Monthly Archives: May 2026

Gal Beckerman HOW TO BE A DISSIDENT

Gal Beckerman is an author and a staff writer at The Atlantic. His latest book is HOW TO BE A DISSIDENT.
Before coming over to The Atlantic, whose books section he also ran, he was an editor at the New York Times Book Review for six years. He also served as the opinion editor at the Forward newspaper and a staff editor and writer at the Columbia Journalism Review. His writing has appeared in a number of places over the years, including the Washington Post, The New Republic and Bookforum.


His previous books include The Quiet Before, which was a New York Times Notable pick in 2022, and When They Come for Us We’ll Be Gone, which won two major book awards and was chosen as a book of the year by The New Yorker and the Washington Post.

Over the years he was a Peace Corps volunteer in Cameroon, lived in Berlin as a German Chancellor Fellow with the Alexander von Humboldt Foundation, and broke his arm almost in half while biking across France.  

We spoke with him via Zoom on May 18, 2026.

Articles pertinent to this interview:

Our show with U. of MD Law Professor, Leigh Goodmark, from 2023 is about women in US prisons for murdering their abusers. https://forthright.media/2023/03/09/leigh-goodmark-imperfect-victims-criminalization-and-the-promise-of-abolition-feminism/

Trump and His Advisers Clearly Haven’t Actually Read Thucydides https://www.nytimes.com/2026/05/18/opinion/trump-xi-iran-war.html

Sarah Wynn-Williams and Virginia Giuffre jointly win freedom to publish prize at British book awards https://www.theguardian.com/books/2026/may/11/sarah-wynn-williams-and-virginia-giuffre-jointly-win-freedom-to-publish-prize-at-british-book-awards

A mask can’t hide you from God’: can you shame an ICE agent into quitting? https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2026/may/16/ice-agents-quit

I.R.S. to Drop Audits of Trump and Family https://www.nytimes.com/2026/05/19/us/politics/trump-irs-doj-lawsuit-audit.html

Exclusive: FBI Files Counter Government Argument om Texas “Antifa” Trial https://inthesetimes.com/article/prairieland-antifa-trial-protest-repression-fbi

Lawrence Douglas THE CRIMINAL STATE: War, Atrocity, and the Dream of International Justice

Our guest today is Amherst College’s Professor of Law, Jurisprudence and Social Thought, Lawrence Douglas. He is the author of seven books, including the nonfiction books, The Memory of Judgment: Making Law and History in the Trials of the Holocaust; and Will He Go? Trump and the Looming Electoral Meltdown in 2020; as well as the novels, The Catastrophist, and The Vices.

The recipient of major fellowships from the National Endowment for the Humanities, the American Council of Learned Societies, the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum, the Institute for International Education, and American Academy in Berlin, and the Carnegie Foundation, he has lectured throughout the United States and in more than a dozen countries, and has served as visiting professor at the University of London and Humboldt Universität zu Berlin.

His latest book, THE CRIMINAL STATE: War, Atrocity, and the Dream of International Justice, was just published by Princeton University Press. It’s a re-interpretation of international law’s reckoning with Nazi aggression and atrocity. He shows how the Nuremberg trials challenged centuries of thought—rooted in Hobbes and other canonical thinkers—that shielded sovereigns from legal scrutiny. Yet Nuremberg’s bid to frame aggression as the cornerstone of a new order of international criminal law largely failed, giving way to a system now centrally concerned with crimes against humanity and genocide—and leaving unresolved the legality and effectiveness of using force to stop the worst violations of human rights. It’s a provocative history of the struggle to bring perpetrators of state violence to justice, which is certainly relevant to the current conflicts around the world and, sadly, increasingly here at home, as well.

Articles pertinent to this interview:

Trump says US navy like ‘pirates’ while seizing a ship in Iranian blockade https://www.theguardian.com/world/2026/may/02/trump-us-navy-pirates-iran-blockade

Hope out of chaos: how the dark era of Trump is creating a new approach to global politics https://www.theguardian.com/world/2026/may/02/dark-era-trump-creating-new-approach-global-politics

André Cerdini, Judge in Trial of Nazi Klaus Barbie, Dies at 96 https://www.nytimes.com/2026/05/15/world/europe/andre-cerdini-dead.html

Meet the New Leader of the Free World https://www.nytimes.com/2026/04/26/opinion/zelensky-ukraine-trump-nato-leader.html?searchResultPosition=1

James Comey’s reindictment is the product of a twisted justice department https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2026/may/01/james-comey-indictment

Trump’s militarization of the DC police was just an opening salvo https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2025/aug/27/january-6-trump-chicago-military

Trump-Appointed Judge Calls Administration’s Behavior ‘Appalling’ In 24-Page Ruling https://www.huffpost.com/entry/doj-immediately-appeals-to-subpoena-trans-patients-health-records-after-judge-blocks-attempt_n_6a063dcde4b098065be8a659?origin=home-latest-news-unit

Todd Wilkinson Last Stand: Ted Turner’s Quest to Save a Troubled Planet

Media around the globe reported the death of Ted Turner on May 6, 2026, at the age of 87. Phillip Evans, a spokesman for the family, confirmed the death. He announced in 2018 that he had Lewy body dementia, a progressive brain disorder. Turner’s Montana properties included the flagship 113,000-acre Flying D Ranch south of Bozeman.

So, we thought it would be good to rebroadcast our interview with Bozeman author, Todd Wilkinson, from 2013 when his book, LAST STAND: TED TURNER’S QUEST TO SAVE A TROUBLED PLANET, was published.