Well before launching the horrifying campaign against Ukraine a year ago, Vladimir Putin had been undermining Russia as well: normalizing corruption on a massive scale, and suppressing dissent and democracy. One of the darkest moments on that trajectory was the poisoning of the opposition leader Alexey Navalny with the nerve agent novichok. Navalny and a t ... Show More
Yesterday
Molly Fischer on Waymo, the Driverless Taxi Coming to a City Near You
A Waymo offers a unique experience: you ride as a passenger behind or next to an empty driver’s seat, the steering wheel turning as though handled by a ghost. The New Yorker staff writer Molly Fischer has been reporting on Waymo, and she tells David Remnick that though the statis ... Show More
26m 18s
Oct 13
The Reporter Nicholas Lemann on California’s Battle to Pass a Billionaire Tax
In California, progressives have crafted a ballot initiative that calls for a wealth tax—a one-time, five-per-cent tax on wealth above a billion dollars, earmarked to shore up the state’s health-care system after drastic federal cuts. Wealth inequality is a vast concern, especial ... Show More
18m 29s
Jan 2021
Aleksei Navalny and the Future of Russia
<p>The Russian activist Aleksei Navalny has spent years agitating against corruption, and against President Vladimir Putin. </p><p>Last summer he was poisoned with a rare nerve agent linked to the Russian state. Last week, after recovering in Germany, he returned to Moscow. He wa ... Show More
28m 18s
Jan 2021
Why Putin wants Alexei Navalny dead
Zack, Jenn, and Alex discuss the nationwide demonstrations in Russia in support of dissident opposition leader Alexei Navalny, who returned to the country this week from Germany, where he was recuperating from a poisoning believed to be an assassination attempt directed by the Kr ... Show More
45m 9s
May 2022
Poison, pranks, prison: The making of ‘Navalny’
When Alexei Navalny, the Russian opposition leader and anti-corruption activist, was poisoned in 2020, he was relocated to Germany to recover. While he was there, he teamed up with a Bulgarian data-journalist named Christo Grozev, who claimed he had figured out who was behind the ... Show More
24m 2s
Sep 2022
Maria Pevchikh: Where does Russia's anti-Putin movement go from here?
Stephen Sackur speaks to Maria Pevchikh, investigations chief for Alexei Navalny’s Anti-Corruption Foundation, which is now outlawed in Russia. With Vladimir Putin putting a tighter squeeze on Russian civil society and criticism of the war risking years in prison, where does Russ ... Show More
24m 27s
Feb 2024
Who is left to oppose Putin now?
Alexei Navalny, the most prominent critic of Russia’s government, has died in a Russian prison, just months after he was placed in a high security cell in a remote Siberian penal colony. His allies, and his wife Yulia Navalnaya, blame President Vladimir Putin and say it was under ... Show More
15m 35s
Feb 2021
What Alexei Navalny's arrest means for Vladimir Putin
On his return to Russia from Germany, where he'd been recuperating after being poisoned by a nerve agent, Russian opposition leader Alexei Navalny was arrested for criminal charges resurrected by the Kremlin from a years-old conviction. In the days since, peaceful protesters have ... Show More
34m 23s
Feb 2024
Putin’s Opposition Ponders a Future Without Aleksei Navalny
<p>Last week, the Russian authorities announced that Aleksei A. Navalny, Russia’s most prominent opposition leader and an unflinching critic of President Vladimir V. Putin, had died in a remote Arctic prison at the age of 47.</p><p>Yevgenia Albats, his friend, discusses how Mr. N ... Show More
31m 31s