In the last thirty years, the developing world has undergone tremendous changes. Overall, poverty has fallen, people live longer and healthier lives, and economies have been transformed.

And yet many countries have simply missed the boat. Oxford’s Stefan Dercon’s new book, “Gambling on Development: Why some countries win and others lose”, asks why it is that some of the previously poorest countries have prospered, while others have failed.

Gabo award-winning innovator Jazmín Acuña is the co-founder and director of El Surtidor. The Paraguayan outlet is celebrated for its unique use of visual journalism. She joins us to discuss some of her outlet’s most successful stories and techniques.

Jakub Parusinski joined a group of 30 journalists who resigned from the Kyiv Post in 2021 to launch the Kyiv Independent. Less than three months later, Russia invaded Ukraine. As COO of the outlet, Jakub has overseen the launch of a membership model that will ensure the outlet’s longevity for many months to come.

Regine Cabato is a reporter in the Manila bureau for the Washington Post covering wide-ranging topics, from women’s rights to politics and human rights abuses in the Philippines. She joins us five days before the landmark general election there to discuss candidates and key policy issues.

Financial Times journalist Michael Moore joins us on the one-month anniversary of the launch of the FT Edit app to discuss how the new product is performing. Malcolm has led tech news for the Financial Times as well as being in Rome, Shanghai and Beijing.

Philip Di Salvo does research about investigative reporting, leaks and the relationships between journalism and hacking. A post-doctoral researcher based at The London School of Economics as Visiting Fellow, Philip will talk to us about how to keep journalists and their sources safe in 2022.

It is argued that secularization creates a fundamental change, to the point of break, in the history of culture, or alternatively, starts a new history. This statement assumes a relation between religion and historical reality. Thus, in a reality in which religion possesses weight and significance for people, the historical process is characterized by continuity, but this is broken in a reality of secularization. The paper explores two models. The break model is based on a diachronic observation, which examines present reality in light of past events.

The fear of Judaism is an important theme in Israeli culture. By analyzing Israeli dystopias and essays we have the chance to “look” closely at this fear, and its images. The main one is the image on Judaism as the Israeli unconsciousness that ambush to the secular identity. This central image tells us something about the roots of the fear.

The story of the early Zionist settlement in Palestine could be told from the viewpoint of failure and melancholia. An untold history of this period ignores the high rate of suicides and cases of clinical depression among the Zionist “pioneers”. The story of the forgotten author Israel Zarchi (1909-1947) will serve as a test case: During his short life he published six novels and seven collections of short stories, as well as translations from German, English, and Polish.