For our final episode, we sat down without a guest to ask ourselves the questions we usually put to others.

A podcast co-hosted by Ekin Yaşin and Burcu Baykurt. Click to read It All Happened Before, a Substack publication.

When we talk about resistance, we tend to picture it: marchers in the street, dissidents with megaphones, confrontation made visible.

On Hansen, Hochschild, and the Limits of Understanding Authoritarianism

Suzy Hansen's first book, Notes on a Foreign Country: An American Abroad in a Post-American World, is one of the books we kept returning to in the conversations that eventually became this podcast.

When mainstream media gets captured, the story doesn't end — it migrates.

Twenty years of frustration with Turkey's opposition and what it might tell us about the Democratic Party.

The Democratic Party is trying to figure out what will work — and the competing forces within it are doing so loudly.

The Democratic Party is trying to figure out what will work — and the competing forces within it are doing so loudly.

In March 2025, masked federal agents arrested a Turkish PhD student on a Somerville sidewalk as she walked to break her Ramadan fast.

Or: how a Turkish car crash, the X-Files, and the new FBI Director are all in conversation

Americans have been talking about the "deep state" like it's a new discovery.

On gilded buildings, captured institutions, and what happens after the concrete sets.

In 2014, a year after Gezi, Recep Tayyip Erdoğan moved into a 1,100-room palace built on Atatürk's protected forest farm — in defiance of court orders that ruled it illegal.

What Hungary's election, Jared Kushner's fund, and two Turkish damats tell us about the shape of autocratic rot

What Hungary's election, Jared Kushner's fund, and two Turkish damats tell us about the shape of autocratic rot

<p>In this episode, we go deep into the role of family in political power, unpacking how nepotism operates under the cloak of democracy. From Donald Trump’s inner circle—Jared Kushner and Ivanka Trump...

FCC Chair Brendan Carr threatens to revoke broadcast licenses over war coverage.

FCC Chair Brendan Carr threatens to revoke broadcast licenses over war coverage.

In this episode of It All Happened Before, Ekin and Burcu use the CBS controversy as a doorway into a much older story — how media capture works precisely because it doesn't announce itself.

I discussed media capture in US and Turkey, and Trump and Erdogan’s media policies. Thanks for all the great questions @Ekin and @Burcu Baykurt

In this episode of It All Happened Before, Ekin and Burcu use the CBS controversy as a doorway into a much older story — how media capture works precisely because it doesn't announce itself.