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Dissident Spotlight: Narges Mohammadi
Narges Mohammadi decades in prison for her human rights advocacy show how intolerable compassion is in a state that treats its citizens like children…
 • Christopher Gerlacher
How to Maintain a Stable Government
Robust institutions must constantly be guarded from elite capture. Diverting the government away from its public mission is a reliable way to radicalize…
 • Christopher Gerlacher
Announcement: Final Newsletter
The weekly newsletter is coming to an end but will remain available online.
 • Christopher Gerlacher
Dissident Spotlight: Abdelkabir Al-Hor
Al-Hor's negative coverage of his government led to four years' imprisonment. Morocco found his reporting on corruption too accurate.
 • Christopher Gerlacher
How Crowds Go Wrong
William Bernstein's exploration of periods of mass hysteria shows how we fall for convenient stories and badly project the future.
 • Christopher Gerlacher
Dissident Spotlight: Behrouz Boochani
Behrouz Boochani arrived in Papua New Guinea seeking asylum in Australia. Instead, he was detained in a prison he described in his memoir years later.
 • Christopher Gerlacher
How Flexible Ideologies Contribute to Political Success
The Chinese Communist Party is not a model for democratic movements, but the CCP's history shows how political movements succeed or fail.
 • Christopher Gerlacher

January 2026

Dissident Spotlight: Renee Good & Alex Pretti
Peaceful objections to ICE's raid tactics cost two Americans their lives. The right to peacefully protest is more fragile than many Americans are…
 • Christopher Gerlacher
A Practical Guide to Navigating Hell
R. F. Kuang's Katabasis is an exploration of not only the author's fictional Hell, but also the myriad Hell myths we've created over thousands of years.
 • Christopher Gerlacher
Dissident Spotlight: Newton Ahmed Barry
Newton Barry is a journalist from Burkina Faso who was tried for defamation in absentia. He only found out after he saw the charges on Facebook.
 • Christopher Gerlacher
Why More Information is Bad for Us
Yuval Noah Harari's history of information shows how much more important the use of information is than producing more of it.
 • Christopher Gerlacher
Dissident Spotlight: Abdul Kalam Azad
In 2019, Abdul Kalam Azad posted a poem online.
 • Christopher Gerlacher
© 2026 Christopher Gerlacher · Privacy ∙ Terms ∙ Collection notice
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