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Die Linke won the Berlin state elections for the first time last week. In another historic first, their leader Elif Eralp could become the first mayor of Turkish descent. But the backlash is here. The impact of these kinds of electoral firsts can be hard to make out in the immediate aftermath, and the media cycles are spinning fast and heavy. So in this episode, HEIST founding editors Peter Matthews and Ruthie Weissmann join Ben Schuman-Stoler in breaking down what happened and how to make sense of the major storylines so far. - Why did leaders from the CDU and SPD call the election “disastrous” and “catastrophic”? - Will the other parties’ attacks keep Die Linke from governing? - What is the Remmo clan, and why are they in the headlines? - How did the left party win so decidedly? - And what can other parties learn toward beating back the AfD’s gains everywhere else in Germany?

How do the editors at HEIST choose what news and features we publish? In this episode, founding editors Ruthie Weissmann and Peter Matthews talk to Ben Schuman-Stoler about how they run the editorial side of things at HEIST. They talk about some of their favorite Berlin animal stories, stories that went viral, and what happens on a very slow news day. We recorded this extra episode also to promote our subscriber campaign which is going into its final weekend. We’ve already hit our first target of 200 paying subscribers and are approaching our main target: 500 paying subscribers to HEIST. If we hit that, we can raise our writers’ rates, launch new content initiatives, and, for the first time, start paying ourselves.

Our guest this episode is researcher, filmmaker, and strategist Alon Sahar, who recently published the report “The Campaign against UNRWA and the Palestinian Right of Return in Germany; Israel-aligned Actors, Narratives, and Policy Uptake” with the Rosa Luxemburg Foundation. HEIST founding editor Peter Matthews and Alon talk about the historical 20th century geopolitical context here, and then hone in on Germany’s role, the evolution of the term Staatsräson, and then finally bring it home to Berlin, where we see the implications of this campaign in local political scandals

“National narratives tell you what you must not say.” In this episode, Nobel Laureate Abdulrazak Gurnah joins HEIST founding editor Peter Matthews. Gurnah challenges history from a European perspective. To him, the idea of European centers is not just an oversight, but a kind of blindness. His work, novels with interwoven histories based on complex and surprising historical narratives, won the Nobel Prize for Literature in 2021. The Swedish Academy cited his "uncompromising and compassionate penetration of the effects of colonialism and the fate of the refugee."

In this episode, HEIST founding editor Peter Matthews is joined by investigative reporter Lea Fauth. They discuss her reporting for Deutschlandfunk Kultur in two German cities where factories, unions, and workers are responding to the Zeitenwende, the new era of German investment in manufacturing arms.

In this episode, HEIST founding publisher Ben Schuman-Stoler talks to writer Lily Johnston about her experience at TRYP Expo, Berlin's new festival for "human flourishing.” Together they reflect on if the Expo means something bigger for Berlin. They talk about new synthetic drugs, the surprising Nazi history of psychedelics, what happens when subculture is commercialized, and ask, is there such a thing as too much self-optimization?

In this episode, HEIST founding editor Peter Matthews is joined live at Chapters Bookshop in Berlin by historian Quinn Slobodian to discuss his latest book, Muskism, and ideas about the far-right and the AfD from his 2025 Hayek's Bastards.

When an AfD candidate was criticized for referencing a concentration camp badge on a campaign billboard, the party’s defense was immediate: "How dare you accuse us of being homophobic? Our leader, Alice Weidel, is a lesbian." It’s a perfect, toxic blend of strategic provocation and plausible deniability. But it points to a much deeper, more disturbing mutation within European politics. In this episode, founding HEIST editor Peter Matthews talks with Ben Miller, historian, writer, and co-host of the podcast Bad Gays to talk about right-wing queer politics.

In this episode, HEIST founding editor Peter Matthews sits down with Berlin-based journalist Yossi Bartal to discuss the rise and fall of Hudhaifa Al-Mashhadani - a seemingly pathological liar who became the German media and political establishments’ darling. But this isn't just a story about a single grifter. It’s an indictment of German media’s failures, a patriarchal style of inter-Neukölln governance, and a multi-million-euro antisemitism industry.

In the inaugural episode of the HEIST Podcast, Peter Matthews and Ben Schuman-Stoler sit down with journalist Hebh Jamal to discuss her reporting on what it feels like to live as a Palestinian in Berlin. She details the dystopian reality of building infrastructure in a city that would rather pretend you don't exist.

The HEIST podcast is coming soon. We'll launch on 6 July with three episodes at once: interviews with Ben Miller, Hebh Jamal, and Yossi Bartal. Subscribe to this feed and pass it around - help us spread the word.