It All Happened Before
Claim This Podcastby Ekin and Burcu
Podcast Overview
<p>Democracy doesn't collapse overnight—it follows a script. Join us as we decode America's current political crisis through the eyes of those who've seen it unfold elsewhere. Drawing on Turkey's experience and voices from across the globe, we explore the rise of autocracy and populism with guests who understand these forces intimately. This isn't just analysis—it's a search for solutions, guided by those who know that the past isn't just prologue, it's a roadmap.</p><p></p><p>Hosts:</p><p><a rel="noopener noreferrer nofollow" href="https://ekinyasin.com/" target="_blank"><b>Ekin Yaşin</b></a> is the Director of Communication Leadership graduate program and a Teaching Professor at the University of Washington, where she designs inclusive and meaningful learning experiences for communities. She thinks and talks about the future of work, organizational communication, innovative teaching methods, and future of higher ed. Outside of work, she is a food, music, travel and literature enthusiast. She splits her time between Seattle and Istanbul.</p><p><a rel="noopener noreferrer nofollow" href="https://www.baykurt.org/" target="_blank"><b>Burcu Baykurt</b></a> is Assistant Professor of Media Studies at the University of Massachusetts Amherst. She is the author of <i>Smart as a City: The Politics of Test-Bed Urbanism</i> and coeditor of <i>Soft-Power Internationalism: Competing for Cultural Influence in the 21st-Century Global Order</i>. Her research examines the politics of digital infrastructures, media, and state power across global contexts. Outside of work, she is happiest near the sea.</p><p></p><p></p><p></p><p></p><p></p>
Language
🇺🇲
Publishing Since
3/19/2026
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Recent Episodes
June 15, 2026
Episode 13: We've Seen the Story Turn with Dr. Karabekir Akkoyunlu
<p>As we explore the various forms of authoritarianism around the world these days, it can feel like there's no end in sight. That's why this week, we wanted to look for something else: a case that might offer some hope, albeit cautiously.<br /><br />We turn to Brazil, and to <a rel="noopener noreferrer nofollow" href="https://urldefense.com/v3/__https://www.karabekir.net/__;!!K-Hz7m0Vt54!k-UpdBFC8FtomnR7imKsMPMbZr-V9sTbO7hhq1f_vmEMOpRCDp8ClVKUKYoXKXNwwSyeLeHbtQG5-yZ4o6fV$" target="_blank">Dr. Karabekir Akkoyunlu</a>, a comparative politics scholar working across Turkey, Iran, Brazil, and Indonesia. He walks us through the last decade of Brazilian politics: Lula's imprisonment ahead of the 2018 election, Bolsonaro's rise as a Trump-idolizing celebrity-populist, his COVID-era collapse, Lula's return, and, for the first time in Brazil's history, the conviction of a former president and a slate of generals for attempting a coup.<br /><br />We also dig into the difference between "redemocratization" with a capital R — an actual regime transition — and the small-r version Brazil is living through now: a swing within the same system, a respite rather than a fresh start, with Bolsonaro's base intact and his son waiting in the wings for 2026. From there we move on to the "rainbow coalition" strategy — Lula's exceptional skill at building alliances that cut across the polarizing lines an autocratizing leader depends on, a strategy Péter Magyar has echoed in Hungary — and the much harder problem of keeping that coalition together once the election is won.<br /><br />We close our conversation with what two decades on Turkey and Iran look like from Brazil: the same fight for a dignified life shows up everywhere, but the circumstances and thresholds differ. Things can get worse. They can also get better.<br /><br />Dr. Karabekir Akkoyunlu's books:<br /></p><ul><li><i>Guardianship and Democracy in Iran and Turkey: Tutelary Consolidation, Popular Contestation</i> (2024) — <a rel="noopener noreferrer nofollow" href="https://edinburghuniversitypress.com/book-guardianship-and-democracy-in-iran-and-turkey.html" target="_blank">https://edinburghuniversitypress.com/book-guardianship-and-democracy-in-iran-and-turkey.html</a></li><li><i>Contesting Autocratisation: Actors and Institutions of Democratic Resistance in a Global Perspective</i> (2026), edited by Bilge Yabanci, Karabekir Akkoyunlu, Kerem Öktem — <a rel="noopener noreferrer nofollow" href="https://www.routledge.com/Contesting-Autocratisation-Actors-and-Institutions-of-Democratic-Resistance-in-a-Global-Perspective/Yabanci-Akkoyunlu-Oktem/p/book/9781041198864" target="_blank">https://www.routledge.com/Contesting-Autocratisation-Actors-and-Institutions-of-Democratic-Resistance-in-a-Global-Perspective/Yabanci-Akkoyunlu-Oktem/p/book/9781041198864</a></li></ul><p>Subscribe to our companion newsletter: <a rel="noopener noreferrer nofollow" href="http://itallhappenedbefore.substack.com" target="_blank">itallhappenedbefore.substack.com</a></p>
June 3, 2026
Episode 12: We've Been Walking Around Obstacles with Dr. Maria Repnikova
<p>When we talk about resistance, we tend to picture it: marchers in the street, dissidents with megaphones, confrontation made visible. But in societies where activists are monitored, journalists are constrained, and the costs of speaking out are real and immediate, resistance looks different. It learns to walk around obstacles rather than through them. It becomes quieter, more adaptive, harder to name.</p><p></p><p>To think through what that means — and what our usual frameworks miss — we turn to <a rel="noopener noreferrer nofollow" href="https://www.mariarepnikova.com/" target="_blank">Dr. Maria Repnikova</a>, a scholar of Chinese political communication. </p><p></p><p>We move across a lot of terrain in this conversation: the lived experiences of journalists and activists who find ways to work around obstacles rather than through them, nonconfrontational activism as strategy and as survival, the blurry line between resistance and complicity, and what "participatory persuasion" reveals about who's really in control of a narrative. We also draw comparisons between China and Russia — where the constraints look similar on the surface but the logic underneath is different. And we ask why soft power is no longer a distinctly Western or liberal-democratic project.</p><p></p><p>What emerges is something we keep coming back to: the importance of image — for autocratic states, for democratic ones, and for all of us trying to make sense of a global information order that keeps shifting.</p><p></p><p><i>It All Happened Before</i> began as a way of seeing our future in other countries' pasts and presents — primarily through Turkey. This season and next, we keep widening that lens. We started with Turkey. The world keeps giving us more to think with.</p><p></p><hr /><p></p><p>Dr. Maria Repnikova's books: </p><ul><li><i>Media Politics in China: Improvising Power under Authoritarianism (2017)</i> — <a rel="noopener noreferrer nofollow" href="https://www.amazon.com/Media-Politics-China-Improvising-Authoritarianism/dp/1107195985" target="_blank">https://www.amazon.com/Media-Politics-China-Improvising-Authoritarianism/dp/1107195985</a></li><li><i>Chinese Soft Power (2022)</i>— <a rel="noopener noreferrer nofollow" href="https://www.cambridge.org/core/elements/chinese-soft-power/4E9C9E445C5F8A9F81F5AAEEAD2DF21D" target="_blank">https://www.cambridge.org/core/elements/chinese-soft-power/4E9C9E445C5F8A9F81F5AAEEAD2DF21D</a></li><li><i>Competing for Softpower: China's Image Making in Africa (forthcoming July 2026): </i><a rel="noopener noreferrer nofollow" href="https://www.amazon.com/Competing-Soft-Power-Chinas-Making/dp/100971029X" target="_blank">https://www.amazon.com/Competing-Soft-Power-Chinas-Making/dp/100971029X</a></li></ul><p></p><p>Read more and subscribe: <a rel="noopener noreferrer nofollow" href="https://itallhappenedbefore.substack.com" target="_blank">https://itallhappenedbefore.substack.com</a></p>
May 27, 2026
Episode 11: A Neighborhood in the Age of Authoritarianism: A Conversation with Author Suzy Hansen
<p>Suzy Hansen's first book, <i>Notes on a Foreign Country: An American Abroad in a Post-American World</i>, is one of the books we kept returning to in the conversations that eventually became this podcast. Her account of seeing the United States from the outside — and her reckoning with American exceptionalism helped us name what we were trying to do here: think about the U.S. with Turkey in the frame, and refuse the comfort of believing it can't happen here. So when listeners and friends started asking us to invite her, it felt overdue. </p><p></p><p>Suzy Hansen joins us to talk about her new book, <a rel="noopener noreferrer nofollow" href="https://us.macmillan.com/books/9780374298432/fromlifeitself/" target="_blank"><i>From Life Itself: Turkey, Istanbul and a Neighborhood in the Age of Erdoğan</i> (April 2026)</a> — a decade-long portrait of Karagümrük and the people who live there. Where <i>Notes</i> asked what it means to be American once you've left America, <i>From Life Itself</i> asks a different question: how do ordinary people experience authoritarianism in the twenty-first century? What does it feel like when the world transforms around you while you're trying to live your life, raise your kids, run your shop, get through the week?</p><p></p><p>We talk about what it means to write authoritarianism from inside a single neighborhood in Istanbul rather than from the height of the strongman narrative — the muhtar, the corner shop, the slow accumulation of small adjustments that become a new normal. We sit with the systemic violence directed at Roma and Syrian communities in the neighborhood, and what it means that everyday ambivalence at street level coexists so easily with institutional disposability. And we keep returning to her argument that authoritarianism is "an act of creation, a process of transformation that begins when few are watching and, once identified, is often too late to stop." We end where the show always ends up — looking back and forth between Turkey and the U.S. right now: at the immigration regime and ICE, at the disposability of certain communities, at the textures of life under a transformation that's already well underway, and at what Turkey's last decade can tell Americans who are still asking whether this is really happening.</p><p></p><p><b>About Suzy Hansen</b></p><p>Suzy Hansen is the author of <a rel="noopener noreferrer nofollow" href="https://us.macmillan.com/books/9780374298432/fromlifeitself/" target="_blank"><i>From Life Itself: Turkey, Istanbul and a Neighborhood in the Age of Erdoğan</i></a> (2026). She lived for more than a decade in Istanbul as a contributing writer for <i>The New York Times Magazine</i>. Her first book, <a rel="noopener noreferrer nofollow" href="https://us.macmillan.com/books/9780374537838/notesonaforeigncountry/" target="_blank"><i>Notes on a Foreign Country: An American Abroad in a Post-American World</i></a>, was a finalist for the 2018 Pulitzer Prize in nonfiction and won the Overseas Press Club's Cornelius Ryan Award. She has taught writing at Princeton, NYU, and Bard, and has been a fellow at New America and the Institute of Current World Affairs. She lives in New York City. </p><p></p><p>Subscribe to our companion newsletter: <a rel="noopener noreferrer nofollow" href="http://itallhappenedbefore.substack.com" target="_blank">itallhappenedbefore.substack.com</a></p>
14 total episodes available
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- What is It All Happened Before?
<p>Democracy doesn't collapse overnight—it follows a script. Join us as we decode America's current political crisis through the eyes of those who've seen it unfold elsewhere. Drawing on Turkey's experience and voices from across the globe, we explore the rise of autocracy and populism with guests who understand these forces intimately. This isn't just analysis—it's a search for solutions, guided by those who know that the past isn't just prologue, it's a roadmap.</p><p></p><p>Hosts:</p><p><a rel="noopener noreferrer nofollow" href="https://ekinyasin.com/" target="_blank"><b>Ekin Yaşin</b></a> is the Director of Communication Leadership graduate program and a Teaching Professor at the University of Washington, where she designs inclusive and meaningful learning experiences for communities. She thinks and talks about the future of work, organizational communication, innovative teaching methods, and future of higher ed. Outside of work, she is a food, music, travel and literature enthusiast. She splits her time between Seattle and Istanbul.</p><p><a rel="noopener noreferrer nofollow" href="https://www.baykurt.org/" target="_blank"><b>Burcu Baykurt</b></a> is Assistant Professor of Media Studies at the University of Massachusetts Amherst. She is the author of <i>Smart as a City: The Politics of Test-Bed Urbanism</i> and coeditor of <i>Soft-Power Internationalism: Competing for Cultural Influence in the 21st-Century Global Order</i>. Her research examines the politics of digital infrastructures, media, and state power across global contexts. Outside of work, she is happiest near the sea.</p><p></p><p></p><p></p><p></p><p></p> - How often does this podcast release new episodes?
This podcast updates daily.
- Where can I listen to this podcast?
This podcast is available on 4 platforms including Apple Podcasts, Spotify, and more. You can also use the RSS feed directly.
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