How Substack delivered its users onto Apple
With the forced introduction of Apple in-app payments, the Substack enshittification process is complete for publishers.
18 Aug 2025All episodes
We've been thinking about Substack all wrong
The company that promised a new paradigm looks a whole lot like the old one
03 Jun 2025
A photographer inside Nazi Germany's largest POW camp
Stalag VII-A was liberated 80 years ago today.
29 Apr 2025
Discover hundreds of lost World War II photographs
I've spent the last few years digitising and researching my great uncle's archives from the war
11 Dec 2024
The fire that started a Victorian gender war
Paris, 1897. The Bazar de la Charité blaze killed 118 women and girls. Where were the men?
02 Dec 2024
Jiu-jitsuing suffragettes, nuns hard done by and the first women's football match
A women's history guided tour on London's Suffragette line
23 Nov 2024
Who were the French women celebrated in the Olympics opening ceremony?
Whom we choose to put on a pedestal says a lot about our culture. The world over, public space is still dominated by male imagery.
29 Jul 2024
Meditation apps won't cure workplace stress
Burnout happens when the demands of a job and the resources allocated to it are out of balance. Self-care won't help with that.
06 Jun 2024
This is journalism's largest exit interview
27 journalists (for now) on why they stopped working in news
17 May 2024
The management tool too many newsrooms lack
A career ladder is a roadmap to promotion.
05 Apr 2024
Borderline, a podcast for defiant global citizens
Borderline is a (now concluded) podcast with 50+ in-depth interviews exploring lives lived across borders, immigration and globalisation. Guests included Jose Antonio Vargas, Amelia Gentleman, Ian Bremmer, Dina Nayeri, Wade Davis, Qian Julie Wang, Felix Marquardt, Ian Dunt, Geoffrey Cain and many more. Listen on Apple Podcasts Listen on Spotify
06 Feb 2024
What does a job offer that self-employment does not?
And other thoughts prompted by the Changing Newsrooms 2023 report
05 Dec 2023
Smells like print spirit
Five things you should read this weekend
10 Nov 2023
Newsroom culture shouldn't be an accident
We need to train editors as people managers, not just story processors
02 Nov 2023
"The desert stretches as far as the Earth exists" (Arizona, 2020)
The eye goes and goes until, almost in Mexico, hills rise as if God pinched up the tablecloth.
14 Aug 2023
Let's not mistake a corporate rebrand for a feminist moment
Barbie is as feminist as a Lean In circle and a "You can have it all" essay in Cosmo.
25 Jul 2023
What being an exchange student did for me – and why every teen should have the same chance
This is the speech I gave at the Rotary International Youth Exchange Officers 2023 Preconvention on 26 May 2023 in Melbourne, Australia. I am an alumna of the programme, which transformed my life.
10 Jul 2023
The end of Borderline and the start of something new
🚨Tl;dr: New job! Borderline archives will stay online, but there won't be any more new episodes. Future blogs will only be relevant to media folks, so I'll be culling this email list by half. Hit the button at the bottom to un/resubscribe. Dear Borderline
28 Sep 2022
Every resource you need to start a solo podcast without breaking the bank
Record, edit, source music and archives... free tools for every step in podcasting.
13 Jun 2022
053 | Thierry Cruvellier | Ukraine's other war
Ukraine wages war on the ground, in media... and in the courts.
06 May 2022
What's happening in Borderline's cover art?
Noboby asked but I'll explain anyway.
26 Apr 2022
Marine Le Pen has not changed
Islamophobia, xenophobia, discrimination: Le Pen’s manifesto shows her as she always was
21 Apr 2022
We need to start telling better stories about immigration
"Storytelling is the only place where nuance can happen," says Jose Antonio Vargas
20 Apr 2022
052 | Jose Antonio Vargas | Telling the full, messy story of immigration
"The dehumanization of migrants happens because we haven't heard stories that insist on complexity and nuance"
19 Apr 2022
051 | Sonita Gale | Inside the hostile environment
Filmmaker Sonita Gale follows people whose lives were upended by the UK's immigration system.
28 Mar 2022
Why I've been waiting 100 days for settled status
The Home Office has massive backlogs and hundreds of thousands of people are waiting.
07 Mar 2022
The triumph of “What’s in it for us?” immigration policy
"Let them pick fruit" is not a slip up. It's a philosophy.
02 Mar 2022
050 | Colin Yeo | The UK's very low bar on Ukrainian refugees
"It's not that the UK has done absolutely nothing. It's just _almost_ absolutely nothing."
02 Mar 2022
049 | Michael Rain | What not fitting in can teach you
A conversation with Michael Rain on multiculturalism as a superpower, growing up a Black immigrant in America and why humility is outdated
24 Feb 2022
The burnout crisis is a workload crisis
Hire more, ask for less. That’s where we need to start.
16 Feb 2022
The right tools can transform your solo media business. Here's how to pick them.
You may not have employees, but you’re still hiring.
02 Feb 2022
“We don't really mean the world when we say the world.”
And we've stopped even noticing it.
01 Feb 2022
We don’t need a global news brand. We need a globally literate media.
The Smiths may not be the ones to bring together the world’s news consumers. But should anyone?
16 Jan 2022
Your Borderline reading list and last-minute Christmas gift guide
Twelve can't-go-wrong books I recommend for your last-minute presents... or just for yourself.
15 Dec 2021
Joe Biden campaigned on massive immigration reform. Is he delivering?
The Trump administration upended immigration law and processes. Its legacy is a complex web to untangle, says Susan Cohen.
09 Dec 2021
048 | Susan J. Cohen | Donald Trump's immigration legacy
Joe Biden campaigned on massive immigration reform. Here's what he's inherited, what he's already changed... and what he still hasn't.
08 Dec 2021
You’re probably wrong about refugees
Busting some common myths and assumptions about asylum-seekers and Channel crossings
02 Dec 2021
047 | Daniel Sohege | Busting myths about refugees and Channel crossings
Arriving without a visa to claim asylum is legal, there is no queue to jump and there is no such thing as the "first safe country" rule.
01 Dec 2021
046 | Kamal al-Solaylee | Why we go back to where we come from
Immigration isn't a one-way ticket. For many, the homeland calls back.
24 Nov 2021
Mass migration is inevitable. The global North should welcome it.
Climate change and demographics are setting the stage for a massive reshuffling of the human population, argues Parag Khanna.
12 Nov 2021
045 | Parag Khanna | Mass migration is inevitable. We should welcome it.
Climate change and demographics are setting the stage for a massive reshuffling of the human population.
11 Nov 2021
Belarus "weaponises" migrants, longtermism is BS and why we’re running out of translators | Borderline Brief #3
A weekly curation for global citizens. This week: Germany, Afghanistan, United States, Australia, Barbados, Belarus, Poland, European Union, the New York Times, Netflix, veterans and translators.
10 Nov 2021
Nearly 5 billion people are not yet fully vaccinated against Covid-19.
Portugal has the best vaccination rate of any major country, while Burundi only received its first few hundred doses in October 2021. Explore the data in this interactive graph.
08 Nov 2021
Netflix vs Orthodox Jews, travel for the unvaxxed and deadbeat dads in blue helmets | Borderline Brief #2
A weekly curation for global citizens. This week: Cambodia, UN peacekeepers, Haredi Jews, Black Britons, US immigration, Afghan refugees, Facebook, Covid, climate, Antarctica, France, Mexico, Russia, China and Isaac Asimov’s Foundation.
03 Nov 2021
The last freedom
As borders slowly reopen, immigrants and expats won’t soon forget that our freedom of movement is conditional, our lifestyle only tolerated
02 Nov 2021
Empire, Churchill and killing monarchs: footnotes on my conversation on (not quite) everything with Jonn Elledge
I can't possibly summarise the latest episode but I can add plenty of footnotes.
29 Oct 2021
044 | Jonn Elledge | A conversation on (not quite) everything
Why Britain never got over the empire, who of the French and the English killed the most monarchs and multiculturalism vs. universalism.
28 Oct 2021
Squid Game, Afghan refugees and the UK's new nationality bill | Borderline Brief #1
A weekly curation of news for global citizens: immigration, free movement, globalisation and more.
27 Oct 2021
043 | Christiana Bukalo | Living stateless
Who are you when no nation claims you? Millions of stateless people navigate life unrecognised by any country. They are the literal citizens of nowhere.
21 Oct 2021
042 | Will Buckingham | Leave the door ajar for strangers...
Xenophobia lurks in all of us. But so does philoxenia, that peculiar curiosity and desire to connect when we meet a stranger. What if we cultivated it?
14 Oct 2021
041 | Qian Julie Wang | "Only two people on the continent could know my secret"
Growing up undocumented | Episode 41
07 Oct 2021
Borderline is going back to school
I'm joining the Entrepreneurial Journalism Creators program at the Newmark Graduate School of Journalism at City University New York.
06 Oct 2021
The podcasts that help me keep up with the world
This International Podcast Day, a shout out to other podcasters that feed my brain and inspire my own work.
30 Sep 2021
040 | Ariane Bernard | Tfw you lead a team you've never seen
Sure, employees never want to give up remote work. But how does a founder feel?
30 Sep 2021
There is no magic immigration tap to fix the worker shortage
Britain is finally admitting it wants foreign workers. It’s forgetting to ask a vital question: Do foreign workers want Britain?
25 Sep 2021
The US reopens to foreign visitors* (*terms and conditions apply) | Borderline #20
I've lived through freedom fries and Brexit. But it's a first when a feud embroils 83% of the flags in my Twitter bio.
23 Sep 2021
039 | Anne Lekas Miller | The US reopens to foreign visitors*
(*terms and conditions apply)
22 Sep 2021
Xinjiang, a most perfect dystopia | Borderline #19
“It is the world's most sophisticated surveillance state.”
16 Sep 2021
038 | Geoffrey Cain | How China perfected the police state
The Uyghurs’ real-life dystopia offers a glimpse of a political and technological future George Orwell could only imagine.
14 Sep 2021
Who are the real nomads? | Borderline (redux) #18
Welcome to season 4 of the podcast and a revamped newsletter.
09 Sep 2021A new season of Borderline has arrived!
Here's everything you need to know about your membership.
06 Sep 2021
037 | Felix Marquardt | Manifesto for a new nomadism
People who cross borders can make a better world. But first we need to leave La La Land.
06 Sep 2021
Where in the world are Afghan refugees?
Europe complains, but it's far from hosting the most Afghan refugees and asylum seekers. Still it shines next to the US...
22 Aug 2021
Why your employer wants to cut your pay when you move
Work is increasingly location-independent. Compensation still isn't.
18 Aug 2021
The true citizens of nowhere
Citizenship isn't belonging to one nation or a few. It's giving up a bit of the self for the collective.
19 Jul 2021
New travel rules: Brits can go play around the world... but the world is not welcome here
Only those vaccinated by the NHS will be spared quarantine in England. Changes once again fall short for transnational families.
08 Jul 2021
"Why should my gratitude be any more explicit than yours?"
Dina Nayeri, author of The Ungrateful Refugee, on everything newcomers keep from the native-born
07 Jul 2021
036 | Dina Nayeri | What immigrants never tell you
A wide-ranging conversation with Iranian American author Dina Nayeri on the refugee experience, what humans are entitled to and why we won’t let others have it. "There's just so much that the displaced don't tell the native-born."
06 Jul 2021
036 extra | What immigrants never tell you: the uncut interview with Dina Nayeri
"There's so much that the displaced don't tell the native-born."
04 Jul 2021
Loving a country sneaks up on you
"It's a melancholy feeling to be othered by the State just as I'm starting to feel like I belong here."
30 Jun 2021
Will the Brexit generation be the next Windrush scandal?
What went wrong for Caribbean immigrants to the UK could befall Europeans a generation later. I explore past and future with Amelia Gentleman.
23 Jun 2021
Is travel from amber list countries dangerous? A look at the data.
Are travel restrictions commensurate with the public health risk? Or are they a mildly xenophobic bit of security theatre?
22 Jun 2021
035 | Amelia Gentleman | The unkept promises of the Windrush scandal
In 2018, Amelia Gentleman revealed the Windrush scandal. Three years on, does Britain treat its immigrants any better?
20 Jun 2021
We are one (literally)
A new format for Borderline's first birthday. This week, the EU settlement scheme, Refugee Week, Kamala Harris, the G7 and the Fastly outage. Tuck in.
16 Jun 2021The UK's latest immigration data in a bunch of charts
Without further commentary, some annotated charts of the UK Home Office Q1 immigration data. Where we learn that every single metric is very much down down and add a little context to the headlines.
15 Jun 2021
034 | Daniel Trilling | Wtf is going on at the Home Office?
It’s scandal after scandal for one of Britain’s biggest ministries and an obstacle course for immigrants who encounter it. Why is the Home Office like this?
08 Jun 2021
034 extra | The full uncut interview with Daniel Trilling
It’s scandal after scandal for one of Britain’s biggest ministries and an obstacle course for immigrants who encounter it. Why is the Home Office like this?
08 Jun 2021
Tim Martin knows exactly what he's doing. / Members' letter #17
The Wetherspoon boss defends a world where immigration is not a right of individuals, but a privilege of employers.
06 Jun 2021
The post-Brexit immigration scheme ends in a month. Its flaws could show up in a decade.
Here are all the ways the EU Settlement Scheme could be a slow-motion crash. (It may well not be. We just won't know for a while.)
03 Jun 2021"Good stuff doesn't float to the top, it claws its way to the middle" / Members' letter #16
30 May 2021
Yes, Europeans are being turned away at UK borders. Not all Europeans though.
Four out of five EU nationals refused entry to the United Kingdom since Brexit are from Eastern Europe.
28 May 2021
How to move around the world, raise a teenager and not go crazy
Hormones, acne, heartbreak… and figuring out what country you even belong to. Adolescence is even trickier when you’re a global kid.
27 May 2021
Beyoncé, Nicolas Cage and the 1335 other people worthy of fast-track UK immigration
An immigration system that promises to reliably pick winners can only pick those who've already won.
25 May 2021How to raise global teens and be kinder to migrants / Members' letter #15
23 May 2021
033 | Anisha Abraham | Raising global teenagers
Hormones, acne, heartbreak… and figuring out what country you even belong to. Adolescence is even trickier when you’re a global kid. Kids who grow up between cultures develop invaluable skills. But having to figure out one’s cultural identity, on top of the usual teenage challenges, can make adolescence
23 May 2021
Welcome to the new Borderline
Dear listeners, readers and members, I am chuffed to bits (yes, the Brits got me) to be introducing the new home of Borderline at www.borderlinepod.com. This started out as a because-I'm-bored lockdown project. Unoriginal, I know. But Borderline has bigger ambitions now. This new site is
20 May 2021
"You don’t have to be a globalist to want other countries to stop sucking away your tax base"
An update on episodes 3 [https://borderline.ghost.io/episode-03-what-globalists-should-learn-from-nationalists-with-hassan-damluji/] & 32 [https://borderline.ghost.io/episode-32-hassan-damluji/] with Hassan Damluji I asked Hassan Damluji, deputy director for the Middle East at the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation and author of The Responsible Globalist, for some updated thoughts on two topics
20 May 2021
A passport is the best and most loaded thing you own
I can count my life in passports. The one that sent me to live abroad for the first time and propelled me into adulthood. The one that saw me through my 20s on  routes like MCI-DEN-LAX-TPE-PNH. The one where I'm a grown up tech exec spending more time
20 May 2021"These are our neighbours, let them go!" / Members' letter #14
16 May 2021
032 | Hassan Damluji | The century-long project to build a global nation
What would it take to create on a planetary level the same fuzzy feelings people have for their country? Let’s start with taxes… If globalists want to build a more united world, they need to look at how nation-states did it – at a smaller scale – in the last couple
15 May 2021
America may be back, but the world wasn't waiting
Tech entrepreneurship has exploded around the world, and Silicon Valley is now but one of many models. A conversation with venture capitalist Christopher Schroeder.
11 May 2021
031 | Christopher Schroeder | How tech entrepreneurship exploded beyond Silicon Valley
America may be back, but the world wasn’t waiting on it. Venture capitalist Chris Schroeder travels the world to invest in emerging markets. To the entrepreneurs he meets, Silicon Valley is just one of many models, China is everywhere and South-to-South exchanges are constant. To succeed in this distributed
11 May 2021Members' letter #13
Episode 31 with venture capitalist Christopher Schroeder
09 May 2021
Immigrants don't owe us a thing
Episode 30 with Leah Cowan: Should we abolish borders?
04 May 2021
030 | Leah Cowan | Should we abolish borders?
The border isn’t a line on the periphery of the country, says Leah Cowan, author of Border Nation. It is a fog that covers all of society and can descend upon you at any time if you’re an immigrant or racialized as “other.” It wasn’t always thus
04 May 2021Leah Cowan's borderless world (episode 30) / Members' letter #12
Episode 30 with Leah Cowan
02 May 2021
Vaccine nationalism was always going to win
The same politicians who told us not to hoard toilet paper are stockpiling the world’s most valuable good. We're secretly glad.
27 Apr 2021
029 | Tania Cernuschi | Vaccine nationalism is winning
More than half of Covid-19 vaccines administered so far have been in high-income countries, which account for just 15% of the world population. Four out of five doses are purchased outside COVAX, the UN-backed procurement scheme that had attempted to set up fair and equal access for all countries. The
26 Apr 2021Members' letter #11
Episode 29 with Tania Cernuschi of the World Health Organization
25 Apr 2021
028 | Steve Taylor | The psychology of thinking beyond borders
Strong attachment to group identity is born out of insecurity, explains psychologist Dr Steve Taylor. Psychologically healthy people feel connected to all humans and are able to think beyond borders. Could we lessen nationalistic stife by promoting psychological health? Show notes 00:29 Intro 03:17 Are humans naturally tribal?
20 Apr 2021