As the 21st century dawned, a newly-elected Vladmir Putin was making friends on the world stage. He smiled for photo ops at G8 meetings, and was the first foreign leader to call George W. Bush after the attacks of 9/11, offering his support against terrorism.

So what changed? To understand Russia's view of the world now – and its continued aggression towards Ukraine – it helps to know more about the psyche of the country and its leader.

In today's episode, we talk to James Rodgers, a reader in international journalism at City St George's, University of London, about how a festering sense of national humiliation after the collapse of the Soviet Union hardened Putin's tough man regime and led Russia to turn its back on the west.

This episode was written and produced by Mend Mariwany and Gemma Ware with editing help from Ashlynne McGhee. Mixing by Michelle Macklem and theme music by Neeta Sarl. Read the full credits for this episode and sign up here for a free daily newsletter from The Conversation.

If you like the show, please consider donating to The Conversation, an independent, not-for-profit news organisation.

• Vladimir Putin’s history war where truth is the first casualty
• The painful post-Soviet transition from communism to capitalism – Recovery podcast series part five
• In pushing for Ukraine elections, Trump is falling into Putin-laid trap to delegitimize Zelenskyy

Mentioned in this episode:

The Making of an Autocrat

Search "The Conversation Weekly" for our new series: The Making of an Autocrat. Is America watching its democracy unravel in real time? In The Making of an Autocrat from The Conversation, six of the world’s pre-eminant scholars reveal the recipe for authoritarian rule. From capturing a party, to controlling the military, Donald Trump is borrowing from the playbook of strongmen thoughout history. This is the story of how democracies falter — and what might happen next.

Whenever federal immigration agents pull up to a location in Minneapolis, people take their whistles out, start blowing them and start filming.

In December, US government sent more than 2,000 Immigration and Customs and Enforcement (ICE) agents into Minnesota in December as part of Operation Metro Surge. The residents of the metropolitan area known as the Twin Cities – Minneapolis and St. Paul – quickly came together to protect and support their neighbours at risk of being caught up in ICE raids.

In this episode, we speak to Daniel Cueto-Villalobos, a doctoral candidate at the University of Minnesota, who lives in southern Minneapolis and studies race, religion and social movements. He tracks the neighbourhood groups that have sprung into action in response to the ICE presence back to mutual networks set up during the 2020 Covid pandemic and in the wake of the murder of George Floyd by a Minneapolis policeman.

This episode was written and produced by Katie Flood with editing help from Mend Mariwany. The executive producer is Gemma Ware. Mixing by Michelle Macklem and theme music by Neeta Sarl. Read the full credits for this episode and sign up here for a free daily newsletter from The Conversation.

If you like the show, please consider donating to The Conversation, an independent, not-for-profit news organisation.

Mentioned in this episode:

The Making of an Autocrat

Search "The Conversation Weekly" for our new series: The Making of an Autocrat. Is America watching its democracy unravel in real time? In The Making of an Autocrat from The Conversation, six of the world’s pre-eminant scholars reveal the recipe for authoritarian rule. From capturing a party, to controlling the military, Donald Trump is borrowing from the playbook of strongmen thoughout history. This is the story of how democracies falter — and what might happen next.

Super Bowl Sunday is the biggest night in American sports. A popular destination to watch – and bet – on the Super Bowl is Las Vegas, Nevada.

And it was in Las Vegas, ahead of the 1986 Super Bowl between the Chicago Bears and the New England Patriots, that one enterprising casino would kickstart a new direction in American sports gambling: prop betting. It offered odds not just on the result of the game, but on the outcome of an individual event within it – whether one defensive player called William Perry, nicknamed The Refrigerator, would score a touchdown.

Today, as American sports face multiple gambling scandals, we speak to John Affleck, Knight Chair in sports journalism and society at Penn State, about that 1986 Super Bowl, the history of prop betting, and why he believes its explosion is threatening the integrity of professional sports in the US.

This episode was written and produced by Katie Flood with editing help from Mend Mariwany. The executive producer is Gemma Ware. Mixing by Michelle Macklem and theme music by Neeta Sarl. Read the full credits for this episode and sign up here for a free daily newsletter from The Conversation.

If you like the show, please consider donating to The Conversation, an independent, not-for-profit news organisation.

• Watch the Super Bowl Shuffle by the Chicago Bears
• Supreme Court delivers a home run for sports bettors – and now states need to scramble
• Bad Bunny’s Super Bowl show is part of long play drawn up by NFL to score with Latin America
• How the explosion of prop betting threatens the integrity of pro sports

Mentioned in this episode:

The Making of an Autocrat

Search "The Conversation Weekly" for our new series: The Making of an Autocrat. Is America watching its democracy unravel in real time? In The Making of an Autocrat from The Conversation, six of the world’s pre-eminant scholars reveal the recipe for authoritarian rule. From capturing a party, to controlling the military, Donald Trump is borrowing from the playbook of strongmen thoughout history. This is the story of how democracies falter — and what might happen next.