We talk to journalist Yuri Manvelyan about the institution of the Church and the political-economic and media role that it plays in Armenia. What kind of institution is the Church and where does its power lie? How is Pashinyan manipulating a criticism of the Church that avoids any political-economic critique and focuses on morality? And how does the media provide a platform, that continues to ignore actually important political and economic concerns for Armenians?

This is a spicy one, y'all. Milena and Tamar have an open dialogue about peace, what it means, and the difficult conversations it entails. It's raw, gets into some histories that are troubling, but we hope opens up good space for future conversations.

We discuss recent workers' strikes (over the past year) in Armenia - especially that of workers at Zangezur Copper and Molybdenum Combine and of Indian migrant workers at the Grand Textile factory in Ijevan - with Knar Khudoyan who has been writing on labor issues in Armenia for years as a journalist. We turn our attention, also, to what it means to be in the liminal period of the strike and the possibilities of freedom that it opens to as well as what constitutes work and labor.

Check out Khudoyan's article on the Zangezur strike here: https://leftrenewal.org/articles-en/khudoyan-noise-vibration-and-dust/

Check out "'Sew Faster' at Gunpoint," about the Grand Textile strike, here: https://epress.am/en/2025/08/27/indian-workers-strike-in-ijevan.html

In this discussion with artist and filmmaker Varduhi Balyan, we talk about a film that she is currently making entitled Մեկի չգոյություն [The Non-Existence of One], which traces the experience of one man in a village in Armenia that is made up largely of Armenian residents of a village displaced from Azerbaijan in the early 1990s during the population exchange. This is a fascinating conversation about the question of belonging, displacement, safety, and what it means to live as a refugee and in exile. We weave together mourning (including queer mourning), memory, and what it means to call a place home.

Dr. Markar Melkonian talks to us about the non-revolutionary regime change of 2018 in Armenia, reflecting on the 1991 counterrevolution as well as revolutionary possibilities that continue to exist today and will exist in the future. We also discuss the Trump initiative in southern Armenia and its possible catastrophic consequences and how depending on imperialist powers for one's salvation has never led to salvation.

We talk to Garren Jansezian, writer and librarian, about the ways in which fascism has been expressed in the many Armenias - in the Republic as well as Diaspora. Garren's insight shows us that it is not just a few select Armenians who have been drawn toward fascist tendencies, but that fascism in its many iterations has drawn large segments of Armenians across time and place. Why is this the case? Listen and find out!

In this episode, with Sona Baldrian, we break down colonialism and decolonization as mechanisms, pointing to the dangerous misuses of the terms and concepts in Armenia's contemporary civil society. We discuss the role of capitalism, soft power, manufacturing consent and share our thoughts on what decolonizing Armenia would actually take.