Hello, I'm Kate Laycock, host of Inside Europe, the weekly current affairs podcast and radio program from DW, Germany's International Broadcaster.

This week, we're taking a break from normal programming in order to make a space for grief.

It does open something up, and you are able, I think, to imagine something different

because it's no longer possible to deny that massive transformations are here.

That's Sarah Jaffe, author of From the Ashes, Grief and Revolution in a World on Fire.

She'll be my guest and guide this week as we explore what it might mean to look at global events through the lens of loss.

If this is a topic that you find difficult, then do feel free to sit this episode out.

For everyone else, welcome.

A storm was breaking over New Orleans when I spoke to Sarah Jaffe, author of From the Ashes,

Grief and Revolution in a World on Fire.

No, not that storm.

Our conversation only happened a couple of weeks ago.

But of course, in New Orleans, every storm carries with it an echo of Katrina.

The city has been remade by a hurricane.

And then each hurricane that comes, you see and feel the

trauma and the damage that that one left behind. And you can see it in the landscape of the city now.

You know, there are still houses with the exes painted on them that people were using to indicate

that the house had been checked to see if there were

any survivors in it. Sarah Jaffe had lived in New Orleans as a child. She moved back as an adult

following the death of her father in 2018. It was an event, she says, which changed everything.

You know, my father died, and it turned my life upside down in ways that I did not expect and could not have foreseen.

And, you know, I have been a journalist for quite a long time.

...