History As It Happens

This is the first of two podcast episodes this week dealing with the aftermath of the attempted assassination of Donald J. Trump and the causes and effects of political violence in America. Historian Jeremi Suri says violence has been a part of our national story from the beginning. In a Time op-ed, Suri argues, "We have inherited a very violent culture in the United States. Moving forward, we have a choice. We can continue to encourage violence, or, we can step back and actively discourage personal attacks, bullying, and intimidation, knowing all too well where they can lead." In this episode, Suri, who co-authors Democracy of Hope on Substack, explores the reasons behind the many assassinations in U.S. history and their effect on the rest of society.

This is the fifth episode in an occasional series examining influential elections in U.S. history. The most recent episode, The Election of 1932, was published on June 17. George W. Bush's historically narrow victory over Al Gore is remembered for how it was decided: the U.S. Supreme Court ruled 5-4 to end a Florida court-ordered recount of disputed ballots, handing the state's 25 Electoral College votes to the Texas Republican. The campaign itself was relatively tame as the candidates sparred over how best to spend a federal budget surplus. Vice President Gore struggled to escape the shadow of his boss Bill Clinton, as voters did not credit Gore with the economic boom that took place during Clinton's two terms. Bush had a shaky grasp of policy and world events, but he struck voters as genuine. In this episode, historians Jeremi Suri and Jeffrey Engel delve into the election of 2000. If the winner only knew what awaited him on Sept. 11, 2001...

Far-right political movements achieved power in Europe a century ago, wrecking parliamentary democracies and instigating wars of conquest and genocide. Today's far-right populists are not the same as yesteryear's fascists, but their growing popularity on a prosperous, mostly peaceful continent has caught many observers by surprise. In the elections for the European Parliament in early June, there was a clear shift to the right. Yet it would be wrong to conclude that Europe, with its stated commitment to human rights and market economics, is hurtling toward a far-right revolution. The results in France's snap elections dealt Marine Le Pen's National Rally a stunning setback, for instance. In this episode, political scientist Veronica Anghel of the European University Institute explains what's driving Europe's turbulent politics.

This is the third episode in an occasional series examining major counterfactual scenarios in history. The most recent installment (Nov. 30, 2023) examined what would have happened to slavery in America without the Civil War. The rebellious colonists' victory in the Revolutionary War and the high ideals of the Declaration of Independence are so integral to the American origin story that it is difficult to grasp our modern society without them. Yet, the British came close to capturing General George Washington's army in 1776 in the first major battle after the delegates in Philadelphia signed the Declaration. The rebellion might have been crushed. So why didn't Great Britain win with its advantages of a professional military, powerful navy, and advanced economy? In this episode, University of Virginia historian Andrew Jackson O'Shaughnessy discusses the reasons why history turned out the way it did. Recommended reading: "The Men Who Lost America: British Leadership, the American Revolution, and the Fate of Empire" by Andrew Jackson O'Shaughnessy

The last time an incumbent president withdrew from a reelection campaign was 1968. On March 31, under immense stress from the failure of his Vietnam War policy, President Lyndon Johnson told a national TV audience that he would neither seek nor accept the nomination of the Democratic Party for another four years in the White House. Vice President Hubert Humphrey would win the nomination, as all hell broke loose on the Chicago streets outside the convention, during one of the most turbulent years in U.S. political history. By late October, as Humphrey gained ground in the polls against Republican Richard Nixon, LBJ learned that a woman by the name of Anna Chennault was interfering in his 11th hour bid to initiate peace talks with the North Vietnamese government in Paris. The person who orchestrated this dirty trick was Nixon himself. In this episode, University of Virginia historian and researcher Ken Hughes tells the story of the Chennault Affair. Recommended reading: "Chasing Shadows: The Nixon Tapes, the Chennault Affair, and the Origins of Watergate" by Ken Hughes

During the Cold War it was taken for granted that Soviet foreign policy was driven by the tenets of Marxism-Leninism toward imperial expansion and subversion. Stalin, Khrushchev, Brezhnev, and even Gorbachev were viewed as ideologues bent on leading their Third World clients to resist U.S. hegemony. In this episode, historians Sergey Radchenko and Vladislav Zubok weigh the role of ideology versus other, more "realist" factors, such as the quest for security and the recognition of the legitimacy of the Kremlin's interests. The focus of the discussion is Radchenko's latest book "To Run the World: The Kremlin's Cold War Bid For Global Power." Additional reading: Collapse: The Fall of the Soviet Union by Vladislav Zubok

Why are Palestinians stateless more than 75 years after the founding of a Jewish state in the same land? Why have international law and the rules-based order established after 1945 failed the Palestinian people? Why hasn't the U.N. with its security council designed to prevent conflict, stopped the Israel-Palestinian conflict? In Nov. 1947 the United Nations General Assembly voted 33 to 13 with 10 abstentions to partition Palestine in one of the most consequential votes the body has ever taken. One side achieved statehood; the other rejected the vote. From this point forward international law hasn't helped Palestinians meet their national aspirations. In this episode, Victor Kattan of the University of Nottingham explains why.

Since achieving its independence in 1948, Burma – now Myanmar – has spent decades under military rule, its people joining ethnic armies at war with the state. With the current war now in its fourth year, pro-democracy activists are being jailed, tortured and murdered. The junta toppled a democratically-elected government in 2021, yet the war doesn't receive as much attention in the U.S. as other wars where democracy is said to be on the line. In this episode, Priscilla Clapp of the U.S. Institute of Peace discusses Burma's history of military rule and democratic activism, and whether any reasons for optimism exist as the country fragments into autonomous statelets ruled by armed groups opposed to the central government. Clapp served as chief of mission at the U.S. Embassy in Burma (1999-2002).

This is the fourth episode in an occasional series examining influential elections in U.S. history. The most recent episode, The Elections of 1860 and 1864, was published on May 7. When Franklin Delano Roosevelt took the oath of office in March 1933, the American people faced a paralyzing national emergency of historic proportions. The unemployment rate was 25 percent and much of the nation's wealth had evaporated with astonishing speed. It was a moment of high drama, unlike the election that put Roosevelt in the White House. When voters went to the polls in Nov. 1932, there was little doubt FDR would defeat the hapless Herbert Hoover by a wide margin. Unclear was whether Roosevelt's promised New Deal would pull the country out of the Great Depression. In this episode, historian David M. Kennedy explains how Roosevelt's economic vision made him a transformational figure. Recommended reading: Freedom From Fear: The American People in Depression and War, 1929-1945.

American public opinion is increasingly intolerant of migrants, given the record numbers who have illegally crossed the southern border over the past several years. The U.S. immigration system is broken, as harsher enforcement in the name of deterrence has not magically fixed the root causes of human migration from Central and South America. Under election year pressure, President Joseph Biden signed an executive order to bar most asylum seekers, but comprehensive immigration reform remains out of reach. The asylum system, codified in 1980, was never designed to handle so many people. In this episode, New Yorker staff writer Jonathan Blitzer, the author of "Everyone Who Is Gone Is Here," explains the ins and outs of asylum and the human costs of failing to reform a broken system.

Future historians who write about the 2024 campaign might puzzle over how the Republican nominee, four years earlier, egged on a mob to attack Congress, the futile culmination of a months-long scheme to steal the 2020 election. But rather than end his political career, he would survive to champion the rioters as victims of the same nefarious forces arrayed against him and, by extension, the American people. So it should come as no surprise that the felony conviction against Donald J. Trump for falsifying business records in a hush-money scheme with a porn star may not dent his support very much. What is Trumpism today? Is there more to it than the man's grievances against prosecutors, judges, and his political foes? In this episode, the National Review's Dan McLaughlin discusses the sources of Trump's ongoing dominance of the Republican Party.

Note: Kate Clarke Lemay is now the Director of the U.S. Army Heritage and Education Center at the Army War College. Original show notes: Today marks the 80th anniversary of the Allied invasion of Normandy, a massive military campaign to begin liberating Western Europe from Nazi occupation on the way to victory in the Second World War. American memories are filled with heroism and sacrifice, as D-Day remains a touchstone in the U.S. self-image as a global superpower and defender of freedom and democracy. For the people of France, memories are more complicated, even painful, because the liberation came at a cost of thousands of French civilians. Moreover, the French defeat of 1940 continued to loom large in collective memory as a source of shame. In this episode, the Smithsonian's Kate Clarke Lemay discusses her work studying the war cemeteries in France, which stand as monuments to U.S. military and cultural primacy. Lemay is the author of "Triumph of the Dead: American World War II Cemeteries, Monuments, and Diplomacy in France."

Before U.S. leaders would compare Saddam Hussein to Hitler, they cynically helped him in his war against Iran. Before the U.S. would wage a decades-long war on Iraq in the form of sanctions and a pre-emptive invasion, multiple White House administrations sought better relations between Washington and Baghdad. During periods of cooperation and conflict, each side misread the other. Yet "forever war" was avoidable. In this episode, investigative journalist Steve Coll, the author of "The Achilles Trap: Saddam Hussein, the C.I.A., and the Origins of America's Invasion of Iraq," discusses new source materials, including audio tapes of Saddam's internal deliberations, that allow us to understand the dictator's decision-making in illuminating ways.

Collective memory -- what our society chooses to remember, honor, or erase from our past -- is perpetually mediated. For generations Confederate statues and monuments stood in public squares until a new racial reckoning compelled cities and towns to remove them. But that wasn't the end of the story -- at least not in Shenandoah County, Virginia. Its school board voted to restore the names of Confederate Generals Lee, Jackson, and Ashby to a pair of schools which had been renamed (Honey Run and Mountain View) in 2020. In Tennessee, the caretakers of the Franklin Battlefield just dedicated a new monument honoring the Texas soldiers who fought there for the Confederacy in 1864. In this episode, historian and Substack writer Kevin Levin discusses the grip Lost Cause mythology continues to hold on the minds of some Americans today, and the difficult task of acknowledging important historical events and actors without glorifying their causes.

The death of Iranian president Ebrahim Raisi has left a power vacuum to be filled in snap elections in less than 50 days. The death of the man once called the "butcher of Tehran" comes at low point in U.S.-Iran relations, and as the theocratic regime's legitimacy at home is under severe stress. In this episode, historians Gregory Brew of Eurasia Group and John Ghazvinian of the University of Pennsylvania discuss Raisi's legacy and how his death may influence the regime's stance on nuclear weapons development.

In the United States and in capitals across the world, liberal democracy is under pressure. We are told that fascism is on the rise. Commentators rummage through the past on the hunt for analogies to explain our current predicament. How does democracy die? What does creeping fascism really look like? Maybe there are solid analogies to examine, if only to confirm that rising fascism is not a real problem today -- or is it? In this episode, political scientist Andreas Umland discusses the crushing of democratic experiments in Weimar Germany and post-Soviet Russia, and the triumph of fascism in the former.

In an essay for Foreign Affairs, the Israeli historian Tom Segev argues that a peaceful resolution to the Israeli-Palestinian conflict is impossible. As early as 1919, the future prime minister David Ben-Gurion observed that both nations' competing claims to the land created an unbridgeable abyss. In this episode, Segev traces the origins of today's war to the era of the British mandate. By facilitating the creation of a Jewish homeland in what was then an Arab-majority country, the British laid the groundwork for decades of bloodshed and grievances. (Foreign Affairs is the official publication of the Council on Foreign Relations).

President Joseph Biden's decision to pause bomb shipments to Israel over its planned invasion of Rafah provoked a curious charge from Republican legislators. They accused Biden of "abandoning" Israel despite his steadfast support of the Jewish state not only for much of the past seven months (since the 10/7 Hamas attack) but also for most of his decades-long career in Washington. The truth is that every U.S. administration since 1948 has supported Israel, but rarely has the support come without any conditions or criticisms. In this episode, historian Jeremi Suri discusses the deep historical roots of the "special relationship" between the two countries. In the context of the past 75 years, President Biden's move to withhold certain weapons because they may be used to kill Palestinian civilians is the kind of politics that has often tested, but not severed, the bilateral bond.

The American diplomat George Kennan was the architect of the Cold War "containment" policy toward the Soviet Union. Writing in the late 1940s, Kennan viewed the USSR as a hostile expansionist enemy, but one that would be willing to compromise if checked by the United States. Containment did not mean the U.S. could or should militarily crush the Soviets. Can Kennan's ideas be applied to Vladimir Putin's Russia? In this episode, historians Michael Kimmage and Frank Costigliola discuss the enduring influence of Kennan's ideas on American policy-makers.

Campus antiwar protests are disturbing some Jewish students, administrators, and politicians by chanting an Arabic word meaning uprising, intifada. Since Israel began its military occupation of Palestinian territories in 1967, Palestinians have waged two uprisings: in 1987 and 2000. Both were crushed by the IDF. In this episode, Khaled Elgindy of the Middle East Institute delves into the history and meanings of intifada, as some Israel supporters say the word is antisemitic and threatening.

This is the third episode in an occasional series examining influential elections in U.S. history. The most recent episode, The Election of 1992, was published on April 4. Audio excerpts of "Civil War" are courtesy A24 Films. Democracy and the Constitution are on the ballot. The fate of the republican is at stake. The potential for violence festers as Americans view their political foes as existential enemies. This was the United States in 1860. Abraham Lincoln's victory as the first antislavery president was met with Southern secession and war. In 1864, Lincoln expected to lose before major Union victories propelled him to a landslide victory, thereby keeping alive the Thirteenth Amendment to abolish slavery forever. In this episode, two of the premier historians of nineteenth century American politics, Sean Wilentz and James Oakes, delve into the enduring consequences of these two "revolutionary" elections.

Is fascism what's ailing the American body politic today? Are Donald Trump and the Republican Party fascists or has fascism been around much longer, going back to the Ku Klux Klan and Jim Crow? In this episode, historian Daniel Bessner, the co-host of American Prestige, discusses what has been a preoccupation among public intellectuals and commentators since Trump entered presidential politics in 2015. Bessner co-authored an essay published in a new anthology edited by the historian Daniel Steinmetz-Jenkins, "Did It Happen Here? Perspectives on Fascism and America."

Zionism was a national liberation movement developed by European Jews in the late nineteenth century. Their early vision of a national homeland was fulfilled about half a century later with the creation of the independent state of Israel, which turned a majority Arab land into a Jewish state. Today, pro-Palestinian protesters on college campuses routinely denounce Zionism as a violent colonial project. In this episode, political scientist Ian Lustick recovers Zionism's historical origins and discusses its future, as roughly 7 million Jewish Israelis face as many Arab residents on territory controlled by Israel.

The Philippines' oldest ally is the United States. Bound by a mutual defense treaty more than 70 years old, the two nations are aligning against China's aggressive behavior in the vitally important South China Sea. If the presidency of Rodrigo Duterte marked a low point in relations, new president Ferdinand Marcos Jr. is renewing the alliance with the U.S. while also courting other nations in the Indo-Pacific and Europe in an anti-China coalition. In this episode, The Washington Times Asia bureau chief Andrew Salmon and U.S. Institute of Peace senior expert Brian Harding discuss the up and down history of the alliance and the importance of keeping the South China Sea from becoming a Chinese lake.

After Israel invaded Lebanon in June 1982, President Ronald Reagan grew infuriated by Israel's siege of Beirut because of thousands of civilian casualties. His administration cut off some arms shipments to Israel, and Reagan himself tore into Israeli Prime Minister Menachem Begin to convince him to withdraw. Today, President Joseph Biden is being criticized for failing to effectively exert U.S. pressure on Israel to curb its campaign in Gaza to protect Palestinian civilians and avoid provoking a wider Middle Eastern war. In this episode, historian Salim Yaqub, an expert on U.S. foreign relations and the Middle East, delves into the analogy between Reagan in 1982 and Biden in 2024.

Former President Donald Trump claims he is absolutely immune from criminal charges as he tries to stop Special Counsel Jack Smith from prosecuting him. Trump is to stand trial for attempting to overturn the 2020 election, an effort that culminated in the Jan. 6 riot attack on the U.S. Capitol. The Supreme Court will hear arguments in Trump's immunity claim on April 25. In an amicus brief filed with the court, fifteen founding-era scholars contend there is no historical basis for Trump's claim. In this episode, historians Jack Rakove and Joseph Ellis discuss the founders' fears of unaccountable monarchs and the possible consequences for American democracy should the Supreme Court validate Trump's claim.

By focusing our attention on only what's happening at the U.S.-Mexico border, we cannot hope to understand the causes of migration or its full consequences. U.S. authorities are encountering record-shattering numbers of migrants crossing into the United States because their home countries continue to lack political and economic stability. The origins of the crisis can be found in decades of political persecution, violence, crime, the rise of gangs, and climate-related crop catastrophes and natural disasters. Meanwhile, the U.S. political system failed to pass comprehensive reform, instead pouring billions into deportation and detention. In this episode, Catholic University historian Julia Young discusses the roots of migration to America.

The Islamic State-Khorasan is forging a reputation for ferocious terrorist violence. Its gunmen massacred 137 people at a Moscow concert hall in March. In January, the group's jihadists slaughtered dozens at a memorial service in Iran. In August 2021, ISIS-K was behind the suicide bombing at the Kabul airport that killed 13 U.S. soldiers and 170 Afghan civilians. Who are these guys? Who is their leader? And what does ISIS-K aim to accomplish by committing spectacular acts of terrorism far from its home base in Afghanistan. In this episode, New America vice president and CNN national security analyst Peter Bergen discuss the group's origins, motives, ideas, and goals.

The U.S. invaded Iraq and toppled Saddam Hussein more than 21 years ago, yet the U.S. is still at war there. Why? Against whom? Will American forces ever leave the country U.S. leaders claimed was liberated way back in mid-2003? In this episode, Chatham House analyst Renad Mansour talks about the armed groups that have attacked U.S. bases in Iraq and Syria, triggering tit-for-tat retaliatory airstrikes that damaged the militias' military infrastructure but failed to advance the political and governmental reforms necessary to turn Iraq into a stable nation-state. A generation after invading and causing a catastrophe, the U.S. cannot extricate itself from Iraq. Also, read Renad Mansour's essay about the Iraqi armed groups in Foreign Affairs, the official publication of the Council on Foreign Relations.

This is the second episode in an occasional series examining influential elections in U.S. history. The first installment, The Election of 1980, was published on March 4. A Republican incumbent faced a Democratic challenger trying to end 12 years of GOP control of the White House. A right-wing insurgent and a Texas businessman tried to upend the status quo by appealing to populist grievances against "the establishment." The election of 1992 was the first of the post-Cold War period, making it the first presidential contest of the era we live in today. In this episode, historians Jeffrey Engel and Jeremi Suri discuss and debate its enduring significance.

Palestinian leader Yasser Arafat died 20 years ago. A generation later, his people appear no closer to achieving their national aspirations than they did during his lifetime. Arafat was reviled by some for PLO terrorism; others celebrated him as a freedom fighter. For years he tried violent resistance; in the 1990s he signed the Oslo Accords. Neither produced Palestinian statehood. His legacy also raises the question, still relevant today, of whether violence is legitimate or even effective at resolving the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. In this episode, Omar Rahman of the Middle East Council on Global Affairs discusses Arafat and the Palestinian cause some 60 years after the founding of the PLO.

How old is too old to run the country? Donald Trump will turn 78 in June. The incumbent Joseph Biden will turn 82 shortly after the November election. Biden is already the oldest president in U.S. history, succeeding Trump who had been the oldest (70) at inauguration in 2017. Rarely have age and mental fitness been such prominent issues in a presidential campaign. But past candidates for the White House successfully dealt with questions about their health and wits. Dwight Eisenhower, then in his mid-60s, suffered a major heart attack the year before he won re-election in 1956. Ronald Reagan faced questions about his age as early as the mid-1970s. Getting old can be either an asset or liability depending on the candidate, as can youth. JFK, Clinton, and Obama all parried accusations they lacked the experience to handle the job. In this episode, presidential historian Lindsay Chervinsky tells us which politicians handled the age question the best -- and how they did it.

As military aid remains stalled in Congress, Ukraine is facing shortages of weapons and ammo as its military forces fight a war of attrition against the Russian invaders. Moscow now has more than 400,000 troops in Ukraine which also faces a manpower shortage. In this episode, Anatol Lieven of the Quincy Institute for Responsible Statecraft argues time is not on Ukraine's side, so Kyiv and its Western backers, namely the U.S., should seek a diplomatic resolution to the war. Are negotiations with Putin possible? Can Ukraine be secure while ceding territory to an aggressor?

At a campaign rally in Ohio, Donald Trump said some things that, depending on your perspective, were either appalling or patriotic. He defended the Jan. 6 rioters as "hostages," called some migrants crossing the southern border "animals," and warned there would be a "bloodbath" if he isn't elected in November -- although his defenders pointed out he was referring to the U.S. auto industry which, according to Trump, needs tariff protection from Chinese imports. Whatever one thinks of Trump's latest demagoguery, it wasn't illegal. One-hundred-six years ago in Ohio, an antiwar speech delivered by Eugene V. Debs did break the law -- by violating the Espionage Act. Debs was arrested, tried, convicted, and sentenced to 10 years in prison. Yet Debs still ran for president as the Socialist Party candidate in 1920. If Trump were to find himself in a similar situation come November (if any of his pending criminal trials are held by then), he too could campaign from behind bars. But this is where the similarities between Trump and Debs end. In this episode, Michael Kazin, a distinguished historian of political and social movements at Georgetown University, discusses the other reasons Eugene V. Debs is an American worth remembering.

Haiti is collapsing under gang-fueled lawlessness. The central government has lost control of most of the capital, Port-au-Prince. The de facto prime minister Ariel Henry has agreed to resign under pressure. Ordinary citizens are being kidnapped by gangs and held for ransom. They have been gunned down in wild shootouts, and are desperate for basic necessities. Caribbean neighbors have agreed to create a transitional council to fill the power vacuum, but it faces internal opposition from rival factions within Haiti. In this episode, Keith Mines of the U.S. Institute of Peace discusses the sources of anarchy in a country that once appeared headed for a brighter future after the Duvalier dictatorship more than 30 years ago.

Throughout his long political career -- as a diplomat, Likud party leader, or Israeli prime minister -- Benjamin Netanyahu has obsessed over his country's security while vehemently opposing Palestinian statehood and U.S.-Iran rapprochement. He promised his people they could be safe, have settlements, and co-exist with Palestinians marooned in permanent statelessness. Now 74 years old and fighting for his political survival, Netanyahu is prosecuting a war of immense destruction after Israel's "mowing the grass" strategy in Gaza was destroyed by the Hamas terrorist attack on Oct. 7. In this episode, the Middle East Institute's Nimrod Goren looks back on Netanyahu's time as soldier, statesman, and political survivor.

This is the follow-up episode to the one published on Feb. 6 previewing the oral arguments in the Colorado ballot case, Trump v. Anderson. The U.S. Supreme Court ruled that a state may not disqualify a candidate for federal office under Section 3 of the 14th Amendment, whose Reconstruction-era framers sought to bar anyone from holding office who had violated their oath by engaging in insurrection. In doing so, the Supreme Court restored Donald J. Trump to the Colorado ballot. But the conservative majority also invented a rule that only Congress has the power to disqualify by passing legislation, something that has no constitutional basis. In this episode, University of Maryland constitutional scholar Mark Graber explains where the Supreme Court mangled U.S. history. Graber also provides a definition of insurrection based on his exhaustive research of centuries of relevant cases.

In power for nearly a quarter century, Vladimir Putin, 71, is a modern-day tsar -- an autocrat largely unaccountable to his people -- except he has no known successor. Whether the Russian president rules for another week or another decade, there will come a time when he's gone. Who might replace him is a mystery. Also unclear is how Putin might be replaced: by a violent coup? Some legal way under the Russian constitution? In this episode, Liana Fix of the Council on Foreign Relations and Maria Snegovaya of the Center for Strategic & International Studies use the Soviet past as a guide to understanding possible scenarios under which a successor may emerge -- and what new leadership in the Kremlin means for Russia, Europe, and the United States.

Hey, 2024 is an election year! This is the first episode in an occasional series examining influential elections in U.S. history. The moralistic incumbent expressed anguish over soulless materialism. The optimistic challenger promised Americans they could overcome any and all problems. The election of 1980 pitted Democrat Jimmy Carter against Republican Ronald Reagan as Americans struggled with stagflation at home and crises abroad. Reagan's victory marked a sea change in U.S. politics, tilting the political landscape to the right. Reagan crusaded against big government and Soviet Communism. If the incumbent looked impotent in the face of these vexing problems, Reagan projected strength -- a timeless lesson of campaigning. In this episode, historians Jeremi Suri and Jeffrey Engel discuss why this election still matters.

Alexei Navalny was Russia's most prominent and effective opposition leader, an anti-corruption crusader and democratic politician who entered public life as a provocative blogger around the same time his future persecutor, Vladimir Putin, became Russia's president. Navalny died inside an Arctic penal colony on Feb. 16. He was 47. He leaves a legacy, setting an example of how to challenge the regime even while under constant state persecution. In this episode, Miriam Lanskoy of the National Endowment for Democracy explains who Navalny was, why his opposition movement was so effective, and what his death says about late Putinism.

In early 1964, Stanley Kubrick's black comedy Dr. Strangelove, Or: How I Learned to Stop Worrying and Love the Bomb premiered in theaters. Sixty years later, it remains one of Kubrick's greatest films, a commentary on the madness of the idea that anyone could win a nuclear exchange. If you watch the film today unaware of the cultural and political milieu in which it was made, you might not get the jokes. In this episode, Joe Cirincione, an expert on nuclear arms control and the history of the arms race, discusses the very real scenarios the movie brilliantly satirized.

In every war, there is a battle over its origins. In this episode, historians Michael Kimmage and Mark Galeotti discuss Kimmage's new book, "Collisions," which seeks to explain why the excessive optimism of the early 1990s about Russia's path toward democracy and market economics never materialized. Moreover, Kimmage's narrative explains what led to each major collision between Russia and Ukraine; Russia and Europe; and Russia and the larger "rules-based order" led by the United States. Russia under Putin -- and for a brief period, Dmitry Medvedev -- and the United States under five presidential administrations could not overcome a fundamental dissonance in how each viewed the other's role in the world. Institutions such as NATO and the E.U., seen in the West as bulwarks of democracy, human rights, and economic prosperity, were viewed with hostility by Putin, who believed an independent Ukraine had no right to join them. ((Note: This conversation was recorded before the eastern Ukrainian town of Avdiivka fell to Russian forces))

When Russian shells began raining on Ukrainian cities and Russian tanks smashed across the border toward Kyiv on Feb. 24, 2022, much of the world wrote off Ukraine. But Vladimir Putin's war of aggression did not go as planned. Ukrainian forces not only stopped the Russian drive on the capital, they drove the Russians back. This is the story told by the Wall Street Journal's Yaroslav Trofimov in "Our Enemies Will Vanish," an eyewitness account of the war's first year. In this episode, Trofimov, who has spent two decades covering conflicts from the front lines, discusses what's at stake for Ukraine as the war turns into a First World War-style slog, and as U.S. aid for Ukraine is entangled in election-year politics. ((Note: This conversation was recorded before the eastern Ukrainian town of Avdiivka fell to Russian forces))

Subscribe for early access, ad-free listening, and bonus content! In 1994 Rwanda was scarred by an organized campaign of mass carnage perpetrated by the Hutu majority against the Tutsi minority and moderate Hutus. It was the final genocide of the twentieth century, with the killers murdering about one million people in about 100 days. The United Nations and U.S. looked on but failed to act, a tragic misstep that has influenced decision-makers since to look differently at the task of intervening in foreign conflicts to protect the innocent. In this episode, Omar McDoom of the London School of Economics and Political Science, a scholar of genocide and expert on central Africa, reflects on the enduring lessons of Rwanda's darkest hour.

Most everywhere one looks in the Middle East today there is conflict: Israel-Gaza, Yemen and the Red Sea, Iraq, Iran and its proxies. The catalyst for this mayhem is the failure to reach a ceasefire in Israel's war against Hamas that would allow for the release of all remaining Israeli hostages held by Hamas militants. Some analysts see the dangerous potential for a wider war -- or even a global war between the U.S. and its allies on one side versus Russia, China, Iran and other despotic regimes on the other. In this episode, Trita Parsi of the Quincy Institute for Responsible Statecraft breaks down the causes of today's dangerous crises.

Audio excerpts from "The Zone of Interest" are courtesy A24 Films. Oscar-nominated "The Zone of Interest" dramatizes the domestic life of the fanatical Nazi Rudolph Hoess, his wife Hedwig, and five kids. They're living in their dream home -- directly adjacent to the infamous Auschwitz-Birkenau death camp where Commandant Hoess implemented Hitler's Final Solution, the genocide of Europe's Jews. In this episode, historian Christian Goeschel, an expert on Nazi Germany and modern European history, discusses the film's strengths and weaknesses as well as the decades-old debates over how to study and depict the Holocaust.

Distinguished historians of the Civil War and Reconstruction eras have submitted briefs to the U.S. Supreme Court explaining the meaning of Section 3 of the 14th Amendment. It is unambiguous and self-executing: Anyone who violates his or her oath by engaging in insurrection is barred from holding public office again. It is not necessary to be formally charged with insurrection to be disqualified. On Feb. 8, the Supreme Court will hear arguments in a Colorado case that resulted in Donald Trump's disqualification from that state's ballot. Challenges to Trump's eligibility are currently pending in 11 other states. In this episode, Princeton historian Sean Wilentz contends that Trump should be disqualified based on an originalist rendering of Section 3. Wilentz rejects the notion that disqualifying Trump will damage democracy when the GOP frontrunner has made clear that he intends to eviscerate the country's democratic institutions upon returning to the White House.

The uproar over free expression and antisemitism on college campuses evokes a controversy from the late 1970s that left a lasting mark on First Amendment case law and provided an enduring lesson on the importance of free speech in a democratic society. In 1977, American Nazis led by Frank Collin sought permission to hold a rally in the Chicago suburb of Skokie, Illinois, the home of thousands of Holocaust survivors. Outraged by the group's racist rhetoric and pamphleteering, the town won a preliminary injunction in court barring the Nazis from assembling. Realizing correctly that the First Amendment protects unpopular and hateful speech, the ACLU came to the Nazis' defense in a case that made national news and defined a generation of civil libertarians. In this episode, Nico Perrino of the Foundation for Individual Rights and Expression (FIRE) reflects on why Skokie matters at a time of increasing hostility to free expression across the American political spectrum. Perrino co-directed the documentary Mighty Ira, about Ira Glasser who led the ACLU for 23 years after the intense backlash against its legal defense of the Nazis' right to express themselves.

We might need a new lexicon to describe the threats to liberal democracy. At a time when some notable scholars are referencing the 1930s -- the decade of Hitler and Mussolini -- to argue that Donald Trump and Vladimir Putin, to name two, are fascists, historian Roger Griffin contends fascism is too malleable and unhelpful a concept. Today's autocrats and wannabe authoritarians do not fit into a single category or share the same political ideology. Rather, Griffin argues, nationalistic leaders, many of them democratically elected, are rejecting liberalism and humanism by bending their nation-states in on themselves. What should we call this? Incurvation.

The origins of the populist backlash against free trade and Wall Street hegemony may be traced to the excessively optimistic 1990s when breaking down trade barriers with Mexico and China was seen as essential to America's long-term prosperity. The decade also saw figures such as Bob Rubin and Alan Greenspan exert their influence to deregulate financial markets, putting ideological faith in banks and hedge funds to regulate themselves, and in the potential of technological innovation to solve societal problems. In this episode, labor historian Nelson Lichtenstein discusses his important new book, "A Fabulous Failure," which charts the Clinton administration's drift away from outdated policies of New Deal, Keynesian liberalism to a neoliberal order prioritizing the free flow of capital, open markets, the decline of labor power, and smaller government. Was the Clinton boom built on sand?