History As It Happens

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?

Taiwanese voters handed the Democratic Progressive Party an unprecedented third consecutive presidential term in the face of Chinese intimidation. The party is promising to defend Taiwan's autonomy, rebuffing Beijing's claims of sovereignty. The election had global implications, too, as The Washington Times reporter Andrew Salmon and U.S. Institute of Peace senior expert Carla Freeman discuss in this episode. At a time when democracy is said to be in retreat, Taiwan's ruling party says it will stand up against the forces of authoritarianism.

In Yemen a rebel movement of Shia Islamists has been firing missiles at commercial shipping in the Red Sea, provoking several rounds of U.S. airstrikes in retaliation. Few Americans know much about the Houthis, who go by the formal name of Ansar Allah or "Defenders of God." The Houthis seized control of Sana'a in 2014, leading to years of catastrophic war once Saudia Arabia intervened to try to restore the ousted government. Today, this relatively small militia is disrupting global shipping, as cargo ships have been forced to avoid the strait at the mouth of the Red Sea on the way to the Suez Canal. In this episode, Eurasia Group analyst Gregory Brew discusses the Houthis' motives and the impact of their missile attacks on the geopolitics of the region.

In the face of government repression and censorship, a number of brave Chinese citizens -- some are activists, others ordinary folks -- are using basic technologies to disseminate the truth about the country's history. Since taking power in 2013, President Xi Jinping outlawed criticism of Mao and rewrote China's modern history to erase the Communist Party's sordid record from the Great Leap Forward to Tiananmen Square and beyond. In this episode, journalist Ian Johnson discusses how the "underground historians" are fighting for China's future by accurately portraying the past.

Before Gaza became synonymous with poverty and human misery, the area was a thriving commercial hub and a crossroads for the armies of empires. Before it became the much smaller Gaza Strip and a seedbed of Palestinian nationalism, it was home to 80,000 Arabs and of little interest to Zionists. But since the middle of the 20th century, Gaza's Arab inhabitants -- the great majority refugees from the violence that brought the independent state of Israel into being -- have been cut off from the greater region. In this episode, eminent historian Jean-Pierre Filiu explores the origins of today's war and its continuities with the past. By his count, there have been 15 wars between Israel and the Arabs of Gaza since 1948. Over the past 75 years, each time Israeli leaders have sought a solution to the problem of Gaza they failed to fulfill Palestinian national aspirations. The result was a cycle of violence spanning generations. Read Jean-Pierre Filiu's essay about Gaza in Foreign Affairs here.

In a major campaign speech to start 2024, President Joseph Biden likened the remarks of his likely November opponent to the rhetoric of Adolph Hitler. "He talks about the blood of America is being poisoned, echoing the same exact language used in Nazi Germany," said Mr. Biden from Valley Forge, Pennsylvania. In fact, Donald Trump has warned his supporters at rallies that immigrants poison the country's blood, and he also recently referred to his political opponents as "vermin." But does likening Trump to the Nazi dictator clarify or confuse? Can Americans understand the challenges to their democratic system by studying 1930s Europe and the rise of fascism? In this episode, esteemed Holocaust scholar Omer Bartov of Brown University dives into the debate over whether Donald Trump poses a unique threat to American democracy, and whether comparisons to Hitler work.

In 1968 the antiwar left punished Vice President Hubert Humphrey for supporting his boss Lyndon Johnson's war in Vietnam. Many young activists either withheld their votes from or gave reluctant support to the Democrat who ultimately lost to Richard Nixon. Then Nixon prolonged the Vietnam War four more years. The distinguished Georgetown University historian Michael Kazin says young leftists today who are considering not voting for President Joe Biden because he refuses to chastise Israel for the war in Gaza, may want to absorb the lesson of '68 or risk helping Donald Trump return to the White House. Kazin, who was a self-described radical in the 1960s, explores the parallels between '68 and the 2024 election cycle with a focus on the genuine dilemma faced by the antiwar left.

President Joseph R. Biden will begin 2024 managing the same commitments and crises that defined his foreign policy in 2023. In both Ukraine and Israel, as well as in the Indo-Pacific, Mr. Biden tied U.S. power and influence to his global crusade against rising autocracy. But as he runs for re-election, the president must balance his time and energy between, on the one hand, managing the U.S. role in foreign wars of questionable popularity and, on the other, tending to pressing domestic issues such as high prices and border chaos. In this episode, The Washington Times' national security team leader Guy Taylor and military and foreign affairs correspondent Ben Wolfgang look ahead to the fourth year of Mr. Biden's foreign policy agenda.

This is the second of two episodes looking back on the major events of 2023. Our year in review continues with historians Jeremi Suri and Jeffrey Engel. As professional scholars, they share their perspectives on the controversy involving free speech and antisemitism on college campuses. They also look ahead to the presidential election of 2024 for which there appear no obvious parallels in U.S. history. The two historians and host Martin Di Caro conclude by sharing their favorite moments of 2023 as well as their thoughts on the importance of historical thinking.

This is the first of two episodes looking back on the major events and ideas of 2023. What events this year compelled you to reassess the past? What historic moments will you speaking about for years to come? In this penultimate episode of 2023, historians Jeremi Suri and Jeffrey Engel talk about the enduring appeal of Trumpism, the health of democracy in the U.S. and abroad, the historical antecedents of the wars in Eastern Europe and the Middle East, and much more.

This conversation was first published in a Washington Times video on Dec. 20 available at washingtontimes.com. Catholic University historian Michael Kimmage, an expert on post-Cold War Europe and U.S.-Russia relations, discusses the state of the Russia-Ukraine war. As winter sets in, Kyiv finds itself in an impossible situation. Its armed forces are entirely reliant on other countries for ammunition and hardware, but Republicans in Congress are not keen on an open-ended commitment in the tens of billions. Kyiv cannot expel Russian forces from its territory. On the other side, Putin does not believe he is losing even though Russia has failed to score a battlefield victory of strategic significance since the summer of 2022.

As Americans opened their Christmas gifts 32 years ago, the beleaguered president of a superpower on the other side of the world endured a unique humiliation. Mikhail Gorbachev, whose open mind and magnetism had captivated Western publics after coming to power in 1985, announced his resignation as leader of the Soviet Union. The nation-state he had tried to reform into something better was swept into the dustbin of history. December 25, 1991: Gorbachev was gone; the country he led no longer existed. The moment was celebrated in the West. But if democracy and market economies were on the march as the curtain fell on the Cold War, their advance halted in Russia during the disastrous Yeltsin years of the 1990s. In this episode, historian Vladislav Zubok, who was born in Moscow in the 1950s and witnessed the rise and fall of perestroika and glasnost, takes on a provocative question: what if some kind of union had survived the tumult of 1991? A proto-democratic, voluntary confederation with decision-making authority devolved to the now former Soviet republics? The question matters today. A revanchist, chauvinist Russia under Vladimir Putin seeks to dominate its neighbors. Western commentators worry about the fate of the "liberal world order" and the waning of U.S. hegemony just a generation after they appeared triumphant.

Audio excerpts of Napoleon courtesy Sony Pictures and Apple Original Films. Many historians have skewered Ridley Scott's Napoleon for inaccuracies and for failing to convey the monumental historical significance of its subject. In this episode, historian Alan Strauss-Schom, the founder of the French Colonial Historical Society and author of "Napoleon Bonaparte" (1997), discusses the origins of Napoleon's military genius and the nature of his despotic rule.

Bayard Rustin was born a Quaker in Pennsylvania and became an advocate of non-violent resistance in the civil rights movement. He was openly gay at a time when most people in his position would have kept knowledge of their homosexuality secret. He was a brilliant organizer. Bayard Rustin was also a socialist who called for a sweeping economic rights program designed to pull all poor Americans out of poverty, rather than narrowly focusing on race. But you wouldn't learn the socialist aspects of Rustin's philosophy and activism from watching the new Netflix biopic "Rustin," which was executive-produced by the Obamas. In this episode, historian William P. Jones discusses the Rustin that doesn't appear on screen, a man dedicated to economic justice who also refused to publicly condemn the Vietnam War.

The Israel-Hamas war has provoked an angry, bitter debate over the meaning of genocide as partisans on both sides of the conflict invoke the memory of the Nazis and the Holocaust. The new Netflix documentary "Ordinary Men" -- based on the 1992 book of the same title by historian Christopher Browning -- may help place this use (or misuse) of history in its proper perspective. "Ordinary Men" confonts us with unsettling questions concerning humans' capacity to inflict cruelty on others. In this episode, historian Thomas Kuehne discusses the psychological aspects of mass murder and the difficulty in drawing comparisons between, for instance, Hamas and the Nazis.

Urban warfare, an appalling civilian death toll, and international outcry: Israel's war against Hamas in Gaza shares parallels with its failed invasion of Lebanon in 1982, which was also meant to destroy a terrorist enemy (guerrilla units of the PLO) on the other side of the border. Whatever similarities and differences that exist between the two wars separated by 41 years, Middle East experts contend that both wars prove that there is no military solution to the Israel-Palestinian conflict. On the contrary, today's war is likely to end in disaster for all involved, just as the 1982 invasion did. In this episode, Middle East Institute president Paul Salem, who was in Lebanon in 1982, discusses the unsettling parallels.

The death of Henry Kissinger at 100 reignited the debate over the foreign policy record of a man who embodied U.S. power and influence. Revered or despised, the former Secretary of State to Presidents Nixon and Ford was one of the most impactful statesman of the American century, maintaining influence as a private consultant and informal presidential counselor up until his death. While in government, Kissinger backed dictators and was a central figure in the secret bombing of Cambodia. He helped open the door to Mao's China, re-establishing the U.S. relationship with the world's most populous country. In this episode, historian and Kissinger biographer Jeremi Suri examines the ideas behind the policies that shaped world history.

This is the second episode in an occasional series examining major counterfactual scenarios in history. The first, published in September, asked whether President Kennedy would have withdrawn the U.S. from Vietnam had he lived to serve a second term. The destruction of human chattel slavery in the United States was a process of world historical importance. It took a terrible civil war and the passage of a constitutional amendment to bring about its complete demise. Could slavery have been ended peacefully? If so, how long would it have taken, had the Civil War not broken out in 1861? In this episode, historian Jim Oakes, an expert on slavery and antebellum U.S. politics, takes on this counter-factual question.

If the era of Trump has brought on a crisis of liberalism, liberals have failed to fully reckon with their "failure to establish a liberal society at home, to say nothing of how their acts and outlook set back the globalization of liberalism abroad as the toll of neoconservative and neoliberal policy continued to mount," according to Yale University historian Samuel Moyn in his provocative book, "Liberalism Against Itself: Cold War Intellectuals and the Making of Our Times." In this episode, Moyn discusses how, in his view, Cold War liberals betrayed liberalism by rejecting its relationship to emancipation and reason in order to confront Soviet communism, with consequences that continue to ripple to this day.

This conversation with University of Virginia Miller Center historian Ken Hughes aired on C-SPAN's American History TV on Nov. 25. Hughes discusses his new research into President John F. Kennedy's role in the coup d'état and assassination of South Vietnam's president Ngo Dinh Diem in early Nov. 1963, just three weeks before JFK was assassinated in Dallas.

Millions of Americans devour roasted turkey for their Thanksgiving dinner. It's the traditional centerpiece of this quintessential American feast. But how did this big o'l bird migrate to our dinner tables? It has less to do with the Pilgrims than Sarah Josepha Hale. In this episode, historian Ruth McClelland-Nugent traces the origins of our modern Thanksgiving traditions and discusses why such cultural touchstones matter, even if we don't always precisely understand where they come from.

Partisans and activists on either side of the Israel-Hamas war are lobbing allegations of genocide against the other. Some respected legal scholars and historians are also weighing in, however, in an effort to elevate a debate that can easily turn ugly. After all, there's no more serious crime than genocide, which is "the intent to destroy, in whole or in part, a national, ethnical, racial or religious group, as such." The memory and history of the Holocaust also are being invoked, as Israel's critics accuse the Jewish state of committing the same crime the Nazis perpetrated against the Jews during the Second World War. In this episode, historian Dirk Moses delves into the thorny moral and legal questions surrounding genocide. He offers a counter argument: the genocide debate obscures the development in modern warfare of the legalized killing of civilians as states pursue "permanent security."

What was Vladimir Putin doing hosting Hamas' representatives two weeks after the terrorist group massacred Israeli civilians? What are Russia's interests in a region that was so important during the Cold War? Its interests may come down to Moscow's great power ambitions in a part of the globe where it has a long history and once exercised considerable influence. In this episode, historians Sergey Radchenko and Vladislav Zubok identify continuities between the Cold War and today concerning Russian influence in the Middle East as a terrible new Arab-Israeli war recalls the region's violent past.