Mar 14
Matthew Moran et al., "Coercing Syria on Chemical Weapons" (Oxford UP, 2025)
In 2012, US President Barack Obama stated that the Syrian government’s use of chemical weapons on its population would cross a red line that would require the US government to reconsider its approach to the civil war then underway in Syria. Syria subsequently used such weapons, c ... Show More
37m 41s
Mar 12
Understanding Iran Under Attack: A Discussion with Author Vali Nasr
Eleven days into the attack on Iran by the United States and Israel, starting on Feb. 28, 2026, I speak with Vali Nasr, a renowned analyst of Iran. He’s the author of several books dealing with Iran, including most recently Iran’s Grand Strategy: A Political History (Princeton Un ... Show More
48m 23s
Feb 21
Mai Serhan, "I Can Imagine It for Us: A Palestinian Daughter's Memoir" (American University in Cairo Press, 2025)
I Can Imagine It for Us: A Palestinian Daughter's Memoir (American University in Cairo Press, 2025) is a young woman’s search for connection with her estranged father, her family’s past, and the Palestinian homeland she can never visit Mai Serhan lives in Cairo and has never been ... Show More
32m 13s
Jun 2021
Syria’s Top Goon: Art and the Arab Spring
BBC Arabic reporter Dima Babilie marks 10 years since the Arab Spring and speaks to poets, film-makers and artists about how that moment of revolutionary change transformed their lives, their countries and their art. When the protests first broke out in Syria, Dima was a student ... Show More
27m 36s
Nov 2022
Arabian queens, Bangladeshi mothers and women's tales
Shahidha Bari looks at the voices of women emerging from new writing in novels, plays and histories. Zenobia, Mavia, and Khadijah are Arabian queens and noblewomen who feature in the new book by Emran Iqbal El-Badawi which looks at the way female rulers of Arabia were crucial in ... Show More
44m 52s
Feb 2015
Alina Garcia-Lapuerta, “La Belle Creole” (Chicago Review Press, 2014)
One of the fundamental functions of biography is the preservation of stories. But it also acts to resurrect the stories that may have fallen from view, reinvigorating the tales of people who, with the passage of time, have become merely names on plaques. In La Belle Creole:The Cu ... Show More
38m 49s
Family stories are the texture of the human fabric. From every land, from every time, they bring the past to life for young ears.
In the beginning of the twentieth century, when there were no borders in the Middle East (it was then called la grande Syrie), Elia Zughaib grew up first in Damascus, then in the mountains of Lebanon. In a rural culture, animals a ... Show More
<p>This is a conversation with <a href="https://twitter.com/anajibakhti">Naji Bakhti</a>, author of the novel <a href="https://www.influxpress.com/between-beirut-and-the-moon" rel="noreferrer noopener" target="_blank"><em>Between Beirut and the Moon</em></a> (2020), published by ... Show More
