Apr 23

The billionaires' utopia blueprint

Starbase. Prospera. California Forever. Mars. From private cities to interstellar colonies, tech billionaires like Elon Musk and Peter Thiel have backed experiments designed to operate beyond the borders — and laws — most of us live by. So we wondered: has this happened before? I ... Show More

48m 34s

Apr 21

Why the wall was built

As the United States expanded into a global superpower, it simultaneously strengthened its national borders and began to limit who could come in and out of the country. In this week’s episode, the story of how one of the very first walls meant to divide people was built on the US ... Show More

13m 13s

Apr 16

The original clickbait king

When we call something "clickbait," we don't mean it as a compliment. But let's be real: we also click. It's hard to resist a spicy story, and 19th-century newspaper tycoon William Randolph Hearst knew it. At a time when most papers merely reported events, his papers created them ... Show More

48m 11s

Nov 2022

Throughline: How Korean culture went global

From BTS to Squid Game to high-end beauty standards, South Korea reigns as a global exporter of pop culture and entertainment. How does a country go from a war-decimated state just 70 years ago, to a major driver of global soft power? Through war, occupation, economic crisis, and ... Show More

48m 3s

Jun 2020

South Korea's economic miracle

An eyewitness account of how a poor, war-ravaged nation became a global economic powerhouse. We hear the memories of Dr Kongdan Oh, who grew up in South Korea in the 1950s, in the aftermath of the Korean War. The country had been left devastated by the conflict. Then, in the earl ... Show More

14m 50s

Jun 2021

K-pop, K-dramas, and K-fever: Why Korean Culture is Booming

In this episode, Dr. Anderson, a South Korean media studies and popular culture expert at George Mason University, tells us how Hallyu - or the Korean Wave - led to the globalization of Korean culture. We discuss how K-pop music and Korean dramas gained worldwide popularity, anal ... Show More

26m 43s

Jan 2023

Hallyu: How the Korean Wave Is Sweeping Global Culture

Background: The Korean cultural wave, also known as Hallyu, has become worldwide sensation a in recent years, with Korean art, music, drama, food and more sweeping the globe. Thanks to the fervour over the likes of K-pop and K-beaut ... Show More

22m 3s

Jan 2022

Korean History 101

Bro History Korean History 101 Today we kick off a multi-part series on the Korean War. We provide a high level overview of Korean history over the past 3,000 years and identify conditions that led to a bloody civil war in the 20th century. Support on Patreon: https://www.patreon ... Show More

1h 8m

Mar 2022

Daniel Y. Kim, "The Intimacies of Conflict: Cultural Memory and the Korean War" (NYU Press, 2020)

In this episode I talk with Daniel Y. Kim, Associate Professor of English and American Studies at Brown University, about his 2020 book Intimacies of Conflict: Cultural Memory and the Korean War, published by New York University Press. Though often considered “the forgotten war,” ... Show More

45m 17s

Dec 2017

What life is like in North Korea

The most important story in the world right now is how real the chance of war with North Korea is — and how cataclysmic such a war would be. Part of the reason the risk of war is so real is that our understanding of North Korea is so sparse. "The Hermit Kingdom" is a world unto i ... Show More

50m 20s

Jan 2021

The K-Pop Wave

Since 2012, Korean pop culture has captured the imagination of people across the Middle East: from K-pop and K-dramas to Korean language classes and even to Korean fried chicken. It's everywhere!But how did we become so obsessed with a culture so different from our own? And how m ... Show More

36m 24s

How Korean Culture Went Global