As the editor of the Saturday Review for more than thirty years, Norman Cousins had a powerful platform to shape American public debate during the height of the Cold War. Although he was a low-key, nebbish figure, under Cousins's leadership, the...
Yesterday
Clarence Dillon: The Roaring 20s Wall Street Baron Who Wrote the Rules for Corporate Takeovers, Junk Bonds, and Bankruptcy
<p>J.P. Morgan, John D. Rockefeller, and Charles E. Mitchell are names that come to mind when thinking of the most prominent icons of wealth and influence during the Roaring Twenties. Yet the one figure who has escaped notice is an enigmatic banker by the name of Clarence Dillon. ... Show More
45m 11s
Nov 20
A Utah Indian Chief Controlled the 1800s Mountain West Through Slave Trading, Building Pioneer Trails, Horse Stealing, and Becoming Mormon
<p>The American Indian leader Wakara was among the most influential and feared men in the nineteenth-century American West. He and his pan-tribal cavalry of horse thieves and slave traders dominated the Old Spanish Trail, the region’s most important overland route. They wid ... Show More
1 h
Nov 18
Why Did Rome Fall? Wrong Question. How Did it Last 2,000 Years Despite Changing its Religion, Language, and Government?
<p>Rome began as a pagan, Latin-speaking city state in central Italy during the early Iron Age and ended as a Christian, Greek-speaking empire as the age of gunpowder dawned. Everything about it changed, except its Roman identity. This was due to a unique willingness am ... Show More
53m 46s
Nov 2023
393. JFK: Cuba, Camelot and the Cold War (Part 2)
By the late 1950s, John F. Kennedy was a rich and handsome Democratic senator with a beautiful wife and young family, heading for the White House despite his Catholicism, his affairs and his secret illnesses. In January 1961 he became the youngest ever President of the United Sta ... Show More
54m 2s
Nov 2022
Inside the JFK White House
November 22nd marks 59 years since the assassination of US President John F. Kennedy. One of the most famous assassinations in history, JFK's death sent shockwaves not only through the United States, but across the world. However, before that fateful day in history, JFK was a jou ... Show More
35m 12s
Mar 2023
The Peacemaker: Ronald Reagan, The Cold War, And The World On The Brink | Peter Robinson | Hoover Institution
<p>Will Inboden is a man of many talents: author, academic, and national policy maker. He held positions with the State Department and the National Security Council before returning to academia to serve as executive director of the Clements Center for National Security and associ ... Show More
57m 48s
Feb 2023
Gabriel Glickman, "US-Egypt Diplomacy Under Johnson: Nasser, Komer, and the Limits of Personal Diplomacy" (Bloombury, 2021)
What happens to policies when a president dies in office? Do they get replaced by the new president, or do advisers carry on with the status quo? In November 1963, these were important questions for a Kennedy-turned-Johnson administration.
Among these officials was a driven Natio ... Show More
1h 22m
Nov 2023
JFK - The Hot President
<p>Today we deep dive into the life and death of the 35th President of the USA, John F Kennedy. So famous that he is remembered by 3 letters, JFK has as many myths, legends, and conspiracies as Area 51, and we look at them all including his efforts in WW2, family life, civil righ ... Show More
23m 41s
Jun 2021
Sean McMeekin, "Stalin's War: A New History of World War II" (Basic Books, 2021)
World War II endures in the popular imagination as a heroic struggle between good and evil, with villainous Hitler driving its events. But Hitler was not in power when the conflict erupted in Asia—and he was certainly dead before it ended. His armies did not fight in multiple the ... Show More
1h 15m
Nov 2023
BONUS SPECIAL: The Legacy of Henry Kissinger
Henry Kissinger, the child refugee who rose to become US Secretary of State and defined American foreign policy during the 1970s with his strategies to end the Vietnam War and contain communist countries, has died. He was 100. Not long before his passing, Kissinger sat down with ... Show More
1h 26m
Jan 2018
The Cold War - An Ideological War | 1
<p>For nearly 50 years, the United States and Soviet Union waged a global war of ideas fueled by politics, intrigue, and nuclear weapons. But how did the polarized ideologies of these two global powers threaten the existence of the entire world?</p><p>This is Episode 1 of a six-p ... Show More
38m 38s
Aug 2018
John M. Curatola, “Bigger Bombs for a Brighter Tomorrow: The Strategic Air Command and American War Plans at the Dawn of the Atomic Age, 1945-1950” (McFarland, 2016)
Conventional wisdom has long held the position that between 1945 and 1949, not only did the United States enjoy a monopoly on atomic weapons, but that it was prepared to use them if necessary against an increasingly hostile Soviet Union. This was not exactly the case, our guest ... Show More
51m 48s