Geopolitics is often conceived of as a realm of pure realpolitik, where ideology takes a back seat to the ruthless and unsentimental pursuit of strategic interests. But all politics involves storytelling, and geopolitics is no exception. Nation-states deploy narratives to legitimize themselves on the world stage, to shore up domestic support and to unite the ... Show More
Mar 23
Why Decades of Conflict From Syria to Iran Continue To Be Misunderstood
On this week's episode of the podcast, journalist and author Anand Gopal joins Faisal Al Yafai to discuss two decades of conflict from Afghanistan to Iran, how the stories told by the powerful ignore the people who live under them, and what a forgotten democratic experiment in Sy ... Show More
50m 38s
Mar 2023
Chrisanthi Giotis, "Borderland: Decolonizing the Words of War" (Oxford UP, 2022)
Every two seconds a person is displaced, caught in one of the more than 40 active conflicts around the world that show no sign of ending. Since 1994, there has been ongoing war in the Democratic Republic of Congo, which has uprooted millions of people and resulted in the deaths o ... Show More
59m 36s
Mar 2022
Timothy Snyder on the Myths That Blinded the West to Putin’s Plans
<p>“Americans and Europeans were guided through the new century by a tale about ‘the end of history,’ by what I will call the <i>politics of inevitability,</i> a sense that the future is just more of the present, that the laws of progress are known, that there are no alternatives ... Show More
1h 11m
Jan 2023
Syrie, la longue tragédie - Fabrice Balanche
<p>Dans son dernier ouvrage Fabrice Balanche, maître de conférences en géographie à l’Université Lyon II et spécialiste du Moyen Orient revient sur son terrain d’études : Syrie et Liban. </p><br><p>Deux États sous influence étrangère, fragmentés par des antagonismes ethnique ... Show More
34m 59s
Aug 2021
Jonathan Haslam, "The Spectre of War: International Communism and the Origins of World War II" (Princeton UP, 2021)
The Spectre of War: International Communism and the Origins of World War II (Princeton UP, 2021), looks at a subject we thought we knew—the roots of the Second World War—and upends our assumptions with a new interpretation. Professor Jonathan Haslam, in the words of historian, Ge ... Show More
1h 3m
Jun 2019
Jennifer Dixon, "Dark Pasts: Changing the State’s Story in Turkey and Japan" (Cornell UP, 2018)
Jennifer Dixon’s Dark Pasts: Changing the State’s Story in Turkey and Japan (Cornell University Press, 2018), investigates the Japanese and Turkish states’ narratives of their “dark pasts,” the Nanjing Massacre (1937-38) and Armenian Genocide (1915-17), respectively. The official ... Show More
1h 2m
