Saleh, the narrator of Out of Mesopotamia (Akashic Books, 2020), is a middle-aged Iranian journalist who moonlights as a writer for one of Iran's most popular TV shows but cannot keep himself away from the front lines in neighboring Iraq and Syria. There, the fight against the Islamic State is a proxy war, an existential battle, a declaration of faith, and, ... Show More
Oct 7
To Exist as a Problem: Being Black, Being Palestinian with Zahi Zalloua (Bloomsbury, 2026)
In the first pages of The Souls of Black Folk, W. E. B. Du Bois meditates on the question, "How does it feel to be a problem?"In this profound response to that question, Zahi Zalloua endeavours to think through the shared Black and Palestinian experience of being racialized as ... Show More
49m 48s
Oct 6
Egyptian Male Film Stars in the Nasser Era: Envisioning a National Identity with Samar Abdel-Rahman (American U of Cairo Press, 2026)
Samar Abdel-Rahman's Egyptian Male Film Stars in the Nasser Era: Envisioning a National Identity (American University of Cairo Press, 2026) explores male stardom in Egyptian cinema produced during the early years following the Free Officers' revolution of 1952, through the lives ... Show More
1h 15m
Sep 25
Driven to Their Knees: Humiliation in Contemporary Politics with Roxanne L. Euben (Princeton UP, 2025)
Humiliation pervades our politics, from images of stripped Palestinian men in Gaza to mocking chants at MAGA rallies. It suffuses pictures and videos, speaks through bodies as well as words, and is expressed by those with too much power as well as by those with too little. In Dri ... Show More
56m 32s
Sep 2023
Ghaith Abdul-Ahad: Iraq Through Iraqis' Eyes
This week on Babel, Jon Alterman speaks with award-winning Iraqi journalist Ghaith Abdul-Ahad. During the conversation, Abdul-Ahad discusses the fallout from the war and U.S. occupation, his career reporting from Iraq, and the ways that working alongside leading journalists influ ... Show More
30m 29s
May 2025
Between Two Rivers: Ancient Mesopotamia and The Birth of History | Dr Moudhy Al-Rashid
<p>We sit down with Dr Moudhy Al-Rashid, author of "Between Two Rivers: Ancient Mesopotamia and The Birth of History" an honorary fellow at Wolfson College, University of Oxford. She takes us on an incredible journey through ancient Mesopotamia, exploring the region's rich histor ... Show More
1h 3m
Apr 2025
#9 - The Levant Through War & Words: Mishka Mourani on Culture, Identity & Exile
In this episode of Tak on the Pod, Andrea sits down with Mishka Mourani, a writer, educator, and storyteller whose life has been deeply shaped by the history of the Levant. Born in Alexandria and rooted in Beirut, Mishka has lived through war, displacement, and resilience, using ... Show More
50m 38s
Oct 2022
Ep 5 - Narrating the Middle East
Can we understand a culture and a region when we don’t read its authors? And what nuances do we miss when we read them in translation? How are authors and poets from the Middle East reaching new audiences? I speak to poet Zeina Hashem Beck, from Lebanon, living in California, abo ... Show More
43m 13s
Oct 2025
David Szalay Reads from His Novel, Flesh, Exploring a Tour of Duty in Iraq
This month on the Service95 Book Club podcast, Dua is joined by award-winning author David Szalay to discuss his quietly powerful novel Flesh – selected as Dua’s Monthly Read for October. Told through a series of spare, intimate portraits, the novel captures moments of human vuln ... Show More
11m 2s
Jul 2021
Space, Fiction and Growing Up in ‘Postwar’ Lebanon w/ Naji Bakhti (E84)
This is a conversation with Naji Bakhti, author of the novel Between Beirut and the Moon (2020), published by Influx Press. He is also Project Manager at SKeyes Center for Media and Cultural Freedom at the Samir Kassir Foundation.Topics Discussed:Growing up in a ‘postwar’ context ... Show More
1h 41m