World War I was a catastrophe for the lands that would become Lebanon. With war came famine, and with famine came unspeakable suffering, starvation, and mass death. For nearly four years the deadly crisis reshaped society, killing untold thousands and transforming how people lived, how they interacted, and even how they saw the world around them. Famine Worl ... Show More
Today
Paul Kohlbry, "Plots and Deeds: Agrarian Annihilation and the Fight for Land Justice in Palestine" (Stanford UP, 2026)
The emancipatory potential and limits of land justice, when land is at once home, property, territory, and homeland. Peasant farming was once an integral part of Palestine's agrarian fabric. But after military occupation of the West Bank in 1967, Israeli land confiscations and ec ... Show More
1h 10m
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
Jun 2023
Pandemics Cause Misery and Death, But They Also Created Agriculture and Put Humans on Top of the Food Chain
Three years into a global pandemic, the fact that infectious disease is capable of reshaping humanity is obvious. But seen in the context of sixty thousand years of human and scientific history, COVID-19 is simply the latest in a series of world-changing pathogens. In fact, the r ... Show More
49m 56s
Aug 2021
Grace M. Cho, "Tastes Like War: A Memoir" (Feminist Press, 2021)
The US military camptowns were established shortly after the Second World War in 1945, appropriating the Japanese comfort stations. The Korean government actively supported the creation of camptowns for its own economic and national security interests. Utilizing the Japanese colo ... Show More
58m 26s
Nov 2015
Nicholas Stargardt, “The German War: A Nation Under Arms, 1939-1945” (Basic Books, 2015)
In all of the thousands upon thousands of books written about Nazi Germany, it’s easy to lose track of some basic questions. What did Germans think they were fighting for? Why did they support the war? How did they (whether the they were soldiers fighting in France or Russia, wom ... Show More
1h 10m
Oct 2020
Brandon M. Schechter, "The Stuff of Soldiers: A History of the Red Army in World War II Through Objects" (Cornell UP, 2019)
The Stuff of Soldiers: A History of the Red Army in World War II Through Objects (Cornell University Press) uses everyday objects to tell the story of the Great Patriotic War as never before. Brandon Schechter attends to a diverse array of things―from spoons to tanks―to show how ... Show More
58m 6s