Over the course of the Vietnam War, the United States dropped 500,000 tons of bombs over Cambodia—more than the combined weight of every man, woman, and child in the country.
Fifty years after the last sortie, residents of rural Cambodia are still coping with the unexploded ordnance that covers their land. In When the Bombs Stopped: The Legacy of War in Rura ... Show More
Apr 2025
Amy Zhang, "Circular Ecologies: Environmentalism and Waste Politics in Urban China" (Stanford UP, 2024)
After four decades of reform and development, China is confronting a domestic waste crisis. As the world's largest waste-generating nation, the World Economic Forum projects that by 2030, the volume of household waste in China will be double that of the United States. Starting in ... Show More
1h 7m
Today
Allison Christine Meier, "Grave" (Bloomsbury, 2023)
Grave (Bloomsbury, 2023) by Allison C. Meier takes a ground-level view of how burial sites have transformed over time and how they continue to change. As a cemetery tour guide, Meier has spent more time walking among tombstones than most. Even for her, the grave has largely been ... Show More
50m 17s
Nov 25
Elizabeth Anne Davis, "The Time of the Cannibals: On Conspiracy Theory and Context" (Fordham UP, 2024)
In 2009, the body of a former president of the Republic of Cyprus, Tassos Papadopoulos, was stolen from his grave. The Time of the Cannibals reconsiders this history and the public discourse on it to reconsider how we think about conspiracy theory, and specifically, what it means ... Show More
1h 30m
Aug 10
The Hiroshima and Nagasaki Bombings
In May 1945, the Second World War ended in Europe, but Japan refused to surrender - despite seemingly facing inevitable defeat. So, confronted by the prospect of drawn-out and costly fighting, Washington sought to bring the conflict in the East to an end as quickly as possible. M ... Show More
56m 33s
Sep 2024
First-Hand Account of Hiroshima: Before, During, and After the Atomic Bomb Drop
Over the past few years, much has been written and created around Oppenheimer and the Manhattan Project, but little attention is paid to those whose lives were ended or forever changed when the bombs dropped in Japan.<br><br>In this episode, we delve into the experiences of the < ... Show More
39m 42s
Aug 2024
Edward Kaplan, "The End of Victory: Prevailing in the Thermonuclear Age" (Cornell UP, 2022)
Waging and winning a nuclear war have been called “thinking about the unthinkable” but that’s exactly what Edward Kaplan and I discussed in our interview about his recent book, The End of Victory: Prevailing in the Thermonuclear Age (Cornell UP, 2022).
The current Dean of the Sch ... Show More
1h 4m
Aug 3
Hiroshima: in the shadow of the bomb
At 8.15am on 6 August 1945, an atomic bomb exploded over Hiroshima. It was an event that changed the course of history, but it was also one driven by individuals. Here, in conversation with Spencer Mizen, Iain MacGregor tells this story through the eyes of people whose lives were ... Show More
43m 36s
Jul 2024
Laura Robson, "Human Capital: A History of Putting Refugees to Work" (Verso, 2023)
When Americans and other citizens of advanced capitalist countries think of humanitarianism, they think of charitable efforts to help people displaced by war, disaster, and oppression find new homes where they can live complete lives.
However, as the historian Laura Robson argue ... Show More
51m 1s
May 2024
Tanisha M. Fazal, "Military Medicine and the Hidden Costs of War" (Oxford UP, 2024)
Decisions to go to war are often framed in cost-benefit terms, and typically such assessments do not factor in longer term costs. However, recent dramatic improvements in American military medicine have had an unanticipated effect: saving more soldiers' lives has vastly increased ... Show More
56m 51s
<p>Le 5 mars 1946, dans son célèbre discours de Fulton, l'ancien Premier ministre Winston Churchill constate qu'un "rideau de fer" coupe désormais l'Europe en deux parties.</p><p>Il sépare désormais les pays de l'Europe occidentale, restés fidèles aux valeurs démocratiques, de l' ... Show More
