May 5, 1862. The French have landed in Mexico. Napoleon III wants to conquer the country and assert France’s imperial dominance in the Americas. In his way? The Mexican army, held up in the city of Puebla.
The Battle of Puebla will come to define this struggle: a European monarch against a fledgling democracy, led by Benito Juárez. Mexico’s victory will be ... Show More
Yesterday
Malcolm Gladwell on Reconstruction’s Unfinished Questions
June 15, 1865. German-American statesman Carl Schurz is traveling to Washington to meet with President Andrew Johnson when he stops at a friend’s home in Philadelphia. That night, during a séance, a teenage medium claims to summon the spirit of Abraham Lincoln… and delivers Schur ... Show More
35m 29s
Jun 8
Why the Crusades Became Cool Again
June 8, 1191. The Crusaders and Muslim forces are locked in battle over the city of Acre. On one side is Saladin, the great Muslim leader who has already recaptured Jerusalem. On the other, an armada arrives carrying England’s king: Richard the Lionheart.The Crusades will become ... Show More
26m 59s
Jun 1
How Higgins and His Boats Won the War
June 6, 1944. As thousands of Allied soldiers prepare to storm the beaches of Normandy, they climb down rope nets into small wooden landing craft bobbing in the dark waters of the English Channel. Within hours, these boats will carry them into the largest amphibious invasion in h ... Show More
30m 17s
May 2025
The Zapatista Uprising | 135
On January 1, 1994, masked indigenous rebels burst from therainforest in Chiapas, Mexico to launch an uprising that was years in themaking. The Zapatista Army declared war on the Mexican Government demanding basics rights for the diverse Mayan communities who lived in extreme pov ... Show More
35m 15s
Apr 2025
Jalisco’s Death Camp, El Salvador's Mega-prison and Mexico’s Cartel Extraditions
Will Grant, the BBC’s Mexico, Central America and Cuba correspondent, was recently on the ground at Jalisco’s Rancho Izaguirre, dubbed ‘Mexico’s Auschwitz’, and CECOT, Nayib Bukele’s megaprison in El Salvador. Will spoke to Sean about what he saw in both places, how politics and ... Show More
1h 12m
Aug 2024
James Barrera, "'We Want Better Education!': The 1960s Chicano Student Movement, School Walkouts, and the Quest for Educational Reform in South Texas" (Texas A&M UP, 2023)
In 'We Want Better Education!': The 1960s Chicano Student Movement, School Walkouts, and the Quest for Educational Reform in South Texas (Texas A&M UP, 2023), James B. Barrera offers a detailed and comprehensive analysis of the educational, cultural, and political issues of the C ... Show More
53m 47s
Jul 2021
Alyssa Goldstein Sepinwall, "Slave Revolt on Screen: The Haitian Revolution in Film and Video Games" (UP of Mississippi, 2021)
Michel-Rolph Trouillot wrote that “the silencing of the Haitian Revolution is only a chapter within a narrative of global domination. It is part of the history of the West and it is likely to persist, even in attenuated form, as long as the history of the West is not retold in wa ... Show More
1h 10m
Jun 2024
Mónica M. Salas Landa, "Visible Ruins: The Politics of Perception and the Legacies of Mexico's Revolution" (U Texas Press, 2024)
The Mexican Revolution (1910–1920) introduced a series of state-led initiatives promising modernity, progress, national grandeur, and stability; state surveyors assessed land for agrarian reform, engineers used nationalized oil for industrialization, archaeologists reconstructed ... Show More
52m 7s