In December 2024, the long and bloody stalemate in Syria broke down. In a transformation breathtaking for its suddenness and speed, President Bashar al-Assad, the beating heart of Arab authoritarianism, fled to Russia, his dungeons emptying as rebels overcame the Syrian army with scarcely a fight.
Euphoria at the collapse of a government people never voted ... Show More
Yesterday
Murat C. Yildiz, "The Ottoman World of Sports: Refashioning Bodies, Men, and Communities in Late Imperial Istanbul" (U Texas Press, 2026)
The history of sports in Turkey is deeply contested. Over the decades, journalists, pundits, non-professional historians, sports scholars, and everyday people have offered competing narratives about the origins of modern sports in the late Ottoman Empire. In The Ottoman World of ... Show More
1h 5m
Yesterday
Mikhail Pelevin, "Love, Honour and God: Pashto Writings of Early Modern Times" (Brill, 2025)
In this episode of New Books Network, I speak with Mikhail Pelevin about his book Love, Honour and God: Pashto Writings of Early Modern Times (Iran and the Caucasus Monographs, vol. 5, Brill, 2025). Love, Honour and God is a survey of three centuries of Pashto literary and educat ... Show More
33m 29s
Jul 29
Lisa Blaydes and Samuel Helfont eds., "Ba‘thist Iraq Through Archives: Reflections, Explorations, and Opportunities" (Stanford UP, 2026)
The opening of Iraq's Ba'th Party archives revolutionized the study of Iraqi politics and history, offering scholars unprecedented access to the inner workings of one of the world's most impenetrable autocracies. Ba‘thist Iraq Through Archives: Reflections, Explorations, and Oppo ... Show More
41m 40s
Dec 2024
Conflicted Community: Aaron Zelin – Assad’s Fall and the Future of Syria
ANOTHER EMERGENCY EPISODE Things are, as ever, moving at lightning speed in the Middle East, as last weekend on December 8th, Bashar al-Assad and his Syrian regime fell. After 13 years of civil war, and more than 50 years of his family’s rule, in an extraordinary turn of events r ... Show More
41m 18s
Jul 2019
Syria: The Rise and Fallout of the House of Assad with Sam Dagher
<p>After eight years of civil war in Syria, with hundreds of thousands of its citizens dead and millions more fleeing the country, one question looms large: how did things get so bad? During those early days of peaceful protest, what prompted a shoot-to-kill order from the highes ... Show More
20m 46s
Dec 2024
The Middle East After Assad
After rebels took Syria’s capital, President Bashar Al-Assad fled Damascus for Russia, ending his brutal 24-year reign. His ouster marks the beginning of a new, uncertain phase for a country that’s been ravaged by 13 years of civil war. On today’s Big Take podcast, Bloomberg’s ... Show More
15m 28s
Nov 2025
The Origins of the Syrian Crisis
The Syrian Civil War didn’t begin in 2011; it began centuries earlier. Dr. Roy explores how the legacy of empire, the carving up of the Middle East after World War I, and repeated Western interference destabilized Syria and Iraq long before the Arab Spring. Along the way, Dr. Roy ... Show More
1h 50m
Dec 2024
The Syrian Civil War Reignites
EMERGENCY EPISODE In another hugely dramatic turn in the Middle East, the Syrian civil war has reignited. On November 27th 2024, Abu Mohammad al-Julani’s HTS reconquered huge swathes of the North West of the country, including the key city of Aleppo. Conflicted is here with an em ... Show More
1h 31m