The inside story of the CIA’s secret mind control project, MKULTRA, using never-before-seen testimony from the perpetrators themselves.Sidney Gottlieb was the CIA’s most cunning chemist. As head of the infamous MKULTRA project, he oversaw an assortment of dangerous—even deadly—experiments. Among them: dosing unwitting strangers with mind-bending drugs, tortu ... Show More
Aug 27
Mark L. Haas, "The Geriatric Peace: Population Aging and the Decline of War" (Oxford UP, 2025)
The vast majority of the world's countries are experiencing a demographic revolution: dramatic, sustained, and likely irreversible population aging. States' median ages are steadily increasing as the number of people ages 65 and older skyrockets. Analysts and policymakers frequen ... Show More
52m 20s
Aug 25
Gregory A. Daddis, "Faith and Fear: America's Relationship with War Since 1945" (Oxford UP, 2025)
In a groundbreaking reassessment of the long Cold War era, historian Gregory A. Daddis argues that ever since the Second World War's fateful conclusion, faith in and fear of war became central to Americans' thinking about the world around them. With war pervading nearly all aspec ... Show More
57m 58s
Aug 24
Stephan Kieninger, "Securing Peace in Europe: Strobe Talbott, NATO, and Russia After the Cold War" (Columbia UP, 2025)
This deeply researched book offers new perspective on the NATO-Russia relationship through the eyes of Strobe Talbott, a deputy secretary of state for seven years under President Bill Clinton and the key US diplomatic broker for the former USSR. Stephan Kieninger traces the Clint ... Show More
40m 25s
Mar 2025
235. The Viceroy, The Psychopath, and The Merchant: The Irish in Empire (Ep 3)
Ireland may have been England’s first colony but, by the 17th century, Irishmen were carving out their own imperial legacies in India. Gerald Aungier, an ambitious East India Company official, saw Bombay as a new frontier for plantation and trade. Drawing from his family’s planta ... Show More
53m 58s
Oct 2023
Arunima Datta, "Waiting on Empire: A History of Indian Travelling Ayahs in Britain" (Oxford UP, 2023)
The expansion of the British Empire facilitated movement across the globe for both the colonizers and the colonized. Waiting on Empire: A History of Indian Travelling Ayahs in Britain (OUP, 2023) focuses on a largely forgotten group in this story of movement and migration: South ... Show More
1h 12m
Jul 2024
The Mighty Ashanti: Rival to the British Empire
At the end of the 17th century, a small clan - the Akan - in West Africa began growing into what would later become the powerful Ashanti Empire. The state grew rapidly in both wealth and land until it spanned most of modern day Ghana, the Ivory Coast, and Togo.
Luke Pepera join ... Show More
29m 42s
Feb 2025
231. Colonising Ireland: Henry VIII, Elizabeth I, & The Tudor Conquest (Ep 1)
Ireland is the only country in Western Europe that has experienced being colonised in the modern era. It was used by England as a laboratory for imperialism, and was the site of bloody colonial wars for centuries, yet many people in the neighbouring United Kingdom have little und ... Show More
40m 19s
Feb 2025
Magnus Course, "Three Ways to Fail: Journeys Through Mapuche Chile" (U Pennsylvania Press, 2024)
An ethnographic exploration of anthropological failures through the Mapuche archetypes of witch, clown, and usurper, Three Ways to Fail: Journeys Through Mapuche Chile (U Pennsylvania Press, 2024) invites readers to consider concepts of failure, knowing, and being in the world wi ... Show More
1h 16m
Oct 2024
Jamestown | The Great Reforms | 4
In April 1613, years of bloody warfare culminated in the kidnapping of the paramount chief Powhatan’s daughter Pocahontas. The English colonists in Jamestown offered to return her in exchange for stolen weapons, English prisoners, and corn, but their proposal was met with silence ... Show More
39m 50s