History Behind News: Recent Episodes
(formerly ThePeel.news)
A History Podcast For News: weekly conversations with distinguished professors and critically acclaimed authors about history that illuminates our current events. We call this peeling the history behind news.
Informative. Shocking! Humorous. Intellectual.
Hey there Newspeelers. This is Adel, the host of the History Behind News podcast. Listen to my fascinating guests every Friday at 6 am EDT, as they provide in-depth historical perspectives on our news.
Support this podcast: https://anchor.fm/history-behind-news/support
Exceptions to & exapnsions of Freedom of Speech.
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In this interview:
►Was the First Amendment really the first?
►Why does the First Amendment only mention Congress?
►Did our Founders believe the President has no power to restrict freedom of speech?
►To our Founders and their British counterparts, was freedom of press more consequential than freedom of speech?
►In the First Amendment, is the word "THE" controversial?
►Does Pres. Trump's Executive Order to prosecute flag burning violate the First Amendment?
►Was the suspension of Jimmy Kimmel's show a 1st amendment violation?
►Do states extend freedom of speech protection to private employees?
►When and how did the Bill of Rights, including the First Amendment, get applied to states?
►What is Selective Incorporation of the Bill of Rights?
►Can a federal employee be fired for their political affiliation?
►Why is Pres. Trump relitigating the Supreme Court 1960's "Sullivan" case?
🚩About My 194th Guest Scholar:
Prof. Eugene Volokh is a Senior Fellow at the Hoover Institution, Stanford University. He is Emeritus professor of law at UCLA, where he taught First Amendment law among other subjects. And before UCLA, he clerked at the US Supreme Court for Justice Sandra Day O'Connor. Prof. Volokh is the author of "The First Amendment and Related Statutes" 8th Ed., and he hosts Free Speech Unmuted – a video podcast series sponsored by the Hoover Institution.
Watch this interview: 🎞️ https://youtu.be/MJLtinvs03o
🚩My Recommendations:
►S3E16, Dr. Aimee Edmondson: Sullivan Case, Defamation Suits & Journalism
►S5E35, Dr. Robert Thompson: Late-Night TV Show Hosts & History
► S5E30, Dr. Lindsay P. Cohn: National Guard & Civil-Military Relations - From Whiskey Rebellion To Los Angeles
Committee on First Amendment, relaunched by Jane Fonda on Oct. 1, 2025.
🚩Adel Aali
host & producer
☑️Where to find my program:
Home:https://historybehindnews.com
Spotify:🎧https://bit.ly/HbN-Podcast-Spotify
Apple:🎧https://bit.ly/HbN-Podcast-Apple
YouTube:▶️https://bit.ly/HbN-YT-Sub
Adel on Facebook and X.com
🚩Support My Program:
Click here and join our other supporters of the History Behind News podcast. Thank you.
🎵 attribution, links and license for thetheme music in this podcast: The Success by Keys of Moon | https://soundcloud.com/keysofmoon Music promoted by https://www.free-stock-music.com. Attribution 4.0 International (CC BY 4.0): https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/
Scholars in Your Inbox?
More than 200 scholar interviews and counting!
Congress, and not the presidency, used to be the predominant power of the U.S. government. In this interview, we discuss the history of how politics, populism and polarization changed the balance of power in our government.
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In this interview:
►Where does the Constitutional principle of the "separation of powers" and "coequal" branches of government come from?
►How did John Locke and baron Montesquieu impact the Federalist papers?
►What are the powers that the Constitution grant to Congress or preserve for the president?
►In the beginning, which had more power: Congress or the Presidency?
►How did the following change the power of the presidency?
- Andrew Jackson
- Abraham Lincoln
- Theodore Roosevelt
- Franklin Roosevelt
- The industrial revolution
- The Civil Rights movement
- Polarization of our politics
►What is presidentialism and what are its perils?
►Why is presidential democracy an oxymoron?
🚩About My 191st Guest Scholar:
Dr. Sidney Milkis is a professor of politics at the Miller Center and in the Dept. of Politics at the University of Virginia (UVA), and the Interim Director of the Program on Constitutionalism and Democracy there. He is co-founder and co-director of an all-university initiative, Project on Democracy and Capitalism, which is exploring the complex relationship between self-government and markets. Dr. Milkis has published extensively on democracy and the presidency, including his 2025 book, which we discuss in this interview.
Watch this interview: 🎞️ https://bit.ly/HbN-S5E49-YT-Presidentialism
🚩My Recommendations:
►S3E1, Prof. Joel Paul: Pres. Jackon & Trump & GOP History
►S5E15, Prof. Adam Cox: Presidency's Awesome Immigration Power
►S5E22, Prof. Julian Davis Mortenson: Unitary Presidency
🚩Adel Aali
host & producer
☑️Where to find my program:
Home:https://historybehindnews.com
Spotify:🎧https://bit.ly/HbN-Podcast-Spotify
Apple:🎧https://bit.ly/HbN-Podcast-Apple
YouTube:▶️https://bit.ly/HbN-YT-Sub
Adel on Facebook and X.com
🚩Support My Program:
Click here and join our other supporters of the History Behind News podcast. Thank you.
🎵 attribution, links and license for thetheme music in this podcast: The Success by Keys of Moon | https://soundcloud.com/keysofmoon Music promoted by https://www.free-stock-music.com. Attribution 4.0 International (CC BY 4.0): https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/
Scholars in Your Inbox?
More than 200 scholar interviews and counting! So don't miss HbN guest scholars’ weekly takes on the history behind our news.
On-again off again. Hot and cold. That's how I would describe more than 75 years of America's relationship with India. It's a story that seesaws between extremely close cooperation and virtually full ruptures and severe sanctions. And the goal of this interview is to learn from history how Pres. Trump's 50% tariffs may impact our relations with India now!
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🚩In this interview:
►How Stalin viewed India after its independence from Britain
►How Khruschev changed USSR-India relations in the 1950s
►America's ambiguity about Kashmir
►Nonalignment is "immoral"!
►Who is India nonaligned against!
►Ultimate irony of India's nonalignment policy
►U.S. supports India in the 1960s
►Consequences of India's criticism of the Vietnam War
►U.S. forsakes India in the 1970s
►Indira Gandhi's masterstroke with the Soviets
►Clinton's India sanctions
►Obama & Biden's warmer relations with India
►Pres. Trump & PM Modi - from close friendship to strained relationship
►Will India buckle under Pres. Trump's tariffs?
►Do tariffs push India toward China and Russia?
►India's nonalignment compared to issue-based alignment and multi-alignment
🚩About My 190th Guest Scholars:
Dr. Šumit Ganguly is a Senior Fellow at the Hoover Institution - Stanford University, where he is also the Director of the Huntington Program on Strengthening US-India Relations. He has published extensively, including the following books:
- "The Troubling State of India's Democracy",
- "The Sino-Indian Rivalry ",
- "Conflict Unending: India-Pakistan Tensions since 1947", and
- "The Oxford Handbook of Indian Politics".
🚩My Recommendations:
►S5E35, Dr. Thompson: Late Night Show History
►S5E27, Dr. Kanjwal: Kashmir History
►S5E24, Dr. Irwin: U.S. Tariffs History
🚩Adel Aali
host & producer
☑️Where to find my program:
Home:https://historybehindnews.com
Spotify:🎧https://bit.ly/HbN-Podcast-Spotify
Apple:🎧https://bit.ly/HbN-Podcast-Apple
YouTube:▶️https://bit.ly/HbN-YT-Sub
Adel on Facebook and X.com
🚩Support My Program:
Click here and join our other supporters of the History Behind News podcast. Thank you.
🎵 attribution, links and license for thetheme music in this podcast: The Success by Keys of Moon | https://soundcloud.com/keysofmoon Music promoted by https://www.free-stock-music.com. Attribution 4.0 International (CC BY 4.0): https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/
Scholars in Your Inbox?
More than 200 scholar interviews and counting! So don't miss HbN guest scholars’ weekly takes on the history behind our news.
U.S. interventions in Brazilian politics since the 19th century & Bolsonaro's 27-year prison term.
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🚩In this interview:
►How do Brazilians perceive the U.S.?
►Do Brazilians watch American TV shows? Do they listen to our music?
►Brazilians to Americans: why don't you know more about us!
►A Tropical Version of the U.S.?
►Brazilians' "weird" relationship with the Amazon: fear, nationalism and exploitation.
►Amazon river as international water?
►1822 - US recognizes Brazil's independence
►1889 - US saves Brazil's republic?
►1891 - United States of Brazil
►1964 - US supports Brazil's military coup
►Interest without intervention
►How FDR & his New Deal changed US-Brazil relations: good neighbor policy
►Brazil's role in WWII: supporting America
►Brazil feels betrayed by America after WWII
►Operation Pan America: Pres. Eisenhower
►Pres. Trump & former Pres. Bolsonaro (Trump of the Tropics)
📽️Watch this interview on YouTube
🚩About My 188th Guest Scholars:
Dr. Rafael Ioris is a professor of Latin American History and Politics at the University of Denver. He specializes in Brazilian history, politics, foreign policy as well as Brazil-US relations. Dr. Ioris grew up in Brazil, attended college there and later received his doctorate in Latin American History in the United States.
He is the recipient of many prestigious research funds… including the Andrew Mellon Foundation, the French Foreign Ministry, the National Research Council of Brazil… and he has been a visiting Professor at premier universities… including the University of Sao Paulo, Sorbonne University, in Paris, and the University of International Business and Economics, in Beijing.
🚩My Recommendation:
►S3E5 🎧: https://bit.ly/HbN-S3E5-BrazilModernHistory
This is an interview with Dr. Marshall Eakin, a professor of history at Vanderbilt University.
🚩Adel Aali
host & producer
☑️Where to find my program:
Home:https://historybehindnews.com
Spotify:🎧https://bit.ly/HbN-Podcast-Spotify
Apple:🎧https://bit.ly/HbN-Podcast-Apple
YouTube:▶️https://bit.ly/HbN-YT-Sub
Adel on Facebook and X.com
🚩Support My Program:
Click here and join our other supporters of the History Behind News podcast. Thank you.
🎵 attribution, links and license for thetheme music in this podcast: The Success by Keys of Moon | https://soundcloud.com/keysofmoon Music promoted by https://www.free-stock-music.com. Attribution 4.0 International (CC BY 4.0): https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/
Scholars in Your Inbox?
More than 200 scholar interviews and counting! So don't miss HbN guest scholars’ weekly takes on the history behind our news.
New York Fashion Week is here. But what is fashion? And what is American fashion?
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🚩In this interview:
►What can be considered unfashionable?
►In the old days, did kings and queens set fashion trends?
►Do you have a fashion group?
►Did you say you don't think about clothes? If yes, then you do!
►Is fashion aspirational?
►Ralph Lauren
►Fashion during the Industrial Revolution
►How is American fashion different than French fashion?
►Is fashion art?
►Can we point to an early expression of American fashion?
►How has social media affected the fashion industry?
►Does New York Fashion Week reflect fashion trends or set fashion trends?
►What is the House of Worth?
►What are the 4 reasons that Adel, HbN host, is interested in fashion history?
🚩About My 188th Guest Scholars:
Prof. Nancy Deihl is Chair of the Department of Art and Art Professions at the Steinhardt School of Culture, Education, and Human Development at New York University (NYU). She is a historian of fashion specializing in the period from the mid-19th century to the present and concentrating on the American fashion industry. She is particularly interested in connections between fashion and art practices. Before NYU, Prof. Deihl taught at the Fashion Institute of Technology.
She has published widely on fashion, including the following two books:
- she has co-authored "The History of Modern Fashion", and
- is the editor of "The Hidden History of American Fashion: Rediscovering 20th-century Women Designers".
🚩Other Interviews:
►S5E45:Jane Austen 250
►S5E40: Putin and the War in Ukraine
►S5E30:National Guard in U.S. Cities
🚩Adel Aali
host & producer
☑️Where to find my program:
Home:https://historybehindnews.com
Spotify:🎧https://bit.ly/HbN-Podcast-Spotify
Apple:🎧https://bit.ly/HbN-Podcast-Apple
YouTube:▶️https://bit.ly/HbN-YT-Sub
Adel on Facebook and X.com
🚩Support My Program:
Click here and join our other supporters of the History Behind News podcast. Thank you.
🎵 attribution, links and license for thetheme music in this podcast: The Success by Keys of Moon | https://soundcloud.com/keysofmoon Music promoted by https://www.free-stock-music.com. Attribution 4.0 International (CC BY 4.0): https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/
Scholars in Your Inbox?
More than 200 scholar interviews and counting! So don't miss HbN guest scholars’ weekly takes on the history behind our news.
How do presidents pay for White House renovations, furnishings and other expenses?
Pres. Trump will be building a big beautiful ballroom for the White House. And you will note from this interview, the need for additional space in the executive mansion is not at all new. Many presidents have asked for it.
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🚩In this interview:
►Who manages the White House?
►Who funds White House maintenance and projects?
►Why did some presidents sell White House furniture, furnishing & tableware?
►Why does the White House have eclectic styles?
►What was Mary Todd Lincoln's for future First Ladies?
►What was Jacqueline Kennedy's contributions to the White House?
►Which president embarked on the biggest 20th century renovation and why?
►How was White House security in the old days?
►Why was the Oval Office moved?
►How did TR and FDR change the White House?
►Does the White House have hidden passages?
►What are some major White House changes that Congress rejected?
►What are some unpopular White House changed that we have come to love?
🚩About My 187th Guest Scholars:
Dr. Matthew Costello was named the Chief Education Officer of the White House Historical Association, where he is Chair in White House History and Director of the David M. Rubenstein National Center for White House History.
🚩Other Interviews:
►S5E41:Presidential Love Affairs, Sexual Relations & Scandals.
►S3E49:America's First Ladies
►S4E8:America's Conspiracy Theories
🚩Adel Aali
host & producer
☑️Where to find my program:
Home:https://historybehindnews.com
Spotify:🎧https://bit.ly/HbN-Podcast-Spotify
Apple:🎧https://bit.ly/HbN-Podcast-Apple
YouTube:▶️https://bit.ly/HbN-YT-Sub
Adel on Facebook and X.com
🚩Support My Program:
Click here and join our other supporters of the History Behind News podcast. Thank you.
🎵 attribution, links and license for thetheme music in this podcast: The Success by Keys of Moon | https://soundcloud.com/keysofmoon Music promoted by https://www.free-stock-music.com. Attribution 4.0 International (CC BY 4.0): https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/
Scholars in Your Inbox?
More than 200 scholar interviews and counting! So don't miss HbN guest scholars’ weekly takes on the history behind our news.
Bath, England, is celebrating Jane Austen - 250 years of her life and legacy.
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Do any of these titles sound familiar to you?
►"Pride and Prejudice"
►"Sense and Sensibility"
►"Persuasion"
►"Emma"
►"Mansfield Park"
►"Sanditon"
If so, you definitely want to hear this interview - the stories and history of Jane Austen's life and legacy.
🚩About My 186th Guest Scholars:
Prof. Kathryn Sutherland of St. Anne's College, University of Oxford, is the Patron of Jane Austen's House Museum in Chawton, a member of the Advisory Board for the British Library's 'Discovering Literature' project and Chair of the Advisory Board of the Oxford Edition of Charles Dickens.
She has published extensively, including the following books that we discuss in this interview:
- "Jane Austen in 41 Objects"
- "Jane Austen: Writer in the World"
- "Why Modern Manuscripts Matter"
🚩Celebrating Jane Austen:
Here is the website for Bath's Jane Austen Festival 2025.
🚩Relevant Interview:
S2E31:my 2022 interview with Dr. Mehrkens about monarchy and middle class
🚩History Behind This Week's News:
►S3E8:China's military history
►S5E33: Presidential sex and love scandals
►S5E30: U.S. National Guards
►S3E9: U.S. antitrust history
🚩Adel Aali
host & producer
☑️Where to find my program:
Home:https://historybehindnews.com
Spotify:🎧https://bit.ly/HbN-Podcast-Spotify
Apple:🎧https://bit.ly/HbN-Podcast-Apple
YouTube:▶️https://bit.ly/HbN-YT-Sub
Adel on Facebook and X.com
🚩Support My Program:
Click here and join our other supporters of the History Behind News podcast. Thank you.
🎵 attribution, links and license for thetheme music in this podcast: The Success by Keys of Moon | https://soundcloud.com/keysofmoon Music promoted by https://www.free-stock-music.com. Attribution 4.0 International (CC BY 4.0): https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/
Scholars in Your Inbox?
More than 200 scholar interviews and counting! So don't miss HbN guest scholars’ weekly takes on the history behind our news.
Public broadcast federal funding has been completely cut. Our federal government will no longer fund public broadcasting. Pres. Trump has ordered the Corporation for Public Broadcasting (CPB) to cease any funding to PBS or NPR. In addition, he signed Congressional bill that clawed back already approved CPB funding.
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🚩In this interview:
►What defines public broadcasting?
►Radio's evolution from a public to commercial medium
►Educational broadcasting or public broadcasting?
►Nonprofit vs. noncommercial
►How is public broadcasting funded?
►How is Sputnik relevant to public broadcast?
►Why the South liked public broadcast
►NAACP and public broadcast
►How did the Carnegie Corp. impact public broadcast?
►Why don't conservatives like public broadcast?
►Pres. Johnson, Nixon and Reagan and public broadcast
🚩About My 185th Guest Scholars:
Dr. Allison Perlmanis a professor of film and media studies in the School of Humanities at University of California, Irvine. Her research interests include history of broadcasting, American social movements, media law and policy, media activism, popular memory. Her publications include the following books:
- Flow TV: Television in the Age of Convergent Media, and
- Public Interests: Media Advocacy and Struggles Over US Television, a book that we discuss in this interview. It's also the winner of the Outstanding Book Award by the International Communication Association.
🚩Adel Aali
host & producer
☑️Where to find my program:
Home:https://historybehindnews.com
Spotify:🎧https://bit.ly/HbN-Podcast-Spotify
Apple:🎧https://bit.ly/HbN-Podcast-Apple
YouTube:▶️https://bit.ly/HbN-YT-Sub
Adel on Facebook and X.com
🚩Support My Program:
Click here and join our other supporters of the History Behind News podcast. Thank you.
🎵 attribution, links and license for thetheme music in this podcast: The Success by Keys of Moon | https://soundcloud.com/keysofmoon Music promoted by https://www.free-stock-music.com. Attribution 4.0 International (CC BY 4.0): https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/
Scholars in Your Inbox?
More than 200 scholar interviews and counting! So don't miss HbN guest scholars’ weekly takes on the history behind our news.
Japan's history of public health, imperial rise and nationalism. And also, story of a Japanese company's commercial invasion of America.
🚩In this interview:
►What does it mean to be modern?
►Japan's 'modernization' - 1860s to 1910s.
►4 requirements for modernization of Japanese toilets
►disease prevention, e.g., cholera in Japan
►Japan - the rise of a 'clean' empire
►Is Japan's history of cleanliness true?
►Black Gold: Japan's centuries-old "night soil system"
►Gen. Douglas MacArthur's toilet
►squat vs. sit down toilets - Japan in the 1980s
►cleanliness and Japan's nationalism
🚩New York Times:
"The Rise of the Japanese Toilet"
🚩About My 184th Guest Scholars:
Dr. Kerry Shannon of California State University, Dominguez Hills, is a historian of modern East Asia, and his broader research and teaching interests include the intellectual and social history of public health. His forthcoming book, which we discuss in this interview, is tentatively titled "Going to the Bathroom for the Nation: a History of the Modern Japanese Toilet".
🚩My Recommendation:
S5E11: Japan's modern history - from pacificism to realism, story of how Japan works.
🚩Adel Aali
host & producer
☑️Where to find my program:
Home:https://historybehindnews.com
Spotify:🎧https://bit.ly/HbN-Podcast-Spotify
Apple:🎧https://bit.ly/HbN-Podcast-Apple
YouTube:▶️https://bit.ly/HbN-YT-Sub
Adel on Facebook and X.com
🚩Support My Program:
🚩Click here and join our other supporters of the History Behind News podcast. Thank you.
🎵 attribution, links and license for thetheme music in this podcast: The Success by Keys of Moon | https://soundcloud.com/keysofmoon Music promoted by https://www.free-stock-music.com. Attribution 4.0 International (CC BY 4.0): https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/
Scholars in Your Inbox?
More than 200 scholar interviews and counting! So don't miss HbN guest scholars’ weekly takes on the history behind our news.
Why do some presidential sexual relations become major scandals while others don't even make the news?
🚩In this interview:
►Are presidential love affairs different than sexual relations?
►What defines a scandal? The nature of the act or the politics of the moment?
►JFK's sexual relations
►FDR's love affairs
►Cleveland's sex scandals and great love story
►Clinton's sexual relations
►Jackson's scandals - heartbreak & Cabinet's shutdown
►Washington's great love
►Epstein's sex scandal vs. others
►Character is King!
🚩About My 183rd Guest Scholars:
Dr. Robert Watson is a Distinguished Professor of American History & Avron Fogelman Research Professor at Lynn University, and also the Director of Project Civitas, an initiative to promote civility both on campus and in the community in politics and all other aspects. He has published 200 scholarly articles and over 45 books, including "Affairs of State: The Untold History of Presidential Love, Sex and Scandal", which we discuss in this interview.
Dr. Watson's forthcoming book is "Declaration: The Story of American Independence", in which he revisits America's Founding - just in time for our nation's 250th anniversary in 2026.
You have likely watched Dr. Watson talk about history on TV, for example on CNN, MSNBC on The Daily Show. In addition, Dr. Watson has worked with or lectured for some of our nation's most preeminent historic sites, such as the Truman Presidential Library, Ford Presidential Museum, US Military Academy at West Point, the National Archives, the Smithsonian Institution, the Pentagon, George Washington’s Mount Vernon, Society of the Cincinnati, Gettysburg National Battlefield, National Civil War Museum, Mount Rushmore, US Capitol Historical Society and the White House Historical Association.
🚩Adel Aali
host & producer
☑️Where to find my program:
Home:https://historybehindnews.com
Spotify:🎧https://bit.ly/HbN-Podcast-Spotify
Apple:🎧https://bit.ly/HbN-Podcast-Apple
YouTube:▶️https://bit.ly/HbN-YT-Sub
Adel on Facebook and X.com
🚩Support My Program:
🚩Click here and join our other supporters of the History Behind News podcast. Thank you.
🎵 attribution, links and license for thetheme music in this podcast: The Success by Keys of Moon | https://soundcloud.com/keysofmoon Music promoted by https://www.free-stock-music.com. Attribution 4.0 International (CC BY 4.0): https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/
Scholars in Your Inbox?
More than 200 scholar interviews and counting! So don't miss HbN guest scholars’ weekly takes on the history behind our news.
As Pres. Trump and Pres. Putin meet in Alaska to negotiate a potential peace deal between Russia and Ukraine, I speak with scholars of Russia and ask them these questions:
►Who is Putin?
►What event had the biggest impact on his worldview?
►Is he an ideological man?
►Does he love Russia?
►Is he a risktaker?
►Does he fear that Russians will revolt against him?
►Does he want to be remembered in history as Putin the Great? Actually, that would be Vladimir the Great.
🚩About My Guest Scholars:
Dr. Kathryn Stoner. I interviewed her in March 2022, shortly after Russia's invasion of Ukraine and while the Covid-19 pandemic was a threat. She was then a scholar at Stanford University and had published an important book, Russia Resurrected: Its Power and Purpose in a New Global Order. Here is our full interview.
Dr. Mark Steinberg. I interviewed him in April 2022, when there was talk of overthrowing Putin. Dr. Steinberg is professor emeritus at the Department of History of the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign. He has published extensively about Russia, including Voices of Revolution, 1917; The Russian Revolution, 1905-1921; and also Russian Utopia. Here is our full interview.
🚩My Recommendations:
►S2E8: Wars in Ukraine, Dr. David R. Stone
►S2E5:Ukraine's National Identity, Dr. Catherine Wanner
►S5E39:Crimea and Crimean Tatars, Dr. Greta Uehling
Image Attribution:
Vladimir Putin, July 14, 2025. By Kremlin.ru, CC BY 4.0. Image cropped on its sides to Zoom in on Mr. Putin.
🚩Adel Aali
host & producer
☑️Where to find my program:
Home:https://historybehindnews.com
Spotify:🎧https://bit.ly/HbN-Podcast-Spotify
Apple:🎧https://bit.ly/HbN-Podcast-Apple
YouTube:▶️https://bit.ly/HbN-YT-Sub
Adel on Facebook and X.com
🚩Support My Program:
🚩Click here and join our other supporters of the History Behind News podcast. Thank you.
🎵 attribution, links and license for thetheme music in this podcast: The Success by Keys of Moon | https://soundcloud.com/keysofmoon Music promoted by https://www.free-stock-music.com. Attribution 4.0 International (CC BY 4.0): https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/
Scholars in Your Inbox?
More than 200 scholar interviews and counting! So don't miss HbN guest scholars’ weekly takes on the history behind our news.
As Pres. Trump & Putin meet in Alaska, without Pres. Zelensky, to discuss a peace deal in the Russian-Ukrainian War, it is not at all certain that any land will in fact be swapped for peace, as suggested by Pres. Trump. But one thing is for certain - that Pres. Putin will not, ever, swap Crimea for any land in Ukraine.
In this episode, my guest and I discuss the history of Crimea and the Crimean Tatars.
🚩About My 182nd Guest Scholar:
Dr. Greta Lynn Uehling is a cultural anthropologist who works at the intersection of Indigenous and Eastern European Studies. She is a Teaching Professor at the University of Michigan in Ann Arbor, where she teaches for the Program in International and Comparative Studies and is Associate Faculty of the Center for Russian, East European and Eurasian Studies.
Her books include the following:
- Decolonizing Ukraine: The Indigenous People of Crimea and Pathways to Freedom - a book that we discuss in this episode,
- Everyday War: The Conflict over Don-bas, Ukraine, and
- Beyond Memory: The Deportation and Return of the Crimean Tatars.
🚩Other Related Interviews:
►S2E9:Who Is Putin? Dr. Kathryn Stoner
►S2E8:Wars in Ukraine, Dr. David R. Stone
►S2E5:Ukraine's National Identity, Dr. Catherine Wanner
🚩Adel Aali
host & producer
☑️Where to find my program:
Home:https://historybehindnews.com
Spotify:🎧https://bit.ly/HbN-Podcast-Spotify
Apple:🎧https://bit.ly/HbN-Podcast-Apple
YouTube:▶️https://bit.ly/HbN-YT-Sub
Adel on Facebook and X.com
🚩Support My Program:
🚩Click here and join our other supporters of the History Behind News podcast. Thank you.
🎵 attribution, links and license for thetheme music in this podcast: The Success by Keys of Moon | https://soundcloud.com/keysofmoon Music promoted by https://www.free-stock-music.com. Attribution 4.0 International (CC BY 4.0): https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/
Scholars in Your Inbox?
More than 200 scholar interviews and counting! So don't miss HbN guest scholars’ weekly takes on the history behind our news.
Tower of London to Alligator Alcatraz: how constitutionalism came to America and became Americanized.
🚩In this interview:
►What is due process? Is it a legal right or privilege?
►How are procedural and substantive due process different?
►Is due process in the Constitution?
►Do immigrants have due process rights?
►Is due process essentially about fear?
►What is Magna Carta?
►Does due process come from Magna Carta?
►Magna Carta was not a compact between government and the people. So how does it set the stage for democracy?
►How did we Americanize constitutionalism?
►What is the 3rd part of the Declaration of Independence and why is it important?
►What is habeas corpus? Does it relate to due process?
►How are our systems of checks and balances related to due process?
🚩About My Guest Scholar:
Dr. David Schultz is a Distinguished University Professor in the Departments of Political Science, Environmental Studies, and Legal Studies at Hamline University. He is also an adjunct professor of Law at the University of Minnesota and at the University of St. Thomas. He is a four-time Fulbright scholar who has taught extensively in Europe and Asia, and the winner of the Leslie A. Whittington national award for excellence in public affairs teaching. Dr. Schultz is the author of more than 200 articles and 45 book on various aspects of American politics, election law, and the media and politics.
When I first interviewed Dr. Schultz, he was my guest # 69. Since then, I've interviewed 181 scholars in more than 200 interviews.
🚩My Other Interviews with Dr. Schultz:
►S4E17: Your Age, Sex & Vote - Stunning Survey Findings
►S4E1: Hypermasculine Trumpism & Politainment
►S2E39: Polarization of America's Politics
🚩Adel Aali
host & producer
☑️Where to find my program:
Home:https://historybehindnews.com
Spotify:🎧https://bit.ly/HbN-Podcast-Spotify
Apple:🎧https://bit.ly/HbN-Podcast-Apple
YouTube:▶️https://bit.ly/HbN-YT-Sub
Adel on Facebook and X.com
🚩Support My Program:
🚩Click here and join our other supporters of the History Behind News podcast. Thank you.
🎵 attribution, links and license for thetheme music in this podcast: The Success by Keys of Moon | https://soundcloud.com/keysofmoon Music promoted by https://www.free-stock-music.com. Attribution 4.0 International (CC BY 4.0): https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/
Scholars in Your Inbox?
More than 200 scholar interviews and counting! So don't miss HbN guest scholars’ weekly takes on the history behind our news.
Is America undermining the rules-based international order? Are we jeopardizing the stability and predictability of the very system that we built for the world?
🚩In this interview:
►What is national security?
►What is America's "special relationship" with Britain?
►In 1916, why did Britain worry about Pres. Wilson's foreign policy?
►Did FDR bring about the end of British Empire?
►How has America benefited from this "special relationship"?
►When did America recognize it has the power and capacity to change the world in its own image?
►What does it mean that "no hegemonic power has had as much voluntary assistance as America"?
►Why does NATO delineate the geographic area to which its commitment applies?
►What event compelled the militarization of NATO?
►What is the rules-based international order?
►How has securing world order and functioning systems been so cost effective for America?
►Can a country remain powerful without political liberalization?
►Is America a rogue superpower now?
►Can America remain powerful and dynamic without our allies?
🚩About My 180th Guest Scholar:
Dr. Kori Schake is a senior fellow and the director of foreign and defense policy studies at the American Enterprise Institute. Prior to this, she was the deputy director-general of the International Institute for Strategic Studies in London. In addition, she has had a distinguished career in government, working at the US State Department, the US Department of Defense, and the National Security Council at the White House.
Dr. Schake has published extensively, including the following books
►“America vs the West: Can the Liberal World Order Be Preserved?”
►“Safe Passage: The Transition from British to American Hegemony”
►“State of Disrepair: Fixing the Culture and Practices of the State Department” and
►“Managing American Hegemony: Essays on Power in a Time of Dominance”
►“Warriors & Citizens: American Views of Our Military”, which she co-edited along with former Secretary of Defense Jim Mattis.
🚩Related Interview:
S5E24: America's Tariffs - A History of Politics & Foreign Policy, Dr. Douglas A. Irwin ( Dartmouth College)
🚩Adel Aali
host & producer
☑️Where to find my program:
Home:https://historybehindnews.com
Spotify:🎧https://bit.ly/HbN-Podcast-Spotify
Apple:🎧https://bit.ly/HbN-Podcast-Apple
YouTube:▶️https://bit.ly/HbN-YT-Sub
Adel on Facebook and X.com
🚩Support My Program:
🚩Click here and join our other supporters of the History Behind News podcast. Thank you.
🎵 attribution, links and license for thetheme music in this podcast: The Success by Keys of Moon | https://soundcloud.com/keysofmoon Music promoted by https://www.free-stock-music.com. Attribution 4.0 International (CC BY 4.0): https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/
Scholars in Your Inbox?
More than 200 scholar interviews and counting! So don't miss HbN guest scholars’ weekly takes on the history behind our news.
Most Americans hardly knew about autism in the 1980s and '90s. Then, as if suddenly, autism became big news in the 2000s. And the rate of autism has increased since, including diagnosis among adults. But how did this happen?
🚩In this interview:
►What is autism? A disorder? A disease? A psychiatric medical condition?
►What does autism spectrum mean?
►In the 1980s, what were medical experts taught about the rate of autism?
►Is there a link between autism and vaccines?
►Do genetics cause and/or contribute to autism?
►Does autism have infection causes and/or contributors?
►When was autism first discovered?
►Is autism the rich kids' disease?
►Was autism considered the rich kids' disease in Europe?
►Do older parents have a higher likelihood of having autistic children?
►What explains the dramatic increase in rate of autism since 2000?
►Is autism a Western medical issue?
►What happened at the Seatle May 2025 International Society for Autism Research conference?
►Latest studies in autism, including the April 2025 published CDC report
🚩About My 180th Guest Scholar:
Dr. Maureen Durkin is the Department Chair of Population Health Sciences and Professor of Population Health Sciences and Pediatrics at the University of Wisconsin-Madison School of Medicine and Public Health. She is a Waisman Center Investigator, Principal Investigator on the Wisconsin Surveillance of Autism and Other Developmental Disabilities System, and Principal Investigator of two studies that we discuss in this interview.
She is a contributor to studies conducted by the CDC, including a study that was published in April 2025, reporting that in 2022 1 in 31 children age eight were autistic.
🚩Related Articles:
- "Experts Doubt Kennedy’s Timetable for Finding the Cause of Autism", New York Times, April 11, 2025.
- "Kennedy Turns to a Discredited Vaccine Skeptic for Autism Study", Wall Street Journal, March 27, 2025
- "Vaccine Opponent Hired by RFK Jr. Scours Official Records for Link to Autism", Wall Street Journal, June 5, 2025.
- "Aluminum-Adsorbed Vaccines and Chronic Diseases in Childhood", Annals of Internal Medicine, July 15, 2025.
🚩Adel Aali
host & producer
☑️Where to find my program:
Home:https://historybehindnews.com
Spotify:🎧https://bit.ly/HbN-Podcast-Spotify
Apple:🎧https://bit.ly/HbN-Podcast-Apple
YouTube:▶️https://bit.ly/HbN-YT-Sub
Adel on Facebook and X.com
🚩Support My Program:
🚩Click here and join our other supporters of the History Behind News podcast. Thank you.
🎵 attribution, links and license for thetheme music in this podcast: The Success by Keys of Moon | https://soundcloud.com/keysofmoon Music promoted by https://www.free-stock-music.com. Attribution 4.0 International (CC BY 4.0): https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/
Scholars in Your Inbox?
More than 200 scholar interviews and counting! So don't miss HbN guest scholars’ weekly takes on the history behind our news.
"First Responders" of entertainment TV. Why American citizens will miss late-night talk shows.
🚩In this interview:
►What defines a late-night talk show?
►Obsolescence that's in the name!
►Was Carson really the King of Late Night?
►Who is Faye Emerson?
►The Letterman revolution.
►Entertaining in 20th century vs. importance in 21st century.
►The internet effect.
►Are late-night talk show hosts partisan?
►Same format. Different personalities.
►What is different about Colbert?
►Why late-night talk shows are so important for our Republic?
🚩About My 179th Guest Scholar:
Dr. Robert Thompson is the founding director of the Bleier Center for Television and Popular Culture and a Trustee Professor of Television and Popular Culture at the Newhouse School of Public Communications at Syracuse University.
🚩Related Interviews:
►S3E29: TV & Magic of Hollywood: Dr. Thomas Doherty (Brandeis University)
►S4E2: Women of Hollywood: Dr. Doherty & Dr. Maggie Hennefeld (University of Minnesota)
🚩Image Attribution:
Stephen Colbert at the 2024 New York Comic Con, held at the Javits Center in Hell's Kitchen, Manhattan. By PhilipRomanoPhoto - Own work, CC BY 4.0, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=154208372
🚩Adel Aali
host & producer
☑️Where to find my program:
Home:https://historybehindnews.com
Spotify:🎧https://bit.ly/HbN-Podcast-Spotify
Apple:🎧https://bit.ly/HbN-Podcast-Apple
YouTube:▶️https://bit.ly/HbN-YT-Sub
Adel on Facebook and X.com
🚩Support My Program:
🚩Click here and join our other supporters of the History Behind News podcast. Thank you.
🎵 attribution, links and license for thetheme music in this podcast: The Success by Keys of Moon | https://soundcloud.com/keysofmoon Music promoted by https://www.free-stock-music.com. Attribution 4.0 International (CC BY 4.0): https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/
Scholars in Your Inbox?
178 scholars and counting! So don't miss HbN guest scholars’ weekly takes on the history behind our news.
Can Harvard use its huge endowment to make up for the federal funds frozen by Pres. Trump?
🚩In this interview:
►What are university endowments?
►How are endowments different than grants, federal funds and other monies that come into universities?
►How do universities perpetuate their endowments?
►What rules and regulations govern endowments?
►When did American universities first receive private monies?
►When did American universities create endowments with legal structures and complex financial plans and dedicated departments to manage them?
🚩About My 178th Guest Scholar:
Ms. Cathleen Rittereiser is a highly recognized authority on the Endowment Investment Model. She is the co-author of the following books:
- "Foundation and Endowment Investing", which we discuss in this interview, and
- "Top Hedge Fund Investors"
Most recently, Ms. Rittereiser served as the Executive Director of the Commonfund Institute, a thought leadership service for investment fiduciaries, where she educated trustees and investment committee members about endowment management best practices. She also founded Uncorrelated, LLC, a conference and thought leadership publishing platform for endowment, foundation, and pension investment officers. Uncorrelated published three papers: The Portfolio Whiteboard Project, The Investment LAB, the Energy Revolution, DoDiligence™ - Reinventing the Due Diligence Process.
Ms. Rittereiser has educated nonprofit fiduciaries on the endowment model, governance, and alternatives at numerous industry conferences including AGB, NACUBO, Council on Foundations, NBOA, SALT, Global ARC, AIMA, CAIA, JFNA, Institutional Investor and The Investment Institute. Earlier in her career, she held investor relations and marketing roles with leading financial services firms and hedge fund complexes and began her career in the Merrill Lynch Corporate Intern Program. She received an A.B. from Franklin & Marshall College and an M.B.A. from NYU Stern School of Business.
🚩Adel Aali
host & producer
☑️Where to find my program:
Home:https://historybehindnews.com
Spotify:🎧https://bit.ly/HbN-Podcast-Spotify
Apple:🎧https://bit.ly/HbN-Podcast-Apple
YouTube:▶️https://bit.ly/HbN-YT-Sub
Adel on Facebook and X.com
🚩Support My Program:
🚩Click here and join our other supporters of the History Behind News podcast. Thank you.
🎵 attribution, links and license for thetheme music in this podcast: The Success by Keys of Moon | https://soundcloud.com/keysofmoon Music promoted by https://www.free-stock-music.com. Attribution 4.0 International (CC BY 4.0): https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/
Scholars in Your Inbox?
178 scholars and counting! So don't miss HbN guest scholars’ weekly takes on the history behind our news.
Why is America's Jewish community so successful? Why have Jewish diaspora communities been so successful throughout history and across many countries and cultures?
🚩In this interview:
►Jewish migration, immigration and emigration
►Preserving Jewish communities: the challenge of Jewish assimilation
►Preserving Judaism without the temple
►Jewish diaspora in Persia - forgotten part of Queen Esther's story
►Which Jews immigrated to America?
►Henry Ford and Jews in Detroit
►America's Jews and America's elite universities
►Jewish business success in America - the film industry and stories of risk taking
►Importance of immigration to America
🚩About My Guest Scholar:
Dr. Howard Lupovitch is a professor of history at Wayne State University and the director of the Cohn-Haddow Center for Judaic Studies. He specializes in modern Jewish History and urban Jewish history, specifically the Jews of Hungary and the Habsburg Monarchy.
In addition to the books mentioned in the podcast, Dr. Lupovitch is the author of "Jews and Judaism In World History", which is the featured image of this episode.
Here are links to some of the sources for the data I share in the introduction:
►Jewish student population in America's elite universities
►Jewish Nobel Prize winners
►Jewish Pulitzer Prize winners
🚩Related Podcast Interviews:
►History of Jewish Diaspora, Dr. Lupovitch, 2023
►History of Ancient Israel, Dr. Michael Pytlik, 2023
► Golden Age of Jewish-Muslim Relations, Dr. Michael Pytlik, 2021
🚩Adel Aali
host & producer
☑️Where to find my program:
Home:https://historybehindnews.com
Spotify:🎧https://bit.ly/HbN-Podcast-Spotify
Apple:🎧https://bit.ly/HbN-Podcast-Apple
YouTube:▶️https://bit.ly/HbN-YT-Sub
Adel on Facebook and X.com
🚩Support My Program:
🚩Click here and join our other supporters of the History Behind News podcast. Thank you.
🎵 attribution, links and license for thetheme music in this podcast: The Success by Keys of Moon | https://soundcloud.com/keysofmoon Music promoted by https://www.free-stock-music.com. Attribution 4.0 International (CC BY 4.0): https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/
Scholars in Your Inbox?
178 scholars and counting! So don't miss HbN guest scholars’ weekly takes on the history behind our news.
What is Decoration Day? Did the South celebrate the 4th of July?
As it turns out, the history of the 4th of July is not that straightforward. For example, it took about a century for the recognition of our Independence Day as a federal holiday. And for some 80 years after the Civil war, some parts of the South, including Vicksburg, did not celebrate the 4th of July. It took WWII to create a new sense of nationalism, including the national celebration of the 4th of July. To better understand the history of our Independence Day, I spoke with Dr. Thomas Balcerski, a professor of history at Eastern Connecticut StateUniversity. For the academic year of 2022-2023, Dr. Balcerski was the Ray Allen Billington Visiting Professor in U.S. History at Occidental College and a Long-Term Fellow at the Huntington Library.
Dr. Balcerski has taught courses on early American history, U.S. Presidents and First Ladies, and the history of the Democratic Party, from Thomas Jefferson toJoe Biden. To learn more about Dr. Balcerski, you can visit his academic home page at Eastern CT.
By the way, be sure to listen to my conversation in S3E1 with Prof. Joel Richard Paul, he told me something very interesting about the 4th of July - that the reason we celebrate 4th of July is because Thomas Jefferson made it a national holiday, in a self-serving way, to elevate the Declaration of Independence. He added that it was Chief Justice Marshall, President Jefferson's chief detractor and also first cousin, who elevated the Constitution over the Declaration of Independence... But the 4th of July's celebration continued and grow in prominence in our culture. This fascinating episode is available here: https://bit.ly/HbN-S3E1
I hope you enjoy these episodes.
Adel
Host of the History Behind News podcast
SUPPORT:
Click here and join our other supporters in the news peeler community. Thank you.
- 🎵 attribution, links and license for the theme music in this podcast: The Success by Keys of Moon | https://soundcloud.com/keysofmoon. Musicpromoted by https://www.free-stock-music.com. Attribution 4.0 International (CC BY 4.0): https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/.
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For America, 1979 was one of the coldest years of the Cold War. The U.S. lost a friend. Gained a foe. And then its nightmare scenario for the Middle East began to come true. This is the history of how and why the U.S. military now has a permanent presence in the Middle East.
🚩In this interview, we also discuss the following:
- The dangers that U.S. military presence in the Middle East poses to U.S. democracy at home,
- History of America's military support of Israel,
- How America switched from Vietnam to the Middle East,
- The Shah of Iran,
- The Iran-Iraq War,
- History of some events that led up to the 9/11 tragedy, and
- What would happen if the U.S. military left the Middle East?
🚩About My Guest Scholar:
My guest for this episode, which was recorded in early January 2024, is Dr. Andrew Bacevich, co-founder and Emeritus Board Chair of the Quincy Institute for Responsible Statecraft. He is Professor Emeritus of International Relations and History at BostonUniversity. He is a graduate of West Point, a Vietnam War Veteran, and a retired colonel of the US Army.
Dr. Bacevich is the author, co-author, or editor of more than a dozen books, including the following:
- The New American Militarism,
- The Limits of Power,
- Paths of Dissent: Soldiers Speak Out against America’s Forever Wars, and
- America’s War for the Greater Middle East
🚩My Recommendations:
►Iran's 1979 Revolution: Dr. Naghmeh Sohrabi, Brandeis University
►Iran's Grand Strategy: Dr. Vali Nasr, Johns Hopkins University
🚩Regarding Images:
Left: Pres. Jimmy Carter, 39th U.S. president (1977-81)
Center: Leonid Brezhnev, General Secretary of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union (1964-82)
Right: Mohammad Reza Pahlavi, King of Iran (1941-79)
🚩Adel Aali
host & producer
☑️Where to find my program:
Home:https://historybehindnews.com
Spotify:🎧https://bit.ly/HbN-Podcast-Spotify
Apple:🎧https://bit.ly/HbN-Podcast-Apple
YouTube:▶️https://bit.ly/HbN-YT-Sub
Adel on Facebook and X.com
🚩Support My Program:
🚩Click here and join our other supporters of the History Behind News podcast. Thank you.
🎵 attribution, links and license for thetheme music in this podcast: The Success by Keys of Moon | https://soundcloud.com/keysofmoon Music promoted by https://www.free-stock-music.com. Attribution 4.0 International (CC BY 4.0): https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/
Scholars in Your Inbox?
177 scholars and counting! So don't miss HbN guest scholars’ weekly takes on the history behind our news.
Alone in the Middle East! Imperial Iran… Safavids, Qajars, and even the Pahlavis - alone in the Middle East. And then, the Ayatollahs. Again, Iran alone in the Middle East.
🚩In this interview:
►What is it about Iran and its history that separates it from the rest of the Middle East?
►Who was Reza Shah and why is he so important to Iran's modern history?
►What was the Mohammad Reza Shah's primary national security fear?
►Have the Ayatollahs continued the Pahlavis' national security strategies?
►If not, in what respects are the Ayatollahs' national security strategies different than the Pahlavis'?
►If so, in what ways are they similar?
►What is forward defense?
►What is scared defense?
►What was the Shah's green plan?
🚩About My Guest Scholar:
Dr. Vali Nasr is a professor and former dean of International Affairs and Middle East Studies at the Johns Hopkins University School of Advanced International Studies, where he is now the co-director of the SAIS Rethinking Iran Initiative.
Dr. Nasr has advised world leaders, business leaders, and senior American policymakers, including the U.S. President, Secretary of State, senior members of Congress, and presidential campaigns.
In this interview, we discuss his latest book - Iran's Grand Strategy: A Political History.
🚩My Recommendations:
►2003 and Iran-US Failed Diplomacy: a discussion of Dr. Nasr's book - The Dispensable Nation: American Foreign Policy in Retreat
►How U.S. Sanctions On Iran Backfired On America: a discussion of Dr. Nasr's book - How Sanctions Work: Iran and the Impact of Economic Warfare
►Ayatollahs of Iran: Dr. Nasr explains Iran's Byzantine government structure
►History of Hijab in Iran: a conversation with Dr. Janet Afary (U.C., Santa Barbara), author of Iranian Romance in the Digital Age: From Arranged Marriage to White Marriage (Sex, Family and Culture in the Middle East)
🚩Adel Aali
host & producer
☑️Where to find my program:
Home:https://historybehindnews.com
Spotify:🎧https://bit.ly/HbN-Podcast-Spotify
Apple:🎧https://bit.ly/HbN-Podcast-Apple
YouTube:▶️https://bit.ly/HbN-YT-Sub
Adel on Facebook and X.com
Support:
Click here and join our other supporters in thenews peeler community. Thank you.
🎵 attribution, links and license for thetheme music in this podcast: The Success by Keys of Moon | https://soundcloud.com/keysofmoon Music promoted by https://www.free-stock-music.com. Attribution 4.0 International (CC BY 4.0): https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/
Scholars in Your Inbox?
177 scholars and counting! So don't miss HbN guest scholars’ weekly takes on the history behind our news.
Riots, rebellions and U.S. armed forces. Civilian supremacy over the military remains inviolate in our history and constitution. But what happens when a civilian Commander in Chief legally deploys the U.S. military or federalized National Guard on American soil?
This story is as old as our democracy. One could even argue that the use of militia to crush rebellion in America was a major contributing factor in the founding of the United States.
In this interview, we discuss the history and evolution of the civil-military relations in the United States and draw comparisons to and lessons from other countries.
🚩About My 177th Guest Scholar:
My guest is Dr. Lindsay P. Cohn, a professor in the Department of National Security Affairs of the U.S. Naval War College. All views she expresses in this interview are her own and do not represent the views of the U.S. Naval War College or the U.S. Government.
Dr. Cohn is a scholar of civil-military relations and has been frequently invited to speak about this important subject not only in the United States, but also in Europe. She has testified before the Senate Armed Services Committee, the Commission on Military, National, and Public Service, and the Courts of Justice and Public Safety Committees of the Virginia General Assembly, and submitted written testimony to the Senate Judiciary Committee.
She splits her time between academic and policy work. For example, from 2013 to 2014 she was an Advisor to the Deputy Assistant Secretary of Defense for Special Operations and Combating Terrorism.
Her forthcoming book is titled On Order, Authority, and Modern Civil-Military Relations- which we discuss in this interview.
She has received the Commander’s Award for Public Service from the Department of the Army, for her work with ROTC cadets preparing to deploy to Afghanistan, the Award for Outstanding Achievement from the Office of the Secretary of Defense, for her work on Building Partner Capacity programs, and the Meritorious Civilian Service Award from the Department of the Navy for her work at the Naval War College.
🚩Adel Aali
host & producer
☑️Where to find my program:
Home:https://historybehindnews.com
Spotify:🎧https://bit.ly/HbN-Podcast-Spotify
Apple:🎧https://bit.ly/HbN-Podcast-Apple
YouTube:▶️https://bit.ly/HbN-YT-Sub
Adel on Facebook and X.com
Support:
Click here and join our other supporters in thenews peeler community. Thank you.
🎵 attribution, links and license for thetheme music in this podcast: The Success by Keys of Moon | https://soundcloud.com/keysofmoon Music promoted by https://www.free-stock-music.com. Attribution 4.0 International (CC BY 4.0): https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/
Scholars in Your Inbox?
177 scholars and counting! So don't miss HbN guest scholars’ weekly takes on the history behind our news.
Bismarck (left) built an empire. But his Emperor (right) destroyed it. The German Empire's swift rise to world power status frightened Europe and threatened its balance of power. So Bismark convinced Germany's neighbors and other world powers that while Germany was prosperous and powerful, it was also peaceful. Wilhelm II, however, flexed his imperial muscles, frightened his neighbors and insulted world leaders.
The brief history of the German Empire holds valuable lessons for the United Sates (the incumbent superpower) and China (the rising world power).
In this interview, we discuss the following:
►The term Reich. And why this term is no longer used in Germany.
►The Year of Three Emperors
►The term 48ers (not to be confused with the 49ers)
►Bismarck: a giant statesman in world history
►Wilhelm II: the man who destroyed what Bismarck had meticulously built
►In the 19th century, did Germans call themselves German?
►Why Bismarck believed that to build a German nation-state, Germans needed blood and iron?
►How German wars led to the creation of the German Empire?
►Why was the German Empire founded in Paris, and not in Germany?
►How did Darwinism figure into the history of the German Empire?
►How did Wilhelm II make enemies for the German Empire?
►How did Wilhelm II interact with the media?
🚩About My 176th Guest:
My guest is Katja Hoyer, a German-British historian, journalist and writer. She is a Visiting Research Fellow at King's College London and a Fellow of the Royal Historical Society. Her publications include the following books:
- Beyond the Wall, East Germany, 1949-1990, and
- Blood and Iron: The Rise and Fall of the German Empire, 1871-1918 - a book that we discuss in this interview.
🚩Recommendations:
🎧S1E31: history of the Spanish Flu, John Barry, author of The Great Influenza: The Story of the Deadliest Pandemic in History
🎧S5E12: history of Germany's deportation of Turks and the rise of Neo-Nazis in Germany, Dr. Michelle Lynn Kahn , author of Two Homelands: Racism, Return Migration, and Turkish-German History
🎧S2E36: history of the China's rise and aggressive foreign policy, Dr. Susan Shirk, author of Overreach: How China Derailed Its Peaceful Rise
🚩Image Attribution:
Flag of the German Empire, aka, Reichsflagge (the Realm Flag).
Image by User:B1mbo and User:Madden - Recoloured Image:Flag of the Germans (2-3).svg, Public Domain.
Wilhelm II (right) & Bismarck.
🚩Adel Aali
host & producer
☑️Where to find my program:
Home:https://historybehindnews.com
Spotify:🎧https://bit.ly/HbN-Podcast-Spotify
Apple:🎧https://bit.ly/HbN-Podcast-Apple
YouTube:▶️https://bit.ly/HbN-YT-Sub
Adel on Facebook and X.com
Support:
Click here and join our other supporters in thenews peeler community. Thank you.
🎵 attribution, links and license for thetheme music in this podcast: The Success by Keys of Moon | https://soundcloud.com/keysofmoon Music promoted by https://www.free-stock-music.com. Attribution 4.0 International (CC BY 4.0): https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/
Scholars in Your Inbox?
176 scholars and counting! So don't miss HbN guest scholars’ weekly takes on the history behind our news.
80% of South Africa's people own only 4% of the land. These are Black South Africans. In contrast, 75% of the land is privately owned by white South Africans, who comprise about 7% of the population. But apartheid ended in 1994. So why hasn't land been more equitably distributed since then?
In this interview, we discuss the following:
►How colonial era Christianity ended the fluidity of societal and power relations among Blacks in South Africa.
►How colonial-imposed land boundaries changed South Africa's culture and allegiances.
►Do white South Africans experience higher crime than Black South Africans?
►How English South Africans supported Afrikaners - their former enemies - and lifted them up in society so that together they could maintain white supremacy.
►Why do Indians of South Africa call themselves Black?
►What happened after the end of apartheid to South Africa's economy and race relations?
►Why did some historians claim that South Africa's decade of 1970s was lost to history?
►Why did it take so long for apartheid to end?
►How did corruption become so pervasive in South Africa?
►Is South Africa a failed state?
Read History Behind News blog post on South Africa.
🚩About My 175th Guest:
Dr. Daniel Magaziner is a professor at Yale University and the Director of Undergraduate Studies at the Department of History at Yale. He is a historian of 20th century Africa, and the author of several books, including the following:
The Law and the Prophets: Black Consciousness in South Africa, 1968 – 1977
The Art of Life in South Africa, and
Available Light: Omar Badsha and the Struggle to Change South Africa.
🚩Recommendations:
🎧S1E28: history of Ethiopia, Dr. Etana Dinka
🎧S3E28: history of Sudan, Dr. Christopher Tounsel
🚩Adel Aali
host & producer
☑️Where to find my program:
Home:https://historybehindnews.com
Spotify:🎧https://bit.ly/HbN-Podcast-Spotify
Apple:🎧https://bit.ly/HbN-Podcast-Apple
YouTube:▶️https://bit.ly/HbN-YT-Sub
Adel on Facebook and X.com
Support:
Click here and join our other supporters in thenews peeler community. Thank you.
🎵 attribution, links and license for thetheme music in this podcast: The Success by Keys of Moon | https://soundcloud.com/keysofmoon Music promoted by https://www.free-stock-music.com. Attribution 4.0 International (CC BY 4.0): https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/
Flag of South Africa in podcast thumbnail is by Miguel Á. Padriñán from Pixabay.
Scholars in Your Inbox?
175 scholars and counting! So don't miss HbN guest scholars’ weekly takes on the history behind our news.
Did you know that up to the Partition of India in 1947, Kashmiri Muslims lived in conditions that very much resembled serfdom? Exploitation of Kashmiri Muslims was particularly notable during the Dogra Dynasty, which ruled the princely state of Jammu and Kashmir from 1846 to 1947.
Since their partition in 1947, India and Pakistan have fought four wars: in 1947, 1965, 1971 and 1999. Based on research and information, three of these wars were specifically about the Kashmir region.
In this interview, I bring historical perspective to conflicts and crises about Kashmir by asking my guest scholar the following questions:
►Is Jammu and Kashmir different than Kashmir?
►Who are Kashmiris?
►Why did Persian missionaries visit Kashmir?
►What happened to Kashmir after the Mughal Empire?
►What does it mean that Kashmir was a princely state?
►Did the British introduce a more egalitarian system in Kashmir? If so, why?
►Why Kashmir was an autonomous region under British rule and until recently in the Republic of India?
►Why is Kashmir called the Indian Administered Kashmir?
►How did Kashmir become a part of India?
►What was the Kashmir massacre that happened in 1947?
►How are Kashmiris 'othered' in India?
►What is it about Kashmir that makes it different from all other Indian states?
►Is Kashmir an integral part of India?
►Would my guest scholar be able to freely talk about Kashmir's history in India?
🚩About My 174th Guest Scholar:
Dr. Hafsa Kanjwal is a historian of modern Kashmir, and the author of Colonizing Kashmir: State-building Under Indian Occupation, a book that we discuss in this interview. She is a professor of South Asian History in the Department of History at Lafayette College, where she teaches courses on the history of the modern world, South Asian history, and Islam in the Modern World.
Dr. Kanjwal also tells us something highly unexpected about her other book (see podcast image): A Fate Written On Matchboxes.
🚩Adel Aali
host & producer
☑️Where to find my program:
Home:https://historybehindnews.com
Spotify:🎧https://bit.ly/HbN-Podcast-Spotify
Apple:🎧https://bit.ly/HbN-Podcast-Apple
YouTube:▶️https://bit.ly/HbN-YT-Sub
Adel on Facebook and X.com
Support:
Click here and join our other supporters in thenews peeler community. Thank you.
🎵 attribution, links and license for thetheme music in this podcast: The Success by Keys of Moon | https://soundcloud.com/keysofmoon Music promoted by https://www.free-stock-music.com. Attribution 4.0 International (CC BY 4.0): https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/
Scholars in Your Inbox?
174 scholars and counting! So don't miss HbN guest scholars’ weekly takes on the history behind our news.
Did you know that all of the growth in federal spending as a percentage of the national income is due to the growth of "uncontrollables"?
In this interview, we discuss the following:
►What are "uncontrollables"? Why are they 'mandatory'?
►What are entitlements? How are they treated differently than discretionary budget spending?
►What was the Budget Resolution Process that was introduced in the 1970s?
►How did Pres. Cleveland, Roosevelt (FDR), Reagan and Clinton control government budget?
►Which president reduced our entitlement programs the most?
►What was FDR's biggest mistake, the consequences of which still impacts us?
►What are the 3 requirements for reducing the budget deficit?
►How would my guest advise a U.S. president in reducing our budget deficit?
🚩About My 42nd Guest Scholar:
Dr. John Cogan is a Senior Fellow at the Hoover Institution, where his research focus is on the US budget and fiscal policy and federal entitlement programs. From 1994-2019, Dr. Cogan was a professor at Stanford University. He is a recipient of the Stanford-in-Government's Distinguished Service Award and the Stanford Review’s Best Undergraduate Teaching Award.
Dr. Cogan served under President Reagan as assistant secretary for policy in the US Department of Labor from 1981-83, and in the US Office of Management and Budget, as associate director from 1983-85 and as deputy director from 1988-89. He was a member of President George W. Bush’s Commission to Strengthen Social Security, the US Bipartisan Commission on Health Care, the Social Security Notch Commission, and the National Academy of Sciences’ Panel on Poverty and Family Assistance. He was also a member of the California State Commission on the 21st-Century Economy and the California Public Employee Post-Employment Benefits Commission.
His books include the following:
- "The High Cost of Good Intentions",
- "The Budget Puzzle", and
- "Healthy, Wealthy, and Wise: Five Steps to a Better Health Care System".
Here is my 2022 interview with Dr. Cogan.
🚩Recommendations:
History of Public Debt, 🎧S3E32: do democracies demand more debt?
"In Defense of Public Debt", a book by Dr. Eichengreen.
In this interview, Dr. Barry Eichengreen takes us through the history of how monarchs, prime ministers and presidents used debt, why some used it wisely and how others grossly wasted their national resources with debt spending. This is a history of war as much as it is the history of absolute monarchs, parliamentary power and democracies.
🚩Adel Aali
host & producer
☑️Where to find my program:
Home:https://historybehindnews.com
Spotify:🎧https://bit.ly/HbN-Podcast-Spotify
Apple:🎧https://bit.ly/HbN-Podcast-Apple
YouTube:▶️https://bit.ly/HbN-YT-Sub
Adel on Facebook and X.com
Support:
Click here and join our other supporters in thenews peeler community. Thank you.
🎵 attribution, links and license for thetheme music in this podcast: The Success by Keys of Moon | https://soundcloud.com/keysofmoon Music promoted by https://www.free-stock-music.com. Attribution 4.0 International (CC BY 4.0): https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/
Scholars in Your Inbox?
173 scholars and counting! So don't miss HbN guest scholars’ weekly takes on the history behind our news.
Gang membership in El Salvador has a common theme, which is also a potential solution for reducing gang membership and gang violence there.
In this interview, I discuss the following with my guest:
►How did El Salvador become the world's most violent country?
►Why is crime so high in El Salvador?
►What are deferred vengeance and retaliation?
►What kinds of crimes are committed in El Salvador? What's the extent of violence?
►Is MS-13 essentially an international gang?
►What is it like to interview gang members in El Salvador?
►What is the common theme among gang members in El Salvador?
►How are crime and politics related in El Salvador?
►Has Pres. Bukele really reduced crime?
►Was the Carter Administration involved in the 1979 coup d'etat?
►Was the U.S. involved in this Civil War?
►During the last two decades, has the U.S. been involved in El Salvador politics?
►If you wanted our audience to remember just one point about “El Salvador”, what would it be?
🚩About My 173rd Guest Scholar:
Dr. Jose Miguel Cruz is a professor at the Department of Criminology and Criminal Justice at Florida International University and also the Director of the Center for the Administration of Justice there. He is an expert in the areas of criminal violence, gangs, police, and public opinion in Central America. He has over one hundred publications on topics such as criminal violence, policing, street gangs, and criminal governance in Latin America. You can learn more about him here: https://ccj.fiu.edu/people/faculty/jose-miguel-cruz/.
🚩Recommendations:
🎧https://bit.ly/HbN-S4E12-EcuadorGangs: in this interview, Dr. Carmen Martinez Novo explains how gangs transformed Ecuador, once a peaceful country, into one of the America's most violent countries.
🚩Adel Aali
host & producer
☑️Where to find my program:
Home:https://historybehindnews.com
Spotify:🎧https://bit.ly/HbN-Podcast-Spotify
Apple:🎧https://bit.ly/HbN-Podcast-Apple
YouTube:▶️https://bit.ly/HbN-YT-Sub
Adel on Facebook and X.com
Support:
Click here and join our other supporters in thenews peeler community. Thank you.
🎵 attribution, links and license for thetheme music in this podcast: The Success by Keys of Moon | https://soundcloud.com/keysofmoon Music promoted by https://www.free-stock-music.com. Attribution 4.0 International (CC BY 4.0): https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/
Scholars in Your Inbox?
173 scholars and counting! So don't miss HbN guest scholars’ weekly takes on the history behind our news.
🚩Image Attribution:
El Salvador flag by Pete Linforth from Pixabay. Visit his work below:
https://pixabay.com/users/thedigitalartist-202249/?utm_source=link-attribution&utm_medium=referral&utm_campaign=image&utm_content=4639709
What are tariffs really used for? For economic protection? For political gain? For enforcing foreign policy?
In this interview, I discuss the following with my guest scholar:
►Why James Madison foresaw tariffs as an inevitable source of conflict?
►In U.S. history, did Americans ever complain that tariffs are really a tax on the people?
►What was the first instance in which tariffs were used as a foreign policy tool?
►What is the Tariff of Abominations?
►How did tariffs backfire on Southern politicians?
►How are tariffs and secession movements related?
►Were tariffs part of Civil War's history?
►What powers did Congress grants to FDR over tariffs?
►What part of U.S. history does Pres. Trump point to as justification for his tariff policy?
►What was Pres. Reagan's tariff policy?
►How is tariff policy with the USSR different than our tariff policy toward China?
🚩About My 172nd Guest Scholar:
Dr. Douglas Irwin is a Professor of Economics at Dartmouth College and also the Co-director of the Political Economy Project at Dartmouth. He is a Research Associate at the NBER - the National Bureau of Economic Research, a non-resident Senior Fellow at the Peterson Institute for International Economics , and served as the President of the Economic History Association (2023-24).
Dr. Irwin worked on trade policy issues while on the staff of Pres. Reagan’s Council of Economic Advisers and later worked in the International Finance Division at the Board of Governors of the Federal Reserve System in Washington, D.C.
He is the author, co-author and or editor of many books, including the following - that we discuss in this interview:
1st. "Clashing over Commerce: A History of U.S. Trade Policy" - it's a book that The Economist and Foreign Affairs selected as one of their Best Books of the Year,
2nd. "Trade Policy Disaster: Lessons from the 1930s", and
3rd. "Peddling Protectionism: Smoot-Hawley and the Great Depression".
You can learn more about Dr. Irwin here:
https://economics.dartmouth.edu/people/douglas-irwin
https://sites.dartmouth.edu/dirwin/
🚩Recommendations:
🎧 https://bit.ly/HbN-S2E26-USDollar: history of the U.S. Dollar.
"The dollar is our currency, but your problem". 1971, U.S. Treasury Secretary to his European counterparts.
🚩Adel Aali
host & producer
☑️Where to find my program:
Home:https://historybehindnews.com
Spotify:🎧https://bit.ly/HbN-Podcast-Spotify
Apple:🎧https://bit.ly/HbN-Podcast-Apple
YouTube:▶️https://bit.ly/HbN-YT-Sub
Adel on Facebook and X.com
Support:
Click here and join our other supporters in thenews peeler community. Thank you.
🎵 attribution, links and license for thetheme music in this podcast: The Success by Keys of Moon | https://soundcloud.com/keysofmoon Music promoted by https://www.free-stock-music.com. Attribution 4.0 International (CC BY 4.0): https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/
Scholars in Your Inbox?
172 scholars and counting! So don't miss HbN guest scholars’ weekly takes on the history behind our news.
How long was the longest conclave? Was St. Peter actually buried in the Vatican? Has the papacy always been in Rome?
In this interview, we discuss the following:
►secret excavations in the Vatican
►an ancient Roman cemetery under St. Peter's Basilica
►How did Rome remain the center of Christianity? The answer is not that simple!
►In early Christianity, was the See of Rome superior to other Patriarchies?
►How did the Great Schism happen?
►What was Charlemagne's role in the split between the Western Catholic Church and the Eastern Orthodox Church?
►How did language barrier contribute to the divide between East and West?
►What was the Reformed Papacy?
►What was the Byzantine Papacy?
►What was the Avignon Papacy?
►Why did kings and emperors kidnap popes?
►What was the Donation of Constantine - the forgery with huge geopolitical ramifications?
🚩About My 171st Guest Scholar:
Dr. Roger Collins is a professor at the University of Edinburgh. He has published extensively, including the following books:
- Keepers of the Keys of Heaven: A History of the Papacy, which we discuss in this interview
- Chased By Bulldogs: A Historian's Tale, which will publish in May 2025,
- Charlemagne
- Caliphs and Kings: Spain, 796-1031
- Early Medieval Europe, 300-1000
- The Arab Conquest of Spain, 710-797
🚩Adel Aali
host & producer
☑️Where to find my program:
Home:https://historybehindnews.com
Spotify:🎧https://bit.ly/HbN-Podcast-Spotify
Apple:🎧https://bit.ly/HbN-Podcast-Apple
YouTube:▶️https://bit.ly/HbN-YT-Sub
Adel on Facebook and X.com
Support:
Click here and join our other supporters in thenews peeler community. Thank you.
🎵 attribution, links and license for thetheme music in this podcast: The Success by Keys of Moon | https://soundcloud.com/keysofmoon Music promoted by https://www.free-stock-music.com. Attribution 4.0 International (CC BY 4.0): https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/
Scholars in Your Inbox?
171 scholars and counting! So don't miss HbN guest scholars’ weekly takes on the history behind our news.
Where do our presidents get their powers? Are those powers enumerated in the Constitution? Or are those powers bestowed by Congress? For our Founders, was the presidency essentially an instrument of legislative agenda? Or did they believe that the president possesses some sovereign right distinct and separate from Congress?
In this interview, I discuss the following with my guest:
►Is it possible to compare a modern president, e.g., Pres. Trump, with one of our Founding presidents, e.g., Pres. Washington? Would this be like comparing apples to oranges?
►What was George Washingtons' presidency like?
►Is studying America's founding period important for history's sake, or does it provide some legal structure for our current constitutional framework?
►If the past truly is a foreign country, i.e., so different than our present, then what values can we derive from studying it?
►What is originalism?
►What is pluralism?
►What are a president's process powers?
►What are president's enumerated powers?
►What are the clear exceptions to the president's Article II powers?
►Do statutes increase presidential power? Can they take away presidential power?
►What is a unitary executive?
►What agency and institutional hurdles do presidents face?
►Why is terminating federal employees such an important and controversial issue?
►Do statutes empower presidents or constrain them?
🚩About My 170th Guest Scholar:
My guest is Prof. Julian Davis Mortenson of Michigan Law, University of Michigan. He is a legal historian, constitutional litigator, and award-winning teacher who specializes in the constitutional and political history of early America. His constitutional law casebook, Constitutional Law: An Integrated Approach, has already been widely adopted in its first three years of publication; and it is now going into a second edition. Prof. Mortensen is currently working on The Founders' President, a fascinating project that we discuss in this interview.
🚩Adel Aali
host & producer
☑️Where to find my program:
Home:https://historybehindnews.com
Spotify:🎧https://bit.ly/HbN-Podcast-Spotify
Apple:🎧https://bit.ly/HbN-Podcast-Apple
YouTube:▶️https://bit.ly/HbN-YT-Sub
Adel on Facebook and X.com
Support:
Click here and join our other supporters in thenews peeler community. Thank you.
🎵 attribution, links and license for thetheme music in this podcast: The Success by Keys of Moon | https://soundcloud.com/keysofmoon Music promoted by https://www.free-stock-music.com. Attribution 4.0 International (CC BY 4.0): https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/
Scholars in Your Inbox?
170 scholars and counting! So don't miss HbN guest scholars’ weekly takes on the history behind our news.
Politically speaking, is America a Christian nation? Is there any country that you would define as a “Christian Nation”?
In this interview, I discuss the following with my guest scholar:
►Did Washington, Adams, Jefferson and Madison believe that America is a Christian nation?
►Is Canada a Christian nation?
►Is Britain a Christian nation?
►What is America's 'Civil Religion'?
►What does the term 'secular' mean? It's not as simple as you think!
►Has America experienced a secular surge?
►We have the Religious Right in our politics. So, why don't have a Secular Left?
►Is it true that until about the 1970s, religion was not a partisan issue?
►Is religion in America a zero-sum game?
►Is it possible to be secular and religious at the same time?
►What does it mean that the decline of Christianity in America has stopped?
🚩About My 169th Guest Scholar:
My guest is Dr. David Campbell, a professor of American Democracy at the University of Notre Dame and the Director of the Notre Dame Democracy Initiative. His research focus is on civic and political engagement with particular attention to religion and young people.
Dr. Campbell is the author or co-author of many books, including the following:
- Why We Vote: How Schools and Communities Shape Our Civic Life,
- American Grace: How Religion Divides and Unites Us,
- Seeking the Promised Land,
- See Jane Run: How Women Politicians Matter for Young People,
- Secular Surge: A New Fault Line in American Politics, a book that we amply discuss in this interview.
🚩Adel Aali
host & producer
☑️Where to find my program:
Home:https://historybehindnews.com
Spotify:🎧https://bit.ly/HbN-Podcast-Spotify
Apple:🎧https://bit.ly/HbN-Podcast-Apple
YouTube:▶️https://bit.ly/HbN-YT-Sub
Adel on Facebook and X.com
Support:
Click here and join our other supporters in thenews peeler community. Thank you.
🎵 attribution, links and license for thetheme music in this podcast: The Success by Keys of Moon | https://soundcloud.com/keysofmoon Music promoted by https://www.free-stock-music.com. Attribution 4.0 International (CC BY 4.0): https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/
Scholars in Your Inbox?
169 scholars and counting! So don't miss HbN guest scholars’ weekly takes on the history behind our news.
Taxes and wars go hand in hand. And as much as our current partisan politics suggest otherwise, it wasn't a Democratic U.S. president that ushered in the income tax. It was a Republican president - Honest Abe! And later, it was during another Republican president's term that the income tax became permanent - William Taft. The irony of it is that the poor masses and the progressive middle class pushed for the income tax to get the rich to pay their fair share. Now, the poor and the middle American families seem to shoulder most of the income tax burden.
In this interview, I discuss the following with my guest scholar:
►British taxes on American colonies - justified or not?
►"No Taxation Without Representation"
►Shays' Rebellion - America's first uprising against taxes
►Hamilton's controversial plan for America's debt
►How the federal government paid for itself all those years before the income tax
►How the Civil War changed tariffs and taxes
►Why the U.S. Supreme Court struck down income taxes
►Why the masses pushed for an income tax amendment - did we do this to ourselves!
►How WWI and WWII affected tariffs and income taxes
►Capitalism and Correlation between lower taxes and higher economic activity and investment
🚩About My 3rd Guest Scholar:
- Dr. David Thomson was my 3rd guest in 2021 (since then, I have interviewed 167 guest scholars). He is a professor of history at Sacred Heart University, and the author of Bonds of War: How Civil War Financial Agents Sold the World On the Union"
🚩Other Mentioned Interviews:
►Dr. Barry Eichengreen: Do Democracies Demand More Debt? | S3E32
►Mr. Roger Lowenstein: Putin's Russia and the Confederacy During the Civil War | S2E14
🚩About the Image:
Photo by Jon Tyson on Unsplash.
🚩Adel Aali
host & producer
☑️Where to find my program:
Home:https://historybehindnews.com
Spotify:🎧https://bit.ly/HbN-Podcast-Spotify
Apple:🎧https://bit.ly/HbN-Podcast-Apple
YouTube:▶️https://bit.ly/HbN-YT-Sub
Adel on Facebook and X.com
Support:
Click here and join our other supporters in thenews peeler community. Thank you.
🎵 attribution, links and license for thetheme music in this podcast: The Success by Keys of Moon | https://soundcloud.com/keysofmoon Music promoted by https://www.free-stock-music.com. Attribution 4.0 International (CC BY 4.0): https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/
Scholars in Your Inbox?
167 scholars and counting! So don't miss HbN guest scholars’ weekly takes on the history behind our news.
"Crisis of Historical Subjectivity" - my guest, Dr. Namhee Lee, used this phrase to describe the Korean people's experience of 'failed history' and their collective effort to overcome that past. This is the story of "disguised employees" - South Korea's intellectuals who left high-paying jobs to instead work on the factory floor with the aim of bringing about democratic change.
🚩About My 167th Guest:
Dr. Namhee Lee is a professor UCLA's Department of Asian Languages & Cultures in UCLA.
She is the author of the following books:
- Memory Construction and the Politics of Time In Neo-liberal South Korea, and
- The Making of Minjung: Democracy and the Politics of Representation in South Korea.
🚩Other Mentioned Interviews:
►How Japan Works - The "most important bilateral relationship in the world, bar none." | S5E11
►Debunking How China Kept Its Prices Low | S4E19
🚩About the Image:
South Korea's flag. Image by Chickenonline from Pixabay.
🚩Adel Aali
host & producer
☑️Where to find my program:
Home:https://historybehindnews.com
Spotify:🎧https://bit.ly/HbN-Podcast-Spotify
Apple:🎧https://bit.ly/HbN-Podcast-Apple
YouTube:▶️https://bit.ly/HbN-YT-Sub
Adel on Facebook and X.com
Support:
Click here and join our other supporters in thenews peeler community. Thank you.
🎵 attribution, links and license for thetheme music in this podcast: The Success by Keys of Moon | https://soundcloud.com/keysofmoon Music promoted by https://www.free-stock-music.com. Attribution 4.0 International (CC BY 4.0): https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/
Scholars in Your Inbox?
163 scholars and counting! So don't miss HbN guest scholars’ weekly takes on the history behind our news.
I start this interview with a super simple question: where is the Arctic?
As it turns out, the answer may not be so simple. In fact, it's a serious question that invokes geopolitical conflicts that seem to be undermining the "exceptionalism" of the Arctic.
►In this interview, I discuss the following with Dr. Troy Bouffard:
- Countries in the Arctic - the Arctic 8, 5 & 3.
- China - a "Near Arctic Country".
- Russia and China joint show of force in the Arctic - a wakeup call for America!
- Can/could Russia embarrass the U.S. with its Arctic forces?
- Is America prepared to enforce Arctic security?
- Is Canada prepared to enforce Arctic security?
- How have hypersonic weapons changed Arctic security?
- Why don't satellites and lasers work in the Arctic?
- What role does Greenland play in Arctic security?
🚩About My 166th Guest:
Dr. Bouffard is a professor of Arctic Security at the University of Alaska Fairbanks, a Research Fellow with the United States Military Academy, Modern War Institute (West Point), and a non-resident Research Fellow at the Centre for Defence and Security Studies in University of Manitoba. Dr. Bouffard served in the U.S. Army (ret., E-8 Master Sergeant) and is a Former Congressional Fellow, Arctic Advisor to U.S. Senator Lisa Murkowski. You can learn more about him, visit his UAF CBSM & UAF CASR webpages.
🚩Other Mentioned Interviews:
►Greenland: Geopolitics & World Powers
►Canada-U.S. Relations
► History of US Air Force - Pentagon Unveils B-21 Raider, A New Stealth Bomber
🚩About the Image:
Map of the Arctic: United States (Alaska), Denmark (Greenland), Canada, Russia, Norway, Finland, Sweden and Iceland. By University of Texas Libraries, Texas University at Austin, Public Domain.
🚩Adel Aali
host & producer
☑️Where to find my program:
Home:https://historybehindnews.com
Spotify:🎧https://bit.ly/HbN-Podcast-Spotify
Apple:🎧https://bit.ly/HbN-Podcast-Apple
YouTube:▶️https://bit.ly/HbN-YT-Sub
Adel on Facebook and X.com
Support:
Click here and join our other supporters in thenews peeler community. Thank you.
🎵 attribution, links and license for thetheme music in this podcast: The Success by Keys of Moon | https://soundcloud.com/keysofmoon Music promoted by https://www.free-stock-music.com. Attribution 4.0 International (CC BY 4.0): https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/
Scholars in Your Inbox?
163 scholars and counting! So don't miss HbN guest scholars’ weekly takes on the history behind our news.
Pres. Trump is not the first U.S. president to have strained relations with America's courts, including our Highest Court - the Supreme Court of the United States. In fact, more than one U.S. president has openly expressed his personal animosity toward one or more Justices of the U.S. Supreme Court.
In this interview, I discuss the following with Dr. Barbara Perry:
►Our Founding Years:
-U.S. Constitution, Washington & Adams
-Jefferson and Chief Justice Marshall (that malignity!)
-Marbury v. Madison (you learned about this case in high school)
►The Jackson Era:
-Jackson & Marshall
-Jackson & Chief Justice Taney
►The Civil War:
-Lincoln & Taney
►The New Deal:
-FDR & Court-packing (The Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse)
►Watergate:
-Nixon and his tapes
►The Trump Era:
-historical perspective to what's happening now
►The Miller Center:
-its mission and activities
►The White House Historical Association:
-its mission and activities
🚩About My Guest:
Dr. Barbara Perryisthe 165th guest scholar of my two podcast programs. She is the J. Wilson Newman Professor of Governance and co-director of the Presidential Oral History Program at the Miller Center, which is affiliated with the University of Virginia. She has authored or edited 17 books on presidents, First Ladies, the Kennedy family, the Supreme Court, and civil rights and civil liberties. She has conducted more than 140 interviews for the Presidential Oral History Projects of (1) George H. W. Bush, (2) George W. Bush, and (3) Barack Obama. She has also participated in the Bill Clinton interviews.
Dr. Perry directs the Edward Kennedy Oral History Project; and co-directs the Hillary Rodham Clinton Oral History Project. She served as a U.S. Supreme Court fellow and has worked for both Republican and Democratic members of the U.S. Senate. She now serves on (1) the board of directors of the White House Historical Association, (2) the board of trustees of the Supreme Court Historical Society, (3) the advisory board of the John F. Kennedy Presidential Library Foundation, and (4) the board of the Friends of the John F. Kennedy National Historic Site.
🚩Other Mentioned Interviews:
►An Immigration Power Not Used By Any President - Until Pres. Trump!
Listen to my podcast interview with Prof. Adam Cox, coauthor of "The President and Immigration Law": https://bit.ly/HbN-S5E17-POTUS-ImmigrationLaw
🚩Adel Aali
host & producer
☑️Where to find my program:
Home:https://historybehindnews.com
Spotify:🎧https://bit.ly/HbN-Podcast-Spotify
Apple:🎧https://bit.ly/HbN-Podcast-Apple
YouTube:▶️https://bit.ly/HbN-YT-Sub
Adel on Facebook and X.com
Support:
Click here and join our other supporters in thenews peeler community. Thank you.
🎵 attribution, links and license for thetheme music in this podcast: The Success by Keys of Moon | https://soundcloud.com/keysofmoon Music promoted by https://www.free-stock-music.com. Attribution 4.0 International (CC BY 4.0): https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/
Scholars in Your Inbox?
163 scholars and counting! So don't miss HbN guest scholars’ weekly takes on the history behind our news.
Chairman Powell gave a much anticipated press conference this week.
Did you know that most developed countries had central banks before we did? If so, then how did our financial system function? And did you know, that for much of our history, we've hated big banks (some still do)? If that's the case, then how was the Fed created?
This is a story that takes us from the Founding of our Republic to 1913, the year in which the Fed was created through secrecy and via subterfuge.
🚩About My Guest:
Roger Lowenstein reported for The Wall Street Journal for more than a decade. Since then, he has written several New York Times bestsellers about different important personalities and periods in the economic and financial history of the United States. His books include the following:
His books include the following:
- Ways and Means: Lincoln and His Cabinet and the Financing of the Civil War. I discussed this book with him in S2E14.
- The End of Wall Street.
- Buffett: The Making of an American Capitalist, and
- America's Bank: the Epic Struggle To Create the Federal Reserve, which we talk about in this episode. 🚩Adel Aali
host & producer
☑️Where to find my program:
Home:https://historybehindnews.com
Spotify:🎧https://bit.ly/HbN-Podcast-Spotify
Apple:🎧https://bit.ly/HbN-Podcast-Apple
YouTube:▶️https://bit.ly/HbN-YT-Sub
Adel on Facebook and X.com
Support:
Click here and join our other supporters in thenews peeler community. Thank you.
🎵 attribution, links and license for thetheme music in this podcast: The Success by Keys of Moon | https://soundcloud.com/keysofmoon Music promoted by https://www.free-stock-music.com. Attribution 4.0 International (CC BY 4.0): https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/
Scholars in Your Inbox?
163 scholars and counting! So don't miss HbN guest scholars’ weekly takes on the history behind our news.
Immigration Exceptionalism!
►Is there something about immigration law and policies that distinguishes it from all other legal issues and policy matters?
►Does the Constitution carve out an exception for immigration law? And if so, what is that exception?
►As for the title of this podcast, what power has Pres. Trump used that no other U.S. president has previously exercised?
🚩About My Guest:
- My guest is Prof. Adam B. Cox, a professor of law at NYU. In this interview, we discuss his book The President and Immigration Law.
🚩Other Mentioned Interviews:
►Prof. Deep Gulasekaram, S3E22: Who can regulate immigration, states or D.C.? In this interview, we discuss Prof. Gulasekaram's book The New Immigration Federalism.
►Prof. Jennifer Chacon, S3E18: Do immigrants commit more crimes than native-born Americans? And what are sanctuary cities?
🚩Adel Aali
host & producer
☑️Where to find my program:
Home:https://historybehindnews.com
Spotify:🎧https://bit.ly/HbN-Podcast-Spotify
Apple:🎧https://bit.ly/HbN-Podcast-Apple
YouTube:▶️https://bit.ly/HbN-YT-Sub
Adel on Facebook and X.com
Support:
Click here and join our other supporters in thenews peeler community. Thank you.
🎵 attribution, links and license for thetheme music in this podcast: The Success by Keys of Moon | https://soundcloud.com/keysofmoon Music promoted by https://www.free-stock-music.com. Attribution 4.0 International (CC BY 4.0): https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/
Scholars in Your Inbox?
163 scholars and counting! So don't miss HbN guest scholars’ weekly takes on the history behind our news.
Pres. Trump admires Pres. Polk and Pres. McKinley - two presidents who expanded America's territories in an age when territorial expansion was a measure of national success.
In this interview, my guest compares Pres. Trump with Pres. Polk and Pres. McKinley. He also explains Manifest Destiny, and indulges my questions about what I term 'America's Manifest Destiny 2.0'.
Mr. Merry also talks about America's Men of Destiny. So I ask him this:
Is Pres. Trump a Man of Destiny?
🚩About My Guest:
- My guest is Mr. Robert Merry. He has been a political and governmental reporter for national newspapers, a newsroom manager, a publishing CEO, and a political commentator. Mr. Merry has served twice as a Pulitzer Prize juror and is a member of Washington’s prestigious Cosmos Club. Before his career in journalism, he served three years in theArmy, including two in West Germany as a language-qualified counterintelligence agent. Mr. Merry is the author of several books, three of which we discuss in this interview:
- A Country of Vast Designs: James K. Polk, the Mexican War, and the Conquest of the American Continent,
- President McKinley: Architect of the American Century, and
- Where They Stand: The American Presidents In the Eyes of Voters and Historians.
🚩Image attribution:
From left to right... all Public Domain images
►Pres. James Polk
►Pres. Donald Trump
►Pres. Theodore Roosevelt
►Pres. William McKinley
🚩Adel Aali
host & producer
☑️Where to find my program:
Home:https://historybehindnews.com
Spotify:🎧https://bit.ly/HbN-Podcast-Spotify
Apple:🎧https://bit.ly/HbN-Podcast-Apple
YouTube:▶️https://bit.ly/HbN-YT-Sub
Adel on Facebook and X.com
Support:
Click here and join our other supporters in thenews peeler community. Thank you.
🎵 attribution, links and license for thetheme music in this podcast: The Success by Keys of Moon | https://soundcloud.com/keysofmoon Music promoted by https://www.free-stock-music.com. Attribution 4.0 International (CC BY 4.0): https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/
Scholars in Your Inbox?
150 scholars and counting! So don't miss HbN guest scholars’ weekly takes on the history behind our news.
Elon Musk is different than prior American business tycoons. Arguably, he is more powerful. More poignantly, as my guest argues, he is less dedicated to democracy, and that makes him frighteningly more dangerous.
In this interview, I discuss the following with my guest scholar:
►Who was Andrew Carnegie?
►How was he similar to Musk?
►How was Carnegie - once the richest man in the world - different than Musk?
►What was Carnegie's political relationship with Washington and his outlook for America?
►Who was William Randolph Hearst?
►How was his promotional reach bigger than Musk's?
►Was Hearst a Nazi?
►How was Hearst's relationship with politics and Washington different than Musk's?
►How did Hearst finally get into trouble with the people?
►Who was Joseph P. Kennedy?
►How did he make his money? In what aspects was he similar to Musk?
►Was Kennedy a Nazi sympathizer?
►How was Kennedy's relationship with FDR different than Musk's relationship with Pres. Trump?
🚩About My Guest:My guest is Dr. David Nasaw, a distinguished professor of History at the CUNY Graduate Center. He has authored many books, including the following that we discuss in this interview
- The Chief, the biography of Willian Randolph Hearst, which won the Bancroft Prize,
- Andrew Carnegie, a Pulitzer Prize finalist and also the winner of the New-York Historical Society Prize in American History, and
- The Patriarch: The Remarkable Life and Turbulent Times of Joseph P. Kennedy, a Pulitzer Prize finalist and chosen by the New York Times as one of the best five non-fiction books of the year.
🚩Other Mentioned Interviews:
🎧 S4E22: Here is my interview with Prof. Lawrence Lessig about Elon Musk, Dark Money in our politics, and Super PACs.
🚩Image attribution:
►Center: United States Air Force Academy, Colorado. -- Tesla Chief Executive Officer Elon Musk poses for a photograph with U.S. Air Force Academy Cadets in Mitchell Hall during a tour hosted by Superintendent Lt. Gen. Richard Clark on April 7, 2022. Musk met with Academy senior leadership and delivered remarks to a crowd of cadets and faculty. (U.S. Air Force photo by Justin R. Pacheco). Public Domain.
►Left: Andrew Carnegie. By Harris & Ewing, photographer - Library of Congress Catalog. Public Domain.
►Center: Joseph P. Kennedy, Sr., when he was the United States Ambassador to Great Britain. Public Domain
►Right: William Randolph Hearst. By Anonymous. Public Domain
🚩Adel Aali
host & producer
☑️Where to find my program:
Home:https://historybehindnews.com
Spotify:🎧https://bit.ly/HbN-Podcast-Spotify
Apple:🎧https://bit.ly/HbN-Podcast-Apple
YouTube:▶️https://bit.ly/HbN-YT-Sub
Adel on Facebook and X.com
Support:
Click here and join our other supporters in thenews peeler community. Thank you.
🎵 attribution, links and license for thetheme music in this podcast: The Success by Keys of Moon | https://soundcloud.com/keysofmoon Music promoted by https://www.free-stock-music.com. Attribution 4.0 International (CC BY 4.0): https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/
Scholars in Your Inbox?
150 scholars and counting! So don't miss HbN guest scholars’ weekly takes on the history behind our news.
Did you know that Helmut Kohl, the German Chancellor (1982-99), implemented a planto deport Turkish immigrant back to Türkiye?
This is the History of Immigration & Far-right Politics in Germany.
Mr. Elon Musk & Vice Pres. JD Vance have endorsed the AfD - Germany's anti-immigrant, Islamophobic, far-right party. And although the AfD commands 20% of the German vote, other parties refuse to form a coalition government with it.
In this interview, I discuss the following with my guest:
►Germany's economic headwinds and growing budget challenges
►the rise of the AfD in German elections
►Why is the AfD being investigated by German authorities?
►What is JAfD?
►How Germany's unification was more like an acquisition than a merger
►For Germans, does the Berlin Wall still exist?
►Roots of racism in East Germany compared to West Germany
►Was the post-WWII de-Nazification a success?
►What is PEGIDA?
►Which ethnic groups commit the most crime in Germany?
►Who is Gerhard Rex Lauck?
►How did America export Nazi propaganda back to Germany?
►What is Ausländer?
►What was Helmut Kohl's plan for exporting Turks?
►Why were Turks called "guest" workers?
►What is Almanci?
🚩About My Guest:
My guest is Dr. Michelle Lynn Kahn, a Professor of Modern European History at the University of Richmond. She is the author of Foreign in Two Homelands: Racism, Return Migration, and Turkish-German History, a book that we discuss in this interview, along with her article "The American Influence on German Neo-Nazism: An Entangled History of Hate, 1970s–1990s: The Journal of Holocaust Research: Vol 35 , No 2 - Get Access".
Her second and upcoming book project investigates the transatlantic connections between German and American neo-Nazis from the fall of the Third Reich through the reunification of divided Germany and the rise of the Internet era.
Dr. Kahn has received many grants and awards, including the 2019 Fritz Stern Dissertation Prize of the German Historical Institute. She was a Guest Scholar at the University of Cologne and serves on the Editorial Board of The New Fascism Syllabus.
You can watch my interview with her at our YouTube channel:
https://bit.ly/HbN-YT-S5E9-Germany
🚩Other Mentioned Interviews:
🎧 S5EA: Is America Making Germany's Past Mistakes?
🚩Image attribution:
Image of German flag by Chickenonline from Pixabay
🚩Adel Aali
host & producer
☑️Where to find my program:
Home:https://historybehindnews.com
Spotify:🎧https://bit.ly/HbN-Podcast-Spotify
Apple:🎧https://bit.ly/HbN-Podcast-Apple
YouTube:▶️https://bit.ly/HbN-YT-Sub
Adel on Facebook and X.com
Click here and join our other supporters in thenews peeler community. Thank you.
🎵 attribution, links and license for thetheme music in this podcast: The Success by Keys of Moon | https://soundcloud.com/keysofmoon Music promoted by https://www.free-stock-music.com. Attribution 4.0 International (CC BY 4.0): https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/
Scholars in Your Inbox?
150 scholars and counting! So don't miss HbN guest scholars’ weekly takes on the history behind our news.
Japan's PM Ishiba wanted to visit Pres. Trump soon after Nov. 5. But President-elect Trump didn't grant him an audience until last week. Back in 2016, Japan PM Abe visited President-elect Trump at the Trump Tower.
But why have Japanese leaders rushed to meet with Mr. Trump?
Because America is important to Japan's economy and security. And vice versa. .
In this interview, we discuss the following:
►The "most important bilateral relationship in the world, bar none."►Japan's longest running political party and its loss of power
►How Japan's government structure compares to America's
►How protectionism and restrictive business practices helped Japan's economy
►1980s' anti-Japanese sentiments in America
►Populism in Japan (and perhaps its lessons for America)
►Japan's formidable bureaucracy and how it shaped Japan's economic planning (and at times political landscape)
►Japan's constitution and America's role in writing it
►Japan's challenge with its constitutional limits on increasing its military power
►Japan military: from pacificism to realism
►An Asian NATO?
🚩How to share this episode: Just copy this: https://bit.ly/HbN-S5E8-Japan
🚩About My Guest:
Dr. Steven Vogel is the Director of the Political Economy Program at UC Berkeley, where he is a Professor of Asian Studies, and a Professor of Political Science and Political Economy. He specializes in the political economy of the advanced industrialized nations, especially Japan.
Dr. Vogel was awarded a Commendation from the Japanese Minister of Foreign Affairs for his contribution to Japanese studies. He has published extensively about Japan, including the following two books that we discuss in this interview:
- Japan Remodeled: How Government and Industry Are Reforming Japanese Capitalism, and
- U.S.-Japan Relations in a Changing World
🚩About image:
Japan's flag, cropped to fit thumbnail. Image by Chickenonline from Pixabay
🚩Other Mention Interviews:Here are my two interviews with Dr. Feng Wang:
- Debunking China's Modern Economic History & Industrial Rise | S4E20, listen here: https://bit.ly/HbN-S4E20-China
- China's Brutal One-Child Policy | S4E11, listen here: https://bit.ly/HbN-S4E11-China
🚩Adel Aali
host & producer
☑️Where to find my program:
Home:https://historybehindnews.com
Spotify:🎧https://bit.ly/HbN-Podcast-Spotify
Apple:🎧https://bit.ly/HbN-Podcast-Apple
YouTube:▶️https://bit.ly/HbN-YT-Sub
Adel on Facebook and X.com
Click here and join our other supporters in thenews peeler community. Thank you.
🎵 attribution, links and license for thetheme music in this podcast: The Success by Keys of Moon | https://soundcloud.com/keysofmoon Music promoted by https://www.free-stock-music.com. Attribution 4.0 International (CC BY 4.0): https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/
Scholars in Your Inbox?
150 scholars and counting! So don't miss HbN guest scholars’ weekly takes on the history behind our news.
How could the Los Angeles fires happen? We knew about Santa Ana winds. We knew about the extremely dry conditions. There were no surprises. So, how could this happen? Is California any good at wildfire management?
In this interview, we talk about the following:
►Native Americans' fire management
►Good wildfires
►Smokey Bear
►American homes built close to wilderness
►Coordination between state, federal and local fire management
►California's wildfire management budget
►the 5 Rs of fire management
►Why R #4 always gets more money and attention than R #2!
►$1 spent in prevention is worth $10 spent in response
►Is California any good at wildfire management?
►What is NIMS?
►the Smelt and California wildfiress
🚩About My Guest:
Dr. Hugh Safford is a professor at UC Davis.The Safford Lab at UC-Davis is focused on applied ecological support to resource and fire management in California and worldwide. Dr. Safford is theChief Scientist for Vibrant Planet, anenvironmental public benefits corporation. Prior to that, he was the Regional Ecologist for the USDA-Forest Service. He is also the director of the Sierra Nevada section of the California Fire Science Consortium and and PrimaryInvestigator of the California Prescribed Fire Monitoring Program, which is a partnership with CALFIRE.
🚩Adel Aali
host & producer
☑️Where to find my program:
Home:https://historybehindnews.com
Spotify:🎧https://bit.ly/HbN-Podcast-Spotify
Apple:🎧https://bit.ly/HbN-Podcast-Apple
YouTube:▶️https://bit.ly/HbN-YT-Sub
Adel on Facebook and X.com
SUPPORT:
Click here and join our other supporters in thenews peeler community. Thank you.
🎵 attribution, links and license for thetheme music in this podcast: The Success by Keys of Moon | https://soundcloud.com/keysofmoon Music promoted by https://www.free-stock-music.com. Attribution 4.0 International (CC BY 4.0): https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/
Scholars in Your Inbox?
150 scholars and counting! So don't miss HbN guest scholars’ weekly takes on the history behind our news.
America In Colombia is a story of secession, "School of Assassins", drugs, immigration, alliance and interference - not necessarily in that order!
In this interview, we talk about the following:
►1840s: America's interest in Colombia and Panama
►How Colombia neglected Panama
►Panama's secession from Colombia with American help
►How Colombians learn about Panama's separation
►Colombian democracy, prudent administration and U.S. alliance
►Plan Lazo & the Kennedy administration
►School of the Assassins
►Colombia: this is not our drug war
►20,000 at Pablo Escobar's funeral
►FARC
►Colombia and its assistance to 1.5 million Venezuelans
►Colombian Pres. Petro vs. American Pres. Trump
Visit my blog post for images and videos.
🚩About My Guest:
Dr. Michael J. LaRosa is a professor at the History department of Rhodes College, where his scholarship focuses on the social, political and religious history of Latin America -specifically Colombia.
In this interview, we discuss two of his books:
🚩Other related interviews:
▶️Immigrants and Crime ▶️Ecuador, violence and gangs
I hope you enjoy these interviews about the history behind our news.
🚩About image:
This is a political map of Colombia in 1824. Obviously, Colombia's boundaries have changed since then. But notice Panama. It is part of Colombia in this map, and would remain so until 1903. Next to Panama is President Teddy Roosevelt, who supported Panamanian rebels to secede from Colombia.
Adel Aalihost & producer
History Behind News homepage & YouTube channel
Adel on Facebook and X.com
🚩Scholars Unravel Middle East:
An in-depth history and analysis of the Middle East available on Spotify, Apple, Castbox, iHeart Radio, AmazonMusic or Radio Public.
SUPPORT:
Click here and join our other supporters in thenews peeler community. Thank you.
🎵 attribution, links and license for thetheme music in this podcast: The Success by Keys of Moon | https://soundcloud.com/keysofmoon Music promoted by https://www.free-stock-music.com. Attribution 4.0 International (CC BY 4.0): https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/
Scholars in Your Inbox?
150 scholars and counting! So don't miss HbN guest scholars’ weekly takes on the history behind our news.
Presidential words = action, because presidents have power.
In this interview, we talk about the following:
►Why Trump's 2nd inaugural address was more like aState of the Union Address.
►How does Trump's 2nd inaugural address compare toother presidents?
►How did the indoors' inauguration setting affectthe cadence of Trump's speech? Its echo?
►What was the overarching tension in Trump'sinaugural address?
►How does Trump's speaking style compare toReagan?
►Why do presidents give inaugural speeches?
►Which president set the stage for all futureinaugural speeches?
►How did Jefferson and Wilson change the State ofthe Union Address?
►Which presidents are ranked as the most effectivespeakers?
►Why did Lincoln limit the number of his speeches?
►In addition to Trump, which president gave the mostextemporaneous speeches?
►What factors make a presidential speech mostmemorable?
►What is Bushism?
►Do presidential speaking styles and speech-makingaffect our values? Our behaviors?
🚩About My Guest:
Dr. David Zarefsky is a Professor Emeritus of Argumentation and Debate and also Professor Emeritus of Communication Studies at Northwestern University. He has published extensively, including the following books:
Public Speaking: Strategies for Success The Practice of Argumentation: Effective Reasoning in Communication President Johnson's War On Poverty: Rhetoric and History Lyndon Johnson, Vietnam, and the Presidency: The Speech of March 31, 1968
🚩Other related interview:
▶️Celevand & Trump - a comparisonby Prof. Michael Gerhardt
I hope youenjoy these interviews about the history behind our news.
Adel Aalihost & producer
HistoryBehind News homepage & YouTube channel
Adel on Facebook and X.com
🚩Scholars Unravel Middle East:
An in-depth history and analysis of the Middle East available on Spotify, Apple, Castbox, iHeart Radio, AmazonMusic or Radio Public.
SUPPORT:
Click here and join our other supporters in thenews peeler community. Thank you.
🎵 attribution, links and license for thetheme music in this podcast: The Success by Keys of Moon | https://soundcloud.com/keysofmoon Music promoted by https://www.free-stock-music.com. Attribution 4.0 International (CC BY 4.0): https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/
Scholars in Your Inbox?
150 scholars and counting! So don't miss HbN guest scholars’ weekly takes on the history behind our news.
April 30, March 4, March 5, January 20, & January 21. These are America's presidential inauguration days.
In this brief episode, I share with you stories about our presidential inaugurations, including the one about the person who, arguably, was America's president for one day.
And here is my post about this podcast, which includes photos of some of the people I talk about in this episode.
🚩In this episode, I also mention several priorguests in my program. Here are their names as well as links to my interviewswith them:
►Prof. Larry Schwartztol: America on the brink, crises caused by our Electoral Count
►Prof. Edward Foley: presidential election disputes and violence
►Prof. Michael Gerhardt: Trump compared to other presidents
I hope you enjoythese interviews about the history behind our news.
Adel Aali host &producer
History Behind News homepage & YouTube channel
Adelon Facebook and X.com
🚩Scholars Unravel Middle East:
Anin-depth history and analysis of the Middle East available on Spotify, Apple, Castbox, iHeart Radio, Amazon Music or Radio Public.
SUPPORT:
Click here and join our other supporters in the news peeler community.Thank you.
🎵 attribution, links and license for the theme musicin this podcast: The Success by Keys of Moon | https://soundcloud.com/keysofmoonMusic promoted by https://www.free-stock-music.com. Attribution 4.0 International (CC BY 4.0): https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/
Scholars in Your Inbox?
150 scholars and counting! So don't miss HbN guest scholars’ weekly takes on the history behind our news.
51st U.S. State! America's interest in incorporating Canada, in some fashion, is as old as our Republic.
In those early days and continuing until almost the end of the 19th century, our relationship with Canada was defined by recurring borders raids and wars, our distrust of Canada and our various plans to gobble up our northern neighbor, which was then an extension of the British Empire.
And even though our relationship with Canada began to slowly and positively change after 1903, WWI and certainly WWII, Canada's identity was and, arguably, continues to be shaped in opposition to America.
In this interview, my guest, a dual national of U.S. and Canada, tells us about the important differences between Canada and America, and explains "Canadian anti-Americanism". We also talk about Canada's foreign policy and how climate change is dramatically changing Canada's geopolitical importance in the world - this all about the Northwest Passage!
🚩Adel's Post on Canada:
Summary, photos, video, audio and Adel's takes.
🚩About My Guest:
Dr. Patrick James is the Dornsife Dean’s Professor Emeritus of International Relations at the University of Southern California - USC. His interests at the international level include the causes, processes and consequences of conflict, crisis and war. With regard to domestic politics, his interests focus on Canada. He has published many books about Canada and its relation with the United States, including the following: Handbook of Canadian Foreign Policy Canada and Conflict (Issues in Canada) The Myth of the Sacred: The Charter, the Courts, and the Politics of the Constitution in Canada Constitutional Politics in Canada after the Charter : Liberalism, Communitarianism, and Systemism (Law and Society) Game Changer: The Impact of 9/11 on North American Security The International Relations of Middle-earth: Learning from The Lord of the Rings
And this is Dr. James's article, published on Jan. 6, 2025. 🚩Other Interviews:
►Greenland and America: Prof. Ebbe Volquardsen, University of Greenland
►Los Angeles Fires: Prof. Joseph Soleiman, Pepperdine University
I hope youenjoy these interviews about the history behind our news.
Adel Aalihost & producer
HistoryBehind News homepage & YouTube channel
Adel on Facebook and X.com
🚩Scholars Unravel Middle East:
An in-depth history and analysis of the Middle East available on Spotify, Apple, Castbox, iHeart Radio, AmazonMusic or Radio Public.
SUPPORT:
Click here and join our other supporters in thenews peeler community. Thank you.
🎵 attribution, links and license for thetheme music in this podcast: The Success by Keys of Moon | https://soundcloud.com/keysofmoon Music promoted by https://www.free-stock-music.com. Attribution 4.0 International (CC BY 4.0): https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/
Scholars in Your Inbox?
150 scholars and counting! So don't miss HbN guest scholars’ weekly takes on the history behind our news.
This is a personal story about a beautiful neighborhood, with kind and supportive neighbors. A beautiful neighborhood that's no more!
And this episode is also about the history of coastal Los Angeles, particularly Malibu. My guest explains the legal ramifications of the LA fires and explains how real estate investors will assess and support the huge rebuilding efforts after the fires. 🚩How to help the fire victims:My guest's kids set up this GoFundMe page to help their neighbors who lost their homes in the fire: https://www.gofundme.com/f/sunset-mesa-rebuild
🚩About My Guest:
Joseph Soleiman, Esq., is an adjunct professor in the MSRE program at Pepperdine Graziadio Business School, focusing on legal issues within real estate. Mr. Soleiman has more than two decades of real-estate focused legal and business experience including property acquisitions, equity and debtraises, property development, and repositioning of real estate/companies and their assets.
Mr. Soleiman serves as a Principal of The AlphaGenGroup of Companies a vertically integrated real estate investment firm, and COO & CLO of Golden West Properties, a real estate investment and developmentfirm with over $1B in AUM.
He holds a Juris Doctorate from the University of California School of Law (formerly Hastings College of the Law), and a Business-Economics degree from the University of California, Los Angeles.
🚩Background image: the Palisades Fire that started in the City of Los Angelas, January 2025. By CAL FIRE_Official - Palisades Fire, Public Domain. 🚩Coming Up:
In the next episode of History Behind News podcast, a preeminent Canadian-American scholar ofU.S.-Canada relations talks about "Canadian anti-Americanism".
Adel Aali, host & producer
History Behind News homepage & YouTube channel
Adel on Facebook and X.com
🚩Scholars Unravel Middle East:
An in-depth history and analysis of the Middle East available on Spotify, Apple, Castbox, iHeart Radio, Amazon Music or Radio Public.
SUPPORT:
Click here and join our other supporters in the news peeler community. Thank you.
🎵 attribution, links and license for the theme music in this podcast:The Success by Keys of Moon | https://soundcloud.com/keysofmoon Music promoted by https://www.free-stock-music.com. Attribution 4.0 International (CC BY 4.0): https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/
Scholars in Your Inbox?
150 scholars and counting! So don't miss HbN guestscholars’ weekly takes on the history behind our news.
Greenland, Denmark & America - a triangular relation that, per my guest, augurs benefits for Greenlanders.
If that's the case, then...
►What do Greenlanders think of Mr. Trump's ideas for their island?
►What do Greenland's indigenous peoples & environmentalists think of America?
►Why did Denmark change Greenland's status from colony to province?
►Can Greenland survive economically as an independent nation?
►What is it like to live in Greenland?
►How do Greenlanders travel in Greenland?
►Who are Greenlanders anyway?
🚩About My Guest:
My guest is Prof. Ebbe Volquardsen, an Associate Professor of Cultural History, and the former Chair of the Department of Social and Cultural History at the University of Greenland in Nuuk. He has a diverse academic background in cultural anthropology, Scandinavian studies, and political science.
Prof. Volquardsen publishes and lectures in Danish, English, and German. Here are 3 of his papers:
Greenland: History and Society,
Greenland, Denmark and the Colonial Legacy, and
Greenland: Literature and Cultural Production
Latest article by Prof. Volquardsen.
Image description:
Greenland's flag superimposed on its map. And its coat of arms (white bear on a blue shield) placed on the map.
Also, listen to my interview with Dr. Paul Douglas Lockhart about the history of Denmark - a once formidable European power!
I hope you enjoy these interviews about the history behind our news.
Adel Aali, host & producer
History Behind News homepage & YouTube channel
Adel on Facebook and X.com
🚩Scholars Unravel Middle East:
An in-depth history and analysis of the Middle East available on Spotify, Apple, Castbox, iHeart Radio, Amazon Music or Radio Public.
SUPPORT:
Click here and join our other supporters in the news peeler community. Thank you.
🎵 attribution, links and license for the theme music in this podcast:The Success by Keys of Moon | https://soundcloud.com/keysofmoon Music promoted by https://www.free-stock-music.com. Attribution 4.0 International (CC BY 4.0): https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/
Scholars in Your Inbox?
150 scholars and counting! So don't miss HbN guestscholars’ weekly takes on the history behind our news.
Funerals of Washington, Adams, Jefferson, Harrison, Lincoln, Harding, Taft, FDR, JFK and more.
What exactly does a "state fuernal" mean? And how many U.S. presidents had state funerals? I didn't get the chance to answer these question in the podcast. But I answered them in this post, and provided photos as well: https://bit.ly/HbN-Bonus-S5E1-7
I hope you my peel of the history behind America's presidential state funerals.
You can connect me on social:
►https://www.facebook.com/historybehindnews/
►https://x.com/HistBehindNews
Adel Aali, host & producer
History Behind News podcast & on YouTube
SUPPORT:
Click here and join our other supporters in the news peeler community. Thank you.
🎵 attribution, links and license for the theme music in this podcast: The Success by Keys of Moon | https://soundcloud.com/keysofmoon. Musicpromoted by https://www.free-stock-music.com. Attribution 4.0 International (CC BY 4.0): https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/. Scholars in Your Inbox? 125 scholars and counting! So don't miss HbN guest scholars’ weekly takes on the history behind our news.
The Electoral Count Act of 1887 (ECA) was law for 135 years. But then, Jan. 6, 2021, happened - the cause of which some partially attributed to the ECA (more about this in the interview). So, what was to be done?
In 2022, Congress passed the ECRA, which will be law on Jan. 6, 2025, when the 119th Congress counts the 2024 Electoral votes.
The ECRA is the Electoral Count Reform and Presidential Transition Improvement Act of 2022.
The counting of the Electoral votes has pushed our country to the brink on multiple occasions. Imagine this: it's two days before the presidential inauguration, and our country still has no president-elect! This is not a hypothetical or something from a Hollywood thriller. This really happened in our history. That's what happens when the simple, boring process of counting the electoral votes - a mere formality really - goes awry!
The January 6th after an election year is one of those days that usually goes unnoticed. Except, when something goes wrong. But each time something went wrong, like it seriously did on Jan. 6, 2021, Congress strove to improve the way it counts the Electoral votes.
In this interview, my guest explains how Congress improved the process of counting the Electoral votes after each crisis, in 1804, 1887, 1933 and 2022.
🚩About My Guest:
My guest is Prof. Larry Schwartztol, a legal scholar at Harvard Law School, where he teaches, writes, and advocates on democracy and voting rights and is also the director of the Democracy and Rule of Law Clinic. Before joining the faculty at Harvard Law School, he served in the Biden Administration as Associate White House Counsel and Special Assistant to the President. You can access his latest publication, CONGRESS’S POWER OVER THE ELECTORAL COUNT, which we also discuss in this interview.
Also, listen to my interview with Prof. Edward Foley about why he thinks we don't have the election system that we think we have!
Have you ever wondered why Congress meets on January 3rd? Visit History Behind News for this story.
I hope you enjoy these interviews about the history behind our news.
Adel Aali, host & producer
History Behind News podcast & on YouTube
Scholars Unravel Middle East:
An in-depth history and analysis of the Middle East available on Spotify, Apple, Castbox, iHeart Radio, Amazon Music or Radio Public.
SUPPORT:
Click here and join our other supporters in the news peeler community. Thank you.
- 🎵 attribution, links and license for the theme music in this podcast: The Success by Keys of Moon | https://soundcloud.com/keysofmoon. Musicpromoted by https://www.free-stock-music.com. Attribution 4.0 International (CC BY 4.0): https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/.
- Scholars in Your Inbox? 125 scholars and counting! So don't miss HbN guest scholars’ weekly takes on the history behind our news.
- Santur: Arpegio performed on a Persian santur, recorded with an oktava mk012 mic. Thispiece has been edited into shorter segments, its volume adjusted, and played in different parts of this podcast. https://freesound.org/people/nsmusic/sounds/259692/ Music available on https://freesound.org/ Creative Commons / Attribution 4.0 International (CC BY 4.0 DEED) https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/
Why Dec. 25? Why so much Christmas conflict & controversy in Christianity's history? Why is Christmas so important to Christianity? And to America?
In this episode, I ask my guest, Dr. Carey Roberts, the following questions:
►Why is Christmas such a grand celebration? What does this tell us about Christianity?
►Did it take a while for Christmas to take a central role in Christianity
►What's the difference between recognition and celebration of Christmas
►Did Christmas piggyback on existing Roman pagan traditions?
►How did Christmas enter America's culture? If not the Puritans, then which immigrant group introduced Christmas to America?
►Were there any regional differences in the celebration of Christmas?
►When did U.S. businesses begin to capitalize on Christmas?
►Would President Grant have witnessed a similar Christmas celebration in Boston and Savannah?
►Would George Washington recognize our Christmas? How about Andrew Jackson? Abraham Lincoln? Teddy Roosevelt?
►What happened to Christmas after WWII?
►Is it a bad thing that non-Christians and/or non-practicing Christians celebrate Christmas?
🚩About My Guest:
Dr. Roberts is a Professor of History and Online Dean of the College of Arts and Sciences at Liberty University. His research interests include early American intellectual and economic history. He has lectured and published widely in the fields of the American Founding, monetary and banking history, American intellectual life, and Southern literature. He has been a ruling elder in the Presbyterian Church of America and the Evangelical Presbyterian Church. Here is his academic homepage.
Also, watch my interview with Dr. David Silverman about the real history of Thanksgiving.
I hope you enjoy these interviews about the history behind our news.
Adel Aali, host & producer
History Behind News podcast & on YouTube
Scholars Unravel Middle East:
An in-depth history and analysis of the Middle East available on Spotify, Apple, Castbox, iHeart Radio, Amazon Music or Radio Public.
SUPPORT:
Click here and join our other supporters in the news peeler community. Thank you.
- 🎵 attribution, links and license for the theme music in this podcast: The Success by Keys of Moon | https://soundcloud.com/keysofmoon. Musicpromoted by https://www.free-stock-music.com. Attribution 4.0 International (CC BY 4.0): https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/.
- Scholars in Your Inbox? 125 scholars and counting! So don't miss HbN guest scholars’ weekly takes on the history behind our news.
- Santur: Arpegio performed on a Persian santur, recorded with an oktava mk012 mic. Thispiece has been edited into shorter segments, its volume adjusted, and played in different parts of this podcast. https://freesound.org/people/nsmusic/sounds/259692/ Music available on https://freesound.org/ Creative Commons / Attribution 4.0 International (CC BY 4.0 DEED) https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/
"I could see him become much more comfortable with power."
Did you know that Syrians welcomed Bashar al-Assad as "a breath of fresh air" when he initially assumed power?
My guest, Dr. David Lesch, has visited Syria 35 times. In 15 of those visits, he met with Mr. Assad to write his biography. But after the biography was published, Mr. Assad invited Dr. Lesch back for more meetings!
What you may find amazing about Dr. Lesch's meetings with Mr. Assad is the wide latitude he enjoyed in his conversations with Syria's president - he could essentially ask him whatever he wanted, including whether or not Mr. Assad ordered the killing of a certain foreign leader.
In this interview, Dr. Lesch tells us the story behind the story, and we also talk about the following:
- transition from Hafez to Bashar
- Bashar: Syria's hope
- Syria's lost hope - the turning point for Bashar
- The Alawites
- Syria's obsession with the Golan Heights
- A 2012 prediction that the House of Assad will fall?
*🚩About My Guest:
Dr. David W. Lesch is the Ewing Halsell Distinguished Professor of History in the Department of History at Trinity University. He received his PhD in Middle East History from Harvard University. He has had 17 books published on a variety of Middle East topics and has over 140 publications overall.
Dr. Lesch has advised the White House in the last four US presidential administrations, from President George W. Bush to President Biden. He has consistently met with and advised high-level officials in Europe, the Middle East, and the United Nations on diplomatic issues. He has appeared frequently on national and international television and radio news programs, and he has appeared in over fifteen documentaries. He is also on the board of a number of organizations dealing with the Middle East or international affairs.
Links to several of Dr. Lesch's books:
- Syria: A Modern History
- Syria: The Fall of the House of Assad
- The New Lion of Damascus: Bashar al-Asad and Modern Syria
*Dr. Abla Hasan:**
Love & Romance In Syria & Rest of Arab World.
I hope you enjoy these episodes.
Adel, host & producer
History Behind News podcast & on YouTube
►SUPPORT:
Click here and join our other supporters in the news peeler community. Thank you.
- 🎵 attribution, links and license for the theme music in this podcast: The Success by Keys of Moon | https://soundcloud.com/keysofmoon. Musicpromoted by https://www.free-stock-music.com. Attribution 4.0 International (CC BY 4.0): https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/.
- Scholars in Your Inbox? 125 scholars and counting! So don't miss HbN guest scholars’ weekly takes on the history behind our news.
Civil Rights Movement vs. Current-Day Climate Movement
Did political movements of the 1960s and '70s have deeper roots with longer lasting positive impacts than our 21st century political movements?
How would we define a political movement? Why did the Civil Rights movement achieved many tangible successes but the Climate movement has not? How has the digital age changed political movements?
Please Note: The numbers for the 2024 presidential election popular vote are based on the latest count available in the morning of Dec. 5, 2024. By the evening of the same day, however, the popular vote count had slightly (not materially) changed. That change is not reflected in the podcast.
*🚩About My Guest:
Prof. Robin Boyle is a law professor at St. John's University, School of Law. She has written extensively on a variety of topics.
In this interview, we discuss her contribution to the book Generational Politics in the United States - From the Silents to Gen Z and Beyond, in the following chapter "The Times They Are A Changin: Generational Comparisons of the Civil Rights Movement with the Current-Day Climate Movement".
*Hypermasculine Trumpism & Politainment:**
Here is my interview with Dr. David Schultz, in which he reviews politics of 2023.
Presidential Comebacks
Here is my interview with Prof. Michael Gerhardt, in which he compares Grover Cleveland's run for a second term to Donald Trump's run in 2024.
I hope you enjoy these episodes.
Adel, host & producer
History Behind News podcast & on YouTube
►SUPPORT:
Click here and join our other supporters in the news peeler community. Thank you.
- 🎵 attribution, links and license for the theme music in this podcast: The Success by Keys of Moon | https://soundcloud.com/keysofmoon. Musicpromoted by https://www.free-stock-music.com. Attribution 4.0 International (CC BY 4.0): https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/.
- Scholars in Your Inbox? 125 scholars and counting! So don't miss HbN guest scholars’ weekly takes on the history behind our news.
Prof. Silverman describes the first Thanksgiving: an accidental feast between frenemies that was never repeated.
How much is our Thanksgiving tradition based on real events that transpired sometime in the fall of 1621 in Plymouth, Massachusetts? And why does it matter anyway?
Don't all nations have feel-good traditions that are partly based on facts, but mostly predicated on myths?
Professor David Silverman answers these questions and more. For example, he shares with us that Europeans had been in contact with the Wampanoag Native Americans, who are the "Indians" of our Thanksgiving tradition, since at least 1524. And that the Pilgrims were guided to Plymouth by at least one crew member who touted its advantage - hint: all its native inhabitants had died of disease, leaving houses and fields empty and available for the would-be English settlers. And while the turkey was certainly on the menu, so was eel! In this episode, Professor Silvermans explains the aftermath of that first Thanksgiving. And by way of follow-up, I ask him to explain why it is that some Native Americans observe a Day of Mourning on Thanksgiving.
Professor Silverman is the author of This Land is Their Land: The Wampanoag Indians, Plymouth Colony, and the Troubled History of Thanksgiving, a 2019 book. Click this link for this book's Amazon page. Professor Silverman has written several other books about the history of Native Americans, which are listed on his academic homepage is along with his other publications, projects and honors. Here is the direct link to Professor Silverman's academic homepage: https://history.columbian.gwu.edu/david-silverman
History of Christmas:
In this interview, Dr. Carey Roberts tells us the real story behind America's celebration of Christmas.
I hope you enjoy this episode.
Adel, host & producer
History Behind News podcast & on YouTube
►SUPPORT:
Click here and join our other supporters in the news peeler community. Thank you.
- 🎵 attribution, links and license for the theme music in this podcast: The Success by Keys of Moon | https://soundcloud.com/keysofmoon. Musicpromoted by https://www.free-stock-music.com. Attribution 4.0 International (CC BY 4.0): https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/.
- Scholars in Your Inbox? 125 scholars and counting! So don't miss HbN guest scholars’ weekly takes on the history behind our news.
The African American elite - a history of America that we don't often hear about in our popular culture. With Ms. Kamala Harris's swift nomination and crushing defeat, in this interview my guest and I approach African American history from a different angle and with a fresh perspective - stories of their intellectual, organizational and business accomplishments in the 19th century (before and after the Civil War) and the 20th century (before the Civil Rights movement). These stories are told through Dr. Lewis's own family, who belonged to the "Talented Tenth", a term he describes in this interview.
*🚩About My Guest:
Dr. David Levering Lewis is a professor emeritus of history at NYU. He is a recipient of the National Humanities Medal and two-time recipient of the Pulitzer Prize.
In this interview, we discuss his latest book, Stained Glass Window - A Family History as the American Story, 1790-1958.
*An ancient Middle East tale that shocked Christian Europe:**Here is my interview with Dr. Sophus Helle about Gilgamesh, an ancient Mesopotamian epic that dates back before the Greek classics.
🚩 SUPPORT:
Click here and join our other supporters in the news peeler community.
And here is our support page: https://historybehindnews.com/support
Thanks very much for your support.
Watch our program on YouTube: 📽️https://www.youtube.com/@historybehindnews
Contact me: you can write to me by leaving a comment on any of the videos in our YouTube channel.
*I hope you enjoy these episodes. Thank you for listening and thanks for your support of our program.
Adel
Host of the History Behind News podcast
- 🎵 attribution, links and license for the theme music in this podcast: The Success by Keys of Moon | https://soundcloud.com/keysofmoon. Musicpromoted by https://www.free-stock-music.com. Attribution 4.0 International (CC BY 4.0): https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/.
- 🎶 Santur: by Peyman Heydarian, Santur.wav by xserra -- https://freesound.org/s/125654/ -- License: Attribution 4.0
- Volume, length & sequence of music used in this video have been modified.
- HIGHLIGHTS: get future episode highlights in your inbox.
"I don't care who does the electing, as long as I do the nominating!" William M. Tweed (1823-78), New York political boss of Tammany Hall. Story of how billionaires determine our voting choices. Big money has replaced the power of 19th century party bosses. In this interview, my guest explains how dark money controls our elections and how big money is responsible for institutional corruption in America. But contrary to popular belief, the story of dark money and Super PACs doesn't really originate with the 2010 "Citizens United" Supreme Court decision.
*🚩About My Guest:
Prof. Lawrence Lessig is a professor of of Law and Leadership at Harvard Law School. He is the founder of Equal Citizens and a founding board member of Creative Commons. He is the recipient of many awards and was once cited by The New Yorker magazine as “the most important thinker on intellectual property in the Internet era.”
Prof. Lessig has also published extensively, including the following books:
- They Don’t Represent Us: Reclaiming Our Democracy,
- Fidelity & Constraint: How the Supreme Court Has Read the American Constitution,
- The USA is Lesterland: The Nature of Congressional Corruption, and
- Republic, Lost: How Money Corrupts Congress—and a Plan to Stop It.
*History of the Republican Party:**
Here is my interview with Prof. Joel Paul about the origins of the Republican and Democratic parties and how and when they switch their platforms.
*History of American Conservatism:**Here is my interview with Dr. Allan Lichtman regarding how conservative ideology and politics have changed in American politics. He also answers this question: is Trump a conservative?
🚩 SUPPORT:
Click here and join our other supporters in the news peeler community.
And here is our support page: https://historybehindnews.com/support
Thanks very much for your support.
Watch our program on YouTube: 📽️https://www.youtube.com/@historybehindnews
Contact me: you can write to me by leaving a comment on any of the videos in our YouTube channel.
*I hope you enjoy these episodes. Thank you for listening and thanks for your support of our program.
Adel
Host of the History Behind News podcast
- 🎵 attribution, links and license for the theme music in this podcast: The Success by Keys of Moon | https://soundcloud.com/keysofmoon. Musicpromoted by https://www.free-stock-music.com. Attribution 4.0 International (CC BY 4.0): https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/.
- 🎶 Santur: by Peyman Heydarian, Santur.wav by xserra -- https://freesound.org/s/125654/ -- License: Attribution 4.0
- Volume, length & sequence of music used in this video have been modified.
- HIGHLIGHTS: get future episode highlights in your inbox.
►Where do pollsters get their participants?
►Do election polling methods and target audiences change as we get closer to Election Day?
►Do Americans vote for candidates who match their values and positions? Or do we vote for candidates with the best campaigns?
►Are there tried-and-true election polling methods?
►Do polls influence election outcomes?
►How frequently have polls completely botched their predictions?
►What is my guest's prediction for this election?
*🚩About My Guest: Dr. Christopher Wlezien is a professor of government in the University of Texas at Austin, with research focus in public opinion, elections, mass media, research methods and other related subjects. He is a Principal Investigator of Datasets on Polls and the Timeline of Elections, a quite impressive research project into polling history that we discuss in this interview.
He is the author and co-author of many books, including the following:
- Information and Democracy (Communication, Society and Politics),
- Who Gets Represented?,
- The Future of Election Studies,
- Degrees of Democracy: Politics, Public Opinion, and Policy,
- The Timeline of Presidential Elections - How Campaigns Do (and Do Not) Matter, a book that we discuss in this interview
The link for the video fo this conversation will provided here later today.
*Sanctions:**
How do sanctions work? And why haven't U.S. sanctions on Iran not worked? As my guest, Dr. Vali Nasr explains, Iran sanctions have, in fact, backfired on America.
Watch episode here. *
🚩 SUPPORT:
Click here and join our other supporters in the news peeler community.
And here is our support page: https://historybehindnews.com/support
Thanks very much for your support.
Watch our program on YouTube: 📽️https://www.youtube.com/@historybehindnews
Contact me: you can write to me by leaving a comment on any of the videos in our YouTube channel.
*I hope you enjoy these episodes. Thank you for listening and thanks for your support of our program.
Adel
Host of the History Behind News podcast
- 🎵 attribution, links and license for the theme music in this podcast: The Success by Keys of Moon | https://soundcloud.com/keysofmoon. Musicpromoted by https://www.free-stock-music.com. Attribution 4.0 International (CC BY 4.0): https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/.
- 🎶 Santur: by Peyman Heydarian, Santur.wav by xserra -- https://freesound.org/s/125654/ -- License: Attribution 4.0
- Volume, length & sequence of music used in this video have been modified.
- HIGHLIGHTS: get future episode highlights in your inbox.
👉full episode: https://bit.ly/UME-S1E39
►Are U.S. sanctions on Iran working?
►Are U.S. sanctions against Iran actually working against the United States?
►Have sanctions empowered and emboldened Iran's Revolutionary Guard… to the point that they were ready for war with the United States? ►Did sanctions help Iran's regime crush the Mahsa Amini protests? ►Are sanctions a one-way ratchet - easy to impose, hard to lift? ►Iran's economic decline - due to sanctions or mismanagement? ►If not sanctions, then what? 🚩About my guest:
Dr. Vali Nasr is professor at the Johns Hopkins University School of Advanced International Studies. and the co-director of the Rethinking Iran Initiative. He has advised the U.S. President, Secretary of State & senior members of Congress about foreign policy.
He is the author and co-author of many books, including the following:
- The Dispensable Nation - American Foreign Policy in Retreat (which we discussed in this program), and
- How Sanctions Work: Iran and the Impact of Economic Warfare - which we discuss in this interview.
🖱️Support Our Program: We appreciate your financial support of our program, for any amount you like. And thank you.
Adel Aali
Host, Scholars Unravel Middle East
Host, History Behind News Podcast
🚩Subscribe to our YouTube channel
✅Image credits:
►image titled "Iran's Ruling Class"
By Khamenei.ir, CC BY 4.0, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=150245544
image background trimmed
►image titled "Iran's Middle Class"
By Fars Media Corporation, CC BY 4.0, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=70147469
🎶Music attributions:
1. Opening and closing music of the program:
Santur: Peyman Heydarian playing on the Santur some Iranian music. Recorded with a Sony PCM-D50 at the School of Oriental and African Studies of London on April 7th 2011.
Music available on at https://freesound.org/people/xserra/sounds/125654/
Creative Commons / Attribution 4.0 International (CC BY 4.0 DEED)
https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/
This music has been cut in shorter pieces and its volume has been adjusted in different portions of our program.
- Background music:
The Success by Keys of Moon | https://soundcloud.com/keysofmoon. Musicpromoted by https://www.free-stock-music.com. Attribution 4.0 International (CC BY 4.0): https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/. The volume and lengths of this piece have been modified.
Has China now reached its age of complacency? To answer this question, Dr. Wang (see bio below) takes us through the history of China's economic miracle of the last 40 years. But the story starts even before that... when impoverished Chinese villagers decided to take matters into their own hands and improve their lives - in spite of their government misguided policies and restrictions.
As you listen to this interview, be ready as Dr. Wang debunks much of what many of us have come to believe about the history of China.
*🚩About My Guest: Dr. Feng Wang is a professor of sociology at U. C. Irvine. His research focus includes contemporary Chinese society, demography, economy and politics.
Dr. Wang is the author of
- One Quarter of Humanity: Malthusian Mythology and Chinese Realities, 1700–2000
- Prudence and Pressure: Reproduction and Human Agency in Europe and Asia, 1700-1900,
- Creating Wealth and Poverty in Post-Socialist China,
- Boundaries and Categories: Rising Inequality in Post-Socialist Urban China , and
- China's Age of Abundance: Origins, Ascendance, and Aftermath, Dr. Wang's most recent book, which we discuss in this episode.
And here is my first interview with Dr. Wang, during which we discussed China's brutal one-child Policy.
*In this interview, Dr. Wang mentions Dr. Huang** - a professor at MIT and an economic historian. I had the pleasure of speaking with Dr. Huang about the economic history of China in this interview.
🚩 SUPPORT:
Click here and join our other supporters in the news peeler community.
And here is our support page: https://historybehindnews.com/support
Thanks very much for your support.
Watch our program on YouTube: 📽️https://www.youtube.com/@historybehindnews
Contact me: you can write to me by leaving a comment on any of the videos in our YouTube channel.
*I hope you enjoy these episodes. Thank you for listening and thanks for your support of our program.
Adel
Host of the History Behind News podcast
- 🎵 attribution, links and license for the theme music in this podcast: The Success by Keys of Moon | https://soundcloud.com/keysofmoon. Musicpromoted by https://www.free-stock-music.com. Attribution 4.0 International (CC BY 4.0): https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/.
- 🎶 Santur: by Peyman Heydarian, Santur.wav by xserra -- https://freesound.org/s/125654/ -- License: Attribution 4.0
- Volume, length & sequence of music used in this video have been modified.
- HIGHLIGHTS: get future episode highlights in your inbox.
Did you know there are 70 definitions of rural?
This is the story of rural America. And although geography does matter for the purposes of this discussion, rural is a loaded term with a complex meaning that cannot readily be determined by looking at the map.
In popular culture, rural may have a negative perception. Regardless of how the media, movies and urban folk perceive rural America, ruralness provides the basis for a strong identity - a distinct identity in a diverse nation.
And since we are so close to the Election, I'll throw this at you: the rural identity is closely associated with politics.
Ask yourself this: why do rural Americans predominantly vote Republican? And why Democrats keep on losing the rural vote?
In this interview, my guest takes us back to 1980. As he explains it, 1980 is a pivotal year in America's rural-urban divide.
He also gives us his prediction for the 2024 Election.
*🚩About My Guest: Dr. Nicholas F. Jacobs is a professor at the Department of Government in Colby College, in Waterville, Maine. He is a political scientist who writes about federalism, rural politics, and public policy.
Dr. Jacobs is the author of
- The Rural Voter - The Politics of Place and the Disuniting of America,
- What Happened to the Vital Center? Presidential Populist Revolt, and the Fracturing of America, and
- Donald J. Trump and the American Presidency.
*And here is my interview with Prof. Edward Foley, which is titled:
"History of America's Election Violence, Electoral College & Why Our Elections Are Producing Minority Winners - As Opposed To Majority Winners". *🚩Scholars Unravel the Middle East: ✅Polytheism in the Middle East - a time without any religious wars. ✅How polytheism ended, and monotheism started in the Middle East.
*Watch our program on YouTube: 📽️https://www.youtube.com/@historybehindnews
Contact me: you can write to me by leaving a comment on any of the videos in our YouTube channel.
SUPPORT:
Click here and join our other supporters in the news peeler community.
And here is our support page: https://historybehindnews.com/support
Thanks very much for your support.
I hope you enjoy these episodes. Thank you for listening and thanks for your support of our program.
Adel
Host of the History Behind News podcast
- 🎵 attribution, links and license for the theme music in this podcast: The Success by Keys of Moon | https://soundcloud.com/keysofmoon. Musicpromoted by https://www.free-stock-music.com. Attribution 4.0 International (CC BY 4.0): https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/.
- 🎶 Santur: by Peyman Heydarian, Santur.wav by xserra -- https://freesound.org/s/125654/ -- License: Attribution 4.0
- Volume, length & sequence of music used in this video have been modified.
- HIGHLIGHTS: get future episode highlights in your inbox.
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Are young American men willing to elect a woman for the highest office in our country?
Watch video of this interview: https://bit.ly/HbN-YT-S4E18
In this interview, I ask the following questions:
- What defines an American generation?
- Do we have a new generation every 20 to 25 years?
- Who are Millenials? Gen Zs?
- How are political movements now, by young Americans, different than prior movements by older Americans? Is human connection the answer?
- Is there a discernable difference in immigration attitudes of America’s generations?
- Do Gen Z Men Think Like Old Men?
- What's so special about Millennials?
- Who will win the 2024 presidential election?
*🚩About My Guest: Dr. David Schultz is a Distinguished University Professor in the Departments of Political Science, Environmental Studies, and Legal Studies at Hamline University. Click here for his full bio. In this episode we discuss his latest book: Generational Politics in the United States - From the Silents to Gen Z and Beyond.
In an earlier episode, we discussed his other recent book Trumpism: American Politics In The Age of Politainment.
*🚩Scholars Unravel the Middle East: ✅Polytheism in the Middle East - a time without any religious wars. ✅How polytheism ended, and monotheism started in the Middle East.
*Watch our program on YouTube: 📽️https://www.youtube.com/@historybehindnews
Contact me: you can write to me by leaving a comment on any of the videos in our YouTube channel.
SUPPORT:
Click here and join our other supporters in the news peeler community.
And here is our support page: https://historybehindnews.com/support
Thanks very much for your support.
I hope you enjoy these episodes. Thank you for listening and thanks for your support of our program.
Adel
Host of the History Behind News podcast
- 🎵 attribution, links and license for the theme music in this podcast: The Success by Keys of Moon | https://soundcloud.com/keysofmoon. Musicpromoted by https://www.free-stock-music.com. Attribution 4.0 International (CC BY 4.0): https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/.
- 🎶 Santur: by Peyman Heydarian, Santur.wav by xserra -- https://freesound.org/s/125654/ -- License: Attribution 4.0
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Hey there newspeelers,
This is Adel, your host at the History Behind News podcast.
We are preparing a great program for the 2nd half of our 4th season, which will start in a few weeks - just in time to cover the history behind the issues that matter for the 2024 presidential election.
Here are some examples of what you can expect:
► I will be interviewing an expert who has correctly predicted US presidential elections for decades, and I'll ask him: who will win the 2024 election? President Biden or former President Trump?
► I'll also speak with the editor of a book that published in June 2024, a book that is very relevant to the 2024 presidential election: Generational Politics in the United States - From the Silents to Gen Z and Beyond.
►I'll talk to another expert about the history of polling, and why do pollsters so often get it wrong?
►Another expert will tell us about the voting history of rural America. And why Republican politicians, particularly Mr. Trump, seem to be winning the hearts and minds of America's rural voters.
►In addition, I will speak with an internationally renowned expert on China about his latest book: China's Age of Abundance - Origins, Ascendance and Aftermath.
He believes that China's economic miracle has ended, and that trouble lays ahead. Of course, I'll ask him what that means for America.
While the History Behind News audio podcast is on a break, you should definitely check out our YouTube channel (also visit our Scholar Unravel Middle East YouTube channel), where we are busy producing documentary-style videos of our audio podcasts.
See you guys in a few weeks.
I hope you enjoy your summer.
Adel
Host of the History Behind News podcast
SUPPORT:
Click here and join our other supporters in the news peeler community. Thank you.
- 🎵 attribution, links and license for the theme music in this podcast: The Success by Keys of Moon | https://soundcloud.com/keysofmoon. Musicpromoted by https://www.free-stock-music.com. Attribution 4.0 International (CC BY 4.0): https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/.
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--- Support this podcast: https://podcasters.spotify.com/pod/show/history-behind-news/support
What is Decoration Day? Did the South celebrate the 4th of July?
As it turns out, the history of the 4th of July is not that straightforward. For example, it took about a century for the recognition of our Independence Day as a federal holiday. And for some 80 years after the Civil war, some parts of the South, including Vicksburg, did not celebrate the 4th of July. It took WWII to create a new sense of nationalism, including the national celebration of the 4th of July. To better understand the history of our Independence Day, I spoke with Dr. Thomas Balcerski, a professor of history at Eastern Connecticut StateUniversity. For the academic year of 2022-2023, Dr. Balcerski was the Ray Allen Billington Visiting Professor in U.S. History at Occidental College and a Long-Term Fellow at the Huntington Library.
Dr. Balcerski has taught courses on early American history, U.S. Presidents and First Ladies, and the history of the Democratic Party, from Thomas Jefferson toJoe Biden. To learn more about Dr. Balcerski, you can visit his academic home pages at Oxy and Eastern CT.
By the way, be sure to listen to my conversation in S3E1 with Prof. Joel Richard Paul, he told me something very interesting about the 4th of July - that the reason we celebrate 4th of July is because Thomas Jefferson made it a national holiday, in a self-serving way, to elevate the Declaration of Independence. He added that it was Chief Justice Marshall, President Jefferson's chief detractor and also first cousin, who elevated the Constitution over the Declaration of Independence... But the 4th of July's celebration continued and grow in prominence in our culture. This fascinating episode is available here: https://bit.ly/HbN-S3E1
I hope you enjoy these episodes.
Adel
Host of the History Behind News podcast
SUPPORT:
Click here and join our other supporters in the news peeler community. Thank you.
- 🎵 attribution, links and license for the theme music in this podcast: The Success by Keys of Moon | https://soundcloud.com/keysofmoon. Musicpromoted by https://www.free-stock-music.com. Attribution 4.0 International (CC BY 4.0): https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/.
- HIGHLIGHTS: get future episode highlights in your inbox.
--- Support this podcast: https://podcasters.spotify.com/pod/show/history-behind-news/support
►My guest claims that Mr. Musk's compensation is $0! How is this possible? ►What are the different components of a CEO's pay package?►Why have CEO salaries stayed constant for decades?
►Why did CEO stock options significantly increase in the 1990s?►Why did CEO pay for performance dramatically increase after 2006? ►Who determines CEO pay? And how? The answer and the story behind it are more complex than you might think. ►Who is driving the push to regulate CEO pay? Politicians or shareholders?
My guest is intimately familiar with Mr. Musk's pay package. Not only is he an expert on executive compensation, but he also testified in Mr. Musk's Delaware trial on behalf of Telsa.
🚩About My Guest:
Professor Kevin Murphy is a nationally known expert on executive compensation. He teaches Corporate Finance and Compensation, Incentives and Governance in the University of Southern California - USC - Marshall School of Business, where he was named chair of the department of finance and business economics and holds the E. Morgan Stanley Chair in Business Administration.
Prof. Murphy helped the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission - the SEC - formulate disclosure rules for top management pay. And his study examining the salary trends of top executives set a benchmark in finance research.
Prior to joining USC in 1995, he was on the faculty at the Harvard Business School and the University of Rochester’s Simon School of Business.
Prof. Murphy is the author of The Economics of Executive Compensation. And as I mentioned in the opening, he is quite knowledgeable with Mr. Musk's pay package and the legal challenges against it, because he testified on Tesla's behalf at the Delaware trial.
🚩Dr. Barry Eichengreen's fascinating discussion of the history of sovereign and national debts - from Medieval Europe to modern America. I am recommending this episode because America's national debt is becoming a gigantic issue, politically and economically. For example, did you know that in the current fiscal year, the U.S. government will pay $892 billion to service our national debt? $892 is more than what we spend on defense and close to what we spend on Medicare!
You can also watch our podcasts:
📽️YouTube.com/@HistoryBehindNews
📽️YouTube.com/@UnravellingTheMiddleEast
I hope you enjoy these episodes. Adel Aali Adel, host & producerHistory Behind News podcast
- Attribution, links and license for the theme music in this podcast: The Success by Keys of Moon | https://soundcloud.com/keysofmoon. Musicpromoted by https://www.free-stock-music.com. Attribution 4.0 International (CC BY 4.0): https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/.
- Support: please consider supporting our program at any amount you like.
- Scholars in Your Inbox? 125 scholars and counting! So don't miss HbN guest scholars’ weekly takes on the history behind our news.
--- Support this podcast: https://podcasters.spotify.com/pod/show/history-behind-news/support
►Who will win the 2024 presidential election? ►Did my guest correctly predict the 2000 presidential election? ►What does it mean to be conservative?
►Is Donald Trump a conservative? ►How are most experts misunderstanding the history of America's conservatism? ►How are most experts misunderstanding an important part of modern Jewish American history?
My guest has correctly predicted the outcome of every U.S. presidential election since 1984. In this episode, I ask him to predict the 2024 election?
We also talk about FDR's record of helping or harming European Jews in the years leading up to WWII.
🚩About My Guest:
Dr. Allan Lichtman is a Distinguished Professor of History at American University in Washington, D.C.
He has lectured in the US and internationally and provided commentary for major US and foreign networks and leading newspapers and magazines across the world. He has also been an expert witness in some 100 civil and voting rights cases. Dr. Litchman was listed as # 85 among the 100 most influential geopolitical experts in the world and received the lifetime achievement award from the Who's Who.
He has written many books, including the folllowing that we discuss in this episode:
1st: White Protestant Nation: The Rise of the American Conservative Movement,
2nd: FDR and the Jews, and
3rd: Predicting the Next President: The Keys to the White House, 2024.
And here is Dr. Lichtman's YouTube channel, where you can tune in to watch live conversations with him.
🚩Prof. Gerhardt's discusion of the 1892 rematch election between Pres. Harrison and former Pres. Cleveland. He also discusses presidents Jackson and Nixon, and questions re president Trump's potential constituional challenges. 🎧 https://bit.ly/HbN-S2E41
You can also watch our podcasts:
📽️YouTube.com/@HistoryBehindNews
📽️YouTube.com/@UnravellingTheMiddleEast
I hope you enjoy these episodes. Adel Aali Adel, host & producerHistory Behind News podcast
- Image attribution: "Predicting the Next President" is the cover image of Dr. Lichtman's upcoming book. This image was provided to us by Dr. Lichtman.
- attribution, links and license for the theme music in this podcast: The Success by Keys of Moon | https://soundcloud.com/keysofmoon. Musicpromoted by https://www.free-stock-music.com. Attribution 4.0 International (CC BY 4.0): https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/.
- Support: please consider supporting our program at any amount you like.
- Scholars in Your Inbox? 125 scholars and counting! So don't miss HbN guest scholars’ weekly takes on the history behind our news.
--- Support this podcast: https://podcasters.spotify.com/pod/show/history-behind-news/support
►Georgia is a country between two civilizations - Europe & Asia, and Islam and Christianity
►Until the Russians came, Georgia had maintained its status as an independent state. ►Georgia has punched above its weight under Russian and Soviet rule - prime example: Stalin, the most powerful Soviet leader, was Georgian!
In this conversation, Dr. Jones takes us from the ancient and Medieval history of Georgia, including its conflicts with Islamic empires and kingdoms, to its modern period of independence, and its struggle to realign itself with Europe.
🚩About My Guest:
Dr. Stephen Jones is the Director of the Program on Georgian Studies at the Davis Center of Russian and Eurasian Studies at Harvard University. He is also a Professor of Modern Georgian History at Ilia State University in Tbilisi, Georgia. Dr. Jones is a foreign member of the Georgian Academy of Sciences and received an honorary doctorate from Tbilisi State University in 2012 and from Ilia State University in 2018.
He has written many books on Georgia’s history, including the following:
1st: Socialism in Georgian Colors: The European Road to Social Democracy, 1883-1917,
2nd: Georgia: A Political History Since Independence,
3rd: The Birth of Modern Georgia: The First Georgian Republic and Its Successors, 1918-2010, and
4th: War and Revolution in the Caucasus: Georgia Ablaze.
🚩Dr. Rafe Blaufarb's history of Napoleon: 🎧 https://bit.ly/HbN-S4E3
You can also watch our podcasts:
📽️YouTube.com/@HistoryBehindNews
📽️YouTube.com/@UnravellingTheMiddleEast
I hope you enjoy these episodes. Adel Aali Adel, host & producerHistory Behind News podcast
- 🎵 attribution, links and license for the theme music in this podcast: The Success by Keys of Moon | https://soundcloud.com/keysofmoon. Musicpromoted by https://www.free-stock-music.com. Attribution 4.0 International (CC BY 4.0): https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/.
- Support: please consider supporting our program at any amount you like.
- Scholars in Your Inbox? 125 scholars and counting! So don't miss HbN guest scholars’ weekly takes on the history behind our news.
--- Support this podcast: https://podcasters.spotify.com/pod/show/history-behind-news/support
►How we gambled before ash economy?
►Are religion and gambling somehow connected?
►How did risk-taking change after humanity settled down? ►How did 2nd chances - the concept of starting again - develop in America's gambling? ►Why did Las Vegas and Atlantic City seesaw on legalizing gambling?
🚩About My Guest:
Dr. David Schwartz is UNLV's ombuds and also a professor in the Dept. of History. Previously, he was the director of Schwartz was director of the Center for Gaming Research within University Libraries. In recognition of his role in promoting the preservation of Las Vegas History, in 2021 Dr. Schwartz was given a History Preservation Award by the Historic Preservation Commission of the City of Las Vegas.
More about Dr. Schwart:
his academic and personal homepages
He is the author of several books, including the following:
- Roll the Bones: The History of Gambling,
- At the Sands: The Casino That Shaped Classic Las Vegas, Brought the Rat Pack Together, and Went Out With a Bang,
- Grandissimo: The First Emperor of Las Vegas, and
- Boardwalk Playground: The Making, Unmaking, & Remaking of Atlantic City.
🚩Dr. Podany's history of ancient Mesopotamia: 🎧 https://bit.ly/UME-S1E10
You can also watch our podcasts:
📽️YouTube.com/@HistoryBehindNews
📽️YouTube.com/@UnravellingTheMiddleEast
I hope you enjoy these episodes. Adel Aali Adel, host & producerHistory Behind News podcast
- 🎵 attribution, links and license for the theme music in this podcast: The Success by Keys of Moon | https://soundcloud.com/keysofmoon. Musicpromoted by https://www.free-stock-music.com. Attribution 4.0 International (CC BY 4.0): https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/.
- Support: please consider supporting our program at any amount you like.
- Scholars in Your Inbox? 125 scholars and counting! So don't miss HbN guest scholars’ weekly takes on the history behind our news.
--- Support this podcast: https://podcasters.spotify.com/pod/show/history-behind-news/support
"The continent's most violent country" is a phrase used in BBC News this week.
In this episode, my guest scholar, Dr. Carmen Martinez Novo, takes us through the history of Ecuador's indigenous peoples and their struggles for equal rights and environmental rights, including an almost three-decade lawsuit against Chevron (initially Texaco). Of course, in this conversation, Dr. Martinez Novo will peel the history behind Ecuador's current state of violence - unprecedented for once a peaceful country.
Dr. Martinez Novo is the author of Undoing Multiculturalism: Resource Extraction and Indigenous Rights in Ecuador (2021), which we discuss in this episode.
And here is my conversation with Dr. Claudio Fuentes about Chile's modern history: https://bit.ly/HbN-S2E38s
You can also watch our podcasts:
📽️YouTube.com/@HistoryBehindNews
📽️YouTube.com/@UnravellingTheMiddleEast
I hope you enjoy these episodes. Adel Aali Adel, host & producerHistory Behind News podcast
- 🎵 attribution, links and license for the theme music in this podcast: The Success by Keys of Moon | https://soundcloud.com/keysofmoon. Musicpromoted by https://www.free-stock-music.com. Attribution 4.0 International (CC BY 4.0): https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/.
- Support: please consider supporting our program at any amount you like.
- Scholars in Your Inbox? 125 scholars and counting! So don't miss HbN guest scholars’ weekly takes on the history behind our news.
--- Support this podcast: https://podcasters.spotify.com/pod/show/history-behind-news/support
Families with second pregnancies were punished. Quiet often, mothers who became pregnant again were forced to abort - even in the third trimester. But now... China's government is promoting multiple pregnancies. There are even beauty pageants... for pregnant mothers.
In this episode, a replay of its original recording in 2021, my guest scholar peels the history behind this news - the history of China's One-Child Policy.
🚩About My Guest:
Dr. Feng Wang is a professor of sociology at the University of California, Irvine - UCI.
He has research interests in contemporary Chinese society and comparative demographic processes and social inequality in state socialism. He is the recipient of many academic distinctions, honors and awards for his research and books, too many to list here.
He is the author of many books, including the following:
- China's Age of Abundances: Origins, Ascendence and Aftermath,
- Convergence to Very Low Fertility in East Asia: Processes, Causes, and Implications, and
- One Quarter of Humanity: Malthusian Mythology and Chinese Realities, 1700-2000.
Erosion of China's government institutions:
Be sure to listen to my conversation with Dr. Susan Shirk (🎧https://bit.ly/HbN-S2E36s) about President Xi and his ascendence to power. As I mentioned in this episode, China's government under Xi is frighteningly transforming into personalized statecraft.
You can also watch our podcasts:
📽️YouTube.com/@HistoryBehindNews
📽️YouTube.com/@UnravellingTheMiddleEast
I hope you enjoy these episodes. Adel Aali Adel, host & producerHistory Behind News podcast
►The cover image of this episode is "A propaganda painting in Guangdong Province promotes the idea of a nuclear family with a single child. The text reads "Planned child birth is everyone's responsibility."" It is provided by Clpro2 (own work) on Wikipedia under CC BY-SA 3.0 https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/3.0/.
https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?title=User:Clpro2&action=edit&redlink=1File:PlannedBirthCeramicPaintings-Xinhui.Jpg. In Wikipedia. https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:PlannedBirthCeramicPaintings-Xinhui.jpg
- 🎵 attribution, links and license for the theme music in this podcast: The Success by Keys of Moon | https://soundcloud.com/keysofmoon. Musicpromoted by https://www.free-stock-music.com. Attribution 4.0 International (CC BY 4.0): https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/.
- Support: please consider supporting our program at any amount you like.
- Scholars in Your Inbox? 125 scholars and counting! So don't miss HbN guest scholars’ weekly takes on the history behind our news.
--- Support this podcast: https://podcasters.spotify.com/pod/show/history-behind-news/support
Denmark was once Europe's greatest Protestant power. But just in a span of two or so decades, it was reduced to a has-been. How did this happen? And what lessons are there for America?
In addition, Denmark's monarchy is quite informal and highly approachable, particularly when compared with the British monarchy.
🚩About My Guest:
Dr. Paul Douglas Lockhart is a professor of history at Wright State University. He teaches courses in military history, early modern Europe, and Scandinavia in its “Age of Greatness.” In 2022, he was elected to membership in the Royal Society for Danish History, in recognition of his contributions to the study of Danish history, which is a rare accolade for a foreign scholar.
He is the author of several books, two of which we discuss in this episode:
- Denmark, 1513–1660: The Rise and Decline of a Renaissance Monarchy, and
- Frederik II and the Protestant Cause: Denmark's Role in the Wars of Religion, 1559–1596.
History of the Ottoman Empire and Europe's exploration of the Americas:
🎧 https://bit.ly/UME-Spotify
🎧 https://bit.ly/UME-Apple
History of Sweden: https://bit.ly/HbN-S3E33
You can also watch our podcasts:
📽️YouTube.com/@HistoryBehindNews
📽️YouTube.com/@UnravellingTheMiddleEast
I hope you enjoy these episodes. Adel Aali Adel, host & producerHistory Behind News podcast
- 🎵 attribution, links and license for the theme music in this podcast: The Success by Keys of Moon | https://soundcloud.com/keysofmoon. Musicpromoted by https://www.free-stock-music.com. Attribution 4.0 International (CC BY 4.0): https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/.
- Santur: Arpegio performed on a Persian santur, recorded with an oktava mk012 mic. Thispiece has been edited into shorter segments, its volume adjusted, and played in different parts of this podcast. https://freesound.org/people/nsmusic/sounds/259692/ Music available on https://freesound.org/ Creative Commons / Attribution 4.0 International (CC BY 4.0 DEED) https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/
- Scholars in Your Inbox? 125 scholars and counting! So don't miss HbN guest scholars’ weekly takes on the history behind our news.
--- Support this podcast: https://podcasters.spotify.com/pod/show/history-behind-news/support
►How did the mighty Sasanian Persian Empire fall to the Muslim Arabs?
►What happened in the Persian Empire on February 9, in the year 628? ►Where is the tomb of the last Sasanian King of kings?
Were the Achaemenid and Sasanian Empires Persian or Iranian? What's the significance of these terms in the context of the past? How about now? Or in the 20th century, when Persia officially changed its name to Iran?
🚩About My Guest:
Dr. Khodadad Rezakhani is a lecturer and a senior research fellow at Leiden University. He is a historian of Global Late Antiquity and Early Middle Ages, with a focus on Central and West Asia from 500-700 CE. His research focuses on the Sasanian and Early Islamic economy of the Near East.
History of Yemen and the Houthis:
🎧 https://bit.ly/UME-Spotify
🎧 https://bit.ly/UME-Apple
You can also watch our podcasts:
📽️YouTube.com/@HistoryBehindNews
📽️YouTube.com/@UnravellingTheMiddleEast
I hope you enjoy these episodes. Adel Aali Adel, host & producerHistory Behind News podcast
- Map of the Sasanian Empire at its greatest extent in 621 CE. The Sasanian Empirelasted from 624 to 651 CE. This map reflects the Persians conquest underShahanshah (King of kings) Khosrow II (570-628, r. 590 & 591-628). NoIranian Shah had achieved such immense territorial gains since Cyrus the Great(600 BCE to 530 BCE). This map is provided by Keeby101: https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/User:Keeby101, on Wikipedia: https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Sasanian_Empire_621_A.D.jpg#/media/File:Sasanian_Empire_621_A.D.jpg, under license CC BY-SA 3.0 ttps://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/3.0/. Reflective effect has been added to the bottom portion of the map, and itsedges have been rounded.
- Derafsh Kaviani: Sasanian royal standard that was derived from a mythological Iranianblacksmith-turned-hero (Kaveh) against a demon-like foreign ruler. PublicDomain image.
- 🎵 attribution, links and license for the theme music in this podcast: The Success by Keys of Moon | https://soundcloud.com/keysofmoon. Musicpromoted by https://www.free-stock-music.com. Attribution 4.0 International (CC BY 4.0): https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/.
- Santur: Arpegio performed on a Persian santur, recorded with an oktava mk012 mic. Thispiece has been edited into shorter segments, its volume adjusted, and played in different parts of this podcast. https://freesound.org/people/nsmusic/sounds/259692/ Music available on https://freesound.org/ Creative Commons / Attribution 4.0 International (CC BY 4.0 DEED) https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/
- Scholars in Your Inbox? 125 scholars and counting! So don't miss HbN guest scholars’ weekly takes on the history behind our news.
--- Support this podcast: https://podcasters.spotify.com/pod/show/history-behind-news/support
World War I was a major turning point for America's conspiracy theories. Before WWI, conspiracy theories targeted minorities and marginalized groups. But after WWI, conspiracy theories became about our government, about the Deep State.
My guest for this episode is Dr. Kathryn Olmsted, a professor at the History Dept of UC Davis. She is the author of many books on America's conspiracy theories, including two books that wediscuss: (1) Challenging the Secret Government:The Post-Watergate Investigations of the CIA and FBI, and (2) Real Enemies: Conspiracy Theories and American Democracy, World War I to 9/11.
Was the ancient Middle East a troubled region?
You can listen to this fantastic episode at Unravelling the Middle East podcast:
🎧 https://bit.ly/UME-Spotify
🎧 https://bit.ly/UME-Apple
You can also watch our podcasts:
📽️YouTube.com/@HistoryBehindNews
📽️YouTube.com/@UnravellingTheMiddleEast
I hope you enjoy these episodes. Adel Aali Adel, host & producerHistory Behind News podcast
- Taylor Swift's image attribution: this image is of Ms. Swift at the 2023 MTV Video Music Awards. It is provided by iHeartRadioCA on Wikipedia under a CC BY 3.0 license. The image has been trimmed so that its narrower.
- US $1 bill image: "The Eye of Providence, or the all-seeing eye of God, seen here on the US$1 bill, has been taken by some to be evidence of a conspiracy involving the Founding Fathers of the United States and the Illuminati." (Public Domain).
- Image of the Twin Towers - the World Trade Center. "The nature of the collapse of the two World Trade Center towers and the nearby 7 World Trade Center (in this photo, the brown building to the left of the towers) is a major focus of 9/11 conspiracy theories." Image provided by Jeffmock on Wikipedia (Public Domain).
- U.S. propaganda poster calling for revenge for Japan's attack on Pearl Harbor, which later became the subject of varying conspiracy theories. (Public Domain).
- 🎵 attribution, links and license for the theme music in this podcast: The Success by Keys of Moon | https://soundcloud.com/keysofmoon. Musicpromoted by https://www.free-stock-music.com. Attribution 4.0 International (CC BY 4.0): https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/.
- Santur: Arpegio performed on a Persian santur, recorded with an oktava mk012 mic. Thispiece has been edited into shorter segments, its volume adjusted, and played in different parts of this podcast. https://freesound.org/people/nsmusic/sounds/259692/ Music available on https://freesound.org/ Creative Commons / Attribution 4.0 International (CC BY 4.0 DEED) https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/
- Scholars in Your Inbox? 125 scholars and counting! So don't miss HbN guest scholars’ weekly takes on the history behind our news.
--- Support this podcast: https://podcasters.spotify.com/pod/show/history-behind-news/support
Out of the 3 major trade routes in the Middle East before the Suez Canal, 2 traversed through Yemen. No wonder the Sasanian Persians, the Ottomans, the Portuguese and the British all occupied and attempted to colonize Yemen.
In this episode our guest scholar, Dr. Charles Schmitz, will explain the rise of Houthis in the context of Yemen's religion and history, going back to the 9th century. Dr. Schmitz is a professor at Towson University and a non-resident scholar at the Middle East Institute.
This episode will be published in two parts on Feb. 15 and 16 at our sister podcast - Unravelling the Middle East, which you can follow via these links:
⏩ https://bit.ly/UME-Spotify
⏩ https://bit.ly/UME-Apple
You can also see me and our guest scholars engaged in conversation about the Middle East on our YouTube channel:
https://www.youtube.com/@UnravellingtheMiddleEast
And on Wed., Feb. 21, a guest scholar of America's conspiracy theories will speak about the Taylor Swift/Kelce MAGA political conspiracy theories in the context of our history.
I hope you enjoy these episodes. Adel Aali
Adel, host & producerHistory Behind News podcast
- Image: Areas controlled by Houthi movement in 2024, colored green. Provided by Borysk5 (own work) on Wikipedia under CC BY-SA 4.0 license.
- 🎵 attribution, links and license for the theme music in this podcast: The Success by Keys of Moon | https://soundcloud.com/keysofmoon. Musicpromoted by https://www.free-stock-music.com. Attribution 4.0 International (CC BY 4.0): https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/.
- Santur: Arpegio performed on a Persian santur, recorded with an oktava mk012 mic. Thispiece has been edited into shorter segments, its volume adjusted, and played in different parts of this podcast. https://freesound.org/people/nsmusic/sounds/259692/ Music available on https://freesound.org/ Creative Commons / Attribution 4.0 International (CC BY 4.0 DEED) https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/
- Scholars in Your Inbox? 125 scholars and counting! So don't miss HbN guest scholars’ weekly takes on the history behind our news.
--- Support this podcast: https://podcasters.spotify.com/pod/show/history-behind-news/support
Argentina used to be Latin America's largest economy - but no longer! Mismanagement and politics have led to several national defaults and, by some measures, Argentina has the highest inflation in the world! To better understand Argentina's economic challenges, I spoke with Dr. Gabriel Palazzo (also visit his personal homepage and X.com account) - a development economist from Latin America exploring questions crucial to improving quality of life and well-being in developing economies. He is a Research Officer at the Institute of Development Studies in England. Prior to this appointment, Dr. Palazzo was a professor of advanced macroeconomics at the University of Bueno Aires.
You may want to listen to the following episodes as well:
- How America became militarily entangled in the Middle East:
https://bit.ly/UME-S1E3
https://bit.ly/UME-S1E4
- History of Chile's democracy and constitutional crisis:
https://bit.ly/HbN-S2E38s
I hope you enjoy these episodes. Adel Aali
Adel, host & producerHistory Behind News podcast
Host, Unravelling the Middle East: Spotify: https://bit.ly/UME-SpotifyApple: https://bit.ly/UME-Apple
- Image: Javier Milei en el Salón Blanco el día de su jura como tal. By Cancillería Argentina in Wikipedia under CC BY 2.0 license. Image was not altered in any way - only set in a colored background and podcast logo placed below it.
- 🎵 attribution, links and license for the theme music in this podcast: The Success by Keys of Moon | https://soundcloud.com/keysofmoon. Musicpromoted by https://www.free-stock-music.com. Attribution 4.0 International (CC BY 4.0): https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/.
- Santur: Arpegio performed on a Persian santur, recorded with an oktava mk012 mic. Thispiece has been edited into shorter segments, its volume adjusted, and played in different parts of this podcast. https://freesound.org/people/nsmusic/sounds/259692/ Music available on https://freesound.org/ Creative Commons / Attribution 4.0 International (CC BY 4.0 DEED) https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/
- Scholars in Your Inbox? 125 scholars and counting! So don't miss HbN guest scholars’ weekly takes on the history behind our news.
--- Support this podcast: https://podcasters.spotify.com/pod/show/history-behind-news/support
While Ms. Nikki Haley was reluctant to say the "S" word (read slavery), we all know that slavery caused the Civil War. In this episode, we discuss whether slavery was the Civil War's immediate cause or its underlying cause.The in-depth analysis of this history is important for our current political moment because race is placed in front and center. For example, did you know that not all Southern states seceded? Or that most Northerners were deeply racist? Or that some slave states, such as Maryland, did not secede and that the Emancipation Proclamation did not apply to them? To learn more about the history of the Civil War, I spoke with Mr. Roger Lowenstein (https://rogerlowenstein.com/), a former reporter for The Wall Street Journal for more than a decade. He is a historian and his writings and writings about his books appear in The Wall Street Journal, Bloomberg, Fortune, the New York Times, Atlantic, the Washington Post, and many other publications. He has written several books, including New York Times bestsellers… about different important personalities and periods in the economic and financial history of the U.S. He is the author of Ways and Means, Lincoln and His Cabinet and the Financing of the Civil War, which was the Winner of the Harold Holzer Lincoln Forum Book Prize. You might also be interested in my prior conversation with Mr. Lowenstein, during which he compared the US Civil War with the current war in Ukraine. Specifically, we talked about cotton and plantation owners in the South and Russia's tycoons and oil in Russia. Listen here: https://bit.ly/HbN-S2E14sI hope you enjoy these episodes. Adel Aali
Adel, host & producerHistory Behind News podcast
Host, Unravelling the Middle East: Spotify: https://bit.ly/UME-SpotifyApple: https://bit.ly/UME-Apple
- Image: Gov. Nikki Haley official portrait. Public Domain.
- 🎵 attribution, links and license for the theme music in this podcast: The Success by Keys of Moon | https://soundcloud.com/keysofmoon. Musicpromoted by https://www.free-stock-music.com. Attribution 4.0 International (CC BY 4.0): https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/.
- Santur: Arpegio performed on a Persian santur, recorded with an oktava mk012 mic. Thispiece has been edited into shorter segments, its volume adjusted, and played in different parts of this podcast. https://freesound.org/people/nsmusic/sounds/259692/ Music available on https://freesound.org/ Creative Commons / Attribution 4.0 International (CC BY 4.0 DEED) https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/
- Scholars in Your Inbox? 125 scholars and counting! So don't miss HbN guest scholars’ weekly takes on the history behind our news.
--- Support this podcast: https://podcasters.spotify.com/pod/show/history-behind-news/support
In a brief order this week, the US Supreme Court restored federal government access to and control of the border.
In response to the Supreme Court's order, Texas Gov. Greg Abbott said this: “I will continue to defend Texas’ constitutional authority to secure the border”.
So here is my question: does the Constitution give Governor Abbot, or any state governor for that matter, the authority to control our country's international borders?
To better understand the history of the tension between US states and our federal government when it comes to immigration, which is a highly polarizing issue now, I spoke with Mr. Gulasekaram, who at the time of this recording, was a Professor of Law at the Santa Clara University School of Law, where he taught Constitutional Law and Immigration Law. He now teaches at the University of Colorado, Boulder law school: https://lawweb.colorado.edu/profiles/profile.jsp?id=1126
Prof. Gulasekaram is co-author of the leading immigration law casebook used in law schools, Immigration & Citizenship: Process and Policy. And he is also co-author of The New Immigration Federalism - a book that provides an in-depth empirical and theoretical analysis of the resurgence of state and local immigration lawmaking, which is the subject of our conversation in this episode.
Prof. Gulasekaram is also the co-founder of the World Children’s Initiative, a non-profit organization dedicated to improving health and educational infrastructure for children in developing areas around the world.
You may also be interested in an earlier episode, in which, my guest, Prof. Jennifer Chacon, answers this question: do immigrants commit more crime than native-born Americans? Listen here: https://bit.ly/HbN-S3E18
I hope you enjoy these episodes.
Adel, host & producerHistory Behind News podcast & on YouTubehttps://historybehindnews.com/ Unravelling the Middle East: This new special series - an in-depth history and analysis of the Middle East - will launch in late January. Get Unravelling the Middle East on Spotify: https://bit.ly/UME-SpotifyApple: https://bit.ly/UME-AppleGoogle: https://bit.ly/UME-Google
- Image: Construction of a floating barrier in the Rio Grande near Eagle Pass as part of Texas's Operation Lone Star. The image was taken by a USBP drone. Public Domain.
- 🎵 attribution, links and license for the theme music in this podcast: The Success by Keys of Moon | https://soundcloud.com/keysofmoon. Musicpromoted by https://www.free-stock-music.com. Attribution 4.0 International (CC BY 4.0): https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/.
- Santur: Arpegio performed on a Persian santur, recorded with an oktava mk012 mic. Thispiece has been edited into shorter segments, its volume adjusted, and played in different parts of this podcast. https://freesound.org/people/nsmusic/sounds/259692/ Music available on https://freesound.org/ Creative Commons / Attribution 4.0 International (CC BY 4.0 DEED) https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/
- Scholars in Your Inbox? 125 scholars and counting! So don't miss HbN guest scholars’ weekly takes on the history behind our news.
--- Support this podcast: https://podcasters.spotify.com/pod/show/history-behind-news/support
Did you know, that Napoleon was born only a year after his homeland Corsica, was conquered by France? And that at the time of his birth, his father was fighting with the Corsican army against the French? And get this: when Napoleon moved to France around the age of 10, this future Emperor of the French could not yet speak French.To better understand Napoleon, his world, his rise to power and his transformation of France in many ways, I spoke with Dr. Rafe Blaufarb of Florida State University. He is a professor of history, a Ben Weider Eminent Scholar of Napoleonic Studies and the director of the Institute On Napoleon and the French Revolution - one of a kind institute in the United States, which we also talk about in this episode. Dr. Blaufarb is the author of many books, including the following: "Napoleon: A Symbol for an Age"; "The Revolutionary Atlantic: Republican Visions, 1760-1830"; "The Great Demarcation: The French Revolution and the Invention of Modern Property"; and "The French Army, 1750-1820: Careers, Talent, Merit".To learn more about him, please visit the following: https://history.fsu.edu/person/rafe-blaufarb
https://infr.history.fsu.edu/Also, listen to Prof. Gildea of Oxford University explain the long history of French rebellions, revolts and revolutions: https://bit.ly/HbN-S3E13I hope you enjoy these episodes. Adel, host & producerHistory Behind News podcast & on YouTubehttps://historybehindnews.com/ Unravelling the Middle East: This new special series - an in-depth history and analysis of the Middle East - will launch in late January. Get Unravelling the Middle East on Spotify: https://bit.ly/UME-SpotifyApple: https://bit.ly/UME-AppleGoogle: https://bit.ly/UME-Google
- Napoleon. Jacques-Louis David - The Emperor Napoleon in His Study at the Tuileries - Google Art Project. Public Domain. Available on Wikimedia.
- 🎵 attribution, links and license for the theme music in this podcast: The Success by Keys of Moon | https://soundcloud.com/keysofmoon. Musicpromoted by https://www.free-stock-music.com. Attribution 4.0 International (CC BY 4.0): https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/.
- Santur: Arpegio performed on a Persian santur, recorded with an oktava mk012 mic. Thispiece has been edited into shorter segments, its volume adjusted, and played in different parts of this podcast. https://freesound.org/people/nsmusic/sounds/259692/ Music available on https://freesound.org/ Creative Commons / Attribution 4.0 International (CC BY 4.0 DEED) https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/
- Scholars in Your Inbox? 125 scholars and counting! So don't miss HbN guest scholars’ weekly takes on the history behind our news.
--- Support this podcast: https://podcasters.spotify.com/pod/show/history-behind-news/support
Not the damsel in distress. Not the desirable woman who will raise your kids and take care of the home. These are the stories of the nymphomaniacs, the nasty and creepy women, the Femme Fatales.
A string of recent films are casting prominent actresses, in dark, creepy, nasty characters. One example is the movie May December, which received four nominations for this pastweekend's Golden Globe Awards.
You can read more about cinema actresses in this recent WSJ article: "In Hollywood, It’s the Golden Age of the Creepy Woman".
So to better understand the history of women in Cinema - not just in Hollywood, from their stereotypical roles to more creative and perhaps more liberating roles, I spoke with Prof. Thomas Doherty and Prof. Maggie Hennefeld, who essentially ran the program by asking each other wonderful question that, frankly, I hadn't even thought about.
Prof. Doherty is a cultural historian with a special interest in Hollywood cinema. He is a professor of American Studies at Brandeis University. He guest-participated in our program last year and talked about the Magic of Hollywood, and also compared TV's disruption of Hollywood in the 1950s with AI's disruption now.
Prof. Hennefeld is a McKnight Presidential Fellow and Associate Professor of Cultural Studies and Comparative Literature at the University of Minnesota, Twin Cities.
I hope you enjoy these episodes.
Adel, host & producer
History Behind News podcast & on YouTube
Unravelling the Middle East:
This new special series - an in-depth history and analysis of the Middle East - will launch in late January. Get Unravelling the Middle East Spotify, Apple, Castbox, iHeart Radio, Amazon Music or Radio Public.
SUPPORT:
Click here and join our other supporters in the news peeler community. Thank you.
- Image attribution: The "Vamp" (Theda Bara) in "A Fool There Was", a 1915 silent film drama in which she seduces and ruins a wealthy family man, John Schuyler (Edward José). Public Domain.
- 🎵 attribution, links and license for the theme music in this podcast: The Success by Keys of Moon | https://soundcloud.com/keysofmoon. Musicpromoted by https://www.free-stock-music.com. Attribution 4.0 International (CC BY 4.0): https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/.
- Santur: Arpegio performed on a Persian santur, recorded with an oktava mk012 mic. Thispiece has been edited into shorter segments, its volume adjusted, and played in different parts of this podcast. https://freesound.org/people/nsmusic/sounds/259692/ Music available on https://freesound.org/ Creative Commons / Attribution 4.0 International (CC BY 4.0 DEED) https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/
- Scholars in Your Inbox? 125 scholars and counting! So don't miss HbN guest scholars’ weekly takes on the history behind our news.
--- Support this podcast: https://podcasters.spotify.com/pod/show/history-behind-news/support
The chaos of 2023 Congressional politics in perspective of history - that's the subject of my conversation with Dr. David Schultz in this episode, during which I ask him the following questions:
- What stood out for him in the political chaos of 2023?
- What period of American history resembles our current moment?
- Whatever happened to decorum and statesmanship in Congress?
- What does he mean by the hyper-masculine nature of Trumpism?
- How does Taylor Swift's music relate to current politics?
- What is Politainment?
- What do Europeans think of America's politics now?
- Because Dr. Schultz has correctly projected every US presidential election for more than two decades, I ask him: who is going to win?
Dr. Schultz is a Distinguished University Professor in the Departments of Political Science, Environmental Studies, and Legal Studies at Hamline University. He is also an adjunct professor of Law at the University of Minnesota and at the University of St. Thomas. He is a four-time Fulbright scholar who has taught extensively in Europe and Asia, and the winner of the Leslie A. Whittington National Award for excellence in public affairs teaching.
Dr. Schultz is the author of more than 200 articles and 45 books on various aspects of American politics, election law, and the media and politics. In this episode, we talk about one of his books: Trumpism: American Politics In The Age of Politainment.
Also, listen to Dr. Schultz explain America's polarized politics and its impact on US elections: https://bit.ly/HbN-S2E39s
I hope you enjoy these episodes.
Adel, host & producer
History Behind News podcast & on YouTube
Unravelling the Middle East:
This new special series - an in-depth history and analysis of the Middle East - will launch in late January. Get Unravelling the Middle East Spotify, Apple, Castbox, iHeart Radio, Amazon Music or Radio Public.
SUPPORT:
Click here and join our other supporters in the news peeler community. Thank you.
- 🎵 attribution, links and license for the theme music in this podcast: The Success by Keys of Moon | https://soundcloud.com/keysofmoon. Musicpromoted by https://www.free-stock-music.com. Attribution 4.0 International (CC BY 4.0): https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/.
- Santur: Arpegio performed on a Persian santur, recorded with an oktava mk012 mic. Thispiece has been edited into shorter segments, its volume adjusted, and played in different parts of this podcast. https://freesound.org/people/nsmusic/sounds/259692/ Music available on https://freesound.org/ Creative Commons / Attribution 4.0 International (CC BY 4.0 DEED) https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/
- Photo of the Cleaver family from the television program Leave it to Beaver. From left: Hugh Beaumont (Ward), Tony Dow (Wally), Barbara Billingsley (June), Jerry Mathers (Theodore AKA "Beaver"). Public Domain, available on Wikimedia. According to historian John Fea, many Trump followers find common ground with others who seek refuge from change by urging a return to a utopian Leave it to Beaver version of America that never actually existed.
- Scholars in Your Inbox? 125 scholars and counting! So don't miss HbN guest scholars’ weekly takes on the history behind our news.
--- Support this podcast: https://podcasters.spotify.com/pod/show/history-behind-news/support
Fireworks and wild parties on Christmas Eve? Does this sound strange to you? Well, it wasn't strange to many Americans of our past. Yet, it was highly offensive to many others.
How America began to celebrate Christmas and celebrate as it does now, is a multicultural story written by many immigrant groups - from the Pilgrims of the 1620s to the Protestants of the 1960s. And then... there is the story behind December 25th. Why the 25th? Why December? Why not March or April? The latter two more historical sense. My guest, Dr. Roberts is a Professor of History and Online Dean of the College of Arts and Sciences at Liberty University. His research interests include early American intellectual and economic history. He has lectured and published widely in the fields of the American Founding, monetary and banking history, American intellectual life, and Southern literature. He has been a ruling elder in the Presbyterian Church of America and the Evangelical Presbyterian Church.
Here is the White House Historical Association, which tells the history of Christmas at the White House.
Also, listen to the real history of Thanksgiving as told by Dr. David Silverman of George Washington University: https://bit.ly/HbN-S3E46
I hope you enjoy this episode.
Adel, host & producer
History Behind News podcast & on YouTube
Unravelling the Middle East:
This new special series - an in-depth history and analysis of the Middle East - will launch in January. Get Unravelling the Middle East Spotify, Apple, Castbox, iHeart Radio, Amazon Music or Radio Public.
SUPPORT:
Click here and join our other supporters in the news peeler community. Thank you.
- 🎵 attribution, links and license for the theme music in this podcast: The Success by Keys of Moon | https://soundcloud.com/keysofmoon. Musicpromoted by https://www.free-stock-music.com. Attribution 4.0 International (CC BY 4.0): https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/.
- Scholars in Your Inbox? 125 scholars and counting! So don't miss HbN guest scholars’ weekly takes on the history behind our news.
- Santur: Arpegio performed on a Persian santur, recorded with an oktava mk012 mic. Thispiece has been edited into shorter segments, its volume adjusted, and played in different parts of this podcast. https://freesound.org/people/nsmusic/sounds/259692/ Music available on https://freesound.org/ Creative Commons / Attribution 4.0 International (CC BY 4.0 DEED) https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/
--- Support this podcast: https://podcasters.spotify.com/pod/show/history-behind-news/support
Rosalynn Smith Carter - was she America's 49th First Lady? Or 50th? Or 41st? The answer depends on who is counted among this elite group of powerful unelected women. Here is my sources for these numbers:
49th: White House Historical Association
50th: National Park Service
41st: the White House
In this episode, I discuss the history of America's First Ladies with Dr. Kathrine Jellison of Ohio University.
And here is my conversation with Prof. Michael Gerhardt who compared former President Trump with former presidents Jackson, Cleveland and Nixon.
I hope you enjoy this episode.
Adel, host & producer
History Behind News podcast & on YouTube
Unravelling the Middle East:
This new special series - an in-depth history and analysis of the Middle East - will launch in January. Get Unravelling the Middle East Spotify, Apple, Castbox, iHeart Radio, Amazon Music or Radio Public.
SUPPORT:
Click here and join our other supporters in the news peeler community. Thank you.
- 🎵 attribution, links and license for the theme music in this podcast: The Success by Keys of Moon | https://soundcloud.com/keysofmoon. Musicpromoted by https://www.free-stock-music.com. Attribution 4.0 International (CC BY 4.0): https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/.
- Scholars in Your Inbox? 125 scholars and counting! So don't miss HbN guest scholars’ weekly takes on the history behind our news.
- Image: First Ladies Nancy Reagan, Ladybird Johnson, Hillary Rodham Clinton, Rosalyn Carter, Betty Ford, and Barbara Bush sit together at the National Garden Gala, 'A Tribute to America's First Ladies. This picture was taken one week before the death of Jacqueline Kennedy Onassis. Created May 11, 1994. By Barbara Kinney on Wikimedia. Public Domain.
--- Support this podcast: https://podcasters.spotify.com/pod/show/history-behind-news/support
What is it like to meet murderers on death row? What is it like to meet mass shooters (those who survived)? Their families and friends? What is it like to meet the families and friends of their victims?
In this episode, Dr. Jillian Peterson takes us through the lives of mass shooters and tells us about some of the variables in their psychological journey from being a wee baby to becoming a mass murderer. She also shares warning signs - what mass shooters leak before they begin their killing rampage.
And, of course, we talk about guns and mass shootings. Are the two connected? Well, let me say this - England and New Zealand banned many types of guns and mass shootings decreased dramatically!
One of the factors that I found fascinating about mass shooters is their desire for fame or perhaps infamy. So that I won't spoil too much here, listen to Dr. Peterson talk about this factor and also be sure to visit the No Notoriety website, which was founded by the parents of a mass shooting victim.
Dr. Peterson is a professor of criminology and criminal justice at Hamline University, where she is the Executive Director of the Violence Prevention Project Research Center. She is the co-author of Violence Project – How to Stop the Mass Shooting Epidemic, a book that we discuss in this episode.
To learn more about Dr. Peterson, you can visit her academic and personal home pages.
America's Gun Violence - Resurrecting & Reinterpreting the 2nd Amendment: in this episode, Dr. Robert Spitzer tells the history of gun regulation in America, and how the NRA transformed itself from helping Congress regulate guns to opposing all gun regulations.
I hope you enjoy this episode.
Adel, host & producer
History Behind News podcast & on YouTube
Unravelling the Middle East:
This new special series - an in-depth history and analysis of the Middle East - will launch in January. Get Unravelling the Middle East Spotify, Apple, Castbox, iHeart Radio, Amazon Music or Radio Public.
SUPPORT:
Click here and join our other supporters in the news peeler community. Thank you.
- 🎵 attribution, links and license for the theme music in this podcast: The Success by Keys of Moon | https://soundcloud.com/keysofmoon. Musicpromoted by https://www.free-stock-music.com. Attribution 4.0 International (CC BY 4.0): https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/.
- Scholars in Your Inbox? 125 scholars and counting! So don't miss HbN guest scholars’ weekly takes on the history behind our news.
- Image attribution: People mourning at a memorial for the victims of the 2019 El Paso Walmart shooting. Ruperto Miller from ´Panama, Panama. On Wikipedia, CC0.
--- Support this podcast: https://podcasters.spotify.com/pod/show/history-behind-news/support
"More Americans Are Ending Up Homeless - at a Record Rate." See WSJ.
Sign up here to stay updated with the launch of HbN's upcoming podcast: a special series on the Middle East, in-depth history and analysis.
From San Francisco and LA to Texas and Florida, to New York, and then back to Montana... this is the history behind America's homelessness crisis.
In this episode, I ask my guest, Prof. Maria Foscarinis, the following questions:
- Prior to recent times, did America suffer from a crisis of mass homelessness? (Hint: Hoovervilles).
- How does our current homelessness crisis compare to the past?
- How did we get to this current moment?
- How did Presidents Reagan, Bush and Clinton change our attitudes and laws toward homelessness?
- Is homelessness a Republican or a Democratic problem?
- As a nation, should we deal with homelessness at the national or local level?
- Were there studies that showed a larger proportion of homeless people caught COVID in comparison to the general population?
- If you wanted our audience to remember just one point about “homelessness”, what would it be?
Prof. Foscarinis is a lecturer at Columbia Law School, where she serves on the Public Interest/Public Service Council. She is the founder and former executive director of the National Homelessness Law Center.
Before founding the National Homelessness Law Center, she established and directed the Washington, D.C. office of the National Coalition for the Homeless. To learn more about her, visit her academic homepage.
Special Announcement: we are launching a Middle East podcast series. So sign up for HbN's weekly newsletter, where we'll inform you of the launch of our upcoming podcast on Middle East in-depth history and analysis.
I hope you enjoy this episode.
Adel, host & producer
History Behind News podcast & on YouTube
SUPPORT:
Click here and join our other supporters in the news peeler community. Thank you.
- 🎵 attribution, links and license for the theme music in this podcast: The Success by Keys of Moon | https://soundcloud.com/keysofmoon. Musicpromoted by https://www.free-stock-music.com. Attribution 4.0 International (CC BY 4.0): https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/.
- Scholars in Your Inbox? 125 scholars and counting! So don't miss HbN guest scholars’ weekly takes on the history behind our news.
- Image attribution: featured photo of homeless man by Ben Hershey on Unsplash.
--- Support this podcast: https://podcasters.spotify.com/pod/show/history-behind-news/support
Prof. Silverman describes the first Thanksgiving: an accidental feast between frenemies that was never repeated.
How much is our Thanksgiving tradition based on real events that transpired sometime in the fall of 1621 in Plymouth, Massachusetts? And why does it matter anyway?
Don't all nations have feel-good traditions that are partly based on facts, but mostly predicated on myths?
Professor David Silverman answers these questions and more. For example, he shares with us that Europeans had been in contact with the Wampanoag Native Americans, who are the "Indians" of our Thanksgiving tradition, since at least 1524. And that the Pilgrims were guided to Plymouth by at least one crew member who touted its advantage - hint: all its native inhabitants had died of disease, leaving houses and fields empty and available for the would-be English settlers. And while the turkey was certainly on the menu, so was eel! In this episode, Professor Silvermans explains the aftermath of that first Thanksgiving. And by way of follow-up, I ask him to explain why it is that some Native Americans observe a Day of Mourning on Thanksgiving.
Professor Silverman is the author of This Land is Their Land: The Wampanoag Indians, Plymouth Colony, and the Troubled History of Thanksgiving, a 2019 book. Click this link for this book's Amazon page. Professor Silverman has written several other books about the history of Native Americans, which are listed on his academic homepage is along with his other publications, projects and honors. Here is the direct link to Professor Silverman's academic homepage: https://history.columbian.gwu.edu/david-silverman
I hope you enjoy this episode.
Adel, host & producer
History Behind News podcast & on YouTube
SUPPORT:
Click here and join our other supporters in the news peeler community. Thank you.
- 🎵 attribution, links and license for the theme music in this podcast: The Success by Keys of Moon | https://soundcloud.com/keysofmoon. Musicpromoted by https://www.free-stock-music.com. Attribution 4.0 International (CC BY 4.0): https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/.
- Scholars in Your Inbox? 125 scholars and counting! So don't miss HbN guest scholars’ weekly takes on the history behind our news.
--- Support this podcast: https://podcasters.spotify.com/pod/show/history-behind-news/support
She could absolutely be a megastar because we have historical precedent for it.
In this episode, I ask my guests, Drs. James Davis & Steven Waksman, the following questions:
- What were music concerts like in the 19th century?
- Were concerts limited in size, since there was no amplification?
- Was music as loud as it is now?
- Was Jenny Lind in the 19th century a bigger star than Taylor Swift now?
- How was it that young people readily listened to classical music - as if it was the hottest and most popular music?
- When did concerts begin resembling modern concerts?
- What is considered popular music? Has this definition changed over time?
- How do we compare Taylor Swift’s concert to our history of concerts?
Dr. Davis is a professor of Musicology and Chair of the Music History Area at the School of Music at the State University of New York at Fredonia. Among his many books, he is the author of Maryland, My Maryland: Music and Patriotism during the American Civil War.
Dr. Waksman is the Elsie Irwin Sweeney Professor of Music and Professor of American Studies; and Chair in American Studies at Smith College. Among his many books, he is the author of Live Music in America: A History from Jenny Lind to Beyoncé.
Hollywood:
Just as America's music culture has changed over the centuries, so has America's movie culture. In S3E29, Professor Thomas Doherty of Brandeis University talked about the magic of the movies in the early 20th century, how all of that changed with the advent of television, and how it's changing now with the disruption of artificial intelligence.
I hope you enjoy these episodes.
Adel, host & producer
History Behind News podcast & on YouTube
SUPPORT:
Click here and join our other supporters in the news peeler community. Thank you.
- 🎵 attribution, links and license for the theme music in this podcast: The Success by Keys of Moon | https://soundcloud.com/keysofmoon. Musicpromoted by https://www.free-stock-music.com. Attribution 4.0 International (CC BY 4.0): https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/.
- Scholars in Your Inbox? 125 scholars and counting! So don't miss HbN guest scholars’ weekly takes on the history behind our news.
- Image attributions: Taylor Swift 2023 MTV Video Music Awards by iHeartRadioCA, CC BY 3.0, on Wikimedi.org. Also Jenny Lind's 1862 portrait. (Public Domain).
--- Support this podcast: https://podcasters.spotify.com/pod/show/history-behind-news/support
This is the history of Palestinians from the rise of Islam to now.
In this episode, I ask my guest, Dr. Maha Nassar, the following questions:
- Did Palestinians have a distinct identity prior to the dominance of this region by Arab rulers?
- Were they called Palestinians? Was their homeland called Palestine?
- Were they called Arabs?
- What was the religion of Palestinians before Islam?
- Were the Palestinians who converted to Islam different ethnically than those who adhered to Christianity?
- From what period was the area called Palestine?
- Was Gaza a distinct subset of the province of Palestine?
- When and in what form did Palestinians establish a polity in this area?
- Was Palestine a province of other kingdoms or empires?
- How is Americans' notion of nationhood and peoplehood different than Palestinians?
- Are there Jewish Palestinians?
- Is there anything about the Crusades that you think changed the religious dynamic of this region?
- Do the Crusades provide us with any lessons for our current moment?
- Do we have the same amount of scholarship into the history of the Palestinian people?
- If you wanted our audience to remember just one point about “the history of the Palestinian people”, what would it be?
Dr. Nassar is a professor of Middle Eastern history and Islamic Studies at the School of Middle Eastern and North African Studies of the University of Arizona.
Her first monograph is titled Brothers Apart: Palestinian Citizens of Israel and the Arab, and her forthcoming book is tentatively titled Palestine's People.
Middle East Series: This episode is part of our Middle East Series, in which we have already had several conversations about the amazing history of the Jewish people - when they identified themselves as Jewish and when they adopted Judaism, the long history of their coexistence with Muslims, and the fascinating historyof how they preserved their Jewish identity during more than 2,000 years of diaspora. we have also analyzed politics in Israel, specifically Mr. Netanyahu's attempts at judicial overhaul and the mass protests in opposition to it.
Our Middle East Series also includes several episodes about the histories of Iran, Tukiye and Lebanon.
I hope you enjoy these episodes.
Adel, host & producer
History Behind News podcast & on YouTube
SUPPORT:
Click here and join our other supporters in the news peeler community. Thank you.
- 🎵 attribution, links and license for the theme music in this podcast: The Success by Keys of Moon | https://soundcloud.com/keysofmoon. Musicpromoted by https://www.free-stock-music.com. Attribution 4.0 International (CC BY 4.0): https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/.
- Scholars in Your Inbox? 125 scholars and counting! So don't miss HbN guest scholars’ weekly takes on the history behind our news.
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The Jewish Diaspora - A History.
It's a story that merits telling especially now. Now that we see many Jewish faces on our screens, Jews who came to Israel from all parts of the world, Jews who kept their Jewish identity for some 2,000 years - regardless of where they were in the world!
In this episode, I ask my guest, Dr. Howard Lupovitch, the following questions:
- What’s the difference between Sephardic and Ashkenazi Jews?
- So, why did the Jews of the diaspora not speak Hebrew?
- What is the story of the Medieval Jewish Kingdom of Khazar?
- What is this Jewish jurisdiction in Russia?
- Why is the story of Jews in Spain the focus of so much attention?
- How did Jews end up in Poland? And how did they thrive there (relatively speaking)?
- What is so special about Persian Jews?
- How important was conversion to the Jewish experience? How does one convert to Judaism anyway?
- What did Jews call the countries in which they lived during the diaspora?
- What are some legacies of the Jewish diaspora - aside from the horrific experiences of persecution and the Holocaust?
- If you wanted our audience to remember just one point about “the Jewish diaspora”, what would it be?
Dr. Lupovitch is a professor of history and the director of the Cohn-Haddow Center for Judaic Studies at Wayne State University. He specializes in modern Jewish History, specifically the Jews of Hungary and the Habsburg Monarchy. He recently completed a history of the Jews of Budapest and is currently writing a history of the Neolog Movement, Hungarian Jewry's progressive wing.
He is the author of Transleithanian Paradise: A History of the Budapest Jewish Community, 1738-1938.
Is it Persia or Iran? In this episode, Dr. Lupovitch talks about Persian Jews and their long history in Persia and modern-day Iran. In a prior conversation, Dr. Khodadad Rezakhani answered the complicated question of whether they are Iranians or Persians. He also explained how the Sasanian Empire crumbled before the Arab Muslims, and, hence, opened the Middle East and Central Asia to Islam. His telling, however, is much different than what you may have heard before. Click here for my conversation with him.
I hope you enjoy these episodes.
Adel, host & producer
History Behind News podcast & on YouTube
SUPPORT:
Click here and join our other supporters in the news peeler community. Thank you.
- 🎵 attribution, links and license for the theme music in this podcast: The Success by Keys of Moon | https://soundcloud.com/keysofmoon. Musicpromoted by https://www.free-stock-music.com. Attribution 4.0 International (CC BY 4.0): https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/.
- Scholars in Your Inbox? 125 scholars and counting! So don't miss HbN guest scholars’ weekly takes on the history behind our news.
- Image description: Diaspora Museum, Tel Aviv. Exhibit showing "One culture: many facets. The growth of pluralism in modern Jewish spiritual life". Image by Sodabottle - Own work, CC BY-SA 3.0, on Wikimedia.
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Do you remember the Unwanted FIFA kiss back in August - when Mr. Luis Rubiales, the former president of the Spanish Football Federation, forced a kiss on Ms. Jenni Hermoso? Well, this week FIFA banned him from all football-related activities for three years.
But this episode is not about him. Rather, it's about how women in Spain have persistently fought for their equal rights going back to the 19th century. And as you will note in this conversation, it's a history that is closely tied to the struggle for freedom, to different political movements and their priorities, to different regimes and republics, and also to world events and global movements, such as the suffrage movement in Britain and America, and Fascism and Nazism in Italy and Germany, respectively.
In this episode, I ask my guest, Dr. Marta del Moral, the following questions:
- How did women's conditions and rights in Spain from the 19th century to 1933 compare to other European countries?
- Were women deemed intellectually equal to men? And if so, were they given the same rights?
- When did Spanish women gain the right to vote and how did they effectively lose it?
- How did Franco's regime impact women's rights and conditions?
- What is (was) permiso marital?
- How were rapists treated in Spain?
- What was the punishment for a man who killed his adulterous wife?
- How did women's conditions and rights change after democracy returned to Spain starting in 1975?
- The Unwanted FIFA Kiss - how did this fit within Spanish women's long struggle for equal rights and Spain's "Macho Culture"?
Dr. del Moral is a professor of gender equality at the Complutense University of Madrid. She directs the Research Group: Gender Relations in the Contemporary World: an interdisciplinary perspective from History, Geography and Law, where she has investigated women's participation in local governments.
By the way, during our conversation, Dr. del Moral recommended this book: New Perspectives on European Women's Legal History.
In this episode, Dr. del Moral tells us that the Unwanted FIFA kiss was an act of masculine power over a woman. And that’s not the first time we've had this in our program.
Back in 2021, when New York Governor Andrew Cuomo was accused of sexual harassment and shortly thereafter resigned, Dr. Carry Baker of Smith College explained to us that at its core, sexual harassment is about power! Click for my conversation with Dr. Baker.
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- Image description: Caricature of Gracia y Justicia, the conservative magazine of political humor published in Spain during the Second Republic. It shows a group of feminist women breaking into an office to claim the right to divorce, even though they are single. The vignette is part of the campaign organized by Catholic right media and parties in order to avoid the legalization of divorce. The following dialogue is read in the text that accompanies the cartoon: - The divorce! … the divorce! We want the [right to] divorce! - But how bad do your husbands treat you? - No, we are single. (Public Domain). In this episode, Dr. del Moral talks about family crises and women's anguish caused by restrictive and repressive divorce laws.
- 🎵 attribution, links and license for the theme music in this podcast: The Success by Keys of Moon | https://soundcloud.com/keysofmoon. Musicpromoted by https://www.free-stock-music.com. Attribution 4.0 International (CC BY 4.0): https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/.
- Scholars in Your Inbox? 125 scholars and counting!
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From Roman Britain to the streets of Paris, from there to Stalingrad in WWII, the Vietnam War's Tet Offensive, the Yugoslav Wars of the 1990s, and then to Gaza.
In this episode, I ask the following questions from my guest, Dr. Mary Elizabeth Walters:
- When did this term, urban warfare, enter our lexicon?
- Does urban warfare give one side a boost, an advantage that they might not have otherwise had in open terrain warfare?
- Are there special urban warfare military tactics?
- Does the U.S. military have special units specially trained for urban warfare?
- You've conquered a city - what next? How do you get out?
- What are some salient examples of modern warfare?
- Are there rules of engagement when it comes to urban warfare?
- How do hostages complicate urban warfare?
- In history, do we have examples of urban warfare in which the dominant party refrained from bombarding cities?
- What lessons can we glean from the history of urban warfare for the potential urban war in Gaza?
- If you wanted our audience to remember just one point about “urban warfare”, what would it be?
Dr. Walters is an Assistant Professor of Military and Security Studies in the Department of International Security at the Air Command and Staff College. She received both her MA and PhD in military history from the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill. Dr. Walters is currently working on an oral history project exploring Operation Allies Welcome, the U.S. military support for the evacuation and resettlement of Afghans spanning 2021-2022. Her second book project, Hospitality is the Law of the Mountains: The 1999 Kosovo War, examines how Albanians – motivated by the Albanian concept of hospitality – took strangers into their homes and communities and changed the course of the refugee crisis. Before joining ACSC, Walters was an assistant professor in the History Department at Kansas State University.
You can follow Dr. Walters here: https://twitter.com/mewalters101
Click here for videos & images of this podcast.
Attrition Warfare:
Earlier this year, when Russia's invasion of Ukraine turned into its 2nd year, I questioned whether or not that war was essentially becoming a war of attrition. And if so, then what's the history of attrition warfare? And which party may benefit from it? The weaker defending party? Or the stronger invading party?
Dr. Sebastian Lukasik was my guest for that episode. He is a Professor in the Department of Leadership and Research Development at Air Command and Staff College. Listen here: https://bit.ly/HbN-S3E8s
I hope you enjoy these episodes.
Adel, host & producer
History Behind News podcast & on YouTube
SUPPORT:
Click here and join our other supporters in the news peeler community. Thank you.
- 🎵 attribution, links and license for the theme music in this podcast: The Success by Keys of Moon | https://soundcloud.com/keysofmoon. Musicpromoted by https://www.free-stock-music.com. Attribution 4.0 International (CC BY 4.0): https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/.
- Scholars in Your Inbox? 125 scholars and counting! So don't miss HbN guest scholars’ weekly takes on the history behind our news.
- Image description: Residential buildings 150 m from the Palestinian Tower, which were destroyed during the first week of intensive bombing by Israeli aircraft. October 2023. Provided by Al Araby under CC BY-SA 3.0 license in Wikipedia. Here are links to articles mentioned in this episode:
WSJ, 10/23/23
NYT, 10/25/23
WSJ, 10/26/23
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As Gaza and Israel explode in crisis and unspeakable tragedies unfold there, we are producing a Middle Series in which we will soon have guests to tell the story of the Palestinian people.
In this episode, my guest, Dr. Michael Ptylik, tells the story of the origin of Jewish people through these discussion points:
- From when were the Jewish people called Jewish?
- What was their land called?
- When did Jews form a polity?
- So, was it Judaism or Yahwism?
- When did Judaism become a religion?
- When did Jewish people begin to leave Israel?
- How much of the Bible about the Jewish people is myth? And how much of it is history?
Dr. Pytlik is a professor in Anthropology and Judaic Studies, Director of Judaic Studies, and Director of the Cis Maisel Center for Judaic Studies at Oakland, University, in Rochester, MI.
To learn more about him, you can visit his academic homepage. Also, here is his dissertation on Imagining David, the Man and King, and also a paper on the Canaanite and Judean Cities of Lachish, Israel.Also, here is my 2021 conversation with Dr. Pytlik about the Golden Age of Muslims and Jews - a period of coexistence.
I hope you enjoy these episodes.
Adel
Host of the History Behind News podcast
Watch my guests & I on YouTube
SUPPORT:
Click here and join our other supporters in the news peeler community. Thank you.
- 🎵 attribution, links and license for the theme music in this podcast: The Success by Keys of Moon | https://soundcloud.com/keysofmoon. Musicpromoted by https://www.free-stock-music.com. Attribution 4.0 International (CC BY 4.0): https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/.
- Scholars in Your Inbox? 125 scholars and counting! So don't miss HbN guest scholars’ weekly takes on the history behind our news.
- We rely on your support to continue this program.
- Watch Adel and his guest scholars on YouTube.
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On the balance, have labor unions benefited American labor? The history of UAW is the story of labor demanding a share of the profits. It's the story of how presidents and politics impact private labor contracts. It's also the story of a corruption scandal at a union with a reputation for high integrity. What compels union leaders to call a strike? And why do unions strike so often? Actually, the premise of the second question here is incorrect. As Dr. Marick Masters of Wayne State University's Mike Ilitch School of Business, HbN's guest for this subject, explains in our podcast, the notes for which are provided below, in the manufacturing and related sectors union strike activity has significantly diminished in recent decades in comparison to the 1950s and '60s. But the struggle has been the same - the demand that companies treat similar to other equity partners. While this episode is mostly about the United Auto Workers (UAW), as you will note, Dr. Masters, who has been involved in high-level labor negotiations, will shed light on the broader union history in the US and Europe and draw comparisons between UAW and other unions.
In this episode, Dr. Masters discusses many fascinating topics, including the following:
- The struggle of UAW's founding years.
- Unions in WWII - the Arsenal of Democracy.
- Predictably adversarial - the fraught relationship between UAW and the Big Three.
- The call for labor to be treated similarly to other equity partners.
- What compels union leaders to call a strike?
- Union negotiations and agreements, local and national
- Have strikes in the auto industry decreased in the late 20th century?
- Corruption at the UAW told through Dr. Masters' book The UAW: An Iconic Union Falls in Scandal
- How do unions make money anyway? Dr. Masters has written a book about it, Trade Union Finance: How Labor Organizations Raise and Spend Money.
- Is the UAW fundamentally different than other unions?
- How US Presidents have responded to union strikes?
- On the balance, have labor unions benefited American labor?
- Is UAW's strike a big deal in Detroit? Now, in 2023?
For more details on this episode, including fast facts, history highlights, images and more, read my post on HbN's site.
Unions in Starbucks, Amazon & more: Last year when Amazon and Starbucks workers went on strike, and when it looked like employees at Trader Joe's and Microsoft may also strike, I spoke with Dr. Kate Bronfenbrenner about the history of labor unions in the U.S.
She shared the history of unions in the service industries, such as healthcare and hospitality. And she told me how the history of America's labor unions is tightly intertwined with the history of immigration.
Dr. Bronfenbrenner also enlightened me about a point I hadn't appreciated before - that unions also fight to protect the climate.
You can listen to that episode here: https://bit.ly/HbN-S2E23s
I hope you enjoy these episodes.
Adel
Host of the History Behind News podcast
Watch my guests & I on YouTube
SUPPORT:
Click here and join our other supporters in the news peeler community. Thank you.
- 🎵 attribution, links and license for the theme music in this podcast: The Success by Keys of Moon | https://soundcloud.com/keysofmoon. Musicpromoted by https://www.free-stock-music.com. Attribution 4.0 International (CC BY 4.0): https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/.
- Scholars in Your Inbox? 125 scholars and counting! So don't miss HbN guest scholars’ weekly takes on the history behind our news.
- Watch Adel and his guest scholars on YouTube.
--- Support this podcast: https://podcasters.spotify.com/pod/show/history-behind-news/support
From mounted horses to hypersonic weapons. This is the story of the global competition of great powers. It’s a story that China has always been a part of, sometimes as the victor, sometimes as the vanquished. In this episode, my guest, Dr. David A. Graff, compares China’s Military might and history to Tibetans, Turks, Mongols, Arabs, Russians, and then the British Dr. David A. Graff of Kansas State University's Dept. of History, HbN's guest for this subject, analyzes how China’s massive state organization and awesome resources empowered China’s military to defeat others. In this post, you'll learn how internal politics and rebellions limited China’s military expansions and geopolitical ambitions. You may also appreciate how history itself, pressures China’s military and government to reclaim what they believe to be their historical borders, including Taiwan.
In this episode, Dr. Graff discusses many fascinating topics, including the following:
1) Why in China they consider the Tang Dynasty as China’s Golden Age?
2) The cavalry - its power and limitations, a theme in China's long imperial history.
3) How China beat and was beaten by the Tibetans, Turks, Mongols and Manchurians.
4) A pivotal battle that changed history. Or maybe not so much!
5) Why did the Ming Empire mothball the Treasure Ships – an armada that dwarfed Europe’s navies.
6) How the Qing Empire, China’s arguably most successful imperial dynasty, was blindsided by the West.
7) China’s military recruitment challenges – from the Ming Empire to President Xi: Born To Fly, a recent Chinese movie similar to Top Gun.
8) Why is Taiwan a question of legitimacy for the PRC? Dr. Graff is a professor in the Department of History of Kansas State University and the director of the undergraduate program in East Asian Studies. His research focuses on Chinese military history, especially that of the Tang dynasty. He is currently completing a translation of what remains of Li Jing’s “Art of War,” an early Tang military text, and is also working on a study of internal politics and labor relations in the provincial armies of the late Tang period.He is one of the two editors-in-chief of the Journal of Chinese Military History and has also served as secretary of the Chinese Military History Society since its founding in 1998.Dr. Graff has been the holder of the Richard A. and Greta Bauer Pickett Chair for Exceptional Faculty since 2017.He is the author of several books on China’s military history, including the following:
- Medieval Chinese Warfare 300-900 (Warfare and History),
- The Eurasian Way of War: Military Practice in Seventh-Century China and Byzantium (Asian States and Empires), and
- A Military History of China.
To learn more about Dr. Graff, you can visit his academic homepage. Click here for an explanation of this episode's image.
More on China?
We got more. Click here to read, listen and watch our series on China.
I hope you enjoy these episodes.
Adel
Host of the History Behind News podcast
Watch my guests & I on YouTube
SUPPORT:
Click here and join our other supporters in the news peeler community. Thank you.
- 🎵 attribution, links and license for the theme music in this podcast: The Success by Keys of Moon | https://soundcloud.com/keysofmoon. Musicpromoted by https://www.free-stock-music.com. Attribution 4.0 International (CC BY 4.0): https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/.
- Scholars in Your Inbox? 125 scholars and counting! So don't miss HbN guest scholars’ weekly takes on the history behind our news.
- Watch Adel and his guest scholars on YouTube.
--- Support this podcast: https://podcasters.spotify.com/pod/show/history-behind-news/support
Did you know, that the compass, gunpowder, paper, and the printing press, all history-changing technologies, were invented in China? Yet, the realization of their economic values happened in Europe, not in China. This is the story of the steep price that imperial China paid for the sake of stability and scale, a story that Communist China seems to be repeating now.
Dr. Yasheng Huang of MIT’s Sloan School of Management, HbN's guest for this subject, analyzes China's colossal economic successes and gigantic failures ("gigantic" is his word) in the context of innovation, freedom of ideas, and diversity of ideologies. Similar to other countries, China's economic success depends on the right balance between scope and scale, terms that Dr. Huang explains. But in most of China's long history, this balance has tipped towards scale, with grave consequences for China's economy and civilization. In this episode, Dr. Huang discusses the following:
- What new perspective does his book (see below) offer about China? Hint: EAST.
- When was China's golden age of innovation?
- China's civil service exam system was an opportunity ladder - similar to America's rags-to-riches stories.
- China's universal education system was established centuries before Europe's.
- Unlike European monarchs, China's emperors were surrounded by commoners who entered the inner sanctum of the Imperial Court through merit, not by birthright.
- Why didn't China's rigorous education and meritocratic civil service system contribute to innovation and economic growth?
- When did China's innovation and economy fall behind Europe's?
- Despite its gigantic failures, why has China's Communist Party proved so durable?
Read more about this episode, see historical images and watch videos on the HbN website here.
This New York Times article, which I mention in this episode, is about a Chinese woman whose journey epitomizes the entrepreneurial spirit that was the backbone of China's economic miracle. A Gigantic Ponzi In China?
Is China's real estate debt structure, essentially one gigantic Ponzi scheme? According to Dr. Victor Shih - yes it is. Dr. Shih is a professor at UC San Diego’s School of Global Policy and Strategy, and the Chair in China and Pacific Relations. I spoke with him last year in Season 2, Episode 1, as China's giant real estate developer, the Evergrande Group, was defaulting on its loans. Our conversation then was timely for another reason: the publication of a book edited by Dr. Shih, Economic Shocks and Authoritarian Stability, which is about how authoritarian governments, such as China’s, handle economic crises.
I hope you enjoy these episodes.
Adel
Host of the History Behind News podcast
Watch my guests & I on YouTube
SUPPORT:
Click here and join our other supporters in the news peeler community. Thank you.
- 🎵 attribution, links and license for the theme music in this podcast: The Success by Keys of Moon | https://soundcloud.com/keysofmoon. Musicpromoted by https://www.free-stock-music.com. Attribution 4.0 International (CC BY 4.0): https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/.
- Episode's image: Song Dynasty figurine of a man holding a compass.
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From Gutenberg to Frankenstein to the Luddites to Edison to Ford and to AI - this is our story of fearing human creations, and also our story of embracing the next and newest technology.
Dr. Robert Friedel of the University of Maryland rejects the generally accepted definition of "disruptive technologies" and explains how major innovations changed human history: from Gutdenberg's movable type printing press to artificial intelligence. In this episode, we uncover the history behind the following:
- How to Define Technology as Disruptive
- Gutenberg’s Printing Press – How It Changed Everything!
- Electric Lighting
- How from the Middle of the 19th Century, people's expectations changed - they began to expect technological changes.
- The Luddites, who lost jobs to new technology and broke machines in protest.
- How human culture changed from fear of new technologies to a culture of improvement.
- From Frankenstein to Artificial Intelligence.
- How Good Technologies Become Bad
Dr. Friedel is a professor in the Department of History at the University of Maryland. Prior to UMD, he was a historian at the Smithsonian Institution and at the Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers. His research expertise is in technology, science, and environment. He has written several books on the history of technology, focusing largely on the nature of invention. His latest book is a wide-ranging survey of Western Technology since the Middle Ages, and it’s titled - A Culture of Improvement; Technology and the Western Millennium. Artificial Intelligence Threatens Hollywood JobsThis summer, actors and writers in the movie industry went on a massive strike because of their grievances about their compensation, the royalties they receive, and the use of AI – artificial intelligence.
As my podcast guest, Dr. Thomas Doherty explained, this recent strike is similar to the 1960 strike, in that in the 1950s - the years leading up to the big 1960 strike, technology changed everything. Back then, that new technology was TV.
The technology that is threatening Hollywood jobs now is streaming and artificial intelligence.
Prof. Doherty explains how the situation in this strike is much more dire than the one back in 1960. In the past, the new TV technology threatened Hollywood jobs and incomes. With artificial intelligence, however, the studios not only could potentially supplant writers, but they also own the actors' likeness. What that means is that with AI you don't just lose your job, you lose yourself!
Hollywood History podcast: https://bit.ly/HbN-S3E29s.
I hope you enjoy these episodes.
Adel
Host of the History Behind News podcast
Watch my guests & I on YouTube
SUPPORT:
Click here and join our other supporters in the news peeler community. Thank you.
- 🎵 attribution, links and license for the theme music in this podcast: The Success by Keys of Moon | https://soundcloud.com/keysofmoon. Musicpromoted by https://www.free-stock-music.com. Attribution 4.0 International (CC BY 4.0): https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/.
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"An Organic Democracy"? "Spain is different. Come to Spain."
Spain’s ignominious defeat in 1898 was an utter shock to Spaniards. Hopes of two republics vanished with civil war, and Franco’s “Organic Democracy” gave way to Spain’s Golden Age that was ultimately supplanted by polarized politics and inconclusive elections.
Dr. Julio Ponce of the University of Seville places Spain's polarized politics in the perspective of its near past history. In this episode, we uncover the history behind the following:
- Was Spain the World’s First Truly Global Empire?
- Why Seville Was the Wall Street of the 16th Century.
- How America's defeat of Spain in 1898 shocked Spaniards. They called it "the disaster".
- Who was responsible for the explosion of the USS Maine in Havana, which led to the Spanish-American War?
- How does the Spanish Empire's decline compare to the British Empire's decline?
- Why sus Franco support Franco during the Spanish Civil War?
- Spain's slogan during Franco’s dictatorship: “Spain is different. Come to Spain.”
- How Spain was a Kingdom Without a King!
- How did Spain transition from a dictatorship to a democracy?
- How does Spain's Decentralized Unitary System compare to a federal system?
- What is Spain's current challenge in its judicial system?
- When was Spain’s modern Golden Age and what happened to it?
About my guest: Dr. Ponce is a Professor at the Dept. of Contemporary History at the University of Seville. His scholarship spans research in the History of Political and Administrative Institutions as well as the History of the State from the local perspective - such as cities and provincial councils in Spain. His research and analysis also focus on Political, Social and Economic History as well as the study of public authorities as creators of political cultures. He is the author of biographies of political figures in Seville, biographies that were awarded distinctions, by the Provincial Council of Seville and the international Juan Valera Award. He is the author of many books and book chapters, including his book Gibraltar and the Spanish Civil War, 1936-39: Local, National and International PerspectivesTo learn more about Dr. Ponce, you can visit his homepage.
In this episode, Dr. Ponce talks about Spain's polarized politics. In a prior episode, which was recorded just after our midterm elections in 2022, Dr. David Schultz explained how America's politics and people became so polarized, and why that polarization will subside in a decade's time. Listen to Dr. Schultz here: https://bit.ly/HbN-S2E39s
I hope you enjoy these episodes.
Adel
Host of the History Behind News podcast
Watch my guests & I on YouTube
SUPPORT:
Click here and join our other supporters in the news peeler community. Thank you.
- 🎵 attribution, links and license for the theme music in this podcast: The Success by Keys of Moon | https://soundcloud.com/keysofmoon. Musicpromoted by https://www.free-stock-music.com. Attribution 4.0 International (CC BY 4.0): https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/.
- HIGHLIGHTS: get future episode highlights in your inbox.
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“Is Haiti a Failed State?” I asked Dr. Robert Fatton. Think about his question from the perspective that there is no civil war in Haiti. Yet, the country is in total and complete chaos.
In this episode, my guest, Dr. Fatton, answers the above question and talks about the history of why democracy did not take hold in Haiti, and how violent gangs became so powerful there. In fact so powerful that they could restrict the movement of Haiti's prime minister, and so powerful that Haiti's government outnumbered and outgunned, has asked for international military intervention to bring some sense of security back to Haiti. But the international community has militarily intervened in Haiti in the past - all to no avail. What's more is that Haitians, a proud nation, have grown weary of these ineffective interventions. Non-military interventions have also disrupted Haiti's domestic affairs. Here, Dr. Fatton tells us the story of how Hillary Clinton, as our Secretary of State, interfered in Haiti's election. And years later, representatives of the UN did the same thing - with a mere tweet!
Even helpful assistance projects have had negative impacts on Haiti's culture, society, and economy. For example, did you know, that over the last decades, the international community has refused to channel assistance to Haiti through its government? Why? Because Haiti’s government is notoriously corrupt. So instead, international aid went to NGOs - non-governmental organizations - which in turn proliferated and grew powerful in Haiti. As this happened, Haiti’s government retrenched. And as the government shrunk, where do you think the corrupt government employees went to work? The NGOs!
This episode is essentially the continuation of my 2021 conversation with Dr. Fatton, during which he shared the history of Haiti from its bloody but glorious founding to the assassination of its president, Jovenel Moïse. You can listen to that episode here: https://bit.ly/HbN-S1E23s.
Dr. Fatton is the Julia A. Cooper Professor of Government and Foreign Affairs in the Department of Politics at the University of Virginia. He is also a formerchair of that department as well as a former associate dean of the Graduate School there. In 2011, Dr. Fatton received the Award for Excellence of the Haitian Studies Association for his “commitment and contribution to the emerging field of Haitian Studies for close to a quarter of a century.” To learnmore about Dr. Fatton, you can visit his academic homepage: https://politics.virginia.edu/people/profile/rf/
Also, after the 2021 earthquake, I spoke to Dr. Mark Schuller about the role of NGOs in Haiti. While celebrity visitors to Haiti, such as Bill Clinton, George Clooney, and Sean Penn, brought much attention and millions of dollars to that country, how NGOs changed Haiti's society, culture and economy is complicated. Let's just put it this way: not all good intentions end well! You can listen to my conversation with Dr. Schuller here: https://bit.ly/HbN-S1E32s.
I hope you enjoy these episodes.
Adel
Host of the History Behind News podcast
Watch my guests & I on YouTube
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- 🎵 attribution, links and license for the theme music in this podcast: The Success by Keys of Moon | https://soundcloud.com/keysofmoon. Musicpromoted by https://www.free-stock-music.com. Attribution 4.0 International (CC BY 4.0): https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/.
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Sweden's spectacular victories against Russia were later reversed by crushing losses to Russia that ended Sweden's Empire.
Sweden is joining NATO. But why now? Why after more than two centuries of peace - a record longer than any other country! My guest in this episode, Dr. Ulf Zander who joined our conversation from Sweden, answers this question and much more.
He explained the history of Sweden from the age of the Vikings. And no, not all Vikings are the same. Those from Sweden ventured east, and they may have given Russia its name. But the legacy of Vikings endured - traders or fearsome warriors? The answer mattered in 20th-century geopolitics.
Dr. Zander describes how Sweden became a nation and how it rose to the status of an empire, despite its much smaller population than its neighbors. Here our conversation takes a turn as we talk about the fall of the Swedish empire and the rise of the Russian empire. We talk about Charles XII, a king who Voltaire portrayed as a tragic hero, and whose legacy in the 20th century was used to goad Sweden into war against Russia in WWI and WWII.
We also talk about Sweden's massive emigration to the United States. How massive? More than 1 million. To put this in perspective, the population of Sweden now is little more than 10 million! But the story doesn't end there. Immigration into Sweden has also been massive. How massive? More than 15% of Sweden's population is foreign-born. That percentage is even higher than the U.S. and the U.K. Dr. Zander explains the challenges of Sweden's large immigration communities, including gang violence, particularly those that haven't assimilated.
A Professor of History at the Department of History, in Lund University in Sweden, Professor Zander's main interest is how history is communicated and used. He has published on the debates and uses of Swedish history from the late 19th century to the early 21st century as well as on monuments, film, history, and identity and uses of history in the United States. He is currently working on several research projects. The one that we discuss in this episode is that he is writing a book together with historian and film historian Tommy Gustafsson about the Swedish warrior king Charles XII in Swedish cinema. To learn more about Prof. Zander and his publications and other projects, you can visit his academic homepage.
"Never Again Alone"! After the 1939 Winter War with the USSR, Finland vowed never again to defend itself alone. Its bid to join NATO in 2022 was a consequence of its experience in 1939, an experience which resonated with Russia's attack on Ukraine. In a 2022 conversation, Dr. Jason Lavery, who joined me from Finland, described Finland's history of war and peace with Russia. Listen to it here: https://bit.ly/HbN-S2E22s
I hope you enjoy these episodes.
Adel
Host of the History Behind News podcast
Watch my guests & I on YouTube
SUPPORT:
Click here and join our other supporters in the news peeler community. Thank you.
- 🎵 attribution, links and license for the theme music in this podcast: The Success by Keys of Moon | https://soundcloud.com/keysofmoon. Musicpromoted by https://www.free-stock-music.com. Attribution 4.0 International (CC BY 4.0): https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/.
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Sovereign debt history of empires, city-states, early republics & parliaments, and democracies.
On August 1, Fitch Ratings downgraded America's credit ratings from AAA to AA6+, which means that Germany, Luxembourg, Netherlands, Sweden, Switzerland and Denmark now have a better credit rating than we do. Fitch Ratings' stated reason for this month's downgrade is "erosion of governance" in the U.S., which makes sense. Back in June, we were on the brink of a national default - thanks to our politicians who were playing political chicken with our nation's debt. And if you recall, back in 2011, during another debt-ceiling standoff between the Congress and the White House, Standard and Poor's downgraded the U.S. government credit rating one notch below the top grade. (WSJ, 8/1/23).
But does this Fitch Rating's downgrade really matter?
Just last week, Greg Ip, the Chief Economics Commentator at The Wall Street Journal, a senior financial reporter whom I've followed and read for many years, asked the same question. And then, answered it. Yes, it does matter. The risk has to do with rising deficits and interest rates. (WSJ 8/9/2023).
The Congressional Budget Office estimates that we'll continue to run a federal budget deficit, which it projects will reach 11.1% in the next 30 years. (WSJ, 7/27/23). The CBO also estimates that by 2029, the federal government will spend more on paying interest on our national debt than it will spend on our national defense. (NYTimes, 7/5/2023).
So, is public debt a bad thing, something to entirely get rid of? Not exactly!
To better public debt, its history and its useful implementations, I read Dr. Barry Eichengreen's book, In Defense of Public Debt, and invited him to our program. In this conversation, Dr. Eichengreen tells us when government borrowing started and for what purpose. Hint: the prime purpose of government borrowing in the past was war!
Most of this discussion with Dr. Eichengreen, as you will note, takes place in the historical context of European countries. This is because Europeans borrowed more frequently than countries in Asia and Africa. Naturally, my follow-up question is why. The answer, once again, has to do with war!
In this episode, we also talk about the role of central banks. Here, things get complicated. Dr. Eichengreen also answers this question: do democracies demand more debt? He also tells us how a democracy, such as ours, can run a surplus and eventually solve its public debt problem.
To learn more about Dr. Eichengreen (UC Berkeley Economics), you can visit his academic homepage.
Listen to Dr. Eichengreen's episode about the U.S. dollar & cryptocurrency.
Of course, we cannot talk about America's public debt without also addressing our hemorrhaging entitlement programs. Dr. John Cogan (Stanford University and the Hoover Institution), tells the history of America's entitlement programs, including describing how Americans in the upper half of the income distribution receive humungous entitlement benefits and anecdotes such as Civil War pension still being paid in 2020! Click here to listen.
I hope you enjoy these episodes.
Adel
Host of the History Behind News podcast
Watch my guests & I on YouTube
SUPPORT:
Click here and join our other supporters in the news peeler community. Thank you.
- 🎵 attribution, links and license for the theme music in this podcast: The Success by Keys of Moon | https://soundcloud.com/keysofmoon. Music promoted by https://www.free-stock-music.com. Attribution 4.0 International (CC BY 4.0): https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/.
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Medieval Recipes & Eating Right in Renaissance. Ozempic, Wegovy, Mounjaro - expensive weight loss drugs that are all the rage now.
Okay, let's get something straight away. In centuries past, diet didn't mean weight loss. In fact, it wasn't until the 18th century that researchers, and later society, began to see fat and obesity as health and, unfortunately, a social issue.
Going back to history, what did people eat to stay healthy? That continues to be an important question today. In fact, it consumes many health-conscious people. But it also pertains to weight loss drugs, because experts warn that it's not enough to take Ozempic, Wegovy, Mounjaro. You also have to eat right to stay healthy!
So, during the Renaissance, the answer to the above question depended on the type of body you were born with, your constitution. So, are you sanguine, phlegmatic, choleric or melancholic? These psychological terms dictated what best fit your physiology.
Dr. Ken Albala, my guest for this episode, is the author of Eating Right in the Renaissance. He is a professor of history at the University of the Pacific, and has written and edited more than 25 books about food and nutrition history, including Cooking in Europe, 1250 to 1650. To learn more about Dr. Albala and his many projects and publications, you can visit his academic and also personal homepage.
Obviously, eating right not only helps you lose weight, but, more importantly, it helps you stay healthy and fight the onslaught and progression of many diseases. In a conversation with Dr. Gil Rabinovici, a Distinguished Professor in Memory and Aging, in the Departments of Neurology, Radiology and Biomedical Imaging, at the University of California, San Francisco, I learned that eating right also helps with treating the symptoms of Alzheimer's disease. In that conversation, I asked Dr. Rabinovici why don't we have a cure for Alzheimer's disease. He gave a compelling explanation to that question, and additionally shared some good news - that while we don't have a cure for Alzheimer's Disease yet, we have learned how to live long and productive lives with Alzheimer's. You can listen to my conversation with him here: https://bit.ly/HbN-S2E7s
I hope you enjoy these episodes.
Adel
Host of the History Behind News podcast
Watch my guests & I on YouTube
SUPPORT:
Click here and join our other supporters in the news peeler community. Thank you.
- 🎵 attribution, links and license for the theme music in this podcast: The Success by Keys of Moon | https://soundcloud.com/keysofmoon. Music promoted by https://www.free-stock-music.com. Attribution 4.0 International (CC BY 4.0): https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/.
- Image description & attribution: William Banting, English undertaker and popularizer of a weight loss diet (Public Domain image). Medieval baker (Public Domain image).
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Comparing Israel's Supreme Court to America's Supreme Court. 64 Israeli legislators, a slim majority of the Knesset, voted on Monday, July 24, to amend one of Israel's Basic Laws, and in so doing, they took away the Israeli Supreme Court's ability to strike down decisions that it finds "unreasonable in the extreme." WSJ, 7/24/23.
As my guests in this episode, Dr. Guy Lurie and Dr. Amir Fuchs explain, the news media, including our news media here in the U.S., simply exaggerate the application of the unreasonable standard at issue here. Israel Supreme Court's "unreasonableness Standard" is not used for constitutional or policy matters. Rather, it only applies to a narrow category of administrative cases. For example, the hiring and firing of top government officials. Without this power to check the government's administrative actions, Mr. Netanyahu could potentially fire Israel's attorney general, who is an outspoken critic of his administration and is steadfastly independent. And oh yes, Israel's AG is also in charge of investigating and prosecuting corruption charges currently pending against Mr. Netanyahu!
Back in April, I had a conversation with Dr. Gideon Rahat, a Senior Fellow at the Israel Democracy Insitute. He told me that this moment is the most central crisis in Israel's history, and he relayed to me that some people even liken it to war. He explained that this crisis has to do with Israel's national identity, and he described how essential the Supreme Court is to democracy in Israel because compared to the U.S., Israel has a poor system of checks and balances.
And that's what this episode is all about - Israel's Supreme Court.
For example, how does Israel’s Supreme Court compare to our Supreme Court? Does Israel’s Supreme Court have the same relationship with Israel’s legislative and executive government branches as the US Supreme Court has with Congress and the White House? Mr. Netanyahu seems to think so (listen to the episode and you'll get this). But Dr. Lurie and Dr. Fuchs disagree!
Dr. Guy Lurie is a Research Fellow in the Democratic Values and Institutions Program of the Israel Democracy Institute. He is an attorney and holds a Ph.D. in History from Georgetown University. Dr. Amir Fuchs is a Senior Researcher at the Center for Democratic Values and Institutions at the Israel Democracy Institute. He holds a doctorate from the Faculty of Law at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem and is a lecturer in the Politics and Communication Department at the School of Government and Social Sciences at Hadassah Academic College.
S3E14: Dr. Rahat re Israel's democracy: https://bit.ly/HbN-S3E14s
S3E26: Dr. Klarman re history of the US Supreme Court: https://bit.ly/HbN-S3E26s
I hope you enjoy these episodes.
Adel
Host of the History Behind News podcast
Watch my guests & I on YouTube
SUPPORT:
Click here and join our other supporters in the news peeler community. Thank you.
- 🎵 attribution, links and license for the theme music in this podcast: The Success by Keys of Moon | https://soundcloud.com/keysofmoon. Music promoted by https://www.free-stock-music.com. Attribution 4.0 International (CC BY 4.0): https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/.
- Image attribution: The Supreme Court of Israel with Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and then-President Reuven Rivlin, 2015. Image made available on Wikipedia under the following license: CC BY-SA 3.0.
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Barbenheimer, Hollywood's Strike & Hollywood's History
Did you know, that the three stooges, Larry, Curly, and Moe, with their physical and slapstick comedy that we all know, never got a dime for all their movies we saw on our TVs? Why? Because those residual incomes were not in their contracts!
As my guest in this episode, Professor Thomas Doherty explains, this strike is similar to the 1960 strike, in that in the 1950s, technology changed everything. Back then, the new technology was TV. Now it’s streaming and AI. But Prof. Doherty also explains how the situation in this strike is much more dire than the one back in 1960, because, you probably guessed it -because of AI. With AI the studios not only could potentially supplant writers, but they also own the actors' likeness. What that means is that with AI you don't just lose your job - you lose yourself.
In this episode, we discuss the magic of the Hollywood's early years, the spellbinding performance of superstars like Charlie Chaplin, the restrictions imposed on Hollywood by Catholic forces in America, and Hollywood's impact on America's culture and politics.
Prof. Doherty is a cultural historian with a special interest in Hollywood cinema. He is a professor of American Studies at Brandeis University. He is the author of many books, including the following Pre-Code Hollywood: Sex, Immorality, and Insurrection in American Cinema; 1930-1934 and Show trial: Hollywood, HUAC, and the birth of the blacklist, both of which we discuss in this episode.
To learn more about Professor Doherty, you can visit his academic homepages.
Also, did you know that Fahrenheit 451, a book about book banning, was once banned in schools in America? To learn more about the history of book banning in the U.S., listen to my fun and fascinating conversation with Dr. Brett Gary of NYU by clicking here: https://bit.ly/HbN-S2E15.
I hope you enjoy these episodes.
Adel
Host of the History Behind News podcast
Watch my guests & I on YouTube
SUPPORT:
Click here and join our other supporters in the news peeler community. Thank you.
- 🎵 attribution, links and license for the theme music in this podcast: The Success by Keys of Moon | https://soundcloud.com/keysofmoon. Music promoted by https://www.free-stock-music.com. Attribution 4.0 International (CC BY 4.0): https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/.
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As another civil war looms in Sudan, we review its history of kingdoms, powerful women, missionaries and messianic revolutions, civil wars and diversity.
According to UN Secretary-General Antonio Guterres, Sudan is on the brink of a full-scale civil war, the consequences of which may be calamitous, destabilizing a wide region, including the Horn of Africa and parts of the Middle East. Sudan itself is in a state of disaster. For example, in a country of less than 50 million, about 3 million people have been displaced from their homes. There are many reports of indiscriminate killings, mass graves, and towns razed to the ground in Darfur, where the violence is morphing into its new horrifying phase of ethnic war. As a reminder, Darfur is a region already ravaged by decades of genocidal atrocities.
When it comes to talking about Sudan, and many other countries about which we woefully know very little, I think it helps to give some depth and dimension to the news in different ways, ways that help us understand the human face of Sudan.
Sudan is a complicated country with a rich history, some of which will be familiar to us. For example, what if I tell you that Sudan's history and its civilizations have been inspirational for African Americans? In fact, many prominent African Americans have traveled there - like Al Sharpton and Malcolm X. Although they have traveled to distinctly different regions of Sudan, they have made the journey for the same purpose: for what Sudan's civilization and history represent - a long history of kingdoms and powerful queens, a vibrant crossroad between the variety of distinct cultures in Africa's East and West, and the different races and colors of peoples, black and white from South to North, and between Islam and Christianity. Basically, Sudan has been a veritable melting pot for centuries.
In this episode, my guest, Dr. Christopher Tounsel of the University of Washington takes us through this rich history. And he personalizes the story for us by telling us why Sudan is important to him as an African American. Dr. Tounsel is an historian of modern Sudan, with a special focus on race and religion as political technologies. His first book, published in 2021, is Chosen Peoples: Christianity and Political Imagination in South Sudan. It's a book that we discuss here, and I begin the discussion by asking him what he exactly means by "political imagination". His answer opens a window to twists and turns of history, which caught him by surprise as he was writing his dissertation on Sudan's history...
Dr. Tounsel is now working on his second book, Bounds of Blackness: African Americans, Sudan, and the Politics of Solidarity. As you will note, he is very excited to tell us about this upcoming book, and I am very excited to be the first podcast host with whom he shares it. To learn more about Dr. Tounsel, you can visit his academic homepage.
Also, here is our prior podcast regarding Ethiopia's history.
I hope you enjoy these episodes.
Adel
Host of the History Behind News podcast
Watch my guests & I on YouTube
SUPPORT:
Click here and join our other supporters in the news peeler community. Thank you.
- 🎵 attribution, links and license for the theme music in this podcast: The Success by Keys of Moon | https://soundcloud.com/keysofmoon. Music promoted by https://www.free-stock-music.com. Attribution 4.0 International (CC BY 4.0): https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/.
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Have economists predicted and prevented past recessions? Barely anyone is talking about a recession now. But just a couple of months ago, it was front-page and prime-time news.
And here is an excerpt from a June 4th WSJ article: “Economists surveyed by The Wall Street Journal in April put the probability of a recession at some point in the next 12 months above 50%. But they have said that since October, and the recession appears no closer.” So, in other words, no one really knows, not even the experts.
To better understand the history of America's recessions their frequencies, intensities and durations, and our attempts to predict and prevent them, I spoke with Dr. Price Fishback, an APS professor of economics at Eller College of Management in the University of Arizona. Dr. Fishback is also a research affiliate at the Centre for Economic History at Australian National University, a CAGE Fellow at Warwick University, a program scholar for the Hoover Program on Regulation and the Rule of Law, a fellow at the TIAA-CREF Institute and a research associate at the National Bureau of Economic Research, which most of us know as NBER.
He is the author of many peer-reviewed publications and books including Government and the American Economy: A New History.
To learn more about Dr. Fishback, you can visit his academic homepage, the link for which is provided in the detailed caption of this episode.
Also, you should definitely listen to my prior conversation with Dr. Fishback about the history of housing bubbles. Actually, he doesn't like the word 'bubble'. So we discussed the booms and busts. This is a fascinating history that includes the added interesting story of the home mortgage industry worked decades ago (think 5-year terms with huge balloon payments). Click here for that episode: https://bit.ly/HBN-S2E32
I hope you enjoy these episodes.
Adel
Host of the History Behind News podcast
Watch my guests & I on YouTube
SUPPORT:
Click here and join our other supporters in the news peeler community. Thank you.
- 🎵 attribution, links and license for the theme music in this podcast: The Success by Keys of Moon | https://soundcloud.com/keysofmoon. Music promoted by https://www.free-stock-music.com. Attribution 4.0 International (CC BY 4.0): https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/.
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Can Congress take away SCOTUS jurisdiction? Can states defy SCOTUS? Has SCOTUS lost its power and prestige? Is SCOTUS a political institution? Do its holdings bend to popular culture?
Can universities consider race in their admissions process? No, they cannot... because the U.S. Supreme Court said so on Thursday, June 29th.
Can President Biden erase more than $400 billion of America's student debt? No, he cannot... Because the Supreme Court said so on Friday, June 30th.
Can a web designer refuse to provide services for same-sex marriages based on her First Amendment rights? Yes, she can... because the U.S. Supreme Court said so on Friday, June 30th.
But where does the Supreme Court get its power? And where does it get its prestige? And are the Supreme Court's power and prestige eroding? Now that everything is so polarized! Now that serious allegations of ethical misconduct have been raised about Justice Clarence Thomas, and to a much lesser extent regarding Chief Justice Roberts and Justice Neil Gorsuch!
To better understand this history, the history of the US Supreme Court's prestige and power, and to better understand its politics, as in, is the highest court in the land inherently a political institution? And whether or not it bends to America's popular sentiments. I spoke with Dr. Michael Klarman, who digs deeps into centuries past, going back to the Court's early years, to answer these important questions in the historical context with vivid examples and familiar stories that you thought you knew but I bet you may be surprised to learn otherwise now. I know I was surprised many times by what I learned during this conversation. For example, did you know that the U.S. Congress can take away the Supreme Court's jurisdiction on a case pending before it? A 'wow" is warranted here, right? What about the separation of powers? What about our systems of checks and balances?
Dr. Klarman is the Charles Warren Professor of Legal History at Harvard Law School. He has won numerous awards for his teaching and scholarship, which are primarily in the areas of Constitutional Law and Constitutional History. In 2009 he was inducted into the American Academy of Arts & Sciences. In 2020, he authored the Foreword to the Harvard Law Review’s annual Supreme Court issue, which is titled “The Degradation of American Democracy—and the Court.” He is the author of many books, including this one: The Framers’ Coup: The Making of the United States Constitution, a book that was a finalist for the George Washington Book Prize. To learn more about Dr. Klarman, you can visit his academic homepage.
Also, you should definitely check out my conversation with Dr. Gideon Rahat of the Hebrew University of Jerusalem about Israel's Supreme Court and Mr. Netanyahu's attempts to reform his country's judiciary. Dr. Rahat is a Senior Fellow at the Israel Democracy Institute, and he draws important distinctions between Israel's democracy and ours. He talks about how integral Israel's Supreme Court is to that country's democracy because it's the only check on Israel's government.
I hope you enjoy these episodes.
Adel
Host of the History Behind News podcast
SUPPORT:
Click here and join our other supporters in the news peeler community. Thank you.
- 🎵 attribution, links and license for the theme music in this podcast: The Success by Keys of Moon | https://soundcloud.com/keysofmoon. Music promoted by https://www.free-stock-music.com. Attribution 4.0 International (CC BY 4.0): https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/.
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Support this podcast: https://podcasters.spotify.com/pod/show/history-behind-news/support
What is Decoration Day? Did the South celebrate the 4th of July?
As it turns out, the history of the 4th of July is not that straightforward. For example, it took about a century for the recognition of our Independence Day as a federal holiday. And for some 80 years after the Civil war, some parts of the South, including Vicksburg, did not celebrate the 4th of July. It took WWII to create a new sense of nationalism, including the national celebration of the 4th of July.
To better understand the history of our Independence Day, I spoke with Dr. Thomas Balcerski, a professor of history at Eastern Connecticut State University. For the academic year of 2022-2023, Dr. Balcerski was the Ray Allen Billington Visiting Professor in U.S. History at Occidental College and a Long-Term Fellow at the Huntington Library.
Dr. Balcerski has taught courses on early American history, U.S. Presidents and First Ladies, and the history of the Democratic Party, from Thomas Jefferson to Joe Biden. To learn more about Dr. Balcerski, you can visit his academic home pages at Oxy and Eastern CT.
By the way, be sure to listen to my conversation in S3E1 with Prof. Joel Richard Paul, he told me something very interesting about the 4th of July - that the reason we celebrate 4th of July is because Thomas Jefferson made it a national holiday, in a self-serving way, to elevate the Declaration of Independence. He added that it was Chief Justice Marshall, President Jefferson's chief detractor and also first cousin, who elevated the Constitution over the Declaration of Independence... But the 4th of July's celebration continued and grow in prominence in our culture. This fascinating episode is available here: https://bit.ly/HbN-S3E1
I hope you enjoy these episodes.
Adel
Host of the History Behind News podcast
SUPPORT:
Click here and join our other supporters in the news peeler community. Thank you.
- 🎵 attribution, links and license for the theme music in this podcast: The Success by Keys of Moon | https://soundcloud.com/keysofmoon. Music promoted by https://www.free-stock-music.com. Attribution 4.0 International (CC BY 4.0): https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/.
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Rome of the Pacific! Geneva of the Pacific! A city that aspired to eclipse New York.
What do Nordstrom, Whole Foods, H&M, Abercrombie & Fitch, Gap and Crate & Barrel have in common? Care to guess?
They all have left, or are leaving, San Francisco!
I asked my guest, Dr. Gray Brechin, if we are seeing the lowest of the low for San Francisco in its history? A categorical "yes" was his answer! He adds that the San Francisco of unforgettable songs by Tony Bennett and Journey is gone.
Dr. Brechin tells the history of San Francisco, from its booms in mid-19th century to busts and booms again. He explains how the forests of Northern California were sacrificed to build San Francisco. We talk about the media moguls and industry magnates of San Francisco's past, who lived in and around the city and invested in it. He draws a distinction to the tech entrepreneurs of our time, who do not invest in San Francisco and are ahistorical. As for San Francisco's liberal culture and politics, did you know that the City's elite used to be Republican?
Dr. Brechin IS AN HISTORICAL GEOGRAPHER AND AUTHOR whose chief interests are the state of California, the environmental impact of cities upon their hinterlands, and the invisible landscape of New Deal public works. He is currently a visiting scholar in the U.C. Berkeley Department of Geography and founder and project scholar of The Living New Deal. He is a San Francisco Bay Area local, who in the 1980s worked as a journalist and TV producer in San Francisco. He is the author of Imperial San Francisco: Urban Power, Earthly Ruin, a book that we discuss in this episode.
To learn more about Dr. Brechin, you can visit his website.
I hope you enjoy this episode.
Adel
Host of the History Behind News podcast
SUPPORT:
Click here and join our other supporters in the news peeler community. Thank you.
- 🎵 attribution, links and license for the theme music in this podcast: The Success by Keys of Moon | https://soundcloud.com/keysofmoon. Music promoted by https://www.free-stock-music.com. Attribution 4.0 International (CC BY 4.0): https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/.
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Support this podcast: https://podcasters.spotify.com/pod/show/history-behind-news/support
A former U.S. president has been indicted on charges of mishandling classified documents, including the willful retention of classified information and obstruction.
The 49-page indictment of Mr. Donald Trump can be accessed via the following journals: NYTimes & WSJ.
Did you know that the definition of classified information is largely dependent on presidential executive orders? And did you know that President Richard Nixon's executive order on classified information, is the model that many look to for clear examples of what type of disclosures may cause damage to our national security and, hence, should be protected as classified information?
In this episode, Professor Heidi Kitrosser speaks to us about the willful retention of national defense information, and the legal implications of such conduct under the Espionage Act. She will also directly address Mr. Trump's retention of classified documents in Mar-a-Lago. In addition, she'll tell us about the history of classified information, e.g., what constitutes classified information? Who can designate information as classified? Who has access to them? And how all of this plays out in our system of separation of powers? With regards to this last point, Prof. Kitrosser points out something interesting - that U.S. courts and Congress may be intentionally skirting the responsibility of defining and categorizing classified information. She explains why this may be to their political benefit.
Ms. Kitrosser is a professor at Northwestern University Pritzker School of Law. She is an expert on the constitutional law of federal government secrecy, and on separation of powers and free speech law more broadly. She is the author of the following book: Reclaiming Accountability: Transparency, Executive Power, and the U.S. Constitution, which was awarded the 2014 Chicago-Kent College of Law / Roy C. Palmer Civil Liberties Prize. She is on the steering committee of a new initiative – the Free Expression Legal Network (FELN) spearheaded by Yale’s Media Freedom and Information Access Clinic and the Reporter’s Committee for Freedom of the Press. To learn more about Professor Kitrosser, you can visit her academic homepage, the link for which is provided in the detailed caption of this episode.
I spoke with Prof. Kitrosser back in October, when the investigation into former President Trump's documents in Mar-a-Lago and its coverage in the news media started to really intensify. As you will note, that earlier conversation is highly relevant to our current news.
You may also be interested in an earlier episode, in which, my guest, Prof. Michael Gerhardt, answers the following question: can Mr. Trump be disqualified from running for president? Prof. Gerhardt and I also talked about Andrew Jackson, Grover Cleveland and Richard Nixon, who were all struggled to reach or return to the White House in one way or another, and we compared them to Mr. Trump. Click here to listen: https://bit.ly/HbN-S2E41
I hope you enjoy these episodes.
Adel
Host of the History Behind News podcast
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Immigration Federalism! VA, WV, SC, MS, IA, TN, NE & FL... these GOP-led states have or are planning to send troops to the Texas border with Mexico. Why, because Texas Governor Abbot has asked for their help. To learn about Governor Abbot's Operation Lone Star program, visit the Texas Indigent Defense Commission site.
But can they don't that? Isn't regulating immigration the role and responsibility of the federal government?
A recent New York Times article included the following admonition: "But states cannot enforce federal immigration law — that is up to the federal government". But what if our federal government abdicates its responsibility in enforcing immigration laws, in protecting our borders? This is not a crazy question. As my guest, Prof. Deep Gulasekaram, explains, this is, in fact, is the very claim that Republican governors of AZ and TX have made - that our federal government has abdicated its responsibility in matters of immigration.
Strangely, for an issue that is and has been so important to our nation's history - hint: we a nation of immigrants, immigration is not even mentioned in the Constitution. And my guest, Dr. Deep Gulasekaaram, tells it, for the initial 100 years of our history, immigration was pretty much run and regulated by our states. It wasn't until after the Civil War that the federal government its involvement in immigration matters the way we think of it today.
From the 1870s to mid-20th Century, immigration was a race-based regulated system. For example, for the longest time, only white people could become US citizens. There were also quotas that favored Northern and Western Europeans. All of this changed in the 1960s, from which time to 2001, immigration became a bipartisan matter. But after 9/11, immigration became a hot button political and polarizing issue. As a result, our Congress hasn't really passed a robust immigration law for a long time.
To better understand the history of the tension between US states and our federal government when it comes to immigration, which is a highly polarizing issue now, I spoke with Mr. Gulasekaram, a Professor of Law at the Santa Clara University School of Law... Where he teaches Constitutional Law and Immigration Law. Prof. Gulasekaram is co-author of the leading immigration law casebook used in law schools, Immigration & Citizenship: Process and Policy. And he is also co-author of The New Immigration Federalism - a book that provides an in-depth empirical and theoretical analysis of the resurgence of state and local immigration lawmaking, which is the subject of our conversation in this episode...
Prof. Gulasekaram is also the co-founder of the World Children’s Initiative, a non-profit organization dedicated to improving health and educational infrastructure for children in developing areas around the world.
You may also be interested in an earlier episode, in which, my guest, Prof. Jennifer Chacon, answers this question: do immigrants commit more crime than native-born Americans? Listen here: https://bit.ly/HbN-S3E18
I hope you enjoy these episodes.
Adel
Host of the History Behind News podcast
SUPPORT:
Click here and join our other supporters in the news peeler community. Thank you.
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Danny Masterson. Donald Trump. Did you know that rape is the most underreported crime?
Did you know that rape was originally a crime of trespass against property? Why property you may ask? Because the raped woman was deemed to be the property of her father or her husband!
But what if, in the above original definition of rape, the rape victim was an unmarried orphan? This is more than an academic question. Because, as my guest, Prof. Diane Rosenfeld explains, over time governments stepped in on behalf of rape victims. And therein lurks another problem: rape laws were written by men.
So rape cases were and are prosecuted with laws that reflect men's perspectives on this terrifying crime. It's no wonder that most prosecutors, in fact, try to dismiss allegations of rape and dissuade victims from bringing charges. And when rapes are prosecuted, only 2-4% succeed.
In the last 30 days, we've had two high-profile rape cases - one civil, the other criminal. Donald Trump was not found liable for rape in the civil suit brought by E. Jean Carroll (although he was found liable for sexually abusing and defaming her). And Danny Masterson, the actor from "That 70s Show", was found guilty of two of the three counts of rape.
When it comes to violent crimes, rape seems to stand apart from others. For example, in other violent crimes, we don't generally ask the victims if they fought back or screamed. But we do that in rape. Also, victims of other crimes don't suffer from the social stigmas that rape victims do! I am referring to victim blaming.
So to better understand the legal, cultural and social history of the crime of rape, I spoke to Professor Diane Rosenfeld of Harvard Law School, where she teaches courses such as Gender Violence, Law and Social Justice; Theories of Sexual Coercion; and Title IX, which is the federal civil rights law that protects discrimination based on sex. In addition to teaching at Harvard Law School, Prof. Rosenfeld has taught several courses at Harvard College, including a seminar on Creating Cultures of Sexual Respect on Campus. Prior to teaching, she served as the first Senior Counsel in the Office on Violence Against Women at the United States Department of Justice and as an Executive Assistant Attorney General at the Illinois Attorney General’s Office.
Prof. Rosenfeld’s research areas include Title IX and campus sexual assault prevention and response; prevention of intimate partner homicide; and addressing commercial sexual exploitation of women and girls. Her current focus is creating a bonobo-inspired sisterhood among women to overcome patriarchal violence.
And if you are wondering what bonobo is, well, you've come to the right place, Prof. Rosenfeld is the author of The Bonobo Sisterhood: Revolution Through Female Alliance, a recent book that we discuss in this episode. To learn more about Prof. Rosenfeld, you can visit her academic page or personal website.
You may also be interested in my podcast conversation with Dr. Carrie Baker about the history of the movement against sexual harassment, which started in 1975. Startlingly, the rates of sexual harassment haven't changed much since 1975! And as Dr. Baker explains it, sexual harassment is about power!
I hope you enjoy these episodes.
Adel
Host of the History Behind News podcast
SUPPORT:
Click here and join our other supporters in the news peeler community. Thank you.
- 🎵 attribution, links and license for the theme music in this podcast: The Success by Keys of Moon | https://soundcloud.com/keysofmoon. Music promoted by https://www.free-stock-music.com. Attribution 4.0 International (CC BY 4.0): https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/.
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How would she feel about the first-ever U.S. default? How does she feel about high inflation?
My guest, Jon Hilsenrath, a senior correspondent of the Wall Street Journal, tells us exactly how Secretary Yellen feels about inflation (a stain on her record), and would feel about the first-ever U.S. default (heart attack!).
And he also explains how she was compelled to take this job — a job she initially declined.
“These are fucking people!” shouted Janet Yellen as she pounded the table. But it was not vulgarity. It was passion about the plight of people, people who are more than numbers, people who deserve better policies.
Secretary Yellen has been worried about a potential U.S. default for at least two years now. And she is determined to get inflation under control. But Janet Yellen has been here before — speaking about and dealing with America’s economy. So her story, as told by Mr. Hilsenrath, is really the story of America’s economy and its economic thoughts and policies. And in this story, her husband, Dr. George Akerlof, who is a recipient of a Nobel Prize in economics, plays a big role (as she does in his professional life). Yellen, Akerlof and their son, who also has a doctorate in economics, talk shop “all the time” at home. They live and breathe economics.
In this episode, Mr. Hilsenrath tells us the many sides of Yellen’s personality, and explains how they have in the past and may now influence her decisions — decisions with profound impacts on our economy. You’ll hear about (1) Yellen’s compulsive preparation (which, at least once, got in the way of swift decision-making), (2) her transition from the regimented and methodical approaches of the Fed to the hustle and bustle and politics of being a member of the U.S. President’s cabinet, (3) her and her husband’s moral purpose, (4) their desire, from early in their lives, to solve the unemployment issue, (5) their humilities versus the hubris of economists in general, (6) her legacy, and (7) her desire to do good, to do the right thing, in a town in which right and fairness aren’t easily defined or attainable. You will also learn and laugh about many important figures in the U.S. economy, and their quirks. You will hear about a family who talks economics all the time — at the kitchen table and on vacation.
You can learn more about Mr. Hilsenrath by clicking this link. And here is an Amazon link to his recent book, Yellen: The Trailblazing Economist Who Navigated an Era of Upheaval, which we discuss in this episode.
Also, to about the history of the US dollar and its dominance, you can listen to my conversation with Dr. Barry Eichengreen of U.C. Berkeley here: HbN-S2E26.
I hope you enjoy these episodes.
Adel
Host of the History Behind News podcast
SUPPORT:
Click here and join our other supporters in the news peeler community. Thank you.
- 🎵 attribution, links and license for the theme music in this podcast: The Success by Keys of Moon | https://soundcloud.com/keysofmoon. Musicpromoted by https://www.free-stock-music.com. Attribution 4.0 International (CC BY 4.0): https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/.
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From Atatürk to Erdoğan. From Secularism to Islamism. From a parliamentary system to absolute presidential power.
Türkiye is set to hold a runoff election next week, on May 28th, between President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan and the opposition leader, Mr. Kemal Kılıçdaroğlu. And the general consensus is that Erdoğan is in the lead. This has come as a surprise and a disappointment to many, particularly since there is much discontent against Mr. Erdoğan. But as you well know, we are not here to cover the news. So let's uncover the history behind this news.
Atatürk is writ large in modern Turkish history. Many businesses and government offices (at least up to the recent past), hung his portrait on the wall. He disliked religion and "despised" Islam in particular. Accordingly, he set out to sever Türkiye from its Ottoman past - practically in every way. For example, Atatürk changed the Turkish alphabet from its Arabic base to a Latinized European alphabet. He forbade the hijab in many government institutions and essentially relegated religion to the private realm. Additionally, he pivoted Türkiye toward the West, especially the ideals of the French Enlightenment. Whether or not the Turks liked it, Atatürk drastically changed Türkiye and its direction into the 20th century.
Dr. Sinan Ciddi, my guest in this episode, explains that Atatürk acted like a benevolent dictator. He is the "Father of the Turks", a title bestowed upon him by the Turkish parliament in 1934.
Well, if all of this is true about Atatürk, then who is Erdoğan? How did Erdoğan rise to power in a country that was modeled after Atatürk's visions of secularism and Westernization? And how did Türkiye lose its parliamentary form of government that was founded on strong institutions, and replace it with an all-powerful presidential system of personalized government in which Erdoğan essentially rules by decree - like an Ottoman Sultan?
Per Dr. Ciddi, Erdoğan is essentially the anthesis of Atatürk, at least in several major areas that matter most to Türkiye and the world. And the danger that Türkiye faces now is that Erdoğan has imperiled its democracy, its secularism, and its international alliances and commitments.
Dr. Ciddi is an Associate Professor of National Security Studies at Command and Staff College in Marine Corps University. He is also an Adjunct Associate Professor at the School of Foreign Service in Georgetown University. In addition, he is a Non-Resident Senior Fellow at the Foundation for Defense of Democracies. Dr. Ciddi is the author of Kemalism in Turkish Politics: The Republican People's Party, Secularism and Nationalism, a book that we discuss in this episode.
To learn more about Dr. Ciddi, you can visit his academic homepage.
Also, the shift from secularism to Islamism seems to be a trend in the Middle East since Iran's 1979 Revolution. In an earlier episode, Dr. Ghamari-Tabrizi of Princeton University spoke with me about Iran's dichotomy of an Islamic state pretending to be a Republic! How would one even write an Islamic constitution for a republic? Here is a Hint: Iran's Ayatollahs had no clue! Click here and listen to this fascinating episode.
I hope you enjoy these episodes.
Adel
Host of the History Behind News podcast
SUPPORT:
Click here and join our other supporters in the news peeler community. Thank you.
- 🎵 attribution, links and license for the theme music in this podcast: The Success by Keys of Moon | https://soundcloud.com/keysofmoon. Musicpromoted by https://www.free-stock-music.com. Attribution 4.0 International (CC BY 4.0): https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/.
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Title 42 Expired.
From Chinese & Catholic & Jewish immigrants of yesteryears to immigrations now at our southern border.
After Title 42 expired last week, America expected a deluge of immigrants to pour over our border with Mexico. But the post-Title 42 reality hasn't yet met the awful specter that everyone feared.
Regardless, the strains of migration from our southern border are not limited to the border states of Arizona, Texas, New Mexico and California. They are felt as far away as Chicago, which identifies itself as a sanctuary city. And the pressure on the resources of US cities is expected to increase rapidly, now that Title 42 has ended.
As the number of migrants swells in US cities, such as Chicago, some Americans are asking this: will we be safe? Will crime rates increase?
This question comes with its own history, dating back to the 19th century when Catholic and Jewish, and Chinese immigrants flood our cities. And the same questions were asked back then by Americans - will we be safe? Will crime rates increase?
To better understand the history of US immigration and its correlation with crime, criminal procedures, and religious and racial biases, back in 2021, I spoke with Professor Jennifer Chacon. And hat conversation is relevant and highly informative, today. In our discussion, Prof. Chacon brings focus to the history of eugenics in the context of immigration and answers questions like do immigrants commit more crimes than native-born Americans? What is a sanctuary city and how is it different than secure communities? What is the immigration paradox? And what was the purpose of Dillingham's Commission on Immigration, which was formed during Teddy Roosevelt's presidency?
At the time of our conversation, back in 2021, Professor Chacon was a professor of law at UC Berkeley. She is now at Stanford University Law School, where she researches issues that arise at the nexus of immigration law, constitutional law, and criminal law and procedure.
She is the co-author of the immigration law textbook titled Immigration Law and Social Justice - which is now in its 2nd edition, and the co-author of a forthcoming book exploring how the past decade’s shifting immigration policies have shaped, and been shaped by, immigrant communities and organizations in Southern California.
Professor Chacon was a co-convenor of the Immigration Policy Advisory Committee to then-Senator Barack Obama during his 2008 presidential campaign, and an outside advisor to the Immigration Transition Team of President-Elect Obama from November 2008 through January 2009. To learn more about Professor Chacon, you can visit her academic homepage.
I hope you enjoy this episode.
Adel
Host of the History Behind News podcast
p.s.
Click here and listen to the WSJ's podcast episode about the history of Title 42.
SUPPORT:
Click here and join our other supporters in the news peeler community. Thank you.
- 🎵 attribution, links and license for the theme music in this podcast: The Success by Keys of Moon | https://soundcloud.com/keysofmoon. Musicpromoted by https://www.free-stock-music.com. Attribution 4.0 International (CC BY 4.0): https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/.
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Monarchs who place the crown on their own heads. This is self-coronation.
As my guest, Dr. Jaume Aurell, tells it, many monarchs have performed self-coronation. What is interesting is that they did this, perhaps defying firmly adhered-to precedence, to establish their own authority, their own supremacy, and to send a clear and visual message about their real and perceived power. Quite tellingly, as Dr. Aurell explains, generally, successors of self-crowning monarchs within the line of their dynasty did not perform self-coronation. This is perhaps because they felt secure in the legitimacy and of their reign.
For this conversation, Dr. Aurell joined from Spain, where he is a professor of Medieval History at the Department of History at the University of Navarra. His main subjects of research are medieval and modern historiography, historians' autobiographies, and Medieval Coronations. He has published many peer-reviewed articles and books, two of which we discuss here:
1) Medieval Self-Coronations: The History and Symbolism of a Ritual (2020), and
2) Genealogies of the West: Civilization, Religion, Consciousness (2023)
To learn more about Dr. Aurell and his extensive research and publications, you can visit his academic homepage.
Also, here is another episode about British and other European royal families:
S2E31: The Family On The Throne, History of Royal Self-Staging, Dr. Mehrkens
I hope you enjoy these episodes.
Adel
Host of the History Behind News podcast
SUPPORT:
Click here and join our other supporters in the news peeler community. Thank you.
- 🎵 attribution, links and license for the theme music in this podcast: The Success by Keys of Moon | https://soundcloud.com/keysofmoon. Musicpromoted by https://www.free-stock-music.com. Attribution 4.0 International (CC BY 4.0): https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/.
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- Image description: Detail of a mosaic showing Roger II (Rogerios Rex in Greek letters) receiving the crown from Jesus Christ (IC), Martorana, Palermo.
- Image by User: Matthias Süßen (own work). License (CC BY-SA 4.0) & more links available at https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Roger_II_of_Sicily#/media/File:Martorana_Palermo_msu2017-0166.jpg
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Hey there News Peelers,
We have a great lineup of episodes starting this Fri., May 5, through the end ofMay. Listen to this brief trailer to find out more about them.
Also, if you are not already supporting the History Behind News podcast, please consider supporting me and this program. It's easy. Just click the support link below.
SUPPORT
Your financial support helps and motivates me to keep on chugging along and producing news episodes with distinguished scholars to uncover the history behind a variety of topics in our news. So thank you.
Adel
Host of the History Behind News podcast
- SUPPORT: please click here and join our other supporters in the news peeler community. Thank you.
- 🎵 attribution, links and license for the theme music in this podcast: The Success by Keys of Moon | https://soundcloud.com/keysofmoon. Musicpromoted by https://www.free-stock-music.com. Attribution 4.0 International (CC BY 4.0): https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/.
- HIGHLIGHTS: get future episode highlights in your inbox.To watch our distinguished guests tell the history behind our news, follow us onTwitter, YouTube, Facebook, LinkedIn, TikTok
--- Support this podcast: https://podcasters.spotify.com/pod/show/history-behind-news/support
Dominion v. Fox News...
The history of defamation suits against journalists is quite colorful. More than mere legal standards of proof for litigants, it goes to the core of our country's liberty and freedom of the press.
In this episode, Dr. Aimee Edmondson explains how the US Supreme Court's Sullivan decision in 1964 liberated journalists to do their jobs. She is a professor in media law and journalism history with a particular focus on civil-rights-related libel law, and, lucky for us, is the author of In Sullivan’s Shadow, The Use and Abuse of Libel Law During the Long Civil Rights Struggle, which we discuss in this episode.
In addition to discussing defamation law and its history in the context of journalism, she brings focus to something that most of us, more or less, tend to gloss over - the difference between journalism and news media. She believes that we must provide media literacy classes in our schools. Although I wholeheartedly agree with her, I just don't think polarized parents will ever agree to such a class in their kids' schools! She also believes in truth-telling in journalism.
To learn more about Dr. Edmondson, please visit her academic homepage.
In addition, below are links to other podcast conversations about protests and revolutions:
S2E18:DeSantis v. Disney & Florida's History,Dr. James ClarkHow special is Disney's special district status in Florida? And is DeSantis the South's most powerful governor since the Civil War?
I hope you enjoy these episodes.
Adel
Host of the History Behind News podcast
SUPPORT:
Click here and join our other supporters in the news peeler community. Thank you.
- 🎵 attribution, links and license for the theme music in this podcast: The Success by Keys of Moon | https://soundcloud.com/keysofmoon. Musicpromoted by https://www.free-stock-music.com. Attribution 4.0 International (CC BY 4.0): https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/.
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To watch our distinguished guests tell the history behind our news, follow us onTwitter, YouTube, Facebook, LinkedIn, TikTok
--- Support this podcast: https://podcasters.spotify.com/pod/show/history-behind-news/support
Kansas City shooting of a Black teenager who was at the wrong address, New York woman in the wrong driveway shot dead, Alabama birthday party mass shooting. Nashville school mass shooting, Half Moon Bay mass shooting Monterey Park Lunar New Year mass shooting, and many, many more!
How did we get here?!? I don't remember it being this bad before, back in the 1980s or even the '90s.
My distinguished guest, Dr. Robert Spitzer, takes us through the history of how we got here. How did an amendment about the militia that was pretty much an artifact of the 18th century - like the 3rd amendment about quartering soldiers in our homes - was resurrected and reinterpreted. How the NRA morphed from helping the government write gun regulations to vehemently opposing regulations. And how mass shootings increased after the assault weapons ban lapsed in 2004. And then, there is Justice Scalia's landmark decision in the Heller case, which changed so much about gun rights and regulations.
Dr. Spitzer is a professor at the Political Science Department of the State University of New York at Cortland, AKA SUNY Cortland. He is the author of fifteenbooks, including several on gun control. His latest book, which was published this year, is The Gun Dilemma, which we discuss in this episode.
Dr. Spitzer has testified before Congress, participated in meetings at the White House, and his work has been cited by federal courts.
To learn more about Dr. Spitzer and his extensive research and publications, you can visit his academic and personal homepages.
In addition, below are links to other podcast conversations about protests and revolutions:
S3E1: History of the Republican Party,Prof. Paul
I hope you enjoy these episodes.
Adel
Host of the History Behind News podcast
SUPPORT:
Click here and join our other supporters in the news peeler community. Thank you.
- 🎵 attribution, links and license for the theme music in this podcast: The Success by Keys of Moon | https://soundcloud.com/keysofmoon. Musicpromoted by https://www.free-stock-music.com. Attribution 4.0 International (CC BY 4.0): https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/.
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- Coverart photo by Gayatri Malhotra on Unsplash.
To watch our distinguished guests tell the history behind our news, follow us onTwitter, YouTube, Facebook, LinkedIn, TikTok
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Mass protests in Israel against Mr. Netanyahu's judiciary overhaul plan virtually brought the country to a standstill and threatened to split the military and drag into the current political conflict. My guest for this episode, Dr. Gideon Rahat, explains that this is one of the more dire crises in Israel's history. This assessment was recently confirmed by Mr. Netanyahu's speech, in which he talked about preventing a civil war!
In this episode, we look into the history of Israel's constitution, its legislature, its systems of checks and balances, and its polarized and personalized politics. Dr. Rahat is the Gersten Family Chair in Political Science and the Chair of the Department of Political Science at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem. His research fields are comparative politics and Israeli politics. His interests include political parties, electoral reform, the personalization of politics and candidate selection methods. He is a Senior Fellow at the Israel Democracy Institute., and an International Fellow at the Peltason Center for the Study of Democracy at the University of California, Irvine.
Dr. Rahat is the author of several books, including From Party Politics to Personalized Politics?: Party Change and Political Personalization in Democracies, which we discuss in this episode.
To learn more about Dr. Rahat and his extensive research and publications, you can visit his academic homepage.
In addition, below are links to other podcast conversations about protests and revolutions:
S3E13: France, History of Protests & Revolutions,Prof. Glidea
S2E33: Iran's 1979 Revolution, Dr. Sohrabi. S2E42: Revolutionary Spirit of Iranians, Dr. Ghamari-Tabrizi. S2E16: Russian Revolutions, Dr. Steinberg.
I hope you enjoy these episodes.
Adel
Host of the History Behind News podcast
SUPPORT:
Click here and join our other supporters in the news peeler community. Thank you.
- 🎵 attribution, links and license for the theme music in this podcast: The Success by Keys of Moon | https://soundcloud.com/keysofmoon. Musicpromoted by https://www.free-stock-music.com. Attribution 4.0 International (CC BY 4.0): https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/.
- HIGHLIGHTS: get future episode highlights in your inbox.
- Image attribution: by Oren Rozen, Demonstration on Begin Road in Tel Aviv, 28 January 2023. License: CC BY-SA 4.0.
To watch our distinguished guests tell the history behind our news, follow us onTwitter, YouTube, Facebook, LinkedIn, TikTok
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King Charles canceled his much anticipated official visit to France that was scheduled for the end of Mach, because the French President, Emanuel Macron, told him don't come - we have mass protests here in France!
France is now approaching three months of mass protests against President Marcon's pension reform bill, which increased the retirement age from 62 to 64. Polls show that 65% of the French people oppose this increase in their retirement age.
And these protests are massive, similar to the Yellow Vests Protests that gripped France in violence back in 2019. Although last week's protests were not as large as prior weeks', still, some 13,000 police officers nationwide, including 5,000 in Paris, were deployed to face and control protestors
So... What's the impact of these protests that are at times violent and volatile?
Here are some examples from recent Wall Street Journal and New York Times reports:
- Schools were shut down
- Trains and other public transportation were limited
- Many domestic and international flights were canceled
- Some roads and university entrances were blocked...
- Garbage went uncollected...
- More than one hundred government buildings have been vandalized...
- More than 800 security officers have been injured
- And lawmakers from President Marcon's party, have received death threats
To better understand the history of French protests and their revolutionary spirit, I spoke with Professor Robert Gildea of Worcester College at the University of Oxford... He has been studying modern French history for forty years with particular interests in both la France profonde and revolutionaryFrance, the scholarship that is illustrated in his books titled Education in Provincial France and Children of the Revolution, The French, 1799-1914.
To learn more about Prof. Gildea and his extensive research and publications, you can visit his academic homepage.
In addition, below are links to other podcast conversations about revolution:
S2E33: Iran's 1979 Revolution, Dr. Sohrabi. S2E42: Revolutionary Spirit of Iranians, Dr. Ghamari-Tabrizi. S2E16: Russian Revolutions, Dr. Steinberg.
I hope you enjoy these episodes.
Adel
Host of the History Behind News podcast
SUPPORT:
Click here and join our other supporters in the news peeler community. Thank you.
- 🎵 attribution, links and license for the theme music in this podcast: The Success by Keys of Moon | https://soundcloud.com/keysofmoon. Musicpromoted by https://www.free-stock-music.com. Attribution 4.0 International (CC BY 4.0): https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/.
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Hey there News Peelers,
We have a great lineup of episodes starting this Fri., Apr. 7, through all of April and then into May. Listen to this brief trailer to find out more about them.
And click the following link for our series on the history of the US economy: HbN US Econ Series.
Also, if you are not already supporting the History Behind News podcast, please consider supporting me and this program. It's easy. Just click the support link below.
SUPPORT
Your financial support helps and motivates me to keep on chugging along and producing news episodes with distinguished scholars to uncover the history behind a variety of topics in our news. So thank you.
Adel
Host of the History Behind News podcast
- SUPPORT: please click here and join our other supporters in the news peeler community. Thank you.
- 🎵 attribution, links and license for the theme music in this podcast: The Success by Keys of Moon | https://soundcloud.com/keysofmoon. Musicpromoted by https://www.free-stock-music.com. Attribution 4.0 International (CC BY 4.0): https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/.
- HIGHLIGHTS: get future episode highlights in your inbox.To watch our distinguished guests tell the history behind our news, follow us onTwitter, YouTube, Facebook, LinkedIn, TikTok
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Silicon Valley Bank and Signature Bank are the two midsize banks that just collapsed. But... how can we have major bank failures, with billions of dollars at stake. Didn't we learn how to regulate banks during the financial crisis of the Great Recession? That was barely 15 years ago!
In this episode, my guest, Dr. Lawrence White, explains that almost always when a bank run occurs, it's on a bank that's already insolvent! And he explains that we've been here before. That is, we've experienced how increases in interest rates have caused bank crises in the past. Dr. White has much to say about the impact of the FDIC on our banking system. He tells me about a time before FDIC when banks functioned just fine... that the relied on capital reserves to attract depositors - not an FDIC sign on their window!
But Dr. White doesn't just leave here. In the perspective segment of our conversation, he provides an alternative banking system - one without an FDIC and with minimal regulations.
To learn more about Dr. White and his extensive research and publications, you can visit his academic homepage.
In addition, below is a link to another podcast conversation with Dr. White:
S2E11: History of US Inflation.
Also, this is the link to The Daily, a New York Times podcast episode about Barney Frank.
Adel
Host of the History Behind News podcast
SUPPORT:
Click here and join our other supporters in the news peeler community. Thank you.
- 🎵 attribution, links and license for the theme music in this podcast: The Success by Keys of Moon | https://soundcloud.com/keysofmoon. Musicpromoted by https://www.free-stock-music.com. Attribution 4.0 International (CC BY 4.0): https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/.
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To watch our distinguished guests tell the history behind our news, follow us onTwitter, YouTube, Facebook, LinkedIn, TikTok
--- Support this podcast: https://podcasters.spotify.com/pod/show/history-behind-news/support
Hey there News Peelers,
We have a great lineup of episodes starting this Fri., Mar. 31, through all of April. Listen to this brief trailer to find out more about them.
Also, if you are not already supporting the History Behind News podcast, please consider supporting me and this program. It's easy. Just click the support link below.
SUPPORT
Your financial support helps and motivates me to keep on chugging along and producing news episodes with distinguished scholars to uncover the history behind a variety of topics in our news. So thank you.
Adel
Host of the History Behind News podcast
- HIGHLIGHTS: get future episode highlights in your inbox.
- SUPPORT: please click here and join our other supporters in the news peeler community. Thank you.
- 🎵 attribution, links and license for the theme music in this podcast: The Success by Keys of Moon | https://soundcloud.com/keysofmoon. Musicpromoted by https://www.free-stock-music.com. Attribution 4.0 International (CC BY 4.0): https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/.
To watch our distinguished guests tell the history behind our news, follow us onTwitter, YouTube, Facebook, LinkedIn, TikTok
--- Support this podcast: https://podcasters.spotify.com/pod/show/history-behind-news/support
Although news about Iran doesn't deluge our headlines any longer, as it did the days and weeks after Ms. Mahsa Amini's murder, we continue to hear and see trickles of news about Iran and Iranians. And it's a good time to talk about it, because it's the Persian New Year on March 20th - just 3 days from now.
In this episode, my guest, Dr. Khodadad Rezakhani of Leiden University, takes us from the Black Sea to the Iranian plateau to talk about Persians & Iranians. Are these terms interchangeable? He also tells us which one is more appropriate: the Persian or Iranian New Year? From there we talk about Eranshahr, and why that important term developed during the Sasanian Empire as opposed to earlier empires, namely the Achaemenid and Parthians. Dr. Rezakhani describes the importance of the Sasanian Empire in history, and how this mighty empire pummeled the Byzantine Roman Empire and then, suddenly, fell to the Arabs and Islamization of Iran. Throughout our conversation, he debunks many myths about Iran and world history.
To learn more about Dr. Rezakhani, you can visit his academic homepage.
In addition, below are links to other episodes about Iran:
S2E42: An Islamic state pretending to be a republic. How CIA’s 1953 coup impacted the 1979 Revolution? Dr. Behrooz Ghamari-Tabrizi
S2E34: Iran's History of Hijab & Women's Rights, Dr. Janet Afary
S2E33: Iranians of the 1979 Revolution, Dr. Naghmeh Sohrabi
S2E25: Iran-U.S. Diplomacy, Dr. Vali Nasr
S1E25: Iran's Leadership, Government Structure & Religion, Dr. Vali Nasr
Adel
Host of the History Behind News podcast
- HIGHLIGHTS: get future episode highlights in your inbox.
- SUPPORT: please click here and join our other supporters in the news peeler community. Thank you.
- 🎵 attribution, links and license for the theme music in this podcast is below: The Success by Keys of Moon | https://soundcloud.com/keysofmoonMusic promoted by https://www.free-stock-music.com Attribution 4.0 International (CC BY 4.0). https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/
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This week at HbN:
After WWII, Americans assumed that electric power would always be available. So no wonder that when we experienced our first massive power outage back in the 1960s... Americans were shocked!
But as our grids become ever more complex, we experience more power outages caused by storms or cascading blackouts that start with a small error!
This is the story of the largest and most sophisticated grid in the world - the history of a superpower's power infrastructure.
My guest is Dr. Julie Cohn. She is a Nonresident Scholar at the Center for Energy Studies at the Baker Institute for Public Policy in Rice University, and also a research historian in the Center for Public History at the University of Houston. She is the author of The Grid: Biography of an American Technology, a 2017 book published by MIT Press. (Amazon link).
To learn more about Dr. Cohn, you can visit her academic homepage.
In addition, below is the links to another fascinating episode:
S1E33: History of America's Infrastructure, Dr. Petroski
I hope you enjoy these episodes.
Adel
Host of the History Behind News podcast
- HIGHLIGHTS: get future episode highlights in your inbox.
- SUPPORT: please click here and join our other supporters in the news peeler community. Thank you.
- 🎵 attribution, links and license for the theme music in this podcast is below: The Success by Keys of Moon | https://soundcloud.com/keysofmoonMusic promoted by https://www.free-stock-music.com Attribution 4.0 International (CC BY 4.0). https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/
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My guest in this episode is Dr. Naomi Lamoreaux. She explains how antitrust enforcement has changed since its lax era of the 1980s. She adds that it's not just antitrust, patent law, which is seemingly a highly technical field of law, is also a product of our political system.
Dr. Lamoreaux takes us back to John D. Rockefeller, to the days of Standard Oil, to how the term antitrust was adopted and how the scope and enforcement of antitrust has ebbed and flowed over the centuries. This history is replete With colorful characters such as Judge Learned Hand and later Judge Bork, and iconic companies such as General Electric, International Harvester, and United States Steel Corporation, and organizations such as labor unions, NAACP and the Ku Klux Klan.
Dr. Lamoreaux is a professor of Economics and History at Yale University's Department of Economics. She is also a Senior Research Scholar at University of Michigan Law School
To learn more about Lamoreaux, you can visit her academic homepage.
In addition, below are links to two fascinating episodes:
S2E40: OPEC, Prices At the Pump & Oil History, Dr. Weaver
S2E13: CRISPR Patents, Dr. Zyontz
S1E17: History of US Patents, Mr. Pepe & Dr. Brenner
I hope you enjoy these episodes.
Adel
Host of the History Behind News podcast
- HIGHLIGHTS: get future episode highlights in your inbox.
- SUPPORT: please click here and join our other supporters in the news peeler community. Thank you.
- 🎵 attribution, links and license for the theme music in this podcast is below: The Success by Keys of Moon | https://soundcloud.com/keysofmoonMusic promoted by https://www.free-stock-music.com Attribution 4.0 International (CC BY 4.0). https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/
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As the one-year anniversary of Ukraine's war with Russia approached this week, President Biden made a surprise visit to Ukraine, and gave a rousing speech in Warsaw, doubling down on America's commitment to supporting Ukraine. The same day, President Putin gave his State of the Nation speech in Moscow, promising to double down on Russia's attacks on Ukraine with fresh troops and a new major offensive/
But this war may soon become more complicated still, because according to our Secretary of State Antony Blinken China is considering providing arms to Russia, and China's leader Xi Jinping is preparing to visit Moscow for a summit with Putin soon.
As all of this fast-developing news comes at us against the backdrop of the slow grind of this war, and the inescapable realization is that this may be a long war. And as Russia pummels Ukrainian cities, civilians and infrastructure, the realization is setting in that far from decisive battles, this may become a war of attrition!
Clearly, Mr. Putin believes that he can bring Ukraine to its knees by basically attrition warfare. In this episode, you'll discover that, historically speaking, he is not alone - many autocracies anddemocracies engaged in attrition warfare with similar beliefs. Their successes and failures all depended on how they choreographed their resources, politics, peoples, and combined arms warfare.
But when does an armed conflict transition from decisive strategies and swift battles into long-drawn wars, in which attrition becomes the strategy? Has human history experienced more decisive wars or more wars of attrition? What is a prime example of attrition warfare? And what military strategies have had to be adopted for these long, grinding wars - these wars of attrition?
To better understand attrition warfare, I spoke with Dr. Sebastian Lukasik, a professor in the Department of Leadership and Research Development at Air Command and Staff College, in Air University, which is a professional military education university system of the United States Air Force, where Dr. Lukasik is the director of the ACSC In-Residence Electives Program.
To learn more about Dr. Lukasik, you can visit his academic homepage.
In addition, below are links to two fascinating episodes:
S2E16: Russian Reforms, Rebellions & Revolutions, Dr. Mark Steinberg
S3E6: History of Tank Warfare, Dr. Alaric Searle
I hope you enjoy these episodes.
Adel
Host of the History Behind News podcast
- HIGHLIGHTS: get future episode highlights in your inbox.
- SUPPORT: please click here and join our other supporters in the news peeler community. Thank you.
- 🎵 attribution, links and license for the theme music in this podcast is below: The Success by Keys of Moon | https://soundcloud.com/keysofmoonMusic promoted by https://www.free-stock-music.com Attribution 4.0 International (CC BY 4.0). https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/
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Although China won't admit it, its huge balloon hovering over the United States, in plain view of ordinary Americans, was a huge geopolitical blunder. To boot, that we shot it down and were able to confirm it was equipped with spying equipment, which negated their claim that it was just a weather balloon, internationally undermined their credibility.
But we have had our own share of blunders. First, we sent reconnaissance balloons over the Soviet Union, until they told us to stop it. Second, our "weather" plane (no doubt similar to China's "weather" balloon), was shot down over the Soviet Union. This is the infamous story of the U-2 spy plane, which became a major embarrassment for the Eisenhower administration.
To get the full U-2 story and much more about aerial reconnaissance, I spoke with Dr. Tim Schultz, Associate Dean of Academics at the US Naval War College. Prior to this, Dr. Schultz served as the Dean of the United State Air Force School of Advanced Air and Space Studies. And prior to his teaching career, he was a U-2 pilot. Dr. Schultz is a retired colonel of the United States Air Force and was the Commander of the 1st Expeditionary Reconnaissance Squadron, which is a U-2 combat squadron.
He is the author of Air Power in the Age of Primacy: Air Warfare since the Cold War - a 2021 book; and also The Problem with Pilots: How Physicians, Engineers, and Airpower Enthusiasts Redefined Flight - a 2018 book.
To learn more about Dr. Schultz, you can visit his academic homepage.
In addition, below are links to two fascinating episodes:
S3E2: U.S. Stealth Bombers & Air Superiority, Dr. Melvin Deaile
S2E36: China's Leaders: Overreaction & Overreach, Dr. Susan Shirk
I hope you enjoy these episodes.
Adel
Host of the History Behind News podcast
- HIGHLIGHTS: get future episode highlights in your inbox.
- SUPPORT: please click here and join our other supporters in the news peeler community. Thank you.
- 🎵 attribution, links and license for the theme music in this podcast is below: The Success by Keys of Moon | https://soundcloud.com/keysofmoonMusic promoted by https://www.free-stock-music.com Attribution 4.0 International (CC BY 4.0). https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/
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Western countries, mainly the United States, the United Kingdom and Germany, are supposed to be sending tanks to Ukraine, to help its valiant fight against Russia. There are two points to consider here. The first is that despite the original enthusiasm and the display of a united front to help Ukraine, these Western may not be arriving anytime soon - save for Germany. The second is that if and when the tanks do arrive in Ukraine, their true effectiveness may not be much more than propaganda value - at least initially so!
To better understand the history of tanks and armored warfare, I spoke with Dr. Alaric Searle. who joined me from Manchester, the United Kingdom, where he is a professor of Modern European History at Salford University. Dr. Searle is a historian with research interests in several subjects including German, British and Chinese militaries. He has been a Visiting Scholar and Visiting Fellow at the University of Oxford, and also an Honorary Fellow and Distinguished Visiting Professor at German and Chinese universities, respectively. He is the author of several books, including the following:
1) Genesis, Employment, Aftermath: First World War Tanks and the New Warfare, 1900-1945,
2) Armoured Warfare: A Military, Political and Global History,
3) Kurdish Armour Against ISIS, and
4) The Military Papers and Correspondence of Major-General J.F.C. Fuller, 1916-1933.
To learn more about Dr. Searle, you can visit his academic homepage.
In addition, below are links to two fascinating episodes:
S2E8: History of War In Ukraine, Dr. David Stone
S2E20: Why Do Humans War? Dr. Chris Blattman
I hope you enjoy these episodes.
Adel
Host of the History Behind News podcast
- HIGHLIGHTS: get future episode highlights in your inbox.
- SUPPORT: please click here and join our other supporters in the news peeler community. Thank you.
- 🎵 attribution, links and license for the theme music in this podcast is below: The Success by Keys of Moon | https://soundcloud.com/keysofmoonMusic promoted by https://www.free-stock-music.com Attribution 4.0 International (CC BY 4.0). https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/
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From favelas to beachfront properties. From democracies to dictatorships. From economic booms to busts. From Catholicism to evangelical Christianity. And from white to many shades of colors.
Brazil's January 8th insurrection occurred two years and two days after our own January 6th insurrection. While our news media has covered the many similarities between these two events, such as false claims of stolen presidential elections made by losing right-wing presidents and their supporters, I wanted to dig into Brazil's history, to look deeper for similarities and differences between Brazil and our own country. This is important because Brazil and the United States are the two most populous democracies in the Western Hemisphere.
So, to better understand Brazil's history and compare it to ours, I spoke with Dr. Marshall Eakin, a distinguished professor of history at Vanderbilt University.
Dr. Eakin is the recipient of two Fulbright-Hayes fellowships and grants from the Tinker Foundation, the National Endowment for the Humanities, the British Library, the Tennessee Humanities Council, and the Corporation for National Service. He has also been the recipient of numerous teaching and advising awards.
Dr. Eakin is a historian of Latin America specializing in the history of Brazil. Although his work spans all of Brazilian history, his major publications have concentrated on the processes of nationalism and nation-building, economic and business history, and industrialization—primarily in the twentieth century.
He has authored many books on Brazil. In this episode, we discuss two of them: Becoming Brazilians: Race and National Identity in Twentieth-Century Brazil, and also Tropical Capitalism: The Industrialization of Belo Horizonte, Brazil.
To learn more about Dr. Eakin, you can visit his academic homepage.
In addition, below is a link to another fascinating episode:
S3E8: Chile's History of Polarized Politics, Dr. Claudio Fuentes
I hope you enjoy these episodes.
Adel
Host of the History Behind News podcast
- HIGHLIGHTS: get future episode highlights in your inbox.
- SUPPORT: please click here and join our other supporters in the news peeler community. Thank you.
- 🎵 attribution, links and license for the theme music in this podcast is below: The Success by Keys of Moon | https://soundcloud.com/keysofmoonMusic promoted by https://www.free-stock-music.com Attribution 4.0 International (CC BY 4.0). https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/
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Now that Mr. Biden is halfway through his presidential term, we want to find his place in US history. In other words, we want to weigh his presidency against prior US presidents.
For example, how do Mr. Biden's successes or failures stack up against his predecessors? How does his age compare to prior US presidents? I know that's a big concern for lots of people. And related to that, here is another question: have any former US presidents died of old age while in office?
How about classified documents? Has that been an issue with other sitting presidents?
Also, there is the matter of the Democratic Party itself. Would Andrew Jackson, the first president of the Democratic Party, recognize President Biden's democratic party? How about FDR - a more modern Democratic President? Would he recognize President Biden's Democratic Party? Would either of them vote for a Biden second term?
To learn more about this history, and to get some insights into what's happening now, in our present moment, I spoke to Dr. Thomas J. Balcerski. He is a visiting professor in US History at Occidental College, also known as Oxy, where he teaches courses on U.S. Presidents and First Ladies as well as the history of the Democratic Party, from Thomas Jefferson to Joe Biden.
In addition to Oxy, Dr. Balcerski is a professor of American history at Eastern Connecticut State University.
Dr. Balcerski is also a Long-Term Fellow at the Huntington Library, where he is conducting research for his forthcoming book The Greatest Party Ever Known, which we discuss in this episode….
He is the author of Bosom Friends: The Intimate World of James Buchanan and William Rufus King. Among his many publications and projects with the White House History Quarterly, Civil War History, Journal of Social History, and others, he recently appeared on the Discovery+ series “The Book of Queer” to discuss the sexuality of Abraham Lincoln.
To learn more about Dr. Balcerski, you can visit his academic homepage,
In addition, below are links to two other fascinating episodes:
S3E1: Principles & Roots of the GOP, Prof. Joel Richard Paul
S2E41: A 2nd Trump Term?Prof. Michael J. Gerhardt
I hope you enjoy these episodes.
Adel
Host of the History Behind News podcast
- HIGHLIGHTS: get future episode highlights in your inbox.
- SUPPORT: please click here and join our other supporters in the news peeler community. Thank you.
- 🎵 attribution, links and license for the theme music in this podcast is below: The Success by Keys of Moon | https://soundcloud.com/keysofmoonMusic promoted by https://www.free-stock-music.com Attribution 4.0 International (CC BY 4.0). https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/
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It's the two-year anniversary of the History Behind News podcast. Given this news, we decided to look into the history behind podcasting. For example, how did podcasting become a thing? How and when did podcasting morph out of its super geeky & techy origins, into this huge, supercool, mainstream phenomenon? And how is a podcast different than, say, a radio program that’s just uploaded onto the Internet and then called a podcast? And finally, what makes for a good podcast?
To get answers to all these questions, I spoke with Dr. Martin Spinelli – Professor of Podcasting and Creative Media at the University of Sussex in Brighton, the United Kingdom.
He is the lead editor of the Bloomsbury Podcast Studies book series, co-host and executive producer of the podcast For Your Ears Only, and writer and executive producer of the recently released adolescent emotional well-being sci-fi podcast drama, The Rez. His benchmark radio art series Radio Radioand LINEbreak are included in the permanent collection of the Museum of Television and Radio in New York.
To learn more about Dr. Spinelli, you can visit his academic homepage. And here is an Amazon link to his book, Podcasting: The Audio Media Revolution, which we discuss in this episode.
I hope you enjoy this episode.
Adel
Host of the History Behind News podcast
- HIGHLIGHTS: get future episode highlights in your inbox.
- SUPPORT: please click here and join our other supporters in the news peeler community. Thank you.
- 🎵 attribution, links and license for the theme music in this podcast is below: The Success by Keys of Moon | https://soundcloud.com/keysofmoonMusic promoted by https://www.free-stock-music.com Attribution 4.0 International (CC BY 4.0). https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/
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The B-21 Raider is a new Air Force superweapon - a stealth bomber that has taken the Northrop Grumman close to a decade to develop on time and under budget. But the US Air Force has been shrinking its bomber fleet since the collapse of the USSR - the Soviet Union. So why develop the B-21 Raider now? Why embark on a huge and highly costly new bomber project now?
To dig deeper into this history, I spoke with Dr. Melvin Deaile. He is the Director of the School of Advanced Nuclear and Deterrence Studies, and an Associate Professor in the Department of International Studies at Air University’s Air Command and Staff College. Dr. Deaile teaches classes on nuclear deterrence, nuclear strategy, joint warfighting, and classical military thought. He is a retired Air Force Colonel, where he served two tours in the B-52 Stratofortress and a tour in the B-2 Spirit. He has flown combat operations as part of Operations DESERT STORM and OPERATION ENDURING FREEDOM, including a record-setting 44.3-hour combat mission, and deployed in support of Operation IRAQI FREEDOM.
He is the recipient of the Distinguished Flying Cross and a distinguished graduate of the USAF Weapon School. Dr. Deailerecently published his first book, Always at War, which chronicles the development of SAC’s organizational culture under Gen Curtis LeMay. Of course, we discuss that book in this episode.
To learn more about Dr. Deaile, you can visit his academic homepage. And here is an Amazon link to his latest book, Always at War, which we discuss in this episode.
In addition, below are links to two other fascinating episodes:
S2E8: History of Wars in Ukraine, Dr. David Stone
S2E5: Who Are Ukrainians?, Dr. Catherine Wanner
I hope you enjoy these episodes.
Adel
Host of the History Behind News podcast
- HIGHLIGHTS: get future episode highlights in your inbox.
- SUPPORT: please click here and join our other supporters in the news peeler community. Thank you.
- 🎵 attribution, links and license for the theme music in this podcast is below: The Success by Keys of Moon | https://soundcloud.com/keysofmoonMusic promoted by https://www.free-stock-music.com Attribution 4.0 International (CC BY 4.0). https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/
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The 118th Congress convened this week, on Tuesday, Jan. 3, 2023. But the Republican-dominated U.S. House of Representatives has failed to show even a semblance of proper function. No business has been conducted for the last three days, because we have no Speaker of the House. And as of this recording, the two-year anniversary of the Jan. 6th attack on Congress, Mr. Kevin McCarthy has Failed to win the Speakership after 11 rounds of voting.
Hopefully, by the time you listen to this podcast, our country will have a Speaker of the House so that U.S. Representatives can be sworn in, so they can legislate so that they can finally conduct the people's business.
In an interview with the Wall Street Journal, a Republican supporter of McCarthy described the opposition to McCarthy's speakership as a "temper tantrum." The Republican opposition to McCarthy's speakership, composed of some 20 Representatives, consider themselves "conservative purists". But the New York Times explains that their agenda "is mostly to defund, disrupt and dismantle government, not to participate in it".
"conservative purists"… the historical question that comes to mind when I hear that term is what are the historical roots of the Republican Party, of conservatism, and what are their founding principles.
To get answers to these questions, I spoke with Prof Joel Richard Paul, who is a legal scholar and historian and he teaches Constitutional Law and other subjects at UC Hastings College of the Law. In this episode, he also tells us why the name of his law school has changed and also speaks about cancel culture.
To learn more about Prof. Paul, you can visit his academic homepage.
Here is an Amazon link to his latest book, Indivisible - Daniel Webster And the Birth of American Nationalism, which we discuss in this episode.
In addition, below is a link to my conversation with Prof. Gerhardt, in which he compares Mr. Trump's attempt at a comeback in 2024 to prior US presidents. He also tells us what it's like to testify before the U.S. Congress.
S2E41: History of Presidential Comebacks, Prof. Michael Gerhardt
I hope you enjoy these episodes.
Adel
Host of the History Behind News podcast
- HIGHLIGHTS: get future episode highlights in your inbox.
- SUPPORT: please click here and join our other supporters in the news peeler community. Thank you.
- 🎵 attribution, links and license for the theme music in this podcast is below: The Success by Keys of Moon | https://soundcloud.com/keysofmoonMusic promoted by https://www.free-stock-music.com Attribution 4.0 International (CC BY 4.0). https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/
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Was Iran's 1979 Revolution an Islamic revolution? Many people say no, it was not. So if that's the case, then why did Iranians vote to transform Iran into an Islamic republic shortly after the revolution? And how can an Islamic state also operate as a republic? These are two opposing ideas - one represents the rule of the people and the other rule of the divine.
My guest for this episode is Dr. Behrooz Ghamari-Tabrizi, a professor and Chair of the Department of Near Eastern Studies at Princeton University, where he is also the Director of the Sharmin & Bijan Mossavar-Rahmani Center for Iran and Persian Gulf Studies. He has written extensively on the topics of Iran, the Iranian revolution, social theory, and Islamist political thought in different journals and book chapters. Currently, he is working on a project on Mystical Modernity, a comparative study of the philosophy of history and political theory of Walter Benjamin and Ali Shariati.
He is the author of three books, including slam and Dissent in Post-Revolutionary Iran, Foucault in Iran: Islamic Revolution after the Enlightenment, and Remembering Akbar: Inside the Iranian Revolution.
To learn more about Dr. Ghamari-Tabrizi, you can visit his academic homepage.
Here is a Revolutionary song by Iranian women... it's a song about happiness & not being afraid...
In addition, below are links to other episodes about Iran:
S2E34: Iran's History of Hijab & Women's Rights, Dr. Janet Afary
S2E33: Iranians of the 1979 Revolution, Dr. Naghmeh Sohrabi
S2E25: Iran-U.S. Diplomacy, Dr. Vali Nasr
S1E25: Iran's Leadership, Government Structure & Religion, Dr. Vali Nasr
Adel
Host of the History Behind News podcast
- HIGHLIGHTS: get future episode highlights in your inbox.
- SUPPORT: please click here and join our other supporters in the news peeler community. Thank you.
- 🎵 attribution, links and license for the theme music in this podcast is below: The Success by Keys of Moon | https://soundcloud.com/keysofmoonMusic promoted by https://www.free-stock-music.com Attribution 4.0 International (CC BY 4.0). https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/
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Barely a week after this year's midterm elections, in which the much anticipated Republican Red Wave never materialized, former President Trump announced his candidacy for the 2024 presidential election.
The only president who succeeded in occupying the White House in two non-consecutive terms was Grover Cleveland. Yet, the story of his comeback is much different than Trump's. In fact, our immediate former president can learn a great deal from Cleveland in how to lose an election and in how to orchestrate his comeback.
In addition to Cleveland, Andrew Jackson and Richard Nixon lost their presidential bids. But they stayed in the fight, rallied their support and had their comebacks to win the White House. By the way, when he lost to Kennedy, Nixon gave a brief but beautiful speech before both houses of Congress. Click this link to listen to it: Nixon announces JFK win to Congress 1961.
To dig deep into this history, I spoke with Professor Michael Gerhardt of the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, where he is a Burton Craig Distinguished Professor of Jurisprudence at the school of law there. If Professor Gerhardt's voice sounds familiar to you, it's because you've seen him on TV, many times.
During the Clinton and first Trump impeachment proceedings, Professor Gerhardt served as an impeachment expert for CNN. In the second impeachment trial of President Trump, he was an expert commentator for CNN, Fox, and MSNBC and served as special counsel to the Presiding Officer, Senator Patrick Leahy.
In addition to all of that, Professor Gerhardt has testified more than 20 times before Congress, including as the only joint witness in the Clinton impeachment proceedings in the House; speaking behind closed doors to the entire House of Representatives about the history of impeachment in 1998. He also testified as one of the four constitutional scholars called by the House Judiciary Committee during President Trump’s impeachment proceedings.
He is the author of seven books, including the Forgotten Presidents, and also Lincoln's Mentors, and his forthcoming book is FDR's Mentors.
To learn more about Professor Gerhardt, you can visit his academic homepage.
In addition, below are links to two other interesting episodes:
S2E39: History of America's Polarized Politics?, Dr. David Schultz
S2E27: History of America's Election Disputes, Prof. Edwar Foley
S2E37: U.S Classified Information - A History, Prof. Heidi Kitrosser
I hope you enjoy these episodes.
Adel
Host of the History Behind News podcast
- HIGHLIGHTS: get future episode highlights in your inbox.
- SUPPORT: please click here and join our other supporters in the news peeler community. Thank you.
- 🎵 attribution, links and license for the theme music in this podcast is below: The Success by Keys of Moon | https://soundcloud.com/keysofmoonMusic promoted by https://www.free-stock-music.com Attribution 4.0 International (CC BY 4.0). https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/
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Why was OPEC formed? Who were the Seven Sisters that ruled the world? How were oil prices determined in the past? And How are they determined now? Will oil and gas prices decrease more anytime soon?
For answers to these questions, I spoke with Ms. Jacqueline L. Weaver, a Professor of Law at the University of Houston Law Center. Her teaching and research interests cover oil and gas law, energy law and policy, international petroleum, and environmental and natural resources law. She has lectured on topics in international petroleum transactions in Africa, Kazakhstan, Lisbon, China and Bangkok.
She is a co-author of Smith and Weaver, The Texas Law of Oil and Gas, and a national casebook titled Energy, Economics and the Environment; as well as another casebook titled International Petroleum Transactions and the treatise International Petroleum Exploration & Exploitation Agreement. She has written articles on offshore safety after the Macondo disaster in the Gulf of Mexico, energy markets, sustainable development in the international petroleum industry, comparative unitization laws, energy policy, and traditional oil and gas law topics.
She worked as an economist in the Corporate Planning Department of Exxon Co. USA before joining the University of Houston Law Center.
To learn more about Professor Weaver, you can visit her academic homepage.
In addition, below is a link to another interesting episode:
S1E26: Is Green Energy Truly Green?, Prof. KK DuVivier
I hope you enjoy these episodes.
Adel
Host of the History Behind News podcast
- HIGHLIGHTS: get future episode highlights in your inbox.
- SUPPORT: please click here and join our other supporters in the news peeler community. Thank you.
- 🎵 attribution, links and license for the theme music in this podcast is below: The Success by Keys of Moon | https://soundcloud.com/keysofmoonMusic promoted by https://www.free-stock-music.com Attribution 4.0 International (CC BY 4.0). https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/
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The "Red Wave" that was trumped up as a red tsunami never materialized... it barely lapped the shore (I am keeping with the wave analogy here).
So what happened? Did we Americans essentially fear the instability that election deniers pose to our democratic systems? If so, we must have feared this so much that we voted for the very party that most of us seem to blame for high inflation, which has always been the death knell for political parties in power in the U.S.
This is a story of geography, demography, money & minority rule.
My guest in this episode is Dr. David Schultz, a Distinguished Hamline University Professor of Political Science and Legal Studies. He is also a professor of law at Hamline as well as the University of Minnesota Schools of Law, where he teaches election law. In this conversation, he tells me about what he believes to be the most important election in U.S. history: the presidential election of 1800. Why is this election important? Because it set the precedent for the losing political party to relinquish power. At the end of the day, Adams conceded his loss (hint, Mr. Trump).
Dr. Schultz explains how polarization has increased in America's politics over the last 50 years, and why polarization will decrease in the next decade (I know, I was surprised too). We also talk about a subject that has baffled and then angered me for years: Super PACs. Don't they threaten our democracy?
We end our conversation with another intriguing realization - that America's election winners are receiving only a minority of the votes. This is a crazy idea in a democracy. Yet, it is happening in ours.
To learn more about Dr. Schultz, you can visit his academic homepage.
In addition, below are links to other interesting episodes:
S1E40: The Real Story of Thanksgiving, Dr. David Silverman
S2E27: America's Election Disputes & Violence, Prof. Edward Foley
S2E38: Chile's History of Polarized Politics, Dr. Claudio Fuentes
I hope you enjoy these episodes.
Adel
Host of the History Behind News podcast
- HIGHLIGHTS: get future episode highlights in your inbox.
- SUPPORT: please click here and join our other supporters in the news peeler community. Thank you.
- 🎵 attribution, links and license for the theme music in this podcast is below: The Success by Keys of Moon | https://soundcloud.com/keysofmoonMusic promoted by https://www.free-stock-music.com Attribution 4.0 International (CC BY 4.0). https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/
- Attribution for episode's artwork image: "Classified documents with and without cover sheets found by the Federal Bureau of Investigation during its search of Mar-a-Lago in August 2022." Citation: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Classified_information_in_the_United_States. Public Domain image.
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Before the CIA-supported 1973 coup that placed Pinochet in power, Chile enjoyed democracy for several decades. Remarkably, after less than a decade of Pinochet's brutal repression of his people, Chileans were able to slowly introduce changes that lay the foundation for the eventual return of democracy. This is a huge national accomplishment.
In this episode, Dr. Claudio Fuentes takes us through the history of Chile's polarized politics from prior to 1973 to 2022. Despite this polarization, Chile's democracy has survived. Perhaps the reason is that Chileans have experienced the alternative to democracy: Pinochet's years.
As our politics become more polarized here in the U.S., we can learn quite a lot from Chile, in how fragile democracy is, in how polarization can destroy democracy.
Dr. Fuentes is a professor at the School of Political Science at Diego Portales University in Chile. His academic interests focus on the study of political processes in Chile and Latin America, and in recent years on the study of the dynamics of institutional change.
Among his many other recognitions, Dr. Fuentes won the award for the best doctoral thesis awarded by the American Political Science Association (APSA) and is a Luksic Fellow at Harvard University (2011). In Chile, was a member of the Presidential Anti-Corruption Advisory Council (2015).
He is an associate researcher at the Center for Intercultural and Indigenous Studies (CIIR) and coordinates the Constitutional Laboratory at Diego Portales University.
To learn more about Dr. Fuentes, you can visit his academic homepage.
In addition, below are links to other episodes about U.S. interests, interference and even occupation of countries and nations in the Americas:
S2E35: Puerto Rico, Dr. Jorge Duany
S1E24: Cuba's History, Dr. Lillian Guerra
S1E23: Haiti's History, Dr. Robert Fatton
I hope you enjoy these episodes.
Adel
Host of the History Behind News podcast
- HIGHLIGHTS: get future episode highlights in your inbox.
- SUPPORT: please click here and join our other supporters in the news peeler community. Thank you.
- 🎵 attribution, links and license for the theme music in this podcast is below: The Success by Keys of Moon | https://soundcloud.com/keysofmoonMusic promoted by https://www.free-stock-music.com Attribution 4.0 International (CC BY 4.0). https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/
- Attribution for episode's artwork image: "Classified documents with and without cover sheets found by the Federal Bureau of Investigation during its search of Mar-a-Lago in August 2022." Citation: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Classified_information_in_the_United_States. Public Domain image.
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Can a U.S. president declassify a document by merely thinking it?
My guest is Heidi Kitrosser, Professor of Law at Northwestern University Pritzker School of Law. Professor Kitrosser is an expert on the constitutional law of federal government secrecy and on separation of powers and free speech law… more broadly. She is the author of the following book: Reclaiming Accountability: Transparency, Executive Power, and the U.S. Constitution, which was awarded the 2014 Chicago-Kent College of Law / Roy C. Palmer Civil Liberties Prize.
She is on the steering committee of a new initiative – the Free Expression Legal Network (FELN) spearheaded by Yale’s Media Freedom and Information Access Clinic and the Reporter’s Committee for Freedom of the Press
She not only tackles the above question head-on, but she also gets into the history of classified information (e.g., Nixon's executive orders), and analyzes the culpability of the Judicial and Legislative branches of our government in giving the Executive branch more or less a free rein when it comes to classified information.
To learn more about Professor Kitrosser, you can visit her academic homepage.
In addition, below is a link to a recent podcast that is relevant to our current news:
S2E27: U.S. Election Violence, Electoral College & Minority Winners, Professor Edward Foley
I hope you enjoy these episodes.
Adel
Host of the History Behind News podcast
- HIGHLIGHTS: get future episode highlights in your inbox.
- SUPPORT: please click here and join our other supporters in the news peeler community. Thank you.
- 🎵 attribution, links and license for the theme music in this podcast is below: The Success by Keys of Moon | https://soundcloud.com/keysofmoonMusic promoted by https://www.free-stock-music.com Attribution 4.0 International (CC BY 4.0). https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/
- Attribution for episode's artwork image: "Classified documents with and without cover sheets found by the Federal Bureau of Investigation during its search of Mar-a-Lago in August 2022." Citation: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Classified_information_in_the_United_States. Public Domain image.
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Xi Jinping - a third unprecedented term!
As China flexes its military muscles against Taiwan, Japan and its other neighbors, the world has come to doubt its peaceful intentions. And as its economy falters, for example in the real estate sector and beyond, the world is no longer spellbound by China's economic might.
All of this begs the following question: what happened to China's peaceful rise?
To answer that question, I spoke with Dr. Susan Shirk, who first visited China in 1971 and has been teaching, researching and engaging China diplomatically ever since. From 1997-2000, Dr. Shirk served as Deputy Assistant Secretary of State in the Bureau of East Asia and Pacific Affairs, with responsibility for China, Taiwan, Hong Kong and Mongolia. Dr. Shirk is the chair of the 21st Century China Center in UC San Diego, and director emeritus of the UC Institute on Global Conflict and Cooperation (IGCC). She also co-chairs a task force of China experts that issued its second report in 2019, “Course Correction: Toward an Effective and Sustainable China Policy.” In addition, Dr. Shirk is the co-chair of the UC San Diego Forum on U.S.-China Relations, the first ongoing high-level forum focused entirely on the U.S.-China relationship. In this episode, I will speak to her about her most recent book… "Overreach: How China Derailed Its Peaceful Rise".
To learn more about Dr. Shirk, including a list of her many publications, you can visit her academic homepage.
In addition, below are links to other episodes about Caribbean nations:
S1E12: China's One-Child Policy, Dr. Wang
S1E19: History of Hong Kong, Dr. Wasserstrom
S2E1: China's Debt Crisis, Dr. Shih
S2E29: Imperial China's History, Mr. Schuman
I hope you enjoy these episodes.
Adel
Host of the History Behind News podcast
- HIGHLIGHTS: get future episode highlights in your inbox.
- SUPPORT: please click here and join our other supporters in the news peeler community. Thank you.
- 🎵 attribution, links and license for the theme music in this podcast is below: The Success by Keys of Moon | https://soundcloud.com/keysofmoonMusic promoted by https://www.free-stock-music.com Attribution 4.0 International (CC BY 4.0). https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/
- Attribution for episode's artwork image: Mar 14, 2012， Secretary Clinton and Vice President Biden hosted a lunch in honor of Vice President of the People's Republic of China, Xi Jinping, at the Department of State. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Xi_Jinping
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Hurricane Fiona devastated Puerto Rico last month, but it also brought focus, once more, to Puerto Rico's peculiar status within the United States... that it is a territory, not a state, despite the fact that more than 9 million Americans identify themselves as Puerto Rican.
To better understand Puerto Rico's rich history, I spoke with Dr. Jorge Duany, who was born in Cuba and raised in Panama and Puerto Rico. Dr. Duany is the Director of the Cuban Research Institute and Professor of Anthropology in the Department of Global & Sociocultural Studies at Florida International University. And prior to that, he served as Acting Dean of the College of Social Sciences and Professor of Anthropology at the University of Puerto Rico.
Dr. Duany is the author, coauthor, editor, or coeditor of twenty-two books, including the following 4 that I am identifying here:
- 1st… Puerto Rico: What Everyone Needs to Know
- 2nd… The Puerto Rican Nation on the Move: Identities on the Island and in the United States
- 3rd…Cuba and Puerto Rico: Transdisciplinary Approaches to History, Literature, and Culture
- 4th…Cubans in Puerto Rico: Ethnic Economy and Cultural Identity
In addition, below are links to other episodes about Caribbean nations:
S1E24: Cuba's History, Dr. Lillian Guerra
S1E23: Haiti's History, Dr. Robert Fatton
I hope you enjoy these episodes.
Adel
Host of the History Behind News podcast
- HIGHLIGHTS: get future episode highlights in your inbox.
- SUPPORT: please click here and join our other supporters in the news peeler community. Thank you.
- 🎵 attribution, links and license for the theme music in this podcast is below: The Success by Keys of Moon | https://soundcloud.com/keysofmoonMusic promoted by https://www.free-stock-music.com Attribution 4.0 International (CC BY 4.0). https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/
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Zan. Zendeghi. Azadi.
Women. Life. Liberty.
This chant has become the slogan of the current protests in Iran, which started with the murder of Ms. Mahsa Amini by the so-called 'morality police'. And to be sure, this time in Iran is all about women's rights.
My guest is an expert in the history of hijab and women's rights in Iran. In this episode, Dr. Janet Afary talks about the plight of Iranian women in the context of Iran's rigid class hierarchy, going back all to the pre-Islamic Persian Empire. We talk about love, love poems and marriage, and polygamy. She talks about the Shah's White Revolution, the liberations it brought for women and the enemies he made amongst the clergy because of it. From there, she explains Iran's progressive family planning laws (e.g., abortion up to 4 months), all of which were abrogated recently, causing more frustration among Iranians.
Dr. Afary is the authors of many books on the history of Iran, women's rights there, and modern romance and sexual politics. Click here to learn more about her books.
In addition, below are links to other episodes about Iran:
S2E33: Iranians of the 1979 Revolution, Dr. Naghmeh Sohrabi
S2E25: Iran-U.S. Diplomacy, Dr. Vali Nasr
S1E25: Iran's Leadership, Government Structure & Religion, Dr. Vali Nasr
And here is the link to Ms. Amanpour's interview with Ms. Ebadi:
https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/amanpour/id1060761517?i=1000581946452
I hope you enjoy these episodes.
Adel
Host of the History Behind News podcast
- HIGHLIGHTS: get future episode highlights in your inbox.
- SUPPORT: please click here and join our other supporters in the news peeler community. Thank you.
- 🎵 attribution, links and license for the theme music in this podcast is below: The Success by Keys of Moon | https://soundcloud.com/keysofmoonMusic promoted by https://www.free-stock-music.com Attribution 4.0 International (CC BY 4.0). https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/
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Hey there Newspeelers,
Tune in this Friday for my conversation with Dr. Janet Afary, in which she talks to me about Iran's history of hijab, women's rights and sexual politics.
This episode will be available on Friday, Oct. 14, at 6 am ET.
Talk to you guys then.
Adel
Host of the History Behind News podcast
- HIGHLIGHTS: get podcast highlights in your inbox.
- SUPPORT: please click here and join our other supporters in the news peeler community. Thank you.
- 🎵 attribution, links and license for the theme music in this podcast is below: The Success by Keys of Moon | https://soundcloud.com/keysofmoonMusic promoted by https://www.free-stock-music.com Attribution 4.0 International (CC BY 4.0). https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/
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Mahsa Amini!
We know her name. Tragically, there are many more names like hers... many more Mahsa Aminis.
We have seen images and watched videos of brave Iranian women, and men, protest in the streets of Iran. Although we experience it from the safety of our homes, far away from the brutality of Iran's regime, it is still daunting to watch a young Iranian woman take off her hijab in public, cut her hair in protest and chant against Iran's Supreme Leader, its president and the Islamic Republic as a whole. What will happen to her? Will she be arrested? Will she become another Mahsa Amini?
We don't know if this is or will become a revolution. But we do know how the movements of the 1970s and street protests in 1978 culminated in the 1979 Revolution. And in this episode, we will learn a lot more about the people who brought about that cataclysmic revolution that changed everything... for the people of Iran.
My guest, Dr. Naghmeh Sohrabi, will take us through this history and also talk about her forthcoming book, which is tentatively titled "The Intimate Lives of a Revolution: Iran 1979.”
Also, here are two publications that Dr. Sohrabi recommends in this episode :
Charles Kurzman: The Unthinkable Revolution in Iran.
Ervand Abrahamian: “Structural Causes of the Iranian Revolution”.
In addition, below are links to other episodes about Iran:
S2E25: Iran-U.S. Diplomacy, Dr. Vali Nasr
S1E25: Iran's Leadership, Government Structure & Religion, Dr. Vali Nasr
S2E34: Iran's History of Hijab, Women's Rights & Sexual Politics
I hope you enjoy these episodes.
Adel
Host of the History Behind News podcast
- HIGHLIGHTS: get future episode highlights in your inbox.
- SUPPORT: please click here and join our other supporters in the news peeler community. Thank you.
- 🎵 attribution, links and license for the theme music in this podcast is below: The Success by Keys of Moon | https://soundcloud.com/keysofmoonMusic promoted by https://www.free-stock-music.com Attribution 4.0 International (CC BY 4.0). https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/
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ThePeel.news is available wherever you get your podcast.
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Hey there Newspeelers,
Tune in this Friday for my conversation with Dr. Naghmeh Sohrabi, in which she talks to me about the Iranians who brought about the 1979 Revolution, a revolution that changed everything for the people of Iran.
This episode will be available this Friday, Oct. 7, at 6 am ET.
Talk to you guys then.
Adel
Host of the History Behind News podcast
- HIGHLIGHTS: get podcast highlights in your inbox.
- SUPPORT: please click here and join our other supporters in the news peeler community. Thank you.
- 🎵 attribution, links and license for the theme music in this podcast is below: The Success by Keys of Moon | https://soundcloud.com/keysofmoonMusic promoted by https://www.free-stock-music.com Attribution 4.0 International (CC BY 4.0). https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/
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Home mortgage interest rates are going up, and home sales rates and even prices are going down.
In this episode, I speak with Dr. Price Fishback, of Eller College of Management at the University of Arizona, about America's history of real estate booms and busts and the history of home loans.
Of course, we can't talk about homes and home mortgages without getting into the history of governments' involvement. As it turns out, the U.S. government has been involved in U.S. real estate since the very beginning.
As the Great Depression wreaked havoc on our economy, causing a huge number of farm and family home foreclosures, the US government got involved in regulating, buying and backstopping mortgages. Of course, we are all familiar with Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac. These two agencies were supposedly not government programs and were supposedly not backed by the U.S. government. The trouble was, no one believed it. Americans associated these corporations with the US government, and rightfully so! As evidence, both corporations had to bend to popular demand and Congressional pressure, by both parties, to extend their lending policy from high-quality loans to include lower-quality loans that carried significant risk. Well, we know what happened eventually, because all lived through the Great Recession, to which the subprime loan crisis was significantly the cause.
In the Perspective segment of our conversation, Dr. Fishback talked about housing segregation. For more than a century, Black home ownership has consistently been about 20% below White home ownership. Many blame the Home Owner's Loan Corporation (HOLC), for institutionalizing housing segregation in America by creating maps that highlighted neighborhoods' racial and ethnic compositions. I had heard the term redlining and brought it up as well. Dr. Fishback is conducting an extensive and ongoing research on this topic. He believes that the history of HOLC, which is quite controversial, is misunderstood and he explained why.
Below, are links to other episodes about the U.S. economy:
S2E26: A Strong U.S. Dollar, Dr. Eichengreen
S2E11: Inflation, Dr. White
S1E18: Fed's History, Mr. Lowenstein
I hope you enjoy these episodes.
Adel
Host of the History Behind News podcast
- HIGHLIGHTS: get future episode highlights in your inbox.
- SUPPORT: please click here and join our other supporters in the news peeler community. Thank you.
- 🎵 attribution, links and license for the theme music in this podcast is below: The Success by Keys of Moon | https://soundcloud.com/keysofmoonMusic promoted by https://www.free-stock-music.com Attribution 4.0 International (CC BY 4.0). https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/
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Hey there Newspeelers,
Tune in this Friday for my conversation with Dr. Price Fishback, in which he takes us through the history of housing booms and busts, and where our housing market stands now - from a historical perspective. We also talk about the history of home loans. Imagine a 15% interest rate on your home mortgage! Or having only five years to pay off your entire home loan?
Dr. Fishback and his team are researching the controversial history of HOLC, a US government agency that is blamed for institutionalizing housing segregation. He disagrees with this assessment of HOLC's history and, of course, we talk about it in detail.
This episode will be available at 6 am ET, this Friday, Sept. 30th.
Talk to you guys then.
Adel
Host of the History Behind News podcast
- HIGHLIGHTS: get podcast highlights in your inbox.
- SUPPORT: please click here and join our other supporters in the news peeler community. Thank you.
- 🎵 attribution, links and license for the theme music in this podcast is below: The Success by Keys of Moon | https://soundcloud.com/keysofmoonMusic promoted by https://www.free-stock-music.com Attribution 4.0 International (CC BY 4.0). https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/
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The year 1814 not only marks the end of the Napoleonic Wars, but also ushers in the era of constitutional monarchies. No longer could Kings and Queens of Britain, or emperors of France, wield absolute power. This drastic transformation forced monarchs to come to terms with their diminished powers, and to reign rather than to rule. This much is intuitive. And much of it is even codified in the constitutional laws of Britain.
But what is not so intuitive is the power left to constitutional monarchs, such as Queen Victoria or Queen Elizabeth II.
My guest is Dr. Heidi Mehrkens of the University of Aberdeen in Scotland. She explains that constitutional monarchs have been practicing the fine art of soft power. It's a balancing act to be accessible to the people - but not too accessible. So monarchs show their normalness, like their normal families. This practice dates back to 1837 in Britain, the year Queen Victoria began her reign. The surprising aspect of this power, though less than absolute power, is that it has connected the monarchs to their people. This was not at all the case prior to the 1789 French Revolution.
Dr. Mehrkens has many stories to share with us in this episode, such as tourism of monarchy and a prince who thought he would never die - because he was the heir to the throne.
To learn more about Dr. Mehrkens, listen to this podcast and also visit his academic homepage.
Below, are links to other episodes about climate:
S2E19: Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth, Dr. Frost
S2E22: Finland's Wars With Russia, Dr. Lavery
S2E28: Hungary's History, Dr. Nemes
I hope you enjoy these episodes.
Adel
Host of the History Behind News podcast
- HIGHLIGHTS: get podcast highlights in your inbox.
- SUPPORT: please click here and join our other supporters in the news peeler community. Thank you.
- 🎵 attribution, links and license for the theme music in this podcast is below: The Success by Keys of Moon | https://soundcloud.com/keysofmoonMusic promoted by https://www.free-stock-music.com Attribution 4.0 International (CC BY 4.0). https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/
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Hey there Newspeelers,
Tune in this Friday for my conversation with Dr. Heidi Mehrkens, in which she takes us through the history of how constitutional monarchs had to adapt to their much-diminished powers after Europe's many revolutions and constitutions. This new power, soft power as it came to be called, created new opportunities for the monarchs to connect with their subjects, a kind of connection that was seldom present prior to the French Revolution. And it's also the kind of power we witnessed throughout Her Majesty, Queen Elizabeth II's reign, mourning rituals and funeral.
This episode will be available at 6 am ET, this Friday, Sept. 23rd.
Talk to you guys then.
Adel
Host of the History Behind News podcast
- HIGHLIGHTS: get podcast highlights in your inbox.
- SUPPORT: please click here and join our other supporters in the news peeler community. Thank you.
- 🎵 attribution, links and license for the theme music in this podcast is below: The Success by Keys of Moon | https://soundcloud.com/keysofmoonMusic promoted by https://www.free-stock-music.com Attribution 4.0 International (CC BY 4.0). https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/
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Did you know that at one point in our recent history, the Army Corp of Engineers and other local developers encouraged Americans to live in the very shadows of our levees? Lots of people made money. Politicians won elections. And then, the levees broke and all those homes were flooded.
This is a general narrative that applies to the infrastructure and property developments of many urban areas. It's a history of failed flood prevention policies. This history would not be complete without talking about home insurance policies, both federal and private, which incentivized many Americans, particularly poor Americans, to live in flood zone - in areas that are not natural human habitats.
In addition to climate change, building and living in flood-prone areas is probably one of the biggest contributing factors to devastating floods, which have increased in frequency and ferocity.
Lucky for us, my guest has many suggestions for what can be done, and he has already implemented much of his flood prevention policies in Louisiana, where nature has been incorporated to help us live with floods, instead of constantly fighting it.
To learn more about Prof. Verchick, listen to this podcast and also visit his academic homepage.
Below, are links to other episodes about climate:
S1E42: America's Water Rights, Prof. Craig
S1E38: Climate Change Laws, Prof. Takacs
S1E26: History of Green Energy, Prof. DuVivier
I hope you enjoy these episodes.
Adel
Host of the History Behind News podcast
- HIGHLIGHTS: get podcast highlights in your inbox.
- SUPPORT: please click here and join our other supporters in the news peeler community. Thank you.
- 🎵 attribution, links and license for the theme music in this podcast is below: The Success by Keys of Moon | https://soundcloud.com/keysofmoonMusic promoted by https://www.free-stock-music.com Attribution 4.0 International (CC BY 4.0). https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/
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Hey there Newspeelers,
Tune in this Friday for my conversation with Professor Robert Verchick, in which he takes us through the history of major floods in the U.S., the common causes for floods, the impact of flooding on real estate, living in flood zones, engineering solutions to prevent flooding (I know, this is already a lot), disastrous flood policies and Louisiana (a state I have visited many times and love).
This episode will be available at 6 am ET, Sept. 16th.
Talk to you guys then.
Adel
Host of the History Behind News podcast
- HIGHLIGHTS: get podcast highlights in your inbox.
- SUPPORT: please click here and join our other supporters in the news peeler community. Thank you.
- 🎵 attribution, links and license for the theme music in this podcast is below: The Success by Keys of Moon | https://soundcloud.com/keysofmoonMusic promoted by https://www.free-stock-music.com Attribution 4.0 International (CC BY 4.0). https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/
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New York is experiencing a polio outbreak. But how can this happen... when polio was declared eradicated from the U.S. back in 1994!
In this brief episode, I discuss one of the reasons why some previously eradicated diseases may return, and use excerpts from previous podcast conversations with experts to drive home my point.
Below are links to podcasts that you will hear about in this episode:
S1E41: Dr. Meredith Wadman - history of vaccines in America
S1E31: Mr. John Barry - history of the Spanish influenza
I hope you enjoy these episodes.
Adel
Host of the History Behind News podcast
- HIGHLIGHTS: get podcast highlights in your inbox.
- SUPPORT: please click here and join our other supporters in the news peeler community. Thank you.
- 🎵 attribution, links and license for the theme music in this podcast is below: The Success by Keys of Moon | https://soundcloud.com/keysofmoonMusic promoted by https://www.free-stock-music.com Attribution 4.0 International (CC BY 4.0). https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/
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China's version of world history is different than ours - much different.
In their version, the Chinese get their inspiration from their own emperors, ministers, heroes, poets, philosophers, and other historic figures. In a nutshell, Western historic figures were largely irrelevant to China and its history, at least until the 19th century, when China came into military conflict with the Europeans.
To be sure, China had faced many fierce enemies, lost many wars, and conquered many times. But the Europeans were different. Unlike all its prior enemies, the Europeans did not hold China's civilization in high esteem.
China views its humiliating losses from the 1830s to the 1940s as a mere aberration, a disruption, of its long and consistent history of being a superpower.
There is much that we don't know about China. And frankly, as China reaches the status of a global superpower, that's more than a little disconcerting.
To better understand China’s history and its own perception of its history, I spoke with Michael Schuman, who is a nonresident senior fellow in the Atlantic Council’s Global China Hub. He is also a contributing writer to The Atlantic, and was previously a foreign correspondent for the Wall Street Journal and Time magazine. His most recent book is Superpower Interrupted: The Chinese History of the World – which we discussed here. His two previous books are Confucius and the World He Created, and also The Miracle: The Epic Story of Asia’s Quest for Wealth. As a journalist, Mr. Schuman has had 25 years of experience in Asia and, for this conversation, he joined us from Beijing. To learn more about Mr. Schuman, you can visit his homepage, the link for which is provided in the detailed caption of this episode.
Below, are links to other episodes about China:
S2E1: China's real estate, Prof. Shih
S1E19: Hong Kong & a Century of Humiliation, Prof. Wasserstrom
S1E12: China's Brutal One-Child Policy, Prof. Wang
I hope you enjoy these episodes.
Adel
Host of the History Behind News podcast
- HIGHLIGHTS: get podcast highlights in your inbox.
- SUPPORT: please click here and join our other supporters in the news peeler community. Thank you.
- 🎵 attribution, links and license for the theme music in this podcast is below: The Success by Keys of Moon | https://soundcloud.com/keysofmoonMusic promoted by https://www.free-stock-music.com Attribution 4.0 International (CC BY 4.0). https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/
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Hey there Newspeelers,
Tune in this Friday for my conversation with Mr. Michael Schuman, in which he takes us through the history of imperial China, and draws comparisons against the rest of the world. And yes, he may even answer the question: what does China want?
This episode will be available at 6 am ET, Sept. 9th.
Talk to you guys then.
Adel
Host of the History Behind News podcast
- HIGHLIGHTS: get podcast highlights in your inbox.
- SUPPORT: please click here and join our other supporters in the news peeler community. Thank you.
- 🎵 attribution, links and license for the theme music in this podcast is below: The Success by Keys of Moon | https://soundcloud.com/keysofmoonMusic promoted by https://www.free-stock-music.com Attribution 4.0 International (CC BY 4.0). https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/
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Are Hungarians"peoples of mixed race"? From "forgotten barbarians" to 896; to Mongols, Ottomans and Austrians; and now!
The "now" aspect of this question is quite important, because as Dr. Robert Nemes will explain in this episode, for most Hungarians now, their nation may seem rather homogenous. And as far as living memory goes, this perception may be correct. But once we dig a little deeper into history, most Hungarians, including our guest's own ancestors, are indeed "peoples of mixed race".
For reasons that Dr. Nemes explains, Hungarians date their history back to 896, after which, despite some military defeats, Hungary becomes a kingdom around 1,000 CE and thrives, experiencing wealth (gold and silver mines) and health (population growth). This success continues despite the utter devastation wrought by the Mongol invasion. As Hungary recovers and even repels the second Mongol invasion, its borders reach the Adriatic.
The Ottoman period is another negative and devastating period in Hungary's history. One particular reason is that their country was split into three parts, and the Austrian Habsburgs also encroach on Hungary, eventually dominating it. But the story of loss doesn't stop there. After WWI, Hungary loses more than 70% of its territory! This loss, imposed by the post-war peace agreement, continues to be relevant in Hungary's nationalistic politics today.
Dr. Nemes is a professor of history at Colgate University and has been visiting Budapest since soon after the fall of the Berlin Wall… where he could see bullet-ridden buildings from the Hungarian Revolution of 1956.
He is the author of The Once and Future Budapestand Another Hungary: The Nineteenth-Century Provinces in Eight Lives. He is also co-editor of Sites of European Antisemitism in the Age of Mass Politics, 1880-1918.
To learn more about Dr. Nemes, you can visit his academic homepage.
In this episode, we also made references to the histories of other European nations. Lucky for us, we have previously produced episodes about them as well:
S2E5: Who Are Ukrainians?
S2E8: Wars in Ukraine.
S2E22: Finland's wars against Russia.
S2E19: Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth.
I hope you enjoy these episodes.
Adel
Host of the History Behind News podcast
- HIGHLIGHTS: get podcast highlights in your inbox.
- SUPPORT: please click here and join our other supporters in the news peeler community. Thank you.
- 🎵 attribution, links and license for the theme music in this podcast is below: The Success by Keys of Moon | https://soundcloud.com/keysofmoonMusic promoted by https://www.free-stock-music.com Attribution 4.0 International (CC BY 4.0). https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/
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Hey there Newspeelers,
Tune in this Friday for my conversation with Professor Robert Nemes in which he answers some basic questions about Hungary. But don't expect simple answers!
This episode will be available at 6 am ET, Sept. 2nd.
Talk to you guys then.
Adel
Host of the History Behind News podcast
- HIGHLIGHTS: get podcast highlights in your inbox.
- SUPPORT: please click here and join our other supporters in the news peeler community. Thank you.
- 🎵 attribution, links and license for the theme music in this podcast is below: The Success by Keys of Moon | https://soundcloud.com/keysofmoonMusic promoted by https://www.free-stock-music.com Attribution 4.0 International (CC BY 4.0). https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/
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Disputing the outcome of the 2020 presidential election continues to play a major role in GOP politics. This begs the question: how have election disputes been handled in our history? Are we progressing at election dispute resolution in the march of our history? Or are we regressing?
Intertwined with those questions is the quagmire of election disputes themselves. Has our Constitution created a working system for us? This one is a trick question for two reasons. First, our electoral college system now is not the same one that our founders envisaged. Second, the election system that we think we have is not what we actually have in practice. In one particular aspect, our founders wanted majority winners in our elections, specifically with respect to presidential elections. But under our current system, a candidate can win the White House with a minority of the national and state popular votes.
My guest, Professor Edward Foley, analyzes all of this for us, gives us models from history on how election disputes should be resolved, and then shares anecdotes of election-related violence, and one frightening election that almost caused a second civil war.
Professor Foley is the author of Presidential Elections and Majority Rule, and also Ballot Battles: The History of Disputed Elections in the United States, which was named a Finalist for the David J. Langum Prize in American Legal History and listed as one of 100 “must-read books about law and social justice”.
He holds the Ebersold Chair in Constitutional Law at The Ohio State University, where he also directs its election law program. He is a contributing opinion columnist for the Washington Post, and for the 2020 election season, he served as an NBC News election law analyst.
And here is the link to my conversation with Daniel Okrent about Prohibition and the 1920 census (S2E24), which I also discuss in this podcast episode.
I hope you enjoy these two episodes,
Adel
Host of the History Behind News podcast
- HIGHLIGHTS: get podcast highlights in your inbox.
- SUPPORT: please click here and join our other supporters in the news peeler community. Thank you.
- 🎵 attribution, links and license for the theme music in this podcast is below: The Success by Keys of Moon | https://soundcloud.com/keysofmoonMusic promoted by https://www.free-stock-music.com Attribution 4.0 International (CC BY 4.0). https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/
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Hey there Newspeelers,
Tune in this Friday for an "unsettling" and yet highly informative conversation with Professor Edward Foley about the history of election disputes in America. This episode will be available at 6 am ET, Aug. 26th.
Talk to you guys then.
Adel
Host of the History Behind News podcast
- HIGHLIGHTS: get podcast highlights in your inbox.
- SUPPORT: please click here and join our other supporters in the news peeler community. Thank you.
- 🎵 attribution, links and license for the theme music in this podcast is below: The Success by Keys of Moon | https://soundcloud.com/keysofmoonMusic promoted by https://www.free-stock-music.com Attribution 4.0 International (CC BY 4.0). https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/
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Is a strong U.S. dollar good for us Americans? Is it good for Europeans, specifically those whose currency is the Euro? How about emerging countries? Is a strong U.S. dollar good for them? What if those emerging markets borrow in dollars? Then, wouldn't a strong dollar make servicing those debts more difficult for them? And if so, should the Federal Reserve - America's central bank, take the economic well-being of other countries, e.g., developing nations, into consideration when it sets and changes its monetary policies? Hm! Believe it or not, this issue has been raised in international conferences.
For answers to all these questions, we speak with Professor Barry Eichengreen, the Chair and Distinguished Professor of Economics and Professor of Political Science at UC Berkeley. Dr. Eichengreen has won many prestigious awards for teaching and his scholarship, and he was named one of Foreign Policy Magazine's 100 Leading Global Thinkers in 2011. He is a past president of the Economic History Association, and a Research Associate of the NBER.
In this episode, Dr. Eichengreen talks about the history of the dollar's valuation - from its zenith to its nadir, and provides many anecdotes that liven the discussions (think pizza coins).
And here is the link to my previous conversation with Dr. Eichengreen about cryptocurrency (S2E12).
I hope you enjoy these two episodes,
Adel
Host of the History Behind News podcast
- HIGHLIGHTS: get podcast highlights in your inbox.
- SUPPORT: please click here and join our other supporters in the news peeler community. Thank you.
- 🎵 attribution, links and license for the theme music in this podcast is below: The Success by Keys of Moon | https://soundcloud.com/keysofmoonMusic promoted by https://www.free-stock-music.com Attribution 4.0 International (CC BY 4.0). https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/
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Hey there Newspeelers,
Tune in this Friday for an exciting conversation with Dr. Barry Eichengreen of UC Berkeley Economics about the U.S. dollar. This episode will be available at 6 am ET, Aug. 17th.
Talk to you guys then.
Adel
Host of the History Behind News podcast
- HIGHLIGHTS: get podcast highlights in your inbox.
- SUPPORT: please click here and join our other supporters in the news peeler community. Thank you.
- 🎵 attribution, links and license for the theme music in this podcast is below: The Success by Keys of Moon | https://soundcloud.com/keysofmoonMusic promoted by https://www.free-stock-music.com Attribution 4.0 International (CC BY 4.0). https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/
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Why doesn't America have diplomatic communications with Iran? Why does Iran pursue a nuclear program?
In this episode, I speak with Dr. Vali Nasr about the history of U.S.-Iran diplomacy, or more precisely, the lack thereof. But it didn't have to be this way. Dr. Nasr tells the story about historic moments of missed opportunities, where we could have perhaps better managed our relationship with Iran and averted more crises and instability in the region.
Dr. Nasr is a Professor of Middle East Studies and International Affairs at Johns Hopkins University… and from 2012 to 2019 he served as the Dean of Johns Hopkins University's School of Advanced International Studies.
Dr. Nasr has advised senior American policymakers, including the President, Secretary of State, senior members of Congress, and presidential campaigns.
He has authored many books on the Middle East and its proximate regions, including The Dispensable Nation: American Foreign Policy in Retreat, which we talk about in this episode.
To learn more about Dr. Nasr, visit his academic homepage.
Also, don't forget to listen to last year's conversation with Dr. Nasr re Ayatollahs In Iran... Shi'ism & Iran's Complex Leadership Structure (S1E25).
I hope you enjoy these two episodes.
Adel Host of the History Behind News podcast
- The episode image is an Iranian newspaper clip from 1968 reads: "A quarter of Iran's Nuclear Energy scientists are women." The picture shows some female Iranian PhDs posing in front of Tehran's research reactor.
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- 🎵 attribution, links and license for the theme music in this podcast is below: The Success by Keys of Moon | https://soundcloud.com/keysofmoonMusic promoted by https://www.free-stock-music.com Attribution 4.0 International (CC BY 4.0). https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/
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The forgotten story of what happened to the 1920 Census!
The 1910s was a big decade in U.S. history.
Here are some highlights from that decade. judge for yourself: (1) WWI, (2) the Spanish flu pandemic, (3) the income tax Constitutional amendment, (4) U.S. senators' popular election Constitutional amendment, (5) women's right to vote Constitutional amendment, and (6) the alcohol ban Constitutional amendment. Also, in 1920 Congress and the White House turned red - meaning Republicans won. Then came the 1920s!
Along with Prohibition, in the Roaring '20s, there was another story that has remained unnoticed by most historians. It's a shocking story of an egregious violation of the U.S Constitution by the U.S. Congress. And behind it all were the determined forces of a minority of Americans.
To learn more about this story, we spoke with Daniel Okrent, author of the Last Call, The Rise And Fall of Prohibition, which won the Albert J. Beveridge prize, awarded by the American Historical Association to the year's best book of American history, and was used as a major source for the PBS miniseries Prohibition directed by Ken Burns and Lynn Novick.
In the last segment of our conversation, Mr. Okrent draws parallels between the Prohibition forces a century ago and Pro-Life forces now. They both represent the will of a minority of Americans Yet, they both won. Note though, Prohibition was eventually repealed, which can be attributed to our guest's concluding statement - that we cannot legislate against human desire.
I wonder if there are lessons here for our time? For the abortion fight that is tearing our country apart.
Mr. Okrent served as the first public editor of The New York Times newspaper, and he has also been the editor of other publications, such as Alfred A. Knopf, Harcourt, Esquire Magazine, New England Monthly and Life Managzine. He also served on the board of the Smithsonian’s National Portrait Gallery for 12 years, including a four-year term as chairman, and remains a board member of the Skyscraper Museum and the Authors Guild.
To learn more about Mr. Okrent, please visit his homepage.
I hope you enjoy this episode.
Adel Host of the History Behind News podcast
- S1E31: History of the Spanish flu Pandemic
- SUPPORT: please click here and join our other supporters in the news peeler community. Thank you.
- 🎵 attribution, links and license for the theme music in this podcast is below: The Success by Keys of Moon | https://soundcloud.com/keysofmoonMusic promoted by https://www.free-stock-music.com Attribution 4.0 International (CC BY 4.0). https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/
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Enjoy our midseason recap of our prior episodes. And here is a link to reflections of season one, including highlights.
I hope you have a great summer and please stay tuned for our next episode.
Adel Host of ThePeel.news podcast
- SUPPORT: please click here and join our other supporters in the news peeler community. Thank you.
- 🎵 attribution, links and license for the theme music in this podcast is below: The Success by Keys of Moon | https://soundcloud.com/keysofmoonMusic promoted by https://www.free-stock-music.com Attribution 4.0 International (CC BY 4.0). https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/
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Are Starbucks employees happy? No, they are/were not happy. It was all Starbucks branding. And it worked for a long time - until Covid!
This is according to our podcast guest, Professor Kate Bronfenbrenner, Director of Labor Education Research at the Industrial and Labor Relations School of Cornell University.
She is the co-author and editor of several peer-reviewed books on union and employer strategies, and she has testified as an expert witness at Labor Department and Congressional hearings and is frequently quoted in the major news media. Professor Bronfenbrenner is the recipient of many awards, most notably, the 2020 George D. Levy Faculty Award for outstanding community-engaged learning, and, one of Cornell's highest honors, the Carpenter Memorial Advising Award, in 2012.
In this episode, Dr. Bronfenbrenner takes us through the history of labor unions in America. I learned a great deal from her. Starting with the very basics, I realized that there is no such thing as the golden age of labor unions. I had assumed that era existed from the 1940s to the 1960s. But she corrected me with a simple retort: depends on which group of workers you are talking about!
The history of unions is intertwined with immigration, tightly so. And unions have been able to organize internationally, to blunt corporations' threats of offshoring work. These days, service industry unions are much more powerful and numerous than traditional unions in heavy industries, such as mining and manufacturing. But those traditional unions have also changed. Get this: they now advocate environmental causes and fight against climate change.
At the conclusion of our conversation, I asked Dr. Bronfenbrenner about the latest news regarding labor unions. She explained that these are mostly organizing victories. They still have to get the contracts, and for that workers need broader support.
I hope you enjoy this episode.
Adel Host of ThePeel.news podcast
- S2E15: History of Censorship in America
- SUPPORT: please click here and join our other supporters in the news peeler community. Thank you.
- 🎵 attribution, links and license for the theme music in this podcast is below: The Success by Keys of Moon | https://soundcloud.com/keysofmoonMusic promoted by https://www.free-stock-music.com Attribution 4.0 International (CC BY 4.0). https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/
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The 1939 Winter War is Finland's creation story. It's a war that Finland fought virtually alone, relying only on its own weapons and resources, against the might of the Soviet Union. It's a war that the USSR failed to win. And it's a war that Stalin believed he would win within 12 days!
After 700 years of being an integral part of the Swedish Empire, Finland was taken by Russia in 1808 and eventually annexed. After the Russian Empire ceased to exist in 1917, Finland declared its independence and then fought a bloody and brutal civil war against its own Bolsheviks. Unlike many former lands and nations of the Russian Empire, such as Ukraine, Finland managed to keep its independence. But as the power of the Third Reich increased in Europe, the Soviets attacked Finland. And despite their inability to win against a smaller and weaker Finnish force, the Russians did gain what they were looking for. Hint: Finland lost territory to USSR.
Since Finland has suddenly ended its decades-long policy of appeasing Russia by applying for NATO membership, we decided to examine Finland's recent history to better understand not only its similarities but also its differences with Ukraine's history and challenges.
To dig deep into Finland's history, we spoke with Dr. Jason Lavery who joined us from Helsinki for this conversation. He is a permanent adjunct professor at Helsinki University, and also a professor at Oklahoma State University's Dept. of History.
To learn more about Dr. Lavery, his many projects and publications, visit his academic homepage and also personal website.
I hope you enjoy this episode.
Adel Host of ThePeel.news podcast
- S2E20: Why We Wage War?
- S2E8: History of Ukraine's Wars
- S2E19: Poland and Ukraine
- SUPPORT: please click here and join our other supporters in the news peeler community. Thank you.
- 🎵 attribution, links and license for the theme music in this podcast is below: The Success by Keys of Moon | https://soundcloud.com/keysofmoonMusic promoted by https://www.free-stock-music.com Attribution 4.0 International (CC BY 4.0). https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/
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How many extraterrestrial beings live on Jupiter? How about on the moon? Philosophers and theologians actually figured this out several centuries ago! They also grappled with another burning question - that since extraterrestrial beings haven't heard the Gospel, then how will they be saved in the afterlife? Good one, right!?!
The study of UFOs goes back all the way to Babylonians. While UFOs weren't called UFOs then, there was significant appreciation, interest and quest for what's out there in the heavens.
Our modern interest in UFOs is very much Americanized. It started in the 1940s, and soon after the term UFO was coined. So it's only natural to call the people who study UFOs Ufologists. But do these Ufologists, who spend a great deal of time and resources on researching UFOs, receive academic degrees for their work? Like doctorates? And do they make money from their UFO-related activities?
To better understand UFOs, Ufologists and the history of UFOs, we spoke with Greg Eghigian, who joined us from Berlin for this conversation. He is a professor of history at PennState College of the Liberal Arts, and the Former Director of the Science, Technology, and Society Program there.
Professor Eghigian’s interest is now focused on studying the history of supernatural and paranormal phenomena. In particular, he is writing a book about the history of UFO sightings and claims of alien contact throughout the world. It’s a book about the human history of UFOs, one that we’ll also talk about in this episode.
To learn more about Professor Eghigian, his many projects and publications, particularly those about UFOs, visit his academic homepage.
I hope you enjoy this episode.
Adel Host of ThePeel.news podcast
- Science Series - more UFOs and "Space Junk"
- SUPPORT: please click here and join our other supporters in the news peeler community. Thank you.
- 🎵 attribution, links and license for the theme music in this podcast is below: The Success by Keys of Moon | https://soundcloud.com/keysofmoonMusic promoted by https://www.free-stock-music.com Attribution 4.0 International (CC BY 4.0). https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/
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"War is hard and finding peace is easier than you think." Are you surprised by this statement? I know I was. I thought that we humans are inherently war-prone and that our inclination is to solve our intractable problems through violence.
This is where Professor Christopher Blattman's timely book Why We Fight (just published in April) is instructive. In it, he describes five reasons why conflict triumphs over compromise. He provides examples of how war can be avoided and why it is waged - from the war in Ukraine to drug wars in Colombia and gang violence in Chicago. He also articulates the Game Theory as it is related to decisions about war.
Professor Blattman is a faculty member in The Pearson Institute for the Study and Resolution of Global Conflicts at the University of Chicago, and focuses on why some people and societies are poor, unequal and violent, and how to tackle these issues.
I hope you enjoy this episode.
Adel Host of ThePeel.news podcast
- Russian Revolutions, Prof. Steinberg
- Wars in Ukraine, Prof. Stone
- Who are Ukrainians?, Prof. Wanner
- Poland's History In Ukraine, Prof. Frost
- Finland's Winter War, Prof. Lavery
- SUPPORT: please click here and join our other supporters in the news peeler community. Thank you.
- 🎵 attribution, links and license for the theme music in this podcast is below: The Success by Keys of Moon | https://soundcloud.com/keysofmoonMusic promoted by https://www.free-stock-music.com Attribution 4.0 International (CC BY 4.0). https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/
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Why does Ukraine look to the West for inspiration as opposed to Russia? To answer this question, we have to understand the history of the Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth, one of the largest and most populous countries in Europe in the 16th and 17th centuries - a country that is now lost to history, a country that engulfed much of modern-day Ukraine.
The government of this Commonwealth was a mixture of different forms of ruling systems - e.g., monarchy, aristocracy and a republic, with many checks and balances that limited the powers of its elected kings. Later in its history, the Commonwealth adopted the first modern European constitution. In addition, the ruling elite of this polity mainly were Catholic. All of this, including Catholicism, affected Ukraine's history, and its preference for a consensual form of government.
As Professor Robert Frost explains in this episode, Ukraine was occupied by this Commonwealth and ruled from Krakow just as long, if not longer, than it has been occupied by Russia and ruled from Moscow. Professor Frost is the Chair of History at the University of Aberdeen. For the last 22 years, his main research interest has been in the history of the Polish-Lithuanian Union and its legacy. Visit his academic homepage to learn more about his extensive scholarship.
I hope you enjoy this episode.
Adel Host of ThePeel.news podcast
- Russian Revolutions, Prof. Steinberg
- Wars in Ukraine, Prof. Stone
- Who are Ukrainians?, Prof. Wanner
- SUPPORT: please click here and join our other supporters in the news peeler community. Thank you.
- Image attribution: by Rzeczpospolita2nar at Wikipedia under CC BY-SA 3.0 license.
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Why does FL Disney World have a special district but CA Disneyland does not? And how special is Florida's special district anyway? Why does a locality or a corporation need a special district anyway? What are the benefits? How prevalent are special districts in our country? How about in FL? And when it comes to FL, is Mr. DeSantis a more powerful governor than his predecessors?
To learn more about all of this, I spoke with Professor James Clark, who lives in Orlando. He is an award-winning journalist and a history lecturer at the University of Central Florida. He is the author of 9 books, including Hidden History of Florida, A Concise History of Florida, Orlando Florida - A Brief History, and Presidents in Florida.
I hope you enjoy this episode.
Adel Host of ThePeel.news podcast
- Prof. Gary, history of censorship, including abortion materials
- SUPPORT: please click here and join our other supporters in the news peeler community. Thank you.
- 🎵 attribution, links and license for the theme music in this podcast is below: The Success by Keys of Moon | https://soundcloud.com/keysofmoonMusic promoted by https://www.free-stock-music.com Attribution 4.0 International (CC BY 4.0). https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/
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I recently came across a Wall Street Journal article about a four-ton Chinese rocket booster that was anticipated to crash into the moon and expected to leave a 65-foot-diameter crater. This crash is different than all other human-related crashes into the moon because this one was unintentional! According to the article, humans have been crashing spacecraft into the moon for the last 60 years. And, it's not just the moon crashes that are alarming. The mass of human-made space debris is a grave concern as well, as it poses a danger to astronauts, space tourists and the environment in space, not to mention its potential for disrupting technology on earth!
To better understand this news and the history behind it, I spoke with Moriba Jah, a well-recognized expert on this topic. Moriba is an associate professor of Aerospace Engineering and Engineering Mechanics at The University of Texas at Austin. He’s won numerous awards and has many accomplishments, too many to list here. To learn more about Moriba, visit his academic homepage, the link for which is provided in the detailed caption of this episode. And visit Privateer, Moriba's super cool startup.
I hope you enjoy this episode.
Adel
Host of ThePeel.news podcast
- UFOs, S1E21
- Science Series
- SUPPORT: please click here and join our other supporters in the news peeler community. Thank you.
- 🎵 attribution, links and license for the theme music in this podcast is below: The Success by Keys of Moon | https://soundcloud.com/keysofmoonMusic promoted by https://www.free-stock-music.com Attribution 4.0 International (CC BY 4.0). https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/
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Professor Steinberg explains that Peter the Great and Catherine the Great were great not because of their many reforms, but because they expanded the Russian Empire. President Putin, who some contemporary Russians believe to be great, admires Peter the Great. This explains a lot, doesn't it? By conquering Ukraine, Russia immediately becomes an empire, making Mr. Putin a "great" Russian leader. The irony of Mr. Putin's admiration of Peter and Catherine is that they Europeanized Russia. This doesn't distress Mr. Putin. He has an explanation for it.
But the greatness of Russia's leaders, be they autocratic presidents or absolutist monarchs, doesn't square with Russia's many revolutions, rebellions, coups and assassinations. That's because Russia is an extremely complex nation. In this episode, Professor Mark Steinberg of the Dept. of History at the University of Urbana-Champaign, tells about the Russian people and their refrain, "we can't live like this anymore!"
Prof. Steinberg's research focuses on the city, revolutions, emotions, violence, space, moralities, and utopia. He is the author of many books about Russia, including Voices of Revolution, 1917, and The Russian Revolution, 1905-1921; and also Russian Utopia.
I hope you enjoy this episode.
Adel
Host of ThePeel.news podcast
- Who are Ukrainians?
- History of Wars in Ukraine.
- Podcast Series: post-USSR
- SUPPORT: please click here and join our other supporters in the news peeler community. Thank you.
- 🎵 attribution, links and license for the theme music in this podcast is below: The Success by Keys of Moon | https://soundcloud.com/keysofmoonMusic promoted by https://www.free-stock-music.com Attribution 4.0 International (CC BY 4.0). https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/
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French postcards were as close as one could get to Playboy in the 19th century. And apparently, they were ubiquitous in America, particularly during the Civil War. And according to our guest, Professor Brett Gary, that's a good starting point to talk about the history of censorship in America.
Anthony Comstock served in the Civil War and was appalled by the volume of pornography enjoyed by Union soldiers. After the war, he manifested his dedication to upholding Christian morality by becoming an anti-vice activist to root out obscene literature. To be sure, many were committed to this cause. But it was Comstock who had the power to impose his righteousness on others because of his positions as the U.S. Postal Inspector and secretary of the New York Society for the Suppression of Vice. Later, the federal and many states' mini Comstock laws were named after him. With these laws, the vice squad raided bookstores, threatened publishers, and removed books from libraries. And surprisingly, these laws are still on the books, even if they are rarely enforced.
But as time wore on, the U.S. Supreme Court, particularly during the Warren Court, restricted the scope of the Comstock laws. So in our time, while there is no censorship of adult literature, school literature continues to be subject to local scrutiny and banning. The latest high-profile such censorship was in Tennessee, where "Maus", a Pulitzer Prize-winning book about the Holocaust was banned.
Professor Gary takes us through the history of censorship, including the pre-Civil War fear of "race suicide", all the way to the story of "Maus." He teaches at NYU's Dept. of Media, Culture, and Communication, and his recent book is titled Dirty Works, Obscenity on Trial in America's First Sexual Revolution.
Enjoy this episode.
Adel
Host of ThePeel.news podcast
- Who are Ukrainians?
- Who are Kazakhs?
- History of Wars in Ukraine.
- Podcast Series: post-USSR
- SUPPORT: please click here and join our other supporters in the news peeler community. Thank you.
- 🎵 attribution, links and license for the theme music in this podcast is below: The Success by Keys of Moon | https://soundcloud.com/keysofmoonMusic promoted by https://www.free-stock-music.com Attribution 4.0 International (CC BY 4.0). https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/
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Does the history of the U.S. Civil War have anything to teach about our time? Yes, a lot. I know! This does sound amazing, even a bit fantastic. But our guest, Roger Lowenstein, who has written several New York Times bestsellers, makes sense of it all and brings the perspective of the past to make sense of our present. Examples include cries of blasphemy for the introduction of paper money, general Grant's and Sherman's frustration with the Union policy of buying cotton from the South while waging war against it (this is not a typo), and the Southern elite's delusion that secession won't lead to war. And somehow, Mr. Lowenstein connects these rich stories from the past to their current counterparts. Visit his homepage to learn more about his many books and other publications, as well as his passions and projects.
I hope you enjoy this episode and learn some about our present challenges from the U.S. Civil War.
Adel Host of ThePeel.news podcast
- Bitcoins from a volcano! Prof. Eichengreen, S2E12
- 20% inflation? Prof. White, S2E11
- Federal Reserve's, history. Mr. Lowenstein, S1E18
- U.S. Economy Series
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- 🎵 attribution, links and license for the theme music in this podcast is below: The Success by Keys of Moon | https://soundcloud.com/keysofmoonMusic promoted by https://www.free-stock-music.com Attribution 4.0 International (CC BY 4.0). https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/
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Did Nobel Prize-winners lose a CRISPR patent? Lucky for us, Dr. Samantha Zyontz has spent years studying CRISPR, its development and growing research, its myriad wonderful applications (think beer!) and ownership disputes. And get this, years ago, she even predicted that the scientific work on CRISPR will one day win the Nobel Prize. Of course, she was right! What preceded and followed that Nobel Prize is years of patent litigation, and ethical discussions - gene editing!
Dr. Zyont of Stanford Law School is Research Fellow, Intellectual Property, and Fellow, Center for Law and the Biosciences. To learn more about her scholarships and many projects, visit her academic homepage.
I hope you enjoy this episode and gain some perspective about this important technology: CRISPR!
Adel Host of ThePeel.news podcast
- History of U.S. Patent System (S1E17)
- SUPPORT: To continue our free podcast program, we depend on our listeners’ support. So please click this link https://anchor.fm/the-peel-news/support and join our other supporters in the news peeler community. Thank you.
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Will a host of privately minted cryptocurrencies displace the U.S. dollar? Professor Eichengreen tells us about a period in which private American banks issued their own notes. It was a chaotic time that ended with the Civil War. Why does this matter? Because not only is cryptocurrency all the rage with investors but also the U.S. government is getting into the game. The Federal Reserve had been studying digital dollars, and President Biden recently issued a cryptocurrency executive order.
Our guest, Mr. Barry Eichengreen, is a Distinguished Professor of Economics and Professor of Political Science at the University of California, Berkeley, and he is a Research Associate of the National Bureau of Economic Research (Cambridge, Massachusetts) and Research Fellow of the Centre for Economic Policy Research (London, England). Prof. Eichengreen is the author of Exorbitant Privilege: The Rise and Fall of the Dollar and the Future of the International Monetary System (see Amazon). His latest article is "Digital Currencies - More than a Passing Fad?"
In this episode, he answers questions like what is cryptocurrency? What is it used for and are there different types? What percentage of world trade is conducted in U.S. dollars and will cryptocurrency endanger the dollar's dominance? Why are countries such as Iran, China and Venezuela interested in cryptocurrency? And what about El Salvador? Is it a joke that they want to harness the power of a volcano to mint Bitcoins?
I hope you enjoy this episode and gain some perspective about the history of the U.S. dollar, its dominance and the rise of the digital dollar.
Adel Host of ThePeel.news podcast
- U.S. Economy Series
- SUPPORT: To continue our free podcast program, we depend on our listeners’ support. So please click this link https://anchor.fm/the-peel-news/support and join our other supporters in the news peeler community. Thank you.
- 🎵 attribution, links and license for the theme music in this podcast is below: The Success by Keys of Moon | https://soundcloud.com/keysofmoonMusic promoted by https://www.free-stock-music.com Attribution 4.0 International (CC BY 4.0). https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/
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Double-digit inflation during WWI, and then again in the '70s! Thankfully, Professor White explains that in the past high inflation looked like a Christmas tree, meaning that it came down just as fast as it had shot up.
During our podcast conversation, Professor White answered the following questions: Is inflation due to issues of supply chain or supply of money? What was inflation like during the previous major pandemic, the Spanish flu? How did the Fed handle inflation during the Great Depression? What do the famous Nixon tapes reveal about his handling of inflation? How did Volker tame inflation? What did Milton Friedman and Ben Bernanke say about the Great Depression and the Fed's handling of inflation? Is fiat money terrible for inflation?
In this episode, Prof. Lawerence White, Dept. of Economics, George Mason University, tells us about the history of inflation, banking and money. He has been a visiting lecturer at the Swiss National Bank and the Federal Reserve Bank of Atlanta. His forthcoming book is Better Money, Fiat, Gold or Bitcoin.
I hope you enjoy this episode and gain some perspective about the history of U.S. inflation.
Adel Host of ThePeel.news podcast
- U.S. Economy Series
- SUPPORT: To continue our free podcast program, we depend on our listeners’ support. So please click this link https://anchor.fm/the-peel-news/support and join our other supporters in the news peeler community. Thank you.
- 🎵 attribution, links and license for the theme music in this podcast is below: The Success by Keys of Moon | https://soundcloud.com/keysofmoonMusic promoted by https://www.free-stock-music.com Attribution 4.0 International (CC BY 4.0). https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/
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Although he did not utter the words "Build Back Better", President Biden tried to salvage parts of his huge social stimulus bill by mentioning them in his State of the Union Address. It didn't work. Senator Manchin remains unpersuaded.
So when did the U.S. government start doling out social benefits anyway? What did John Quincy Adams say about one particular pension program? Which was the party of high tariffs and high pensions? Which three presidents successfully reformed social welfare programs? Which president decreased them the most? How did FDR's New Deal change America's social welfare culture? How did our social benefits programs hemorrhage into the costly colossus that they are now? And what are some of the recent eye-popping statistics for "mandatory" spending programs?
In this episode, Professor John Cogan, a Senior Fellow at the Hoover Institution and a Professor of Public Policy Program at Stanford Institute for Economic Policy Research, tells the history of America's entitlements, including a story of longevity, love and marriage, along with eye-popping economic stats. He is the of The High Cost of Good Intentions: A History of U.S. Federal Entitlement Programs. (See in Amazon).
I hope you enjoy this episode and gain some perspective about the long history of America's entitlement programs.
Adel
Host of ThePeel.news podcast
- U.S. Economy Series
- SUPPORT: To continue our free podcast program, we depend on our listeners’ support. So please click this link https://anchor.fm/the-peel-news/support and join our other supporters in the news peeler community. Thank you.
- 🎵 attribution, links and license for the theme music in this podcast is below: The Success by Keys of Moon | https://soundcloud.com/keysofmoonMusic promoted by https://www.free-stock-music.com Attribution 4.0 International (CC BY 4.0). https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/
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"The Putin Puzzle: Why Ukraine? Why Now?" is a recent WSJ essay by Professor Kathryn Stoner of Stanford University. She is also the author of Russia Resurrected: Its Power and Purpose in a New Global Order, a 2021 book published by Oxford University Press.
In this episode, Professor Stoner tells us about Mr. Putin's early years, his moment of shock in Dresden when he received no help from Moscow in response to anti-communist protests. The year was 1989! She also talks about Mr. Putin's love of the Russian Empire - its geography, which he expresses now with nationalism and also his support of the Russian Orthodox Church. His pride in Russia was exhibited in his renovation of historic Russian Empire palaces, and his attempts to create a modern, stable Russian economy, about which Professor Stoner educates us as well. So does Mr. Putin want to resurrect the Soviet Union? Our news media seems to think so, as they often repeat Mr. Putin's infamous line that the collapse of the Soviet empire “was the greatest geopolitical catastrophe of the [20th] century”. But there is a second part to this statement that is not often repeated. It provides a clue to Mr. Putin's true intentions, which Professor Stoner sets out to explain in this episode.
To learn more about Dr. Stoner, her academic work many publications and projects, visit her academic homepage.
I hope you enjoy this episode and gain some perspective about Mr. Putin and Russia.
Adel
Host of ThePeel.news podcast
- Post-Soviet States Series
- SUPPORT: To continue our free podcast program, we depend on our listeners’ support. So please click this link https://anchor.fm/the-peel-news/support and join our other supporters in the news peeler community. Thank you.
- 🎵 attribution, links and license for the theme music in this podcast is below: The Success by Keys of Moon | https://soundcloud.com/keysofmoonMusic promoted by https://www.free-stock-music.com Attribution 4.0 International (CC BY 4.0). https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/
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Dr. David Stone, U.S. Naval War College, is an expert on Russian military history. He takes us back to a treaty in 1654, one that Russia cites as the basis of its claim to Ukraine. From there, he explains the history of wars in Ukraine, from Peter the Great to Catherine the Great, and then to Vladimir Lenin, WWI and Ukraine's declaration of statehood, and then to the catastrophe of famine in the 1930s and the calamity of WWII.
Dr. Stone is the author of the following books:
- Hammer and Rifle: The Militarization of the Soviet Union (2000)
- A Military History of Russia (2006)
- The Russian Army in the Great War: The Eastern Front, 1914-1917 (2015)
He is also the editor of The Soviet Union at War, 1941-1945 (2010).
To learn more about Dr. Stone, his academic work many publications and projects, visit his academic homepage,
I hope you enjoy this episode and gain some perspective about wars and battles in Ukraine and against Ukraine.
Adel
Host of ThePeel.news podcast
- Post-Soviet States Series
- SUPPORT: To continue our free podcast program, we depend on our listeners’ support. So please click this link https://anchor.fm/the-peel-news/support and join our other supporters in the news peeler community. Thank you.
- 🎵 attribution, links and license for the theme music in this podcast is below: The Success by Keys of Moon | https://soundcloud.com/keysofmoonMusic promoted by https://www.free-stock-music.com Attribution 4.0 International (CC BY 4.0). https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/
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"Alzheimer's Disease of forgetting was a forgotten disease" for most of the 20th century, says Dr. Gil Rabinovici of UCSF.
In this episode, he tells us the history of Alzheimer's disease since its discovery and explains why we have yet to discover the cure for AD. In addition, he describes the innovations that ushered in the modern era of AD research. Dr. Rabinovici shares the exciting goal of his large clinical studies. And after giving us some frightening figures about the projected increase of AD population in the U.S., he ends our discussion with a great message of hope - don't be afraid. You can live a long, functional life with AD. In case you were wondering, the news that we are peeling in this episode is Biogen's ADUHELM AD drug - its exciting promise that failed to materialize, confusing product launch, and highly publicized controversy.
To learn more about Dr. Rabinovici, his work and publications, visit his academic homepage.
I hope you enjoy this episode and gain some perspective about the history and future of Alzheimer's Disease.
Adel
Host of ThePeel.news podcast
- Public Health Series
- SUPPORT: To continue our free podcast program, we depend on our listeners’ support. So please click this link https://anchor.fm/the-peel-news/support and join our other supporters in the news peeler community. Thank you.
- 🎵 attribution, links and license for the theme music in this podcast is below: The Success by Keys of Moon | https://soundcloud.com/keysofmoonMusic promoted by https://www.free-stock-music.com Attribution 4.0 International (CC BY 4.0). https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/
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Should the CDC be independent?
Professor Dorit Reiss of U.C. Hastings Law explains two recent Supreme Court decisions and their practical implications on President Biden's vaccine mandates. She also explains the history behind America’s vaccines laws. For example, do we have federal vaccine laws? Does the federal government have the power to set working conditions for its own employees? Why is it that the CDC seems to have less power than many other federal agencies, such as the FDA? Are there benefits to our system of state-level vaccine laws? Can you sue someone for giving you Covid? Or should we deny health insurance coverage for people who refuse to get vaccinated or wear masks? Professor Reiss's current research and activities focus on legal and policy issues related to vaccines. She has written extensively about vaccines mandates, policy responses to non-vaccinating, tort issues and administrative issues related to vaccines, and the anti-vaccine movement.
To learn more about Professor Reiss and her work, visit her academic homepage.
I hope you enjoy this episode and gain some perspective about our country's vaccine laws.
Adel
Host of ThePeel.news podcast
https://ThePeel.news
- Public Health Series: click for more episodes
- SUPPORT: To continue our free podcast program, we depend on our listeners’ support. So please click this link https://anchor.fm/the-peel-news/support and join our other supporters in the news peeler community. Thank you.
- 🎵 attribution, links and license for the theme music in this podcast is below: The Success by Keys of Moon | https://soundcloud.com/keysofmoonMusic promoted by https://www.free-stock-music.com Attribution 4.0 International (CC BY 4.0). https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/
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Are Ukrainians and Russians One People? Mr. Putin certainly claims so. In this episode, Ms. Catherine Wanner, a professor of history, anthropology and religious studies at PennState University, sets out to answer this complex question by exploring Ukraine's and Russia's shared histories, as well as their similar languages and religions.
Professor Wanner has devoted her career to the study of Ukraine and Ukrainians, and has published extensively on this subject. Her most recent book is Everyday Religiosity and the Politics of Belonging in Ukraine (Amazon link). Examples of her previous books include State Secularism and Lived Religion in Soviet Russia and Ukraine (Amazon link) and Communities of the Converted: Ukrainians and Global Evangelism (Amazon). To learn more about Prof. Wanner and her work, please visit her academic homepage.
I hope you enjoy this episode and gain some perspective about Ukraine's national identity.
Adel
Host of ThePeel.news podcast
- Post-Soviet States Series
- SUPPORT: To continue our free podcast program, we depend on our listeners’ support. So please click this link https://anchor.fm/the-peel-news/support and join our other supporters in the news peeler community. Thank you.
- 🎵 attribution, links and license for the theme music in this podcast is below: The Success by Keys of Moon | https://soundcloud.com/keysofmoonMusic promoted by https://www.free-stock-music.com Attribution 4.0 International (CC BY 4.0). https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/
SOCIAL MEDIA: to watch the host of ThePeel.news, Adel, peel the history behind news with distinguished professors and critically acclaimed authors, follow us on social media by clicking the following links:
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100,000 overdose deaths! Prof. Agahi was working with opioid users from the very beginning of the crisis. In this episode, she tells the story of how America's opioid problem became a pandemic!
Prof. Agahi tells us about "chasing the white dragon", a term she digs into and defines it in the context of overdose, which is the leading cause of death and injury in the U.S. She speaks about who is to blame, how should addicts be treated (wholistic approach), suicide prevention, harm reduction, and compares the opioid pandemic death tolls against other major U.S. killers, such as diabetes. Thankfully, she concludes with a message of hope - that 60-70% of overdose patients fully recover and lead highly productive lives.
Professor Agahi of the University of Massachusetts Global, School of Social Work, has over 20 years of expertise in alcohol and drug prevention and treatment, as well as suicide prevention and treatment - a subject she feels quite passionately about. She received her doctorate from the University of Southern California, School of Social Work, and holds dual Masters in Public Health and Social Work. To learn more about her work, including her long list of presentations and publications, visit her academic homepage.
I hope you enjoy this episode and gain some perspective about our opioid crisis.
Adel
Host of ThePeel.news podcast
- Public Health Series: click for more episodes
- SUPPORT: To continue our free podcast program, we depend on our listeners’ support. So please click this link https://anchor.fm/the-peel-news/support and join our other supporters in the news peeler community. Thank you.
- 🎵 attribution, links and license for the theme music in this podcast is below: The Success by Keys of Moon | https://soundcloud.com/keysofmoonMusic promoted by https://www.free-stock-music.com Attribution 4.0 International (CC BY 4.0). https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/
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ThePeel.news Podcast Platforms: Our program is available pretty much wherever you get your podcasts. And for your convenience, here are direct links to several platforms:
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This episode is sponsored by · Anchor: The easiest way to make a podcast. https://anchor.fm/app
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"Old Man Get Out!" With personal stories and professional analysis, Prof. Tutumlu takes us through the history of her homeland, the aspirations of its people and their dashed hopes, and the deep-rooted causes for this month's widespread uprising.
Kazakhstan is a resource-rich country with a very low population density. It has successfully attracted consortiums of large international corporations and diligently polished its business-friendly image abroad. So by all indications, Kazakhs should enjoy high living standards. Unfortunately, the realities of life in Kazakhstan are starkly different than the country's potentials otherwise suggest. The overwhelming majority of wealth and power is held by a few. And Kazakhstan's former president, Nursultan Nazarbayev, who led the country from its independence from Soviet rule for some 30 years, still wields considerable power from behind the scenes. As for Russian troops, they were deployed to Kazakhstan not to ensure stability and peace for Kazakh people and businesses. Rather, President Putin sent them there to ensure the security of a friendly oligarchy within the sphere of its influence.
Professor Assel Tutumlu, Near East University, has written extensively about Kazakhstan. Click this link to access some of her publications and read highlights of this podcast conversation.
I hope you enjoy this episode and gain some perspective about Kazakhstan.
Adel
Host of ThePeel.news podcast
- Post-Soviet States Series
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Prof. Shermer tells us how student loans were designed as a financial product, rather than a guarantee for higher education. This history, she explains, has made all the financial difference to students, their families and our country, and has created the current crisis.
As of the production of this podcast episode, America's student debt burden stood at $1.73 trillion! Do the math, and you'll note that this figure is not an insignificant percentage of our GDP. While this debt keeps on climbing, no one in government is really rushing to fix the problem. And here is something intriguing: this is a decades-old problem. That's right! As Professor Shermer tells it, complaints about student debts were voiced as far back as 50 years ago. As the complaints became more vocal in the 1990s, the Clinton Administration almost embarked on major changes to our student debt system. But as politics go, it was not to be! Blazing voices of students during the Occupy Movement in the Great Recession brought national news coverage to the debt crisis. Regardless, student debt and its burden have continued climbing unabated.
Professor Elizabeth T. Shermer, Loyola University Chicago, is the author of Indentured Students: How Government-Guaranteed Loans Left Generations Drowning in College Debt (also available on Amazon). In this episode, she explains how we got here.
I hope you enjoy this episode and gain some perspective about our country's student debt crisis.
Adel Host of ThePeel.news podcast
- U.S. Economy Series: click for more episodes
- SUPPORT: To continue our free podcast program, we depend on our listeners’ support. So please click this link https://anchor.fm/the-peel-news/support and join our other supporters in the news peeler community. Thank you.
- 🎵 attribution, links and license for the theme music in this podcast is below: The Success by Keys of Moon | https://soundcloud.com/keysofmoonMusic promoted by https://www.free-stock-music.com Attribution 4.0 International (CC BY 4.0). https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/
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Prof. Shih explains banks, shadow banks, massive debt, Evergrande, economic shocks, and President Xi's personal history that informs his ideology and policies.
In December, one of China's largest real estate developers, Evergrande, defaulted on its loan. Evergrande is the "world's most indebted developer" and this was potentially "Asia's largest default". Prof. Shih cautions that this default and other looming real estate crises do not mean that the Chinese people and investors have lost faith in real estate assets. No! This recent crisis, which Prof. Shih is confident the PBOC will prevent from devolving into a market crash, was caused by government regulations, regulations meant to end the borrowing binge of giant private companies, companies that have become too powerful for President Xi's taste and conservative communist beliefs that seem to pivot China away from its roaring days of capitalism to something else, some form of economy that Prof. Shih explains in this episode.
This is the link to Prof. Shih's academic homepage: https://gps.ucsd.edu/faculty-directory/victor-shih.html
And these are the Amazon and University of Michigan Press links to Economic Shocks and Authoritarian Stability, a 2020 book edited by Prof. Shih and discussed in this episode.
- China Series: click for more episodes
- SUPPORT: To continue our free podcast program, we depend on our listeners’ support. So please click this link https://anchor.fm/the-peel-news/support and join our other supporters in the news peeler community. Thank you.
- 🎵 attribution, links and license for the theme music in this podcast is below: The Success by Keys of Moon | https://soundcloud.com/keysofmoonMusic promoted by https://www.free-stock-music.com Attribution 4.0 International (CC BY 4.0). https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/
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Listen to 42 highlights from Season One, and learn about what's coming up in Season Two.
The first season of ThePeel.news has come to an end. Over the course of the past 42 episodes, we've covered many fascinating subjects and organized them into several series, which you can find on our website.
In this first season, our audience has grown, our newsletter subscription has increased, and more and more of you are financially supporting our program through your small monthly contributions.
I am very grateful for your support, which helps us develop and distribute this podcast. So, thank you!!
We have exciting episodes planned for our second season, which starts on Fri., Jan. 7, at 6 am ET. Click the image below to learn more about our New Year episodes.
Merry Christmas, happy holidays, and happy New Year.
Adel
Host of ThePeel.news Podcast
- SUPPORT: To continue our free podcast program, we depend on our listeners’ support. So please click this link https://anchor.fm/the-peel-news/support and join our other supporters in the news peeler community. Thank you.
- 🎵 attribution, links and license for the theme music in this podcast is below: The Success by Keys of Moon | https://soundcloud.com/keysofmoonMusic promoted by https://www.free-stock-music.com Attribution 4.0 International (CC BY 4.0). https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/
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Prof. Craig explains America’s water rights, the Colorado River’s special case and environmental consequences of diverting the water far away from their river sources.
The U.S. Supreme Court unanimously decided against Mississippi in its water rights dispute against Tenessee. The case was not only the first oral argument of this term and the first decision rendered by the Court, but it was also the first of its kind: a dispute about groundwater rights that is based on tort law, and not the legal doctrine of Equitable Apportionment. If all of this sounds too... well, too legalese, not to worry. Professor Robin Craig of USC's Gould School of Law livens up this podcast conversation with stories about the Colorado River and the clever scheme of Tenessee to suction off Mississippi's water from right under their feet (I hope you read that literally). She goes on to explain how the Colorado River's water is split between the many thirsty states along its meandering path, and why it is that California has senior rights to Colorado's water over other states. In addition, she informs us about the environmental catastrophes that result from the mismanaged use of America's river and aquifer waters.
Professor Craig specializes in all things water. She is the author, co-author and editor of many books on this subject, and has a long list of accomplishments and engagements relating to water law, management and scholarship in the US and abroad. They are listed on her academic homepage, the link for which is this: https://gould.usc.edu/faculty/?id=77538
I hope you enjoy this episode and gain some perspective about our water rights and its environmental challenges.
Adel
Host of ThePeel.news podcast
https://ThePeel.news
- SUPPORT: To continue our free podcast program, we depend on our listeners’ support. So please click this link https://anchor.fm/the-peel-news/support and join our other supporters in the news peeler community. Thank you.
- 🎵 attribution, links and license for the theme music in this podcast is below: The Success by Keys of Moon | https://soundcloud.com/keysofmoonMusic promoted by https://www.free-stock-music.com Attribution 4.0 International (CC BY 4.0). https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/
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As Covid vaccine conflict continues, Dr. Wadman explains history of vaccines that saved our parents and grandparents.
Omicron arrived in America this week. It is a new Covid-19 variant, one which President Biden says is a cause for concern, not a cause for panic. Regardless, the President, the CDC and other health care professionals and institutions are encouraging Americans, as they have been for months now, to get vaccinated. To better understand what the world was like when there were no vaccines, and what happened when vaccines were developed, such as polio and rubella vaccines, we spoke with Dr. Meredith Wadman. In addition, she provided some perspective for us, from her own medical experience, about countries in which vaccines were (and still are) unavailable. Dr. Wadman is a staff reporter at the journal Science and has written for Nature, Fortune, the New York Times, and the Wall Street Journal. She is the author of The Vaccine Race: Science, Politics and the Human Costs of Defeating Disease. This is a direct link to Dr. Wadman's homepage: http://meredithwadman.com/the-vaccine-race/
I hope you enjoy this episode and gain some perspective about America's past interest to get vaccinated.
Adel Host of ThePeel.news podcast
https://ThePeel.news
- SUPPORT: To continue our free podcast program, we depend on our listeners’ support. So please click this link https://anchor.fm/the-peel-news/support and join our other supporters in the news peeler community. Thank you.
- 🎵 attribution, links and license for the theme music in this podcast is below: The Success by Keys of Moon | https://soundcloud.com/keysofmoonMusic promoted by https://www.free-stock-music.com Attribution 4.0 International (CC BY 4.0). https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/
- PHOTO: The MMR vaccine image is by Whispyhistory, provided at Wikipedia under the CC BY-SA 4.0 license. https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/User:Whispyhistory, https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0/
SOCIAL MEDIA: to watch the host of ThePeel.news, Adel, peel the history behind news with distinguished professors and critically acclaimed authors, follow us on social media by clicking the following links:
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Prof. Silverman describes first Thanksgiving: an accidental feast between frenemies that was never repeated. How much is our Thanksgiving tradition based on real events that transpired sometime in the fall of 1621 in Plymouth, Massachusetts? And why does it matter anyway? Don't all nations have feel-good traditions that are partly based on facts, but mostly predicated on myths? Professor David Silverman answers these questions and more. For example, he shares with us that Europeans had been in contact with the Wampanoag Native Americans, who are the "Indians" of our Thanksgiving tradition, since at least 1524. And that the Pilgrims were guided to Plymouth by at least one crew member who touted its advantage - hint: all its native inhabitants had died of disease, leaving houses and fields empty and available for the would-be English settlers. And while the turkey was certainly on the menu, so was eel! In this episode, Professor Silvermans explains the aftermath of that first Thanksgiving. And by way of follow-up, I ask him to explain why it is that some Native Americans observe a Day of Mourning on Thanksgiving.
Professor Silverman is the author of This Land is Their Land: The Wampanoag Indians, Plymouth Colony, and the Troubled History of Thanksgiving, a 2019 book. Click this link for this book's Amazon page. Professor Silverman has written several other books about the history of Native Americans, which are listed on his academic homepage is along with his other publications, projects and honors. Here is the direct link to Professor Silverman's academic homepage: https://history.columbian.gwu.edu/david-silverman
- SUPPORT: To continue our free podcast program, we depend on our listeners’ support. So please click this link https://anchor.fm/the-peel-news/support and join our other supporters in the news peeler community. Thank you.
- 🎵 attribution, links and license for the theme music in this podcast is below: The Success by Keys of Moon | https://soundcloud.com/keysofmoonMusic promoted by https://www.free-stock-music.com Attribution 4.0 International (CC BY 4.0). https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/
SOCIAL MEDIA: to watch the host of ThePeel.news, Adel, peel the history behind news with distinguished professors and critically acclaimed authors, follow us on social media by clicking the following links:
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This episode is sponsored by · Anchor: The easiest way to make a podcast. https://anchor.fm/app
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Defund PD? Not in Minneapolis! Per Prof. Simonson, historically Democrats funded America's PDs in the name of Civil Rights. Minneapolis gets to keep its police department. That's the outcome of last week's ballot vote.
Minneapolis Mayor Jacob Frey called for police officers "to make sure they are working directly with the community to keep us safe." In our podcast conversation, Professor Jocelyn Simonson brings attention to the complexity of the term "community". What is exactly a community and who is in it? Frankly, before this podcast conversation, I was under the impression that the term community had a geographical definition, such as the community within a precinct. But I now understand that a community can be much more diverse than that restrictive definition, and it may include citizens whose voices are not heard or are ignored. The term community is important because it goes to the heart of ordinary people's participation in the criminal system, which Professor Simonson also describes as bottom-up contestation, and it can include laws and ordinances, policing policies and courtroom watching. She also takes us through the history of America's police, how and when it was founded and when it began to receive federal funding for its growth and militarization.
Professor Simonson, who writes and teaches about criminal law, criminal procedure, evidence, and social change at Brooklyn Law School, explores ways in which the public participates in the criminal process and in the institutions of local governance that control policing and punishment. In this episode, which was recorded prior to the ballot vote in Minneapolis, she also talks about her upcoming book on this subject.
This is the link to her academic homepage: https://www.brooklaw.edu/Contact-Us/Simonson-Jocelyn, and it lists her research and provides information for her many publications - including those in popular journals such as the New York Times and the Washington Post.'
SUPPORT: To continue our free podcast program, we depend on our listeners’ support. So please click this link https://anchor.fm/the-peel-news/support and join our other supporters in the news peeler community. Thank you.
Description to featured image: Student loan debt rose from $480.1 billion (3.5% GDP) in Q1 2006 to $1,683 billion (7.8% GDP) in Q1 2020. Orange and red boxes inserted by ThePeel.news. Chart by St. Louis Federal Reserve Bank (Public Domain).
🎵 attribution, links and license for the theme music in this podcast is below: The Success by Keys of Moon | https://soundcloud.com/keysofmoonMusic promoted by https://www.free-stock-music.com Attribution 4.0 International (CC BY 4.0). https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/
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This episode is sponsored by · Anchor: The easiest way to make a podcast. https://anchor.fm/app
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Prof. Takacs: America is the only Western democracy not to have any climate change laws!
President Biden attended the Glasgow Climate Conference, COP26, with much fanfare, suggesting that America could lead the fight against climate change by the power of its example. But as Professor David Takacs explains the history of America's climate change commitments in this episode, the U.S. doesn't come out quite the exemplary leader to spearhead this enormous effort. Ask yourself this: how did the U.S. handle the Kyoto Protocol? Or the Paris Agreement? But surely, you may say, that even though the U.S. has disappointed the international community in the past when it comes to climate change, we've done a great job back home... right? No. Not right! The United States of America, the biggest historical polluter of greenhouse gases, is the only Western democracy not to have any climate change laws.
In this podcast episode, Professor Takacs explains how our federal government's climate policies are implemented in the absence of laws, and the real and political ramifications of this lack of laws on climate. Professor Takacs further teaches us that rules and laws won't do any good, and they may not even pass, without the participation of those who are negatively impacted by our shift to a low or zero carbon emission economy. As he tells it, we need a just transition for workers that will lose their jobs due to our efforts to combat climate change.
To learn more about Professor Takacs's important scholarship and contributions to climate studies, visit his academic homepage at U.C. Hastings College of the Law (link: https://www.uchastings.edu/people/david-takacs/), and read his numerous publications and book (link: https://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/cf_dev/AbsByAuth.cfm?per_id=1393231). And here is an Amazon link to Professor Takcas's book on biodiversity: https://www.amazon.com/Idea-Biodiversity-Philosophies-Paradise/dp/0801854008/ref=sr_1_2?dchild=1&keywords=The+Idea+of+Biodiversity&qid=1621394881&sr=8-2.
One last point, in addition to teaching law, Professor Takacs has a Ph.D. in the history of science and has taught undergraduates for a decade. Prior to that, he has spent time in Keyna and Senegal and witnessed climate change firsthand. In this episode, he shares the depth of his expertise and breadth of experience with us.
Professor Takacs Recommendations: Novel by Barbara Kingsolver, Flight Behavior (Amazon link). My Octopus Teacher, a film on Netflix.
- To continue our free podcast program, we depend on our listeners’ support. So please click this link https://anchor.fm/the-peel-news/support and join our other supporters in the news peeler community. Thank you.
- 🎵 The attribution, links and license for the theme music in this podcast is below: The Success by Keys of Moon | https://soundcloud.com/keysofmoonMusic promoted by https://www.free-stock-music.com Attribution 4.0 International (CC BY 4.0). https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/
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Prof. Marks tells the story of human migration from Africa to the Americas - 10,000 years prior than previously believed.
Did humans first migrate to America by crossing an ice-free land bridge from Asia? This is the familiar story of how Native Americans crossed the Bering Sea, during a time when it was dry land, from Siberia to Alaska. But here is the thing: the latest scientific evidence undermines this belief. According to a study published in the journal Science, human presence is unequivocally shown in America during a period between 21,000 to 23,000 years ago, a period in which glacial ice sheets would have presumably impeded the migration of humans from Asia to Alaska.
To better understand the significance of this recent discovery, and to also better understand anthropology, including its history of racism, we spoke with Mr. Jonathan Marks, a Professor of Anthropology at the University of North Carolina at Charlotte. Professor Marks teaches biological anthropology, human variation and human origins. He is the recipient of many awards and honors, which are listed on his academic homepage: https://anthropology.charlotte.edu/node/131
Among his many publications, Professor Marks is the author of the following books:
The Alternative Introduction to Biological Anthropology (2018),
Is Science Racist? (2017), and
Tales of the ex-Apes: How We Think about Human Evolution (2015).
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- 🎵 The attribution, links and license for the theme music in this podcast is below: The Success by Keys of Moon | https://soundcloud.com/keysofmoonMusic promoted by https://www.free-stock-music.com Attribution 4.0 International (CC BY 4.0). https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/
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Per Prof. Sheffi, global supply chain lacked enough monkeys to develop Covid vaccines.
Isn't strange that the supply chain has dominated our news? It's strange because the overwhelming majority of us Americans hardly ever think of the supply chain. We order a product, it soon arrives. And if we want to touch and feel things, we go to the store and buy it - physically! But now, we have a supply chain crisis. To better understand the wide-ranging impact of supply chain and supply chain history, we spoke with Mr. Yossi Sheffi, who is a professor at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology.
Professor Sheffi is the Director of the MIT Center for Transportation & Logistics and also the Director of the MIT Supply Chain Management Program. He has written many books, including a 2020 book titled The New (Ab)Normal: Reshaping Business and Supply Chain Strategy Beyond Covid-19, and a 2021 book that was published just this week, titled A Shot in the Arm: How Science, Engineering, and Supply Chains Converged to Vaccinate the World. Professor Sheffi has advised many governments and leading manufacturing, retail and distribution enterprises, and he has also founded and co-founded five successful companies.
This is the link to Professor Sheffi’s academic homepage, which lists his research and provides information for his many publications, projects and awards, is provided in the detailed caption of this episode: https://ctl.mit.edu/about/bio/yossi-sheffi
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- The image in our caption artwork is of a basic flowchart of a supply chain for an end-consumer product. It is provided by Miguel Garcia Gonzalez on Wikipedia under the CC BY-SA 4.0 license. Click the following links to learn more about the source of this image and its license: https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Supply_Chain_Flowchart.svg#/media/File:Supply_Chain_Flowchart.svg https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0/
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Lebanon hasn't had a national census since the 1930s! Prof. Makdisi explains historical background to current crisis.
Sectarian violence erupted in the streets of Beirut this week. This development is the manifestation of deep-rooted and unresolved issues in Lebanon, which include, but are not limited to, Lebanon's dysfunctional sectarian government system. As Professor Makdisi explains in our podcast conversation, for centuries, pluralism was a constant and celebrated feature of the Levant. Prior to WWI, different sects coexisted under the auspices of the Ottman Empire. But the sectarian government system that the French established in Lebanon after WWI created fissures along sectarian lines that continue to widen. The astonishing aspect of Lebanon's sectarian government is that it was initially meant as a temporary step towards forming a united, secular national government.
Join our conversation with Professor Ussama Makdisi of Rice University to learn more about Lebanon's failed sectarian government, foreign interference and the current economic crisis. He is a Professor of History and the first holder of the Arab-American Educational Foundation Chair of Arab Studies at Rice University. Professor Makdisi has been a Visiting Professor at UC Berkeley, a Resident Fellow at the Institute for Advanced Study, in Berlin, and was named a Carnegie Scholar in 2009. He was awarded the Berlin Prize and was a Fellow at the American Academy of Berlin.
Here is the link to Professor Makdisi's academic homepage, which includes a list of his books and other publications: https://profiles.rice.edu/faculty/ussama-makdisi.
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Prof. Nunan takes us from Soviet occupation of Afghanistan to rise of Taliban and their lack of governing experience.
Where do the Taliban come from? And how is their version of Islam different than say... Iran's? Saudi Arabia? Or Turkey's? And why is it that most Taliban don't speak English (or French for that matter), but the US-backed Afghan government's technocrats did? In addition to their strict interpretation of Islam, the Taliban are different from the Afghan government they defeated in their ethnicity, language and regional affiliations. The two most striking characteristics of the Taliban are their close ties with Pakistan and their rural origins, both of which sets them apart from the urban residents of Kabul - the Afghanistan that we Americans often saw on TV. Describing the Taliban of the 1990s, Professor Timothy Nunan highlights an intriguing point - that it's hard to call the Taliban a state, because, in their first run of Afghanistan, they pretty much outsourced most of the administrative matters of the country. And this leads to Professor Nunan's interest in Afghanistan's major theme - that it's a country that for decades has depended on foreign aid to survive! Although the following is a small point in the great tragedy of Afghanistan's fall to the Taliban, it's important to note that the Taliban are not interested, at least not yet, in exporting their way of government or their Islamic ethos. As Professor Nunan tells it, they are perfectly happy remaining within the bounds and boundaries of Afghanistan.
In this podcast episode, Professor Nunan describes the long history of communism's interest in partnering with the forces of Islam and recruiting Muslims. This background provides a segue to the USSR's occupation of Afghanistan, during which more than one million Afghans died. For more information about Professor Nunan's impressive accomplishments and fascinating research, please visit his academic homepage or his personal website: https://timothynunan.com/.
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- 🎵 The attribution, links and license for the theme music in this podcast is below: The Success by Keys of Moon | https://soundcloud.com/keysofmoonMusic promoted by https://www.free-stock-music.com Attribution 4.0 International (CC BY 4.0). https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/
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As Congress debates infrastructure bill, Prof. Petroski explains the history of America's infrastructure and its funding.
Did you know, that before the 19th century, the only engineering schools were at military academies, such as West Point? Civil engineers that took courses in military schools were later hired by governments and, mostly, by private enterprises to build infrastructure that would make the conduct of business more efficient. So, at its core, infrastructure has always been about commerce and the economy. This statement is timeless - it applied to Roman roads and aqueducts as it applies to American freeway and broadband networks. When it comes to infrastructure, just as in any other technical discipline, improvement spawns out of failure. As Professor Henry Petroski tells it, while the French were historically great theorists and designers of infrastructure, the British were better doers. And in their infrastructure efforts, the British kept close records of their progress and failures, something that didn't happen in the U.S. until the 1980s.
And here is something that I bet you didn't know: 100 years ago, engineers believed that they could build a bridge across the Atlantic. Yes, one hundred years ago. Try getting Congress to pay for that!
This is the link to Professor Petroski's academic homepage, which includes a list of his many publications, accomplishments and awards: https://cee.duke.edu/faculty/henry-petroski
- To continue our free podcast program, we depend on our listeners’ support. So please click this link https://anchor.fm/the-peel-news/support and join our other supporters in the news peeler community. Thank you.
- The MMR vaccine image is by Whispyhistory, provided at Wikipedia under the CC BY-SA 4.0 license. https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/User:Whispyhistory, https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0/
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Prof. Schuller explains how neoliberal policies and NGOs crippled Haiti's economy, and Haitian women shouldered the burden.
Haitian migrants are at America's Southern border in unprecedented numbers. While many have fled Haiti after the recent assassination of its president, last month's earthquake and the flooding that followed, the overwhelming majority of Haitians are refugees from the aftermath of the 2010 earthquake. This begs the following question: how is it that Haiti hasn't recovered from its 2010 earthquake, despite all the international assistance that it received?
Professor Schuller dives into the history of Haiti's earthquake recovery, and what role NGOs have played in Haiti. He is a professor of Anthropology and Nonprofit and NGO Studies at Northern Illinois University and its affiliate University in Haiti. Professor Schuller has been studying NGOs and Haiti since the beginning of this century, and he was on the ground in Haiti just 8 days after its calamitous 2010 earthquake.
This is the link to Professor Schuller’s academic homepage, which includes a list of his many publications and accomplishments
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- Ruins of Haiti National Palace - Port au Prince. Photo provided by Trocaire from Ireland - DSC_1200 Uploaded by victorgrigas. https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/User:Victorgrigas
- https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2010_Haiti_earthquake#/media/File:Ruins_of_Haiti_National_Palace_-_Port_au_Prince_2012.jpg
License: CC BY 2.0: https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/2.0/ 4. 🎵 The attribution, links and license for the theme music in this podcast is below: The Success by Keys of Moon | https://soundcloud.com/keysofmoonMusic promoted by https://www.free-stock-music.com Attribution 4.0 International (CC BY 4.0). https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/
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What if Covid predominately killed young Americans? Mr. Barry explains how such a scenario would have altered our response.
John M. Barry, our guest in this episode, is the author of The Great Influenza, an award-winning book about the Spanish flu pandemic, one that famously became the impetus for President George W. Bush's pandemic preparation plan. Interestingly, President Bush has read another award-winning book by Mr. Barry, one about the history of the Mississippi River's 1927 flood, which President Bush mentions in his autobiography. Although a nonscientist, Mr. Barry has been involved in highly prestigious positions with many scientific institutions. You'll understand how he is qualified for such positions once you read his books (we highly encourage reading The Great Influenza). You can also appreciate the depth of his scientific knowledge and historical research by listening to our conversation with him about the Spanish flu pandemic, and the lessons that can be gleaned from it for our struggle with the Covid-19 pandemic. As you will note, Mr. Barry is not sheepish in sharing his opinions, about how some of our politicians and experts have may have botched our response to our great pandemic.
Mr. Barry's personal and professional bios are quite fascinating, and he uses wit and humor to tell both. You are welcome to visit his website to learn more about him, including links to his many publications and interviews: https://www.johnmbarry.com/
- To continue our free podcast program, we depend on our listeners’ support. So please click this link https://anchor.fm/the-peel-news/support and join our other supporters in the news peeler community. Thank you.
- 🎵 The attribution, links and license for the theme music in this podcast is below: The Success by Keys of Moon | https://soundcloud.com/keysofmoonMusic promoted by https://www.free-stock-music.com Attribution 4.0 International (CC BY 4.0). https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/
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Prof. Allison, a military historian, explains America’s war strategies from Vietnam to Afghanistan.
We can't win with you... and we can't win without you. What does this statement mean? The statement comes from an American ally, which we supported militarily, and which was widely viewed as an American puppet regime. Can you guess which ally this was? Here is a hint: that regime and that country no longer exist. In this episode, Professor Allison explains the difficulty of war. But what he explains, even more, is the difficulty of ending a war. We have faced this difficulty after virtually every American war, the aftermaths of which have been uncertain, tumultuous, violent and at times have led to renewed war. You may find it interesting that American military officers learn about the art of ending a war, just as much as they learn about having empathy... not the kumbaya type of empathy, but the kind that helps us better understand our enemies and their objectives, which in turn help us win wars and succeed afterward. Such analysis informs our military leaders to avoid making bad assumptions and, more importantly, avoid strategic narcissism.
To better understand how our nation botched our military exit from Afghanistan as well as understand our war strategies and exit strategies in Iraq and Vietnam, we engaged Professor Bill Allison in a long conversation, one that revealed much about America's wars. Professor Allison teaches at Georgia Southern University. He has many accomplishments and awards. For example, he is a recipient of the Department of the Army Meritorious Public Service Medal.
This is a link to his academic homepage: https://cah.georgiasouthern.edu/history/faculty/allison/
And here are links and information about two of Professor Allisons' books:
My Lai: An American Atrocity in the Vietnam War: https://jhupbooks.press.jhu.edu/title/my-lai
The Gulf War 1990-91: https://www.macmillanexplorers.com/global-and-transnational-history/the-gulf-war-1990-91/15379996
Prof. Allison also has a podcast on military history and military historians. Its title is Military Historians Are People Too! A Podcast With Brian and Bill. It's available on all podcast platforms.
- To continue our free podcast program, we depend on our listeners’ support. So please click this link https://anchor.fm/the-peel-news/support and join our other supporters in the news peeler community. Thank you.
- 🎵 The attribution, links and license for the theme music in this podcast is below: The Success by Keys of Moon | https://soundcloud.com/keysofmoonMusic promoted by https://www.free-stock-music.com Attribution 4.0 International (CC BY 4.0). https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/
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Recently, the Cato Institute published a research study that showed crime rates in Texas by illegal as well as legal immigrants are lower, in fact much lower than native-born Americans. This was an astonishing report to us, not because we don't believe it, but because one hardly hears such reports in the news. The popular political narrative of some conservatives, which we often hear in the news, is the opposite - that immigrants increase crime in America. Also, we should point out that the news of the Cato research wasn't exactly headline news! Rather, it was a tiny note in the Wall Street Journal.
To understand the correlation between immigration and crime, and its history, we spoke with Professor Jennifer Chacón of UC Berkeley Law. This is a link to her academic homepage: https://www.law.berkeley.edu/our-faculty/faculty-profiles/jennifer-m-chacon/
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- Image attributions: immigrants during a 2010 naturalization ceremony at the Grand Canyon National Park. and immigrants on an ocean steamer passing the Statue of Liberty, NYC, 1887. Both images are in the Public Domain.
- 🎵 The attribution, links and license for the theme music in this podcast is below: The Success by Keys of Moon | https://soundcloud.com/keysofmoonMusic promoted by https://www.free-stock-music.com Attribution 4.0 International (CC BY 4.0). https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/
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Prof. Dinka explains history of empire, independence, ethnicities & nations, civil war & more...
When most of us Americans think of Ethiopia, we think of famine, of which Ethiopia is once again in imminent danger. But there is so much more about Ethiopia that distinguishes it from the rest of Africa. For example, Ethiopia was never colonized. In fact, by beating Italian invaders in the late 19th century, Ethiopia became the envy of and inspiration for other African countries. And yes, there is more to this story too. Ethiopia used that prestige and power to, in turn, colonize other African nations that now reside in southern regions of modern Ethiopia. But why do we say nations? Aren't the terms ethnicity, race or tribes a better fit for describing Ethiopia's different peoples? The answer to that is a definite no! Ethiopia defies African standards, once again, by having the "courage", the word that Professor Dinka used, to create a country in which the boundaries of its different states are drawn to reflect the different nations that live within Ethiopia. In essence, Ethiopia is a multinational federal country. But that federal system is now under threat as a civil war with the Tigray region is engulfing other national regions of the country as well as Eritrea, a bordering country that until recently was part of Ethiopia.
Join me in this podcast conversation with Professor Etana Dinka of James Madison University, who is a historian of Africa and whose research focus is on Ethiopia, including many publications and a book titled Society, Revolution and Military Intervention in Ethiopian Politics. This is the link to Professor Dinka's academic homepage: https://www.jmu.edu/history/people/all-people/dinka-etana.shtml
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- Image attribution: Map of Ethiopia by Gordon Johnson from Pixabay.
- 🎵 The attribution, links and license for the theme music in this podcast is below: The Success by Keys of Moon | https://soundcloud.com/keysofmoonMusic promoted by https://www.free-stock-music.com Attribution 4.0 International (CC BY 4.0). https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/
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Prof. Baker takes us through the history of the movement against sexual harassment.
Governor Cuomo has resigned due, in part, to allegations of sexual harassment by him on about a dozen women. But what does the term sexual harassment mean? According to Professor Baker, its legal definition derives from the intensity and pervasiveness of the harassment. And amazingly, in the last 46 years since the term "sexual harassment" has been coined, the rates of sexual harassment have pretty much remained the same. But progress, however slow, is being made after the me-too moment.
Join me in this podcast conversation with Professor Carrie Baker of Smith College, whose research focus is on women's legal history, gender and public policy, and feminist activism. She is the author of The Women’s Movement Against Sexual Harassment, a 2008 book, and Sexual Harassment Law, a 2020 book. This is the link to Professor Baker's academic homepage: https://www.smith.edu/academics/faculty/carrie-baker
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- Image attribution: #METOO by Mihai Surdu on Unsplash. https://unsplash.com/@mihaisurdu?utm_source=unsplash&utm_medium=referral&utm_content=creditCopyText https://unsplash.com/s/photos/sexual-harassment?utm_source=unsplash&utm_medium=referral&utm_content=creditCopyText
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Prof. DuVivier talks about Michael Moore's 2020 film and explains the growing pains of the carbon-neutral industry.
We hear much talk about green energy. But other terms are used as well, including renewable energy, clean energy, green energy and sustained energy. So which term is correct, and which term is more important for legislation and fundraising purposes? And how does politics fit into all of this? And why do some environmentalists oppose solar power projects?
For answers to these questions, and much more, we spoke with Professor DuVivier of the University of Denver Sturm College of Law. She is Chair in Natural Resources Law, an award-winning professor, the author of two books on energy, and also has a degree and experience working in geology.
This is the link to Professor DuVivier's academic homepage: https://www.law.du.edu/about/people/kk-duvivier
Professor DuVivier also followed up on our podcast conversation about switching to heat pumps for air conditioning and heating, with the following article that heralds California's new building code to phase out gas: https://www.power-grid.com/policy-regulation/california-adopts-new-building-code-to-phase-out-gas/?utm_source=powergrid_weekly_newsletter&utm_medium=email&utm_campaign=2021-08-19
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- Podcast Artwork Attributions: Image attributions: solar panels by Zbynek Burival (https://unsplash.com/@zburival?utm_source=unsplash&utm_medium=referral&utm_content=creditCopyText) on Unsplash (https://unsplash.com/s/photos/clean-energy?utm_source=unsplash&utm_medium=referral&utm_content=creditCopyText), wind turbine by Photo by Gonz DDL (https://unsplash.com/@gonz_ddl?utm_source=unsplash&utm_medium=referral&utm_content=creditCopyText) on Unsplash (https://unsplash.com/s/photos/clean-energy?utm_source=unsplash&utm_medium=referral&utm_content=creditCopyText).
- 🎵 The attribution, links and license for the theme music in this podcast is below: The Success by Keys of Moon | https://soundcloud.com/keysofmoonMusic promoted by https://www.free-stock-music.com Attribution 4.0 International (CC BY 4.0). https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/
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Prof. Nasr explains that contrary to popular belief, Shi'ism's dominance in Iran is relatively new.
Iran has a new president, a new government. But what does the term government mean to you? That question is not meant to be philosophical. It's rather simple in fact. To most of us Americans, our federal government is composed of the executive, the legislative and the Judiciary branches combined. This is more or less repeated throughout our state systems. But in the Islamic Republic of Iran, the very term government may be confusing to the unfamiliar. For example, aside from its parliament and president, there are many non-elected institutions that rule above the presidency and the parliament. And while Iran's Supreme Leader is an all-powerful figure, as explained by our podcast guest, Professor Vali Nasr, his power does indeed have limitations - limitations that more than once were displayed for all to see. And here is a question that is not often asked... what is it about Iran's dominant religion - Shi'i Islam - that particularly lends itself to Iran's form of government, particularly its Supreme Leadership? And here is another question yet: has Iran - this bastion of Shi'ism - always been a Shi'i country? The answer is a shocking no!
To dig deeper and better understand the governing structure of the Islamic Republic of Iran, including its history, we spoke with Mr. Vali Nasr. He is a Professor of Middle East Studies and International Affairs at Johns Hopkins University, and from 2012 to 2019 he served as the Dean of Johns Hopkins University's School of Advanced International Studies. Professor Nasr has advised senior American policymakers, including the President, Secretary of State, senior members of the Congress, and presidential campaigns. He has authored many books on Iran and Shi'ism, and has written for the Wall Street Journal, the New York Times, Foreign Affairs, Financial Times, The Washington Post, and a host of others. He is a frequent guest on PBS, CNN, and other major networks.
This is the link to Professor Nasr's academic homepage: https://sais.jhu.edu/users/vnasr1
In addition, here is a link to a recent New York Times article about the structure of Iran's government: https://www.nytimes.com/2021/08/05/world/middleeast/iran-president-ebrahim-raisi.html?searchResultPosition=1
Podcast Artwork Attributions: Iran's flag: Photo by sina drakhshani on Unsplash. Link to image: https://unsplash.com/@sina_drakhshani?utm_source=unsplash&utm_medium=referral&utm_content=creditCopyText Ayatollah Khamenei (middle): on Wikipedia by khamenei.ir under license CC BY 4.0 Link to image: https://farsi.khamenei.ir/photo-album?id=47568#i, and link to license: https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/ President Ra'isi (right): on Wikipedia by Mehr News Agency under license CC BY 4.0. Link to image: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/President_of_Iran#/media/File:Raisi_in_2021-02_(cropped).jpg. Link to License: https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/.
- SUPPORT: To continue our free podcast program, we depend on our listeners’ support. So please click this link https://anchor.fm/the-peel-news/support and join our other supporters in the news peeler community. Thank you.
- 🎵 attribution, links and license for the theme music in this podcast is below: The Success by Keys of Moon | https://soundcloud.com/keysofmoonMusic promoted by https://www.free-stock-music.com Attribution 4.0 International (CC BY 4.0). https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/
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One way to understand Cuba, the way that Professor Guerra tells it, is to study it in contrast to other colonies of the Spanish Empire. And what stands out is this: slavery! It was a ruthless, barbaric form of slavery that was exercised throughout Cuba's sugar plantations. And then... fears of revolution led to mass persecutions that preceded real revolutions and incremental, slow change. Along the way in the 19th Century, there were larger than lifelike characters, such as Jose MartÍ, about whom Professor Guerra, this episode's guest, published a book in 2005.
As Cuba struggled to free itself of its Spanish overlords, America invaded Cuba in 1898. But deep disappointment set in as it soon became evident that America did intend to bring freedom to Cuba. In fact, developments that soon followed proved that America's interest in Cuba was far from the independence of Cuba or freedom of its people. America's military intervention, its meddling in all aspects of Cuba's government, including its constitution, and its support of military despots in Cuba paved the path for Castro and, eventually, communism in Cuba.
To better understand this history, we spoke with Lillian Guerra. She is an award-winning scholar of Cuba with many scholarly publications on the subject, including three books. Her upcoming fourth book on Cuba is Patriots and Traitors in Cuba: Political Pedagogy, Rehabilitation and Vanguard Youth, 1961-1981.
Here is the link to Professor Guerra's academic homepage, which includes a list of her several books and her many awards and accomplishments:
https://history.ufl.edu/directory/current-faculty/353-2/
The image of the Cuban flag in this episode's artwork is by Photo by Juan Luis Ozaez on Unsplash. Here is a link to Juan's page on unsplash.com: https://unsplash.com/@jloza?utm_source=unsplash&utm_medium=referral&utm_content=creditCopyText
🎵 The attribution, links and license for the theme music in this podcast is below: The Success by Keys of Moon | https://soundcloud.com/keysofmoonMusicpromoted by https://www.free-stock-music.comAttribution 4.0 International (CC BY 4.0). https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/its
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After assassination of Pres. Jovenel Moïse, Prof. Fatton describes world's reaction to independence of a black nation.
Haiti continues to be on American news. The country's stability is at issue, and America has declined the request of Haiti's government to send troops. But many Haitians don't want American troops in their country, no doubt because of the long history of foreign interference in Haiti's domestic affairs.
To better understand this history, we spoke with Robert Fatton Jr. He is an award-winning Professor of Government and Foreign Affairs in the Department of Politics at the University of Virginia, and the author of many books on various aspects of Haiti's history, including one that published this year.
Here is the link to Professor Fatton's academic homepage, which includes a list and links to his many publications: https://politics.virginia.edu/people/profile/rf/
- To continue our free podcast program, we depend on our listeners’ support. So please click this link https://anchor.fm/the-peel-news/support and join our other supporters in the news peeler community. Thank you.
- 🎵 The attribution, links and license for the theme music in this podcast is below: The Success by Keys of Moon | https://soundcloud.com/keysofmoonMusic promoted by https://www.free-stock-music.com Attribution 4.0 International (CC BY 4.0). https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/
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Prof. Hanifi takes us through parts of Afghan history that are hardly ever covered in our news media.
As the U.S. military leaves Afghanistan, the nightmare of the Taliban regaining control of that country is more and more becoming a real possibility. And President Biden remains resolute about his decision, because, as he emphasizes, we did not go to Afghanistan to nation-build. In a recent news conference, he has explained more, historically more. According to President Biden, no empire has been able to unify Afghanistan.
To better understand the history of Afghanistan, we spoke with Mr. Shah Mahmoud Hanifi, a professor of Central and South Asia and Middle Eastern studies in James Madison University. Professor Hanifi has many publications regarding the history of Afghanistan since the 16th century, including his book "Connecting Histories in Afghanistan".
Here is the link to Professor Hanifi's academic homepage, which includes a list and links to his many publications: https://www.jmu.edu/history/people/all-people/hanifi.shtml
- To continue our free podcast program, we depend on our listeners’ support. So please click this link https://anchor.fm/the-peel-news/support and join our other supporters in the news peeler community. Thank you.
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Prof. Loeb informs of the scientific community's reluctance to embrace UFO research.
The U.S. government's intelligence community released its report about UFOs on June 25, 2021 (it was actually an analysis of many reports). And prior to this, our government had revived its special task force on UFOs. But what about our scientific community? According to Professor Avi Loeb, a professor in and the former chair of the Department of Astronomy at Harvard University, the scientific community has been cool to explore UFOs and research this fascinating and mysterious topic. Why you may ask, as did we? Because of the risks involved. While scientists have researched the dark matter, the taboo and the potential for ridicule surrounding UFOs has, generally speaking, kept away from delving deep into the subject of UFOs.
Professor Loeb is the Founding Director of Harvard's Black Hole Initiative and a former member of the President's Council of Advisors on Science and Technology (PCAST) at the White House. He has authored four books and some 700 research articles. His latest book is Extraterrestrial: The First Sign of Intelligent Life Beyond Earth. It was published in January of this year.
Here is the link for his academic homepage: https://astronomy.fas.harvard.edu/people/avi-loeb
And this is the link to his most recent book: https://www.hmhbooks.com/shop/books/Extraterrestrial/9780358274551
- To continue our free podcast program, we depend on our listeners’ support. So please click this link https://anchor.fm/the-peel-news/support and join our other supporters in the news peeler community. Thank you.
- 🎵 The attribution, links and license for the theme music in this podcast is below: The Success by Keys of Moon | https://soundcloud.com/keysofmoonMusic promoted by https://www.free-stock-music.com Attribution 4.0 International (CC BY 4.0). https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/
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Prof. Balcerski shares the surprisingly circuitous history of America's celebration of the 4th of July.
America's Independence Day has been on the news. One reason is that President Biden set a goal for at least 70% of Americans to get one Covid vaccine shot, which he did not achieve. Another reason, a more complicated one, is that some have brought focus to the importance and meaning of the 4th of July, which doesn't seem all that out of place, given last year's pandemic crisis, BLM protests, a contested presidential election and the January 6th insurrection. As it turns out, the history of the 4th of July is not that straightforward. For example, it took about a century for the recognition of our Independence Day as a federal holiday. And for some 80 years after the Civil war, some parts of the South, including Vicksburg, did not celebrate the 4th of July. It took WWII to create a new sense of nationalism, including the national celebration of the 4th of July.
To better understand the history of our Independence Day, we spoke with Professor, an associate professor of history at Eastern Connecticut State University, where he teaches classes on early American history, African American history, and US presidents and first ladies. In addition, Professor Balcerski is a frequent contributor to CNN, the Washington Post, NBC, and other news organizations. This week he published an opinion on CNN, in which he talked about this week's release of C-SPAN's 2021 Historians Survey of Presidential Leadership. In addition to the fact he was one of the 142 historians who participated in this survey, he also authored a book on President James Buchanan… which is highly relevant to the C-SPAN survey because James Buchanan is ranked as our country's worst president.
The link to Prof. Balcerski's academic homepage: https://www.easternct.edu/faculty-directory/balcerski.html
You can find on Twitter @tbalcerski
Link to his latest CNN opinion piece: https://www.cnn.com/2021/06/30/opinions/c-span-historian-survey-donald-trump-ranking-balcerski/index.html
Link to the 2021 C-SPAN survey: https://www.c-span.org/presidentsurvey2021/?page=overall
Amazon link to Prof. Balcerski's book, "Bosom Friends: The Intimate World of James Buchanan and William Rufus King Illustrated Edition": Bosom Friends: https://www.amazon.com/Bosom-Friends-Intimate-Buchanan-William/dp/019091459
- To continue our free podcast program, we depend on our listeners’ support. So please click this link https://anchor.fm/the-peel-news/support and join our other supporters in the news peeler community. Thank you.
- 🎵 The attribution, links and license for the theme music in this podcast is below: The Success by Keys of Moon | https://soundcloud.com/keysofmoonMusic promoted by https://www.free-stock-music.com Attribution 4.0 International (CC BY 4.0). https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/
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Prof. Wasserstrom connects history of Opium Wars to China's repossession of Hong Kong & its emotional patriotic education.
Hong Kong never really left the news after its massive demonstrations in 2019 and early 2020. But this month, June 2021, America's news coverage of Hong Kong spiked. Here are some highlights. According to the Wall Street Journal, out of apprehension for Hong Kong's future, big international businesses are leaving that city, and the effects of that exodus are highly visible, both metaphorically and literally - the latter manifest in the high rate of commercial real estate vacancies. In addition, although Hong Kong's annual observance of the Tiananmen Square massacre has been banned, in defiance, Hong Kong residents gathered in small numbers to commemorate that tragic day anyway. And there is one more highlight that we like to share. The leaders of the G-7 group of nations issued a rebuke to China regarding many issues, including its treatment of Hong Kong's autonomy and the freedom of its residents. But why does Hong Kong receive so much press coverage? What makes the case of Hong Kong special? To better understand Hong Kong, its past and present, we spoke with Jeffrey Wasserstrom, a Chancellor's professor of history at the University of California, Irvine. Professor Wasserstrom is a specialist in modern Chinese history and has a strong interest in connecting China's past to its present and placing both into global perspective.
Here is the link to Professor Wasserstrom's academic homepage, which includes a list of his numerous publications: https://www.faculty.uci.edu/profile.cfm?faculty_id=5310.
- To continue our free podcast program, we depend on our listeners’ support. So please click this link https://anchor.fm/the-peel-news/support and join our other supporters in the news peeler community. Thank you.
- 🎵 The attribution, links and license for the theme music in this podcast is below: The Success by Keys of Moon | https://soundcloud.com/keysofmoonMusic promoted by https://www.free-stock-music.com Attribution 4.0 International (CC BY 4.0). https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/
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The consumer price index rose to 5% in May, a level it had not reached since August 2008, when it was at 5.4%. Economists and the business community are now wondering when the Federal Reserve will raise interest rates to combat and control inflation. Changing interest rates may affect the stock market, our economy, and our lives - the lives of ordinary Americans, which means that the Federal Reserve is a very powerful institution, and an independent one. But where did the Federal Reserve come from? There is nothing about it in the Constitution. We did not have a Federal Reserve at our founding. We merely had a private bank that acted as America's de facto central bank. But that was too much for us Americans - giving that much power to one bank. So, until 1913 America didn't have a central bank... and for some time after its establishment, the Federal Reserve was not the powerful entity that it is today. For example, it hardly mattered during the Great Depression.
To better understand the history of the Federal Reserve, in this episode we speak with Roger Lowenstein. Mr. Lowenstein is a financial journalist and writer. He reported for The Wall Street Journal for more than a decade. His work has appeared in The Wall Street Journal, Bloomberg, The New York Review of Books, Fortune, The New York Times Magazine, and other publications. His books include Buffett, When Genius Failed, Origins of the Crash, While America Aged, and The End of Wall Street. In addition, he is the author of a 2015 book titled "America's Bank, THE EPIC STRUGGLE TO CREATE THE FEDERAL RESERVE"… which nicely fits with this episode's history behind the news.
This is the link http://rogerlowenstein.com/news to Mr. Lowenstein's website, which includes a list of his numerous publications.
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- 🎵 The attribution, links and license for the theme music in this podcast is below: The Success by Keys of Moon | https://soundcloud.com/keysofmoonMusic promoted by https://www.free-stock-music.com Attribution 4.0 International (CC BY 4.0). https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/
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Join two patent experts (one is a historian) for a fun debate about the ethics and economic impact of America's patent system.
Last month, President Biden's Administration made the extraordinary decision to support the suspension of Covid vaccine patent rights. While pundits weigh our moral obligation to help other countries against the gravity of patent rights for America's businesses and their leadership in innovation, we decided to ask an entirely different question - a seminal question. What is a patent anyway? What rights does a patent give a patent holder? And where did patents come from? And why has patent law - a highly technical field - has had such a complicated history?
To get the answer to these questions and learn more about the history of patent law, we turned to two experts.
Steve Pepe is a partner at the law firm of Ropes and Gray with 25 years of experience in litigating patent infringement cases in virtually every important patent jurisdiction. He’s been lead counsel in many significant patent suits in the fields of computer technology, semiconductors, telecommunications, consumer products, and mechanical systems. Mr. Pepe has been recognized as a Super Lawyer every year since 2013 and has taught patent law and Intellectual Property at Touro Law School. Click this link https://www.ropesgray.com/en/biographies/p/steven-pepe for the extensive list of his publications, presentations, and awards are available on his homepage.
Sam Brenner is an attorney with a Ph.D. in U.S. history – our kinda guy! He is Counsel at the law firm of Ropes and Gray. Dr. Brenner litigates intellectual property cases in technical fields, including telecommunications, electronics, software and hardware, semiconductors, and the life sciences. He counsels clients on patent licensing strategy and also has a prolific pro bono practice. Dr. Brenner has taught at the University of New Hampshire School of Law, the University of Michigan, Brown University, and the University of Rhode Island. Click this link https://www.ropesgray.com/en/biographies/b/samuel-brenner for his bio and long list of publications, presentations, and other accomplishments and awards.
About the law firm of Ropes and Gray (www.ropesgray.com/en): Ropes & Gray is one of the world’s most prestigious law firms, with 1,400 lawyers, known for its work in the private equity, asset management, life sciences, health care and technology industries. Over a century and a half, it has provided legal advice to the world’s most exciting brands - Samsung, Cirque du Soleil, Dunkin’ Brands, among many others. The firm has also advised nearly every major COVID-19 vaccine manufacturer on legal or financial issues associated with bringing vaccines to market. Ropes & Gray also recently played a role in a $40 billion deal to take public Grab, one of the biggest ride-hailing and delivery services apps in Asia, which speaks to the firm’s global reach and its ability to handle complex legal issues. In 2015, Ropes & Gray litigated, and won, at the U.S. Supreme Court the key case that extended marriage equality to all 50 states; the case was Obergefell v. Hodges.
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Prof. Pytlik tells the long history of coexistence between Muslims & Jews, which defies America's understanding of this region.
Last month, in May 2021, for almost two weeks Israel and Hamas exchanged missiles and rockets. At the same time, Israeli Arabs attacked Jews, and Israeli Jews attacked Arabs... all in the streets, neighborhoods and restaurants of Israel. This was the people of Israel attacking other people of Israel.
In this podcast episode, Professor Michael Pytlik describes the long, intertwined history of Muslims and Jews, and how in comparison to Christian Europe, for several centuries Jews lived in relative peace in the lands of Islam and even thrived. He ends our conversation by asking us all to remember what we forgot.
Mr. Pytlik is an assistant professor in the Department of Anthropology and Religious Studies at Oakland University, in Rochester, Michigan. He is the Director of Judaic Studies and the Director of the Cis Maisel Center for Judaic Studies and Community Engagement. Professor Pytlik is also the Director of the Study Abroad in Israel: an archaeological field school and culture tour. This is the link to Professor Pytlik's academic homepage: https://www.oakland.edu/socan/top-links/faculty/pytlik.
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Prof. Demmer: 130,000 Vietnamese evacuated in 1975 along with the US military. Over time, one million Vietnamese refugees settled in the U.S.
When is the right time to leave Afghanistan? And when was the right time to leave Vietnam? Are we leaving our allies in Afghanistan, defenseless before the onslaught of the Taliban? Just as we left our allies at the mercy of the North Vietnamese? What will time tell? Will Kabul go the say of Saigon? And if so, will it take two years? Or will Kabul fall faster?
One rare soldier who served in both wars believes that the same thing that happened in Vietnam is happening now in Afghanistan.
To understand what happened in Vietnam and its aftermath, we spoke with Professor Amanda Demmer, an assistant professor of history at Virginia Tech, whose research and teaching are focused on the boundaries between war and peace in American history. Her recently published book is highly pertinent to our conversation, and it's titled After Saigon’s Fall: Refugees and US-Vietnamese Relations, 1975-2000.
To learn more about Professor Demmer's scholarship and contributions to America's history of war, visit her academic homepage at https://liberalarts.vt.edu/departments-and-schools/department-of-history/faculty/amanda-demmer.html.
- To continue our free podcast program, we depend on our listeners’ support. So please click this link https://anchor.fm/the-peel-news/support and join our other supporters in the news peeler community. Thank you.
- 🎵 The attribution, links and license for the theme music in this podcast is below: The Success by Keys of Moon | https://soundcloud.com/keysofmoonMusic promoted by https://www.free-stock-music.com Attribution 4.0 International (CC BY 4.0). https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/
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The success of President Biden's climate summit hinges on the unprecedented cooperation of the international community. But as Professor David Takacs explains the history of America's climate change commitments in this episode, the U.S. doesn't come out quite the exemplary leader to spearhead this enormous effort. Ask yourself this: how did the U.S. handle the Kyoto Protocol? Or the Paris Agreement? But surely, you may say, that even though the U.S. has disappointed the international community in the past when it comes to climate change, we've done a great job back home... right? No. Not right! The United States of America, the biggest historical polluter of greenhouse gases, is the only Western democracy not to have any climate change laws. In this podcast episode, Professor Takacs explains how our federal government's climate policies are implemented in the absence of laws, and the real and political ramifications of this lack of laws on climate. Professor Takacs further teaches us that rules and laws won't do any good, and they may not even pass, without the participation of those who are negatively impacted by our shift to a low or zero carbon emission economy. As he tells it, we need a just transition for workers that will lose their jobs due to our efforts to combat climate change. To learn more about Professor Takacs's important scholarship and contributions to climate studies, visit his academic homepage at U.C. Hastings College of the Law (link: https://www.uchastings.edu/people/david-takacs/), and read his numerous publications and book (link: https://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/cf_dev/AbsByAuth.cfm?per_id=1393231).
And here is an Amazon link to Professor Takcas's book on biodiversity: https://www.amazon.com/Idea-Biodiversity-Philosophies-Paradise/dp/0801854008/ref=sr_1_2?dchild=1&keywords=The+Idea+of+Biodiversity&qid=1621394881&sr=8-2.
One last point, in addition to teaching law, Professor Takacs has a Ph.D. in the history of science and has taught undergraduates for a decade. Prior to that, he has spent time in Keyna and Senegal and witnessed climate change firsthand. In this episode, he shares the depth of his expertise and breadth of experience with us.
And, as we promised during the podcast, this is the link to the White House's fact sheet regarding President Biden's climate summit.
Professor Takacs Recommendations: Novel by Barbara Kingsolver, Flight Behavior (Amazon link). My Octopus Teacher, a film on Netflix.
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We are having a bit of fun with the title of this podcast because it poses a trick question? You see... if Mr. Biden was president in 1821... aside from the fact that there was no "Democratic" political party then, he would have another issue on his hand: there were no corporate or income taxes back then either. And no! As much as our current political skirmishes suggest, it wasn't a Democratic US President that ushered in the income tax. It was a Republican president - Honest Abe! And later, it was during another Republican President's term that the income tax became permanent - William Taft. The irony of it is that the poor masses and the progressive middle class pushed for the income tax to get the rich to pay their fair share. Now, the poor and the middle American families seem to shoulder most of the income tax burden. So this begs the following question: how did the federal government pay for itself all these years before the income tax? How and why did it grow so large, needing ever more income to pay for its many programs? So that we better understand our present, we spoke with Mr. David Thomson, an assistant professor of American history at Sacred Heart University in Connecticut (link to the academic homepage: https://www.sacredheart.edu/phonebook/david-thomson.php). In his research, Professor Thomson focuses on the Civil War period, including the financing of that war through the sale of government bonds. He recently received a grant from the National Endowment for the Humanities. He is the recipient of numerous fellowships and has won many awards and honors. He is also a contributor to prominent publications, such as the New York Times, the Washington Post, and the Boston Globe magazine. See more information on his website: http://davidkthomson.com/. Professor Thomson has an upcoming book titled Bonds of War: How Civil War Financial Agents Sold the World on the Union. His book will be published in the Spring of 2022 with the University of North Carolina Press. Tune in to ThePeel.news podcast as Professor Thomson takes us from our very beginning - no taxation without representation - through Shays' Rebellion, the US Constitution, George Washington, Alexander Hamilton, the Civil War, great depressions before the GREAT DEPRESSION, the Gilded Age, the Sixteenth Amendment, World War I, the Roaring '20s, the GREAT DEPRESSION, and World War II. Image attribution: The chart title "Federal Revenue by type" is by Wikideas1, from this source, and provided under CC BY-SA 4.0 license in Wikipedia. The sides and top margins of the chart were cropped for better fitting. Some descriptions & titles were superimposed on the chart for better reading. The chart was turned sideways for better fit into the frame. 🎵 The attribution, links and license for the theme music in this podcast is below: The Success by Keys of Moon | https://soundcloud.com/keysofmoonMusic promoted by https://www.free-stock-music.com Attribution 4.0 International (CC BY 4.0). https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/
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China's highly anticipated and much-delayed census finally arrived. And it is making China's officials nervous because it shows a definite downward trend for its population growth. In fact, China's recently announced that families can have three kids, which is a step up from two kids, which was a step up from only one child, which was China's policy from about 1979 to 2015. China's population decline will affect everything - its pension and housing systems to its geopolitical relations with Europe and the U.S. In this episode, we spoke with Professor Wang, who shared the brutal history of China's one-child policy and drew perspective for us... for what the future may look like.
Mr. Feng Wang is a professor of sociology at the University of California, Irvine (academic homepage). He has research interests in contemporary Chinese society and comparative demographic processes and social inequality in state socialism, and his work is frequently cited in the Wall Street Journal, the New York Times, and other prominent journals.
I hope you enjoy this episode and gain some perspective about China's population control programs.
Adel
Host of ThePeel.news podcast
- China Series
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Click https://thepeel.news/register/subscribe-support/ to support our podcast for the price of a cup of coffee. The knee of a police officer placed on the neck of an African American man for longer than 8 minutes - in broad daylight, brazenly in full view of a cell phone camera. How did we get here? How have previous U.S. Presidents handled violence against African Americans? How have they reacted to high-profile criminal proceedings involving Black people? And how does President Biden's handling of the killing of George Floyd and Derek Chauvin's trial hold up against our prior presidents? So that we better understand our present, Thomas Balcerski, a professor of American history and a frequent contributor to CNN, NBC and Washington Post provides us with perspective from the past by taking us on a journey - at times a discomfiting one – through America's history. Tune in to ThePeel.news podcast as Professor Balcerski teaches us that free African Americans were snatched from the North into the slavery of the South. He brings this story to life through the example of the Academy Award-winning film "12 Years A Slave". From this antebellum period, he informs of the post-Civil War atrocities of the Ku Klux Klan and how President Grant and his DOJ crushed them, only for white supremacy to come back in a different form, with a different name. We learn from Professor Balcerski the heart-wrenching story of Emmett Till - a murdered African American teenager - and his intrepid mother's determination for all the world to know, and to see, what happened to her boy. We compare the responses of Presidents Eisenhower and Obama to the murders of teenage African Americans. Finally, we are reminded that George Floyd's death was not the first time that police violence against African Americans was recorded.... for all Americans to see. Here's a hint: Rodney King. Click this link to read ThePeel.news post that is related to this podcast episode. Information about this episode's guest: Professor Thomas Balcerski is an associate professor of history at Eastern Connecticut State University (link to his academic homepage: https://www.easternct.edu/faculty-directory/balcerski.html), where he teaches classes on early American history, African American history, and presidents and first ladies. He is a frequent contributor to CNN, the Washington Post, and NBC, and is the author of Bosom Friends: The Intimate World of James Buchanan and William Rufus King, published b y Oxford University Press in 2019 (book link). You can find him on Twitter @tbalcerski. Here is the long-form Amazon link to his book: https://www.amazon.com/Bosom-Friends-Intimate-Buchanan-William/dp/0190914599 🎵 The attribution, links and license for the theme music in this podcast is below: The Success by Keys of Moon | https://soundcloud.com/keysofmoonMusic promoted by https://www.free-stock-music.comAttribution 4.0 International (CC BY 4.0). https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/
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Republicans argue that President Biden's infrastructure plan includes items irrelevant to infrastructure. It will be a big political fight. But passing big infrastructure legislation has always been difficult - legally and politically. In this podcast, we briefly review the history of America's infrastructure - from Washington's dream of a water canal to America's constitution, and then to presidents that followed Washington, all the way to Eisenhower. Become a financial supporter of ThePeel.news podcast by clicking the support button in this link. 📚 Below are citations to some sources discussed in this podcast. Visit the post on ThePeel.news site for citations to specific pages.
Ambrose, Stephen E. Eisenhower: Soldier And President. Simon & Schuster, 1990. Amazon link. Chernow, Ron. Alexander Hamilton. Penguin Books, 2004. Amazon link. Chernow, Ron. Washington, A Life. The Penguin Press, 2010. Amazon link. Heilbroner, Robert L. The Worldly Philosophers. Simon & Schuster, 1953. Amazon link. Meacham, Jon. Thomas Jefferson, The Art of Power. Random House, 2012. Winner of the Pulitzer Prize. Amazon link. Meacham, Jon. American Lion - Andrew Jackson in the White House. Random House, 2008. Amazon link. McCullough, David. John Adams. Simon & Schuster, 2001. Amazon link. Remini, Robert V. The Life of Andrew Jackson. Harper, 1988. Amazon link. Rubenstein, David M. The American Story - Conversations With Master Historians. Simon & Schuster, 2019. Amazon link. Schlesinger, Arthur, Jr. The Age of Jackson. Konecky&Knockey, 1945. Winner of the Pulitzer Prize. Amazon link. Unger, Harlow Giles. The Last Founding Father - James Monroe And A Nation's Call To Greatness. Da Capo, 2009. Amazon link.
🎵 The attribution, links and license for the theme music in this podcast is below: The Success by Keys of Moon | https://soundcloud.com/keysofmoonMusic promoted by https://www.free-stock-music.comAttribution 4.0 International (CC BY 4.0). https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/
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America has experienced three mass shootings in three weeks. But have there really been... three mass shootings in the three weeks! We are not trying to be cute here. Of course, there were three mass shootings in the last three weeks. We merely pose this question to highlight the frustrating fact that there is no consensus on the exact definition of a mass shooting. There is actually disagreement. And there is no consensus about the frequency of mass shootings, and whether or not their numbers are rising. After ample research, we were left with confusing and contradicting definitions and data. In this podcast, we briefly review the history of the Second Amendment, and then, through our frustration, bring focus to the lack of funding for research and information about gun violence, including mass shootings. Become a financial supporter of ThePeel.news podcast by clicking the support button in this link. 📚 Below are citations to some sources discussed in this podcast. Visit the post on ThePeel.news site for citations to specific pages.
Amar, Akhil Reed. America's Constitution, A Biography. Random House, 2005. Amazon link. Cheney, Lynne. James Madison, A Life Reconsidered. Viking, 2014. Amazon link. Scalia, Antonin. Scalia Speaks, Reflections on Law, Faith and Life Well Lived. Forwarded by Ruth Bader Ginsburg. Edited by Christopher J. Scalia. Crown Forum, 2017. Amazon link. Waldman, Michael. The Second Amendment, A Biography. Simon & Schuster, 2014. Amazon link.
🎵 The attribution, links and license for the theme music in this podcast is below: The Success by Keys of Moon | https://soundcloud.com/keysofmoonMusic promoted by https://www.free-stock-music.comAttribution 4.0 International (CC BY 4.0). https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/
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Since last week, Democratic Party's push to end the Senate's filibuster has picked up momentum. Republicans are against it and so are some Democrats... including a very important - the President of the United States. In this podcast, we analyze the history of the filibuster. How did it get started? How do Senators end a filibuster? Why has it morphed from a rare parliamentary procedure of the past to the prevalent practice of our present? And why would a U.S. Senator need a urine bucket close to the Senate floor? Become a financial supporter of ThePeel.news podcast by clicking the support button in this link. 📚 Below are citations to some sources discussed in this podcast. Visit the post on ThePeel.news site for citations to specific pages.
Jentleson, Adam. Kill Switch: The Rise of the Modern Senate and the Crippling of American Democracy. Liveright, 2021. Amazon link.
🎵 The attribution, links and license for the theme music in this podcast is below: The Success by Keys of Moon | https://soundcloud.com/keysofmoonMusic promoted by https://www.free-stock-music.comAttribution 4.0 International (CC BY 4.0). https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/
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Last week, President Biden's Covid stimulus recovery bill became law. Already, many, including President Biden himself, are comparing the Covid stimulus package to Lyndon Johnson's Great Society relief programs. But this colossal economic package is just one of several that Mr. Biden and his Democratic Party colleagues are planning, meaning that the Biden Administration will outlay funds and financial packages the scope of which will likely rival FDR's New Deal programs. But the Democratic Party that President Jackson founded was in favor of a small federal government and balancing the budget. Although this Democratic ethos changed in the latter decades of the 19th century, it wasn't until Franklin Delano Roosevelt's presidency that gigantic federal programs were implemented. It was the era of the New Deal. In this podcast, we analyze the history of Jackson's and FDR's presidencies and entertain you with their unbelievable stories. We also bring focus to Jackson's and FDR's political powers and invite you to contemplate as to whether or not President Biden enjoys similar political powers to push through his wide-ranging economic programs. Become a financial supporter of ThePeel.news podcast by clicking the support button in this link. 📚 Below are citations to some sources discussed in this podcast. Visit the post on ThePeel.news site for citations to specific pages.
Downey, Kirstin. The Woman Behind The New Deal – The Life of Frances Perkins, FDR’s Secretary of Labor and His Moral Conscience. Random House, 2009. Amazon link. Heidler, David S. and Jeanne T. Henry Clay: The Essential American. Random House, 2010. Amazon link. Lash, Joseph P. Eleanor And Franklin. Konecky & Konecky, 1971. Amazon link. Meacham, Jon. American Lion - Andrew Jackson in the White House. Random House, 2008. Amazon link. Remini, Robert V. The Life of Andrew Jackson. Penguin Books, 1990 (original publication, 1988). Amazon link. Wapshott, Nicholas. The Sphinx: Franklin Roosevelt, The Isolationists, And The Road To World War II. Norton, 2015. Amazon link.
🎵 The attribution, links and license for the theme music in this podcast is below: The Success by Keys of Moon | https://soundcloud.com/keysofmoonMusic promoted by https://www.free-stock-music.comAttribution 4.0 International (CC BY 4.0). https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/
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Become a financial supporter of ThePeel.news podcast by clicking the support button in this link. Last week, Dr. Seuss Enterprises announced that it will no longer publish or license six specific books from the Dr. Seuss collection. This piqued our interest regarding the history of what other classic books have been censored or self-censored in our history due to social pressure. For example, did you know that Fahrenheit 451, a book about book banning, book burning and book censoring, was itself censored in America? And what is banned books week? Brianna Keilar of CNN rhymes the new Dr. Seuss-style. Watch video. 📚 Below are citations to some sources discussed in this podcast. Visit the post on ThePeel.news site for citations to specific pages.
Karolides, Nicholas J, et al. 100 Banned Books - Censorship Histories of World Literature. Checkmark Books, 1999. Amazon link. Goodwin, Doris K. Team of Rivals: The Political Genius of Abraham Lincoln. Simon & Schuster Paperbacks, 2005. Amazon link.
🎵 The attribution, links and license for the theme music in this podcast is below: The Success by Keys of Moon | https://soundcloud.com/keysofmoonMusic promoted by https://www.free-stock-music.comAttribution 4.0 International (CC BY 4.0). https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/
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Become a financial supporter of ThePeel.news podcast by clicking the support button in this link.
Last week, the title Mister in Mr. Potato Head briefly became a heated social and cultural issue.
Did you know that, not too long ago, the use of Ms., which is a title, a prefix before a woman's name, was a sensational issue in a U.S. presidential election?
📚 Below are citations to some sources discussed in this podcast. Visit the post on ThePeel.news site for citations to specific pages.
- Baron, Dennis. What's Your Pronoun? Beyond He & She. W.W. Norton & Co., 2020. Amazon link.
- Caouette, Mick. Summoned: Frances Perkins and the General Welfare. A 2020 PBS documentary film, available on Amazon Prime Video.
- Cowley, Robert, ed. What If? Eminent Historians Imagine What Might Have Been. Putnam, 1998. Chapter: What if Pizarro Had Not Found Potatoes In Peru? The humble roots of history. By William H. McNeill, pp. 813-827. Amazon link.
- Downey, Kirstin. The Woman Behind The New Deal - The Life of Frances Perkins, FDR's Secretary of Labor and Hist Moral Conscience. Random House, 2009. Amazon link.
🎵 The attribution, links and license for the theme music in this podcast is below: The Success by Keys of Moon | https://soundcloud.com/keysofmoonMusic promoted by https://www.free-stock-music.comAttribution 4.0 International (CC BY 4.0). https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/
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Last week, the market value of bitcoin reached above $1T. By comparison, the market value of privately held gold is $2.7T.
Where does bitcoin fit in the history of the eagle, Alexander Hamilton, the Civil War, Karl Marx, the Dutch, the Mongols, a Persian King and "cross of gold"? Our podcast this week peels the history behind the bitcoin news - America's money and... its gold!
📚 For the full list of sources either cited in or consulted for this podcast, please visit its corresponding post here https://thepeel.news/2021/02/20/minimum-wage-politics-2021-verus-1930s/. Below is a list that includes some of them:
- Lewis, Nathan. Gold - The Once And Future Money. John Wiley & Sons, 2007. Click here to link to this book on Amazon
- Mezrich, Ben. Bitcoin Billionaires - A True Story of Genius, Betrayal, And Redemption. Flatiron Books, 2019.
🎵 The attribution, links and license for the theme music in this podcast is below: The Success by Keys of Moon | https://soundcloud.com/keysofmoonMusic promoted by https://www.free-stock-music.comAttribution 4.0 International (CC BY 4.0). https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/
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Establishing a national minimum wage was a revolutionary idea that entailed a constitutional court crisis and impeachment hearings. And at the center of it all, was a woman - Frances Perkins, America's first female member of a U.S. Cabinet.
📚 For the full list of sources either cited in or consulted for this podcast, please visit its corresponding post here https://thepeel.news/2021/02/20/minimum-wage-politics-2021-verus-1930s/. Below is a list that includes some of them:
- Cameron, Rondo; Neal, Larry. A Concise Economic History of The World, 4th ed. Oxford University Press, 2003.
- Caouette, Mick. Summoned: Frances Perkins and the General Welfare. A 2020 PBS documentary film, available on Amazon Prime Video.
- Downey, Kirstin. The Woman Behind The New Deal - The Life of Frances Perkins, FDR's Secretary of Labor and Hist Moral Conscience. Random House, 2009. Amazon link: https://www.amazon.com/Woman-Behind-New-Deal-Unemployment/dp/1400078563/ref=sr_1_1?dchild=1&keywords=kirstin+downey&qid=1613770724&sr=8-1
- Feldman, Noah. Scorpions: The Battles and Triumphs of FDR's Great Supreme Court Justices. Norton, 2010.
- Lewis, Nathan. GOLD - The Once And Future Money. Wiley & Sons, 2007.
- Scalia, Antonin. Scalia Speaks: Reflections on Law, Faith, and Life Well Lived. Crown Forum, 2017.
- Sowell, Thomas. Basic Economics, A Common Sense Guide to the Economy. 3rd ed. Perseus Books Group, 2007.
- Thomas, Evan. First, Sandra Day O'Connor. Random House, 2019.
- Wapshott, Nicholas. Sphinx - Franklin Roosevelt, The Isolationist, And The Road To World War II. Norton, 2015.
🎵 The attribution, links and license for the theme music in this podcast is below: The Success by Keys of Moon | https://soundcloud.com/keysofmoonMusic promoted by https://www.free-stock-music.comAttribution 4.0 International (CC BY 4.0). https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/
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Establishing a national minimum wage was a revolutionary idea that entailed a constitutional court crisis and impeachment hearings. And at the center of it all, was a woman - Frances Perkins, America's first female member of a U.S. Cabinet.
📚 For the full list of sources either cited in or consulted for this podcast, please visit its corresponding post here https://thepeel.news/2021/02/20/minimum-wage-politics-2021-verus-1930s/. Below is a list that includes some of them:
- Cameron, Rondo; Neal, Larry. A Concise Economic History of The World, 4th ed. Oxford University Press, 2003.
- Caouette, Mick. Summoned: Frances Perkins and the General Welfare. A 2020 PBS documentary film, available on Amazon Prime Video.
- Downey, Kirstin. The Woman Behind The New Deal - The Life of Frances Perkins, FDR's Secretary of Labor and Hist Moral Conscience. Random House, 2009. Amazon link: https://www.amazon.com/Woman-Behind-New-Deal-Unemployment/dp/1400078563/ref=sr_1_1?dchild=1&keywords=kirstin+downey&qid=1613770724&sr=8-1
- Feldman, Noah. Scorpions: The Battles and Triumphs of FDR's Great Supreme Court Justices. Norton, 2010.
- Lewis, Nathan. GOLD - The Once And Future Money. Wiley & Sons, 2007.
- Scalia, Antonin. Scalia Speaks: Reflections on Law, Faith, and Life Well Lived. Crown Forum, 2017.
- Sowell, Thomas. Basic Economics, A Common Sense Guide to the Economy. 3rd ed. Perseus Books Group, 2007.
- Thomas, Evan. First, Sandra Day O'Connor. Random House, 2019.
- Wapshott, Nicholas. Sphinx - Franklin Roosevelt, The Isolationist, And The Road To World War II. Norton, 2015.
🎵 The attribution, links and license for the theme music in this podcast is below: The Success by Keys of Moon | https://soundcloud.com/keysofmoonMusic promoted by https://www.free-stock-music.comAttribution 4.0 International (CC BY 4.0). https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/
This episode is sponsored by · Anchor: The easiest way to make a podcast. https://anchor.fm/app
Support this podcast: https://anchor.fm/history-behind-news/support
In our research of the history of Congressional disciplinary actions, including expulsion and exclusion of members as well as their removal from committees, we discovered a general caution toward taking disciplinary action against behaviors at issue that occurred prior to members' election to office. The Congress's hesitance to discipline a member seemed particularly high when the behavior at issue occurred in plain view of the member's future constituents. Prior criminal activity, however, was an exception to this general trend.
Listen to our podcast to learn about the standards and circumstances in which other members of Congress have been disciplined.
📚 The following works were either cited in or consulted for this post: "Marjorie Taylor Greene Removed From Committees by House Vote," The Wall Street Journal, Feb. 4, 2021. "Marjorie Taylor Greene would be in rare company if she is kicked off her committees," The Washington Post, Feb. 3, 2021. "House Republicans Propose Removing Ilhan Omar From Committees Instead Of Greene," Forbes, Feb. 2, 2021. Expulsion of Members of "Congress: Legal Authority and Historical Practice," Congressional Research Service, Jan. 11, 2018. "The Insurrection Bar to Office: Section 3 of the Fourteenth Amendment," Congressional Research Service, Jan. 29, 2021.
🎵 The attribution, links and license for the theme music in this podcast is below: The Success by Keys of Moon | https://soundcloud.com/keysofmoonMusic promoted by https://www.free-stock-music.comAttribution 4.0 International (CC BY 4.0). https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/
Spon
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The resignation of the director of one of the many bureaus in our federal government does not frontpage news make. However, controversy and clash over who should be counted in the 2020 U.S. does, just as it did in 1920. Similar to our time, a century ago including immigrants in the census was the issue.
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The following works were either cited in or consulted for this post:
Amar, Akhil Reed. America's Constitution - A Biography. Random House, 2005.
Okrent, Daniel. Last Call - The Rise And Fall Of Prohibition. Scribner, 2010.
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The attribution, links and license for the theme music in this podcast is below:
The Success by Keys of Moon | https://soundcloud.com/keysofmoon
Music promoted by https://www.free-stock-music.com
Attribution 4.0 International (CC BY 4.0).
https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/
This episode is sponsored by · Anchor: The easiest way to make a podcast. https://anchor.fm/app
Support this podcast: https://anchor.fm/history-behind-news/support