Podcast
History As It Happens
Hosted by Martin Di Caro · EN
Discover how the past shapes the present with the best historians in the world. Everything happening today comes from something, somewhere. History As It Happens features interviews with today's top scholars and thinkers, interwoven with audio from history's archive.
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176episodes
Episodes
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Regime Change: Kennedy and Diem in Vietnam
4d ago00:48:49Summary readyKeep the narrative flow going! Subscribe now for ad-free listening, early access, and bonus content! In the history of the long, misbegotten American project in Vietnam, an episode that pulled the country deeper into the quagmire deserves more attention. In 1963, the Kennedy administration green-lit a coup to topple the regime of Ngo Dinh Diem in South Vietnam. Diem was an ardent anti-Communist who lost U.S. support after a cascade of missteps in his war against the Viet Cong and his crackdown on the majority Buddhists. As "regime change" dominates today's headlines, the historian-journalist Jack Cheevers explains why the attempt to control South Vietnam ended in ruin — and with Diem murdered. History As It Happens Premium costs $5/month or $50/year. 10-day free trial, cancel any time. Subscribe here: https://historyasithappens.supercast.com/
SummaryThe Trump-Xi Summit (Bonus)
5d ago00:06:11Summary readySubscribe now to listen to the entire 16-minute episode (or preview 6 minutes). President Trump is the eighth U.S. president to visit China since Richard Nixon's bold gamble to establish diplomatic relations with the Communist country in 1972. During his two-day summit with Xi Jinping last week, Trump's first China trip since 2017, the two leaders praised one another and discussed several pressing issues, but they came away with few, if any, substantive breakthroughs. Anatol Lieven of the Quincy Institute for Responsible Statecraft offers his post-summit analysis.
SummaryWere the Nazis socialists?
1w ago00:40:11Summary readyKeep the narrative flow going! Subscribe now for ad-free listening, early access, and bonus content! The Nazis' official name was the National Socialist German Workers' Party, which may seem a strange choice given Hitler's ferocious hostility toward Marxism and Communism. Yet many right-wing pundits and politicians today argue that the Nazis were a left-wing movement opposed to capitalism, as evidenced by the party's name, rhetoric, and policies. Is it true? Historian Roger Griffin, one of the world's leading experts on fascism, is here with a nuanced take on these historical ambiguities. Recommended reading: Fascism: A Quick Immersion by Roger Griffin
SummaryZionism and Israel's Self-Destruction
2w ago00:46:39Summary readyKeep the narrative flow going! Subscribe now for ad-free listening, early access, and bonus content! What emerged as a national movement to liberate Europe's Jews by establishing a Jewish homeland has become a racist, irrational, vengeful state ideology worthy of history's dustbin, contends historian Omer Bartov in his new book, "Israel: What Went Wrong?" Bartov, an expert on the Holocaust and genocide at Brown University, was among the first major historians to warn that Israel's destruction of Gaza could turn genocidal. He argues that decades of the occupation of Palestinian territories (since 1967) had already inured most Israeli Jews to the suffering of others before the Hamas atrocities of Oct. 7, 2023. Today, he says those feelings have hardened into outright hostility or utter indifference. Where did it start going wrong? Bartov points to Israel's founding: David Ben-Gurion's opposition to writing a constitution and to defining the new state's borders. History As It Happens Premium costs $5/month or $50/year. 10-day free trial, cancel any time. Subscribe here: https://historyasithappens.supercast.com/
SummaryWhose Strait of Hormuz? (Bonus)
2w ago00:05:44Summary readySubscribe now to listen to the entire 18-minute episode (or preview 6 minutes). Two and a half months after President Trump ordered U.S. forces to bomb Iran, there is no war, no peace, and the Strait of Hormuz is still closed at both ends. The global economy is staggering from the loss of energy resources (oil and natural gas) that normally traverse the strait. Iran wants to establish its sovereignty over the Strait of Hormuz as part of any settlement. What's actually happening out there? The Wall Street Journal's chief foreign affairs correspondent Yaroslav Trofimov joins us from Dubai, which faces the Persian Gulf.
SummaryLebanon's Long Agony
2w ago00:45:36Summary readySubscribe now for early access, ad-free listening, and bonus content! Lebanon, a small country on the Mediterranean coast that cannot defend its borders, is once again stuck in a hellacious bind, between Hezbollah fanaticism and Israeli destruction. Since its long civil war (1975-90), sectarian strife and foreign occupation have intermixed with economic mismanagement and political paralysis, leaving Lebanon in a near-permanent state of crisis. In this episode, Maha Yahya of Carnegie Middle East Center joins us from Beirut to explain the causes of the country's deep domestic problems. Recommended reading: Pity the Nation: The Abduction of Lebanon by Robert Fisk
SummaryThe First Palestinian Uprising
3w ago00:49:43Summary readySubscribe now for early access, ad-free listening, and bonus content! A decade before the state of Israel was born, a revolt rocked the British mandate of Palestine. It was an uprising of Arab peasants directed at their colonial overlords, Zionist immigrants, and Arab elites. The Great Revolt of 1936-1939 nearly succeeded before it was crushed by overwhelming force, a setback from which the Palestinian national movement never truly recovered. When you listen to this episode, you'll hear its echoes in today's crisis. Our guest is Ted Swedenburg, professor emeritus of anthropology at the University of Arkansas and author of Memories of Revolt: The 1936–1939 Rebellion and the Palestinian National Past.
SummaryPaul Kennedy's Prophecy
3w ago00:34:28Summary readySubscribe now for early access, ad-free listening, and bonus content! HAIH Premium subscribers got this episode (with no ads!) on Monday, May 4. The United States' failure to defeat Iran in an unprovoked, undeclared war is fueling the notion that the U.S. is in decline. Its security commitments cover the globe. The annual defense budget is approaching $1 trillion. But the Pentagon can neither defend its Persian Gulf bases from low-cost drone attacks nor reopen the Strait of Hormuz. Forty years ago, a Yale historian named Paul Kennedy argued in a best-selling book that the U.S., like all great powers, could not avoid relative decline, especially if it failed to square means and ends. In those days, the national debt was $3 trillion. Today, it's soaring toward $40 trillion. Our guest is one of Paul Kennedy's old students, historian Jeremi Suri. Jeremi Suri teaches history at the LBJ School of Public Affairs at the University of Texas at Austin. He writes the Democracy of Hope newsletter and co-hosts This is Democracy podcast. Further reading: The Rise and Fall of the Great Powers by Paul Kennedy
SummaryMadman Diplomacy, Nixon to Trump
4w ago00:50:59Summary readySubscribe now for early access, ad-free listening, and bonus content! Shortly after taking office in 1969, President Richard Nixon believed he might intimidate, through military threats, the Soviet Union and North Vietnam into making concessions at the peace table. In Nixon's words, it was "Madman theory." It didn't work. Today, President Trump has tried to bluster and bluff his way to victory over Iran, even threatening to wipe out Iranian civilization. Now the president hopes a naval blockade will force Tehran into surrendering the Strait of Hormuz and its nuclear ambitions. Historian Carolyn Eisenberg is our guest. Historian Carolyn Eisenberg teaches at Hofstra University. She is an expert on the Vietnam War and the author of Fire and Rain: Nixon, Kissinger, and the Wars in Southeast Asia.
SummaryChernobyl, 40 Years On
4w ago00:43:19Summary readySubscribe now for early access, ad-free listening, and bonus content! In late April 1986, what should have been a routine test at the Chernobyl nuclear power plant in northeastern Ukraine turned into an epic disaster, the largest ever accidental release of deadly radiation. It contaminated the earth, exposed the rot in the Soviet system, and changed the course of history. To this day, Chernobyl is not only a place on a map. It's a symbol of death, destruction, and the terrible legacy of the USSR. Mariana Budjeryn is our guest. Mariana Budjeryn is a senior researcher with the Center for Nuclear Security Policy at MIT's Security Studies Program. She is the author of Inheriting the Bomb: The Collapse of the USSR and the Nuclear Disarmament of Ukraine. Further listening: When Ukraine Had Nukes w/ Mariana Budjeryn
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