Sometimes the news moves so fast, you have to look closely to know if you’ve seen it before. And that’s what this show is about. Breaking History breaks down the news, by breaking down history. We cover everything from LBJ and the Roman Republic to Donald Trump and the chaos at Columbia. This twice a month show from The Free Press delivers the best historians, authors, and reporters by mining the archives of human experience to figure out the present. George Santayana wrote, “Those who do not remember the past are condemned to repeat it.” Tune in to Breaking...
Latest episodes
-
1 h 02
Why the Future of Education Won’t Come from the Ivy League
Peter Berkowitz returns to the show to trace the slow collapse of liberal education in America, all in his new book, Reclaiming Liberal Education in America. In this episode, he an…
-
51 min
The Slow Death of Journalism, with Matt Taibbi
Matt Taibbi has spent the better part of a decade documenting one of the most underreported stories in American media: how the federal government built a shadow infrastructure to s…
-
1 h 00
How the Democratic Socialists Conquered New York City
Back in October, we traced the founding of the Democratic Socialists of America (DSA) in our episode “Beautiful Losers: Mamdani & the End of Socialism’s Losing Streak.” Now, with Z…
-
48 min
Iran’s Favourite Washington Pundit
Journalist Jay Solomon is back on the show this week to discuss his latest explosive investigation into Trita Parsi, the Iranian-born, Swedish-raised lobbyist who spent 20 years at…
-
1 h 18
Who Owns the Declaration of Independence?
As America approaches the 250th anniversary of its founding, a quiet war is being waged over what the Declaration of Independence really means — with some on the new right dismissi…
-
43 min
A New Series From The Free Press | The Lindbergh Conspiracies
Hi Breaking History listeners! My colleague Joe Nocera has launched a six part series about the Lindbergh kidnapping. Enjoy episode one here and then head on over to The Lindbergh…
-
57 min
What the Founders Really Meant to Say
Robert Parkinson is a historian at SUNY Binghamton who has spent 25 years studying the American Revolutionary period. His new book, Tyrants and Rogues, arrives just in time for the…
-
49 min
Roald Dahl: Genius and Bigot
For tickets to our live recording with Jon Meacham in Philadelphia, click here and register. Use code TFP for a 20 percent discount. Roald Dahl gave the world Matilda, James and th…
-
52 min
Eli Lake and David Rose: The UK Censorship Machine Eats Itself
David Rose is the director of policy and research at the Free Speech Union (FSU), a UK-based nonpartisan organization that campaigns for freedom of speech. The FSU will publish a n…
-
1 h 56
Is This War Justified? Eli Lake Debates Iran with Robert Wright
Eli Lake joins Robert Wright over at his podcast NonZero, which offers “conversations with a series of people who have nothing in common except that program host Robert Wright is c…
-
54 min
Why Iran’s Reform Movement Failed
Arash Azizi lived through the democracy movement in Iran before he wrote about it. Now a historian at Yale, he joins Eli Lake to trace the arc from former president Mohammad Khatam…
-
1 h 27
Eli Lake and Haviv Rettig Gur on Why Iran's Regime Is Hard to Kill
What does it actually take to break a regime built on martyrdom? Eli Lake sits down with Haviv Rettig Gur — host of Ask Haviv Anything and one of the deepest thinkers on the Middle…
-
1 h 29
When ‘Good Kids’ Go Radical: A Breaking History Special
What drives someone from an ordinary background into extremism? In this Breaking History special, journalist Jay Solomon joins Eli Lake to discuss his investigation into American e…
-
2 h 10
Eli Lake and Andrew Sullivan Debate the Iran War
This week I joined The Dishcast with Andrew Sullivan, who has generously agreed to let us share the conversation here. Andrew and I go way back, and few people are as willing as he…
-
51 min
Modern Terrorism Was Born in the 1970s
Breaking History producer Poppy Damon sits down with Guardian security correspondent Jason Burke to unpack his new book, The Revolutionists, a sweeping history of the 1970s wave…
-
48 min
The Reluctant Prince: Can Reza Pahlavi Lead Iran’s Future? Q&A with Eli Lake
As Iran’s regime faces mounting internal pressure, one name keeps resurfacing: Reza Pahlavi, the exiled son of the last shah. But is he a viable future leader, or simply the most r…
-
1 h 28
The Making of Modern Iran (Part 2) | The Red-Green Alliance
In our last episode, we traced the rise of the Pahlavi dynasty and the forces building toward Iran’s 1979 Islamic Revolution. In Part 2, we turn to the man who brought that monarch…
-
1 h 11
The Making of Modern Iran (Part 1)
Breaking History dives into the paradox at the heart of modern Iran: How a nation born in revolt, from the tobacco protests of the 1890s to the 1979 Revolution, has time and again…
-
50 min
A History of Tough Jews
After October 7, Jews around the world were reminded of an old, unsettling truth: Governments do not always protect minorities when mobs turn violent. From Bondi Beach to New York…
-
40 min
From the Archives: Why Jews Wrote Your Favorite Christmas Songs
Did you know the soundtrack of Americans’ Christmas was written largely by . . . Jews? Most of the composers behind the holiday canon were the children of immigrants who fled pogro…