History As It Happens

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Twenty-five years ago, on September 11, 2001, nineteen al-Qaeda hijackers working for Osama bin Laden killed nearly 3,000 people in New York, Washington, and a Pennsylvania field. The U.S. responded by launching a poorly defined war across the Greater Middle East that led to the deaths of hundreds of thousands of civilians, the displacement of millions more, and the destruction of U.S. credibility and prestige. The war would be defined by the failures that flowed from long-term occupations and a preemptive invasion, the use of torture...

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Maybe U.S. presidents need to read a how-to manual on avoiding quagmires. Or maybe it wouldn't make much difference anyway. To understand why the United States keeps being sucked into protracted conflicts in the Greater Middle East, we must look beyond individual decision-making, says Emma Ashford of the Stimson Center in Washington. Instead, we must weigh the structural causes and incentives that have led one administration after another into battle in the name of protecting U.S. interests.

Emma Ashford is...

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Since the aftermath of the Second World War and the establishment of an independent Jewish state of Israel in 1948, U.S. foreign policy has been in the "grip of a foreign power," according to the authors of "Israel's Lobby."

Authors Eli Clifton and Ian Lustick contend that the lobby has successfully pressured generations of U.S. leaders to set aside American interests in favor of Israeli interests, even though the two are often not aligned. Today the lobby — which consists of dozens of or...

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Since the New York real estate developer-turned-realty TV star Donald Trump entered politics a decade ago, his personality has dominated Americans' lives. Where did Trump's malignant charisma come from? Where did he learn the art of the deal and how to master the media? And what about the ways of the liar, the cheat, and the bully? From his mentor, Roy Cohn.

Our guest is Pulitzer Prize-winning historian and biographer Kai Bird, the author with Susan Goldmark of 'American Scoundrel: Roy Cohn's Dark...

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Sixty years ago, in late August 1966, a remarkable film premiered at the Venice Film Festival. The Italian director Gillo Pontecorvo's 'The Battle of Algiers' portrayed the brutal realities of the Algerian war for independence against colonial France. It has inspired revolutionaries fighting for national liberation ever since. Historian Martin Evans, an expert on empires at the University of Sussex, explores why Pontecorvo's masterpiece has endured and still resonates.

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Some 23 years after the U.S. invaded Iraq to topple Saddam Hussein, the country's stability and sovereignty remain compromised.

Washington continues to demand that Baghdad disarm powerful, Iran-backed Shia militias — a promise the new Iraqi prime minister Ali al-Zaidi made during his July visit to the Oval Office. The war over the Strait of Hormuz is exerting even more pressure on Iraq's delicate balancing act.

Here to explain Iraq's di...

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Myanmar is not a country. It is a place of endless violence and ethnic strife, with its 50 million people trapped in another civil war, now in its fifth year, with no end in sight. Since its independence from Great Britain after the Second World War, Burma (now Myanmar) has been ruled mostly by military juntas. Every generation or so, a better future has seemed possible, but democracy and economic prosperity have never been allowed to blossom.

Our guest is historian Maitrii Aung-Thwin...

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Since returning to the White House in 2025, President Trump has threatened to annex Greenland by force, mused about making Canada the 51st state, claimed he was ready to retake the Panama Canal, and turned Venezuela into a vassal by kidnapping its leader. Trump is trying to turn the clock back to a time when annexation (or territorial expansionism) was a norm in international relations. Since its birth, the United States has been expansionist, but its conduct has taken on different forms over time.

In this episode, author...

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The Oslo Peace Process seems like ancient history. Today, a truly just and durable peace between Israel and the Palestinians appears impossible, as Gaza has been destroyed and Jewish settler-terrorists rampage through the West Bank with the support of their state. President Trump's vision for Gaza may render any surviving Palestinians as second-class citizens.

A quarter-century ago, in the summer of 2000, President Bill Clinton brought Israeli and Palestinian leaders together at Camp David to try to resolve the most difficult problems standing in the way of peace. To this day...

This special episode features an exclusive interview with United States Senator Chris Van Hollen, a Maryland Democrat and potential 2028 presidential candidate.

Congress' attempts to end the Trump administration's Iran war fiasco have thus far come up short. The same goes for the movement to end U.S. weapons and bulldozer shipments to the Israeli government, which has used American military hardware to destroy Gaza and southern Lebanon, killing tens of thousands of people in the process.

In this conversation with Sen. Van Hollen, we cover the War Powers Act and Iran, unrestrained executive power, the...

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The American way of war is broken. Like many of his White House predecessors, Donald Trump is stuck in a stalemate of his own making. In Korea, Vietnam, Afghanistan, and Iraq — to name four major wars — the president who went to war was unable to extricate the U.S. from the morass. It was up to his successor to salvage something from the wreckage of U.S. credibility and prestige.

Our guest is Will Walldorf, who teaches in the Department of Politics and...

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The Trump administration is attempting to topple Cuba's government through economic warfare.

An oil embargo and other punitive measures have led to severe consequences, including massive blackouts and water shortages. Ordinary Cubans are suffering, yet both they and their communist government are persevering — at least for now. The New York Times reports the CIA has established a secret task force to increase the pressure. The Cold War may be over, but U.S.-Cuba relations are frozen in time.

What explains more than six decades of ho...

The world is aflame with endless wars and racial strife. Some societies are tearing themselves apart as mass migration fuels a nationalist backlash. Since the nineteenth century, ethnic nationalism has been a potent force, galvanizing peoples — imagined nations — around shared myths and historical truths.

Our guest is Sune Haugbølle, an expert on global political sociology. He specializes in social memory, the history of radical movements, and transnational solidarity at Roskilde University in Denmark.

He is the author of War and Memory in Lebanon (Cambridge Middle East Studies).

Further listening:

The Nakba...

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This is the 70th year of Sudanese independence, but there is little to celebrate and much to lament as the country continues to tear itself apart. Three major civil wars have consumed 43 years of Sudan's seven decades, not counting the many years of violence and genocide in Darfur from 2003.

The current war has entered its fourth year with no prospect of peace. Recent fighting has drawn the world's attention to the central Sudanese city of El Obeid, where thousands...

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The precarious international consensus on nuclear non-proliferation is cracking. The Trump administration announced a civilian nuclear agreement with Saudi Arabia — long sought by Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman — which experts fear could lead to the Saudis pursuing nuclear weapons in violation of the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty. The deal allows for the kingdom to enrich uranium and reprocess plutonium on its own soil.

In this episode, Joe Cirincione explains the potential danger to the U.S.-led nuclear order.

Recommended reading:

Tr...

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President Trump seems helpless. All the bombs and missiles he flings at Iran cannot solve his problems — problems he created by attacking Iran on the magical belief that the Islamic regime would crumble and be replaced by people whom Trump could control. It was a fantasy, and now, as the war enters its sixth month, Iran maintains a stranglehold on the Strait of Hormuz. The situation is in limbo, floating somewhere between war and peace — with little hope that a new nuclear accord with Iran is p...

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Was it possible for the leaders of the new American republic to end slavery entirely? Was the violent dispossession of Native peoples inevitable? These questions are integral to the eminent historian Joseph Ellis' new book about what he calls the two major failures of the revolutionary generation, "The Great Contradiction: The Tragic Side of the American Founding."

Other questions to consider while listening are whether the Constitution consisted of compromises over slavery or capitulations to Southern slave interests. Also, whether Native Americans' views of...

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Is Congress irreparably broken or temporarily stuck as it fails to act as a co-equal branch of government willing to check a rogue executive? And how did it get this way? In the aftermath of Vietnam and Watergate, the winds of political change swept young, ambitious reformers into the halls of Congress, and they left an important legislative legacy. But in the decades since, Congress' potential to affect meaningful change — and prevent unnecessary wars — has been whittled away. Maya Kornberg is here to explain why.

Maya...

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Have too many liberals and leftists given up on patriotism? Have they forgotten the tradition of social movements striving for equal political and economic rights as expressed in the country's founding ideals? Historian Michael Kazin says these ideals can be used "as both a benchmark against which to measure how far we have fallen short and a means of articulating the Constitution's vision of a more perfect union."

Michael Kazin teaches history at Georgetown University and is the author of "...

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Now well into its fifth year, Russia's invasion of Ukraine appears to be a stalemate on the ground while the combatants seek a decisive edge in the air with drones and missiles. Diplomacy to end the war seems to be going nowhere. No one can say with any certainty how or when the war may end. Do the war's origins point toward an exit? Anatol Lieven is our guest.

Anatol Lieven is Director of the Eurasia Program and the Andrew Bacevich chair in American Diplomatic...

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Herman Melville's masterpiece Moby-Dick has something to teach us about democracy, citizenship, and the rule of law. A flop when published in the mid-nineteenth century, Moby-Dick has long been considered a quintessential American novel — an epic adventure story layered with allegory. In this episode, historian Michael Kimmage revisits the novel with a focus on the character Starbuck, the first mate who clashes with Captain Ahab over his mad pursuit of the white whale.

Recommended reading:

Citizen Starbuck, or Democracy and the Whale by Mi...

This is a special episode of History As It Happens.

South Carolina Senator Lindsey Graham is dead. His office says Graham died from "a brief and sudden illness" on Saturday night in Washington. He was 71.

Graham was first elected to the U.S. House in 1994 and the Senate in 2002. He was seeking a fifth term in the midterm elections this November. After first condemning Donald Trump during the 2016 campaign, the conservative Republican turned into one of Trump's most fawning supporters.

In this episode, University of Texas at Austin historian Jeremi Suri examines Graham's...

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The discourse is drowning in -isms. President Trump is railing against an imaginary resurgence of communism. Many of its critics say the Trump administration is putting the country on the road to fascism. Others are trying to define something called Trumpism.

In this episode, historian Roger Griffin, one of the world's foremost experts on fascism and ideological movements, explains how these ideas developed over time through the prism of his own career.

Recommended reading:<...

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When the Trump administration attacked Iran in late February, some war backers dreamt that the Iranian people would rise en masse and take control of their country. It proved to be a dangerous fantasy. But then the history of U.S.-Iran relations is full of cruel ironies. More than 70 years ago, a democrat and nationalist named Mohammad Mossadegh galvanized the Iranian people and tried to liberate his country from foreign domination, only to be betrayed by the United States. Historian Roham Alvandi is our guest.

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This is the eighth episode in a series marking the 250th anniversary of the Declaration of Independence, America's semiquincentennial.

By the time the delegates at the Continental Congress formally declared independence in July 1776, the armed rebellion had been underway for more than a year. General George Washington had been in the field since the summer of '75. The men of the Continental Army saw little glory throughout a bloody, prolonged conflict during which they were often half-naked and hungry. More men died from disease than...

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Enjoy this special episode of History As It Happens! On June 26, podcast host Martin Di Caro attended a screening of "Young Washington" at Mount Vernon in Virginia. The new film tells the story of George Washington's formative years as an officer in the Virginia militia at the outbreak of the French & Indian War (1754-1763).

"Young Washington" was directed by Jon Erwin and is a collaboration between Wonder Project and Angel, the film's distributor. In this episode, Martin interviews William Franklyn-Miller, the actor who plays Washington...

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As the president's approval ratings sink to a low ahead of the midterm elections, is the end of the Age of Trump in sight, or will his politics endure? What of Donald Trump's presidency might last? When it comes to ideology, Trump is as difficult to pin down today as he was when he announced his first presidential run in 2015. Are we witnessing a politics after ideology?

Our guest is Damon Linker, the political scientist and author of Notes From The Middleground newsletter.

...

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This is the seventh episode in a series marking the 250th anniversary of the Declaration of Independence, America's semiquincentennial.

He was the indispensable American. George Washington held together the Continental Army as its commander-in-chief during the Revolutionary War. Then he answered his countrymen's call to serve as the new nation's first president, setting important precedents over the next eight years. Without him, the new republic might have failed. His leadership and the esteem in which he was held are the stuff of legend. The story...

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One of the most influential central bankers in U.S. history, Alan Greenspan, who chaired the Federal Reserve for 19 years, died on June 22. He was 100.

Greenspan was once treated as an oracle whose policies and arcane pronouncements moved markets. After the '08 crash, however, his legacy was badly tarnished because he had embraced a quasi-religious faith in markets to regulate themselves — a fantasy that led to ruin shortly after he departed the Fed.

Our guest is historian Nelson Lichtenstein, the author of...

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This is the sixth episode in a series marking the 250th anniversary of the Declaration of Independence, America's semiquincentennial.

The American Revolution was deeply rooted in Enlightenment philosophy and inspired by the principle of natural rights. Even before the fighting broke out at Lexington and Concord, some Americans were calling attention to the terrible contradiction of slavery. These few would grow in number and form the first organized antislavery movement in history. In this episode, Sean Wilentz discusses this long-neglected aspect of the American Revolution.<...

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The national mood was dour. Political scandals and a lost war cast long shadows. The economy was mired in stagflation. Americans were losing confidence in the future. It was the summer of '76 — 1976! Yet despite the tough times, millions celebrated the nation's bicentennial, which was both patriotic and a bit schlocky. Historians Jeremi Suri and Jeffrey Engel reflect on that strange summer as many Americans today shrug their shoulders at the coming semiquincentennial.

Jeremi Suri teaches history at the LBJ School of Public Affairs at th...

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On June 7, 2026, the historian Gordon Wood died at 92. He was one of the greatest scholars of the American Revolution and early Republic, who did "as much as anyone to deepen understanding and change perceptions of the forces and events that led to the birth of the United States," according to The New York Times.

In this episode, three historians talk...

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Chuck Todd is our special guest in this episode. He explains how changes in mass media and the journalism business led to the Trump presidency, and how Trump himself exploited the new media landscape to achieve power.

Chuck Todd hosts The Chuck ToddCast on YouTube. He is the former NBC News political director and moderator of "Meet the Press."

Further reading:

The 24/7 Presidency (The Miller Center at the University of Virginia)

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Our memories of D-Day usually center on the courage and grit of the infantrymen who stormed the Normandy beaches under German fire. We don't talk much about the weatherman. But without Group Captain James Stagg's forecast, there would have been few heroes to remember from June 6, 1944. In this episode, historian William Hitchcock discusses the riveting new film "Pressure," about the excruciating hours before General Eisenhower greenlit Operation Overlord.

Audio excerpts of "Pressure" are from Focus Features.

Recommended reading:<...

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President Donald Trump's corruption and abuse of power are staggering. In his second term, he has prioritized enriching himself and his family in broad daylight, while weaponizing the Department of Justice to go after his enemies. In this episode, historian Ken Hughes, an expert on Nixon's secret White House tapes and Watergate, compares and contrasts how America's constitutional system responded to each president's rogue behavior.

Recommended reading:

By Ken Hughes

Chasing Shadows: The Nixon Tapes, the Chennault Affair, and the Origins...

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What was Cold War liberalism? What is its lasting significance? Does it live on as a zombie ideology?

In this episode, historians Daniel Bessner and Michael Brenes trace the origins of this powerful ideology to the 1930s and 40s. It soon reached the apogee of its influence, only to decline after the tragedy of Vietnam. As Americans today grapple with the disastrous consequences of decades of military adventurism, they might find some answers in Cold War liberalism, which shaped U.S. foreign policy as the...

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Why do some opponents of the abandoned JCPOA, also known as the Iran nuclear deal of 2015, continue to lie about it? Many of these critics are now the most vocal backers of President Trump and Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu's fiasco of a war against the Islamic Republic, which has failed in all its main objectives while leading to the closure of the Strait of Hormuz.<...

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This is the fifth episode in an occasional series for the 250th anniversary of the Declaration of Independence, America's semiquincentennial.

Americans have always contested the meanings and purpose of the Revolution. During the 1850s, both unionists and secessionists, the anti-slavery movement and pro-slavery stalwarts, cited the Declaration of Independence to defend their positions. How could Americans who were on opposite sides of the all-important slavery conflict cite the same document invoking fundamental human equality? In this episode, historian James Oakes takes us into the mind...

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Every May, Israelis celebrate the anniversary of their independence. For Palestinians, their memories are of dispossession and displacement.

Beginning in late 1947, months before the official creation of the Jewish state, Jewish forces expelled Palestinian Arabs and destroyed their homes and villages. By the time the Nakba, which means catastrophe in Arabic, was over, some 750,000 Palestinians had been expelled in one of the first ethnic cleansing operations of the post-WWII era.

Yet it took generations for this story to receive the attention it deserves — an...

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This is the fourth episode in an occasional series for the 250th anniversary of the Declaration of Independence, America's semiquincentennial.

What if we approached this coming Fourth of July not as a single day to celebrate a special national birthday, but as the start of a decade-long commitment to a "civic renaissance"? The story of the founding of the United States didn't end on July 4, 1776 — it remains a work in progress (with plenty of setbacks, too). Indeed, a question people pondered at the time remains im...