Breaking History
by The Free Press
Latest episode
Why the Future of Education Won’t Come from the Ivy League
Why the Future of Education Won’t Come from the Ivy League
About this podcast
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 History to resist the repetition.
Episodes
The newest 20 of 56 episodes
- Why the Future of Education Won’t Come from the Ivy League · 1 h 2 minPeter 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…
- The Slow Death of Journalism, with Matt Taibbi · 51 minMatt 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…
- How the Democratic Socialists Conquered New York City · 1 h 0 minBack 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…
- Iran’s Favourite Washington Pundit · 48 minJournalist 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…
- Who Owns the Declaration of Independence? · 1 h 18 minAs 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…
- A New Series From The Free Press | The Lindbergh Conspiracies · 43 minHi 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…
- What the Founders Really Meant to Say · 57 minRobert 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…
- Roald Dahl: Genius and Bigot · 49 minFor 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…
- Eli Lake and David Rose: The UK Censorship Machine Eats Itself · 52 minDavid 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…
- Is This War Justified? Eli Lake Debates Iran with Robert Wright · 1 h 56 minEli 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…
- Why Iran’s Reform Movement Failed · 54 minArash 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…
- Eli Lake and Haviv Rettig Gur on Why Iran's Regime Is Hard to Kill · 1 h 27 minWhat 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…
- When ‘Good Kids’ Go Radical: A Breaking History Special · 1 h 29 minWhat drives someone from an ordinary background into extremism? In this Breaking History special, journalist Jay Solomon joins Eli Lake to discuss his investigation into…
- Eli Lake and Andrew Sullivan Debate the Iran War · 2 h 10 minThis 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…
- Modern Terrorism Was Born in the 1970s · 51 minBreaking 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…
- The Reluctant Prince: Can Reza Pahlavi Lead Iran’s Future? Q&A with Eli Lake · 48 minAs 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…
- The Making of Modern Iran (Part 2) | The Red-Green Alliance · 1 h 28 minIn 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…
- The Making of Modern Iran (Part 1) · 1 h 11 minBreaking 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…
- A History of Tough Jews · 50 minAfter 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…
- From the Archives: Why Jews Wrote Your Favorite Christmas Songs · 40 minDid 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…
