Insights on 21st Century Athens, and...Antiquity by Brady Kiesling

Noted former US diplomat Brady Kiesling, an archaeologist by training and a historian with a specialty in ancient history and Mediterranean archaeology, and just as importantly, a long-time resident of Athens, is the guest today on the first 2026 edition of “Explaining Greece”.

Kiesling gained international recognition back now in now far-off February 2003 when he very publicly resigned from the US State Department to protest America’s impending war with Iraq.

However, diplomacy and geopolitical analysis is far from his daily routine these days, as he’ll explain, with academic pursuits revolving on his beloved disciplines taking up much of his time “in front of a PC screen”, as he half-jokingly laments.

Kiesling has been instrumental in developing an application and website called ToposText, a free mobile app and website that connects the ancient Greek world's literary culture, monuments and history with its physical landscape, billed as a digital library and map for travelers, researchers, and aficionados of ancient history. He’s also on the team behind the site Digital Periegesis, which traces the places and legends of ancient Greece through the footsteps of Pausanias, a second century AD Asia Minor geographer and traveler.

Along with his insight as an American expatriate living in Greece for years, Kiesling expertly touches on politics and the global situation – up until the last days of 2025 - when asked. He also candidly reflects on his high-profile resignation from the State Department in 2003 and even refers the subject of one of his books, “Greek Urban Warriors”, a detailed history of the emergence and eventual defeat of the far-leftist terrorist group “17 November”.

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