Turkquake!
Having flitted around the edges of the Ottoman Empire for most of this season, now we’re going straight to the jugular: the heart of that empire, the city of Istanbul (or Constantinople, if you prefer...
6 Juli 202259min
Subcontinental Rift
From the Arab world, we now journey eastward to the Indian Subcontinent. Ancient, vast, and spiritually rich, the lands that comprise the nation-states of Pakistan, India, and Bangladesh underwent one...
22 Juni 20221h 18min
Gaddafi: The Arab Madman Cometh
Now that we’ve told the story of the rise and fall of Nasserism, we turn to Libya and its handsome and charismatic dictator, Col. Muammar Gaddafi. Believing himself to have inherited Nasser’s mantle o...
8 Juni 20221h 30min
Arab-Israeli Blitzkrieg
We’ve finally reached the climax of the Cold War in the Middle East: the 6-Day War of 1967 and its dramatic sequel, the Yom Kippur War of 1973. The outcomes of both wars are well known; less so the po...
25 Maj 20221h 6min
Hashemites!
As we race toward the 1967 and 1973 Arab-Israeli wars, we’re putting our final duck in its row. After the fall of the Ottoman Empire, Jordan and Iraq both received Hashemite monarchs—and the rivalries...
11 Maj 20221h 19min
The State of Syria
In this episode, we talk about Syria. Or ask the question, really: What is Syria? Syria has been described as a “ fulcrum of geopolitical hegemony...” — a bit like Ukraine, interestingly — “...in the ...
27 Apr 20221h 10min
Introducing: Behind the Sun
Before the next episode, we have something a little different for your ears - an introduction to a whole new podcast - Behind the Sun. In Behind the Sun, Nadia, a young Syrian woman in the diaspora, ...
20 Apr 202246min
Zionism and It's Discontents
Having avoided it for as long as possible, Aimen & Thomas finally turn their attention to the state of Israel: its backstory, its modern re-emergence, and its impact on the civilizational fault lines ...
13 Apr 20221h 5min
