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PODCAST

Breaking History

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

history

All Episodes

74:23

BONUS: Conversations with Coleman & Bari Weiss

Breaking History ·

2025/06/11

We’re sharing the latest episode of Conversations with Coleman, a podcast that joined The Free Press network this week. Coleman Hughes engages deep thinkers and curious minds in sharp, surprising, and unfiltered chats. In this relaunch episode he sits down with Free Press founder Bari Weiss and asks her about her critics, rising antisemitism, the woke right, and more. Hope you enjoy it & stay tuned for more Breaking History here. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

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55:01

Partition’s Ghost: How Pakistan Became a Deep State

Breaking History ·

2025/05/28

Last month, two nuclear powers exchanged blows after terrorists mowed down 26 tourists in Kashmir, yet it didn’t turn into a hot war. We got lucky. But sadly, the next India-Pakistan war seems like only a matter of time. In this week’s Breaking History, Eli Lake explores the origin story of the ongoing conflict between India and Pakistan. How did Pakistan become a true ‘deep state nation’ post-partition? And why does it really really matter? ******* Producers: Alex Miller, Bobby Moriarty,

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72:02

Vulgarians at the Gate: How Censors Lost the Culture War

Breaking History ·

2025/05/14

*Explicit Content Warning*Since Donald Trump won the presidential election, American institutions are shedding what remains of wokeness nearly everywhere. From Columbia University to Facebook, the old guardrails have crumbled. Something similar happened nearly 60 years ago. After police and prosecutors drove the revolutionary comic Lenny Bruce into bankruptcy and overdose, America began its slide into vulgarity. Despite the best efforts of the word police of that era, the old taboos about sex

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60:48

How North Korea Got the Nuke

Breaking History ·

2025/04/30

As Iranian nuclear ambitions force their way back onto America’s agenda, it’s worth looking at the story of North Korea, the original ‘madman’ nation that bullied its way to the nuclear table. ******* Producers: Alex Miller, Poppy Damon and Bobby Moriarty ******* Buy tickets for SAPIR Debate“Is Donald Trump Good for the Jews?” at sapirjournal.org/sapirdebate. Listen to Unpacking Israeli History Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

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55:06

When Trade Wars Become Real Wars

Breaking History ·

2025/04/16

It’s been two weeks since President Donald Trump declared war on the global economic system his predecessors painstakingly built up since 1945. Then he partially reversed course, paused most of the tariffs, and focused on China. In this episode, we dive into the last time the world’s most populous country was in a trade war with the world’s richest country. What do the British Empire’s Opium Wars of the 1800s tell us about America’s pending economic divorce with China?Go to

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50:45

Orientalism: How One Book Fueled 50 Years of Campus...

Breaking History ·

2025/04/02

Pro-Palestine protests have been a feature of Columbia's campus since October 7. Now, Donald Trump has issued an ultimatum to the university: get control of your campus or lose $400 million in Federal funding. But the target of the measures wasn't just security, but the Middle East Department too, which Columbia has agreed to place into five years of 'academic receivership'. This week we take a deeper look at the ideology behind the unrest. One protester’s placard stuck out, it read: “Why make me

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46:55

Luigi Mangione & The History of Bourgeois Terrorism

Breaking History ·

2025/03/19

Luigi Mangione appears in court this week. He stands accused of murdering a healthcare CEO in cold blood. It’s not the first time a well heeled winner has been celebrated for his embrace of political violence. Today we look at the West German woman who paved the way. We dive into the phenomenon of breaking rad.Eli Lake tells the story of Ulrike Meinhof and the infamous Red Army Faction. ******* And a note from our sponsors: Go to groundnews.com/BreakingHistory to get 40% off the unlimited

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43:52

The Dissidents Who Defeated Russia

Breaking History ·

2025/03/05

Ronald Reagan’s speech in front of the Berlin Wall in 1987 is legendary for its six simple words: “Mr. Gorbachev, tear down this wall!”And two years later the wall fell. In another two years, the Soviet Union came crashing down. Many factors led to these moments. Among them: the failures of communism, the bravery of dissidents, and America’s role in challenging the “evil empire,” at least that’s what Reagan called it. The dissidents—many languishing in gulags—heard America. They heard President

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49:59

Why We Can't Escape JFK Conspiracy Theories

Breaking History ·

2025/02/19

Every now and again, a work of art is so profound that it breaches the boundary between fact and fiction and affects current events. And if you had to rank the most politically resonant artworks American pop culture has produced in the last 50 years, the 1991 film JFK would top the list.More than any document, this film codified the murder of JFK as a conspiracy in the minds of the American people. Directed by the most celebrated filmmaker in America at the time, Oliver Stone, JFK featured Kevin

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47:02

Paradise Burning

Breaking History ·

2025/02/05

Last month, L.A. burned. It was one of the most predictable disasters on record. A century of development on land whose ecosystems were forged in wildfire; years of increasingly regular blazes; months of low rainfall. The National Weather Service even issued an explicit warning: This was coming.Unfortunately, when Chekhov’s fire arrived, everything that could go wrong, did. A key reservoir was being repaired when the blazes began. The hydrants didn’t have enough pressure. The state hadn’t cleared

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35:36

Trump’s Populism Isn’t a Sideshow. It’s as American...

Breaking History ·

2025/01/22

Donald Trump, just sworn in as the 47th president, was reelected to be a wrecking ball, a middle finger, the people’s punch to the Beltway’s mouth. And while this populist moment feels “unprecedented,” it’s not. The rebuke of the ruling class is encoded in our nation’s DNA. We have seen populist leaders like Donald Trump before. He stands on the shoulders of Texas billionaire H. Ross Perot, Alabama governor George Wallace, and Louisiana legend Huey Long. There have been populist senators,

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2:40

Introducing: Breaking History

Breaking History ·

2025/01/14

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

en

38:47

Why Jews Wrote Your Favorite Christmas Songs (From...

Breaking History ·

2025/01/14

*This episode originally ran on December 23, 2024 on Honestly with Bari Weiss* Did you know that the Americans who wrote nearly all of the Christmas classics were . . . Jewish? Many of these songwriters were the children of parents who had fled Russia and other parts of Eastern Europe during the great wave of immigration between 1880 and 1920. Sammy Cahn, the son of Galician Jewish immigrants, wrote the words to “Let it Snow!” and was known as Frank Sinatra’s personal lyricist. There is also Mel

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41:06

Resistance or Opposition: Which Route Should the...

Breaking History ·

2025/01/14

*This episode originally ran on November 12, 2024 on Honestly with Bari Weiss* Even your most optimistic Mar-a-Lago member didn’t see Donald Trump winning the popular vote and taking all seven swing states. He even came within five points of taking the Democratic stronghold of New Jersey! So, what on earth does the Democratic Party do next? They can stay the course and resist. It’s what they did the last time Trump won. In the aftermath of Trump’s 2016 victory, America was stunned. Every time he

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39:30

Trump and the Art of the Bullshitter (From the...

Breaking History ·

2025/01/14

*This episode originally ran on November 2, 2024 on Honestly with Bari Weiss* Bullshit is an American tradition. Think the theatrics of P.T. Barnum, miracle products sold ad nauseam on television in the 1980s and, of course, politicians. Who can forget President Bill Clinton saying “It depends upon what the meaning of the word is is” during his grand jury testimony in the Monica Lewinsky scandal? And then there’s Donald Trump. He presents as a man with no fact-checking filter, someone happily

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43:32

The Hundred Year Holy War (From the Honestly Archives)

Breaking History ·

2025/01/14

*This episode originally ran on October 12, 2024 on Honestly with Bari Weiss* We all know the horrid tale of what happened in Israel on October 7, 2023. Waves of gunmen attacked families in their homes and young people attending a music festival. The marauders filmed their murders on GoPro cameras. They burned families alive in their safe rooms; raped, and mutilated their victims; and took hostages back to Gaza on golf carts. Why did they do it? For many critics of Israel, the horrific violence of

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40:00

How Republics Unravel: From Rome to…America? (From...

Breaking History ·

2025/01/14

*This episode originally ran on September 26, 2024 on Honestly with Bari Weiss* In September 2024, a man armed with an assault rifle was apprehended on a southern Florida golf course. He was planning to murder Donald Trump on the links. It was the second near miss in two months. It seems likely that the shooter, Ryan Routh, was acting alone. But he is not alone in the hatred he has for Trump. He shares that with millions of Americans. In many people’s eyes, the 45th president of the United States

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42:36

Kamala Harris and the Election of Laughter and...

Breaking History ·

2025/01/14

*This episode originally ran on August 6, 2024 on Honestly with Bari Weiss* Vice President Kamala Harris appeared to be cruising after she became the presumptive Democratic presidential nominee. But in her anointment to the top of the ticket, there was a strange and silent rewriting of history by the press and party loyalists with the support of a lot of tech companies, who together were changing our collective understanding of the present and of the very recent past. Eli Lake argues this has

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44:14

When Students Become Terrorists (From the Honestly...

Breaking History ·

2025/01/14

*This episode originally ran on September 7, 2024 on Honestly with Bari Weiss* After Oct. 7, 2023—when Hamas attacked Israel— students at colleges across America etched themselves into infamy with the most dramatic campus protests in a generation. In preparation for the 2024 fall semester, some major universities—from NYU to UCLA—have implemented new rules and decided to enforce old ones to protect Jewish students from activists who had declared sections of campus no-go zones for Zionists

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40:42

When a President Drops Out: What Biden Can Learn from...

Breaking History ·

2025/01/14

*This episode originally ran on July 4, 2024 on Honestly with Bari Weiss* On our nation’s 248th birthday, Joe Biden faced the wrath of a thousand pundits. The whole world watched the elected leader of the world’s oldest republic befogged, slack-jawed, and mentally vacant in a debate he had to win. A poll from CBS showed that after Biden’s infamous debate performance last week, 72 percent of registered voters believed the man lacked the cognitive ability to be president. Even his closest friends

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