History As It Happens

Subscribe  for early access, ad-free listening, and bonus content!  HAIH Premium subscribers got this episode (with no ads!) on Thursday, March 19. "Peace Through Strength" has long been a mantra in American foreign policy. Yet peace never seems to arrive despite all the strength. Instead, the Pentagon budget soars toward $1 trillion, and the U.S. military is being used to coerce and bomb other co...

Subscribe now to listen to the entire 28-minute episode (or preview 7 minutes). Nearly three weeks into launching an unprovoked attack on Iran, whose supreme leader was assassinated in an Israeli air strike, it has become clear that President Trump and his national security team badly misjudged their enemy. The regime is surviving. And, according to expert Vali Nasr, Iran is transitioning to an IR...

Subscribe  for early access, ad-free listening, and bonus content!  HAIH Premium subscribers got this episode on Monday, March 16. Thirty-five years ago, a U.S. administration built an international coalition and received congressional authorization to fight a major war in the Middle East. Today, an American president leaps into war with a videotaped announcement and not a peep of public debate. I...

Subscribe  for early access, ad-free listening, and bonus content!  HAIH Premium subscribers got this episode on Thursday, March 12. What is neoliberalism? Is it to blame for the crisis of American democracy? In this follow-up episode to What is Neoliberalism? , the historian Nelson Lichtenstein discusses the enormous economic changes that have transformed American capitalism, from free trade to g...

Subscribe now to listen to the entire 25-minute episode (or preview 5 minutes). The regionwide war now engulfing the Greater Middle East has threatened to involve Turkey, after Iranian ballistic missiles headed for the country were successfully intercepted by NATO air defenses. Also, last month, former Israeli prime minister Naftali Bennett warned that a "new Turkish threat is emerging," accusing...

Subscribe  for early access, ad-free listening, and bonus content!  HAIH Premium subscribers got this episode on Monday, March 9. The Nazis were in many ways unique, but the Army psychiatrist who evaluated the two dozen defendants at Nuremberg in 1945 saw in Germany's war criminals the potential for authoritarianism in all societies, including America. Douglas Kelley's warnings were not well recei...

Subscribe  for early access, ad-free listening, and bonus content!  HAIH Premium subscribers got this episode on Thursday, March 5. In wars from Eastern Europe to the Greater Middle East, new technologies and tactics are transforming some battlefields, while in other theaters, warring states are leaning on failed ideas and magical thinking to somehow produce different and better outcomes — all whi...

Subscribe now to listen to this entire 20-minute episode (or preview 5 minutes). Is the U.S.-Israeli war against Iran legal under international law? Did President Donald Trump fulfill his oath to the Constitution before hurling the country into another war in the Greater Middle East? And what about Iran's retaliation, which is sending missiles and drones into Gulf States aligned with the U.S? In t...

Subscribe for early access, ad-free listening, and bonus content! HAIH Premium subscribers got this episode on Monday, March 2. This is the third episode in an occasional series for the 250th anniversary of the Declaration of Independence. The idea of the frontier compelled Americans to seek new lands and independence since before the days of the American Revolution. Before the United States becam...

Subscribe for early access, ad-free listening, and bonus content! Editor's note: Shortly after this episode was published, news broke that Iran's Supreme Leader, the Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, was killed in an air strike. Americans awoke on Saturday to learn their leaders, along with Israel, launched another unprovoked air attack against Iran. Unlike last June's 12-day-long war, President Donald Trum...

Subscribe for early access, ad-free listening, and bonus content! History As It Happens Premium subscribers got this episode on Thursday, Feb. 26. Twenty-six years after coming to power, Vladimir Putin is prosecuting a ruinous war in Ukraine and tightening the screws of repression at home. How much longer can his rule endure under these suffocating circumstances? In this episode, historian Nina Kh...

Subscribe now for early access to this episode and all future shows. Early access is the newest benefit of becoming a History As It Happens Premium subscriber. You'll get new episodes a day or two ahead of everyone else, plus ad-free listening and bonus content! The Russian invasion of Ukraine is entering its fifth year with no end in sight despite several rounds of U.S.-mediated negotiating sessi...

Subscribe now to listen to this entire 28-minute episode (or preview 7 minutes). The United States may soon be at war in the Middle East — again! President Trump is weighing whether to attack Iran, although neither he nor any administration official has bothered to fully explain why. Congress seems unwilling or incapable of intervening, although there is little public enthusiasm for another unnece...

Subscribe now for access to the back catalog of 525+ episodes. Plus ad-free listening and bonus content. Germany is rearming, and it's making some of its European allies a little uncomfortable. No one believes a militarily powerful Germany would be bent on conquest. Rather, German hegemony, meant to deter Russian aggression, could renew rivalries and competition with European allies at a time when...

Subscribe now for 24/7 access to the entire catalog of 500+ episodes. Chinese President Xi Jinping is purging the military's leadership, raising doubts about the People's Liberation Army's readiness. China has not fought a war since 1979, so how can anyone know whether the United States' No. 1 rival can fight and win a conflict in Taiwan, the South China Sea, or some other flashpoint?  David Finke...

Subscribe now to enjoy ad-free listening and bonus content. Keep the narrative flow going in 2026! "Nuremberg," starring Russell Crowe, Rami Malek, and Michael Shannon, has renewed interest in the landmark trials of Nazi war criminals after the Second World War. The movie is an important reminder that justice is possible if there's a will to seek it, as it seems unimaginable that many of today's w...

Subscribe now  to listen to this entire 28-minute episode (or preview 7 minutes). Nuclear arms control, RIP. The expiration of the New START treaty, agreed in 2010, marks the end of an era that began in 1972 with the first major U.S.-Soviet strategic nuclear arms pact brokered by Nixon and Brezhnev. In this episode, weapons control expert Joe Cirincione reflects on the new arms race underway and t...

This is the second episode in an occasional series for the 250th anniversary of the Declaration of Independence. Listen to the first show  here . Why did America's eighteenth-century revolutionaries revolt? Which ideas influenced their decisions and behavior? The answers depend on which revolutionaries you're talking about, from colonial society's elites to ordinary people hoping to survive the cr...

Subscribe for 24/7 access to the entire catalog of 500+ episodes (or listen free to only the 40 most recent episodes). The fascism debate is intensifying as the Trump administration lurches deeper into authoritarianism. Analogies abound, trying to connect or liken what's happening today to the death of democracy in interwar Europe — or to dark chapters in America's past. Is there an American fasci...

Subscribe now to enjoy ad-free listening and bonus content. Keep the narrative flow going in 2026! It wasn't very long ago when U.S. policymakers relied on a species of grand strategist known as the Sovietologist. It was the Cold War, and the strategies for dealing with the USSR ranged from containment to rollback, to détente and peaceful bridge-building. Zbigniew Brzezinski formulated the latter....

Subscribe for 24/7 access to the entire catalog of 500+ episodes. Non-subscribers may listen to only the 40 most recent episodes. President Trump's harsh immigration crackdown would not be possible without a militarized law enforcement apparatus that presidents and legislators of both political parties built over decades. Even before the 9/11/2001 terrorist strikes, immigration began to be viewed...

Subscribe now to listen to the entire 28-minute episode. (Or preview 7 minutes). On the streets of Minnesota, a federal paramilitary force in combat gear is executing a deliberate policy of terror and violence against American citizens and their immigrant neighbors. The lawless conduct of President Trump's immigration enforcers has supercharged a debate that's been roiling since 2016: Is Trumpism...

Subscribe now for 24/7 access to the entire catalog of 500+ episodes, ad-free listening, and bonus content. Non-subscribers may listen to only the 40 most recent episodes. The Trump administration's National Security Strategy calls for "flexible realism" in foreign policy, a supposed departure from the military adventurism that led to disasters in the Greater Middle East. Realism prioritizes natio...

Subscribe now to enjoy ad-free listening and bonus content. Keep the narrative flow going in 2026! This month Iran's clerical leaders and security forces spilled oceans of blood to suppress mass demonstrations after Iranians took to the streets to protest the regime's economic and political failings. Systematic violence has always been a tool utilized by the Islamic Republic to enforce obedience,...

Subscribe now to listen to the entire 37-minute episode. At the World Economic Forum in Davos, Canadian Prime Minister Mark Carney said the rules-based order is being ruptured by powerful countries who prefer coercion over negotiation. The following day, as if on cue, President Donald Trump broadcast his obsession with acquiring Greenland, although he said he would not use force. In this episode,...