History Behind News Program

Before the CIA-supported 1973 coup that placed Pinochet in power, Chile enjoyed democracy for several decades. Remarkably, after less than a decade of Pinochet's brutal repression of his people, Chileans were able to slowly introduce changes that lay the foundation for the eventual return of democracy. This is a huge national accomplishment.  In this episode, Dr. Claudio Fuentes takes us thro...

Can a U.S. president declassify a document by merely thinking it?  My guest is Heidi Kitrosser, Professor of Law at Northwestern University Pritzker School of Law. Professor Kitrosser is an expert on the constitutional law of federal government secrecy and on separation of powers and free speech law… more broadly. She is the author of the following book: Reclaiming Accountability: Transparenc...

Xi Jinping - a  third unprecedented term!   As China flexes its military muscles against Taiwan, Japan and its other neighbors, the world has come to doubt its peaceful intentions. And as its economy falters, for example in the real estate sector and beyond, the world is no longer spellbound by China's economic might.  All of this begs the following question: what happened to C...

Hurricane Fiona devastated Puerto Rico last month, but it also brought focus, once more, to Puerto Rico's peculiar status within the United States... that it is a territory, not a state, despite the fact that more than 9 million Americans identify themselves as Puerto Rican. To better understand Puerto Rico's rich history, I spoke with Dr. Jorge Duany, who was born in Cuba and raised in Panama and...

Women. Life. Liberty.  This chant has become the slogan of the current protests in Iran, which started with the murder of Ms. Mahsa Amini by the so-called 'morality police'. And to be sure, this time in Iran is all about women's rights.  My guest is an expert in the history of hijab and women's rights in Iran. In this episode, Dr. Janet Afary talks about the plight of Iranian women in th...

Mahsa Amini!  We know her name. Tragically, there are many more names like hers... many more Mahsa Aminis.  We have seen images and watched videos of brave Iranian women, and men, protest in the streets of Iran. Although we experience it from the safety of our homes, far away from the brutality of Iran's regime, it is still daunting to watch a young Iranian woman take off her hijab in pu...

Home mortgage interest rates are going up, and home sales rates and even prices are going down.  In this episode, I speak with Dr. Price Fishback , of Eller College of Management at the University of Arizona, about America's history of real estate booms and busts and the history of home loans.  Of course, we can't talk about homes and home mortgages without getting into the history of go...

The year 1814 not only marks the end of the Napoleonic Wars, but also ushers in the era of constitutional monarchies. No longer could Kings and Queens of Britain, or emperors of France, wield absolute power. This drastic transformation forced monarchs to come to terms with their diminished powers, and to reign rather than to rule. This much is intuitive. And much of it is even codified in the cons...

Did you know that at one point in our recent history, the Army Corp of Engineers and other local developers encouraged Americans to live in the very shadows of our levees? Lots of people made money. Politicians won elections. And then, the levees broke and all those homes were flooded.  This is a general narrative that applies to the infrastructure and property developments of many urban area...

China's version of world history is different than ours - much different.  In their version, the Chinese get their inspiration from their own emperors, ministers, heroes, poets, philosophers, and other historic figures. In a nutshell, Western historic figures were largely irrelevant to China and its history, at least until the 19th century, when China came into military conflict with the Euro...

From "forgotten barbarians" to 896; to Mongols, Ottomans and Austrians; Hitler's Germany and USSR, to now!  The "now" aspect of this question is quite important, because as Dr. Robert Nemes will explain in this episode, for most Hungarians now, their nation may seem rather homogenous. And as far as living memory goes, this perception may be correct. But once we dig a little deeper into histor...

Disputing the outcome of the 2020 presidential election continues to play a major role in GOP politics. This begs the question: how have election disputes been handled in our history? Are we progressing at election dispute resolution in the march of our history? Or are we regressing?  Intertwined with those questions is the quagmire of election disputes themselves. Has our Constitution created a w...

Is a strong U.S. dollar good for us Americans? Is it good for Europeans, specifically those whose currency is the Euro? How about emerging countries? Is a strong U.S. dollar good for them? What if those emerging markets borrow in dollars? Then, wouldn't a strong dollar make servicing those debts more difficult for them? And if so, should the Federal Reserve - America's central bank, take the econo...

Why doesn't America have diplomatic communications with Iran? Why does Iran pursue a nuclear program?  In this episode, I speak with Dr. Vali Nasr about the history of U.S.-Iran diplomacy, or more precisely, the lack thereof. But it didn't have to be this way. Dr. Nasr tells the story about historic moments of missed opportunities, where we could have perhaps better managed our relationship with I...

The forgotten story of what happened to the 1920 Census! The 1910s was a big decade in U.S. history.  Here are some highlights from that decade. judge for yourself: (1) WWI, (2) the Spanish flu pandemic, (3) the income tax Constitutional amendment, (4) U.S. senators' popular election Constitutional amendment, (5) women's right to vote Constitutional amendment, and (6) the alcohol ban Constitu...

Enjoy our midseason recap of our prior episodes. And here is a link to reflections of season one , including highlights.  I hope you have a great summer and please stay tuned for our next episode.  Adel Host of ThePeel.news podcast SUPPORT : please click here and join our other supporters in the news peeler community. Thank you. 🎵 attribution, links and license for the theme music in th...

Are Starbucks employees happy? No, they are/were not happy. It was all Starbucks branding. And it worked for a long time - until Covid!  This is according to our podcast guest, Professor Kate Bronfenbrenner, Director of Labor Education Research at the Industrial and Labor Relations School of Cornell University.  She is the co-author and editor of several peer-reviewed books on union and...

The 1939 Winter War is Finland's creation story. It's a war that Finland fought virtually alone, relying only on its own weapons and resources, against the might of the Soviet Union. It's a war that the USSR failed to win. And it's a war that Stalin believed he would win within 12 days!  After 700 years of being an integral part of the Swedish Empire, Finland was taken by Russia in 1808 and e...

How many extraterrestrial beings live on Jupiter? How about on the moon? Philosophers and theologians actually figured this out several centuries ago! They also grappled with another burning question - that since extraterrestrial beings haven't heard the Gospel, then how will they be saved in the afterlife? Good one, right!?! The study of UFOs goes back all the way to Babylonians. While UFOs weren...

"War is hard and finding peace is easier than you think." Are you surprised by this statement? I know I was. I thought that we humans are inherently war-prone and that our inclination is to solve our intractable problems through violence.  This is where Professor Christopher Blattman's timely book Why We Fight (just published in April) is instructive. In it, he describes five reasons why conf...

Why does Ukraine look to the West for inspiration as opposed to Russia? To answer this question, we have to understand the history of the Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth, one of the largest and most populous countries in Europe in the 16th and 17th centuries - a country that is now lost to history, a country that engulfed much of modern-day Ukraine.  The government of this Commonwealth was a m...

Why does FL Disney World have a special district but CA Disneyland does not? And how special is Florida's special district anyway? Why does a locality or a corporation need a special district anyway? What are the benefits? How prevalent are special districts in our country? How about in FL? And when it comes to FL, is Mr. DeSantis a more powerful governor than his predecessors?  To learn more...

I recently came across a Wall Street Journal article about a four-ton Chinese rocket booster that was anticipated to crash into the moon and expected to leave a 65-foot-diameter crater. This crash is different than all other human-related crashes into the moon because this one was unintentional ! According to the article, humans have been crashing spacecraft into the moon for the last 60 years. An...

Professor Steinberg explains that Peter the Great and Catherine the Great were great not because of their many reforms, but because they expanded the Russian Empire. President Putin, who some contemporary Russians believe to be great, admires Peter the Great. This explains a lot, doesn't it? By conquering Ukraine, Russia immediately becomes an empire, making Mr. Putin a "great" Russian leader. The...

French postcards were as close as one could get to Playboy in the 19th century. And apparently, they were ubiquitous in America, particularly during the Civil War. And according to our guest, Professor Brett Gary , that's a good starting point to talk about the history of censorship in America.  Anthony Comstock served in the Civil War and was appalled by the volume of pornography enjoyed by...