The MERIP Podcast

On today’s program, we have a special release of the audio from the second installment of our summer event series “Iran in Context,” featuring conversations with scholars in the field about the deeper dynamics behind the political and military convulsions in Iran over the last year. The latest installment, available here, is on the “Politics and Counter Politics in Contemporary Iran” and includes...

Today’s episode of the MERIP Podcast is an audio recording from the first event in our Iran in Context series. This series is co-produced by MERIP, BRISMES, the British Society for Middle East Studies, and SeSaMO, the Italian Society for Middle East Studies. Each event features conversations with scholars about the deeper context behind the political and military convulsions in Iran over the last...

Today’s episode of the MERIP Podcast features an interview with Ayça Alemdaroğlu about her article, “The Capture of Turkey’s Universities Under the AKP,” in our Spring 2026 issue, “Campus Politics–Palestine and the New University Order.” MERIP executive director James Ryan spoke with Alemdaroğlu about the efforts of President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan’s Justice and Development Party to co-opt universit...

Today's episode of the MERIP Podcast features an interview with two contributors to the spring issue of Middle East Report , “Campus Politics—Palestine and the New University Order.” Since the beginning of world-wide campus protests in the wake of October 7, 2023, there has been a tremendous upswell of organizing and support for Palestinian liberation and activism against US militarism. In respons...

Today on the podcast three MERIP contributors discuss Lebanon’s tenuous, one-sided ceasefire with Israel. Even as officials in the Lebanese government have entered into negotiations with Israel, an unprecedented diplomatic move with questionable legal status under Lebanese law, Israel has violated the ceasefire numerous times and has continued its efforts to destroy villages south of its unilatera...

Today’s episode is the third installment of our MERIP Roundtable discussing the war on Iran, instigated by the US and Israeli on February 28, 2026, and its regional reverberations. This episode focuses on Israel’s expanded war on Lebanon. Following the assassination of Ali Khamanei, supreme leader of the Islamic Republic of Iran, Hizballah fired six missiles into Israel, its first offensive move s...

On today’s episode of the MERIP Roundtable our discussion focused on people’s experiences of the war on Iran and throughout the region two and a half weeks in. Much of the discussion of this war in the western media has centered on the strategic calculus of the United States and Israel in deciding to go to war, how long it may endure and what that means for Americans. Despite the fact that Iranian...

On today’s episode we have an installment of our MERIP Roundtable series, where members of our editorial committee, recent contributors and close comrades discuss current events. In this episode, we centered our discussion on the social dynamics and impacts of the current war on Iran and consider how the regional political order may be shifting as a result.  On February 28, 2026, the United S...

Today’s episode of the MERIP Podcast features an interview with Niema Alhessen, a Sudanese researcher based in Cairo who is focused on urban conflict and displacement. She is the author of “Burri Under Siege—How War Remade Everyday Life in a Sudanese Neighborhood” in our Winter 2025 issue of Middle East Report , “Reconstruction and Ruin.” Burri, a neighborhood in central Khartoum that houses key p...

In today’s episode Iman Ali talks about her recently published article, “Repair and Ongoing Ruination—Rebuilding the Dahiyeh Once More,” which appeared in our Winter 2025 issue, “Reconstruction and Ruin.” Iman Ali,  a doctoral candidate in anthropology at Cornell University, has been conducting fieldwork in Lebanon to investigate the impacts of Israel’s war in the fall of 2024 and the ongoing...

On this episode of our In the Archive series, MERIP’s Executive Director, James Ryan, speaks with Brahim El Guabli about his essay, “The Sub-Saharan Turn in Moroccan Literature,” which appeared in the Spring 2021 issue of Middle East Report , “Maghreb from the Margins.” El Guabli speaks about how migration from sub-Saharan Africa reshaped Moroccan politics and identity over the course of the last...

In this installment of the MERIP Roundtable podcast, MERIP’s executive director James Ryan is joined by a panel of MERIP comrades to discuss the latest wave of protests in Iran. The protests began on December 28, 2025, as merchants and bazaar workers reacted negatively to new budgetary measures announced by President Masoud Pezeshkian. The protests snowballed in the first week of January, reaching...

Today on the podcast we have an interview with Ned Leadbeater, a researcher and analyst based in Britain who recently wrote an article for our Summer/Fall double issue on the material politics of normalization titled, “Fiber Optics and the Hidden Politics of Connectivity.” His article explores the politics surrounding undersea fiber optic cables in the Red Sea and plans for possible overland cable...

On this episode of the MERIP Podcast we're sharing highlights of our live event Honoring Joe Stork, held at Busboys and Poets in Washington, D.C. on November 22, 2025. The event featured reflections and reminiscences about Joe Stork, our co-founder and longtime editor who passed away October 23, 2024. Featured speakers included Sarah Leah Whitson, Lisa Hajjar, Mouin Rabbani, Joel Beinin, Zachary L...

Today we have a very special episode, part of a new occasional series that will highlight some of the truly great work MERIP has done over the last 50-plus years, all of which is free to read in our archive. In the first of this series, we’re featuring the landmark essay “Abu Farid’s House” written by Beshara Doumani and published in March 1989 as part of Issue 157, “Israel Faces the Uprising.” Th...

On this episode of The MERIP Podcast we are featuring an interview with Raouf Farrah, an Algerian activist and researcher based in Tunis, about his article "On the Road to Rafah -- The Sumud Convoy and New Maghrebi Geographies of Resistance" which appears in Middle East Report 315-316 Material Politics of Normalization (Summer/Fall 2025). In the interview, Farrah and MERIP Executive Director James...

On today's episode we are providing another installment of our MERIP Roundtable, where members of our Editorial Committee discuss recent developments in the region. Today's roundtable, "On the Regional War" focuses on the fallout from Israel's September 9th strike on Qatar, a failed assassination attempt targeting the Hamas delegation that is involved in negotiations over a ceasefire and hostage r...

This episode of the MERIP podcast features an interview with longtime MERIP contributor and noted journalist Helen Lackner on the state of Yemen's Houthi movement. The conversation with MERIP Executive Director James Ryan follows up on her essay, "Yemen's Ansar Allah" that was published in our Winter 2024 Issue of Middle East Report on "Resistance: The Axis and Beyond." We discussed the increasing...

This week in the feed we have the audio from our August 14th, 2025 event "Syria at the Crossroads: Unpacking Sectarianism and the Crisis in Suweida." The conversation features perspectives from Syrian journalists, scholars, and activists Sara Ajlyakin, Sana Mustafa, and Yasser Munif, and was co-moderated by James Ryan (MERIP) and Shireen Akram-Boshar (SPECTRE). This is the third event in our serie...

The MERIP Roundtable is a new format for the MERIP podcast featuring conversation on urgent issues in the Middle East with members of MERIP's Editorial Committee. The theme of this episode's conversation is "Recognition" -- both the widening circle of Israeli, diaspora, and Jewish figures and institutions that are belatedly recognizing the facts of the genocide in Gaza and the recent wave of G7 st...

This week on the MERIP Podcast Feed we have the audio recording of our June 23rd event "Syria at the Crossroads: Regional Politics and the Movement for Palestine." This conversation was the second in our series jointly produced with SPECTRE: A Marxist Journal. It featured a discussion of the wider regional politics shaping the dynamics of the transitional regime in Syria -- including the early eff...

This week on the feed is the audio recording of our zoom event "Syria at the Crossroads: Popular Revolt, Counterrevolution, and Regional Transformation" featuring Leila Al-Shami, Wafa Mustafa, and Djene Bajalan. Syria at the Crossroads is a special event series co-produced by MERIP and SPECTRE: A Marxist Journal. This event took place May 7, 2025 and was co-moderated by James Ryan (MERIP) and Shir...

This week on the MERIP Podcast we're featuring an interview with the Lebanese journalist Habib Battah, author of "Beirut and the Birth of the Fortress Embassy" which was published in Middle East Report Online in April 2024. Battah has recently returned to Lebanon for the first time since we published his investigation, and he spoke with MERIP Executive Director James Ryan about the role of the US...

This week in the MERIP Podcast feed we have the audio recording of our launch event for the latest issue of Middle East Report, New Gender Frontlines. Hosted by MERIP Executive Director, James Ryan, and featuring a panel with MERIP Editorial Committee member and issue editor Sabiha Allouche (University of Exeter), Rahaf Aldoughli (University of Lancaster), Paniz Musawi Natanzi (University of Penns...

The first episode of the MERIP Podcast features an interview with Mona Tajali, a Visiting Scholar at Stanford University's Center on Democracy, Development and the Rule of Law about her piece, “Women and Politics in Post-Jina Iran” which was published in our latest issue “New Gender Frontlines.” Interview was recorded June 24, 2025. The MERIP Podcast is hosted by James Ryan, Executive Director of...