After Assad

In Wordsworth’s 1807 description of ‘golden daffodils’, the breeze animates both the scene and the inner life of the speaker. Like many poets, Wordsworth turned to the weather to mediate between internal and external experiences. In this episode, Sarah and Sandeep look at the way ...  Show more

‘The beautiful game has never looked more beautiful on the pitch, or more ugly off it,’ Simon Skinner writes in the latest LRB. Each World Cup seems more tainted by corruption than the last, but is that a nostalgic illusion? The second competition, held in Italy in 1934, was a po ...  Show more

An episode on the fall of the Assad regime and its implications on Syria and Lebanon. Covering the rapid collapse of the Assad regime, identity formation in the wake of over half a century of minoritarian rule mired by tyranny, where Iran stands in the near future and a wider amb ...  Show more

On Sunday Morning the sound of gunfire filled the air in Damascus. The noise, not of fighting, but celebrations. President Bashar al-Assad and his family had fled to Russia. A family which ruled for more than 50 years, brought down by a rebel offensive which had begun less than t ...  Show more

What are the prospects for democracy in Syria? Is this the right question to ask? What do we need to better understand about Syria’s new leader, its civil society, and the challenges it faces in a new era for Syria? Join Rana Khoury, Daniel Neep, and Emily Scott for this special ...  Show more

When Bashar al Assad’s government fell just a couple of days ago, after a two week whirlwind campaign by opposition forces which surprised the entire world, it signalled the end of more than 54 years of rule by the Assad family and it’s the so called Ba’th-party. While it has bee ...  Show more