A Brief Overview of the U.S. Presidency

The Haitian Revolution was the most radical and unlikely uprising in the modern world. In this episode, Dr. Roy Casagranda traces the rise of Toussaint Louverture and the extraordinary transformation of Saint-Domingue from the richest slave colony on earth to a revolutionary forc ...  Show more

Most histories of the Islamic Golden Age focus on its discoveries. But in this episode, Dr. Roy goes further back, tracing the long arc of Western civilization from ancient Egypt and Mesopotamia to Greece, Rome, Persia, and the rise of Islam. He reveals how one Persian emperor’s ...  Show more

In December 2024, the long and bloody stalemate in Syria broke down. In a transformation breathtaking for its suddenness and speed, President Bashar al-Assad, the beating heart of Arab authoritarianism, fled to Russia, his dungeons emptying as rebels overcame the Syrian army with ...  Show more

Eric, Andrew and Rudy join for a discussion on the Arab Socialist Ba'ath Party in the two regions where it held power: Syria and Iraq, covering the history of both countries from the dissolution of the Ottoman empire up to the Hama Rebellion in Syria and the Kuwait War in Iraq ...

This episode takes us from the disastrous Oslo Accords through the 2000 Camp David Summit and the eruption of the Second Palestinian Intifada. Then the 9/11 attacks, the War on Terror, the US destruction of Iraq, the Arab Spring, the Syrian Civil War, and the rise of Islamic Stat ...  Show more

Professor Samer Abboud from Villanova University is an expert on Syrian politics. He joins us to discuss the intricacies of Syria's political history from 1946 to the present, including the impact of French colonial rule, frequent coups, the United Arab Republic, the rise and ...