Déjà Vu

Long before Europe ruled the seas, India’s vast ocean trade linked it to the world. Thinkers like Brahmagupta and Aryabhata spread mathematical ideas that shaped the Renaissance and the modern age. Then colonialism shifted the balance of power. As global power shifts back towards ...  Show more

Long before Europe ruled the seas, India’s vast ocean trade linked it to the world. Thinkers like Brahmagupta and Aryabhata spread mathematical ideas that shaped the Renaissance and the modern age. Then colonialism shifted the balance of power. As global power shifts back towards ...  Show more

From Spain to Sicily, Muslims helped shape Europe for centuries. Why do they still seem to be cast as outsiders? In this episode of Deja Vu, author Tariq Ali traces the rise of Al-Andalus to its fall amid the burning of books and the loss of a shared past. How does that history s ...  Show more

Can Judaism exist without Zionism? Rabbi Haim Sofer traces Jewish identity through exile and persecution to centuries of life alongside Muslims, from al-Andalus to Morocco and Iraq. How did the dream of a Jewish state and plans for a Third Temple reshape those ties – and why does ...  Show more

Why does anger seem to rule the world today? Pankaj Mishra traces our age of anger to the collision of Enlightenment promises of liberty and equality with empire, nationalism and capitalism. He asks what happens when those promises are broken – and when the Global South turns Wes ...  Show more

What happens when a revolutionary movement takes control of the world’s most vital waterway, bringing global oil shipping to a halt and sparking war with an empire? It’s not the Strait of Hormuz, but the Suez Crisis of 70 years earlier. In 1956, Egypt shut the Suez Canal and took ...  Show more