Hugh Wilford, professor of history at California State University, Long Beach, is on the program for the first of two episodes on his book The CIA: An Imperial History. In this first part, they explore the historiography of intelligence today, how the CIA fits into an imperial lens of US history, whether the CIA is a liberal way of managing the world, the agency’s origins and shift from intelligence gathering to covert actions, gender relations among officers, their families, and agency partners, individuals like Kim Roosevelt, and whether CIA personnel truly believed in the threat of communism.

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Danny and Derek welcome back to the program Mark Ames, co-host of Radio War Nerd, to talk about where things stand in the Russia-Ukraine conflict. They discuss Trump and Putin's relationship, the state of the Russian economy, the situation on the ground in Ukraine, Zelensky and Trump's infamous meeting, the so-called "minerals deal", Trump potentially recognizing Crimea as Russian territory, and more.

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In this week’s news: Israelis break the Gaza ceasefire (0:33); Trump resumes America’s war on Yemen’s Ansar Allah/Houthis (6:09); clashes break out on the border of Syria and Lebanon (10:15); a presidential candidate is arrested in Turkey (12:27); the South Sudan peace process continues to break down (16:02); calls for a ceasefire go unheeded in the Democratic Republic of the Congo (18:16); the US expels the ambassador from South Africa (21:08); in Russia-Ukraine news, Trump and Putin talk by phone (23:24) while the Kursk operation is effectively over (26:32); Canada welcomes its new prime minister, Mark Carney (28:45); and Donald Trump ignores a court ruling in order to deport hundreds of Venezuelans (31:14). 

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Danny and Derek speak with Chicago-based historian and writer Charlotte Rosen about the end of so-called “Resistance history”, a particular strain of liberal historiography that emerged during the first Trump administration. They talk about Resistance history’s defining characteristics, how it might have been an overcorrection to defend liberal democracy against attacks by Trump, how historians who engaged in this form of history viewed it as political action, some of the movement’s biggest figures, the apparent elitism and self-promotion among its proponents, the AHA and the decline of the history profession, and more.

Read Charlotte’s piece “The End of Resistance History” over at Protean Magazine.  

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Danny and Derek speak with Charli Carpenter, professor at UMass-Amherst, about US influence on the “rules-based order”. They discuss whether this “system” has become the US unilaterally delegating the rules, how the Biden administration undercut any remaining semblance of these norms, America’s cynical use of this concept in a context like Ukraine, the decline of mass politics in foreign policy decision-making, what mechanism might exist to stop rogue actors like Trump, and more. 

Read Charli's article, "The Rules-Based Order Is Less Dependent on the U.S. Than Biden’s Critics Think".

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This week on the news roundup: the Copernicus Climate Change Service reports that global sea ice fell to the lowest level ever recorded in February (1:18); Alawites in northwestern Syria have been massacred over several days (3:19) while the government and SDF cut a deal (6:49); Israel intensifies its blockade of Gaza (9:38) as the US proposes a new compromise for the Strip (10:55); Armenia and Azerbaijan look to be on the cusp of a peace agreement (14:31); the Philippines arrests former president Rodrigo Duterte on an ICC warrant (16:30); Trump and China’s Xi Jinping might hold a summit in June (19:23); the crisis in South Sudan continues to worsen (21:03); the Democratic Republic of the Congo (DRC) and M23 armed group look to hold peace talks (23:31); in Russia-Ukraine, the US and Ukraine produce a ceasefire proposal (25:15) while Russia retakes most of Kursk Oblast (29:46); Trump might be preparing to invade Panama (31:45); Canada elects a new prime minister (33:43); Trump continues to escalate the trade war (37:07); and former US National Security Advisor Jake Sullivan will become Harvard’s inaugural Kissinger Professor of the Practice of Statecraft and World Order (39:32).

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Spencer Ackerman of Forever Wars joins the program to talk about the arrest by ICE of activist Mahmoud Khalil.

Read Spencer's piece on the matter, "Mahmoud Khalil's Detention Is A War on Terror Milestone".

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Chag Purim Sameach! Enjoy this discussion from 2022 where Danny speaks with Benjamin Balthasar, associate professor of English at Indiana University-South Bend, about the history of Jewish anti-imperialism from the 1930s until today.

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Independent journalist and lawyer Jessica Pishko sits down with Danny and Derek to talk about sheriffs and the power that they hold. The group explores the rise of sheriffs in the 1820s under Andrew Jackson, their unique position as both law enforcement officers and politicians, their relationship to militias, the rise of “constitutional sheriffs”, figures from Wyatt Earp to Joe Arpaio, sheriffs and border policy, and more.

Be sure to pick up a copy of Jessica’s book The Highest Law in the Land: How the Unchecked Power of Sheriffs Threatens Democracy.    

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Danny and Derek welcome back to the podcast Paul Reitter, professor of Germanic languages and literature at the Ohio State University, this time for a discussion on Karl Marx through the lens of his Judaism and how that might illuminate new elements of his work or reshape our thinking of it. They talk about Marx’s place among other radical Jewish thinkers from the Rhineland, ideas of Jewish masculinity in his era, Jewish intellectuals becoming prominent atheists, how Marx’s background might have inspired his focus on the proletariat, and more.

Be sure to grab the new edition of Capital translated by Paul Reitter and edited by Paul North (on which we did an episode recently).    

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