History Behind News Program

Now that Mr. Biden is halfway through his presidential term, we want to find his place in US history. In other words, we want to weigh his presidency against prior US presidents. 

For example, how do Mr. Biden's successes or failures stack up against his predecessors? How does his age compare to prior US presidents? I know that's a big concern for lots of people. And related to that, here is another question: have any former US presidents died of old age while in office?

How about classified documents? Has that been an issue with other sitting presidents? 

Also, there is the matter of the Democratic Party itself. Would Andrew Jackson, the first president of the Democratic Party, recognize President Biden's democratic party? How about FDR - a more modern Democratic President? Would he recognize President Biden's Democratic Party? Would either of them vote for a Biden second term?

To learn more about this history, and to get some insights into what's happening now, in our present moment, I spoke to Dr. Thomas J. Balcerski. He is a visiting professor in US History at Occidental College, also known as Oxy, where he teaches courses on U.S. Presidents and First Ladies as well as the history of the Democratic Party, from Thomas Jefferson to Joe Biden.

In addition to Oxy, Dr. Balcerski is a professor of American history at Eastern Connecticut State University.

Dr. Balcerski is also a Long-Term Fellow at the Huntington Library, where he is conducting research for his forthcoming book The Greatest Party Ever Known, which we discuss in this episode….

He is the author of Bosom Friends: The Intimate World of James Buchanan and William Rufus King. Among his many publications and projects with the White House History Quarterly, Civil War History, Journal of Social History, and others, he recently appeared on the Discovery+ series “The Book of Queer” to discuss the sexuality of Abraham Lincoln.

To learn more about Dr. Balcerski, you can visit his academic homepage,

In addition, below are links to two other fascinating episodes:

S3E1: Principles & Roots of the GOP, Prof. Joel Richard Paul 

S2E41: A 2nd Trump Term? Prof. Michael J. Gerhardt

I hope you enjoy these episodes.

Adel

Host of the History Behind News podcast

⁠⁠⁠⁠SUPPORT⁠⁠⁠⁠:

⁠⁠Click here⁠ and join⁠⁠⁠ our other supporters in the news peeler community. Thank you.

To watch our distinguished guests tell the history behind our news, follow us on ⁠⁠⁠Twitter⁠⁠, ⁠⁠YouTube⁠⁠, ⁠⁠Facebook⁠⁠, ⁠⁠LinkedIn⁠⁠, ⁠⁠TikTok .

It's the two-year anniversary of the History Behind News podcast. Given this news, we decided to look into the history behind podcasting. For example, how did podcasting become a thing? How and when did podcasting morph out of its super geeky & techy origins, into this huge, supercool, mainstream phenomenon? And how is a podcast different than, say, a radio program that’s just uploaded onto the Internet and then called a podcast? And finally, what makes for a good podcast?

To get answers to all these questions, I spoke with Dr. Martin Spinelli – Professor of Podcasting and Creative Media at the University of Sussex in Brighton, the United Kingdom.

He is the lead editor of the Bloomsbury Podcast Studies book series, co-host and executive producer of the podcast For Your Ears Only, and writer and executive producer of the recently released adolescent emotional well-being sci-fi podcast drama, The Rez. His benchmark radio art series Radio Radio and LINEbreak are included in the permanent collection of the Museum of Television and Radio in New York. 

To learn more about Dr. Spinelli, you can visit his academic homepage. And here is an Amazon link to his book, Podcasting: The Audio Media Revolution, which we discuss in this episode.

I hope you enjoy this episode. 

Adel

Host of the History Behind News podcast

⁠⁠⁠⁠SUPPORT⁠⁠⁠⁠:

⁠⁠Click here⁠ and join⁠⁠⁠ our other supporters in the news peeler community. Thank you.

To watch our distinguished guests tell the history behind our news, follow us on ⁠⁠⁠Twitter⁠⁠, ⁠⁠YouTube⁠⁠, ⁠⁠Facebook⁠⁠, ⁠⁠LinkedIn⁠⁠, ⁠⁠TikTok

The B-21 Raider is a new Air Force superweapon - a stealth bomber that has taken the Northrop Grumman close to a decade to develop on time and under budget. But the US Air Force has been shrinking its bomber fleet since the collapse of the USSR - the Soviet Union. So why develop the B-21 Raider now? Why embark on a huge and highly costly new bomber project now? 

To dig deeper into this history, I spoke with Dr. Melvin Deaile. He is the Director of the School of Advanced Nuclear and Deterrence Studies, and an Associate Professor in the Department of International Studies at Air University’s Air Command and Staff College. Dr. Deaile teaches classes on nuclear deterrence, nuclear strategy, joint warfighting, and classical military thought. He is a retired Air Force Colonel, where he served two tours in the B-52 Stratofortress and a tour in the B-2 Spirit. He has flown combat operations as part of Operations DESERT STORM and OPERATION ENDURING FREEDOM, including a record-setting 44.3-hour combat mission, and deployed in support of Operation IRAQI FREEDOM.

He is the recipient of the Distinguished Flying Cross and a distinguished graduate of the USAF Weapon School.  Dr. Deailerecently published his first book, Always at War, which chronicles the development of SAC’s organizational culture under Gen Curtis LeMay. Of course, we discuss that book in this episode.

To learn more about Dr. Deaile, you can visit his academic homepage. And here is an Amazon link to his latest book, Always at War, which we discuss in this episode. 

In addition, below are links to two other fascinating episodes: 

S2E8: History of Wars in Ukraine, Dr. David Stone
S2E5: Who Are Ukrainians?, Dr. Catherine Wanner 

I hope you enjoy these episodes.

Adel

Host of the History Behind News podcast

⁠⁠⁠⁠SUPPORT⁠⁠⁠⁠:

⁠⁠Click here⁠ and join⁠⁠⁠ our other supporters in the news peeler community. Thank you.

To watch our distinguished guests tell the history behind our news, follow us on ⁠⁠⁠Twitter⁠⁠, ⁠⁠YouTube⁠⁠, ⁠⁠Facebook⁠⁠, ⁠⁠LinkedIn⁠⁠, ⁠⁠TikTok .

The 118th Congress convened this week, on Tuesday, Jan. 3, 2023. But the Republican-dominated U.S. House of Representatives has failed to show even a semblance of proper function. No business has been conducted for the last three days, because we have no Speaker of the House. And as of this recording, the two-year anniversary of the Jan. 6th attack on Congress, Mr. Kevin McCarthy has Failed to win the Speakership after 11 rounds of voting.

Hopefully, by the time you listen to this podcast, our country will have a Speaker of the House so that U.S. Representatives can be sworn in, so they can legislate so that they can finally conduct the people's business.

In an interview with the Wall Street Journal, a Republican supporter of McCarthy described the opposition to McCarthy's speakership as a "temper tantrum." The Republican opposition to McCarthy's speakership, composed of some 20 Representatives, consider themselves "conservative purists". But the New York Times explains that their agenda "is mostly to defund, disrupt and dismantle government, not to participate in it". 

"conservative purists"… the historical question that comes to mind when I hear that term is what are the historical roots of the Republican Party, of conservatism, and what are their founding principles. 

To get answers to these questions, I spoke with Prof Joel Richard Paul, who is a legal scholar and historian and he teaches Constitutional Law and other subjects at UC Hastings College of the Law. In this episode, he also tells us why the name of his law school has changed and also speaks about cancel culture. 

To learn more about Prof. Paul, you can visit his academic homepage.

Here is an Amazon link to his latest book, Indivisible - Daniel Webster And the Birth of American Nationalism, which we discuss in this episode. 

In addition, below is a link to my conversation with Prof. Gerhardt, in which he compares Mr. Trump's attempt at a comeback in 2024 to prior US presidents. He also tells us what it's like to testify before the U.S. Congress. 

S2E41: History of Presidential Comebacks, Prof. Michael Gerhardt

I hope you enjoy these episodes. 

Adel

Host of the History Behind News podcast

⁠⁠⁠⁠SUPPORT⁠⁠⁠⁠:

⁠⁠Click here⁠ and join⁠⁠⁠ our other supporters in the news peeler community. Thank you.

To watch our distinguished guests tell the history behind our news, follow us on ⁠⁠⁠Twitter⁠⁠, ⁠⁠YouTube⁠⁠, ⁠⁠Facebook⁠⁠, ⁠⁠LinkedIn⁠⁠, ⁠⁠TikTok

Was Iran's 1979 Revolution an Islamic revolution? Many people say no, it was not. So if that's the case, then why did Iranians vote to transform Iran into an Islamic republic shortly after the revolution? And how can an Islamic state also operate as a republic? These are two opposing ideas - one represents the rule of the people and the other rule of the divine. 

My guest for this episode is Dr. Behrooz Ghamari-Tabrizi, a professor and Chair of the Department of Near Eastern Studies at Princeton University, where he is also the Director of the Sharmin & Bijan Mossavar-Rahmani Center for Iran and Persian Gulf Studies. He has written extensively on the topics of Iran, the Iranian revolution, social theory, and Islamist political thought in different journals and book chapters. Currently, he is working on a project on Mystical Modernity, a comparative study of the philosophy of history and political theory of Walter Benjamin and Ali Shariati.

He is the author of three books, including slam and Dissent in Post-Revolutionary Iran, Foucault in Iran: Islamic Revolution after the Enlightenment, and Remembering Akbar: Inside the Iranian Revolution.

To learn more about Dr. Ghamari-Tabrizi, you can visit his academic homepage.

Here is a Revolutionary song by Iranian women... it's a song about happiness & not being afraid... 

In addition, below are links to other episodes about Iran:

S2E34: Iran's History of Hijab & Women's Rights, Dr. Janet Afary

S2E33: Iranians of the 1979 Revolution, Dr. Naghmeh Sohrabi

S2E25: Iran-U.S. Diplomacy, Dr. Vali Nasr

S1E25: Iran's Leadership, Government Structure & Religion, Dr. Vali Nasr

Adel

Host of the History Behind News podcast

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How does his 2024 comeback attempt compare to other US presidents? And can Trump Be Disqualified From Running In 2024? 

Barely a week after this year's midterm elections, in which the much anticipated Republican Red Wave never materialized, former President Trump announced his candidacy for the 2024 presidential election. 

The only president who succeeded in occupying the White House in two non-consecutive terms was Grover Cleveland. Yet, the story of his comeback is much different than Trump's. In fact, our immediate former president can learn a great deal from Cleveland in how to lose an election and in how to orchestrate his comeback. 

In addition to Cleveland, Andrew Jackson and Richard Nixon lost their presidential bids. But they stayed in the fight, rallied their support and had their comebacks to win the White House. By the way, when he lost to Kennedy, Nixon gave a brief but beautiful speech before both houses of Congress. Click this link to listen to it: Nixon announces JFK win to Congress 1961.

To dig deep into this history, I spoke with Professor Michael Gerhardt of the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, where he is a Burton Craig Distinguished Professor of Jurisprudence at the school of law there. If Professor Gerhardt's voice sounds familiar to you, it's because you've seen him on TV, many times.

 During the Clinton and first Trump impeachment proceedings, Professor Gerhardt served as an impeachment expert for CNN. In the second impeachment trial of President Trump, he was an expert commentator for CNN, Fox, and MSNBC and served as special counsel to the Presiding Officer, Senator Patrick Leahy.

In addition to all of that, Professor Gerhardt has testified more than 20 times before Congress, including as the only joint witness in the Clinton impeachment proceedings in the House; speaking behind closed doors to the entire House of Representatives about the history of impeachment in 1998. He also testified as one of the four constitutional scholars called by the House Judiciary Committee during President Trump’s impeachment proceedings.

He is the author of seven books, including the Forgotten Presidents, and also Lincoln's Mentors, and his forthcoming book is FDR's Mentors.

To learn more about Professor Gerhardt, you can visit his academic homepage.

In addition, below are links to two other interesting episodes:

S2E39: History of America's Polarized Politics?, Dr. David Schultz

S2E27: History of America's Election Disputes, Prof. Edwar Foley

S2E37: U.S Classified Information - A History, Prof. Heidi Kitrosser

I hope you enjoy these episodes.

Adel

Host of the History Behind News podcast

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Why was OPEC formed? Who were the Seven Sisters that ruled the world? How were oil prices determined in the past? And How are they determined now? Will oil and gas prices decrease more anytime soon? 

For answers to these questions, I spoke with Ms. Jacqueline L. Weaver, a Professor of Law at the University of Houston Law Center. Her teaching and research interests cover oil and gas law, energy law and policy, international petroleum, and environmental and natural resources law. She has lectured on topics in international petroleum transactions in Africa, Kazakhstan, Lisbon, China and Bangkok.

She is a co-author of Smith and Weaver, The Texas Law of Oil and Gas, and a national casebook titled Energy, Economics and the Environment; as well as another casebook titled International Petroleum Transactions and the treatise International Petroleum Exploration & Exploitation Agreement. She has written articles on offshore safety after the Macondo disaster in the Gulf of Mexico, energy markets, sustainable development in the international petroleum industry, comparative unitization laws, energy policy, and traditional oil and gas law topics.

She worked as an economist in the Corporate Planning Department of Exxon Co. USA before joining the University of Houston Law Center.

To learn more about Professor Weaver, you can visit her academic homepage.

In addition, below is a link to another interesting episode:

S1E26: Is Green Energy Truly Green?, Prof. KK DuVivier

I hope you enjoy these episodes.

Adel

Host of the History Behind News podcast

Click to follow us on Twitter

The "Red Wave" that was trumped up as a red tsunami never materialized... it barely lapped the shore (I am keeping with the wave analogy here). 

So what happened? Did we Americans essentially fear the instability that election deniers pose to our democratic systems? If so, we must have feared this so much that we voted for the very party that most of us seem to blame for high inflation, which has always been the death knell for political parties in power in the U.S. 

This is a story of geography, demography, money & minority rule.

My guest in this episode is Dr. David Schultz, a Distinguished Hamline University Professor of Political Science and Legal Studies. He is also a professor of law at Hamline as well as the University of Minnesota Schools of Law, where he teaches election law. In this conversation, he tells me about what he believes to be the most important election in U.S. history: the presidential election of 1800. Why is this election important? Because it set the precedent for the losing political party to relinquish power. At the end of the day, Adams conceded his loss (hint, Mr. Trump). 

Dr. Schultz explains how polarization has increased in America's politics over the last 50 years, and why polarization will decrease in the next decade (I know, I was surprised too). We also talk about a subject that has baffled and then angered me for years: Super PACs. Don't they threaten our democracy? 

We end our conversation with another intriguing realization - that America's election winners are receiving only a minority of the votes. This is a crazy idea in a democracy. Yet, it is happening in ours. 

To learn more about Dr. Schultz, you can visit his academic homepage.

In addition, below are links to other interesting episodes: 

S1E40: The Real Story of Thanksgiving, Dr. David Silverman

S2E27: America's Election Disputes & Violence, Prof. Edward Foley

S2E38: Chile's History of Polarized Politics, Dr. Claudio Fuentes

I hope you enjoy these episodes.

Adel

Host of the History Behind News podcast

Click to follow us on Twitter

ThePeel.news is available wherever you get your podcast.

Before the CIA-supported 1973 coup that placed Pinochet in power, Chile enjoyed democracy for several decades. Remarkably, after less than a decade of Pinochet's brutal repression of his people, Chileans were able to slowly introduce changes that lay the foundation for the eventual return of democracy. This is a huge national accomplishment. 

In this episode, Dr. Claudio Fuentes takes us through the history of Chile's polarized politics from prior to 1973 to 2022. Despite this polarization, Chile's democracy has survived. Perhaps the reason is that Chileans have experienced the alternative to democracy: Pinochet's years. 

As our politics become more polarized here in the U.S., we can learn quite a lot from Chile, in how fragile democracy is, in how polarization can destroy democracy. 

Dr. Fuentes is a professor at the School of Political Science at Diego Portales University in Chile. His academic interests focus on the study of political processes in Chile and Latin America, and in recent years on the study of the dynamics of institutional change.

Among his many other recognitions, Dr. Fuentes won the award for the best doctoral thesis awarded by the American Political Science Association (APSA) and is a Luksic Fellow at Harvard University (2011). In Chile, was a member of the Presidential Anti-Corruption Advisory Council (2015).

He is an associate researcher at the Center for Intercultural and Indigenous Studies (CIIR) and coordinates the Constitutional Laboratory at Diego Portales University.

To learn more about Dr. Fuentes, you can visit his academic homepage.

In addition, below are links to other episodes about U.S. interests, interference and even occupation of countries and nations in the Americas: 

S2E35: Puerto Rico, Dr. Jorge Duany

S1E24: Cuba's History, Dr. Lillian Guerra

S1E23: Haiti's History, Dr. Robert Fatton

I hope you enjoy these episodes.

Adel

Host of the History Behind News podcast

Click to follow us on Twitter

ThePeel.news is available wherever you get your podcast.

Can a U.S. president declassify a document by merely thinking it? 

My guest is Heidi Kitrosser, Professor of Law at Northwestern University Pritzker School of Law. Professor Kitrosser is an expert on the constitutional law of federal government secrecy and on separation of powers and free speech law… more broadly. She is the author of the following book: Reclaiming Accountability: Transparency, Executive Power, and the U.S. Constitution, which was awarded the 2014 Chicago-Kent College of Law / Roy C. Palmer Civil Liberties Prize.

She is on the steering committee of a new initiative – the Free Expression Legal Network (FELN) spearheaded by Yale’s Media Freedom and Information Access Clinic and the Reporter’s Committee for Freedom of the Press

She not only tackles the above question head-on, but she also gets into the history of classified information (e.g., Nixon's executive orders), and analyzes the culpability of the Judicial and Legislative branches of our government in giving the Executive branch more or less a free rein when it comes to classified information. 

To learn more about Professor Kitrosser, you can visit her academic homepage.

In addition, below is a link to a recent podcast that is relevant to our current news: 

S2E27: U.S. Election Violence, Electoral College & Minority Winners, Professor Edward Foley 

I hope you enjoy these episodes.

Adel

Host of the History Behind News podcast

Click to follow us on Twitter

ThePeel.news is available wherever you get your podcast.