History Behind News Program

Did you know that at one point in our recent history, the Army Corp of Engineers and other local developers encouraged Americans to live in the very shadows of our levees? Lots of people made money. Politicians won elections. And then, the levees broke and all those homes were flooded. 

This is a general narrative that applies to the infrastructure and property developments of many urban areas. It's a history of failed flood prevention policies. This history would not be complete without talking about home insurance policies, both federal and private, which incentivized many Americans, particularly poor Americans, to live in flood zone - in areas that are not natural human habitats. 

In addition to climate change, building and living in flood-prone areas is probably one of the biggest contributing factors to devastating floods, which have increased in frequency and ferocity. 

Lucky for us, my guest has many suggestions for what can be done, and he has already implemented much of his flood prevention policies in Louisiana, where nature has been incorporated to help us live with floods, instead of constantly fighting it. 

To learn more about Prof. Verchick, listen to this podcast and also visit his academic homepage. 

Below, are links to other episodes about climate: 

S1E42: America's Water Rights, Prof. Craig 

S1E38: Climate Change Laws, Prof. Takacs 

S1E26: History of Green Energy, Prof. DuVivier

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.

Hey there Newspeelers,

Tune in this Friday for my conversation with Professor Robert Verchick, in which he takes us through the history of major floods in the U.S., the common causes for floods, the impact of flooding on real estate, living in flood zones, engineering solutions to prevent flooding (I know, this is already a lot), disastrous flood policies and Louisiana (a state I have visited many times and love). 

This episode will be available at 6 am ET, Sept. 16th.

Talk to you guys then.

Adel

Host of the History Behind News podcast

Click to follow us on Twitter

HistoryBehindNews is available wherever you get your podcast.

New York is experiencing a polio outbreak. But how can this happen... when polio was declared eradicated from the U.S. back in 1994! 

In this brief episode, I discuss one of the reasons why some previously eradicated diseases may return, and use excerpts from previous podcast conversations with experts to drive home my point. 

Below are links to podcasts that you will hear about in this episode: 

S1E41: Dr. Meredith Wadman - history of vaccines in America

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.

China's version of world history is different than ours - much different. 

In their version, the Chinese get their inspiration from their own emperors, ministers, heroes, poets, philosophers, and other historic figures. In a nutshell, Western historic figures were largely irrelevant to China and its history, at least until the 19th century, when China came into military conflict with the Europeans. 

To be sure, China had faced many fierce enemies, lost many wars, and conquered many times. But the Europeans were different. Unlike all its prior enemies, the Europeans did not hold China's civilization in high esteem. 

China views its humiliating losses from the 1830s to the 1940s as a mere aberration, a disruption, of its long and consistent history of being a superpower. 

There is much that we don't know about China. And frankly, as China reaches the status of a global superpower, that's more than a little disconcerting. 

To better understand China’s history and its own perception of its history, I spoke with Michael Schuman, who is a nonresident senior fellow in the Atlantic Council’s Global China Hub. He is also a contributing writer to The Atlantic, and was previously a foreign correspondent for the Wall Street Journal and Time magazine. His most recent book is Superpower Interrupted: The Chinese History of the World – which we discussed here. His two previous books are Confucius and the World He Created, and also The Miracle: The Epic Story of Asia’s Quest for Wealth. As a journalist, Mr. Schuman has had 25 years of experience in Asia and, for this conversation, he joined us from Beijing. To learn more about Mr. Schuman, you can visit his homepage, the link for which is provided in the detailed caption of this episode.

Below, are links to other episodes about China: 

S2E1: China's real estate, Prof. Shih

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.

Hey there Newspeelers,

Tune in this Friday for my conversation with Mr. Michael Schuman, in which he takes us through the history of imperial China, and draws comparisons against the rest of the world. And yes, he may even answer the question: what does China want? 

This episode will be available at 6 am ET, Sept. 9th.

Talk to you guys then.

Adel

Host of the History Behind News podcast

Click to follow us on Twitter

HistoryBehindNews is available wherever you get your podcast.

From "forgotten barbarians" to 896; to Mongols, Ottomans and Austrians; Hitler's Germany and USSR, to now! 

The "now" aspect of this question is quite important, because as Dr. Robert Nemes will explain in this episode, for most Hungarians now, their nation may seem rather homogenous. And as far as living memory goes, this perception may be correct. But once we dig a little deeper into history, most Hungarians, including our guest's own ancestors, are indeed "peoples of mixed race". 

For reasons that Dr. Nemes explains, Hungarians date their history back to 896, after which, despite some military defeats, Hungary becomes a kingdom around 1,000 CE and thrives, experiencing wealth (gold and silver mines) and health (population growth). This success continues despite the utter devastation wrought by the Mongol invasion. As Hungary recovers and even repels the second Mongol invasion, its borders reach the Adriatic. 

The Ottoman period is another negative and devastating period in Hungary's history. One particular reason is that their country was split into three parts, and the Austrian Habsburgs also encroach on Hungary, eventually dominating it. But the story of loss doesn't stop there. After WWI, Hungary loses more than 70% of its territory! This loss, imposed by the post-war peace agreement, continues to be relevant in Hungary's nationalistic politics today. 

Dr. Nemes is a professor of history at Colgate University and has been visiting Budapest since soon after the fall of the Berlin Wall… where he could see bullet-ridden buildings from the Hungarian Revolution of 1956.

He is the author of The Once and Future Budapestand Another Hungary: The Nineteenth-Century Provinces in Eight Lives. He is also co-editor of Sites of European Antisemitism in the Age of Mass Politics, 1880-1918.

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

In this episode, we also made references to the histories of other European nations. Lucky for us, we have previously produced episodes about them as well:

S2E5: Who Are Ukrainians? 

S2E8: Wars in Ukraine. 

S2E22: Finland's wars against Russia. 

S2E19: Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth.

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.

Hey there Newspeelers,

Tune in this Friday for my conversation with Professor Robert Nemes in which he answers some basic questions about Hungary. But don't expect simple answers! 

This episode will be available at 6 am ET, Sept. 2nd. 

Talk to you guys then.

Adel

Host of the History Behind News podcast

Click to follow us on Twitter

HistoryBehindNews is available wherever you get your podcast.

Disputing the outcome of the 2020 presidential election continues to play a major role in GOP politics. This begs the question: how have election disputes been handled in our history? Are we progressing at election dispute resolution in the march of our history? Or are we regressing? 

Intertwined with those questions is the quagmire of election disputes themselves. Has our Constitution created a working system for us? This one is a trick question for two reasons. First, our electoral college system now is not the same one that our founders envisaged. Second, the election system that we think we have is not what we actually have in practice. In one particular aspect, our founders wanted majority winners in our elections, specifically with respect to presidential elections. But under our current system, a candidate can win the White House with a minority of the national and state popular votes. 

My guest, Professor Edward Foley, analyzes all of this for us, gives us models from history on how election disputes should be resolved, and then shares anecdotes of election-related violence, and one frightening election that almost caused a second civil war. 

Professor Foley is the author of Presidential Elections and Majority Rule, and also Ballot Battles: The History of Disputed Elections in the United States, which was named a Finalist for the David J. Langum Prize in American Legal History and listed as one of 100 “must-read books about law and social justice”.

He holds the Ebersold Chair in Constitutional Law at The Ohio State University, where he also directs its election law program. He is a contributing opinion columnist for the Washington Post, and for the 2020 election season, he served as an NBC News election law analyst.

And here is the link to my conversation with Daniel Okrent about Prohibition and the 1920 census (S2E24), which I also discuss in this podcast episode. 

I hope you enjoy these two episodes,

Adel

Host of the History Behind News podcast

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ThePeel.news is available wherever you get your podcast.

Hey there Newspeelers,

Tune in this Friday for an "unsettling" and yet highly informative conversation with Professor Edward Foley about the history of election disputes in America. This episode will be available at 6 am ET, Aug. 26th.

Talk to you guys then.

Adel

Host of the History Behind News podcast

Click to follow us on Twitter

ThePeel.news is available wherever you get your podcast.

Is a strong U.S. dollar good for us Americans? Is it good for Europeans, specifically those whose currency is the Euro? How about emerging countries? Is a strong U.S. dollar good for them? What if those emerging markets borrow in dollars? Then, wouldn't a strong dollar make servicing those debts more difficult for them? And if so, should the Federal Reserve - America's central bank, take the economic well-being of other countries, e.g., developing nations, into consideration when it sets and changes its monetary policies? Hm! Believe it or not, this issue has been raised in international conferences. 

For answers to all these questions, we speak with Professor Barry Eichengreen, the Chair and Distinguished Professor of Economics and Professor of Political Science at UC Berkeley. Dr. Eichengreen has won many prestigious awards for teaching and his scholarship, and he was named one of Foreign Policy Magazine's 100 Leading Global Thinkers in 2011. He is a past president of the Economic History Association, and a Research Associate of the NBER. 

In this episode, Dr. Eichengreen talks about the history of the dollar's valuation - from its zenith to its nadir, and provides many anecdotes that liven the discussions (think pizza coins). 

And here is the link to my previous conversation with Dr. Eichengreen about cryptocurrency (S2E12).

I hope you enjoy these two episodes, 

Adel

Host of the History Behind News podcast

Click to follow us on Twitter

ThePeel.news is available wherever you get your podcast.