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Breaking History: Daily Summaries Delivered
by The Free Press
Sometimes the news moves so fast, you have to look closely to know if you’ve seen it before. And that’s what this show is about. Breaking History breaks down the news, by breaking down history. We cover everything from LBJ and the Roman Republic to Donald Trump and the chaos at Columbia. This show delivers the best historians, authors, and reporters by mining the archives of human experience to figure out the present. George Santayana wrote, “Those who do not remember the past are condemned to repeat it.”
Latest Episodes
The most recent episodes — sign up to get AI-powered summaries of each one.
- Aug 6, 20261h 2m
Why the Future of Education Won’t Come from the Ivy League
Peter Berkowitz returns to the show to trace the slow collapse of liberal education in America, all in his new book, Reclaiming Liberal Education in America. In this episode, he and Eli Lake walk through 50 years of ideological capture, from the campus radicals of the 1960s who became the tenured professors of the 1980s, to the speech codes of the 1990s, to October 7, 2023, as the moment it all came into full view. Along the way, they dig into the French postmodernists who gutted academic standards, the DEI bureaucracies that replaced intellectual diversity with conformity, and the peer review process that failed so spectacularly. They end on the essential question: Can the university still reform itself, or is it time to build something new? Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices
- Jul 23, 202651 min
The Slow Death of Journalism, with Matt Taibbi
Matt Taibbi has spent the better part of a decade documenting one of the most underreported stories in American media: how the federal government built a shadow infrastructure to shape what people could say and read online. In this episode, Eli Lake sits down with Taibbi to trace the full journey. It starts with the post-2016 Senate hearings that spooked Silicon Valley into compliance, and it ends with the chaotic information environment we live in today. They also dig into the Hunter Biden laptop story, the Covid misinformation crackdown, and whether the formal censorship bureaucracy is really gone or just harder to see. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices
- Jun 30, 20261h 0m
How the Democratic Socialists Conquered New York City
Back in October, we traced the founding of the Democratic Socialists of America (DSA) in our episode “Beautiful Losers: Mamdani & the End of Socialism’s Losing Streak.” Now, with Zohran Mamdani’s allies sweeping three congressional primaries in New York, we’re back for a follow-up. In this episode, journalist Harry Siegel outlines how the DSA spent the better part of a decade building the machine that just reshuffled New York City politics—from post-Trump organizing drives and close-but-no-cigar primary runs to a movement that now has the Democratic Party establishment looking over its shoulder. How did it happen and what comes next? Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices
- Jun 12, 202648 min
Iran’s Favourite Washington Pundit
Journalist Jay Solomon is back on the show this week to discuss his latest explosive investigation into Trita Parsi, the Iranian-born, Swedish-raised lobbyist who spent 20 years at the center of Washington’s foreign policy debate over Iran. Parsi built two influential organizations, cultivated powerful allies on both left and right, and consistently pushed a line on Iran that looked remarkably like the one coming out of Tehran’s foreign ministry. Now the Marco Rubio State Department is taking a serious look at his immigration status, and the organization Parsi co-founded, the Quincy Institute for Responsible Statecraft, is mobilizing lawyers and foundation money to fight back. Jay and Eli trace the full arc of the story, from Iran’s post-9/11 influence operation to the leaked Iranian emails that blew the lid off the Iran Experts Initiative, which counted Parsi’s brother among its members. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices
- May 27, 20261h 18m
Who Owns the Declaration of Independence?
As America approaches the 250th anniversary of its founding, a quiet war is being waged over what the Declaration of Independence really means — with some on the new right dismissing it as globalist fantasy and some on the left reducing it to a document written by slaveholders. Writer and former national security official Michael Anton joins Eli Lake to examine the ideas of Harry Jaffa, a Brooklyn-born philosopher who spent his career insisting that the Declaration's truths are not relics of the 18th century but eternal facts about human nature. Jaffa's argument was unfashionable when he made it and it's contested now, but Anton thinks it's never been more urgent. Along the way, Michael and Eli take on the new right's growing rejection of the ideas that made the founding possible, the left's long abandonment of the Declaration, and how both sides have managed, in their own way, to get America's origin story completely wrong. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices
- May 19, 202643 min
A New Series From The Free Press | The Lindbergh Conspiracies
Hi Breaking History listeners! My colleague Joe Nocera has launched a six part series about the Lindbergh kidnapping. Enjoy episode one here and then head on over to The Lindbergh Conspiracies feed for the rest of the season. --- EP01 | The Broken Window One night in March 1932, the infant son of aviator Charles Lindbergh is taken from his nursery. A warped window, a ladder, and a ransom note mark the beginning of a case that will grip the world and launch a hundred conspiracy theories. Ninety-four years later, we return to the scene of the crime to ask: What really happened that night? Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices
- May 13, 202657 min
What the Founders Really Meant to Say
Robert Parkinson is a historian at SUNY Binghamton who has spent 25 years studying the American Revolutionary period. His new book, Tyrants and Rogues, arrives just in time for the 250th anniversary of the Declaration of Independence — and it argues that we’ve been reading that document wrong for most of those 250 years. In this episode, Parkinson explains why the 27 grievances that follow the famous preamble are the real heart of the Declaration, what Congress actually debated and deleted from Thomas Jefferson’s original draft, and why someone in that room made sure race would be the last and most explosive grievance on the list. He also explains why those grievances, written in panic and desperation in the summer of 1776, feel newly urgent today. Limited time: download Supremacy: World War 3 for free via our link and get an exclusive Elite Bomber Seasonal Unit worth $25 - but only for the next 30 days: https://con.onelink.me/kZW6/z3mcjbhb Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices
- May 7, 202649 min
Roald Dahl: Genius and Bigot
For tickets to our live recording with Jon Meacham in Philadelphia, click here and register. Use code TFP for a 20 percent discount. Roald Dahl gave the world Matilda, James and the Giant Peach, and Charlie and the Chocolate Factory. He was also a vicious antisemite. A Broadway play about Dahl’s legacy; the new Michael Jackson biopic; Kanye West’s attempted redemption arc; all of these have the culture asking again: How do we approach brilliant art produced by morally compromised artists? Throughout history, some of the world’s preeminent literary geniuses have also been deeply bigoted, even monstrous people. In this episode, Shilo is joined by Eli Lake, host of Breaking History, for a conversation about these geniuses, from Voltaire to Norman Mailer, and why we should read their work despite their odious prejudices. Old School is proudly brought to you by the Jack Miller Center. If you believe in the importance of civic education and want to help prepare the next generation to carry on our democracy, join us at JackMillerCenter.org. Become a paid subscriber to The Free Press today to enjoy exclusive bonus episodes and reduced ads. Click here to subscribe. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices
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About Breaking History
Sometimes the news moves so fast, you have to look closely to know if you’ve seen it before. And that’s what this show is about. Breaking History breaks down the news, by breaking down history. We cover everything from LBJ and the Roman Republic to Donald Trump and the chaos at Columbia. This show delivers the best historians, authors, and reporters by mining the archives of human experience to figure out the present. George Santayana wrote, “Those who do not remember the past are condemned to repeat it.”
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