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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.
- 1 weeks ago1h 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
- 2 weeks ago43 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
- 3 weeks ago57 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
- 4 weeks ago49 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
- May 1, 202651 min
Eli Lake and David Rose: The UK Censorship Machine Eats Itself
David Rose is the director of policy and research at the Free Speech Union (FSU), a UK-based nonpartisan organization that campaigns for freedom of speech. The FSU will publish a new report examining allegations tied to Labour Together, the political network linked to Keir Starmer. David joins Eli Lake to explain how his investigation describes a murky ecosystem involving claims of journalists labeled as Russian assets, the circulation of private intelligence-style dossiers, and the growing overlap between political advocacy and “disinformation” or “digital hate” laws in the UK. Our special episode on the UK being a “censor’s paradise” is here. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices
- Apr 16, 20261h 56m
Is This War Justified? Eli Lake Debates Iran with Robert Wright
Eli Lake joins Robert Wright over at his podcast NonZero, which offers “conversations with a series of people who have nothing in common except that program host Robert Wright is curious about what they’re thinking” . Robert views the U.S-Israel military campaign against Iran as a serious mistake and a clear violation of international law. Eli sees it as a necessary—if legally awkward—response to decades of Iranian aggression and destabilization. Who wins? You’ll have to listen to decide for yourself. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices
- Apr 9, 202653 min
Why Iran’s Reform Movement Failed
Arash Azizi lived through the democracy movement in Iran before he wrote about it. Now a historian at Yale, he joins Eli Lake to trace the arc from former president Mohammad Khatami’s unlikely rise to the crushed hopes of the Green Movement—and what it tells us about whether reform from within the Islamic Republic was ever really possible. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices
- Mar 31, 20261h 27m
Eli Lake and Haviv Rettig Gur on Why Iran's Regime Is Hard to Kill
What does it actually take to break a regime built on martyrdom? Eli Lake sits down with Haviv Rettig Gur — host of Ask Haviv Anything and one of the deepest thinkers on the Middle East — to assess week five of the Iran war. They trace the ideological DNA of Iran’'s Islamic Republic from the Algerian National Liberation Front to Frantz Fanon to Ali Shariati, and explain why this is a regime designed to treat its own destruction as a form of victory. Plus: what a color revolution in Tehran could mean for Sunni Islamism, Hamas, and the future of the Palestinian question. 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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