Breaking History
Breaking History is a podcast from The Free Press that examines current events through the lens of history. Hosted by a team of historians, authors, and reporters, the show covers topics ranging from LBJ and the Roman Republic to Donald Trump and campus protests. It aims to help listeners understand the present by learning from the past, releasing new episodes twice a month.
Episodes
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 lik
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
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.
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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
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 fam
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
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 la
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
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.
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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 desig
When ‘Good Kids’ Go Radical: A Breaking History Special
What drives someone from an ordinary background into extremism?
In this Breaking History special, journalist Jay Solomon joins Eli Lake to discuss his investigation into American extremist Calla Walsh.
But this isn’t an isolated story. It echoes a pattern we’ve seen before.
Following the interview, we revisit our episode on “middle-class kids breaking bad,” exploring how individuals from s
Eli Lake and Andrew Sullivan Debate the Iran War
This week I joined The Dishcast with Andrew Sullivan, who has generously agreed to let us share the conversation here. Andrew and I go way back, and few people are as willing as he is to really go toe-to-toe over our disagreements—especially on Israel and America’s role in the world.
In our discussion, we cover a broad range of history and politics: from the Iran-Contra affair to the Oslo Accords
Modern Terrorism Was Born in the 1970s
Breaking History producer Poppy Damon sits down with Guardian security correspondent Jason Burke to unpack his new book, The Revolutionists, a sweeping history of the 1970s wave of extremism that transformed global politics. From plane hijackings to hostage crises, Burke traces the radical figures and world leaders who shaped the modern age of terror. What does the 1970s tell us about 2026?
The Reluctant Prince: Can Reza Pahlavi Lead Iran’s Future? Q&A with Eli Lake
As Iran’s regime faces mounting internal pressure, one name keeps resurfacing: Reza Pahlavi, the exiled son of the last shah. But is he a viable future leader, or simply the most recognizable symbol of a free Iran? In this conversation, host Eli Lake and producer Poppy Damon unpack the strange political moment Pahlavi finds himself in—popular with many Iranians, yet viewed skeptically by parts of
The Making of Modern Iran (Part 2) | The Red-Green Alliance
In our last episode, we traced the rise of the Pahlavi dynasty and the forces building toward Iran’s 1979 Islamic Revolution. In Part 2, we turn to the man who brought that monarchy to an end: Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini. From exile in a quiet French chateau, Khomeini launched a revolution that shattered 2,500 years of Persian monarchy. But he didn’t do it alone. Liberals and leftists, both insid
The Making of Modern Iran (Part 1)
Breaking History dives into the paradox at the heart of modern Iran: How a nation born in revolt, from the tobacco protests of the 1890s to the 1979 Revolution, has time and again empowered autocrats in the name of democracy. This week we trace the cycles of reform and repression that still shape Iran today.
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A History of Tough Jews
After October 7, Jews around the world were reminded of an old, unsettling truth: Governments do not always protect minorities when mobs turn violent. From Bondi Beach to New York synagogues, the promise of public order has looked increasingly fragile.
In this episode of Breaking History, Eli Lake revisits the last time Jews in America confronted that reality head-on. In the 1930s, as Nazi sympat
From the Archives: Why Jews Wrote Your Favorite Christmas Songs
Did you know the soundtrack of Americans’ Christmas was written largely by . . . Jews? Most of the composers behind the holiday canon were the children of immigrants who fled pogroms and conscription in Russia and Eastern Europe between 1880 and 1920.
Sammy Cahn, Frank Sinatra’s go-to lyricist, gave us “Let It Snow! Let It Snow! Let It Snow!” Mel Tormé, son of a Belarusian refugee, wrote “The Chr
How Clinton, Trump, and Epstein Rewired America’s Moral Compass
We revisit the scandal-soaked 1990s—Packwood, Thomas, Clinton—and explore how failing to enforce norms around abuse of power helped create the world in which the Epstein scandal could flourish. This episode traces the unraveling of political accountability from the Clinton impeachment to the Trump Access Hollywood moment, and finally the global Epstein reckoning. We show how feminists in the ’90s
Never Mind the Bollocks, Here’s Socrates
We are coming up on the 50th anniversary of punk, the genre that smashed the old rock gods and stripped down the music to its essence. In this episode of Breaking History, we examine the examined life of the original punk: the loudmouth philosopher who defied the authorities, refused to conform, and paid the ultimate price for speaking the truth. Yes—it can only be Socrates. Grab your leather jac
Beautiful Losers: Mamdani & The End of Socialism’s Losing Streak
For 124 years, the American socialist movement has been defined by defeat. From Eugene Debs’ doomed presidential runs to Michael Harrington’s quiet organizing, it’s been a story of almosts: almost mainstream, almost powerful, almost relevant. Until now. In this episode, we look at how Zohran Mamdani’s likely mayoral victory marks the first real crack in America’s century-long resistance to sociali
Trailer | Spiral: Murder in Detroit
On October 21, 2023, beloved Detroit community leader Samantha Woll was found brutally stabbed to death outside her home—two weeks to the day after the October 7 attacks on Israel. It looks like an open-and-shut case—a hate crime. But swiftly the police rule that out. Instead they eventually find themselves with two unrelated suspects. When they charge one with murder, the case takes a turn that r
London Falling: How the Birthplace of Free Speech Became a Censor’s Paradise
Once, Britain was the cradle of free speech- the land of Milton, Orwell, and John Stuart Mill. But in 2025, police are arresting citizens for tweets, comedians are detained for jokes, and ordinary people are jailed for words deemed “hateful.” In this episode, we trace how the birthplace of liberty became a censor’s paradise - and what it reveals about a Western world that’s forgotten Mill’s warnin
James Comey: The Case That Could Break America
James Comey isn’t a hero. But prosecuting him like this? It’s not justice—it’s political theater. In this episode, we tell the origin story of Comey, the now indicted former FBI chief, and unpack the tangled web of FBI overreach, President Donald Trump’s vendetta, and a system that no longer knows where accountability ends and revenge begins. This is more than a case: It’s a mirror held up to a na
Defying the Assassin’s Veto: Grace in a Time of Violence
In a week when political violence has returned to the national stage, we revisit a moment from the 1970s when Shirley Chisholm, the first black congresswoman, visited segregationist Alabama governor George Wallace after he was nearly assassinated. Her act of grace lit a spark that changed him. What can we learn from that moment today, after the murder of Charlie Kirk silenced a voice in mid-debate
How a Russian Spy Destroyed a Beautiful Mind
This week Breaking History dives into a century-old mind game: Russia’s information war against America. More specifically, how it keeps driving us crazy. From Soviet spycraft to this summer’s Russiagate revelations, the story is often familiar: a kernel of truth is then buried in lies.
We look back at the haunted mind of James Jesus Angleton, the CIA’s original paranoia prophet. He spent his li
The Birth of Cool: How Air Conditioning Changed Everything
How did air conditioning go from a niche invention for factories to a force that reshaped cities, industries, and even human behavior?
In this episode of Breaking History, we dive deep into the surprising, often overlooked story of AC with author Salvatore Basile—author of Cool: How Air Conditioning Changed Everything.
Hear how Willis Carrier’s revolutionary breakthrough changed the world.
Restless Nation | The Red-Green Alliance: The Making of Modern Iran (Part 2)
In our last episode, we traced the rise of the Pahlavi dynasty and the forces building toward Iran’s 1979 Islamic Revolution.
This week, we turn to the man who brought that monarchy to an end: Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini.
From exile in a quiet French chateau, Khomeini launched a revolution that shattered 2,500 years of Persian monarchy. But he didn’t do it alone.
Liberals and leftists, bo
BONUS | Eli Lake & Josh Hammer on Russiagate: Do the New Documents Support Treason?
Do the new Russiagate releases justify Director of National Intelligence Tulsi Gabbard’s accusation of “treasonous conspiracy”? In this bonus episode, Eli Lake and commentator Josh Hammer get into the nitty gritty of the newest document releases in one of the most polarizing political controversies of the 21st century: Russiagate.
Listen to Boundless Insights wherever you get your podcasts fo
Restless Nation | The Making of Modern Iran (Part 1)
Breaking History dives into the paradox at the heart of modern Iran: How a nation born in revolt, from the tobacco protests of the 1890s to the 1979 Revolution, has time and again empowered autocrats in the name of democracy. This week we trace the cycles of reform and repression that still shape Iran today.
Producer: Poppy Damon
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America Has Always Been a Dangerous Idea
As our nation turns 249 this week, we explore the radical and enduring power of the Declaration of Independence. More than just a break from the British Empire, the Declaration was a bold statement of universal human rights, an idea so dangerous it has sparked revolutions and inspired liberation movements around the world ever since, from Vietnam to Israel, from China to the Black Panther Party. W
BONUS: David Albright and Eli Lake on Iran’s Nuclear Program
Eli Lake and nuclear weapons expert David Albright discuss the Islamic Republic’s arsenal and whether or not Israel can destroy it on its own.
This episode was originally a subscriber-only livestream. Livestreams are one of the many benefits of becoming a paid subscriber to The Free Press. (Thank you to everyone who joined us live!)
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The Buckley Stops Here: Trump And The Death of Conservative Civility
William F. Buckley, one of the founding fathers of the American right, would have turned 100 this year. He, more than any other figure, is responsible for creating the American conservative movement that fueled the Reagan revolution more than 40 years ago. But what happened to that revolution in the era of Donald Trump?
CREDITSProducer Poppy DamonExecutive Producer Alex Miller
Go to groundn
BONUS: Haviv Rettig Gur and Eli Lake on Israel's Strike
This was recorded as a Free Press livestream. To be part of these conversations as they happen live, become a part of The Free Press. You can do that by going to TheFP.com and subscribing now.
The world woke up today to a changed Middle East. Israel struck key nuclear and military facilities throughout Iran. Ayatollah Ali Khamenei vowed retaliation. And Donald Trump urged Iran to agree to a nuc
BONUS: Conversations with Coleman & Bari Weiss
We’re sharing the latest episode of Conversations with Coleman, a podcast that joined The Free Press network this week. Coleman Hughes engages deep thinkers and curious minds in sharp, surprising, and unfiltered chats. In this relaunch episode he sits down with Free Press founder Bari Weiss and asks her about her critics, rising antisemitism, the woke right, and more.
Hope you enjoy it & stay t
Partition’s Ghost: How Pakistan Became a Deep State
Last month, two nuclear powers exchanged blows after terrorists mowed down 26 tourists in Kashmir, yet it didn’t turn into a hot war. We got lucky. But sadly, the next India-Pakistan war seems like only a matter of time.
In this week’s Breaking History, Eli Lake explores the origin story of the ongoing conflict between India and Pakistan. How did Pakistan become a true ‘deep state nation’ post-
Vulgarians at the Gate: How Censors Lost the Culture War
*Explicit Content Warning*
Since Donald Trump won the presidential election, American institutions are shedding what remains of wokeness nearly everywhere. From Columbia University to Facebook, the old guardrails have crumbled.
Something similar happened nearly 60 years ago. After police and prosecutors drove the revolutionary comic Lenny Bruce into bankruptcy and overdose, America began its
How North Korea Got the Nuke
As Iranian nuclear ambitions force their way back onto America’s agenda, it’s worth looking at the story of North Korea, the original ‘madman’ nation that bullied its way to the nuclear table.
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CREDITSProducer Poppy DamonExecutive Producer Alex Miller
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The Opium War: The Original Trade War
It’s been two weeks since President Donald Trump declared war on the global economic system his predecessors painstakingly built up since 1945. Then he partially reversed course, paused most of the tariffs, and focused on China. In this episode, we dive into the last time the world’s most populous country was in a trade war with the world’s richest country. What do the British Empire’s Opium Wars
Orientalism: How One Book Fueled 50 Years of Campus Unrest
Pro-Palestine protests have been a feature of Columbia's campus since October 7. Now, Donald Trump has issued an ultimatum to the university: get control of your campus or lose $400 million in Federal funding. But the target of the measures wasn't just security, but the Middle East Department too, which Columbia has agreed to place into five years of 'academic receivership'.
This week we take
Luigi Mangione & The History of Bourgeois Terrorism
Luigi Mangione appears in court this week. He stands accused of murdering a healthcare CEO in cold blood. It’s not the first time a well heeled winner has been celebrated for his embrace of political violence. Today we look at the West German woman who paved the way. We dive into the phenomenon of breaking rad.
Eli Lake tells the story of Ulrike Meinhof and the infamous Red Army Faction.
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How A Strange Group of Heroes Defeated Russia
Ronald Reagan’s speech in front of the Berlin Wall in 1987 is legendary for its six simple words: “Mr. Gorbachev, tear down this wall!”
And two years later the wall fell. In another two years, the Soviet Union came crashing down. Many factors led to these moments. Among them: the failures of communism, the bravery of dissidents, and America’s role in challenging the “evil empire,” at least that
Why We Can't Escape JFK Conspiracy Theories
Every now and again, a work of art is so profound that it breaches the boundary between fact and fiction and affects current events. And if you had to rank the most politically resonant artworks American pop culture has produced in the last 50 years, the 1991 film JFK would top the list.
More than any document, this film codified the murder of JFK as a conspiracy in the minds of the American pe
Paradise Burning
Last month, L.A. burned. It was one of the most predictable disasters on record. A century of development on land whose ecosystems were forged in wildfire; years of increasingly regular blazes; months of low rainfall. The National Weather Service even issued an explicit warning: This was coming.
Unfortunately, when Chekhov’s fire arrived, everything that could go wrong, did. A key reservoir was
Trump’s Populism Isn’t a Sideshow. It’s as American as Apple Pie.
Donald Trump, just sworn in as the 47th president, was reelected to be a wrecking ball, a middle finger, the people’s punch to the Beltway’s mouth. And while this populist moment feels “unprecedented,” it’s not. The rebuke of the ruling class is encoded in our nation’s DNA.
We have seen populist leaders like Donald Trump before. He stands on the shoulders of Texas billionaire H. Ross Perot, Al
Introducing: 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 twice a month show from The Free Press delivers the best historians, authors, and reporters by mining the
Why Jews Wrote Your Favorite Christmas Songs (From the Honestly Archives)
*This episode originally ran on December 23, 2024 on Honestly with Bari Weiss*
Did you know that the Americans who wrote nearly all of the Christmas classics were . . . Jewish? Many of these songwriters were the children of parents who had fled Russia and other parts of Eastern Europe during the great wave of immigration between 1880 and 1920.
Sammy Cahn, the son of Galician Jewish immigrants,
Resistance or Opposition: Which Route Should the Democrats Take? (From the Honestly Archives)
*This episode originally ran on November 12, 2024 on Honestly with Bari Weiss*
Even your most optimistic Mar-a-Lago member didn’t see Donald Trump winning the popular vote and taking all seven swing states. He even came within five points of taking the Democratic stronghold of New Jersey!
So, what on earth does the Democratic Party do next? They can stay the course and resist. It’s what the
Trump and the Art of the Bullshitter (From the Honestly Archives)
*This episode originally ran on November 2, 2024 on Honestly with Bari Weiss*
Bullshit is an American tradition. Think the theatrics of P.T. Barnum, miracle products sold ad nauseam on television in the 1980s and, of course, politicians. Who can forget President Bill Clinton saying “It depends upon what the meaning of the word is is” during his grand jury testimony in the Monica Lewinsky scand
The Hundred Year Holy War (From the Honestly Archives)
*This episode originally ran on October 12, 2024 on Honestly with Bari Weiss*
We all know the horrid tale of what happened in Israel on October 7, 2023. Waves of gunmen attacked families in their homes and young people attending a music festival. The marauders filmed their murders on GoPro cameras. They burned families alive in their safe rooms; raped, and mutilated their victims; and took hosta
How Republics Unravel: From Rome to…America? (From the Honestly Archives)
*This episode originally ran on September 26, 2024 on Honestly with Bari Weiss*
In September 2024, a man armed with an assault rifle was apprehended on a southern Florida golf course. He was planning to murder Donald Trump on the links. It was the second near miss in two months. It seems likely that the shooter, Ryan Routh, was acting alone. But he is not alone in the hatred he has for Trump. He
When Students Become Terrorists (From the Honestly Archives)
*This episode originally ran on September 7, 2024 on Honestly with Bari Weiss*
After Oct. 7, 2023—when Hamas attacked Israel— students at colleges across America etched themselves into infamy with the most dramatic campus protests in a generation.
In preparation for the 2024 fall semester, some major universities—from NYU to UCLA—have implemented new rules and decided to enforce old ones to pro
Kamala Harris and the Election of Laughter and Forgetting (From the Honestly Archives)
*This episode originally ran on August 6, 2024 on Honestly with Bari Weiss*
Vice President Kamala Harris appeared to be cruising after she became the presumptive Democratic presidential nominee.
But in her anointment to the top of the ticket, there was a strange and silent rewriting of history by the press and party loyalists with the support of a lot of tech companies, who together were changi
When a President Drops Out: What Biden Can Learn from 1968 (From the Honestly Archives)
*This episode originally ran on July 4, 2024 on Honestly with Bari Weiss*
On our nation’s 248th birthday, Joe Biden faced the wrath of a thousand pundits. The whole world watched the elected leader of the world’s oldest republic befogged, slack-jawed, and mentally vacant in a debate he had to win. A poll from CBS showed that after Biden’s infamous debate performance last week, 72 percent of regi
