History As It Happens

Why was director Oliver Stone testifying on Capitol Hill today? After his 1991 film "JFK" reignited conspiracy theories about President Kennedy's assassination, Congress authorized the release of millions of classified documents. But it wasn't until this January when President Trump released the supposedly final 80,000

Suspicious foreigners arrested without warrants. The suppression of free speech in the name of national security. Civil liberties shredded in a climate of hysteria. During and immediately after the First World War, the federal government under President Woodrow Wilson and ordinary patriotic Americans enforced conformit

In late June 1973, former White House counsel John Dean delivered startling testimony before the congressional committee investigating Watergate: Richard Nixon had an enemies list. The point, as Dean had written in a 1971 memo, was to "use the available federal machinery to screw our political enemies." The exposure of

In March 2020, the World Health Organization declared the coronavirus outbreak, months after it originated in China, a global pandemic. It soon infected millions of Americans in all 50 states, upending daily life and revealing deep fissures and paranoia in society. Historian John Barry is an authority on the 1918 influ

Note: This podcast was published before a federal judge found that Elon Musk likely violated the Constitution in his effort to demolish U.S.A.I.D. President Trump's move to shutter the U.S. Agency for International Development pleased its critics on the left and right while leaving the agency's supporters -- and many p

At the Munich Security Conference, Ukrainian president Volodymyr Zelenskyy said, "Many, many leaders have talked about Europe that needs its own military, and army -- an Army of Europe. And I really believe that time has come. The Armed Forces of Europe must be created." This idea is almost as old as NATO, and it will