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History As It Happens

Aug 31, 2023

Ukraine's counteroffensive, launched three months ago amid increasing pressure to turn the tide of the war, has made meager gains on its eastern and southern fronts against tough Russian defenses of minefields and trenches. Russia's war of aggression is now a war of attrition, and it's unclear which side may...


Aug 29, 2023

Anniversaries have a way of concentrating our minds on important events, but most Americans paid little attention to a certain date in history when it crossed their calendars this month. On August 19, 1953, the CIA toppled Iran’s democratic prime minister Mohammad Mossadegh and installed the Shah Mohammad Reza...


Aug 24, 2023

The massive gathering of Americans on the National Mall sixty years ago, on August 28, 1963, is best remembered by the final few minutes of Martin Luther King, Jr.'s soaring call for racial harmony, "I Have A Dream." But there was much more to the March on Washington for Jobs and Freedom. In this episode, historians...


Aug 22, 2023

This is the final episode in a three-part series about “Oppenheimer” and the historical debates raised by the blockbuster film.

By the time he left office in early 1961, President Dwight Eisenhower had overseen the expansion of the nation’s nuclear arsenal to 20,000 weapons. The United States had dramatically...


Aug 17, 2023

This is the second episode in a three-episode series about “Oppenheimer” and the historical debates raised by the blockbuster film.

When Robert Oppenheimer accepted the job to lead the top-secret Manhattan Project, he and his fellow physicists expected any bomb would be used against Nazi Germany. But by the time the...