HeyJaredHistory As It Happens
For people who want to think about current events historically.
- Indexed issues, last 90 days
- 15
- Latest publication
- Sep 25, 2026
- Audience
- Checking…
- Earliest in this view
- Jul 24, 2026
Latest issues
The deaths of others (opens the original)
Read excerpt
Before I get to this week’s podcasts…This morning Responsible Statecraft published my interview with Azmat Khan, the Pulitzer Prize-winning investigative reporter for The New York Times. Her remarkable work in 2021 revealed why the Pentagon kills so many civilians in faraway places, despite assurances surrounding “precision weapons” and the use of reliable intelligence. As the Iran war has tragically demonstrated, the U.S. military often fails to discriminate between civilians and combatants — a
Origins of the imperial presidency (opens the original)
Read excerpt
What else is there to say that hasn’t been said already?I’ve been dwelling on this question because of the relentlessly depressing state of U.S. politics and international relations. I face it when I scroll X (formerly Twitter) and feel a fleeting urge to dive into a debate, or when I start writing my weekly newsletter. Last week Andrew Sullivan asked the same question in his newsletter, admitting that he feels exhausted writing about the Trump Era.One purpose of writing is to persuade. Writing
Echoes of Pontecorvo at Venice (opens the original)
Read excerpt
This morning Responsible Statecraft published my essay on ‘The Battle of Algiers,’ Gillo Pontecorvo’s 1966 masterpiece, which won the Golden Lion at the Venice Film Festival sixty years ago.Read it here.You may have noticed the intense publicity a new documentary is generating at this year’s festival. ‘NAZA’ is <a href="https://www.haaretz.com/opinion/2026-09-15/ty-article-opinion/.premium/naza-c
Misbegotten from the start (opens the original)
Read excerpt
Even after a quarter century, the “war on terror” is hard to define — and this is a major part of the problem. The U.S. has fought multiple wars in different ways, from special forces operations (Afghanistan 2001) to a traditional land invasion (Iraq 2003), which was followed by urban counter-insurgency warfare there. And then the drone wars expanded to Pakistan, Yemen, and Somalia under President Obama.The George W. Bush administration also prosecuted the war by kidnapping and torturing terrori
What did the war on terror achieve? (opens the original)
Read excerpt
Yesterday I spent thirty minutes watching news footage of the day of terror. The initial uncertainty giving way to dread as soon as the second plane struck the South Tower of the World Trade Center. You could hear it in the news anchors’ voices. One plane may have been an accident. Two were a deliberate attack.There were no smartphones as thousands of terrified people fled the burning towers in lower Manhattan — imagine the intimate footage we would have today — but TV cameras and personal camco
Publishing over time
Last 90 days. Choose a month to open its work.
Recurring subjects
Named in the text we hold. One piece can cover several.
Audience
No verified audience measurement yet.
About this data
Counts cover the work we have indexed. Tone needs enough text and a confident classification. Excerpts and episode notes are not full articles or transcripts.
Identity or attribution wrong? Suggest a correction.