What can NASA and Boeing engineers are learn from the trouble-plagued Starliner capsule, which has just returned back to Earth without its crew? Plus, a look at where Vice President Kamala Harris and former president Donald Trump stand on key foreign policy issues.
We dive into the unusual world of dog surfing and meet some of the surfers who take part in the sport's World Championships. Also, why the British rescue team are revisiting Morocco one year on from the earthquake.
Grammy-nominated singer and songwriter Omar Apollo is on the road for his tour promoting his highly anticipated sophomore album “God Said No.” He says the title means “it is what it is” or “lo que será, será” and that it’s a response to all the songs on the album.
Apollo stopped by the WBEZ studios ahead of his August Chicago show at the Huntington Bank Pavilion at Northerly Island. Reset sits down with the singer to talk more about creating his album, embracing his queer identity, hot sauce and heartbreak.
For a full archive of Reset interviews, head over to wbez.org/reset.
Last year, at colleges across America, students etched themselves into history, or infamy, with the most dramatic campus protests in a generation.
In preparation for the fall semester, some major universities—from NYU to UCLA—have implemented new rules and decided to enforce old ones to protect Jewish students from activists who had declared sections of campus no-go zones for Zionists. Universities that turn a blind eye to the Tentifada phenomenon now risk violating federal statute.
Nonetheless, the chaos appears to be returning. At Temple University, protesters marched in solidarity with Palestinian “resistance against their colonizers.” Last week, a man attacked a group of Jewish students with a glass bottle on the University of Pittsburgh campus outside the school’s “Cathedral of Learning.”Meanwhile at the University of Michigan, four agitators were arrested during a “die-in.”
So clearly the danger is not yet over entirely for campuses, even though some of the steam may be leaving the movement. The Democratic National Convention, for example, was supposed to be the exclamation mark of rage, but the protests barely registered as a tussle.
But history teaches us that it takes only a few student true believers to make quite a mess once they decide that boycotts and sit-ins aren’t making a difference.
To understand this moment and the risk these student protesters pose, Free Press columnist Eli Lake looks at America’s history with Ivy League domestic terrorists. More than 50 years ago, campus unrest also spilled into the streets and moved off the grid as a small and lethal group of radicals called the Weather Underground took the plunge from protest to resistance. But the Weather Underground railed against the establishment. Today’s campus protesters are supported by it. Call them. . . the Weather Overground.
If you liked what you heard from Honestly, the best way to support us is to go to thefp.com and become a Free Press subscriber today.
The Algerian War of Independence constituted a major turning point of 20th century history. The conflict exacerbated divisions in French society, culminating in an unsuccessful coup attempt by the OAS in 1961. The war also launched the Third Worldist movement, delegitimized colonial rule because of its brutality, and it gave us one of the towering anti-colonial intellectual figures, the pro-FLN Martinican psychiatrist Frantz Fanon.
Today’s episode focuses on another important development that occurred as a result of the Algerian War: the transformation of modern warfare. Revolutionary Warfare: How the Algerian War Made Modern Counterinsurgency(Cornell UP, 2024) shows how French generals, officers, and civil officials sought to counter Algerian independence with their own project of social transformation. My guest, Terrence Peterson, argues that the French military effort in Algeria never exclusively focused on repression. Instead, military leaders fashioned new forms of surveillance and social control that its proponents hoped would capture the loyalty of Algerians and transform Algerian society. Although ultimately unsuccessful in its attempt to ‘keep Algeria French,’ the new strategy of counterinsurgency became a model for anti-communist military and intelligence officers around the world.
Terrence Peterson is an Associate Professor of History at Florida International University, where he teaches on modern Europe and European empires. He holds a PhD from the University of Wisconsin at Madison.
Brazil’s power struggle with Elon Musk over censorship on X (formerly Twitter) escalated this week, with the country’s Supreme Court upholding a ban on the platform. 40 million Brazilians lost access to the site, which had come under fire for allowing election deniers to incite an insurrection—sound familiar? Erin and Max take a look at other countries that have enacted similar social media bans, including Sri Lanka, Turkey and India. Does it stop the violence? Do tech companies actually care about free speech there? And what does it mean for the world if more governments follow Brazil’s lead and temporarily ban social platforms to pressure companies into compliance? Can governments really be trusted to regulate our online interactions? Find out on this week’s “How We Got Here.”
