Adrian Wooldridge: Can Liberalism Save Itself?
In this latest Conflicted Conversation, journalist Adrian Wooldridge discusses his latest book Centrists of the World Unite: The Lost Genius...
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CONFLICTED
An ex-Al Qaeda jihadi turned MI6 spy and a former monk turned filmmaker, have been embedded at the heart of conflicts in the Middle East. Together Aimen Dean and Thomas Small unpack the real...
Episodes
20 of 240 episodesThe Real Geopolitics of Sudan’s Civil War
Sudan’s civil war has become a regional proxy struggle, with the UAE, Egypt, Iran, Turkey and other powers backing rival armed camps as the...
The Middle East Braces for Escalation
The war is widening, diplomacy has stalled, and the Middle East is once again sliding towards escalation as the relationship between Israel...
Carlos the Jackal: The World’s First Super-Terrorist
In this latest Conflicted Conversation, Pulitzer Prize-winning journalist Joby Warrick tells Thomas all about his latest book The Jackal: Th...
The Houthis Are Winning — Here’s Why
Aimen's away this week. But not to worry! Sitting in his seat is Mohammed al-Basha: a Yemeni-American analyst with over twenty years of expe...
1453: The Catastrophe That Ended Rome
In this latest Conflicted Conversation, historian Anthony Kaldellis of the University of Chicago discusses his new book 1453: The Conquest a...
Globalisation Made Global Jihad Possible
In this week’s Conflicted Conversation, UCL associate professor Philip Cunliffe makes a provocative case: far from being polar opposites, gl...
Saudi Arabia’s Yemen Disaster
Every region-watcher was stunned over past week as the anti-Houthi forces in Yemen suffered an extremely brutal reversal—with global consequ...
Re-Interrogating 9/11: A 25th Anniversary Debate
To commemorate the 25th Anniversary of the 9/11 attacks, Aimen and Thomas take a deeper, wider look at the historical, ideological, and geop...
The End of the Nation State?
Where did the nation-state come from—and what happens if the conditions that made it powerful are now disappearing? Thomas discusses these q...
The Battle for Taiwan
In this Conflicted Conversation, journalist Chris Horton talks about his new book Ghost Nation: The Story of Taiwan and Its Struggle for Sur...
Trump's Strangulation Strategy
Aimen's prediction on 4 August came true, and in the intervening weeks the United States have ramped up the economic pressure on the Iranian...
Simon Sebag Montefiore: How the Modern Middle East Was Made
In this Conflicted Conversation, Simon Sebag Montefiore returns to the show, this time to talk about his new book The Cauldron: The Making o...
The Rise of the Offshore World
In this Conflicted Conversation, Ian Kumekawa (a fellow of Harvard University and a lecturer at MIT) talks about his book Empty Vessel: The...
The Battle for Yemen Begins Again
Yemeni researcher and political analyst Baraa Shiban (and dear friend of the show) is back not only to give us an update on Yemen now that t...
Libya: The Return of the Arab Strongman?
Turning their attention away from Iran and toward another Middle Eastern hotspot, Aimen and Thomas explain the course of events in Libya sin...
The Crusades: What Was Really Going On?
In this Conflicted Conversation, Nicholas Morton discusses his new book The Crusader Storm: A Global History of the Wars for the Middle East...
Slavery and Islam: The Whole Story
In this Conflicted Conversation, Justin Marozzi discusses his new book Captives and Companions: A History of Slavery and the Slave Trade in...
Will America Cut and Run?
Donald Trump has once again stepped back from a threatened major attack on Iran. So has America lost the Iran War? Or is Trump’s apparent he...
U Thant: The Diplomat Who Defined the 1960s
In this Conflicted Conversation, Thant Myint-U talks about his new book Peacemaker: U Thant, the United Nations and the Untold Story of the...