The brothers welcome Drop Site News journalist Sharif Abdel Kouddous to the show to discuss the latest developments in Gaza, as, despite a nominal "ceasefire," Israel's genocide grinds on, and as, meanwhile, dystopian plans to remake Gaza put forward by the likes of Jared Kushner are slowly put into place, which would see Palestinians forced into biometrically controlled concentration camps as parts of the territory are plundered or developed for the enrichment of foreign investors. The conversation shows that we are entering a pivotal moment, in which either Israel's worst and most dystopian desires will be fulfilled or they will break apart—in Gaza.

Date of recording: January 27, 2026

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A special edition of the Makdisi Street podcast in which Ussama interviews fellow historian Avi Shlaim in Jaipur, India where both were attending the Jaipur Literature Festival. Ussama asks Avi about his new book Genocide in Gaza, the history of coexistence devastated by the project of colonial Zionism, and about when and why Avi became an anti-Zionist. They discuss the importance of archives, ethical history writing, the virulent anti-Palestinian racism of Benny Morris, and the significance about the refusal of the historical profession's leading bodies in the West to take a clear stand against genocide.

Date of recording: January 15, 2026

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The brothers welcome Professor Greg Grandin to the show to discuss the US kidnapping of the Venezuelan president against the historical context of other American imperial interventions in Latin America, the recurring use of Latin America as a stage to reboot US interventions elsewhere around the world, different models of regime change, the collapse of international law and legitimacy and the specificities of Trump as a symptom of American decline and the crisis of empire.

Date of recording: January 7th, 2026

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The brothers talk with the prominent Palestinian politician, activist and medical doctor Mustafa Barghouti, Secretary General of the Palestinian National Initiative, and presidential candidate during the last elections in Palestine in 2005. We discuss the awful realities of Palestinians living under Israeli genocide and attempted ethnic cleansing despite a "ceasefire," the essence of Palestinian steadfastness and the importance of international solidarity. We also debate the meaning of Palestinian unity as key to the liberation struggle connecting forces, movements and people globally. We end by talking proposed upcoming elections, the importance of democratizing the PLO, and the gap in solidarity between Arab peoples and their leaders.

Date of recording: December 23, 2025

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Special Christmas/New Year edition with the brothers' mother! The brothers welcome their mother, the author and educator Jean Said Makdisi, to the show, to discuss her books, her memories of growing up between Palestine and Egypt, living in America in the 1950s and 1960s and returning to Lebanon, where she raised her children through the 1975-1990 war while teaching at Beirut University College.

She is the author of "Teta, Mother and Me: An Arab Woman's Memoir" and "Beirut Fragments: A War Memoir."

This episode was recorded live and produced by Layla Makdisi.

Date of recording: August 8, 2025.

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Date of recording: December 22, 2023.

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The brothers welcome Professor Darryl Li of the University of Chicago to the show to discuss the new AAUP/MESA report on federal "antisemitism" investigations on US college campuses, revealing the extent to which US civil rights laws have been distorted and weaponized to suppress the advocacy of Palestinian rights across the United States, to suppress American academic freedom in order to protect the Zionist project in Palestine, as well as the extent to which this process, though taken to a new level by Trump, was actually initiated by liberal and Democratic administrations long before Trump came along.

Date of recording: December 2, 2025

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The brothers welcome Ali Abunimah of The Electronic Intifada to the show to discuss mainstream media distortion of Palestine and the rise of alternative media, shifting public opinions on Zionism and solidarity for Palestine in the West, the growing divide between ordinary people and political elites, and the shared sense that we are witnessing the terminal decline of Zionism in the West.

Date of recording: November 3, 2025

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