CONFLICTED

In this Conflicted Conversation, Thant Myint-U talks about his new book Peacemaker: U Thant, the United Nations and the Untold Story of the 1960s. It tells the story of his grandfather U Thant, the Burmese schoolteacher turned UN Secretary-General who guided the United Nations through some of the most dangerous crises of the 1960s, yet is now woefully forgotten or badly misremembered.

Thant explains:

U Thant’s forgotten role as UN Secretary-General during the great crises of the 1960s

His sociability, humour, directness, and moral imagination

How Buddhism shaped U Thant’s approach to crisis

How newly independent post-colonial states tried to remake the world order

Burma/Myanmar after empire: colonial destruction, weak institutions, and postcolonial state-building

The Non-Aligned Movement: Afro-Asian internationalism beyond the US–Soviet Cold War

Congo, Katanga and sovereignty: U Thant’s defence of postcolonial borders against neo-imperial fragmentation

The Cuban Missile Crisis: U Thant’s overlooked role in helping Kennedy, Khrushchev and Castro de-escalate

Vietnam and the lost peace channel: U Thant’s ignored 1964 attempt to open talks with Ho Chi Minh

The Six-Day War and the UN-Israel rupture: UNEF, Nasser, Israel, and the myth that the UN abandoned Israel

U Thant’s late one-world vision, the decline of Bandung idealism, and the lost promise of postcolonial internationalism

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Visit Thant’s website: thantmyintu.com

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Conflicted is a Message Heard production.

Executive Producers: Jake Warren & Max Warren.

Produced and edited by Thomas Small.
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French war reporter and global jihadism expert Wassim Nasr was part of the presidential press party during Emmanuel Macron’s recent visit to Damascus. He shares his first-hand account not only of what happened between Macron and Syrian president Ahmad al-Sharaa during the visit, but also what he discovered afterwards, during a trip to Aleppo and to the northern town of Kobane.

Wassim and Thomas discuss:

What it was like inside Macron’s presidential delegation to Syria

France–Syria relations after the fall of Bashar al-Assad

Macron and Ahmed al-Sharaa at the Umayyad Mosque and Mount Qasioun

Islamic State bombings during Macron’s Damascus visit

French investment in Syrian reconstruction, energy, ports and transport

Aleppo’s security, political representation and slow post-war recovery

Kobani, SDF integration, PKK influence and Arab–Kurdish tensions

Ahmed al-Sharaa’s Islamist pragmatism and Syria’s dependence on his leadership

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Follow Wassim on X: https://x.com/SimNasr

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Conflicted is a Message Heard production.

Executive Producers: Jake Warren & Max Warren.

Produced and edited by Thomas Small.
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In this Conflicted Conversation, Thomas meets Laura Spinney, author of Proto: How One Language Went Global, the story of the Proto-Indo-European language and its descendants, which are spoken today by half of humanity.

Laura explains:

How, where, and among whom Proto-Indo-European emerged

How Indo-European split into English, Hindi, Persian, Russian, Greek, Latin-derived Romance languages, Celtic, Germanic, Baltic and Slavic tongues

How linguists reconstruct an unwritten prehistoric language through sound laws, comparative vocabulary and ancient texts

Why ancient DNA has transformed the debate over Indo-European origins by restoring migration to the centre of the story

Who the Yamnaya were, and how mobile pastoralists north of the Black Sea spread language through cattle, wagons, dairy and steppe mobility

How a small number of steppe migrants may have transformed Europe’s languages through disease, prestige, violence, intermarriage and social networks

Why Tocharian, Sanskrit and Persian reveal extraordinary Indo-European journeys from the Pontic-Caspian steppe to China, India and Iran

How ‘Aryan’ began as a real Indo-Iranian self-description before being distorted by racial nationalism and Nazi pseudoscience

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Find Laura on X: https://x.com/lfspinney

And on Bluesky: https://bsky.app/profile/laurainparis.bsky.social

And on Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/laura.spinney

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Conflicted is a Message Heard production.

Executive Producers: Jake Warren & Max Warren.

Produced and edited by Thomas Small.
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The MoU with Iran has broken down, war has returned to the Middle East, and so Aimen walks us through the events since the war re-ignited on 7th July.

More than anything, the fighting now focuses on the Strait of Hormuz. In Iran’s eyes, it has won control of the Strait as a spoil of war. In the rest of the world’s eyes, freedom of navigation through the Strait remains a cast-iron principle of international law.

Aimen and Thomas discuss:

Why the US–Iran MoU collapsed over control of the Strait of Hormuz

Iran’s attacks on Gulf shipping and the return of the US naval blockade

US strikes on Bandar Abbas and Iran’s coastal military infrastructure

GCC retaliation: Kuwait, Bahrain, UAE and Jordan confront Iran

Trump assassination threats and divisions inside the US administration

Saudi Arabia’s internal debate over Iran and renewed war with the Houthis

Houthi threats to close Bab al-Mandab and attack Saudi infrastructure

Oman, NATO and Israel’s roles in the widening Iran war

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Conflicted is a Message Heard production.

Executive Producers: Jake Warren & Max Warren.

Produced and edited by Thomas Small.
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In this latest Conflicted Conversation, Thomas talks with Yaakov Katz, the former editor-in-chief of The Jerusalem Post and co-author of ⁠While Israel Slept: How Hamas Surprised the Most Powerful Military in the Middle East⁠.

Yaakov explains:

October 7 intelligence failure and Israel’s missed warnings

Hamas’s ‘Jericho Walls’ plan and ignored Unit 8200 alerts

The Israeli conceptzia: why leaders believed Hamas was deterred

Netanyahu’s Gaza containment strategy and Qatari money policy

Hamas as a political asset against Palestinian statehood

Israel’s overreliance on technology, SIGINT and border barriers

Unit 504, HUMINT failure and the absence of agents in Gaza

Gaza’s tunnel network and Hamas’s hidden underground military city

Operation Guardian of the Walls and Israel’s exaggerated ‘Metro’ success

Netanyahu’s responsibility, Israeli division and the post–October 7 media war

**PLUS: Yaakov answers listener questions! FOR SUBSCRIBERS ONLY!**

Join the Conflicted Community here: ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠https://conflicted.supportingcast.fm/⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠

Find Yaakov on X: ⁠https://x.com/yaakovkatz⁠

And on Facebook: ⁠https://www.facebook.com/yaakov.katz⁠

And on LinkedIn: ⁠https://www.linkedin.com/in/yaakovkatz⁠

Yaakov's website: ⁠www.yaakovkatz.com⁠

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Conflicted is a Message Heard production.

Executive Producers: Jake Warren & Max Warren.

Produced and edited by Thomas Small.
Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices