Society

Chastising little brother

Why did Japanese Confucians enthusiastically support Imperial Japan’s murderous conquest of China, the homeland of Confucius?

Shaun O’Dwyer

How it looked to Afghan women to see the Taliban return to power

33 minutes

Why America fell for guns

The US today has extraordinary levels of gun ownership. But to see this as a venerable tradition is to misread history

Megan Kang

Legacy of the Scythians

How the ancient warrior people of the steppes have found themselves on the cultural frontlines of Russia’s war against Ukraine

Peter Mumford

A reporter orphaned by night raids in Afghanistan investigates their cruel legacy

17 minutes

Reconstructed hemisphere

In the 19th century, civil wars tore apart the US, Mexico and Argentina. Then came democracy’s fight against reaction

Evan C Rothera

The two Chomskys

The US military’s greatest enemy worked in an institution saturated with military funding. How did it shape his thought?

Chris Knight

Chorus of testimony

Anne Frank’s diary is one of thousands of desperate, secret and vivid journals each bearing witness to the reality of war

Nina Siegal

Warfare as mercy and love

The daggers that knights carried to the crusades help us understand why they thought of holy war as an act of love

William Chester Jordan

Meet the man who uncovered the scandal of nuclear testing in South Australia

13 minutes

Trenches in Chernobyl

Disturbing and inhaling radioactive dust, in their haste Russian soldiers unburied the wrecked, undead Earth itself

Michael Marder

Exhuming the truth

Thousands of victims of political executions lie in anonymous graves. Forensics offers hope for the ‘forgotten’ ones

Nicole Iturriaga

A peace activist’s harrowing account of nuclear war is a visceral case for disarmament

26 minutes

The will to fight

Throughout history, the most effective combatants have powered to victory on commitment to core values and collective resolve

Scott Atran

With respect and friendship

For a century before the rise of European empires, Britons and North Africans lived together in amicable peace

Nat Cutter

Before he leaves to go to war, Artem, 18, says goodbye to the man who raised him

12 minutes

When his grandfather won’t talk about the war, Bastien is left to his imagination

15 minutes

Tattoos and trousers

Let your imagination take flight to the hunting, riding, adventurous lives of Scythia’s warrior women, the real Amazons

Christine Lehnen

Those born later

How does a nation begin to take responsibility for its past wrongs? The German case suggests courage comes locally

Helmut Walser Smith