What Happened to Syria?
Episodes
UNLOCKED: Bonus Episode 17 - The Christians of Syria
08 Jan 2026
Contributed by Lukas
This episode was originally recorded in 2024, shortly after the fall of Bashar al-Assad's regime, and released on our Patreon that Christmas. https://...
UNLOCKED: BONUS EPISODE 16 - Christmas in Syria
25 Dec 2024
Contributed by Lukas
Milad majid! Did you know that Orthodox Christians celebrate Christmas on January 7th? This episode examines the millennia-long history of Christianit...
2023 Christmas Special (aka “Don’t Cut Aid to Syria! And other countries!”)
25 Dec 2023
Contributed by Lukas
Merry Christmas! Sadly, the World Food Program has had their funding cut by 60 percent. Also, we are currently listed among the Top Five Syria-related...
Episode 15 (Full) - Crimes Against Humanity (June 24 to July 31, 2011)
24 Dec 2023
Contributed by Lukas
The Assad regime starts to crack under the pressure of increasingly large, passionate, cross-sectarian protests. Millions of people are taking to the ...
Episode 15D - Seven Million Protestors
15 Dec 2023
Contributed by Lukas
We're breaking up Episode 15 - Crimes Against Humanity (June 24 to July 31, 2011) into four smaller episodes before putting out the full thing. The As...
Episode 15C - Crimes Against Humanity
08 Dec 2023
Contributed by Lukas
We're breaking up Episode 15 - Crimes Against Humanity (June 24 to July 31, 2011) into four smaller episodes before putting out the full thing. The As...
Episode 15B - Ibrahim Qashoush’s Revolutionary Song
14 Jan 2023
Contributed by Lukas
We're breaking up Episode 15 - Crimes Against Humanity (June 24 to July 31, 2011) into four smaller episodes before putting out the full thing. The...
Episode 15A - Lost Legitimacy
06 Jan 2023
Contributed by Lukas
We're breaking up Episode 15 - Crimes Against Humanity (June 24 to July 31, 2011) into four smaller episodes before putting out the full thing. The...
2022 Christmas Special (This Podcast is Still Alive)
25 Dec 2022
Contributed by Lukas
Explaining the absence and examining the Syrian refugee crisis, as well as the situation for refugees across the world in 2022. Sources / Quotes: “B...
UNLOCKED - BONUS EPISODE 15 - Calluses on the Soul: Bernd Debusmann reflects on war reporting in Lebanon and Syria
20 Apr 2022
Contributed by Lukas
Bernd Debusmann was a young Reuters bureau chief when Lebanon imploded into civil war and anarchy in the 1970s, during which Syria and Hafez al-Assad...
2021 Christmas Special - The First Refugees
24 Dec 2021
Contributed by Lukas
We're starting a new holiday tradition, an episode focused on refugees and other humanitarian issues in Syria. As early as 2011, tens of thousands ...
Episode 14 - Community Revolution
19 Dec 2021
Contributed by Lukas
How do you organize a leaderless movement? The Syrian Revolution was a decentralized movement of localized cells, but enterprising activists sti...
Episode 13 - Alienation (June 13 to June 24, 2011)
10 Dec 2021
Contributed by Lukas
Supporters and opponents of the Assad regime are becoming irrevocably alienated from one another, sowing the seeds for a future war between Assad's Sy...
THE TERROR - Bonus Episode 1 - Navy SEAL, CIA, Firefighter: Jeff Butler Reflects on 9/11 and the War on Terror
12 Nov 2021
Contributed by Lukas
Jeff Butler's multifaceted career made him the perfect guest for THE TERROR. A warfighter, a CIA counterterrorism specialist, and now a first responde...
Episode 12 - The Revolutionaries (Part 2)
06 Nov 2021
Contributed by Lukas
There are too many amazing heroes among the Syrians who protested in 2011 to fit into a single episode. This is our second attempt at an ongoing effo...
Episode 11 - The Last Straw (May 25 to June 12, 2011)
22 Oct 2021
Contributed by Lukas
DISTURBING CONTENT WARNING There is no turning back for Syria after this episode. The Syrian Opposition is nearing its breaking point after m...
Minisode 1 - Daraa‘s Devastation
15 Oct 2021
Contributed by Lukas
Episode 11 - The Last Straw is taking longer than expected to edit. Here's an excerpt to tide everyone over until the full episode is done. Source...
Episode 10 - Syrian Kurds and the Revolution
01 Oct 2021
Contributed by Lukas
This might be our most controversial episode, yet. What is the relationship between the Assad regime and Syrian Kurds? How did Kurds react to...
UNLOCKED - Bonus Episode 11 - The Northern Revolution
25 Sep 2021
Contributed by Lukas
Yusuf was born in Manbij and gave up his job in Latakia to organize protests during the Syrian Revolution. The events of 2011 changed his lif...
THE TERROR - Episode 1 - When Everything Changed (September 11, 2001)
11 Sep 2021
Contributed by Lukas
Twenty years ago, the world changed. The Terror is a 12-episode miniseries about 9/11, what led up to it, and it's aftermath. It's the story about ...
Message to Listeners (Upcoming Hiatus)
04 Aug 2021
Contributed by Lukas
Hey y'all, we're going to put out one or two more episodes before we take a month off. In the meantime, keep an eye out for The Terror, a 12-part ...
Episode 9 - A Thousand Deaths (April 22 to May 24, 2011)
19 Jul 2021
Contributed by Lukas
This week, the Syrian Revolution takes a bloody and tragic turn when the Assad regime begins to put restive towns and cities under military siege. St...
Episode 8 - The Assad Family and Regime (Part 1, 1930 to 1970)
02 Jul 2021
Contributed by Lukas
How did the Assad family seize power in Syria? The answer lies in a man named Hafez al-Assad (basically, imagine an alternate version of Bashar al-Ass...
Episode 7 - The Great Friday (April 1 to April 22, 2011)
18 Jun 2021
Contributed by Lukas
The regime and its opponents both dig in their heels while each tries to convince the other to give up. Appeasement, brutality, and other mix-messagin...
Episode 6 - Inside Daraa’s Uprising feat. Fadil al-Mhameed
11 Jun 2021
Contributed by Lukas
Fadil al-Mhameed lived right next to the Omari mosque in 2011, when Daraa became the epicenter of the Syrian Revolution. He witnessed, participated, ...
Episode 5 - An Infamous Speech (March 26 to March 31, 2011)
04 Jun 2021
Contributed by Lukas
Protests have broken out across the country and the death toll from state violence against protestors has already broken the triple digits. Syria is i...
Bonus Episode 7 - Revolution in Raqqa feat. Hasan al-Kassab
03 May 2021
Contributed by Lukas
Hasan al-Kassab (@HasanAlKassab2 on Twitter) was a medical student from Raqqa in 2011, when the protests began. Today, he's a Syrian revolutionary ac...
Bonus Episode 6 - The Bride and Groom of the Revolution feat. Noura Ghazi
26 Apr 2021
Contributed by Lukas
They fell in love while risking their lives to protest against a regime that routinely arrests, tortures, and executes dissidents. Noura Ghazi d...
Episode 4 - The Revolutionaries (Part 1)
26 Apr 2021
Contributed by Lukas
This is our first "biographical" episode. This week, we're going to look at individuals who risked, and sometimes lost, their lives to engage in non-v...
Bonus Episode 5 - Damascus to DC (Part 3) feat. Mamoun
19 Apr 2021
Contributed by Lukas
What is one to do after being exiled from your homeland? That's exactly the situation Mamoun found himself in eight years ago. Coming of age a...
Bonus Episode 4 - Damascus to DC (Part 2) feat. Mamoun
12 Apr 2021
Contributed by Lukas
Damascus to DC tells the story of Mamoun, a Syrian-Lebanese attorney whose life journey took him across the world from his hometown Damascus to Washi...
Episode 3 - Days That Changed Everything (March 15 to March 25, 2011)
11 Apr 2021
Contributed by Lukas
How did the Syrian Revolution lead to the Syrian Civil War? Why didn't the regime make any real concessions? How quickly did the regime resort to mas...
Bonus Episode 3 - Damascus to DC (Part 1)
04 Apr 2021
Contributed by Lukas
Today, we're reaching into the vault and pulling out a pilot episode from mid-2020, before we knew what exactly this podcast would look like. Damas...
Bonus Episode 2 - The Syrian Revolution feat. Suhail al-Ghazi
29 Mar 2021
Contributed by Lukas
What did protestors in Syria want? How does it feel to voice your opinion and show solidarity with your fellow citizens for the first time in a total...
Episode 2 - The Good, The Bad, and the Propaganda feat. Dr. Idrees Ahmad
26 Mar 2021
Contributed by Lukas
This week, we look at a topic that has dominated the discourse surrounding Syria: media coverage and disinformation. Dr. Idrees Ahmad is lecture...
UNLOCKED Bonus Episode 1 - What Comes Next
22 Mar 2021
Contributed by Lukas
This is a prototype bonus episode. Future bonus episodes will feature interviews with Syrians or experts in the topics we discuss. Our first set of...
Episode 1 - The Calm and the Storm (March 15, 2011)
19 Mar 2021
Contributed by Lukas
Here it begins! Our ten-year retrospective look at Syria. This first episode works its way to the 15 of March, 2011, the day most-commonly cited as th...