Kaboom: A Podcast About Bombing

Jon Western on how the United States decides to intervene or not to intervene in foreign conflicts. Also, the story behind the bikini.

Historian Donald Miller on the young men of the American 8th Air Force, how bombing failed to defeat Germany, and how it finally started to succeed. Also, another dark day in Manchester, England – June 15, 1996.

Historian Donald Miller talks about the American "bomber boys" of World War II. Also, digging up unexploded bombs in Normandy, and the big gamble that started the Six Day War.

Photojournalist Warzer Jaff tells us about covering ISIS in Iraq. Also, the long-secret massacre of up to 300 black people in Tulsa, Oklahoma, including what may have been the first aerial bombing in the United States.

Iraqi-American journalist Warzer Jaff on the wars in Iraq, our best friends in the Middle East, the Kurdish people, and their lives under Saddam Hussein. Also, the massacre of teenage girls in Manchester, England, and the bombing of France before D-Day.

Colm McKeogh on the idea of civilians, how it became wrong to kill them, and how it became okay to kill them again. Also, survivors in Mosul, and Nixon vows, "The bastards have never been bombed like they’re going to be bombed this time."

We look back at the occupation of Iraq in the 1920s and '30s by the British, who trained for World War II by bombing their villages. Also, cluster bombs and the Haymarket riot of 1886.

Ward Wilson tells us his "Five Myths About Nuclear Weapons." Also, terrorism in France and the 1937 bombing of Guernica, Spain, that shocked the world.

Joshua Kurlantzick talks with us about the most bombed country in the world, tiny little Laos. Also, the US uses the "Mother of All Bombs," and we look back at the Americans' first air raid against Japan.

It's the first episode of KABOOM! We talk with Heather Grayson about what happened to her and her unit when she was an explosive ordnance disposal officer in the US Army, and look back at a 1985 bombing in Spain that presaged today's terrorism.