''Blowback'' is a podcast about American history and foreign policy hosted by Noah Kulwin and Brendan James.

Format

The first season of the show was a ten part series dedicated to the

Iraq War {{Infobox military conflict , conflict = Iraq War {{Nobold, {{lang, ar, حرب العراق (Arabic) {{Nobold, {{lang, ku, شەڕی عێراق (Kurdish languages, Kurdish) , partof = the Iraq conflict (2003–present), I ...

. Throughout the show audio clips from

MSNBC MSNBC (originally the Microsoft National Broadcasting Company) is an American news-based pay television cable channel. It is owned by NBCUniversala subsidiary of Comcast. Headquartered in New York City, it provides news coverage and political ...

and

CNN CNN (Cable News Network) is a multinational cable news channel headquartered in Atlanta, Georgia, U.S. Founded in 1980 by American media proprietor Ted Turner and Reese Schonfeld as a 24-hour cable news channel, and presently owned by the M ...

and readings of news reports are provided as well as satirical skits performed by H. Jon Benjamin. The second season of the show focuses on U.S. intervention before and after the

Cuban revolution The Cuban Revolution ( es, Revolución Cubana) was carried out after the 1952 Cuban coup d'état which placed Fulgencio Batista as head of state and the failed mass strike in opposition that followed. After failing to contest Batista in cou ...

, and includes more interviews with those who experienced the events discussed first hand. The third season of the show released in July 2022 and covers the events surrounding the

Korean War , date = {{Ubl, 25 June 1950 – 27 July 1953 (''de facto'')({{Age in years, months, weeks and days, month1=6, day1=25, year1=1950, month2=7, day2=27, year2=1953), 25 June 1950 – present (''de jure'')({{Age in years, months, weeks a ...

Episodes

Season 1 (2020)

Season 2 (2021)

Season 3 (2022)

Season 4 (2023)

James announced a fourth season on his

Twitter Twitter is an online social media and social networking service owned and operated by American company Twitter, Inc., on which users post and interact with 280-character-long messages known as "tweets". Registered users can post, like, and ...

account in December 2022, to be released in Summer 2023. The fourth season will be about

Operation Cyclone Operation Cyclone was the code name for the United States Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) program to arm and finance the Afghan mujahideen in Afghanistan from 1979 to 1992, prior to and during the military intervention by the USSR in suppor ...

and its consequences, including the creation of

al-Qaeda Al-Qaeda (; , ) is an Islamic extremism, Islamic extremist organization composed of Salafist jihadists. Its members are mostly composed of Arab, Arabs, but also include other peoples. Al-Qaeda has mounted attacks on civilian and military ta ...

and the

September 11, 2001 attacks The September 11 attacks, commonly known as 9/11, were four coordinated suicide terrorist attacks carried out by al-Qaeda against the United States on Tuesday, September 11, 2001. That morning, nineteen terrorists hijacked four commercial ...

Reception

According to Vince Mancini of ''

UPROXX ''Uproxx'' (stylized in all caps) is an entertainment and popular culture news website. It was founded in 2008 by Jarret Myer and Brian Brater, and acquired by Woven Digital (later renamed Uproxx Media Group) in 2014. The site's target audience ...

'' and Derek Robertson of ''

Politico ''Politico'' (stylized in all caps), known originally as ''The Politico'', is an American, German-owned political journalism newspaper company based in Arlington County, Virginia, that covers politics and policy in the United States and intern ...

'', Blowback was "painstakingly researched" and didactic in its approach, "bombarding the listener with the host's ''

sturm-und-drang ''Sturm und Drang'' (, ; usually translated as "storm and stress") was a proto- Romantic movement in German literature and music that occurred between the late 1760s and early 1780s. Within the movement, individual subjectivity and, in particul ...

'' argument about the Iraq War as a portal to hell that directly caused our modern-day political ills". In a comparison of ''Blowback'' and ''Slow Burn'', Slate's podcast about the Iraq War, Derek Robertson of ''

'' described Blowback as "an unapologetically left-wing re-examination of the war’s many causes and ongoing effects". Jake Greenberg of ''Podcast Review'' wrote that "''Blowback'' is an excellent piece of history, one that documents the misadventures, deceits, and war crimes" of the Iraq War. ''Podcast Review'' called the topic of the second season "a tremendous fit for James and Kulwin's style".

References

External links

* {{Podcast platform links 2020 podcast debuts Audio podcasts History podcasts Socialist podcasts American podcasts