What Happened to Syria?

Bonus Episode 3 - Damascus to DC (Part 1)

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.

 

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 Washington D.C. after he was forced leave Syria. Part 1 focuses on Mamoun's upbringing, what it was like to live in Syria when Bashar al-Assad succeeded his father, and how the first protests began in 2011.

 

You can find us on Twitter at @SyriaPod and email us at whathappenedtosyriapodcast@gmail.com. 

 

If you like our show, please considering us for $1 or more at patreon.com/whathappenedtosyria  https://www.patreon.com/whathappenedtosyria?fan_landing=true 

Bonus Episode 2 - The Syrian Revolution feat. Suhail al-Ghazi

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 totalitarian state? How did protests in one part of the country differ from another? How quickly did the Assad regime resort to brutalizing and massacring protestors? (answer: very quickly)

Suhail al-Ghazi is Non-Resident Fellow at the Tahrir Institute and a Syrian dissident from Damascus now based in Istanbul. He was arrested twice for political activism before he joined the 6.6 million people forced to flee the country. You can follow him on Twitter at @putintintin.

Episode 2 - The Good, The Bad, and the Propaganda feat. Dr. Idrees Ahmad

This week, we look at a topic that has dominated the discourse surrounding Syria: media coverage and disinformation.

 

Dr. Idrees Ahmad is lecturer in journalism at the University of Stirling with a doctorate in sociology and a focus on international conflicts. He is also the author of The Road to Iraq: The Making of a Neoconservative War. Idrees has spent years tracking online propaganda and its impact on the international response to events in Syria.

 

As the title suggests, we get into the best and worst coverage of Syria since 2011, and run down the list of grifters who have made a career spreading disinformation. *cough* Max Blumenthal, Vanessa Beeley, Eva Bartlett, Aaron Mate, Rania Khalek *cough*

 

Next week, we'll pick the main story back up with the events of March 15 to March 31, 2011.

 

Music licensing

Fragments by Nomyn https://soundcloud.com/nomyn

Creative Commons — Attribution 3.0 Unported — CC BY 3.0

Free Download / Stream: http://bit.ly/l-fragments

Music promoted by Audio Library https://youtu.be/ndyyIhwojys

UNLOCKED Bonus Episode 1 - What Comes Next

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 Bonus episodes will be released for free. In the future, they will be available only to our Patrons on Patreon. 

 

Music licensing

Fragments by Nomyn https://soundcloud.com/nomyn

Creative Commons — Attribution 3.0 Unported — CC BY 3.0

Free Download / Stream: http://bit.ly/l-fragments

Music promoted by Audio Library https://youtu.be/ndyyIhwojys

Episode 1 - The Calm and the Storm (March 15, 2011)

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 the beginning of the Syrian Civil War.

This is the start of Season 1, which will focus on 2011. Season 2 will focus on 2012, so on and so forth. 

 

Sources cited:

Syria by Samer N. Abboud

No Turning Back by Rania Abouzeid

Butterfly by Yusra Mardini

We Crossed A Bridge and It Trembled by Wendy Pearlman

My Country by Kassem Eid

 

Music licensing

Fragments by Nomyn https://soundcloud.com/nomyn

Creative Commons — Attribution 3.0 Unported — CC BY 3.0

Free Download / Stream: http://bit.ly/l-fragments

Music promoted by Audio Library https://youtu.be/ndyyIhwojys