Blowback

Blowback, hosted by Brendan James and Noah Kulwin, tells the story of an American war or intervention as a season, with the consequences treated as the plot rather than the epilogue.

Iraq, Cuba, Korea, and others. The tone is angry, researched, and often funny in a way that will annoy listeners who wanted solemnity. Interviews with people who lived the policy sit next to the hosts’ indictment.

The series is popular because it is a narrative history with a thesis you can argue with. It does not pretend the United States stumbled into these stories without a motive.

The hosts’ banter in the open is not the reporting. The reporting is the interviews and the archive they build the case from.