Tara Zahra On Anti-Globalization After WWI
The Dishcast with Andrew Sullivan
Andrew Sullivan
4.6 • 836 Ratings
🗓️ 25 July 2025
⏱️ 48 minutes
🧾️ Download transcript
Summary
Tara Zahra is a writer and academic. She’s currently the Hanna Holborn Gray Professor of East European History at the University of Chicago. This week we discuss her latest book, Against the World: Anti-Globalism and Mass Politics Between the World Wars.
For two clips of our convo — on the starving of Germany during and after WWI, and what Henry Ford and Trump have in common — head to our YouTube page.
Other topics: growing up in the Poconos; her parents’ butcher shop; ballet her first career goal; her undergrad course on fascism that inspired grad school; how the Habsburg Dynasty was the EU before the EU; the golden age of internationalism; cutting off trade and migration during WWI; the Spanish flu; the Russian Revolution; pogroms across Europe; scapegoating Jews over globalization and finance; the humiliation at Versailles; Austria-Hungary chopped up and balkanized; Ellis Island as a detention center; massive inflation after the war; the Klan in the 1920s; Keynes; the Great Depression and rise of fascism; mass deportations in the US; autarky; Hitler linking that self-reliance to political freedom; Lebensraum; anti-Semitism; the Red Scare; the WTO and China; the 2008 crash; Trump’s tariff threats; rare earths; reshoring; fracking and energy independence; MAHA; Elon Musk and Henry Ford; Mars as Musk’s Lebensraum; and the longing for national identity.
Browse the Dishcast archive for an episode you might enjoy (the first 102 are free in their entirety — subscribe to get everything else). Coming up: trans activist Shannon Minter debating trans issues, Scott Anderson on the Iranian Revolution, and Johann Hari turning the tables to interview me. Please send any guest recs, dissents, and other comments to [email protected].
Transcript
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| 0:00.0 | The Hi there. |
| 0:28.9 | Welcome to another discast. |
| 0:32.3 | What of Roll. |
| 0:33.3 | Finally got a steamy summer here in Provincetown, been dipping in the tidal pools, |
| 0:39.5 | which are the greatest joy of the end of the Cape, if you've ever been here. |
| 0:44.4 | They come and go, as tides do. |
| 0:46.8 | And when they rise about like three feet high, maybe four feet at most, no, maybe not even that high. |
| 0:53.9 | You can just hang out in them for a while |
| 0:56.0 | and they come in over the warm sand. And it's just like this wonderful bath. And so I spent a few days |
| 1:03.2 | over the July 4th weekend trying to decompress because it's been a, it's been a stressful six |
| 1:08.4 | months with the new administration. And then I, then all the stuff about the New York Times piece, I just did all that stuff. So it's been a lot. So I took a few days to just chill and spend time in the tidal pools and with Truman. I hope you're finding ways to relax and be yourself in these stressful times. |
| 1:29.2 | I think it's kind of important to decontaminate yourself from time to time, |
| 1:34.6 | from especially online media. |
| 1:37.7 | We have some wonderful people coming up. |
| 1:39.8 | Yohan Hari is coming on to turn the tables and actually interview me, which he does every now and again |
| 1:45.8 | on this podcast, the kind of reverse, a reverse discast. But this week, have someone I've, |
| 1:53.5 | whose book really intrigued me. And as you know, as you all know, I'm a history buff. And |
| 2:00.4 | Tara Zara is the, is the writer of the book, |
| 2:04.0 | and she's currently the Hannah Holborn, Gray Professor of East European History at the University |
| 2:10.9 | of Chicago. |
| 2:12.9 | And Central Europe is one of her themes and interests. |
| 2:16.3 | But the book we're discussing this week is the latest |
... |
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