What Iran teaches us about why wars start
The Indicator from Planet Money
NPR
4.7 • 9.5K Ratings
🗓️ 30 June 2026
⏱️ 10 minutes
🧾️ Download transcript
Summary
Chris Blattman’s book is Why We Fight: The Roots of War and the Paths to Peace.
Fact checking by Sierra Juarez.
Your Next Listen
— The new economic arms race
Connect with The Indicator
— Sign up for The Indicator’s brand new newsletter
— Buy the Planet Money book
— Find our socials, YouTube and more!
— For sponsor-free episodes, subscribe to NPR+
See pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data for sponsorship and to manage your podcast sponsorship preferences.
NPR Privacy Policy
Transcript
Click on a timestamp to play from that location
| 0:00.0 | NPR. |
| 0:06.3 | Yesterday, President Trump claimed that the U.S. and Iran are going to talk in Doha, as officials |
| 0:12.1 | try to patch up a ceasefire agreement that was broken by strikes over the last week. |
| 0:17.5 | So in this liminal moment, we thought it would be a good time to look back and ask, |
| 0:21.6 | how did we get into this? Chris Blackman is an economist and political scientist at the |
| 0:26.1 | University of Chicago who studies the roots of war and conflict. Once you start thinking about |
| 0:31.3 | conflict and violence, you can't stop thinking about anything else. Chris's obsession with war and |
| 0:36.2 | the data on conflicts revealed something to him. |
| 0:39.1 | He says the several weeks of intense fighting between the U.S. and Israel on one side and Iran on the other |
| 0:44.5 | is actually kind of typical. |
| 0:47.1 | I think the average war in the last 200 years has been less than two months long, and so this fits that pattern. |
| 0:52.5 | We don't know what will happen next. |
| 0:54.6 | But if the fighting stays at the current lower simmer, |
| 0:58.5 | then the Iran War's hot stage matched average historical lengths. |
| 1:03.5 | The two world wars do not fit that pattern. |
| 1:06.1 | Neither does the war in Ukraine or Gaza. |
| 1:08.9 | This is the indicator from Planet Money. |
| 1:10.6 | I'm Waylon Wong. |
| 1:11.7 | And I'm Darien Woods. |
| 1:12.9 | Today on the show, why we fight. |
| 1:15.3 | We speak to an economist about the incentives that push countries to war. |
| 1:19.8 | We ask, if violence is so costly, why do some wars keep stretching on and on? |
... |
Transcript will be available on the free plan in 21 days. Upgrade to see the full transcript now.
Disclaimer: The podcast and artwork embedded on this page are from NPR, and are the property of its owner and not affiliated with or endorsed by Tapesearch.
Generated transcripts are the property of NPR and are distributed freely under the Fair Use doctrine. Transcripts generated by Tapesearch are not guaranteed to be accurate.
Copyright © Tapesearch 2026.