Pushkin.

It's hard to read the news these days without asking yourself, how did we get here?

Fiasco is a history podcast for the co-creators of Slow Burn.

In our first season, Bush v. Gore, we examined an unmistakable turning point in American

politics, the 2000 election, which resulted in a high-stakes stalemate, ended with one of the most

controversial rulings in Supreme Court history. So if you're trying to make sense at the present

moment, check out Fiasco, Bush v. Gore. Listen on theHeart Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you listen to podcasts.

From Pushkin Industries, this is Deep Background, the show where we explore the stories behind the stories in the news.

I'm Noah Feldman. Welcome to this week's program, where we're going to talk about one of the most challenging and controversial topics that I can think of, namely concentration camps.

The phrase alone is enough to strike terror in your heart.

And controversially, this phrase so closely associated with Nazi Germany and with the Holocaust has been used by some critics to refer to the current

migrant detention facilities that the United States government is using to detain people

at our southern border. To discuss the history and the politics, I'm very pleased to be

joined today by Andrea Pitzer. Andrea is a journalist who loves to unearth lost history.

And for our purposes today, the lost history that she's uncovered is that of the concentration camp itself.

Her book, One Long Night, A Global History of Concentration Camps, is a deep dive into the term concentration camp, where it came from, and where it's going today.

And she's also been an outspoken critic of the Trump administration's detention policy.

Andrea, I want to start just by telling you my own story of how I came to expand on the uses of the term.

I'm Jewish. Like a lot of Jews, I grew up hearing the phrase

concentration camps and never distinguishing it from death camps or anything else that the Nazis

may have done. And like a lot of people, I had teachers who had camp tattoos on their arms,

and they and others used the term concentration camps in a kind of

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