Visits by high level Japanese dignitaries to Yasukuni Shrine have provoked outrage among Japan’s neighbors and unease among its own citizens.  Why has Yasukuni become such a lightning rod for the memory wars about Japan’s past?  In this episode of Realms of Memory, Akiko Takenaka, Associate Professor of History at the University of Kentucky, and…

How did Germany go from being an international pariah at the end of World War II to a leader of the European Union and one of the most trusted nations on the planet? In Learning from the Germans: Race and the Memory of Evil, Susan Neiman, director of the Einstein Forum in Berlin, argues that…

From the toppling of Civil War monuments to Putin’s claims about Nazis in Ukraine, memories of the past are everywhere.  Realms of Memory is a podcast that looks at how countries confront their darkest chapters, what they gain by doing so, and what happens when they fail to take up this challenge.  We feature the…