The Sun Also Rises

The story of a group of men who undertook a mission so dangerous and so rapidly prepared that only a fiction writer would have been optimistic about how it would turn out. But they refused to compromise with evil, so they charged into it wholeheartedly. The episode is built around an exclusive interview with Dr. Iddo Netanyahu, notable historian and brother of Israel's Prime Minister.

On this episode, we discuss three remarkable yet mostly forgotten stories of heroism that occurred in Soviet Armenia in the 1970s and 80s—and a twist that connects them.

This episode examines how a serious injury sustained by a factory worker in 1867 not only changed the course of that man's life, but also set in motion a chain of events that changed the course of American history—in a way that countless people for generations have benefited from.

By the beginning of the 1800s, Bell Rock in Scotland’s Firth of Forth was responsible for wrecking numerous ships each winter. It was clear to everyone that sailors needed to be warned. But since the Rock was miles from shore and submerged by the sea for all but two hours a day, experts thought it would be impossible to build a lighthouse there. For Robert Stevenson, the challenge would become an obsession.

There is little in the human experience that hooks attention and holds it like a story. In this episode, we demonstrate and explain the power of story. And we encourage listeners to more regularly tap into that power.

Despite America's deep-rooted problems, the nation remains an unmatched paragon of prosperity, providing opportunity and wealth for great numbers of people.

But how and why did the United States became so exceptional? Pundits debating this question point to things like America’s laissez-faire economic system, values, politics, societal mobility, freedom of religion and speech, and its prioritization of equal opportunity. But there is another, often overlooked answer. In many ways this unnoticed factor is the foundation that has made other aspects of America’s success possible. It is a deeply inspiring facet of the U.S. that takes us all the way back into the mists of the earliest human history.

Friend or foe? Are you with us—or them? In certain clashes, this can be a gristly question for soldiers to answer. In ancient times, the Gileadites devised an ingenious way to differentiate between their own troops and those of the enemy, which lives on in the ever-expanding English language today. This episode of The Sun Also Rises discusses words and language and also examines a fascinating account from the Autobiography of Herbert W. Armstrong, elucidating how he became such a masterful communicator.

When the sun came up on May 28 in the year 585 BCE, the Medes and Lydians were still at war. They had been at each other’s throats for years, and it looked like there was no end in sight for their conflict. But something extraordinary happened on the battlefield that day, which changed everything. This episode also features an interview with Dr. Fred Espenak, an astrophysicist, and scientist emeritus at NASA's Goddard Space Flight Center.

Gunter Wetzel was 22 years old when he decided that he had to get his family free. But how could he get himself, his wife and their two small children past all the soldiers and over the razor wire-topped walls keeping them inside of East Germany?

Mr. Wetzel recently gave an interview to The Sun Also Rises, and, in this episode, he shares the astounding story of how human ingenuity and the longing to be free triumphed over Communist East Germany.

In the mid 1800s, a major medical breakthrough happened that has saved countless lives since then. But could it be that this life-saving knowledge was actually available to mankind for millennia before that breakthrough?