Episode 114: Marc Lynch

If you follow the Middle East at all, you've probably read the works of my guest today, Marc Lynch. Marc publishes widely and in a wide variety of mediums. He's got a high volume Twitter feed under the handle @AbuAardvark and writes regularly for the Monkey Cage blog at the Washington Post. He is a professor of political science and international affairs at George Washington University, and the founder and director of the Project on Middle East Political Science among other affiliations. He is someone whose work I have learned from and followed for several years

We spend about the first 20 minutes or so talking about his new book, The New Arab Wars: Anarchy and Uprising in the Middle East, which explores the Arab Spring and its fallout through the prism of international relations and regional politics.

Marc discusses how he became interested in the middle east through an internship early in college, and the evolving nature of one of his key research subjects over his career, the relationship between media and politics in the Middle East. And of course, stick around until the end for his musings on how international relations theory can explain rivalries in hip hop.