In around ten minutes on April 8, the Israeli military hit more than 100 targets across Lebanon. Israel called the attack Operation Eternal Darkness and said it struck Hezbollah command and control centres. The Lebanese government said at least 300 people were killed and 1,000 injured.

Israel has a powerful and lethal army, and it’s been defending itself against attacks from Hamas, Hezbollah and Iran. But why has it chosen such brutal military aggression?

One historian, Yaron Peleg, believes the answer to this question lies in the early days of Zionism in the 19th century, when many Jews who arrived in Palestine were fleeing antisemitism in Europe. In defiance, they began a cultural revolution, emphasising military strength and honouring Biblical Jewish heroes.

But in the wake of the Holocaust, Peleg, who is a professor of modern Hebrew studies at the University of Cambridge in the UK, thinks Israel’s view of itself began to change. He tracks how he sees Israel’s self‑image changed from self‑reliance to aggressive militarism, and how that history helps to explain the way it wages war today.

This episode was produced by Mend Mariwany and the executive producer was Gemma Ware. Mixing by Eleanor Brezzi and theme music by Neeta Sarl. Read the full credits for this episode and sign up here for a free daily newsletter from The Conversation.

If you like the show, please consider donating to The Conversation, an independent, not-for-profit news organisation.

Mentioned in this episode:

Voices of the South

For 16 years, Viktor Orbán built an illiberal democracy in Hungary. Orbán and his Fidesz party managed to take control of many of Hungary's levers of power, from the judiciary to state-owned media, and weakened the institutions that could keep them accountable. Now, his regime has been ended by a former Fidesz insider, Péter Magyar, who managed to unite Hungarians to secure a two-third majority in the country's parliament.

So how did Peter Magyar manage to beat his former boss? And what does Magyar's victory mean for the European Union, where Orbán was a belligerent, pro-Russian voice at the leaders' table.

We speak to Zsolt Enyedi, professor of political science at the Central European University and an expert in Hungarian politics.

This episode was produced by Mend Mariwany and Katie Flood. Gemma Ware was the host and executive producer. Mixing by Eleanor Brezzi and theme music by Neeta Sarl. Read the full credits for this episode and sign up here for a free daily newsletter from The Conversation.

If you like the show, please consider donating to The Conversation, an independent, not-for-profit news organisation.

• He exposed corruption and walked across Hungary. Now Péter Magyar has defeated a powerful state machine
• What Viktor Orbán’s election loss means for Putin, Trump and the rise of right-wing populism
• Viktor Orbán’s election loss shows the limits of his propaganda machine

Mentioned in this episode:

The We Society

Tackling the big questions through a social science lens, the We Society Podcast from the Academy of Social Sciences brings you some of the best ideas to shape the way we live. Join acclaimed journalist and Academy president Will Hutton, as he invites guests from the world of social science to explore the stories behind the news and hear their solutions to society’s most pressing problems.

The Making of an Autocrat

Search "The Conversation Weekly" for our new series: The Making of an Autocrat. Is America watching its democracy unravel in real time? In The Making of an Autocrat from The Conversation, six of the world’s pre-eminant scholars reveal the recipe for authoritarian rule. From capturing a party, to controlling the military, Donald Trump is borrowing from the playbook of strongmen thoughout history. This is the story of how democracies falter — and what might happen next.

If you have teenagers in your life, they’ll probably have heard of the PSL scale. Or at least the language associated with it. Chad. Stacy. Normie. Subhuman.

The PSL scale is a pseudoscientific attractiveness rating system used by looksmaxxers, men in a part of the manosphere who can go to extreme methods to change their appearance.

The roots of this rating system lie in misogynistic online forums used by incels or involuntarily celibates, but now it’s all over social media. So how did the language of incels, and this one way of quantifying attractiveness and beauty, go so mainstream?

In this episode, we speak to Jordan Foster, an associate professor of sociology at MacEwan University in Alberta, Canada, who researches social media, beauty and masculinity. He explains the origins of the PSL scale, where it fits into the manosphere, and how some looksmaxxing influencers are making money off it.

This episode was written and produced by Katie Flood and Gemma Ware was the executive producer. Mixing by Eleanor Brezzi and theme music by Neeta Sarl. Read the full credits for this episode and sign up here for a free daily newsletter from The Conversation.

If you like the show, please consider donating to The Conversation, an independent, not-for-profit news organisation.

• What parents need to know to talk to their children about the manosphere
• How ‘looksmaxxing’ self-improvement apps are marketing misogyny to young men
• Men can get out of the manosphere. Here’s what former incels say about why they left
• From gym to jawline: What looksmaxxing says about modern masculinity

Mentioned in this episode:

The We Society

Tackling the big questions through a social science lens, the We Society Podcast from the Academy of Social Sciences brings you some of the best ideas to shape the way we live. Join acclaimed journalist and Academy president Will Hutton, as he invites guests from the world of social science to explore the stories behind the news and hear their solutions to society’s most pressing problems.