Interested in wild adventures, obscure tribes, & historical processes.
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Glenn Beck is apparently still alive - he and Levin are the only two people on this I've heard of 
Steppe ancestry in IEs was diluted by the time that they reached SW Iberia at end of third millennium, in line with other studies. However, there are signs of an Eastern Mediterranean migration to Iberia in Bronze Age or earlier: 
Safavid Order had a waqf (charitable endowment) for its benefit by 1305 in Ardabil. Its network of followers expanded in Anatolia, Khorasan, & Mazandaran under aegis of Ilkhanate & some of its successors, but was forced to arm some of its supporters in at least Ardabil. 
Eisenhower backed Pakistan, but Kennedy backed India, so by 1965 the USA gave up hope on mediating between the two. That allowed for the Soviets to emerge as the natural mediator in 1965, despite their partiality to India as a result of Pakistan's previous alignment with USA. 
The concept of "dual use" knowledge 
Shia birthrates in mid-20th century Lebanon were higher than those of Sunnis & Christians. 
one reason to find the Iranian Revolution interesting is that it proceeded to follow a non-Western path of development, much like India & China, rather than following the Western path. 
alcohol consumption in at least New Kingdom/Roman Egypt as a means to avoid Schistosomiasis: ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/P…
Burma is a colonial era English name for Myanmar. In the Burmese language (Myanma Saga), the ethnicity & nationality of locals are not distinguished - such distinctions are made only in Western academia. 
Mansa Musa's rise to power is known only through a dictation written down by a secretary in Cairo. 
death toll in Algerian War is disputed, but census comparisons suggest it was about 350k-400k - about 3% of the population. 
Islamic impulse towards iconoclasm ensured that physical Ottoman commemorations of triumphs & catastrophes were usually limited to inscriptions on fountains, clocks towers, & mosques. Statues of men in Turkey are usually from the republican era. 
Contemporary Arabic and Greek sources for the first Ottoman rulers have a dearth of information. However, three late 15th century Turkish offer enough information to understand the early Ottoman realm when combined with archaeological, epigraphic, & cartographic work. 
Latin world's understanding of Abbasid Caliphate was almost mythological due to distance. Byzantines by contrast saw Abbasids as the only empire equivalent to theirs (Holy Roman Empire's imperial pretensions were rejected by Byzantines). 
Japanese Xinjiang scholarship is apparently the best developed. One wonders how many parts of the world can be best understood in a third (non-English, non-local) language. 
Ctesiphon & Seleucia were part of an agglomeration of seven cities by 636 AD. Unstated if they were partly depopulated by the misery of the previous 34 years (I’d guess they were). 
Central Asian portrayals of Alexander in Middle Ages 
The author arrived in Tajikistan in the middle of the civil war. The local security forces were initially suspicious of him, but eventually decided to let him into their country so that he could popularize their favorite (or second favorite) writer - Sadriddin Ayni.… twitter.com/i/web/status/1… 
the book focuses on Sultan Husain Bayqara, great-great-grandson of Timur the Lame whose rule comprised a third of the Timurid period en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sultan_Hu… 
Sassanid founding myth involves an episode where they defeated a warlord whose power derived from the possession of a giant worm, which the Sassanids killed along with the warlord. 