On “Reading the Middle East with Gilles Kepel,” the latest Al-Monitor podcast, renowned French scholar Gilles Kepel interviews the ground-breaking authors and thought leaders who are both shaping and explaining the complex trends in the Middle East and Islamic world. Kepel, one of Europe's leading experts on Islamism, the Middle East and North Africa, is a professor at the Institute of Political Studies, Paris (Sciences Po). His numerous books — which include "Jihad: The Trail of Political Islam," "The War for Muslim Minds: Islam and the West," "Beyond Terror and Martyrdom: The Future of the Middle East," and "The Prophet and the Pandemic" — have been translated into seventeen languages.