Showcasing the latest developments in the realm of academic and professional research and literature, about the Middle East and global affairs. We discuss Israeli, Arab and Palestinian society, the Jewish world, the Middle East and its conflicts, and issues of global and public affairs with scholars, writers and deep-thinkers.
Latest episodes
-
45 min
Omer Bartov on Israel, Zionism, and the Reckoning with History
Can a country confront its past without putting its founding ideals into question? The renowned and controversial historian of the Holocaust Omer Bartov has spent decades studying…
-
46 min
Theorizing Israel/Palestine
What happens when a political philosopher stops asking, "What would the perfect society look like?" and starts asking, "How did we get here?" Dr Raef Zreik takes a close look at th…
-
50 min
The Complicated History of Israel and South Africa's Anti-Apartheid Movement
What did South African anti-apartheid activists once think about Israel and Zionism? The answer is more complicated than most seem to think. Dr. Asher Lubotzky, research fellow at…
-
29 min
Body Politics
What does soccer have to do with Zionism? More than you might think. Today, competitive sports feel like an obvious part of Israeli culture. But when Zionism was taking shape in th…
-
44 min
An Activist's Notebook
What separates an activist who changes the world… from one who simply makes noise? Israeli-American lawyer, philanthropist, and disability rights advocate Jay Ruderman argues that…
-
43 min
Beyond Anne Frank: The Jew in Dutch Cinema
Can films reveal what a nation really believes about itself? For decades, Dutch cinema told one story about its Jews. Then, slowly, that story began to change. This week, Dr. Eyal…
-
41 min
Losing Our Story?
Upon the publication of Autocorrect, his latest collection of short stories, Etgar Keret joins us to discuss his favorite literary form, the impact of AI on storytelling and the po…
-
14 min
Patron-Exclusive Sample: Iran and the Bomb: A Long View
The major turning points in Iran's nuclear program were not the JCPOA or the latest wars, but the Shah's defiance of Henry Kissinger and the Iran-Iraq War, says Dr. Sina Azodi, Ass…
-
35 min
The Arab King and the American Republic
How does a Western-educated king survive — and thrive — in the political chaos of the Middle East for more than 25 years? Aaron Magid, a journalist formerly based in Jordan, discus…
-
48 min
A Nightmare on Herzl Street
Olga Gershenson, professor of Jewish and Near East Studies and Film Studies at the University of Massachusetts, Amherst, explains how a generation raised on VHS, torrents, and glob…
-
39 min
The Dialectics of a Special Relationship
Oz Frankel, professor of American history at the New School for Social Research in New York, discusses his book Coca Cola, Black Panthers and Phantom Jers: Israel in the American O…
-
35 min
Early Zionism's Arabists
A thought-provoking episode exploring how early Zionist thinkers engaged deeply with Arabic language and Islamic culture, challenging conventional views of identity and "Orientalis…
-
35 min
Bubbe-Meises for the Masses: A Gendered Reading of the US Yiddish Press
Did you know that a Yiddish newspaper once had a larger circulation than The New York Times? At the turn of the 20th century, the Yiddish press in America wasn't just a news indust…
-
46 min
When Everybody Is LGBT, Nobody Is
Amir Naaman and Dr Ran Heilbrunn, Israeli writers based in Germany, discuss their new collection of essays Inversion: Gay Life after the Homosexual. What are the next steps for que…
-
41 min
The Beginning of the End of Israeli Democracy
For Michael Sfard, one of Israel's most prominent human rights lawyers and author of the forthcoming book Occupation from Within: How Israel's Oppression of the Palestinians Turned…
-
8 min
Patron-Exclusive: Israel-Us Relations at a Crossroad?
How will the much-touted special relationship be affected by President Trump's overhaul of many aspects of American governance? Alon Pinkas, former Israeli diplomat and author of t…
-
37 min
The Ottoman World of Sports
Dr. Murat Yildiz, a historian of the Middle East at Skidmore College, discusses his book, The Ottoman World of Sports: Refashioning Bodies, Men and Communities in Late Imperial Ist…
-
49 min
A Tragedy of Miscalculations
Robert Malley, a former US negotiator and president and CEO of the International Crisis Group, and currently Senior Fellow and Lecturer at Yale University's Jackson School for Glob…
-
41 min
Jews and "Whiteness" Across Time and Space
Dr Balazs Berkovits, a Hungarian-born sociologist and philosopher, and Dr. Sara Hirschhorn, an American-Israeli historian, discuss the complexity – and adverse effects – of attribu…
-
40 min
The Legal Battle for Palestine
Steven E. Zipperstein, the director of the Nazarian Center for Israel Studies at UCLA, discusses his book, Zionism, Palestinian Nationalism and the Law: 1939-1948.