Podcast Episodes
Back to SearchThe Jews in Poland-Lithuania and Russia: 1350 to the Present Day
For centuries, Poland and Russia formed the heartland of the Jewish world. Until World War II, this area was home to over forty percent of world Jewr…
2 months ago
How Did Germany Go From Vilified to Respected?: A Conversation Andrew I. Port
Few countries are more haunted by the darker aspects of their history than Germany. Nazi crimes continue to cast a long shadow at home and abroad. G…
2 months ago
Danny Bate, "Why Q Needs U: A History of Our Letters and How We Use Them" (Bonnier Books, 2025)
Every letter you’re reading right now has a fascinating story to tell, having been on a long linguistic, historical, political and social journey. Th…
2 months ago
Craig Perry, "Slavery and the Jews of Medieval Egypt: A History" (Princeton UP, 2026)
What did slavery actually look like in the everyday lives of Jews in the medieval Middle East? In this episode, Rabbi Marc Katz sits down with histor…
2 months ago
Philip C. Almond, "Noah and the Flood in Western Thought" (Cambridge UP, 2025)
In a world beset by climatic emergencies, the continuing resonance of the flood story is perhaps easy to understand. Whether in the tortured alpha ma…
2 months ago
Santiago Muñoz-Arbeláez, "The New Kingdom of Granada: The Making and Unmaking of Spain's Atlantic Empire" (Duke UP, 2025)
The New Kingdom of Granada: The Making and Unmaking of Spain's Atlantic Empire (Duke UP, 2025) tells the history of the making and unmaking of empir…
2 months ago
Timothy Manion, "Why Barbarossa Failed: Germany and Russia in the Second World War" (Helion, 2026)
Why did Operation Barbarossa fail? For more than eight decades, historians have offered one dominant answer: Nazi Germany’s invasion of the Soviet Un…
2 months ago
Karima Moyer-Nocchi, "The Epic History of Macaroni and Cheese: From Ancient Rome to Modern America" (Columbia UP, 2026)
Today, macaroni and cheese is the ultimate comfort food, a staple of weeknight dinners, family gatherings, and Soul Food restaurants. Humble though t…
2 months ago
Sunmin Kim, "The Unruly Facts of Race: The Politics of Knowledge Production in the Early Twentieth-Century Immigration Debate" (U Chicago Press, 2026)
What happens when theories of racial hierarchies interact with reality? How are they contested, refuted and changed in light of that encounter? What …
2 months ago
Kalpana Karunakaran, "A Woman of No Consequence: Memory, Letters and Resistance in Madras" (Context, 2026)
In this intimate, yet simultaneously anthropological, exploration of the life of her maternal grandmother Pankajam (1911–2007), Kalpana Karunakaran a…
2 months, 1 week ago