Today
Daniel R. Langton, "Darwin in the Jewish Imagination: Jews' Engagement with Evolutionary Theory" (Oxford UP, 2026)
In this episode, Rabbi Marc Katz sits down with Professor Daniel Langton, author of Darwin in the Jewish Imagination: Jews' Engagement with Evolutionary Theory (Oxford UP, 2026), to explore how Jewish thinkers responded to one of the most disruptive ideas of the modern world: evo ... Show More
53m 44s
Feb 8
Alex Prichard, "Anarchism: a Very Short Introduction" (Oxford UP, 2022)
If you asked a passerby on the street what anarchism is, they may answer that it is an ideology based on chaos, disorder, and violence. But is this true? What exactly is anarchism? Anarchism: a Very Short Introduction (Oxford UP, 2022) provides a new point of departure for our un ... Show More
55m 38s
Feb 8
Jacob Mchangama, "Free Speech: A History from Socrates to Social Media" (Basic Books, 2022)
Jacob Mchangama, founder and director of the think tank Justitia, has written a one-volume history of freedom of thought, which ranges from the lone Demosthenes of 4th-century BCE Athens to the recent controversies regarding Donald Trump. In Free Speech: A History from Socrates ... Show More
35m 47s
Mar 2023
Jennie E. Burnet, "To Save Heaven and Earth: Rescue in the Rwandan Genocide" (Cornell UP, 2023)
In To Save Heaven and Earth: Rescue in the Rwandan Genocide (Cornell UP, 2023), Jennie E. Burnet considers people who risked their lives in the 1994 Rwandan genocide of Tutsi to try and save those targeted for killing. Many genocide perpetrators were not motivated by political id ... Show More
1h 12m
Jan 2016
Ron Grigor Suny, “They Can Live in the Desert but Nowhere Else: A History of the Armenian Genocide” (Princeton UP, 2015)
Anniversaries are funny things. Sometimes, as with the hundredth anniversary of the outbreak of the First World War, they are accompanied by a flood of discussion and debate. Other times they are allowed to pass in silence.
The hundredth year anniversary of the Genocide of the ... Show More
1h 6m
Jul 2025
How Governments Disappear Humans
There is a chilling pattern of how governments have systematically dehumanized, displaced, and exterminated entire groups of people throughout history using bureaucratic steps.Drawing from real atrocities such as the Holocaust, the Khmer Rouge regime, the Rwandan genocide, and th ... Show More
30m 43s
Mar 2024
An Unfinished History of the Holocaust
<p>The Holocaust is much discussed, much memorialized, and much portrayed. But there are major aspects of its history that have been overlooked.</p> <p>Spanning the entirety of the Holocaust, this sweeping history deepens our understanding. Dan Stone—Director of the Holocaust Res ... Show More
1h 36m
Mar 2025
Grzegorz Rossolinski-Liebe, "Stepan Bandera: The Life and Afterlife of a Ukrainian Nationalist: Fascism, Genocide, and Cult" (Ibidem Press, 2014)
Stepan Bandera: The Life and Afterlife of a Ukrainian Nationalist (Ibidem Verlag, 2014) is the first comprehensive and scholarly biography of the Ukrainian far-right leader Stepan Bandera and the first in-depth study of his political cult. In this fascinating book, Grzegorz Rosso ... Show More
56m 45s
Mar 2024
Stefanos Geroulanos, "The Invention of Prehistory: Empire, Violence, and Our Obsession with Human Origins" (Liveright, 2024)
Books about the origins of humanity dominate bestseller lists, while national newspapers present breathless accounts of new archaeological findings and speculate about what those findings tell us about our earliest ancestors. We are obsessed with prehistory—and, in this respect, ... Show More
1h 14m
In her book Japan Reborn: Race and Eugenics from Empire to Cold War (Columbia UP, 2025), historian Kristin Roebuck grapples with the question: Why did Japan embrace “mixed blood” as an authoritarian empire yet turn to xenophobic racial nationalism as a Cold War democracy? Through in-depth and rigorous historical archival research, Roebuck traces the fraught ... Show More
'Genocide' is a powerful term — it's been called the "crime of crimes". When does large-scale violence become genocide, and why is it so difficult to prove and punish? - نسل وژنه (Genocide) یوه پیاوړې اصطلاح ده. مګر د دغې اصطلاع اصلي معنی څه ده؟ او څوک پریکړه نیسي چې څه وخت یوه ش ... Show More
