'The Story of the Jews' Continues

Charlotte McConaghy’s latest novel, “Wild Dark Shore,” opens with an enigma: A mysterious, half-drowned woman washes ashore.The stranger’s name is Rowan, and she has arrived on Shearwater, a remote island near Antarctica. The island, which houses an important seed bank, was once ... Show More

Summer is slipping away and we are on break this week. But we have a fantastic rerun for you — our conversation with Min Jin Lee from last summer, when her book "Pachinko" was named one of the "100 Best Books of the 21st Century" by a New York Times Book Review panel. She spoke a ... Show More

Imagine, if you will, that for unknown reasons North Korea has just launched a nuclear bomb at the United States. What happens next?The journalist Annie Jacobsen has imagined exactly that, and spent more than a decade interviewing dozens of experts while mastering the voluminous ... Show More

Simon Lancaster and Tom Clark touch upon the history of speeches 

Discussing Friedrich Schleiermacher's "On Religion; Speeches to its Cultured Despisers" (1799, with notes added 1821), first and second speeches. With guest Daniel Horne. 

When Deborah Friedell and Adam Thirlwell met twenty years ago, they started a discussion about Jewish identity they are still puzzling over today. Revisiting Philip Roth’s The Counterlife (1986), an American take on British antisemitism and the escapist allure of aliyah, Adam and ... Show More

On the debut of ’The Interview,' the actress talks to David Marchese about learning to let go of other people’s opinions. 

Authors Sharla Alegria and Catherine Yeh discuss the article, "Machine Learning and the Reproduction of Inequality" published in the Fall 2023 issue of Contexts. 

*Friend of the podcast Chris Beausang has started his own podcast! Subscribe to his show here on Apple Podcasts and listen to the entire episode* An interview with Conor McCarthy about the life and work of the Palestinian literary critic and activist Edward Said. Conor McCarthy i ... Show More

Today I talked to Roslyn Weiss, editor of Hasdai Crescas: Collected Writings (Library of the Jewish People, 2023).Hasdai Crescas spent his life in public service - as a rabbi and community leader in desperate times in 14th-century Spain. Despite having limited time for writing, h ... Show More