Best Shoah Podcasts (2025)

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Michal Govrin et. al, "But There Was Love―Shaping the Memory of the Shoah" (de Gruyter, 2025) 33:41

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7d ago33:41

33:41

But There Was Love―Shaping the Memory of the Shoah (de Gruyter, 2025) proposes a new paradigm for Shoah remembrance in today’s cultural and political reality. It derives from the four-year workings of a group of researchers and artists at The Van Leer Jerusalem Institute led by Michal Govrin. The group positions the extraordinary Jewish and non-Jew…

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Yehudah Halper, "Averroes on Pathways to Divine Knowledge" (Academic Studies Press, 2025) 42:31

1h ago42:31

42:31

Today we will be talking to Yehudah Halper about his new book, Averroes on Pathways to Divine Knowledge (Academic Studies Press, 2025). The twelfth-century Andalusian philosopher Averroes sought to understand the divine in a way independent of religious theology, by turning to the philosophical works of Aristotle and, to a lesser extent, Plato. In …

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Henry H. Sapoznik, "The Tourist's Guide to Lost Yiddish New York City" (SUNY Press, 2025) 47:40

43m ago47:40

47:40

The Tourist's Guide to Lost Yiddish New York City (SUNY Press, 2025) by Henry H. Sapoznik explores a century of Yiddish popular culture in New York City. Sapoznik--the author of Klezmer! Jewish Music fro0m Old World to Our World and a Peabody Award-winning coproducer of NPR's Yiddish Radio Project--tells his story through chapters on eating, archit…

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Wendy I. Zierler, "Going Out with Knots: My Two Kaddish Years with Hebrew Poetry" (Jewish Publication Society, 2025) 43:29

43m ago43:29

43:29

Interweaving memoir with Hebrew poetry, Going Out with Knots: My Two Kaddish Years with Hebrew Poetry (Jewish Publication Society, 2025) illluminates author Wendy I. Zierler’s literary and personal Jewish mourning journey in the aftermath of unremitting personal loss. She begins with her story: the death of both her parents in one year; the challen…

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William Ury, "Possible: How We Survive (and Thrive) in an Age of Conflict" (Harper Business, 2024) 34:32

4d ago34:32

34:32

The author of the world’s best-selling book on negotiation draws on his nearly fifty years of experience and knowledge grappling with the world’s toughest conflicts to offer a way out of the seemingly impossible problems of our time. Conflict is increasing everywhere, threatening everything we hold dear—from our families to our democracy, from our …

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Spine 671: La Cage aux Folles 1:34:46

1d ago1:34:46

1:34:46

Sometimes Criterion shows us a single film from a director we'd never seen before and leaves us wanting for the rest of our project, so often actually that we call them "one and dones". But then sometimes Criterion shows us a movie by Edouard Molinaro and it's fine that they aren't going to show us another. La Cage aux Folles (1978) is a funny movi…

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191: The BBC's built-in bias "always believes the worst about Israel" 29:35

6d ago29:35

29:35

Help support Jonny's independent journalism by supporting him on Substack. The BBC's top brass have lost their jobs over the institutionalised bias of their news coverage. But their news output which made them so famous and trusted around the world has let the rest of the corporation down for a very long time. Director-General Tim Davie and CEO of …

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Michal Govrin et. al, "But There Was Love―Shaping the Memory of the Shoah" (de Gruyter, 2025) 33:41

7d ago33:41

33:41

But There Was Love―Shaping the Memory of the Shoah (de Gruyter, 2025) proposes a new paradigm for Shoah remembrance in today’s cultural and political reality. It derives from the four-year workings of a group of researchers and artists at The Van Leer Jerusalem Institute led by Michal Govrin. The group positions the extraordinary Jewish and non-Jew…

1
Michal Govrin et. al, "But There Was Love―Shaping the Memory of the Shoah" (de Gruyter, 2025) 33:41

3h ago33:41

33:41

But There Was Love―Shaping the Memory of the Shoah (de Gruyter, 2025) proposes a new paradigm for Shoah remembrance in today’s cultural and political reality. It derives from the four-year workings of a group of researchers and artists at The Van Leer Jerusalem Institute led by Michal Govrin. The group positions the extraordinary Jewish and non-Jew…

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Spine 670: To Be or Not to Be 1:46:25

5h ago1:46:25

1:46:25

A problem talking about the films of Ernst Lubitsch is that it's very hard not to just start listing the good gags, and To Be or Not to Be (1942) is full of great gags. It's also full of suspense - a film that seamlessly balances noir-ish intrigue with farce. Fascism deserves to be mocked. Fascism is a performance, and can be undermined with perfor…

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Maya Arad, "The Hebrew Teacher" (New Vessel Press, 2024) 27:24

9d ago27:24

27:24

Three Israeli women, their lives altered by immigration to the United States, seek to overcome crises. Ilana is a veteran Hebrew instructor at a Midwestern college who has built her life around her career. When a young Hebrew literature professor joins the faculty, she finds his post-Zionist politics pose a threat to her life’s work. Miriam, whose …

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Elizabeth R. Hyman, "The Girl Bandits of the Warsaw Ghetto: The True Story of Five Courageous Young Women Who Sparked an Uprising" (Harper, 2025) 40:58

16d ago40:58

40:58

The Warsaw Ghetto Uprising is one of the most storied events of the Holocaust, yet previous accounts of have almost entirely focused on its male participants. In The Girl Bandits of the Warsaw Ghetto: The True Story of Five Courageous Young Women Who Sparked an Uprising (Harper, 2025), Holocaust historian Elizabeth Hyman introduces five young, cour…

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Shaul Kelner, "A Cold War Exodus: How American Activists Mobilized To Free Soviet Jews" (NYU Press, 2025) 36:11

17d ago36:11

36:11

Winner of The 74th National Jewish Book Award: American Jewish Studies Celebrate 350 Award Reveals the mass mobilization tactics that helped free Soviet Jews and reshaped the Jewish American experience from the Johnson era through the Reagan–Bush years What do these things have in common? Ingrid Bergman, Passover matzoh, Banana Republic®, the …

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Shaul Kelner, "A Cold War Exodus: How American Activists Mobilized To Free Soviet Jews" (NYU Press, 2025) 36:11

17d ago36:11

36:11

Winner of The 74th National Jewish Book Award: American Jewish Studies Celebrate 350 Award Reveals the mass mobilization tactics that helped free Soviet Jews and reshaped the Jewish American experience from the Johnson era through the Reagan–Bush years What do these things have in common? Ingrid Bergman, Passover matzoh, Banana Republic®, the …

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Spine 669: Charulata 1:36:14

15d ago1:36:14

1:36:14

Satyajit Ray's Charulata (1964) is a masterpiece. We haven't seen a film that so exquisitely captures longing since Wong Kar Wai's In the Mood for Love (2000) 500 Spines ago. In ten more years I suspect I will still be thinking about the visuals of Charulata - the swing, the bedroom window, that final pair of freeze frames - as much as I still thin…

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Elissa Bemporad, "Jews in the Soviet Union: A History: Revolution, Civil War, and New Ways of Life, 1917–1930, Vol. 1" (NYU Press, 2025) 57:04

21d ago57:04

57:04

Chronicles the encounter of one of the largest Jewish communities in the world with war, revolution, and Soviet power from 1917 through 1930 At the beginning of the twentieth century, more Jews lived in the Russian Empire than anywhere else in the world. After the Holocaust, the USSR remained one of the world’s three key centers of Jewish populatio…

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Paula Oppermann, "Thunder Cross: Fascist Antisemitism in Twentieth-Century Latvia" (U Wisconsin Press, 2025) 1:04:54

21d ago1:04:54

1:04:54

Founded in 1932, the Pērkonkrusts ("Thunder Cross") was the largest and most prominent right-wing political party in Latvia in the early twentieth century. Its motto--"Latvia for Latvians!"--echoed the ultranationalist rhetoric of similar movements throughout Europe at the time. Unlike the Nazis in Germany or the Fascists in Italy, however, the Pēr…

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Jakub Gortat, "Remembering National Socialism in Austrian Post-war Film" (1945-1955) (Brill, 2025) 39:37

21d ago39:37

39:37

Entrenched in the myth of being victim of the Nazi aggression, Austrian elites pursued a politics of memory that symbolically shook off any responsibility for the emergence, development and consequences of National Socialism. Authors of the vast majority of films produced early after 1945 were not interested in dealing with the recent Nazi past of …

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Mark Mazower, "On Antisemitism: A Word in History" (Penguin Press, 2025) 45:58

24d ago45:58

45:58

What do we mean when we talk about antisemitism? A thoughtful, vital new intervention from the award-winning historian. For most of history, antisemitism has been understood as a menace from Europe’s political Right, the province of blood-and-soil ethno-nativists who built on Christendom’s long-standing suspicion of its Jewish population and infuse…

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Iris Idelson-Shein, "Between the Bridge and the Barricade: Jewish Translation in Early Modern Europe" (U Penn Press, 2024) 51:21

25d ago51:21

51:21

One of the constants of Jewish history is that Jews have learned from the cultures around them. But this exchange of information was not an easy endeavor. Not only did Jews speak a different language, but their cultural touchpoints were different. If they were to learn from the people around them, their translations had to be deliberate, sometimes …

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Spine 668: The Big City 1:51:58

25d ago1:51:58

1:51:58

We absolutely fell in love with the films of Satyajit Ray when we first watched The Music Room a few years ago, and we are so happy that Criterion is finally showing us more of his work. The Big City (1963) is an Ozu-like take of the effect progress has on the "traditional" family, an ode to female emancipation, and a condemnation of social, racial…

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190: Maccabi Tel Aviv's sorrowful ban from Aston Villa plunges football into darkness 38:33

27d ago38:33

38:33

Find Jonny's writing and other podcasts on his Substack. Buy him a coffee here. A chunk of my background, both personal and professional, has been washed away. I didn’t think football was supposed to hurt like this. Banning a mere thousand or less Israeli football fans from Villa Park for a Europa League tie is a cause for deep sorrow. But not just…

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Maurice Samuels, "Alfred Dreyfus: The Man at the Center of the Affair" (Yale UP, 2024) 39:17

26d ago39:17

39:17

On January 5, 1895, Captain Alfred Dreyfus’s cries of innocence were drowned out by a mob shouting “Death to Judas!” In Alfred Dreyfus: The Man at the Center of the Affair (Yale UP, 2024), Maurice Samuels gives readers new insight into Dreyfus himself—the man at the center of the affair. He tells the story of Dreyfus’s early life in Paris, his prom…

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Massimo Modonesi, "The Antagonistic Principle: Marxism and Political Action" (Haymarket, 2019) 43:07

1M ago43:07

43:07

What does it mean to be a political subject? This is one of the key questions asked by Massimo Modonesi in The Antagonistic Principle: Marxism and Political Action (2019), published as part of the Historical Materialism book series from Brill and Haymarket books. The book takes on the theories of Marx and Gramsci to develop a philosophical triad …

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Elliott Rabin, "The Biblical Hero: Portraits in Nobility and Fallibility" (Jewish Publication Society, 2020) 58:18

17d ago58:18

58:18

Today I talked to Elliott Rabin about his book The Biblical Hero: Portraits in Nobility and Fallibility (Jewish Publication Society, 2020). Approaching the Bible in an original way—comparing biblical heroes to heroes in world literature—Rabin addresses a core biblical question: What is the Bible telling us about what it means to be a hero? Focusing…

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Spine 667: Seconds 1:57:22

1M ago1:57:22

1:57:22

We get our first John Frankenheimer feature in the Collection with Seconds (1966), though we covered his version of Dr. Moreau on a Patreon episode recently and also he directed The Comedians teleplay in the Golden Age of Television boxset. In Seconds a late middle aged banker, bored with career and marriage is stalked and blackmailed into using a …

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4. The Breslover Chassidim of the Warsaw Ghetto 48:32

1M ago48:32

48:32

On Yom HaShoah, Rav Shlomo Katz shares the hidden story of the Breslover chassidim in the Warsaw Ghetto — led by Rav Yitzchak Breiter, who brought the light of Rebbe Nachman to Poland. Through song, courage, and unshakable faith, they built a world of hope where the words “אין שום ייאוש בעולם כלל” — “There is no despair in the world at all” — hung …

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3. The Rebbes You've Never Heard of 1:48:54

1M ago1:48:54

1:48:54

On Yom HaShoah, Rav Shlomo Katz shares the forgotten stories of Chassidic masters who perished in the Holocaust — giants whose names and faces have faded, but whose light still burns. Through song, tears, and Torah, Rav Shlomo brings their legacy back into our hearts — their courage, their humility, and their unshakable faith. A holy remembrance of…

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2. In the Warsaw Ghetto with the Aish Kodesh 31:25

1M ago31:25

31:25

On Yom HaShoah, Rav Shlomo Katz learns from the Aish Kodesh, Rav Kalonymus Kalman Shapira of Piaseczna, whose Torah was born in the fire of the Warsaw Ghetto. Through his words, Rav Shlomo opens a window into faith that survived the unthinkable — how Jews held on to God, to hope, and to each other even in the darkest night. A quiet moment of rememb…

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1. Talking to Hashem on Yom Hashoah 51:59

1M ago51:59

51:59

On Yom HaShoah, Rav Shlomo Katz opens his heart about how we speak to Hashem after the six million. Through niggun, a survivor story from his own family, and teachings from the Chassidic masters, he shares why simple closeness—more than answers—is the only medicine for a wounded world. A gentle space to remember, to feel, and to keep talking to God…

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Lawrence Grossman, "Living in Both Worlds: Modern Orthodox Judaism in the United States, 1945-2025" (Academic Studies Press, 2025) 55:19

25d ago55:19

55:19

In American Judaism today, Orthodoxy is the fastest growing movement. However, Orthodoxy is anything but monolithic. Living in Both Worlds: Modern Orthodox Judaism in the United States, 1945–2025 by Lawrence Grossman explores a piece of the Orthodox story, that of Modern Orthodoxy. For those who may be unfamiliar, Modern Orthodoxy affirms the tradi…

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Spine 666: The Devil's Backbone 1:51:06

1M ago1:51:06

1:51:06

Sometimes the Criterion Collection goes and does a silly thing, like releasing Guillermo del Toro's The Devil's Backbone as Spine 666. How spooky! One of the great Mexican director's films about how fascism is bad for children - a lesson we as a society apparently do actually keep needing to learn - The Devil's Backbone sets a ghost story at an orp…

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Robert L. Worden and Jane Leung Larson, "A Chinese Reformer in Exile: Kang Youwei and the Chinese Empire Reform Association in North America, 1899-1911" (Brill, 2025) 2:14:03

1M ago2:14:03

2:14:03

A Chinese Reformer in Exile: Kang Youwei and the Chinese Empire Reform Association in North America, 1899-1911 is an encyclopaedic reference work documenting the exile years of imperial China’s most famous reformer, Kang Youwei, and the political organization he mobilized in North America and worldwide to transform China’s autocratic empire into a …

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Anthony J. Knowles, "Driving Productivity: Automation, Labor, and Industrial Development in the United States and Germany" (Brill, 2025) 46:21

28d ago46:21

46:21

Driving Productivity: Automation, Labor, and Industrial Development in the United States and Germany (Brill, 2025) reconstructs the industrial histories of the American and German automotive industries in a new light. From the Fordist assembly line to Japanese lean production and Industry 4.0, Anthony J. Knowles critically examines major technical …

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Scott D. Seligman, "The Chief Rabbi's Funeral" (U Nebraska Press, 2024) 55:46

1M ago55:46

55:46

On July 30, 1902, tens of thousands of mourners lined the streets of New York’s Lower East Side to bid farewell to the city’s chief rabbi, the eminent Talmudist Jacob Joseph. All went well until the procession crossed Sheriff Street, where the six-story R. Hoe and Company printing press factory towered over the intersection. Without warning, scraps…

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Vartan Matiossian, "The Color of Choice: The Armenians and the Politics of Race in the United States and Germany (1890-1945)" (Brill, 2025) 1:19:09

1M ago1:19:09

1:19:09

The extensive research literature on race has paid little attention to Armenians. Between the two world wars, they had to prove that they were free white persons to ensure their naturalization in the United States, while in Nazi Germany they needed to document that they were stakeholders of the Aryan race to safeguard their existence. Vartan Matios…