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Episode 362 — The Past Has an Afterlife

Guest: Trevor Stern | Host: Gilad Avrahami | hmTv / HMTC**

In this inaugural episode of The Past Has an Afterlife, Programs and Development Coordinator Gilad Avrahami sits down with scholar Trevor Stern for a riveting dive into the world of collective memory — how we inherit it, how we shape it, and how it shapes us.

Trevor, a PhD candidate at the University of Edinburgh, traces his unusual upbringing as “the only Jewish kid in town” through life in Egypt and India, revealing how identity is formed in unlikely places. From there, the conversation explores the difference between individual and communal remembrance, how stories from the past become narratives we live by, and why certain histories rise to prominence while others disappear into silence.

Together, they confront challenging questions:

• Who gets represented in Holocaust memory — and who is missing?
• How does society decide which events to remember?
• What happens when the past is used as a tool in today’s political and cultural debates?

Timely, layered, and thought-provoking, this episode sets the tone for a series dedicated to examining how memory isn’t static — it’s alive, contested, reshaped, and deeply consequential for how we understand our world.

Subscribe, listen, and join the conversation as hmTv explores how history lives beyond history — and why it matters more than ever.

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