Van Leer Institute Series on Ideas
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Recent Episodes
Stuart Katz, "Still Here: A Story of Living with Suicidal Ideation" (Independent, 2026)
Still Here is a powerful and unflinching novel about chronic suicidal ideation—not as a moment of crisis, but as a daily presence. Daniel is a husband, a father, and a respected professional. He…
Rebecca Newberger Goldstein, "The Mattering Instinct: How Our Deepest Longing Drives Us and Divides Us" (Liveright Publishing, 2026)
MacArthur Fellow and National Humanities Medalist Rebecca Newberger Goldstein, author of Plato at the Googleplex and The Mind-Body Problem, returns with a revelatory book about the primal drive that…
Antisemitism: What Everyone Needs To Know by David Harris
History teaches that antisemitism is a disease which begins with the Jews but does not end with them. Once antisemitism is unleashed, it knows no bounds and can attack the very fabric of society.…
Laughter and Leadership: A Conversation with Tikva Blaukopf Schein, Ph.D.
We laugh without thinking — but what if laughter is one of the most revealing human acts? In this episode of The Van Leer Institute Series On Ideas, Dr. Tikva Blaukopf Schein explores laughter not as…
Elias V. Messinas, "Synagogues of Greece: A Study of Synagogues in Macedonia and Thrace" (Bloch Publishing, 2011)
Across Greece, once-thriving Jewish communities stood for more than two thousand years. From the Romaniote Jews of Ioannina to the great Sephardic center of Salonika, Jewish life shaped the cultural…
Steven Pinker, "When Everyone Knows That Everyone Knows...: Common Knowledge and the Mysteries of Money, Power, and Everyday Life" (Scribner, 2025)
Common knowledge is necessary for coordination, for making arbitrary but complementary choices like driving on the right, using paper currency, and coalescing behind a political leader or movement.…
Robert J. Coplan, "The Joy of Solitude: How to Reconnect with Yourself in an Overconnected World" (Simon and Schuster, 2025)
Solitude is part of the human experience. But just like other relationships, your relationship with solitude can be satisfying, intimate, and enhance your well-being, or it can leave you wanting,…
Michael Kimmel, "Playmakers: The Jewish Entrepreneurs Who Created the Toy Industry in America" (W. W. Norton & Co, 2026)
The untold story of the first-generation Jewish American toymakers who literally manufactured “the century of the child.” In 1902, Morris and Rose Michtom invented the Teddy Bear―bound by clothing…
Oren Harman, "Metamorphosis: A Natural and Human History" (Basic Books, 2025)
A search for the meaning of one of nature's greatest riddles: why do so many creatures transform? “How many creatures walking on this earth / Have their first being in another form?” the Roman poet…
Marc Berman, "Nature and the Mind: The Science of How Nature Improves Cognitive, Physical, and Social Well-Being" (Simon and Schuster, 2025)
Dr. Marc Berman, the pioneering creator of the field of environmental neuroscience, has discovered the surprising connection between mind, body, and environment, with a special emphasis on the…
Susan Weingarten, "Ancient Jewish Food in its Geographical and Cultural Contexts: What’s Cooking in the Talmuds?" (Taylor & Francis, 2025
Ancient Jewish Food in its Geographical and Cultural Contexts: What’s Cooking in the Talmuds? (Taylor & Francis, 2025) is the first in-depth study of food in talmudic literature in its…
William Ury, "Possible: How We Survive (and Thrive) in an Age of Conflict" (Harper Business, 2024)
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…
Michal Govrin et. al, "But There Was Love―Shaping the Memory of the Shoah" (de Gruyter, 2025)
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…
Maya Arad, "The Hebrew Teacher" (New Vessel Press, 2024)
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…
Shaul Kelner, "A Cold War Exodus: How American Activists Mobilized To Free Soviet Jews" (NYU Press, 2025)
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…
Danya Ruttenberg, "On Repentance and Repair: Making Amends in an Unapologetic World" (Beacon Press, 2022)
Winner of the National Jewish Book Awards in Contemporary Jewish Life & Practice and Myra H. Kraft Memorial AwardOn Repentance and Repair: Making Amends in an Unapologetic World (Beacon Press,…
Mary-Frances O’Connor, The Grieving Body: How the stress of Loss Can be an Opportunity for Healing (Harper One, 2025)
The Grieving Body: How the stress of Loss Can be an Opportunity for Healing (Harper One, 2025)by Mary-Frances O’Connor, Ph.D. The follow-up to celebrated grief expert, neuroscientist, and…
Nicole Nehrig, "With Her Own Hands: Women Weaving Their Stories" (W.W. Norton, 2025)
In this first of a series of episodes on healing, we speak with Nicole Nehrig, whose book With Her Own Hands: Women Weaving Their Stories (W.W. Norton, 2025) is a rich and intimate exploration of…
Irving (Yitz) Greenberg, "The Triumph of Life: A Narrative Theology of Judaism" (Jewish Publication Society. 2024)
The Triumph of Life is Rabbi Irving Greenberg’s magnum opus—a narrative of the relationship between God and humanity as expressed in the Jewish journey through modernity, the Holocaust, the creation…
David S. Wall, "Cybercrime: The Transformation of Crime in the Information Age" (Polity, 2024)
How has the digital revolution transformed criminal opportunities and behaviour? What is different about cybercrime compared with traditional criminal activity? What impact might cybercrime have on…
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Van Leer Institute Series on Ideas has published 166 episodes since July 2019, covering topics in Arts, Books.
Van Leer Institute Series on Ideas is currently active with new episodes every 2 weeks. Average episode length is 43m.
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