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Van Leer Institute Series on Ideas

New Books Network

Interviews with thought-leaders about their new books. Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/van-leer-institute

arts books

All Episodes

33:54

Marc Berman, "Nature and the Mind: The Science of How...

Van Leer Institute Series on Ideas ·

2026/01/08

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 natural environment. He has devoted his life to studying it. If you sometimes feel drained, distracted, or depressed, Dr. Berman has identified the elements of a “nature prescription” that can boost your energy, sharpen your focus, change your mood, and improve your mental and physical health. He also reveals

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37:27

Susan Weingarten, "Ancient Jewish Food in its...

Van Leer Institute Series on Ideas ·

2025/12/13

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 geographical and cultural contexts. It demonstrates the sharing of foods and foodways between Jews and their non-Jewish neighbours in the Near East in Late Antiquity.Using both ancient written sources and archaeological evidence, this book sets the foods of the Mishnah and Palestinian Talmud in their Graeco-Roman

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34:32

William Ury, "Possible: How We Survive (and Thrive)...

Van Leer Institute Series on Ideas ·

2025/11/15

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 workplaces to our world. In nearly every area of society, we are fighting more and collaborating less, especially over crucial problems that demand

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33:41

Michal Govrin et. al, "But There Was Love―Shaping the...

Van Leer Institute Series on Ideas ·

2025/11/12

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-Jewish human struggle in facing dehumanization and extermination as the essence of the Shoah, challenging us with a profound ethical call. Learn more about

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27:24

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

Van Leer Institute Series on Ideas ·

2025/11/03

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 son left Israel to make his fortune in Silicon Valley, pays an unwanted visit to meet her new grandson and discovers cracks in the family’s perfect

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36:11

Shaul Kelner, "A Cold War Exodus: How American...

Van Leer Institute Series on Ideas ·

2025/11/02

Winner of The 74th National Jewish Book Award: American Jewish Studies Celebrate 350 AwardReveals the mass mobilization tactics that helped free Soviet Jews and reshaped the Jewish American experience from the Johnson era through the Reagan–Bush yearsWhat do these things have in common? Ingrid Bergman, Passover matzoh, Banana Republic®, the fitness craze, the Philadelphia Flyers, B-grade spy movies, and ten thousand Bar and Bat Mitzvah sermons? Nothing, except that social movement activists

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31:46

Danya Ruttenberg, "On Repentance and Repair: Making...

Van Leer Institute Series on Ideas ·

2025/10/04

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, 2022) is a crucial new lens on repentance, atonement, forgiveness, and repair from harm—from personal transgressions to our culture's most painful and unresolved issues.American culture focuses on letting go of grudges and redemption narratives instead of the perpetrator’s obligations or recompense for

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37:16

Mary-Frances O’Connor, The Grieving Body: How the...

Van Leer Institute Series on Ideas ·

2025/09/14

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 psychologist Dr. Mary-Frances O’Connor’s The Grieving Brain focuses on the impact of grief—and life’s other major stressors—on the human body. Coping with death and grief is one of the most painful human experiences. While we can speak to the psychological and emotional ramifications of loss and sorrow, we often

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39:40

Nicole Nehrig, "With Her Own Hands: Women Weaving...

Van Leer Institute Series on Ideas ·

2025/09/03

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 how women have used textile work to create meaningful lives, from ancient mythology to our current moment.Knitting, sewing, embroidery, quilting―throughout history, these and other forms of textile work have often been dismissed as merely “women’s work” and attached to ideas of domesticity and obedience

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42:41

Irving (Yitz) Greenberg, "The Triumph of Life: A...

Van Leer Institute Series on Ideas ·

2025/07/23

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 of Israel, and the birth of Judaism’s next era.Greenberg describes Judaism’s utopian vision of a world created by a God who loves life, who invites humans to live on the side of life, and who enables the forces of life to triumph over death. The Bible proclaims our mission of tikkun olam, repairing the

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29:47

David S. Wall, "Cybercrime: The Transformation of...

Van Leer Institute Series on Ideas ·

2025/07/13

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 public security?In this updated edition of his authoritative and field-defining text, cybercrime expert David Wall carefully examines these and other important issues. Incorporating analysis of the latest technological advances and their criminological implications, he disentangles what is really known

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37:42

Rebecca Lemov, "The Instability of Truth:...

Van Leer Institute Series on Ideas ·

2025/07/11

Because brainwashing affects both the world and our observation of the world, we often don’t recognize it while it’s happening—unless we know where to look. As Rebecca Lemov writes in The Instability of Truth, “Brainwashing erases itself.” What we call brainwashing is more common than we think; it is not so much what happens to other people as what can happen to anyone. The Instability of Truth exposes the myriad ways our minds can be controlled against our will, from the brainwashing techniques

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34:58

Cary Nelson, "Mindless: What Happened to...

Van Leer Institute Series on Ideas ·

2025/06/13

In Mindless: What Happened to Universities?, renowned scholar and former president of the American Association of University Professors Cary Nelson delivers a searing indictment of modern higher education. Once bastions of open debate and critical thinking, universities have become ideological battlegrounds where dissent is silenced, academic freedom is under siege, and antisemitism is repackaged as social justice.Against the backdrop of Hamas’ brutal invasion of Israel and massacre of civilians

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42:47

Owen Flanagan, "What Is It Like to Be an Addict?:...

Van Leer Institute Series on Ideas ·

2025/06/11

A powerful and important exploration of how addiction functions on social, psychological and biological levels, integrated with the experience of being an addict, from an acclaimed philosopher and former addict.What is addiction? Theories about what kind of thing addiction is are sharply divided between those who see it purely as a brain disorder, and those who conceive of it in psychological and social terms. Owen Flanagan, an acclaimed philosopher of mind and ethics, offers a state-of-the-art

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39:53

Elaine Pagels, "Miracles and Wonder:The Historical...

Van Leer Institute Series on Ideas ·

2025/05/12

Early in her career, Elaine Pagels changed our understanding of the origins of Christianity with her work in The Gnostic Gospels. Now, in the culmination of a decades-long career, she explores the biggest subject of all, Jesus. In Miracles and Wonder:The Historical Mystery of Jesus (Doubleday, 2025) she sets out to discover how a poor young Jewish man inspired a religion that shaped the world.The book reads like a historical mystery, with each chapter addressing a fascinating question and answering

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41:31

Sandra Matz, "Mindmasters: The Data-Driven Science of...

Van Leer Institute Series on Ideas ·

2025/05/07

A fascinating exploration of how algorithms penetrate the most intimate aspects of our psychology—from the pioneering expert on psychological targeting.There are more pieces of digital data than there are stars in the universe. This data helps us monitor our planet, decipher our genetic code, and take a deep dive into our psychology. As algorithms become increasingly adept at accessing the human mind, they also become more and more powerful at controlling it, enticing us to buy a certain product

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28:32

David Resnick, "Empowered or Abused: The Bible's Plan...

Van Leer Institute Series on Ideas ·

2025/05/03

What to do when a victorious soldier lusts for the beautiful woman he’s just taken captive in an overseas war. In fact, her body already belongs to him as war booty. If they’re alone in an alley, no one will find out what he does to her.That’s the incendiary situation to which the Bible responds with the Beautiful Captive Law. The Bible’s first step was to stop battlefield rape and protect the vulnerable woman from the powerful soldier. More than that, the Bible has strategies to get the soldier

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31:44

Jerome Gellman, "The Problem of God in Jewish...

Van Leer Institute Series on Ideas ·

2025/04/23

The Hebrew Bible contains two quite different divine personae. One is quick to anger and to exact punishment while the other is a compassionate God slow to anger and quick to forgive. One God distant, the other close by.This severe contrast posed a theological challenge for Jewish thought for the ages. The Problem of God in Jewish Thought (Cambridge UP, 2025)follows selected views in rabbinic literature, medieval Jewish philosophy, Jewish mystical thought, the Hasidic movement, modern Jewish

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41:15

Keith J. Hayward, "Infantilised: How Our Culture...

Van Leer Institute Series on Ideas ·

2025/04/11

Have you ever noticed that in areas of everyday life, rather than being addressed like a mature adult, you're increasingly treated like an irresponsible child in constant need of instruction and protection?Noticing society's creeping descent into infantilisation is one thing, however understanding the roots and causes of the phenomenon is not quite so easy. But in this topical and vitally important new work, cultural theorist and academic, Dr Keith Hayward, exposes the deep social, psychological

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38:43

James Davison Hunter, "Democracy and Solidarity: On...

Van Leer Institute Series on Ideas ·

2025/04/09

Liberal democracy in America has always contained contradictions—most notably, a noble but abstract commitment to freedom, justice, and equality that, tragically, has seldom been realized in practice. While these contradictions have caused dissent and even violence, there was always an underlying and evolving solidarity drawn from the cultural resources of America’s “hybrid Enlightenment.” James Davison Hunter, who introduced the concept of “culture wars” thirty years ago, tells us in Democracy and

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