Ask Haviv Anything

Haviv Rettig Gur

"Ask Haviv Anything" is a podcast about history, a podcast you, dear listener, will help to shape and direct, focusing not just on what I want to talk about but on what you want to learn and discuss. Nothing is off limits. We're going to talk about big and painful things, and also beautiful and fascinating things, wars and identities and painful history. And also more light-hearted things. Humor matters, especially when facing tough subjects. Join me on this journey. A podcast by Haviv Rettig Gur

  1. 1 day ago

    132: What is happening now in Gaza? With Dr. Shira Efron

    To support our work, please consider joining our Patreon community (https://www.patreon.com/c/AskHavivAnything), Substack (https://havivgur.substack.com/), or Buy Me a Coffee (https://buymeacoffee.com/havivrettiggur). And be sure to check us out on Instagram (https://www.instagram.com/haviv.rettig.gur/) and TikTok (https://www.tiktok.com/@haviv.rettig.gur). -- The Gaza war may have stopped, but the struggle over Gaza’s future is only beginning. Hamas is rebuilding, Gazans remain displaced, and the American plan for disarmament, reconstruction and new governance appears stalled. Dr. Shira Efron, Gaza expert and senior fellow at RAND, joins Haviv to explain what is actually happening on the ground -- and why Israel’s failure to offer Gazans an alternative to Hamas may be its greatest strategic mistake of the war. -- This episode is sponsored by Dee Dee Whitman and dedicated to Dr. Gary B. Witman, her late husband and father of their three wonderful adult children. In Dee Dee's words: "To my children, who all chose their respective spouses both wisely and lovingly, and who, not accidentally, are all Jewish. Our purpose in this life is to be who we are and to leave this Earth a little better than we entered it. Just marrying fellow Jews, bringing up Jewish children and being proud of who we are is a win not only for our family but for our religion. Gary and I are lucky parents and grandparents." -- If you like what we do here, please consider joining our Patreon community at https://www.patreon.com/c/AskHavivAnything or our Substack at https://havivgur.substack.com/. You can also Buy Me a Coffee at https://buymeacoffee.com/havivrettiggur. It helps us keep the lights on. Patreon and Substack are also the platforms where you can ask the questions that guide the topics we cover on the podcast, join our great discussions where listeners share news and valuable resources, and take part in our monthly livestreams where Haviv answers your questions live. If you would like to sponsor an episode, please email us at haviv@askhavivanything.com⁠. Musical intro by Adam Ben Amitai.

  2. 4 days ago

    131: Why Christians are disappearing from the Middle East, with Amb. George Deek

    To support our work, please consider joining our Patreon community (https://www.patreon.com/c/AskHavivAnything), Substack (https://havivgur.substack.com/), or Buy Me a Coffee (https://buymeacoffee.com/havivrettiggur). And be sure to check us out on Instagram (https://www.instagram.com/haviv.rettig.gur/) and TikTok (https://www.tiktok.com/@haviv.rettig.gur). -- Israel’s first special envoy to the Christian world, Ambassador George Deek, joins Haviv for a sweeping conversation about Christians in Israel, Palestinian Christians, the disappearance of ancient Christian communities across the Middle East, and the strange new alliance targeting Israel from both the far left and far right. Drawing on his own family’s extraordinary journey from Palestinian refugees to full participation in Israeli society, Deek offers a powerful argument for responsibility over victimhood -- and for building a future rather than remaining imprisoned by the past. -- This episode is dedicated by Peter Fine of New York to his family in Israel. In his words: “Originally, my family’s name was Zavodnick. They came from Mezritch in today's northwest Ukraine. My maternal grandfather was the oldest of 5 brothers and came to New York via Canada around WW1. He came for many reasonsl but the one relayed to me the most was the fear of Cossacks and not wanting to subscribe to the ‘death sentence’ for Jewish people serving in the Russian Army. “After immigration to the US was essentially shut down for East European Jews in the 1920s, my grandfather's four younger brothers emigrated to Palestine in the 1920s and 1930s. Most settled in and around Haifa. Name changes to Bar-Akiva and Zavod followed. They were an incredibly bright, energetic group. They started businesses and kibbutzim while one brother went to Spain in the 30s to fight with the anti-fascists and died in battle. “I had only a vague awareness of this family growing up in New York as my parents were preoccupied with the daily struggle of making a living, raising kids and caring for indigent relatives stuck in poorer neighborhoods in the city. As a student at NYU in the early 1980s, I met a cousin, Oded, who was a wandering soul and was working in a cafe in the East Village. He opened my eyes to the treasure of my mom’s family in Israel. A backpacking summer in Israel and then Europe in ’83 changed everything. I heard stories of the founding of Israel, relatives who had passed and of course service in various wars. I stayed with family in a kibbutz near the Lebanon border and the Carmel neighborhood of Haifa. We struggled to communicate in broken Hebrew, some English and a bit of Yiddish. I have traveled to Israel many times since and cherish my relationships with cousins there. Their courage, their intelligence and deep belief in the Zionist dream is inspiring. I often wonder how these decent, compassionate souls have been transformed into ‘colonialists’ and ‘imperialists’ by the mob that dominates the media and public discourse in the States. It’s outrageous." Thank you to Peter for sponsoring the episode and dedicating it to his family and its remarkable story. Many listeners have shared with us their family’s journey through the tumultuous 20th century, helping us all to better understand our collective story. -- If you like what we do here, please consider joining our Patreon community at https://www.patreon.com/c/AskHavivAnything or our Substack at https://havivgur.substack.com/. You can also Buy Me a Coffee at https://buymeacoffee.com/havivrettiggur. It helps us keep the lights on. Patreon and Substack are also the platforms where you can ask the questions that guide the topics we cover on the podcast, join our great discussions where listeners share news and valuable resources, and take part in our monthly livestreams where Haviv answers your questions live. If you would like to sponsor an episode, please email us at haviv@askhavivanything.com⁠. Musical intro by Adam Ben Amitai.

  3. 10 Jul

    130: Here's to the next 250 years

    To support our work, please consider joining our Patreon community (https://www.patreon.com/c/AskHavivAnything), Substack (https://havivgur.substack.com/), or Buy Me a Coffee (https://buymeacoffee.com/havivrettiggur). And be sure to check us out on Instagram (https://www.instagram.com/haviv.rettig.gur/) and TikTok (https://www.tiktok.com/@haviv.rettig.gur). -- America’s 250th birthday came and went. Americans celebrated – or fretted about – their past and looked forward to their future. Now, a week later, recorded on an ordinary Thursday that commemorates no great war or rebellion, Haviv offers belated good wishes for America’s next 250 years. The real miracle of America, after all, isn’t in epic triumphs of the sort commemorated on July 4, but in the ordinary, messy days between the holidays, in the humble, everyday pragmatism, built-in institutional humility and wild inventiveness that gave the world its first large-scale democracy. -- This episode is sponsored by the adult children of David Altman and Eugene Roberts, two eminent Jewish-American rocket scientists who -- with full US government approval -- contributed vital expertise to Israel’s security. May their memories be a blessing! Am Yisrael Chai! -- If you like what we do here, please consider joining our Patreon community at https://www.patreon.com/c/AskHavivAnything or our Substack at https://havivgur.substack.com/. You can also Buy Me a Coffee at https://buymeacoffee.com/havivrettiggur. It helps us keep the lights on. Patreon and Substack are also the platforms where you can ask the questions that guide the topics we cover on the podcast, join our great discussions where listeners share news and valuable resources, and take part in our monthly livestreams where Haviv answers your questions live. If you would like to sponsor an episode, please email us at haviv@askhavivanything.com⁠. Musical intro by Adam Ben Amitai.

  4. 8 Jul

    129: Iran is closer to freedom than you think, with Armin Navabi

    To support our work, please consider joining our Patreon community (https://www.patreon.com/c/AskHavivAnything), Substack (https://havivgur.substack.com/), or Buy Me a Coffee (https://buymeacoffee.com/havivrettiggur). And be sure to check us out on Instagram (https://www.instagram.com/haviv.rettig.gur/) and TikTok (https://www.tiktok.com/@haviv.rettig.gur). -- Is the Iranian regime finally on the path toward collapse? In this episode, Iran-born political analyst Armin Navabi (from the YouTube channel Liberty Politics) takes us inside the mind of the Iranian people and the fractured Islamic Republic. We break down the four warring factions within the regime, the controversial strategy behind the Trump MOU (and why it might be doing more harm to the regime than the war itself), and why the Iranian resistance rallied behind Reza Pahlavi. Plus, why arming the Iranian people might achieve what air strikes could not. -- This episode is sponsored by Torie Sepah and Ron Shatzmiller, husband and wife physicians, who run the Pasadena Neuropsychiatry Center in California. They are proud to be one of the few elite providers of Brainsway Transcranial Magnetic Stimulation, an Israeli technology used for treatment-resistant depression. Ron was born in Israel and Torie was born in Iran. They would like to dedicate this episode to the memory of the 40,000 peaceful protesters murdered by the Iranian regime. -- If you like what we do here, please consider joining our Patreon community at https://www.patreon.com/c/AskHavivAnything or our Substack at https://havivgur.substack.com/. You can also Buy Me a Coffee at https://buymeacoffee.com/havivrettiggur. It helps us keep the lights on. Patreon and Substack are also the platforms where you can ask the questions that guide the topics we cover on the podcast, join our great discussions where listeners share news and valuable resources, and take part in our monthly livestreams where Haviv answers your questions live. If you would like to sponsor an episode, please email us at haviv@askhavivanything.com⁠. Musical intro by Adam Ben Amitai.

  5. 3 Jul

    128: Iran, Gaza and the new American right, with Sohrab Ahmari

    To support our work, please consider joining our Patreon community (https://www.patreon.com/c/AskHavivAnything), Substack (https://havivgur.substack.com/), or Buy Me a Coffee (https://buymeacoffee.com/havivrettiggur). And be sure to check us out on Instagram (https://www.instagram.com/haviv.rettig.gur/) and TikTok (https://www.tiktok.com/@haviv.rettig.gur). -- In this episode, Haviv sits down with Sohrab Ahmari -- Iranian-born American conservative writer, JD Vance confidant and US editor at Unherd -- to hash out the big questions that now divide Israelis and Americans. Is the obsessive focus on Gaza and the West Bank legitimate moral scrutiny, or antisemitism wearing a new mask? Can Israel survive its undeterrable enemies -- Hamas, Hezbollah, and an Iranian regime that has spent 47 years treating its destruction as theology -- while its key ally fractures? Does Israel rely too much on "omnibelicosity?" Was Israel once a "moral beacon" of the West? And what benefit is there to such a status when facing a multi-front war against a theological death cult that demands your destruction? There are no comforting answers here. Only brutal dilemmas that will shape the next decade in the Middle East and in the US-Israel relationship. -- This episode is sponsored by Julie and Frank Cohen and dedicated to the memory of those murdered on October 7, 2023. -- If you like what we do here, please consider joining our Patreon community at https://www.patreon.com/c/AskHavivAnything or our Substack at https://havivgur.substack.com/. You can also Buy Me a Coffee at https://buymeacoffee.com/havivrettiggur. It helps us keep the lights on. Patreon and Substack are also the platforms where you can ask the questions that guide the topics we cover on the podcast, join our great discussions where listeners share news and valuable resources, and take part in our monthly livestreams where Haviv answers your questions live. If you would like to sponsor an episode, please email us at haviv@askhavivanything.com⁠. Musical intro by Adam Ben Amitai.

  6. 30 Jun

    127: Does Islam hate Jews? With Prof. Meir Litvak

    To support our work, please consider joining our Patreon community (https://www.patreon.com/c/AskHavivAnything), Substack (https://havivgur.substack.com/), or Buy Me a Coffee (https://buymeacoffee.com/havivrettiggur). And be sure to check us out on Instagram (https://www.instagram.com/haviv.rettig.gur/) and TikTok (https://www.tiktok.com/@haviv.rettig.gur). -- What’s the real history of antisemitism in the Muslim world? Haviv sits down with Prof. Meir Litvak of Tel Aviv University, one of Israel’s foremost scholars of modern Shi’a Islam, Iran, Islamism and Islamist antisemitism, to trace the story of Muslim hatred of Jews from Muhammad’s encounter with the Jews of Medina to the dhimmi system that arose in early Islam, from the medieval mix of tolerance and discrimination to the modern-day shock of European power, Zionism and the 1948 war. The result of this sweeping survey is neither a comforting myth of Muslim-Jewish harmony nor a simplistic story of eternal persecution. It is a harder, more disturbing picture: a long religious tradition of Jewish inferiority transformed in the modern age -- by European conspiracy theories, Muslim political collapse and the humiliation of defeat by Jews -- into one of the world’s most openly genocidal forms of antisemitism. And the final question is the hardest one: can Muslim societies find a way out? -- This episode was sponsored by an individual who chose to remain anonymous but asked us to share this message: “I was invited to hear a former IDF officer, blinded in a Hamas tunnel, speak about the Israel Guide Dog Center. I wish to highlight this incredible organization. It is far more than a place for adorable puppies -- it’s a lifeline for people across Israel. “As the country’s only internationally accredited guide dog and service dog organization, it is transforming the lives of Israelis every day by providing guide dogs that restore independence and safety for the blind and visually impaired, PTSD service dogs that bring stability and healing to IDF veterans, and emotional support dogs that offer comfort to children with special needs and families coping with trauma.” Thank to our sponsor for that dedication. The Israel Guide Dog Center can be found at https://israelguidedog.org. -- If you like what we do here, please consider joining our Patreon community at https://www.patreon.com/c/AskHavivAnything or our Substack at https://havivgur.substack.com/. You can also Buy Me a Coffee at https://buymeacoffee.com/havivrettiggur. It helps us keep the lights on. Patreon and Substack are also the platforms where you can ask the questions that guide the topics we cover on the podcast, join our great discussions where listeners share news and valuable resources, and take part in our monthly livestreams where Haviv answers your questions live. If you would like to sponsor an episode, please email us at haviv@askhavivanything.com⁠. Musical intro by Adam Ben Amitai.

  7. 25 Jun

    126: Will your kid's best friend be a robot? With Dr. Micah Goodman

    To support our work, please consider joining our Patreon community (https://www.patreon.com/c/AskHavivAnything), Substack (https://havivgur.substack.com/), or Buy Me a Coffee (https://buymeacoffee.com/havivrettiggur). And be sure to check us out on Instagram (https://www.instagram.com/haviv.rettig.gur/) and TikTok (https://www.tiktok.com/@haviv.rettig.gur). -- Haviv sits down with Dr. Micah Goodman, his former Maimonides professor, influential Israeli public intellectual, founder of the educational network Mabua, and co-host of the Hebrew podcast Mifleget Hamakhshavot, to confront what may be the most consequential development in human history. Micah argues that AI is not another technology. It is technology that creates intelligence, reversing the fundamental pattern of human progress in which human intelligence alone could create technology. We explore the emergence of behaviors no one programmed into these systems, including self-preservation and deception, and why some of the people at the cutting edge of AI assign disturbingly high probabilities to catastrophic outcomes. But we don't stop at mere doom-saying. We look into the quiet trade-offs already underway in this new world: what happens to our capacity to think, write, and form real human connections when we outsource those functions to machines that do them faster and often better, and with less risk. Micah argues that in the age of AI, ancient traditions may become more valuable than ever -- not as nostalgia, but as a deliberate compensatory culture to keep our humanity from atrophying. A calm, upbeat conversation about the end of the world as we knew it, and about fighting to preserve the truly precious things. -- This episode is sponsored by Peter Fine, who asked to dedicate the episode to "my 3 children, Sarah, Robby and Katie, all children of Israel who God-willing will soon beget their own children of Israel. Lovers of family, fun and all things Jewish, they seem to have absorbed the primary lessons of being Jewish: Keep the historical chain of our people going and take joy in being Jewish. I am very proud of the people they have turned out to be. "I hope they find in the Ask Haviv Anything podcast learning and insight into their history as Jewish people, the history of our cousins in Israel and some insight and language to understand the increasing complexity of living in a world that doesn’t seem to understand us and needs us to explain ourselves in a forthright intelligent way. The podcast helps me and I think will help them in the acquisition of these insights and language." Thank you, Peter, for that dedication. -- If you like what we do here, please consider joining our Patreon community at https://www.patreon.com/c/AskHavivAnything or our Substack at https://havivgur.substack.com/. You can also Buy Me a Coffee at https://buymeacoffee.com/havivrettiggur. It helps us keep the lights on. Patreon and Substack are also the platforms where you can ask the questions that guide the topics we cover on the podcast, join our great discussions where listeners share news and valuable resources, and take part in our monthly livestreams where Haviv answers your questions live. If you would like to sponsor an episode, please email us at haviv@askhavivanything.com⁠. Musical intro by Adam Ben Amitai.

  8. 21 Jun

    125: Did Netanyahu misread Trump? With Ross Douthat

    To support our work, please consider joining our Patreon community (https://www.patreon.com/c/AskHavivAnything), Substack (https://havivgur.substack.com/), or Buy Me a Coffee (https://buymeacoffee.com/havivrettiggur). And be sure to check us out on Instagram (https://www.instagram.com/haviv.rettig.gur/) and TikTok (https://www.tiktok.com/@haviv.rettig.gur). — Ross Douthat, author and New York Times columnist, joins the podcast to discuss this fraught moment in the US-Israel relationship. We discuss Netanyahu’s role in shaping Trump’s regime-change gamble in Iran, the limits of American willingness to absorb prolonged pain, how American identification with Israel – and not just hostility or bigotry in some political spaces – makes policy disagreements feel uniquely personal and intense. We also dig into Israel’s failure to explain its wars, especially in Gaza, and the rise of conspiracism on the American right. Ross comes to the conversation shortly after interviewing Vice President JD Vance on, among other things, the strained state of the US-Israel relationship. He offers some direct advice: Israelis must argue specifics, engage the center-left, and tell their story clearly, or risk losing reasonable supporters they cannot afford to lose. -- Israel became the Startup Nation by turning talent into strength. Ideas into industries. For more than a century, the Technion has trained the engineers, scientists, and entrepreneurs who transformed Israel into the Startup Nation and delivered breakthroughs that changed the world. Now Technion scientists are advancing the next wave of innovation to help power Israel’s next chapter. Israel. Engineered by the Technion. Join us. Visit https://ats.org/rebuild . -- If you like what we do here, please consider joining our Patreon community at https://www.patreon.com/c/AskHavivAnything or our Substack at https://havivgur.substack.com/. You can also Buy Me a Coffee at https://buymeacoffee.com/havivrettiggur. It helps us keep the lights on. Patreon and Substack are also the platforms where you can ask the questions that guide the topics we cover on the podcast, join our great discussions where listeners share news and valuable resources, and take part in our monthly livestreams where Haviv answers your questions live. If you would like to sponsor an episode, please email us at haviv@askhavivanything.com⁠. Musical intro by Adam Ben Amitai.

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Hosts & Guests

About

"Ask Haviv Anything" is a podcast about history, a podcast you, dear listener, will help to shape and direct, focusing not just on what I want to talk about but on what you want to learn and discuss. Nothing is off limits. We're going to talk about big and painful things, and also beautiful and fascinating things, wars and identities and painful history. And also more light-hearted things. Humor matters, especially when facing tough subjects. Join me on this journey. A podcast by Haviv Rettig Gur

Information

  • Creator
    Haviv Rettig Gur
  • Years Active
    2025 - 2026
  • Episodes
    137
  • Rating
    Explicit
  • Copyright
    © Haviv Rettig Gur
  • Show Website
    Ask Haviv Anything

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