Van Leer Institute Series on Ideas

New Books Network
  • 5.0 (6)
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Interviews with thought-leaders about their new books. Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/van-leer-institute

  1. May 16

    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 shows up. He functions. He is, by every external measure, fine. But every morning begins the same way. A thought.A negotiation.A choice. Told with striking emotional precision, Still Here takes readers inside an experience that is often hidden, misunderstood, or reduced to moments of emergency. This is not that story. This is the story of what it means to live with it over years, across a lifetime, while continuing to build a life, a family, and a sense of purpose. Interwoven throughout the novel are clinical sidebars that offer insight into the psychology of suicidal thinking, making this book not only deeply human but also deeply informative for: those who struggle silently those who love someone who does clinicians, educators, and helpers This is not a rescue manual.It is something rarer. A book that stays. If you are in immediate distress, please seek support. Crisis resources are included at the end of the book. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/van-leer-institute

    44 min

  2. May 12

    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 in our species alone has been transformed into one of our most persistent and universal motivations: the longing to matter. Drawing on biology, psychology, and philosophy, in The Mattering Instinct: How Our Deepest Longing Drives Us and Divides Us (Liveright Publishing, 2026) Goldstein argues that this need to matter―and the various “mattering projects” it inspires―is the source of our greatest progress and our deepest conflicts: the very crux of the human experience.Goldstein brings this profound idea to life through unforgettable stories of famous and not-so-famous people pursuing their unique mattering projects: the ragtime genius Scott Joplin, whose dedication to his ignored masterpiece, Treemonisha, ended in tragedy; the pioneering psychologist William James, who rose above the depression of his young adulthood to become perhaps the first great theorist of mattering; an impoverished Chinese woman who rescued abandoned newborns from the trash; and a neo-Nazi skinhead who as a young man dealt racial violence to feel he mattered but ultimately renounced that hateful past after realizing that mattering isn’t a zero-sum game. These portraits illuminate how our instinct for significance shapes identity, relationships, culture, and conflict―and they point the way to a future where we all might see that there is, fundamentally, enough mattering to go around.Deeply revealing and insightful, and decades in the making, The Mattering Instinct is a must read for those curious about why we seek to matter to ourselves and others―and how this insatiable longing that drives us apart may be the key to finally understanding each other. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/van-leer-institute

    44 min

  3. May 8

    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. This deadly strain of hatred often turns against other minority groups too, not to mention foundational democratic values, beginning with equal rights and equal protection before the law. Therefore, antisemitism should be viewed as a universal human rights issue of importance to all, and not solely as a parochial Jewish or Israeli concern.Antisemitism: What Everyone Needs to Know (Oxford UP, 2025) explores how, in the 21st century, antisemitism is once again resurgent. In recent years, the FBI reported that well over half of all religiously motivated hate crimes in the United States targeted Jews, even though Jews comprise just over two percent of the population. It is striking how little understood antisemitism, including the term itself, still is. This extends quite widely to political leaders, educational authorities, law enforcement and the judiciary, civic groups, and media outlets. Polls have also shown how knowledge of the Holocaust, which was widely considered to be a firewall against the resurgence of antisemitism, is declining, notwithstanding ongoing attention to the topic in education, museums and memorials, and culture. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/van-leer-institute

    35 min

  4. Apr 18

    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 humor, but as power. Across ancient Roman and rabbinic texts, laughter could strengthen leadership, threaten institutions, or expose hidden fear. The same laugh that comforts one audience can unsettle another. Our conversation moves from classical literature to contemporary academic life, touching on scholarship, family, identity, and the challenges facing Jewish and Israeli scholars today. Along the way emerges a surprising idea: societies become nervous about laughter precisely when they feel most fragile. Thoughtful, personal, and deeply relevant, this episode asks why humans so often laugh in moments of crisis — and what that laughter reveals about hope, survival, and meaning. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/van-leer-institute

    35 min

  5. Apr 13

    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 and urban fabric of the eastern Mediterranean. During the Holocaust, approximately 87 percent of Greek Jewry was murdered — one of the highest destruction rates in Europe. Entire communities disappeared almost overnight. What remained were buildings — sometimes abandoned, sometimes altered, sometimes barely recognizable — silent witnesses to lives erased. For more than three decades, architect, researcher, and author Elias V. Messinas has devoted his life to documenting, restoring, and re-interpreting these synagogues and Jewish spaces. His major works include: The Synagogues of Greece: A Study of Synagogues in Macedonia and Thrace, a foundational architectural and historical survey, The Synagogue of Verona, a landmark study in restoration practice, Kahal Shalom: The Synagogue of Kos — A Chronicle of Research, Restoration, Sanctity and Ecology, and his recent reflective work, The Synagogue, which explores memory, encounter, and meaning through these spaces. Messinas is both architect and historian — but perhaps most importantly, a custodian of memory, working to preserve places whose congregations no longer exist. Renee Garfinkel, Ph.D. is a psychologist, writer, Middle East television commentator, and host of the New Books Network’s Van Leer Jerusalem Series on Ideas. Write her at reneeg@vanleer.org.il. She's on Twitter @embracingwisdom. She blogs here and also contributes here. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/van-leer-institute

    39 min

  6. Mar 23

    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. It’s also necessary for social coordination: everything from rendezvousing at a time and place to speaking the same language to forming enduring relationships of friendship, romance, or authority. Humans have a sixth sense for common knowledge, and we create it with signals like laughter, tears, blushing, eye contact, and blunt speech. But people also go to great lengths to avoid common knowledge—to ensure that even if everyone knows something, they can’t know that everyone else knows they know it. And so we get rituals like benign hypocrisy, veiled bribes and threats, sexual innuendo, and pretending not to see the elephant in the room. In When Everyone Knows That Everyone Knows…: Common Knowledge and the Mysteries of Money, Power, and Everyday Life (Scribner, 2026) Pinker shows how the hidden logic of common knowledge can make sense of many of life’s enigmas: financial bubbles and crashes, revolutions that come out of nowhere, the posturing and pretense of diplomacy, the eruption of social media shaming mobs and academic cancel culture, the awkwardness of a first date. Artists and humorists have long mined the intrigues of common knowledge, and Pinker liberally uses their novels, jokes, cartoons, films, and sitcom dialogues to illuminate social life’s tragedies and comedies. Along the way he answers questions like: -Why do people hoard toilet paper at the first sign of an emergency? -Why are Super Bowl ads dominated by crypto? -Why, in American presidential primary voting, do citizens typically select the candidate they believe is preferred by others rather than their favorite? -Why did Russian authorities arrest a protester who carried a blank sign? -Why is it so hard for nervous lovers to say goodbye at the end of a phone call? -Why does everyone agree that if we were completely honest all the time, life would be unbearable? Steven Pinker is the Johnstone Professor of Psychology at Harvard University. Renee Garfinkel, Ph.D. is a psychologist, writer, Middle East television commentator, and host of the New Books Network’s Van Leer Jerusalem Series on Ideas. Write her at reneeg@vanleer.org.il. She's on Twitter @embracingwisdom. She blogs here and also contributes here. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/van-leer-institute

    35 min

  7. Mar 18

    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, stuck in a cycle of sadness, anxiety, or anger. Regardless of whether you're starved for “me time” or struggling with loneliness, most of us have never thought carefully about how to get the most out of the time we spend by ourselves. As a result, we’re missing out on what could be a deeply enriching aspect of our lives. But how can we unlock the positive power of solitude?  In The Joy of Solitude: How to Reconnect with Yourself in an Overconnected World (Simon and Schuster, 2025) Robert Coplan draws from diverse fields including psychology, neuroscience, literature, and sociology to guide readers through solitude’s many dimensions and its profound effects on mental health and well-being. In this enlightening book, you will discover:  The many different types of solitude, ranging from enjoyable to challenging, each influencing personal experiences in unique ways. Why choosing to spend even fifteen minutes alone each day can help stabilize your mood, recharge your battery, and spark creativity. A deeper understanding of extraverts and introverts and their (often misunderstood) relationship to solitude. -What alone time looks like in a world where social connection is always a click away.  Groundbreaking scientific insights into the effects of both loneliness and “aloneliness.” The surprising ways that time alone can enhance relationships with others. Practical strategies for harmonizing moments of social engagement and solitude, crucial for achieving optimal life satisfaction.  The Joy of Solitude is a vital resource for those who wish to understand the complexities of solitude and its potential to enhance mental health, creativity, and self-discovery. Whether you seek affirmation for your love of solitude or strive to find balance within it, Coplan’s insights are indispensable tools for enriching your relationship with yourself and others. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/van-leer-institute

    31 min

  8. Mar 14

    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 scraps, stuffed with sawdust, and given button eyes with a sad, longing expression―in the back room of their Brooklyn candy store. Together they launched the Ideal Toy Corporation, joining a set of other poor, first-generation Jewish toymakers: the Hassenfeld brothers of Hasbro, Ruth Moskowicz and Elliot Handler of Mattel, and Joshua Lionel Cowan of Lionel Trains. From Barbie and G.I. Joe to Popeye, Superman, and Mr. Potato Head, Playmakers: The Jewish Entrepreneurs Who Created the Toy Industry in America (W. W. Norton & Co, 2026) reveals how the toy industry created the idealized American childhood: an enchanted world, full of wild creatures and eternal struggles between good and evil, with endless realms of fantasy and beauty. For much of the twentieth century, every part of the American toy business was largely Jewish―the company founders, executives, and designers, as well as the factory workers, wholesale distributors, retail outlets, and armies of salesmen. A descendant of the founders of the Ideal Toy Corporation, Michael Kimmel shows how these poor, often Yiddish-speaking, tenement-dwelling children of immigrants invented a world they never experienced for themselves. Along with the toys and Jewish toymakers that climbed the ladder of success, Kimmel also portrays the rise of an entire culture focused on children, led by Jewish comic book creators, children’s authors, parenting experts, and child psychologists. The first full-scale toy history of the United States, Kimmel’s story conjures the colorful, imaginative, restless spirits who followed the promise of the American Dream―and describes the ways in which the world they came from molded their beloved creations. Playmakers shows that the overlapping experiences of being a Jew, an immigrant, and a child in twentieth-century America―an outsider looking in, a person desperate to be accepted―created childhood as we know it today. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/van-leer-institute

    33 min
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Ratings & Reviews

5
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6 Ratings

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

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