Tel Aviv Diary Podcast

Marc Schulman
  • 5.0 (2)
  • News
  • Updated Biweekly

Twice weekly, Marc Schulman shares sharp, pragmatic insights into Israeli affairs and global tech—drawing on decades as a Newsweek columnist and Apple developer. Veteran journalist and historian Marc Schulman offers sharp, unfiltered insight into current events in Israel. An American-born commentator who has lived in Israel on and off since 1975, Marc wrote a long-running weekly column on Israel for Newsweek and brings decades of deep engagement with Israeli politics, society, and history. His perspective is iconoclastic, pragmatic, and often challenges conventional narratives. Each episode combines personal observations with sharp political analysis, covering everything from the weekly rallies at Hostage Square to the intricate negotiations surrounding ceasefire deals. Marc doesn't shy away from difficult topics—whether it's critiquing government policies, analyzing the military draft controversy, or exploring the broader implications of regional conflicts with Hamas, Hezbollah, and Iran. Beyond Middle Eastern affairs, the podcast ventures into global politics, economics, and emerging technology, examining how international developments impact daily life in Israel. From trade policy critiques to AI's revolutionary impact on truth and reality, Marc brings a historian's perspective to contemporary events. Tel Aviv Diary is essential listening for anyone seeking an authentic, ground-level view of Israeli society during wartime—complete with the frustrations, hopes, and hard truths that come with living through historic events as they unfold. Raw, honest, and deeply personal, each episode captures the weight of the moment while grappling with questions that extend far beyond Israel's borders. marcschulman.substack.com

  1. 2d ago

    After the Flydubai Attack: Israel Heads Toward an Election: as America Faces Its Own Reckoning

    Marc Schulman returns to Tel Aviv after two weeks in the United States to a country already focused on the October 27 election—and still absorbing the extraordinary attempted destruction of a Flydubai flight bound for Israel. Marc examines the questions raised by the attack, including how a potentially dangerous pilot was able to fly a route into Israel, and what the episode says about Israel’s security establishment. With the anniversary of October 7 approaching, he turns to an election campaign increasingly centered on responsibility for the failures that preceded the attack and the continuing absence of a national commission of inquiry. He also looks at what Israelis mean when they say the country has “moved to the right” since October 7, the changing attitudes of younger Israelis, and the political arithmetic that could determine who is able to form the next government. Then the focus shifts to the United States: the approaching midterm elections, what changes in Congress could mean for Israel, continuing uncertainty over another confrontation with Iran, and Marc’s growing concern about the extraordinary speed of artificial intelligence—and whether governments are running out of time to regulate it. A wide-ranging Tel Aviv Diary about Israel three weeks before an election, America approaching its own political test, and a world in which politics, war, and technology are changing with remarkable speed. This is a public episode. If you'd like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit marcschulman.substack.com/subscribe

    After the Flydubai Attack: Israel Heads Toward an Election: as America Faces Its Own Reckoning

  2. Sep 25

    Replacing size with speed: the Israeli company reinventing the speaker

    For 150 years, every speaker ever built has worked the same way. Alexander Graham Bell put a membrane in a telephone, the membrane moved air, and we heard sound. Everything since has been a refinement of that idea. Moti Margalit thinks there is another way. His company, Sonic Edge, has built what amounts to a very fast air pump, one that cycles 400,000 times a second at ultrasound frequencies and moves the same air a full-sized speaker moves. As he puts it, they are replacing size with speed. Moti studied at the Technion, took his doctorate in lasers and electro-optics, spent two years at MIT working on quantum optics, and came home to build deep-tech companies: silicon photonics twenty years before the market wanted it, equipment for solar cell manufacturing, advanced LED design. He holds more than a hundred granted patents. Sonic Edge began at the end of 2019, which meant the first two years were run out of his attic over Zoom. The company is Israeli-Danish. Denmark, he says, is to audio what Silicon Valley is to electronics, and that is where the seed money, the electronics work and a second office came from. The chips are built with MEMS technology, the same silicon process used for microprocessors, except that instead of transistors they fabricate mechanical structures. We talk about what the technology can actually do, why the smaller form factor matters more than the sound quality for earbuds nobody can stand to wear for more than an hour, how a component company gets designed into a product two years before that product reaches a store, and why an Israeli entrepreneur selling into Europe and Asia right now still describes himself as an optimist. A personal note. Some of you know that I write about politics and the military, and that those episodes tend toward the pessimistic. This one is different, and it is different for me in particular. I grew up in the world of audio. My father ran a headphone company called Superex, and I spent my childhood around it, going to CES shows from the very first one when I was a little kid. Hearing someone describe a genuinely new way to generate sound, one that turns the whole problem upside down, was a joy. I only wish my father were alive to hear it. Sonic Edge expects to see its speakers in shipping products in 2027. The company won an Edison Bronze Award and the International Sound Award this year, and was nominated for an entrepreneurship award by Music Ally in the UK. This is a public episode. If you'd like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit marcschulman.substack.com/subscribe

    Replacing size with speed: the Israeli company reinventing the speaker

  3. Sep 16

    Inside Naftali Bennett’s Plan for Israel: Jeremy Saltan on Education, Haredi Service and the Coming Election

    Marc Schulman sits down with Jeremy Saltan, a candidate on Naftali Bennett’s list, for a detailed conversation about what Bennett and his party would actually do if returned to government. Saltan explains why he chose to run with Bennett and argues that lessons have been learned from Bennett’s previous government, including a much more rigorous process for selecting candidates. The conversation then moves from campaign politics to policy: Israel’s troubled education system, the shortage of teachers, Bennett’s proposal to bring Haredi and Arab schools into a common state framework, and the challenge of preparing Israeli children for the country’s economic future. They also tackle one of the most contentious issues in Israeli politics: Haredi military service. Saltan lays out the party’s approach to military and national service, Haredi participation in the workforce, and the principle that government benefits should be tied more closely to fulfilling civic responsibilities. With Israel heading toward an election, this episode goes beyond personalities and polls to examine the policies Bennett’s party says it intends to put into practice from its first day in office. This is a public episode. If you'd like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit marcschulman.substack.com/subscribe

    Inside Naftali Bennett’s Plan for Israel: Jeremy Saltan on Education, Haredi Service and the Coming Election

  4. Sep 11

    Israel’s Arab Citizens at a Crossroads: Integration, Crime, Politics—and the Search for a Shared Future

    In this Rosh Hashanah edition of the Tel Aviv Diary Podcast, Marc Schulman welcomes back Professor Yitzhak Reiter, one of Israel’s leading experts on Arab-Jewish relations, for a wide-ranging conversation about the changing place of Arab citizens in Israeli society. Arab Israelis have made striking gains in higher education, employment, medicine, technology, and other parts of Israeli life. Yet at the same time, Arab communities are confronting an unprecedented crisis of organized crime and violence, while relations between Jewish and Arab citizens have been deeply strained by October 7 and the war in Gaza. Reiter examines the political transformation taking place within Arab society, including Mansour Abbas and Ra’am’s effort to make Arab parties an integral part of Israeli coalition politics. Could Ra’am become a decisive force in forming Israel’s next government? And could tackling crime in Arab communities become one of the next government’s most urgent priorities? The conversation then goes deeper: Why has hostility toward Arab citizens grown even as integration has increased? Can Israelis and Palestinians ever reconcile their competing narratives of 1948, the Nakba, Jerusalem, and the Temple Mount? Did the Oslo process underestimate the importance of those narratives? Finally, with the new year approaching, Marc challenges Professor Reiter to end on an optimistic note: Is there still a realistic path toward better Jewish-Arab relations, renewed Israeli-Palestinian diplomacy, and eventually peace? A thoughtful conversation about identity, politics, history—and whether Israelis and Palestinians can still imagine a different future. #Israel #IsraeliArabs #ArabIsraelis #MansourAbbas #Raam #IsraeliPolitics #Elections #Palestinians #Oslo #Peace #RoshHashanah #TelAvivDiary This is a public episode. If you'd like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit marcschulman.substack.com/subscribe

    Israel’s Arab Citizens at a Crossroads: Integration, Crime, Politics—and the Search for a Shared Future

  5. Sep 8

    Between Hope & Fear: What Israel’s Past Teaches Us and Why AI’s Future Frightens Me

    Here is the report by the chief scientist of Open AI that I reference in the episode. https://openai.com/index/an-alien-mind/ This is a public episode. If you'd like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit marcschulman.substack.com/subscribe

    Between Hope & Fear: What Israel’s Past Teaches Us and Why AI’s Future Frightens Me

  6. Sep 1

    Launch Day: Thirty-Three Years, Year by Year: Why I Wrote Between Hope and Fear

    Launch day. Instead of the usual news, Marc Schulman talks about the book he has just published — 33 years of Israeli history, from Oslo through the war, told year by year. He traces the path that led here: an Apple developer in the early Mac days, CD-ROMs on American history, a website launched before the 1996 election, an email list of a few hundred readers that eventually scooped CNN on the Syrian reactor. Then the move back to Israel in 2011, the Newsweek partnership that began during the 2014 Gaza war, ten years of the column, and the Substack that grew from weekly to daily on October 7th. He explains why the book starts where it does, why he chose straight chronology over a thematic structure, and what that choice cost him. He is candid about the parts he isn’t sure he got right — the rift with the ultra-Orthodox, the religious Zionist project since Gush Katif, the Supreme Court and the accusations the right keeps making about it. And he lays out what he took away from writing it: that extremists on both sides wrote the story of these decades. Hamas working from the beginning to kill the peace process, and a Jewish extremist who murdered a prime minister — an assassination Marc calls one of the most successful in world history, because it changed the direction of a country. The hope in the title has shifted meaning over 33 years. It began as the hope for peace. It has become the hope that technology will save us. The fear was there the whole time. This is a public episode. If you'd like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit marcschulman.substack.com/subscribe

    Launch Day: Thirty-Three Years, Year by Year: Why I Wrote Between Hope and Fear

  7. Aug 28

    From Israel’s War of Independence to Ukraine: Jeffrey Weiss on History, Russia and Israel’s Strategic Future

    In this episode of the Tel Aviv Diary Podcast, Marc Schulman speaks with author and historian Jeffrey Weiss about the past—and what it may tell us about Israel’s future. Weiss begins with the remarkable story of Mahal, the thousands of foreign volunteers who came to fight for the newly established State of Israel in 1948. Many were World War II veterans whose experience proved especially important in building the fledgling Israeli Air Force. Weiss also recounts the extraordinary life of Stan Andrews, an American bomber pilot who volunteered to fight for Israel, helped create the emblem of the IAF’s 101 Squadron, and was killed in action in 1948. The conversation then turns sharply to the present. Weiss argues that Israel needs to reconsider its longstanding caution toward Russia and develop a much closer relationship with Ukraine. With Russia’s position in Syria weakened, he believes Israel could assist Ukraine with missile defense while learning from Ukraine’s battlefield experience combating drones. Such cooperation, he argues, could also help repair Israel’s strained relations with Europe and strengthen Israel’s strategic importance to Washington. Finally, Marc and Weiss examine a larger and increasingly urgent question: Is Israel losing its traditional strategic appeal in the United States? Weiss argues that the familiar case for Israel as America’s “unsinkable aircraft carrier” is becoming less persuasive, particularly among younger Americans. His prescription is a fundamental change in the conversation—positioning Israel not simply as a Middle Eastern ally confronting Iran and its proxies, but as a technological and security partner capable of contributing to the defense of Europe. A wide-ranging discussion of Zionist history, Russia and Ukraine, missile defense, U.S.-Israel relations—and how Israel might rethink its place in a rapidly changing world. #Israel #Ukraine #Russia #Mahal #Zionism #History #IDF #AirForce #America #Europe #Defense #Geopolitics #Diplomacy #TelAviv #Podcast This is a public episode. If you'd like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit marcschulman.substack.com/subscribe

    From Israel’s War of Independence to Ukraine: Jeffrey Weiss on History, Russia and Israel’s Strategic Future

  8. Aug 21

    Israel’s Demographic Time Bomb: Prof. Dan Ben-David on the Economic and Educational Crisis

    In this episode of the Tel Aviv Diary Podcast, I speak with economist Professor Dan Ben-David, head of the Shoresh Institution for Socioeconomic Research, about what he sees as the long-term trends threatening Israel’s future—and why the coming election may represent a rare opportunity to change course. Ben-David lays out some stark numbers. Roughly half of Israel’s children, he argues, are receiving an education that will leave them unable to sustain a modern developed economy. Only a small portion of the workforce drives Israel’s extraordinary high-tech economy, while a relatively narrow segment of society carries much of the country’s tax burden. If enough of Israel’s doctors, academics, engineers and high-tech workers decide to leave, he warns, the country could enter an economic “spiral of collapse.” At the center of the discussion is Israel’s rapidly changing demography, particularly the growing Haredi population and the consequences of an education system that often fails to provide basic mathematics, science and English. Ben-David argues that Israel cannot continue funding schools that refuse to teach a full core curriculum or subsidizing a way of life that leaves large numbers of adults outside the workforce. This is a public episode. If you'd like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit marcschulman.substack.com/subscribe

    Israel’s Demographic Time Bomb: Prof. Dan Ben-David on the Economic and Educational Crisis
See All (132)

Ratings & Reviews

5
out of 5
2 Ratings

About

Twice weekly, Marc Schulman shares sharp, pragmatic insights into Israeli affairs and global tech—drawing on decades as a Newsweek columnist and Apple developer. Veteran journalist and historian Marc Schulman offers sharp, unfiltered insight into current events in Israel. An American-born commentator who has lived in Israel on and off since 1975, Marc wrote a long-running weekly column on Israel for Newsweek and brings decades of deep engagement with Israeli politics, society, and history. His perspective is iconoclastic, pragmatic, and often challenges conventional narratives. Each episode combines personal observations with sharp political analysis, covering everything from the weekly rallies at Hostage Square to the intricate negotiations surrounding ceasefire deals. Marc doesn't shy away from difficult topics—whether it's critiquing government policies, analyzing the military draft controversy, or exploring the broader implications of regional conflicts with Hamas, Hezbollah, and Iran. Beyond Middle Eastern affairs, the podcast ventures into global politics, economics, and emerging technology, examining how international developments impact daily life in Israel. From trade policy critiques to AI's revolutionary impact on truth and reality, Marc brings a historian's perspective to contemporary events. Tel Aviv Diary is essential listening for anyone seeking an authentic, ground-level view of Israeli society during wartime—complete with the frustrations, hopes, and hard truths that come with living through historic events as they unfold. Raw, honest, and deeply personal, each episode captures the weight of the moment while grappling with questions that extend far beyond Israel's borders. marcschulman.substack.com

Information

  • Creator
    Marc Schulman
  • Years Active
    2025 - 2026
  • Episodes
    132
  • Rating
    Clean
  • Copyright
    © Marc Schulman
  • Show Website
    Tel Aviv Diary Podcast

You Might Also Like