500 episodes listed below
Scholarship for Eastern Europe’s long memory.
New Books in Eastern European Studies treats recent scholarship as an entry point into long historical arguments. Its episodes move patiently through Vilna, Poland-Lithuania, Russia, Germany, and the post-Yugoslav space, favoring context over speed.
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New Books in Eastern European Studies is a scholarly listening room for the historical and cultural life of Eastern Europe. Books usually set the agenda. The conversations then widen from publication details into arguments about memory, minority life, religion, empire, nationalism, art, and language. Jewish history is one of the show’s strongest through-lines. Episodes return to Vilna, Poland-Lithuania, Russia, Lithuania, Ukraine, Belarus, Yiddish literature, communal reconstruction, and the difficult task of studying worlds that were damaged, dispersed, or destroyed. The tone is serious but not sealed off. Speakers take time to define the stakes. A lecture on Kishinev becomes a meditation on reconstructing East European Jewish history rather than only mourning it. A discussion of Jews in Poland-Lithuania and Russia moves from cultural autonomy and literature to war, genocide, communist rule, emigration, and demographic decline. An episode on the Vilna Gaon turns religious authority into a question about minority life, intellectual surroundings, and the pull of community. The show is not confined to Jewish studies. It also follows Orthodox Christianity through North America and revolutionary Russia, post-Yugoslav contemporary art, Germany’s divided twentieth century, and cultural images of vulnerable minorities and the Russian state. The format rewards patience. Guests and speakers are allowed to build historical scaffolding before reaching a claim. That can mean long arcs from 1350 to the present, or tight attention to one institution, one thinker, one riot, or one book. The presentation is interview-centered and text-centered. It assumes an audience comfortable with proper nouns, dates, movements, and academic categories. It also keeps the human stakes visible. Archives, language, migration, violence, religious practice, and political pressure are treated as lived structures, not just abstract themes. The show works best for listeners who want scholarship in full sentences. It is less about quick explanation than about watching careful historical interpretation take shape.
Made for: For readers, students, researchers, and historically minded listeners who want serious conversations about Eastern Europe, Jewish history, religion, nationalism, art, and political memory. It especially suits people who prefer patient explanation to compressed takeaways.
What sets it apart: The channel’s range is unusually broad while remaining academically grounded: a single feed can move from Vilna archives and Yiddish culture to Orthodox Christianity, Germany’s divided century, and post-Yugoslav art. Its value lies in letting specialists build context at length.
This podcast is a channel on the New Books Network. The New Books Network is an academic audio library dedicated to public education. In each episode you will hear scholars discuss their recently published research with another expert in their field. Discover our 150+ channels and browse our 28,000+ episodes on our website: newbooksnetwork.com Subscribe to our free weekly Substack newsletter to get informative, engaging content straight to your inbox: https://newbooksnetwork.substack.com/ Follow us on Instagram and Bluesky to learn about more our latest interviews: @newbooksnetwork Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/eastern-european-s…
Based on 6 episodes we listened to · September 2026
Scholarly conversations place Jewish thought and community life inside the wider political and social history of Eastern Europe.
New Books in Eastern European Studies gives scholars room to explain the frameworks behind their work, while hosts keep asking how those frameworks change the historical picture.
A historian stops to defend theory; you get the East Germany that neat labels miss.
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Short reviews from the PlayNext desk, based on the episodes we processed.
A sweeping scholarly history that links early Jewish communities, twentieth-century upheaval, and literary legacies.
Antoni Polonsky's history of Jews in Poland and Russia from 1350 to the present is framed here as a major one-volume work, and the discussion keeps pace with that ambition.
Germany, told through walls, currencies, and the rules people had to relearn.
Andrew Port's Germany keeps its focus on clear turning points: the Wall in 1961, East German reforms beginning in 1963, the West German economic miracle, and the 1990 currency union that suddenly filled East Berlin stores.
A dense, patient look at why the Vilna Gaon still matters to modern Jewish life.
This conversation uses the Vilna Gaon to think about how modern Judaism gets shaped by place, minority life, and the authority of texts. Eliyahu Stern and the hosts move across historical frames, comparing Vilna with Western Europe, tracing the pull of language and community,…
Persson shows Russian military doctrine as a living argument shaped by history, technology, and fighting ideals.
Russian military thought is treated here as a continuing argument over how a state understands war. Gudrun Persson discusses Russian Military Thought: The Evolution of Strategy Since the Crimean War, tracing the project back to archival research in Moscow during her doctoral…
A careful look at how populism and political antagonism shape Hungary's democratic backsliding.
Hungary's elections are framed through democratic backsliding, autocratisation, and populism, with Emilia Polonin and Jolt Enyedi tracing how political antagonism, enemy-making, coalitions, and the limits of the mainstream shape the country's political life.
A broad, thoughtful episode on Dussel, liberation theology, and Marxism in religious and political history.
This episode situates Dussel's The Theological Metaphors of Marx within the larger friction between liberation theology and Marxism. It presents Dussel as a thinker whose theological work cannot be separated from his wider intellectual method, his attention to the Vatican and…
A careful, theory-led discussion of queer East German history and subjectivity.
Socialist Subjectivities: Queering East Germany under Honecker reads East German history through Soviet theories of subjectivity, with careful attention to how identities take shape in relation to political, social, and cultural institutions.
Jewish radio with memory, music, and Torah.
Two Bible translators unpack Scripture's hardest passages, from Revelation's 666 to the Witch of Endor.
MJ Dorian's solo deep dives trace genius through Blake, McQueen, da Vinci, and Jung's Red Book.
Two Methodist pastors and guests work through forgiveness, control, and grief in scripture.
This episode features an interview with Bruce Berglund about his book 'The Moscow Playbook,' which explores how Russia has used sports, including state-sponsored doping, as a tool for political power and national image-building.
This episode features an interview with Agata Fijalkowski about her book 'Law, Visual Culture, and the Show Trial', exploring the intersection of legal proceedings and visual media.
Theory does the heavy lifting here.
Dussel gets approached from several angles.
Anna Jaroszyńska-Kirchmann's book "Pierogi: An American Story of Polish Food" (Columbia UP, 2026) follows the dish from Stanisław Czerniecki's 1682 cookbook to American supermarkets in all 50 states.
This episode features an interview with scholar Katharina Wiedlack about her book 'Under Western Eyes: Vulnerable Minorities and the Russian State in New Cold War Cultures', examining how minority groups are portrayed and affected in contemporary geopolitical tensions.
This episode introduces an event celebrating the poetry of Avrom Sutzkever, highlighting the Evo Institute's international efforts to recover lost Jewish cultural treasures in Lithuania.
This episode features an interview with author Scott Kenworthy about his book 'The People's Patriarch: Tikhon Bellavin and the Orthodox Church in North America and Revolutionary Russia'.
This inaugural lecture by the Cronhill Visiting Scholar at the Ivo Institute explores how the Kishinev riot influenced 20th-century Jewish history, emphasizing the reconstruction of East European Jewish heritage.
This episode features an interview with authors Jonathan Blackwood and Jasmina Tumbas about their book 'Contemporary Art in the Post-Yugoslav Space' published by Routledge in 2025.
The conversation centers on Polonsky’s history of Jews in Poland and Russia from 1350 to the present.
Kelly talks with Andrew Port about his book Germany.
The show centers on Eliyahu Stern's book about the Vilna Gaon and the making of modern Judaism.
["Gudrun Persson tells Steven Sikhevich that Russian military thought is not a narrow battlefield manual, because it combines political, diplomatic, economic, cultural, and military instruments.", "She connects that claim to the Crimean War, Dmitry Milyutin's reforms under Alexander II, and Soviet theorists such as Tukhachevsky, Snezarev, and Triantafilov.", "Persson says Western surprise over Crimea in 2014 and the war in Ukraine in 2022 came from mirror imaging, while Russian leaders kept reading domestic upheaval, history, and NATO through the same frame.", "She treats Valery Gerasimov as an operational chief rather than a grand strategist, says the initial Ukraine plan came from the FSB, and notes Russia still recruits about 400,000 soldiers a year."]
Tim Horton speaks with Emilia Polonin and Jolt Enyedi about Hungary's elections and its place in debates on democratic backsliding, autocratisation, and populism.
This episode features an interview with historian Samuel Kassow discussing the myth and reality of the Shtetl in Jewish history, his work with YIVO, and his contributions to Jewish scholarship.
This episode features an interview with author Jovana Babović about her new book 'The Youngest Yugoslavs: An Oral History of Post-Socialist Memory', exploring memory and history in post-socialist contexts.
This episode features an interview with Alexandra Ghiț about her book on women's welfare work during austerity in interwar Bucharest, exploring labor history and social policy.