The TPPI Podcast
Episode 9:
Israel's Year of Dangerous Living, Part 5: Conceptions and Consequences: A Conversation with Orian Morris and Gabriel Noah Brahm
Gabriel Noah Brahm talks with Orian Morris, a longtime close observer of Israeli politics and culture, a noted Israeli literary critic, a critically acclaimed novelist writing primarily in Hebrew, and a former IDF combat soldier. While serving as a paratrooper, he saw the death of his company commander in battle and participated in an ambush in which a number of Hezbollah terrorists were killed. He has authored numerous highly original and thought-provoking essays and stories for Haaretz, Makor Rishon, Tablet, and TelosScope. The release of his formally innovative 2016 book לרגל עבור מקום אחר (With My Little Eye) established him as the latest "enfant terrible of Hebrew literature." Also available in audio-only format here.
Episode 8:
Israel's Year of Dangerous Living, Part 4: A View from Israel's Center Left: A Conversation with Paul Gross and Gabriel Noah Brahm
Gabriel Noah Brahm, director of the Telos-Paul Piccone Institute’s Israel Initiative, Paul Gross, a Senior Fellow at the Menachem Begin Heritage Center in Jerusalem. Previously, Gross served as speechwriter for Israel's Ambassador to the UK. He holds an MA in Middle East Politics from the University of London, and lectures widely on Israeli history and politics. His numerous published research articles and op-eds have appeared in a variety of media outlets in Israel, the UK, the US and Canada, including the Jerusalem Post, Haaretz, Fathom, The American Interest, and Persuasion. He was an active participant in the protest movement against judicial reform in Israel from December 2022 to October 2023. Also available in audio-only format here.
Episode 7:
Israel's Year of Dangerous Living, Part 3: On Ballots and Bullets: A Conversation with Prof. Michael S. Kochin
Gabriel Noah Brahm, director of the Telos-Paul Piccone Institute’s Israel Initiative, talks with Michael S. Kochin, Professor Extraordinarius in the School of Political Science, Government, and International Relations at Tel Aviv University. Kochin received his A.B. in mathematics at 19 from Harvard and his M.A. and Ph.D. in political science from the University of Chicago. He has held visiting appointments at Yale, Princeton, Toronto, and Claremont McKenna College. Through September 2025 Kochin is Visiting Scholar at the Hillsdale College Allan P. Kirby, Jr. Center for Constitutional Studies and Citizenship and at the Catholic University of America. He has written widely on the comparative analysis of institutions, political thought, politics and literature, and political rhetoric. Kochin is the author of three books: Gender and Rhetoric in Plato’s Political Thought (2002), Five Chapters on Rhetoric: Character, Action, Things, Nothing, and Art (2009) and (with the historian Michael Taylor) An Independent Empire: Diplomacy & War in the Making of the United States (2020). With Alberto Spektorowski he edited Michel Houellebecq, the Cassandra of Freedom: Submission and Decline (2021). Also available in audio-only format here.
Episode 6:
Israel's Year of Dangerous Living, Part 2: From the Battlefield of Ideas to the Battlefield, and Back: A Conversation with Dr. Jonathan Spyer
Gabriel Noah Brahm, director of the Telos-Paul Piccone Institute’s Israel Initiative, speaks with Dr. Jonathan Spyer, editor of the Middle East Quarterly, the Middle East Forum's flagship publication, and director of research at the Forum. A journalist, he reports for Janes Intelligence Review, writes a column for the Jerusalem Post, and is a contributor to the Wall Street Journal and The Australian. He frequently reports from Syria and Iraq. He has a B.A. from the London School of Economics, an M.A. from the School of Oriental and African Studies in London, and a Ph.D. from the London School of Economics. He is the author of two books: The Transforming Fire: The Rise of the Israel-Islamist Conflict (2010) and Days of the Fall: A Reporter's Journey in the Syria and Iraq Wars (2017). Also available in audio-only format here.
Episode 5:
Israel's Year of Dangerous Living: From Judicial Reform to October 7 and Beyond: A Conversation with Gadi Taub and Gabriel Noah Brahm
Gabriel Noah Brahm, director of the Telos-Paul Piccone Institute’s Israel Initiative, speaks with Gadi Taub, a Senior Lecturer at the Federmann School of Public Policy at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem, about judicial reform in Israel, the aftermath of October 7, and more. Taub previously joined us for the TPPI webinar on May 7, 2024, “Our Troubled Institutions: The End(s) of Higher Education, Post-Journalism, and Antisemitism after October 7,” with Russell A. Berman and Paulina Neuding. Also available in audio-only format here.
Episode 4:
The Nazi Roots of October 7: A Podcast Conversation with Dr. Matthias Küntzel and Gabriel Noah Brahm
Gabriel Noah Brahm, director of the Telos-Paul Piccone Institute’s Israel Initiative, speaks with German political scientist Dr. Matthias Küntzel about the Nazi roots of the Hamas atrocities of October 7, 2023, and about the dangers posed today by Iran. This conversation follows TPPI’s webinar of February 7, 2024, “Historians on Ideology and Politics in the 1948 War,” with Küntzel, Jeffrey Herf, and Benny Morris. Also available in audio-only format here.
Episode 3:
Democracy in India: Mark Kelly Speaks with Salvatore Babones
Mark G. E. Kelly, organizer of the 2024 Telos conference on "Democracy Today?," speaks with Salvator Babones of the University of Sydney about democracy in India, asking him in particular about his sympathetic reading of the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) of Prime Minister Narendra Modi. Also available in audio-only format here.
Episode 2:
Frantz Fanon and October 7: A Conversation with Abe Silberstein
Gabriel Brahm talks with Abe Silberstein, a writer and critic based in New York, whose essays have appeared in the New York Times, Ha’aretz, The Forward, Times Literary Supplement (UK), and Dissent, among other publications. This conversation follows TPPI's webinar on January 7 on the topic of the response to October 7 within universities, with Silberstein, Cary Nelson, and Manuela Consonni. Also available in audio-only format here.
Episode 1:
“A Range of Theories Engaged with and Challenging Each Other”: A Conversation with Cary Nelson
As part of its Israel initiative, Gabriel Noah Brahm talks with Prof. Cary Nelson, former president of the American Association of University Professors, about the role of critical theory in the response within higher education to the Hamas atrocities of October 7. This conversation follows TPPI's webinar on January 7 on the same subject with Nelson, Abe Silberstein, and Manuela Consonni. Also available in audio-only format here.