What Matters Now

Welcome to What Matters Now, a weekly podcast exploring key issues currently shaping Israel and the Jewish World, with host Amanda Borschel-Dan speaking with Israel Democracy Institute senior fellow Dr. Tehilla Shwartz Altshuler. Shwartz Altshuler, the head of the IDI's Democracy in the Digital Age Program, weighs in on the nefarious ways in which AI is being used to manipulate hearts and minds -- from elections to smear campaigns. She breaks down in practical terms how AI is now able to flood the public sphere with noise and confusion. We discuss the ripple effects of increased reliance on chatbots versus Google-type searches and how information can easily be poisoned by bad actors. The technology law and policy expert gives an overview of the potential possibilities for regulation -- and the chaotic Wild West reality we're living in. Turning to Israel's upcoming elections, we learn how the delegitimization of the results has already begun. And so, this week, we ask Dr. Tehilla Shwartz Altshuler, what matters now. What Matters Now podcasts are available for download on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, YouTube or wherever you get your podcasts. This episode was edited by Ari Schlacht.See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

Welcome to What Matters Now, a weekly podcast exploring key issues currently shaping Israel and the Jewish World, with host deputy editor Amanda Borschel-Dan, speaking with author and scholar Dara Horn. Horn visited ToI's Jerusalem studio while on a break from this year’s International Writers Festival in Jerusalem, taking place May 25-28 at the city’s Mishkenot Sha’ananim cultural center An author of novels and non-fiction, including “People Love Dead Jews,” “Eternal Life,” “A Guide for the Perplexed,” Horn's latest book -- her first for young readers -- is “One Little Goat.” Her newest nonfiction work will be published by Simon & Schuster in September under the title, "The Final Solution to the Jewish Question: A Love Story for the Living." We hear about how, after Horn published her bestselling work, "People Love Dead Jews," readers asked her for the solution to this problem. This week, she speaks about her new education initiative, Tell, which is bent on teaching American schoolchildren about real, living Jews, and Jewish culture. To launch the wide-ranging conversation, Horn defines terms, explaining that Jews are not a religion, but a people with a religion. This difference, she states, is massive and must be internalized to understand the millennia of hate experienced by the Jewish people.  Since the Hamas onslaught on southern Israel on October 7, 2023, and the resultant retaliatory war in Gaza, there has been an outsized focus on the trend of "non-Zionist" or "anti-Zionist" Jews. Who are these Jews -- and are they significant in the chronicles of Jewish history? And so, this week, we ask author Dara Horn, what matters now? What Matters Now podcasts are available for download on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, YouTube or wherever you get your podcasts. This episode was produced by Yitzchak Ledee. IMAGE: APSee omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

Welcome to What Matters Now, a weekly podcast exploring one key issue currently shaping Israel and the Jewish World. This week, founding editor David Horovitz speaks with CEO of the British Board of Deputies Michael Wegier. Wegier has been the CEO of the Board, the umbrella organization representing Anglo-Jewry, for the past five years -- an increasingly fraught period, especially since October 7, 2023. Anti-Israel demonstrators routinely march through central London, Palestine Action activists have attacked Israeli targets, a cultural boycott of Israel has picked up steam... We discuss how things have changed for Britain's Jews, especially amid a stream of antisemitic attacks, including deadly terrorism at a Manchester synagogue last Yom Kippur and the stabbing of two Jewish men in northwest London's Golders Green neighborhood last month. Wegier talks about who is behind the violence, how the police are facing up to it, and the role of Keir Starmer's Labour government. We also look more widely at British politics from a Jewish context, with this month's local elections marked by the dramatic rise of the hard-right UK Reform party, and unprecedented gains by a Green Party engulfed in antisemitism scandals, under a Jewish leader who made vicious criticism of Israel a centerpiece of the campaign. Finally, we look at the relationship between Anglo-Jewry and Israel, and the degree to which what Wegier describes as the "anxiety" in the community about day-to-day life is prompting thoughts of potential emigration to Israel. So this week, we ask Michael Wegier, what matters now? What Matters Now podcasts are available for download on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, YouTube or wherever you get your podcasts. This episode was produced by Yitzchak Ledee.  IMAGE: Michael Wegier (courtesy) / Protesters gather near Downing Street during a 'national emergency' rally organized by the Campaign Against Antisemitism following a knife attack in Golders Green, in London, April 30, 2026. (AP Photo/Alberto Pezzali)See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

Welcome to What Matters Now, a weekly podcast exploring key issues currently shaping Israel and the Jewish World, with host deputy editor Amanda Borschel-Dan speaking with Ahmed Fouad Alkhatib, the head of Realign For Palestine, an Atlantic Council project that challenges entrenched narratives in the Israel and Palestine discourse. We begin the conversation with a bleak update on how Gazans are faring on the ground and hear anecdotes of poor hygiene and price gouging in the Strip. As the festive holy month of Ramadan begins, the lack of basic necessities becomes more stark for those who must fast all day but cannot feast at night. We then turn to the sudden announcement this week from Doctors Without Borders that it has suspended non-critical medical activities at Nasser Hospital in Gaza’s Khan Younis due to the presence of armed men at the medical facility and “a recent situation of suspicion of movement of weapons.” Alkhatib brings multiple examples of prior knowledge of the "armed men" in the hospital since Hamas's October 7, 2023, onslaught on southern Israel. He accuses the NGO of looking the other way as the terror organization took over hospital wings and turned them into prisons and torture chambers. So why did the international humanitarian group in Gaza decide to take notice now? And so this week, we ask Ahmed Fouad Alkhatib, what matters now. What Matters Now podcasts are available for download on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, YouTube or wherever you get your podcasts. This episode was produced by Ari Schlacht. IMAGE: Palestinians hang decorations beside the rubble of destroyed homes as they prepare for the holy month of Ramadan in Khan Younis, southern Gaza Strip, Sunday, Feb. 15, 2026. (AP Photo/Abdel Kareem Hana)See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

Welcome to What Matters Now, a weekly podcast exploring key issues currently shaping Israel and the Jewish World, with host Jessica Steinberg speaking with Unholy podcast hosts Yonit Levi and Jonathan Freedland. In this episode, Channel 12 news anchor Levi and Guardian columnist and BBC Radio 4's Jonathan Freedland look back on five years of podcasting together on "Unholy: Two Jews on the News," their weekly show that offers the perspectives of a Jewish Israeli and a Diaspora Jew. Freedland and Levi discuss their intention to foster dialogue between Israel and the diaspora at a time when those conversations have become increasingly difficult. They delve into the types of conversations carried out on "Unholy"  following the October 7 Hamas terrorist attack, and how the podcast became a lifeline for them as much as their listeners, as the Jewish community worldwide has grappled with the massacre, bereavement, hostage crisis, and the war in Gaza. The two hosts discuss their own approaches as Levi is a Jewish Israeli who spent a portion of her childhood in the US, and Freedland is a British Jew who views Judaism and Israel through his own lens. They also chew over the intimacy of the podcast medium for them, particularly given Levi's usual role as a popular news anchor, with her face and voice familiar to most of the Israeli public. The podcast has created a setting that offers a different kind of opportunity for Levi and Freedland, their guests, and their listeners, with the capacity to foment real conversation and debate. Levi and Freedland reminisce about earlier, favorite episodes and the years when the podcast tackled other subjects, such as musicals or literature, and with different kinds of guests, including Etgar Keret, Howard Jacobson, and Helen Mirren. They talk about the books they each published this past year, including Freedland's 14th, a non-fiction historical thriller, "The Traitors Circle: The True Story of a Secret Resistance Network in Nazi Germany—and the Spy Who Betrayed Them." Levi's book, her first, was written with her friend and CNN anchor Bianna Golodryga. "Don't Feed the Lion" is for middle-grade readers and Levi talks about how young people grapple with antisemitism. What Matters Now podcasts are available for download on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, YouTube or wherever you get your podcasts. This episode was produced by the Pod-Waves. IMAGE: Jonathan Freedland, left, and Yonit Levi are the hosts of podcast 'Unholy: Two Jews on the News' (Courtesy)See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

Welcome to What Matters Now, a weekly podcast exploring key issues currently shaping Israel and the Jewish World, with host deputy editor Amanda Borschel-Dan speaking with Ahmed Fouad Alkhatib, the head of Realign For Palestine, an Atlantic Council project that challenges entrenched narratives in the Israel and Palestine discourse. This week, we dive into the 12-member National Committee for the Administration of Gaza. The technocratic council is headed by former Palestinian Authority deputy planning minister Ali Shaath. It is tasked with running daily affairs on the ground and providing services for Gazans in place of the Hamas terror group. The committee held its first meeting in Cairo on Thursday, but is currently barred by Israel from entering the Gaza Strip and its work remains in limbo as the Board of Peace begins its activities in Davos this week. We hear how the names on the technocratic council are relatively consensus figures -- among Gazan Palestinians -- and learn about Israel's objections to this committee and Trump's naming of Qatar and Turkey to the Gaza Executive Board. Alkhatib delves into the lack of popular Hamas support throughout the Strip, but points out the massive enforcement problem that the committee will face as the armed terrorist group maintains its hold. And so this week, we ask Ahmed Fouad Alkhatib, what matters now. What Matters Now podcasts are available for download on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, YouTube or wherever you get your podcasts. This episode was produced by the Pod-Waves. IMAGE: Ahmed Fouad Alkhatib (courtesy) / A tent camp for displaced Palestinians stretches across Deir al-Balah, in the central Gaza Strip, January 15, 2026. (AP Photo/Abdel Kareem Hana)See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

Welcome to What Matters Now, a weekly podcast exploring key issues currently shaping Israel and the Jewish World, with host deputy editor Amanda Borschel-Dan speaking with stand-up comedian Liz Glazer, who is coming soon to Israel as part of the annual Comedy for Koby tour. On stage and off, the former law prof -- a graduate of New York's stalwart Modern Orthodox Ramaz high school -- is loudly and proudly out about her life as the spouse of a female rabbi. Perhaps more unusually, since the October 7, 2023, Hamas onslaught on Israel, she's also made no secret of her support for the Jewish state In our conversation, we hear which of Glazer's identities -- lesbian or Jew -- is trickier for her to navigate on stage. We learn how being the granddaughter of Holocaust survivors has shaped her personality -- and career choice. And finally, we hear how becoming a mother two years ago has shifted Glazer's comedic sensibilities. Comedy for Koby is a fundraiser for the Koby Mandell Foundation, which was founded by Seth and Sherri Mandell, whose son Koby and his friend Yosef Ishran were murdered in a terrorist attack in 2001. Jumping off from the foundation's motto, "From tragedy to community," the comedy tours have brought 88 comedians to Israel since comedian Avi Liberman began hosting and organizing them in 2008. From January 5-12, Glazer will be joined by Andy Pitz and Rich Shnyder throughout Israel. And so this week, we ask Liz Glazer what matters now. What Matters Now podcasts are available for download on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, YouTube or wherever you get your podcasts. This episode was produced by the Pod-Waves.See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.