Don't Know Much About with Naya Lekht

Welcome back, listeners and viewers! After a summer of traveling in Israel and Australia, Naya Lekht returns with her first guest of the season, Dr. Einat Wilf, one of Israel’s leading public intellectuals and a prominent voice on Zionism, Israel, and the Arab-Israeli conflict. The episode begins with a simple question: If you could teach people only a handful of things about Israel and the Middle East, what would they absolutely need to understand? The answer may not satisfy those long...

What happens when a scholar of religion turns his critical eye on the very ideas he once championed? On this episode of Don't Know Much About, Naya Lekht sits down with writer Kile B. Jones, a man who once embraced the ideologies that fuel modern antizionism, and who has since became one of the clearest voices writing and speaking against it. Kile holds two master's degrees in Religious Studies from Boston University. A longtime bridge-builder, he has created interfaith programs and projects ...

In this episode of Don't Know Much About, Naya Lekht sits down with historian Dr. Olga Kirschbaum-Shirazki to dismantle one of the most pervasive arguments used against the Jewish state: that Zionism is a 19th-century European settler-colonial project with no historical legitimacy. Drawing on her new book, a collection of essays examining nationalism, empire, and the intellectual roots of antizionism, Dr. Kirschbaum-Shirazki offers a rigorous comparative framework — situating Zionism alongsid...

In this episode of Don't Know Much About, Naya Lekht sits down with political commentator and writer Karys Rhea to examine one of the most alarming developments in contemporary American politics: the emergence of the "Woke Right." Long before it became a topic of mainstream conservative concern, Rhea was tracking the identitarian, conspiratorial, and antisemitic currents quietly taking root within parts of the America First movement — and sounding the alarm. This conversation is essential lis...

In this episode of Don't Know Much About, Naya Lekht sits down with Eyal Yakoby: UPenn graduate, incoming MIT student, and one of the most prominent young voices documenting Jew hatred on campus and in the streets of America. Eyal was a senior at the University of Pennsylvania when, in the three weeks before October 7th, four antisemitic incidents struck his campus in rapid succession: a swastika drawn inside a campus building, a break-in at the Hillel, vandalism of the Chabad House sukkah, a...