Jonathan Widder

Prejudices about Jews are still widespread today. Yet many young people in Germany have never consciously met a Jew. The project ‘Meet a Jew’ aims to change this by bringing Jewish volunteers together with school classes and clubs. In this episode, project coordinator Masha explains what the encounters achieve and why many participants are amazed by them.

In this special, personal episode, we continue our conversation about history with a special guest and a special project in which Jonathan’s father recently rediscovered the story of Kurt Klein and Gerda Weissmann Klein: two Jews who left Germany during and after World War II, married and became very well-known in the US due to Gerda’s book “All but my life” – but almost unknown in Germany. In this episode, we speak with their son Jim Klein about how his Kurt father saved Oskar Schindler, lessons from his mother for politics today, and the meaning of re-establishing contact with a left-behind part of family history.

In this episode, Ed and Jonathan, a Jew in LA and Jonathan a German in Berlin, reflect on current political events and their personal relation and experience with it: The rise of the far-right AfD in Germany, mass protests against it, and how Germany deals with the past in general; and on the other hand, the possible comeback of Donald Trump, racism and antisemitism in US history. By the way, we’re just getting started. Much more to come in our next episodes.

Can psychedelics like MDMA drive positive social change? Journalist Rachel Nuwer wrote a book on “MDMA and the Quest for Connection in a Fractured World”, and in one chapter she describes how taking the drug in a scientific study seems to have helped a former white nationalist leader change his extremist beliefs. In this episode, Rachel explains how this could be possible, how MDMA could have similar effects on others and where the limits are.