This episode features a discussion between theatre dybbuk's artistic director, Aaron Henne, and Professor Carol Margaret Davison about Bram Stoker's Dracula, exploring the ways in which the societal concerns present at the time of its publication intersect with the prejudices and beliefs that are embedded in the text.

Professor Davison acted as a consulting scholar on theatre dybbuk's new world premiere production, Dracula (Annotated), which Aaron wrote and directed, and which opens in Los Angeles on September 26, 2025 then tours to Tucson and Cincinnati in the weeks that follow. In the piece, the company uses a unique blend of scholarly investigation and heightened theatricality to weave together the gothic characters and plot of Dracula with references to the forces at play in Victorian England that are still timely today.

This episode is a rebroadcast of an online Zoom event that was recorded live on August 10, 2025, as presented by the Orange County Jewish Community Scholar Program and hosted by Shirel Horovitz. The program was edited for the podcast by Julie Lockhart and Mark McClain Wilson. You can learn more about the Jewish Community Scholar Program at www.occsp.net.

Learn more at theatredybbuk.org/podcast.

This illuminated lecture features Professor Paul Lerner as he discusses the famous 1938 radio broadcast by Orson Welles of "The War of the Worlds" vis-à-vis analysis from Austrian Jewish media researcher (and later advertising exec) Herta Herzog, who studied audience reactions to the broadcast and argued that the tensions of the time – the rise of fascist movements, the growing likelihood of war – agitated listeners and predisposed them to believe the fabricated threat from the skies, despite Welles’ assurances that the broadcast was a hoax.

This episode was recorded as a live presentation on September 1st, 2024 at the Skirball Cultural Center in Los Angeles.

Learn more at theatredybbuk.org/podcast.

This illuminated lecture features Alan Niku as he seeks to answer these questions: How did Jews in Persia participate in Sufism before and after the appearance of Kabbalah? Is Sufism a fundamentally Islamic form of mysticism? And what Sufi influences are still tangible in the practices of Persian Jews today?

This episode was recorded as a live presentation on July 11, 2024 at The Philosophical Research Society in Los Angeles.

Learn more at theatredybbuk.org/podcast.