YUTorah has grown from a collection of cassette recordings into one of the world's largest online Torah libraries, with hundreds of thousands of shiurim available for free.

In this episode of Depends on the Context, I sit down with R' Robert Shur, Director of YUTorah, to explore the platform's history, the technology behind it, and how AI is transforming its future.

Rob shares why he believes AI should enhance Torah learning rather than replace it, why historic recordings are still at risk of being lost, and how AI is helping rebuild the site's search capabilities. Along the way, we explore YUTorah's funding, technical challenges, and what's next for the platform.

Explore YUTorah: https://www.yutorah.org/#YUTorah #TorahLearning #AI #JewishEducation

More than a decade ago, Alex Taub co-founded SocialRank, a platform that helped brands like the NBA, Netflix, and L’Oréal understand the people behind their social media audiences. The business was growing—until Instagram restricted access to its API in 2018, threatening the very foundation of the product.Now Alex is revisiting the same idea with SocialCrank, using AI and new technology to do things that weren't possible the first time around.In this episode of Depends on the Context, Alex and I discuss SocialRank's unlikely beginnings, what happened when Instagram pulled the plug, his journey through Upstream, and why an idea that was ahead of its time might finally have its moment.

Links:

https://www.socialcrank.ai/blog/introducing-socialcrank

In 1995, my family moved from Manhattan to Teaneck, New Jersey, and I took the basketball card collection I shared with my childhood friend Aryeh Buchsbayew ("Boo"). 31 years later, I finally made things right by finding the cards and sending them to Boo.

Boo and I have known each other since preschool, and what starts as a reckoning over the great basketball card heist of '95 turns into a conversation about turning 40, growing older, the lives we imagined versus the lives we've built, moving to Israel, and an unforgettable Limp Bizkit encounter.