Unorthodox

This week on Unorthodox: a Jewish writer and an Episcopal priest walk into a podcast. Our Jewish guest is writer and essayist Daphne Merkin, whose latest book is This Close to Happy: A Reckoning With Depression. She tells us what it was like to write such a personal book—Tablet literary critic Adam Kirsch called it “a hybrid of memoir, case study, and confession”—and discusses the stigma that continues to surround depression in the Jewish community and beyond. Our Gentile of the Week is Father Ed Bacon, a retired Episcopal priest legendary for his work with All Saints Church in Pasadena, California, which he turned into an activist, multi-ethnic congregation in a mostly white and wealthy town. He is also an Oprah regular and author of the book 8 Habits of Love. Sign up for for our weekly newsletter to get new episodes, behind-the-scenes photos, and more! Email us at Unorthodox@tabletmag.com—we'll share our favorite notes on air. Music Credits: "Mikveh Bath" by Golem "Don't Hang Up" by The Orlons "where the su

This week on Unorthodox, Mel Gibson gives tzedakah. Our Jewish guest is Ukrainian-born writer Sana Krasikov, whose latest novel, The Patriots, explores the effects of the Cold War on three generations of a Jewish-American family, from the 1930s to the present. Our Gentile of the Week is Republican strategist Patrick Ruffini, who tells us what the future of data and technology looks like for political campaigns, and the value of data under a president who is openly dismissive of unfavorable polls. Sign up for our weekly newsletter to get new episodes, behind-the-scenes photos, and more! Email us at Unorthodox@tabletmag.com—we'll share our favorite notes on air. This episode is sponsored by Harry’s. Enter code UNORTHODOX at checkout to get a free post-shave balm. Music Credits: “Mikveh Bath” by Golem “Dancing Tiger” by Damscray “A Spoonful Of Sugar” by Richard and Roger Sherman, from the film Mary Poppins "Outro Dia" by Diogo Cadaval “The One on the Right is on the Left” by Johnny Cash “Birds of Prey” by Dark

This week on Unorthodox, Mark ditches us for the Holy Land. It was snowing in New York, but we trudged to the studio and were graciously joined by Israeli filmmaker Shimon Dotan, whose latest film is The Settlers, a documentary about the controversial settler movement in Israel (you can read Tablet film critic J. Hoberman's review here). He tells us why he decided to take on such a contentious topic, how he created a nuanced cinematic portrait of a group of people with whom he fundamentally disagrees, and how it felt to encounter protests from BDS activists who hadn’t seen the film. Sign up for our weekly newsletter to get new episodes, behind-the-scenes photos, and more! Email us at Unorthodox@tabletmag.com—we'll share our favorite notes on air. Music Credits:  "Mikveh Bath" by Golem "That's What I Call Love" by Crowded House "Kolomeika" by Tres Tristes Tangos "The Pinch Paid Off, Pt. 1" by Albert King "Full Stop" by Ketsa

This week on Unorthodox, Jewish baseball is having a moment. Our Jewish guest is Adam Irving, whose documentary Off the Rails tells the story of Darius McCollum, an obsessive transit buff with Aspberger’s syndrome who has been arrested 32 times for impersonating New York City subway conductors and bus drivers. Adam tells us how his life has changed since releasing the film (his first) to critical acclaim, getting his start in reality TV, and how he feels about Darrius’s story getting the Hollywood treatment in a forthcoming film starring Julia Roberts as his lawyer. Our Gentile of the Week is writer and reviewer Macy Halford, whose first book, My Utmost: A Devotional Memoir, tells the story of Macy’s life through the lens of the bestselling Evangelical daily devotional My Utmost for His Highest. She read the book nightly, from her childhood in an Evangelical Christian family in Dallas to her years attending Barnard and then working for the New Yorker, and finally goes in search of its mysterious author, Oswa

This week on Unorthodox, we check in with Jake Turx, the now-famous Orthodox White House reporter who asked Trump about anti-Semitism. Our guests this week are Leah Green and Freddy McConnell, co-hosts of The Guardian’s “Token” podcast. Leah is mixed-race—her mother is Jewish and her father Nigerian—and Freddy is transgender and gay, and on their show they discuss topics like sex, gender, and race with frankness and humor (and British accents). We talk about whether Jews are white, find out the worst thing you can say to someone when you find out they’re transgender, and debate anti-Semitism on the British left. Sign up for our weekly newsletter to get new episodes, behind-the-scenes photos, and more! Email us at Unorthodox@tabletmag.com—we'll share our favorite notes on air. Music Credits: "Unorthodox Theme Song" by Golem "Yakety Sax" by Spider Rich and Boots Randolph "D'Bronx Tanz" by Tres Tristes Tango "Hello City" by Barenaked Ladies "Thorn in Your Side" by Namoli Brennet

This week on Unorthodox, we’ve got two Jewish guests. First up is Scott Feinberg, the awards columnist for The Hollywood Reporter and host of the Awards Chatter podcast, and one of the “most informed Oscarologists,” according to the New York Times. He tells us how he makes his Oscar predictions and where he'll be Sunday night as the winners are announced. Our next guest knows the way to our hearts: homemade hamantaschen filled with sprinkles. Molly Yeh is the author of Molly on the Range, one of the New York Times’ top fall cookbook releases of 2016, and the creator of my name is yeh, named Saveur’s 2015 Blog of the Year. She tells us about fielding questions from strangers about her ethnicity (her father is Chinese and her mother is Jewish), leaving Brooklyn for a sugar beet farm on the North Dakota-Minnesota border, and how far she has to go for a good bagel with lox these days. Sign up for our weekly newsletter to get new episodes, behind-the-scenes photos, and more! Email us at Unorthodox@tabletmag.com—we

This episode was recorded live at Temple Israel in West Palm Beach, Florida. Our Jewish guest is Igor Shteyrenberg, director of the Miami Jewish Film Festival, which in five years he grew from an annual event with 4,000 attendees to the third largest Jewish film festival in the U.S. He tells us his favorite new Jewish films, the most controversial film the festival has screened (hint: there were zombies), and the Jewish movie he’d make if he were given carte blanche to choose from all the actors and directors in the world. Our Gentile of the Week is Rocco Mangel, the restaurateur behind Rocco’s Tacos and Tequila Bar, which has six locations in Florida and one in Brooklyn. He tells us about getting his start in the business working in his family’s New York restaurants as a teenager, studying tequila in Mexico before opening his first location, and which South Florida location is the rowdiest (sorry, Boca). Sign up for our weekly newsletter to get new episodes, behind-the-scenes photos, and more! Email us at

This week on Unorthodox, we’re getting into the Valentine’s Day spirit. Or as we call it around here, Secular Tu B’Av. Our Jewish guest is Israeli-American novelist and essayist Ayelet Waldman, whose latest book, A Really Good Day chronicles her experience taking microdoses of LSD to treat her mood disorder. She explains what microdosing is and how it helped her and her marriage, and tells us what it’s like to be married to another writer. Our second guest is a self-described “pizza bagel”—half Jewish, half Italian. Andrea Silenzi is the host and producer of “Why Oh Why,” a podcast about dating and relationships. She tells us how people use emojis to signal their Jewishness on dating apps like Tinder, whether it’s hard to date while hosting a podcast about dating, and the challenges educated women in New York City face when seeking a partner. Our Gentile of the Week would call us gentiles, too. Laurel Thatcher Ulrich is a history professor at Harvard and a practicing Mormon. Her latest book is A House Full of

This week’s episode was recorded live at JCC Manhattan. Our first Jewish guest is Canadian transplant and longtime "This American Life" contributor Jonathan Goldstein, who now hosts the podcast Heavyweight. He tells us about mining his personal life for stories to tell on his show and gives us a definitive (if very Canadian) answer on Montreal bagels vs. New York bagels. Our Gentile of the Week is Catholic New York Times columnist Ross Douthat, who tells us about being a conservative voice writing for a largely liberal audience, why so many voters on the Christian right supported Trump despite mounting evidence of his moral failings, and why conservatives love fantasy novels like Lord of the Rings. Our second Jewish guest is Jen Spyra, comedian and writer on The Late Show with Stephen Colbert. She tells us about her Late Show audition, the challenges of writing jokes during a Trump administration, and when she first realized she was funny. Sign up for our weekly newsletter to get new episodes and more. Email

This week, in addition to our regular Thursday episode, we’re doing something a bit different. President Trump’s Executive Order on immigration struck us as so troubling, so decidedly antithetical to the Jewish values we hold dear—and such a disappointment given our own paths to this country—that we were moved to respond. On this mini-episode, Liel Leibovitz, Stephanie Butnick, and producer Elissa Goldstein offer brief reflections. Sign up for our weekly newsletter to get new episodes and more. Email us at Unorthodox@tabletmag.com—we'll share our favorite notes on air. Song credits: “Unorthodox Theme Song” by Golem “Ten Years Before” by Lobo Loco “Waiting for my Man” by The Velvet Underground “What Would You Do?” from the Original Cast Recording of Cabaret “Cylinder Six” by Chris Zabriskie

Our Jewish guest this week is actor David Duchovny, whose latest novel, Bucky F*cking Dent, follows a Red Sox-loving father and son during the 1978 World Series. He tells us how fox Mulder, the fictional FBI agent he played on The X-Files, would feel about James Comey right about now, his favorite X-Files meme, and his long-lost Yale Ph.D. thesis on magic and technology in 20th century fiction. Our Gentile of the Week is John Cleese, whose memoir, So, Anyway, is out in paperback. The legendary British comedian and actor tells Liel about the first time he heard a good Jewish joke, why The Hangover is a terrible movie, and how the Black Knights from Monty Python and the Holy Grail might just be a metaphor for Jewish history. Sign up for our weekly newsletter to get new episodes and more. Email us with comments, questions and kvetches at Unorthodox@tabletmag.com—we'll share our favorite notes on air. Sponsored by Harry’s: Enter code UNORTHODOX at checkout to get a free post shave balm. Music Credits: “Unorthod

In anticipation of our Wednesday (1/25) live show at the Manhattan JCC (tickets available here), we thought we'd share the season finale of Jonathan Goldstein's Heavyweight podcast. Jonathan is a radio storytelling legend and he'll be one of our guests on Wednesday night, so if you're coming to the show, listen up, and if not, listen anyway. If you like us, we bet you'll like him too. In this episode (#8 Jeremy), Jonathan revisits his tricky relationship with Judaism by reconnecting with an acquaintance he hasn't heard from in decades.  Heavyweight is a production of Gimlet Media. 

This week on Unorthodox, Bernie Madoff's prison hot chocolate scheme. We've got two Jewish guests this week: our first is return visitor Rosie Gray, who covered the election for BuzzFeed and is now a staff writer at the Atlantic. Our second guest is Charlie Brotman, who has announced every inauguration parade from Eisenhower to Obama but was snubbed by the Trump inauguration committee. Sign up for our weekly newsletter to get new episodes and more. Email us with comments, questions and kvetches at Unorthodox@tabletmag.com (we may share your note on air!). Music credits:  “Unorthodox Theme Song” by Golem “NPR’s Morning Edition Theme” by BJ Liederman “Le Hustle” by Polyrhytmics “Rosie” by Jackson Browne “Alley Cat” by Bent Fabric “Hail to the Chief” by American Patriotic Music Ensemble

This week on Unorthodox: We’ll always have Casablanca (except Mark). Our Jewish guest is writer and comedian Lynn Harris, founder of Comedy GOLD, which teaches girls and women how to empower themselves through comedy. Our Gentile of the Week is author and Bloggingheads founder Robert Wright, who was raised Southern Baptist but now practices Buddhism. Sign up for our weekly newsletter to get new episodes and more. Email us with comments, questions and kvetches atUnorthodox@tabletmag.com (we may share your note on air!). Sponsors: HelloFresh: For $35 off your first week of deliveries, enter UNORTHODOX35 when you subscribe. Harry’s: Try a shave set for free—just cover shipping when you sign up. Enter code UNORTHODOX at checkout to get a free post shave balm. Music Credits: "Unorthodox Theme Song" by Golem “As Time Goes By” by Herman Hupfeld, from the soundtrack to Casablanca “Goodbye Columbus” by The Association “Crate Diggin’” by Ari De Niro “Send in the Clowns” by Stephen Sondheim, as performed by Herschel Kr

This week on Unorthodox, Jared and Ivanka go shul shopping in Washington, D.C. Our Jewish guest is renowned biblical scholar Avivah Gottlieb Zornberg, whose latest book examines the life of Moses, one of the most enigmatic biblical figures (you can read an excerpt here). She tells us about exploring the often overlooked aspects of Moses’s life—his speech impediment, for example–and why she believes Moses is one of the most compelling literary characters of all time. (This segment is sponsored by Yale Jewish Lives.) Our Gentile of the Week is linguist John McWhorter, author of the forthcoming book, Talking Back, Talking Black. He tells us the latest linguistic trends he's noticed among his college students, why there’s no such thing as a safe space (or at least an unironic one), and why it’s OK to say ‘like’ a lot, as long as you’re not in a meeting. Sign up for our weekly newsletter to get new episodes and more. Email us with comments, questions and kvetches at Unorthodox@tabletmag.com. We may share your note

This week we’re celebrating Christmas the only way we know how: Chinese food and a movie. Plus a bunch of amazing guests! We’re joined by New York Times reporter Marc Tracy, who tells us about the tradition of Jews eating Chinese food on Christmas, and the Jewish songwriters behind some of the most well-known Christmas songs. Jessica Grose, the editor of the email newsletter Lenny, tells us why it’s OK for Jews to have a Christmas tree. Film critic Jordan Hoffman shares his favorite Christmas movies—and one classic he’s not so into. Librarian Rachel Kamin talks about a No Good Very Bad children's Hanukkah book (and recommends a few good ones), writer and activist Robin Rice tells us about her latest project, Your Holiday Mom, and Natasha Zaretsky explains why Soviet Jews have New Years trees. Wishing you and your loved ones, pets, and frenemies a wonderful, meaningful, and delicious Hanukkah, and a merry Jewish Christmas! We love hearing from you. Email us at Unorthodox@tabletmag.com with comments or question

This week on Unorthodox, Israeli Burger King debuts the SufganiKing—a hamburger inside a jelly donut. Our Jewish guest is Jason Diamond, author of the new memoir, Searching for John Hughes: Or Everything I thought I Needed to Know About Life I Learned from Watching ‘80s Movies. He gives us his list of the must-see John Hughes movies. Our Gentile of the Week is actually a Jew and a gentile—Vanessa Zoltan and Casper ter Kuile—the hosts of Harry Potter and the Sacred Text, a podcast that Talmudically analyzes the wildly popular J.K. Rowling’s series. They tell us how (spoiler) Harry Potter is actually about the Holocaust. Sign up for our weekly newsletter to get new episodes and more. Email us with comments, questions and kvetches at Unorthodox@tabletmag.com. We may share your note on air. Today’s episode is brought to you by Harry’s. Go to Harrys.com to get a limited edition holiday shave set while supplies last—use the promo code UNORTHODOX at checkout for $5 off your order. Music credits: "Unorthodox Theme S

This week on Unorthodox, Ivanka Trump steals a kugel. Our Jewish guest is Naftali Hanau, founder of Grow and Behold Foods, the Brooklyn-based purveyor of kosher meat from animals raised on family farms with no hormones or antibiotics. He tells us about being trained as a kosher butcher, or shochet, and why he’s made it his mission to provide ethically-produced kosher meat. Our Gentile of the Week is Glynn Washington, host of NPR’s Snap Judgment. He talks about what it takes to tell stories on the radio and how he knows when he's got a great one. Sign up for our weekly newsletter to get new episodes and more. Email us with comments, questions and kvetches at Unorthodox@tabletmag.com. We may share your note on air. Today’s episode is also brought to you by Harry’s. Go to Harrys.com to get a limited edition holiday shave set while supplies last—use the promo code UNORTHODOX at checkout for $5 off your order. Music credits for this episode (in order):  "Unorthodox Theme Song" by Golem "Teddy Bears' Picnic" by Jo

Our guest this week is Rabbi Brent Chaim Spodek of the Beacon Hebrew Alliance, whose mission is bringing Judaism out of the pews and into the daily lives of his congregants. He tells us about his popular Soul Strolls through the idyllic Hudson Valley woods on Saturdays, why it’s OK to watch movies on Shabbat, and why he wants to end the bar mitzvah practice as we know it. Plus, the Jewbadour Jim Knable contributes a ballad about Liel's travel woes. Sign up for our weekly newsletter to get new episodes and more. Email us with comments, questions and kvetches at Unorthodox@tabletmag.com. We may share your note on air. This week’s episode is brought to you by Audible. Get a free audiobook with a 30-day trial at audible.com/unorthodox. Today’s episode is also brought to you by Harry’s. Go to Harrys.com to get a limited edition holiday shave set while supplies last—use the promo code UNORTHODOX at checkout for $5 off your order.

This week’s episode was recorded live at Beth Tzedec Congregation in Drake's hometown of Toronto. Our Jewish guest is writer and filmmaker David Bezmozgis, who moved with his family from Latvia to Toronto when he was six years old. He tells us just how dangerous he thinks a Trump presidency will be, and why Americans shouldn’t flee to Canada but instead stay and fight. Our Gentile of the week is Julie Nesrallah, mezzo-soprano and host of Tempo, CBC Radio 2’s classical music program. She tells us about founding Carmen on Tap, a company that performs Georges Bizet’s opera Carmen as dinner theatre, and treats us to a song from the 1875 opera.Like listening to Unorthodox? Sign up for our weekly newsletter to get new episodes and more. Email us at Unorthodox@tabletmag.com with comments, questions, and kvetches. We may share your letter on air. Today’s episode is brought to you by Harry’s. For a great shave at an affordable price, go to Harrys.com and use promo code UNORTHODOX at checkout to get their free trial se