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This week: a special update from Stephanie’s apartment and a reminder to donate to the Unorthodox fundraiser! Gifts of $180 and above get you a hot-off-the-press copy of our forthcoming book, The Newish Jewish Encyclopedia; gifts of any size get you our eternal love and appreciation.Let us know what you think of the show! Email us at Unorthodox@tabletmag.com or leave a message at our listener line: 914-570-4869.Subscribe to our weekly newsletter to get new episodes, photos, and more.Follow us on Twitter and Instagram, and join our Facebook group. Get your Unorthodox T-shirts, sweatshirts, and baby onesies at bit.ly/unorthoshirt.This episode is brought to you by Harry’s. Get a free trial shave set when you sign up at Harrys.com/Unorthodox.

Don't forget to donate to the Unorthodox fundraiser! Help us keep going strong in 5780 and beyond.This week on Unorthodox: A whole lot of Jewish guests!First we sit down with Cindy Chupack, an Emmy-winning TV writer and producer who's worked on shows like Sex and the City, Modern Family, and Everybody Loves Raymond. Her latest film, which she co-wrote and directed, is Otherhood, now streaming on Netflix. It's about three mothers whose grown sons seem to have forgotten them, and so together they descend on New York City to push their way back into their son's lives.Stephanie chats with Erin Davis, host of the dating show Bubbies Know Best, and S.J. Mendelson, one of the bubbies. The premise of the show? Three grandmothers meet each contestant, ask him or her some probing questions, then select a date for them from a group of prospective suitors. Kibbitzing ensues.Let us know what you think of the show! Email us at Unorthodox@tabletmag.com or leave a message at our listener line: 914-570-4869.Subscribe to our weekly newsletter to get new episodes, photos, and more.Follow us on Twitter and Instagram, and join our Facebook group. Get your Unorthodox T-shirts, sweatshirts, and baby onesies at bit.ly/unorthoshirt.

Donate to the Unorthodox fundraising drive and help us keep going strong!Our Jewish guest is Taffy Brodesser-Akner, New York Times Magazine writer and author of Fleischman is in Trouble. She tells us about the moment she learned her debut novel was a New York Times bestseller, why she writes from such a specific—and jewish—place, and why people are always asking her about Philip Roth.Our Gentile of the Week is Umber Ahmad, the banker-turned baker behind Mah-Ze-Dahr bakery in Manhattan's West Village. She brings us their delicious old-fashioned donuts, which are made with buttermilk, lemon zest, and vanilla bean and are fried and then glazed. She tells us about growing up in Northern Michigan to Pakistani immigrant parents, and learning from a young age to use food to tell stories and create community. Her question for the hosts is about how food became such an integral part of the Jewish holiday calendar.Email us at Unorthodox@tabletmag.com or leave a message at our listener line: 914-570-4869.Subscribe to our weekly newsletter to get new episodes, photos, and more.Follow us on Twitter and Instagram, and join our Facebook group. Get your Unorthodox T-shirts, sweatshirts, and baby onesies at bit.ly/unorthoshirt.

It’s that time of the year: The Unorthodox fundraising drive! Help us keep going strong in 5780 and beyond—donate here.Our Jewish guest this week is Liz Feldman, writer and creator of Dead to Me, the new Netflix series starring Christina Applegate and Linda Cardellini. She tells us about the Jewish elements of the hit traumedy which was just renewed for a second season.Our Gentile of the Week is Dennis Schleicher, who shares his conversion story. After coming out as gay as a teenager and leaving his family and their evangelical church, he ends up converting to Mormonism as an adult. (His book is called ‘Is He Nuts: Why a Gay Man Would Become a Member of the Church of Jesus Christ.’)It’s the last week to fill out our listener survey for a chance to win an autographed copy of our forthcoming book, The Newish Jewish Encyclopedia..Subscribe to our weekly newsletter to get new episodes, photos, and more. Email us at Unorthodox@tabletmag.com or leave a message at our listener line: 914-570-4869. Follow us on Twitter and Instagram, and join our Facebook group.This episode is brought to you by Harry’s. Get a free trial shave set when you sign up at Harrys.com/Unorthodox

We're off this week, recharging in various locations, but we didn't want to leave your feed completely empty.  Instead, Mark has a story he's been trying to find a place to tell for years. As our fourth birthday approaches, we wanted to expand our own creation myth, back to when Mark was 15 years old. Here's a few links for when you're done:First, take our survey here or at http://bit.ly/uosurvey19Second, our 2019 Fundraiser is here, at http://tabletmag.com/donate

This week in 'News of the Jews,' Israel's new Education Minister endorsed gay conversion therapy, a controversial and widely discredited practice. We're bringing you an interview (recorded before those comments were made) with Mathew Shurka founder of Born Perfect, an organization that lobbies against conversion therapy. Mathew tells us about his own experience—he spent five years in conversion therapy as a teen—and how he found his calling in activism after an 'It Gets Better' video he recorded in 2012 went viral.Our Gentile of the Week, recorded at our Chicago live show last month, is Greta Johnsen, who hosts the Nerdette podcast and anchors Weekend Edition Saturday on WBEZ Chicago. She tells the audience at the Logan Square Auditorium what it means to be a nerdette, shares her favorite moments of the podcast, and asks the hosts a question about Jewish food.Tell us what you really think! Fill out our listener survey for a chance to win an autographed copy of our forthcoming book, The Newish Jewish Encyclopedia.Subscribe to our weekly newsletter to get new episodes, photos, and more. Email us at Unorthodox@tabletmag.com or leave a message at our listener line: 914-570-4869. Follow us on Twitter and Instagram, and join our Facebook group.This week's outro music is 'Adon Olam' sung to the tune of the 'Golden Girls' theme song by Kol Zimra. The song is featured in Latter Day Jew, Aliza Rosen's new film about former Unorthodox guest H. Alan Scott. Contact info@kolzimra.com for engaging harmony music at your next simcha.This episode is brought to you by Harry’s. Get a free trial shave set when you sign up at Harrys.com/Unorthodox.

This episode was recorded live at the Hollis Hills Bayside Jewish Center in Queens.Our Jewish guest is Leon Neyfakh, who hosts the new podcast Fiasco, which tells the story of the 2000 election. He previously hosted two seasons of the hit podcast Slow Burn—the first focused on Watergate, and the second on the Clinton impeachment. He tells us why he focuses on what it was like to live through these explosive moments in American history as they slowly unfolded, and what he's learned about today's political dramas by digging into recent historyOur gentile of the week is Clare Malone, a senior political writer at FiveThirtyEight, where she covers the 2020 presidential election and appears on the weekly FiveThirtyEight Politics Podcast. She accepts our challenge to name all 24 Democrats running for president, and gives us her predictions of what's to come in the 2020 campaign. Following in the footsteps of her sister Noreen, who in 2017 inquired about the phrase 'Jewish American Princess' and inspired an entire special episode on the topic, Clare asks what the deal is with the word 'shiksa.'Tell us what you really think! Fill out our listener survey for a chance to win an autographed copy of our forthcoming book, The Newish Jewish Encyclopedia.Email us at Unorthodox@tabletmag.com or leave a message at our listener line: 914-570-4869.Subscribe to our weekly newsletter to get new episodes, photos, and more. Email us at Unorthodox@tabletmag.com or leave a message at our listener line: 914-570-4869. Follow us on Twitter and Instagram, and join our Facebook group.

In honor of the 4th of July, we present our second-annual Jews Across America episode, celebrating the diversity of Jewish life throughout this great nation. (You can listen to last year's episode here)We have a bunch of star-studded guests! Blair Braverman, the second Jewish woman to complete the Iditarod, joined us at our Chicago live show with her dog, Flame, to tell us about how a Jewish girl from California becomes a dog sledding phenom. (Check out her memoir, Welcome to the Goddamn Ice Cube, too)Stanford M. Adelstein, a former State Senator from South Dakota and the subject of the new book The Question Is "Why?": A Jewish Life in South Dakota, tells us how Jews got to South Dakota, and how Jewish life there has changed in his 87 years.Melissa Untereker, an lawyer with Frontera Immigration Law in El Paso, Texas, explains how Judaism informs her work, and how local religious groups are stepping up to help refugees. (If you'd like to help, she recommends starting here.Rabbi Neil Amswych of Temple Beth Shalom in Santa Fe tells us about how an English rabbi came to helm a New Mexico synagogue, and what makes his adopted community so special.Josh Furman, a historian at Rice University who runs the university's Houston Jewish History Archive, talks to us about preserving Jewish items in the wake of Hurricane Harvey, and his favorite item in the collection.Subscribe to our weekly newsletter to get new episodes, photos, and more. Email us at Unorthodox@tabletmag.com or leave a message at our listener line: 914-570-4869. Follow us on Twitter and Instagram, and join our Facebook group.This episode is brought to you by Harry’s. Get a free trial shave set when you sign up at Harrys.com/Unorthodox.This episode is also brought to you by The Franciska Show, a podcast about Jewish women in the arts. Neshama Carlebach will be a guest on the July 9th episode. Subscribe today. 

Unorthodox is off this week, but we have something special for you instead. Mark Oppenheimer was a recent guest on Slate’s Trumpcast, where he explained everything you could ever want to know about Trump and the Jews.  Subscribe to our weekly newsletter to get new episodes, photos, and more. Email us at Unorthodox@tabletmag.com or leave a message at our listener line: 914-570-4869. Follow us on Twitter and Instagram, and join our Facebook group.

Our first Jewish guest this week is Matthew Futterman, deputy sports editor at the New York Times and author of the new book, Running to the Edge. A 23-time marathoner, Matt breaks down the major transformations in both professional and recreational running over the past few decades, and describes the more meditative aspects of the sport, explaining how running is, for him, a form of prayer.Our second Jewish guest is Tony and Academy Award-winning actor Joel Grey, whose credits include Cabaret, Wicked, and Chicago. His latest role is directing the Yiddish production of Fiddler on the Roof at Stage 42. He tells us about growing up around Yiddish (his father was musician and comedian Mickey Katz, who wrote Yiddish parodies of popular songs), having a daughter in the business (Jennifer Grey starred as Baby in Dirty Dancing), and about his love of photography (he just published his fifth book of photography, "The Flower Whisperer").We'd love to hear what you thought of this week's show. Email us at Unorthodox@tabletmag.com or leave a message at our listener line: 914-570-4869.We’re heading to Chicago! See us live Wednesday, June 26 at 7 p.m. at the Logan Square Auditorium with Iditarod finisher Blair Braverman and Nerdette podcast host Greta Johnsen. Presented with Hadassah Chicago-North Shore. Get your tickets here.Subscribe to our weekly newsletter to get new episodes, photos, and more. Email us at Unorthodox@tabletmag.com or leave a message at our listener line: 914-570-4869. Follow us on Twitter and Instagram, and join our Facebook group.