Tablet Studios

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 sunshine goes" by Yshwa"No Rain" by Blind Melon"A Perceptible Shift" by Andy G. Cohen"Once Upon a Time... Storybook Love" by Mark Knopfler, from the film A Princess Bride

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 Sunn“Stranger in Moscow” by Michael Jackson

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, Oswald Chambers. She tells us about being called “an Esther”—hiding among non-believers at the New Yorker—by her mother, and what it was like to visit her family’s conservative Dallas community in the wake of the 2016 election.Sponsors: HelloFresh: For $35 off your first week of deliveries, enter code UNORTHODOX35 when you subscribe.Harry’s: Enter code UNORTHODOX at checkout to get a free post-shave balm.Music Credits: "Mikveh Bath" by Golem"Balkan Español" by Golem"Sinnerman," written by Les Baxter and Will Holt, performed by Nina Simone"What's New, Pussycat?" written by Burt Bacharach and Hal David, performed by Franck Pourcel et Son Grand Orchestre"Belief" by John Mayer

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'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"Unorthodox Theme Song" by Golem"Come Get Me" by Nas"Klezmer Happy Birthday" by Gypsy Jive Band"Hooray for Hollywood" by Richard A. Whiting and Johnny Mercer"Hi, Stephanie" by 임형복, ft. David Duchovny & iOS7, prod. by Squish Turner"Home on the Range" written by Daniel E. Kelley and Brewster M. Higley, performed by Roy Rogers

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 Unorthodox@tabletmag.com—we'll share our favorite notes on air.Music Credits:  "Unorthodox Theme Song" by Golem"We'll Meet Again" by Johnny Cash"Odessa" by Golem"Prince Igor, Act II: Polovtsian Dance" by Alexander Borodin, performed by Bolshoi Theater Choir"Amor Verdadero" by The Afro-Cuban All Stars"Volver, Volver" by Vincente Fernandez

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 Females: Plural Marriage and Women’s Rights in Early Mormonism. She tells us the unexpected ways in which plural marriage empowered the women involved in it, and why the practice was ultimately abolished.We're also joined by Noam Osband, who performs some original love-themed songs on the ukulele. 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.Sponsors:HelloFresh: For $35 off your first week of deliveries, enter code UNORTHODOX35 when you subscribe.Harry’s: Enter code UNORTHODOX at checkout to get a free post-shave balm.Music Credits:“Mack the Knife” by Louis Armstrong“Chervona Ruta” by Golem“Lysergic Bliss” by Of Montreal“Why, Oh Why” by Woodie Guthrie“Tomorrow is a Latter Day” from The Book of Mormon“The Luna Moth Song” by Noam Osband

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 us with comments, questions and kvetches at Unorthodox@tabletmag.com—we'll share our favorite notes on air. This episode is dedicated to the memory of J.J. the dog.Special thanks to our live band, the Jewbadourians: Jim Knable, Sunny Knable, and Claudia Mogel.Music Credits: “Unorthodox Theme Song” by Golem “Swing Gitane” by The Underscore Orkestra “Jonathan Goldstein” by The Jewbadourians“If Your Dad Doesn’t Have A Beard, You’ve Got Two Mums” by The Beards“Ross Douthat” by The Jewbadourians“Bad Religion” by Frank Ocean“Jen Spyra” by The Jewbadourians“LA Jews” by The Jewbadourians

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