Tablet Studios

This week, Unorthodox heads to Palo Alto, California, for a special live taping at the Oshman Family JCC. Our Jewish guest is Eddan Katz, a cyber-crime lawyer who founded Sudo Room, a hackerspace in Oakland. Our Gentile of the Week is Amanda Bradford, founder and CEO of The League, an invite-only dating app that uses data from Facebook and LinkedIn to match its highly selective pool of ambitious singles. We love to hear from you! Email us at Unorthodox@tabletmag.com. Sign up for our weekly newsletter at http://bit.ly/UnorthodoxPodcast. Come see us live at the American Hebrew Academy in Greensboro, North Carolina, on May 16.

This week on Unorthodox: Tel Aviv, so hot right now. Our Jewish guest is writer Jillian Keenan, whose first book, Sex with Shakespeare, explores her dual passions for the Bard and BDSM. She tells us why she identifies with Caliban from The Tempest, and who she thinks is the most underrated Shakespeare character. Our Gentile of the Week is Jeff Yang, editor and publisher of aMagazine, an Asian American periodical, whose son, Hudson Yang, stars on ABC’sFresh Off the Boat. He tells us about his enduring love for comic books, and what it’s like having his 12-year-old son star on a sitcom. This episode of Unorthodox is brought to you by Harry’s. Stop overpaying for a great shave. Go to Harrys.com and enter the code UNORTHODOX at checkout for $5 off your first order. We love to hear from you! Email us at Unorthodox@tabletmag.com. Sign up for our weekly newsletter at http://bit.ly/UnorthodoxPodcast.

This week on Unorthodox: Scottish Jews get their own official tartan. Our Jewish guest is L. Jon Wertheim, executive editor of Sports Illustrated and the co-author of the book, This is Your Brain on Sports: The Science of Underdogs, the Value of Rivalry, and What we Can Learn from the T-Shirt Cannon. He tells us how he got into sports journalism, and what he thinks the least Jewish sports are. Our Gentile of the Week is Imani Perry, professor in the Center for African American Studies at Princeton. She tells us why she thinks Bernie Sanders should have more support from African American voters, and what she really thinks of Drake. We love to hear from you! Email us at Unorthodox@tabletmag.com. Sign up for our weekly newsletter at http://bit.ly/UnorthodoxPodcast. 

This week on Unorthodox: Israeli actress Gal Gadot proves she’s Wonder Woman off-screen, too. Our Jewish guest is Ladino singer-songwriter Sarah Aroeste, who tells us what Ladino is, and why it’s so important to keep the Sephardic language and culture alive. She performs a song from her new Ladino children’s album, and (warning!) even gets the hosts to sing along. Our Gentile of the Week is ACLU lawyer Gillian Thomas, whose new book, Because of Sex: One Law, Ten Cases, and Fifty Years That Changed American Women’s Lives at Work, explores the impact of Title VII of the 1964 Civil Rights Act, which prohibited gender discrimination in the workplace. She tells us how much progress we've actually made in the 50 years since the trailblazing women she profiles took their fight for workplace equality to the Supreme Court. We love to hear from you! Email us at Unorthodox@tabletmag.com. Sign up for our weekly newsletter at http://bit.ly/UnorthodoxPodcast. 

This week on Unorthodox: Name-calling at a basketball game between a Catholic high school and a heavily Jewish public school in a Boston suburb takes a weirdly dark turn. Our Jewish guest is Jessamyn Hope, whose debut novel, Safekeeping, tells the intertwined stories of several strangers who find their way to a kibbutz in the summer of 1994, and was partly inspired by her own brief stay on a kibbutz. Our other Jewish guest (we are short a Gentile of the Week–forgive us!) is legal scholar Lawrence Douglas, whose latest book, The Right Wrong Man: John Demjanjuk and the Last Great Nazi War Crimes Trial, chronicles the dramatic effort to try the former Nazi known as Ivan the Terrible. We love to hear from you! Email us at Unorthodox@tabletmag.com. Sign up for our weekly newsletter at http://bit.ly/UnorthodoxPodcast.

This week on Unorthodox: Israeli settlers and Palestinians working together… to grow marijuana. Our Jewish guest is Eric Weiner, author of the new book, The Geography of Genius. He tells us the cities throughout history most conducive to breeding genius, how he really feels about Silicon Valley, and whether cats are smarter than dogs. Our Gentile of the Week is Katherine Connor Martin, editor of the Oxford English Dictionary and the New Oxford American Dictionary. She tells us why "Trumpmentum" doesn’t hold a candle to "Joementum," and asks about the difference between the words kippah, yarmulke, and skullcap.

This week on Unorthodox: the Oscars' Jewish highlights (and lowlights). Our Jewish guest, Adam Kantor, plays the tailor Mottel Kamzoil in the Broadway revivial of "Fiddler on the Roof," which opened in December. He made his Broadway debut in 2008 as Mark Cohen in "Rent." Our Gentile of the Week is writer and comedian Mandy Stadtmiller. She discusses her new Unwifeable column for New York magazine (and her recent wedding) and the mysteries of Kabbalah. We love to hear from you! Email us at Unorthodox@tabletmag.com. Sign up for our weekly newsletter at http://bit.ly/UnorthodoxPodcast.

Our Jewish guest this week is Ben Ostrower, whose design firm created Bernie Sanders’ logo. He tells us how campaign logos have evolved over time and how the Obama campaign catapulted branding and logos to the forefront of election-season consciousness. Our Gentile of the Week is Chris Eigeman, who made his acting debut as preppy New York City teen Nick Smith in Whit Stillman’s 1990 film, Metropolitan. He tells us about playing an Upper East Side WASP despite being from Denver and his latest directing project. We love to hear from you! Email us at Unorthodox@tabletmag.com. Sign up for our weekly newsletter at http://bit.ly/UnorthodoxPodcast. 

This week on Unorthodox: Klezmer aerobics and the strangest bris story you've ever heard. Our Jewish guest is Daniel Oppenheimer, author of the new book, Exit Right: The People Who Left the Left and Reshaped the American Century. He’s also—you guessed it—the brother of our host Mark Oppenheimer. Our Gentile of the Week is novelist and essayist Roxane Gay, whose latest book, Bad Feminist, cleverly tackles issues in contemporary feminism alongside considerations of culture, identity, and race. We love to hear from you! Email us at Unorthodox@tabletmag.com. Sign up for our weekly newsletter at http://bit.ly/UnorthodoxPodcast.

This week on a special Valentine’s Day episode, Unorthodox plays Yenta. Our Jewish guest is Jill Kargman—creator, writer, producer, and star of the Bravo comedy Odd Mom Out, a thinly-veiled satire of life and motherhood on the Upper East Side, a world the lifelong New Yorker is no stranger to and isn’t afraid to lampoon. A few weeks ago we put out a call for listeners who wanted to be set up by Unorthodox, and we were so overwhelmed by the amount and quality of the submissions we received that we enlisted the help of an expert: professional dating coach Nancy Slotnick. She preps us for our first Unorthodox matchmaking session, in which we meet Shira Ginsburg, a cantor and singer based in New York City who’s looking for her beshert. Know a great guy for Shira? Email us at Unorthodox@tabletmag.com. Sign up for our weekly newsletter at http://bit.ly/UnorthodoxPodcast. This episode of Unorthodox is brought to you by Harry’s. Stop overpaying for a great shave. Go to Harrys.com and enter the code UNORTHODOX at checkout for $5 off your first order.