Tablet Studios

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...

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...

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 K...

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 J...

In this bonus episode, Mark chats with his only Facebook friend supporting Donald Trump: Bob Barnes, a Yale classmate he hasn't seen in 22 years. Barnes, a lawyer and self-described populist who hasn't voted in a presidential election since 1992, put $125,000 on a Trump win at 4 to 1 odds in London. Now a half million dollars richer, he talks to Mark about why he supports the President-Elect, how...

Torontonians! Join us tonight, Nov. 17, for our live show at Beth Tzedec Congregation at 7:30 p.m. Tickets here. Today we’re joined by a special guest to help us process what happened in last week’s presidential election, and where we go from here. Former U.S. Congressman Barney Frank, who represented the fourth district of Massachusetts from 1981 to 2013, talks about the impacts of race and class...

Join us next week in Toronto! We’ll be recording a live show at Beth Tzedec Congregation Thursday, November 17 at 7:30 p.m. Tickets here. Surprise! We’re getting our Unorthodox on a little early this week, with a jam-packed episode for you to listen to while you wait on line to vote. Our first Jewish guest is Stephanie’s maternal grandfather, Albert Rothaus, calling in from Boca Raton, Florida. Th...

This week’s episode was recorded live at Hebrew College in Newton, Mass. We’re joined by three great guests to talk about the never evening presidential election. Our first Jewish guest is Jeremy Hobson, co-host of NPR’s "Here and Now," who has traveled the country to talk to voters about why they support Donald Trump. Our second Jewish guest is Boston Globe op-ed columnist Jeff Jacoby, the lone c...

Boston-area listeners, join us for our live show tonight at Hebrew College in Newton, Mass, at 7:30 p.m.—tickets available here. This week on Unorthodox, Bar Refaeli gets pixelated. Our Gentile of the Week is Sohrab Ahmari, a London-based editorial writer for the Wall Street Journal and the author of The New Philistines: How Identity Politics Disfigure the Arts. He tells us about watching the pres...

This week on Unorthodox, Robert Zimmerman gets a Nobel Prize. Our Jewish guest is David Kaufman, editor in chief of Alexa, the luxury magazine of the New York Post. He tells us about visiting Amar’e Stoudemire and his family in Jerusalem, and why moving to Israel was a relief for the former New York Knick. Our Gentile of the Week is Nelson Eddy, the official historian for the Jack Daniels distille...

This week on Unorthodox, we’re partying like it’s 5777. Our Jewish guest is Gitl Schaechter Viswanath, co-author of the new Comprehensive English-Yiddish Dictionary, an 850-page volume that adapts the Eastern European language for the modern world—and includes a new Yiddish term for 'sexting.' Our Gentile of the Week is actress Tessa Kim, whose one-woman show, The Bad German, tells the story of re...

This week on Unorthodox, we’re gearing up for Yom Kippur with our second annual Apology episode. Marjorie Ingall, Unorthodox regular and co-founder of the website SorryWatch.com, tells us about the best and worst public apologies of the last year. We talk to Richard Cellini, the founder of the Georgetown Memory Project, and the force behind the university’s recent decision to grant preferential ad...

Rosh Hashanah has us feeling reflective, so we decided to put together a special mini-episode for the Jewish New Year, featuring stories of new beginnings from our hosts. Mark Oppenheimer discusses how a failure his freshman year in college forced him to rethink his priorities and get a new life, Stephanie Butnick describes the freedom of a semester abroad, and Liel Leibovitz tells an old Hasidic...

This episode was recorded live from the JCC of Greater New Haven. Our Jewish guest is Connecticut Lt. Gov. Nancy Wyman, who explains what exactly a Lieutenant Governor does. She also tells us how she made her way from Brooklyn to New England, whether she’d run for governor, and what she thinks of Donald Trump. Our Gentile of the Week is humorist and WNPR host Colin McEnroe, who returns for his sec...

This week on Unorthodox, who said it: Harry Potter star Emma Watson or Hillel the Elder? Our Jewish guest is professional football player Geoff Schwartz, one half of the first set of Jewish brothers to play in the NFL since Ralph and Arnold Horween in 1923. He and his brother, Mitchell Schwartz, are the authors of a new book called Eat MySchwartz: Our Story of NFL Football, Food, Family, and Faith...

This week on Unorthodox, the hottest meal in Scottish prisons is… kosher. Our Jewish guest is Willard Spiegelman, longtime English professor at Southern Methodist University and author of the new book of essays, Senior Moments: Looking Back, Looking Ahead. He tells us the worst fashion trend among college students today and why retiring to Manhattan is the secret to a long life. Our Gentile of the...

This week on Unorthodox, singer Sia gets sued for a sub-par Tel Aviv concert. Our Jewish guest is Justin Sakofs, creator of MagneticShul, a toy designed to engage kids in ritual Jewish life (yes, we try it out). Our Gentile of the Week is Paris-based writer Thomas Chatterton Williams, who tells us about his perspective on American politics as an ex-pat and his next book, a reckoning with how we de...

This week on Unorthodox, we’re obsessed with the Olympics.  Our Jewish guests are 20-year-old twins Jack and David Cahn, co-authors of a new book called When Millennials Rule: The Reshaping of America. They tell us what they think of the 2016 election, which twin is better at chess, and how to prepare for the Millennial takeover. Our Gentile of the Week is Gaura Vani, a lifelong Hare Krishna and p...

We’ve got a special show for you this week, Unorthodoxers. We’re excited to have Tablet columnist Marjorie Ingall back on to discuss her new book, Mamaleh Knows Best: What Jewish Mothers Do to Raise Successful, Creative, Empathetic, Independent Children, which comes out August 30. In it, she challenges the stereotype of the overbearing, coddling Jewish mother, arguing that Jewish mothers actually...

This week on Unorthodox, Amar’e Stoudemire ditches the NBA for the Holy Land. Our Jewish guest is BuzzFeed reporter Rosie Gray, who has spent the past six months following the Republican presidential candidates on the campaign trail, producing behind-the-scenes dispatches from everything from white supremacist rallies to contentious Republican meetings, and reporting on Donald Trump’s nomination a...

This week, Vilnius's hottest wedding destination is a former concentration camp. Our Jewish guest is Deena Gottlieb, who just finished her first year of reform rabbinical school. She tells us what that first year in Israel was like (less Real World, more studying), why she wants to become a reform rabbi, and how she gets through to distracted bar mitzvah students. Our Gentile of the week is Arsala...

This week, we can't stop talking about the Republican National Convention. Our Jewish guest is the very funny Catie Lazarus, writer and host of "Employee of the Month," a monthly live talk show at Joe’s Pub at The Public Theater, for which she’s interviewed Bette Midler, Jon Stewart, and Lin-Manuel Miranda. She tells us how she found her calling as a live interviewer and about the time she went to...

This week on Unorthodox, our favorite Jewish gymnast is headed to Rio. Our Jewish guest is Deborah Pardo-Kaplan, a freelance journalist working on a memoir about her life as a Messianic Jew. She explains what Messianic Jews believe, and her journey from a traditional Jewish upbringing to ultimately adopting those beliefs—plus the unexpected difficulties of dating as a Messianic Jew. Our Gentile of...

Our Jewish guest is writer and illustrator Christopher Noxon, author of the novel, Plus One, and the husband of Weeds and Orange is the New Black creator Jenji Kohan. He tells us why he prefers the term ‘domestic first responder’ to ‘house husband,’ and about the ritual bloodletting required to complete his conversion to Judaism. Our Gentile of the Week is rock critic Jim DeRogatis, co-host of the...

This week on Unorthodox: Kappa connections, ruff times for dogs in Iran, and a new original song from our in-house Jewbadour Jim Knable. Our Jewish guest is Rebecca Schiff, whose debut short story collection, The Bed Moved, was published in April .  She reads us one of the stories, and tells us what her mom thinks of the sex and pot references in the book, and why she’s attracted to Jewish guys. O...