The RDL Podcast with Rabbi Daniel Lapin

How long would it take before a visitor to your home saw a shelf of books? Why this really matters. Want to change your actions? Simple! Change your beliefs. Your soul abhors a vacuum. Absent good beliefs, it will readily embrace bad beliefs and bad beliefs stimulate self-destructive actions. The real reason that certain courts no longer punish certain people for certain crimes. Being depraved is...

Why almost every airplane built flies reliably, almost every ship built floats, almost all skyscrapers erected stand, but many marriages and business start-ups fail. What is going on? The five reliable rules that govern both financial transactions and marital relations. Did you know that brands and franchises depend upon spiritual factors? What are they? The secret ingredient needed for effective...

If boys and girls are so interchangeable that boys can run, bike, and wrestle against girls, why does alcohol cause so much more havoc on girls’ brains than on boys’ brains? Why do far more girls deliberately cut their flesh than boys? Why does anyone cut themselves? Why do people pierce their tongues and bellybuttons? The connection between the bloody observance of the Muslim cutting festival of...

The government itself, no friend of the traditional family, admits that the most dangerous place for an American child, statistically speaking, is in a home with a single mother and her boyfriend. Notwithstanding the heroic achievements of certain rare and dedicated single moms who live heroic and self-sacrificing lives. Here’s a shocker: it’s just about as dangerous for a child to live with his m...

It's the Great Greta Thunberg hoax. Inability to function in a modern economy is a far bigger threat to happy and successful living for today’s 16 year-olds than is the hoax of global warming. When today’s 16 year-olds are 21, 27, and 35, their problems will be finding and keeping a job, paying exorbitant taxes, and affording decent housing, not being swept away by rising ocean levels. Yet, govern...

My guest, the brave and beautiful young Helga Lunenburg from Denmark came to America to warn us about politicians who tax us more and more in order to spend ever greater slices of our money on their wasteful, utopian & self-serving schemes. This bold, young 16 year-old Scandinavian schoolgirl wisely warns us that our economic future is imperiled unless we lower the national deficit. She courageous...

Meet the luckiest husband in all of Oregon. Food tastes better to a man when it is served by an apron-wearing woman they desire. A rabbinic request for more romance in the workplace. Women suffer depression at twice the rate of men. Really? Perhaps men just don’t share their pain. Is male depression under-reported? Didn’t you know that depressed men tend to be prone to violence? To be happy is to...

We all change our behavior on the basis of our beliefs, not the facts we learn. Beliefs lead to feelings which are emotional—facts are intellectual.  We do things because we feel like it much more often than because we know we should.  Recycling is the sacred sacrament of the religion of urban atheists, Secular Fundamentalism. It is based entirely on false beliefs and not on facts.  The real reaso...

Help your children find a job or start a business and thereby make your home a nicer place. I might not have been as entertaining as President Trump or as brilliant as Bill Gates, but here’s why I was a better choice as a speaker for this event. Profit is not just important, it’s crucial. Learn why finding your anchor liberates you, and how you are bribed by your emotions and how they try to subve...

Why you should never take notes while listening to a lecture. Why Jewish last names usually advertised their owners’ occupations. Yes, a man may be somewhat more than his work, but surprisingly, not as much more as you’d have thought. The activity of work and money-making influences women’s personalities and identities far less than these things shape men. The real reason that unemployable people...

Most women want to give themselves to men they consider worthy of their surrender. What if the man of your dreams turns out to lack ambition, masculine mastery, and money sense? Let's revisit the time I took a strange woman dress-shopping. Is the man you’re married to now the product of your behavior over the past few years? Most women would like to be married to a man taller, smarter, and richer...

1) We broke up weeks ago, so she'll be okay with me dating her roommate now. 2) My GF/BF is having dinner with her/his ex but it's nothing, they're just friends. 3) Everyone has one true soulmate somewhere and my purpose in dating is to find him/her. 4) You'll always recognize true love. 5) No, he doesn't have a job, but he can get one anytime he wants. 6) I know he says he's not interested in mar...

Try to make a movie or write a book in which the terrorists are Muslims and you’ll have CAIR (Council on American-Islamic Relations) to deal with. Just try depicting a money-loving character in your movie as a Jew and you’ll feel the weight of the ADL (Anti Defamation League of Bnai Brith) drop on you like a bag of cement. Depict African-Americans or Italian-Americans badly and you’ll instantly in...

Why does the number of mentally ill individuals in America just keep climbing? Who said, “If you will not have God, you should pay your respects to Hitler and Stalin."? Let’s talk truthfully about mass shootings. First of all, unlike familicides or felony-related homicides, the perpetrators are almost always suicidal. Why are they also nearly always white men?  Yes, they mostly involve firearms, b...

Rabbi Daniel and Susan Lapin converse over breakfast about the General Patton Principle. This explains why the most effective person to solve a particular problem may not be the most gentle, refined and polite person.  General Patton and his 3rd Army beat back the Germans at the Battle of the Bulge in January 1945, but his tirades were often vulgar and profane. Yet, not only did the men under his...

Won’t ya let me take you on a sea cruise? Johnny Rivers 1974 and Rabbi Daniel Lapin 2020. You need only three permanent principles in order to make sense of Robert Mueller’s testimony on Capitol Hill. Also, more news on Secularists Anonymous - my twelve-step program for recovering secularists. Seriously, guys, it’s no longer 1859 or even 1972. It’s time to get over it. A secular world view is just...

Do you know the name of your most valuable employee? Do you know the name of the person most to blame for your problems and predicaments? Do you know the name of the person you are most responsible for educating and improving? Here's a clue: All three people carry the same name. Your physical characteristics are things like: height, skin color, hairstyle, and body type. Your spiritual characterist...

So, there was your Rabbi struggling with what to name this episode. At first, I thought of calling it “Even Poor People Deserve Compassion”. Then, I thought we’ll call it “Especially, Poor People Deserve Compassion”. Then, I thought about “We Love Poor People”. As you can see, the ideas were flowing fast and furious, but I was worried about appearing to lack compassion—one of the very worst sins i...

If you liked being a happy warrior, well, I’ve upped the ante. It’s now a little harder. It’s easy to laugh when I speak about your rabbi (that would be me) revealing how the world REALLY works, but the truth is that learning how the world REALLY works and adapting to it is immensely painful. Having our illusions shattered is always painful; the slogan is easier than the reality. How the world REA...

Never use the word “fair”.  The political landscape of many countries is changing because citizens are asking their governments, “What have you done to our country?”  Please allow me to teach you the hierarchy of moral obligations.  What does the Biblical dictum “Love your neighbor like yourself” actually mean?  I tell you about  two important books; but for your own health, tell nobody, not even...

You’ll love taking this boat trip with your rabbi.  The one big lie that, if you fall for it, will utterly distort your vision of your own life.  Do you know the one colossal difference that forever distinguishes humans from animals? Clue: Progressives hate it.  A few fun fire facts especially for happy warriors.  Why do so many feel guilty about using a lot of energy?  The difference that fire ma...

Responding to a thoughtful listener’s letter attacking my views on marriage as “ridiculous”.  Would we stand for a system that forces young people to undergo at least four years of religious indoctrination before getting on with their lives?  Would we cruelly withhold jobs and employment from anyone brave enough to try and evade this brutal system of compulsory madrassas? Would we allow imams, cle...

I respond to a thoughtful listener’s letter charging me with ‘bias’ against Islam. After the Nazi surrender in May 1945, German youths didn’t inflict terror on London and New York to avenge the destruction of Dresden and the bombing of Berlin. After the surrender on the battleship USS Missouri in September 1945, Japanese youths didn’t form terror teams against America to avenge Hiroshima and Nagas...

Why does liberalism and home shopping dominate television while conservatism mostly finds its home on radio? Why is liberalism the creed of emotionalism? Who had done more good for the world - Calcutta’s Mother Theresa or Amazon’s Jeff Bezos? Why is our balance mechanism found in our ears? Aggressiveness vs modesty - Why do men and women’s biological structures reflect these differences? Newspaper...

Why does adultery inflict greater pain and suffering than corporate closures and job loss? In Governmental Indoctrination Centers (GIC’s), formerly known as public schools, little children are prematurely sexualized through a propaganda campaign known as Sex Education or Sex Ed. The argument is that children are “going to do it anyway” so we should teach them how to do it safely. Now, your Rabbi a...