What People Do

Rabbi Norman Solomon served in many important capacities in the United Kingdom during his decades of service as a pulpit rabbi and educator. But the title of his latest book—which promised a delve into what we might mean in the modern world with our talk of God—promised to be a rich read. And it has been, with its very personal and idiosyncratic writing style and conventions. Anyone with an intere...

I met Carole as the star administrator of the New York City-based rabbinic school I attended in 2025. (Shout out, Jewish Spiritual Leaders Institute !) It always felt like there was a lot more under her surface in the moments when she’d pop up, or in the times she’d email. When she shared a cool introspection exercise with our graduating rabbinic class, I had to learn more about her. Turns out, sh...

A hundred years ago, Judaism’s path of moral self-improvement was stuck mostly in the Orthodox world where the classic books of the field were in their original language. When the wider Jewish world began taking notice of Mussar , study and books in translation blossomed in availability. That’s the beautiful world that Rabbi Greg Marcus and I inhabit today, where the rabbi walks us through his own...

People talk about "main character energy" when it's a bad thing: You're the center of the universe, you're the hero or heroine in your story, and your story is how you see the world. Everyone is important only in how they connect to, or affect, you. You need your needs met (Karen!) before others, because, well, you're the most important person. But there's another more playful way to become the ma...

I stumbled onto Christina’s name in my quest for one of my favorite Jewish folk tales. Turns out, she’d shared a version from a Christian book on her blog, which was also filled with marvelous thinking on men and women, trauma and therapy, and ways for folks to flourish. It was a fascinating conversation touching on evergreen topics of psychology as well as a vision of problems she sees in contemp...

There is Jewish music, with melody and harmony and rhythm. There is chanting for Torah reading, with melody and meaning.  And then there is Jewish chanting.  Rabbi Shefa Gold talks about her entry point into it, demonstrates what it sounds like, and explains how it works in this insightful conversation ...   Further resources: Rabbi Shefa Gold’s website Are We There Yet? Travel as a Spiritual Path...

You’ve experienced this before, right? You know you’re supposed to do something. You’ve learned that a good habit is what you need or a bad habit needs to be changed. You know you should spend more time on this and less time on that. You know it’d be good for your emotional health, your body, or your soul. But you don’t do it. There’s a gap. Dr. Kyra Bobinet, MD-PhD, calls it the “Know-Do” gap. It...

No, not game, like deer and pheasant, but game like … board games, tabletop games, card games, miniature games. Basically, all the games of the world that happen solo, in pairs, in groups, around tables, at home, at cafes (like the one next door to his shop), and out in parks and fields and anywhere else you can roll some dice or move some tokens or share and swap some cards. Everything but the vi...

I am a big fan of thinking of productivity and task management, but I’ve been through dozens of them and I no longer think that any tool is going to magically spirit away whatever issues I have with self-motivation, focused productivity, or values-based action. Buuut … I still like to toy with this stuff. Back in the day, David Allen’s book Getting Thing Done changed my life, and I still fall back...

He's a scholar. A therapist. And a rabbi. And all three of those disciplines have touched on his work deeply studying what Judaism has to say about the supernatural and especially the afterlife. Rabbi Simcha Raphael takes me on a fascinating, personal, and well-researched dive into his decades' long work into a realm that doesn't get as much attention as it does in Christianity: what happens to us...

After interviewing Rabbi Rifat Sonsino about a co-edited book he worked on called A God We Can Believe In , the other co-editor reached out and said he had more to say on it. Given that I peppered Rabbi Sonsino mostly about other books he'd worked on that had been influential in my understanding how pluralistic and wide-ranging Jewish views on God were, I said absolutely sure of course yes to a ne...

Israel and Zionism: Could I have picked a hotter topic? Well, cool your jets, man. Sam Brody, PhD, an associate professor of religious studies at University of Kansas, is going to bring a nuanced view of Zionism, theology, politics, and the ever-in-the-news dilemma of the nation-state of Israel by exploring an early thinker on the topic who’s most famous these days in bookstores for his religious...

Religions emphasize, in different measure at different times and for different reasons, belief/theology and practice/ritual/tradition.  Judaism, in general, is a religion that focuses more on practice than belief. And it famously has multiple ways to remain “tied in” to the ethnoreligious tribe: To be Jewish is to do Jewish religion, to be Jewish is to be a part of the tribal nation of Israel (as...

I know Ilana from a teaching gig. Ilana's mom asked if I wanted to interview the budding podcaster. I said, of course, sure, absolutely. You can find everything they're working on around the project of helping kids make a difference in causes they care about at the very well-named Kids4Justice.org . You can also get right to the podcast The Power Pod on Spotify. Episodes are VERY short with snappy...

He's a dad. He's a granddad. He was a decades-long sporting goods salesman in his town. And he worries about the negativity in the world today and wanted to take a stab at sharing the philosophy that helps him. That's Larry Stigsell and his new book, Looking Through Our Eyes of Curi Osity . I knew Larry through his son; we used to work together in B2B publishing. I think you get a feel for Larry's...

It’s been a few weeks now that I’ve been keeping a commonplace book. A few hours after discovering the concept and chasing some internet rabbit holes, I found Richard Orodenker, a former Temple University faculty member, who uses a commonplace book, has studied historical examples of them, and used them as projects in some of “Intellectual Heritage” classes with college students. I immediately con...

KJ Davis  is a self-described "working neurodivergent matriach, military vet spouse, small business owner, and descriptive fantasy sci-fi author." All the aspects were interesting to me (we didn't talk the "military vet spouse" part, sorry). The idea of a small business that serves to help creatives take their burning passions to the people is a neat one. What if you're shy, nervous, inexperienced...

Noah Gibbs is a fellow tabletop gamer and Kansas City metro local. But he’s got even stronger feelings about the local gaming and convention community than me. He’s been working with a charity convention to raise funds for local causes for a few years. He still games regularly (I’ve lapsed). And, guess what, his connections at local gaming conventions led him to the Kansas City metro years ago. Fo...

Georgios is a philosophy student and one who brings others along with him. Now, when I say he’s a philosophy student, you think, ahh, he’s taking a class.  No.  Georgios has a job. He lives in the real world with us outside academia. But he carves out time to study Aristotle and other writers and thinkers for fun and wisdom in the time he isn’t working.  That’s so amazing, this is my second time i...

This episode gets into every angle of a musical instrument you’ve, for sure, heard yet may not know what it’s called.  Elliot Kanshin Kallen touches on the history of this Japanese flute, the emotions you can conjure from it, how it compares to other breath instruments, and, best of all, plays some notes for us a few times to make a point. We even talk a little Zen Buddhism (because it ties into t...

It’s a new year, 2024, and that means James Gomes re-read Siddhartha by Herman Hesse for the umpteenth time. It’s a short book, it’s in the public domain, and Gomes says he gets something new out of it every time.  I know that happened for me. He set up an online book club, and I read along with him. I had read the book a few years ago, and based on my reading this time, I didn’t remember as much...

I interviewed Kevin Jones about soft skills in security and law enforcement work for another podcast here . I enjoyed the conversation so much, and I was so intensely curious about his work in law enforcement, that I asked him to drop in for this podcast to talk about his career in law enforcement as well, near the end, about his transition to private security at a regional airport and now oversee...

I met the Stoics a long time ago, as an adult, sitting in a field outside a local library and reading Epictetus’ Enchiridion (the Handbook). In fact, it was probably one of these copies .  Well, before Epictetus, there were the Cynics, and their philosophy was a little harder to follow. The famous Diogenes lived more like the animals than the Greeks around him, enjoying the sunshine, wearing whate...

There is a beautifully un-nail-down-able question-and-answer I have been rolling around, like a stone in a rock polisher, for many years now: What is consciousness?  It’s the big thing that seems to separate us from other animals: We are conscious or self-reflective or imaginative or reasoning in a way that other creatures, great and small, do not seem to be.  This quest, which has carried around...

I enjoyed working for a few years with David Doherty with a multimedia publishing and events company in veterinary medicine. My favorite part was, every couple months, I'd go break into his office, sit down and ask him about sales. I thought his philosophy was fascinating. I don't like sales, but if I had to think about sales, heart about sales, wrap my head around sales ... I enjoyed doing it wit...