← New Books Network
Loading summary
Transcript63 lines
- [00:01]
A
Welcome to the New Books Network.
- [00:05]
B
Hello everybody and welcome to New Books Network. I'm your host, Paul Lerner, and I'm delighted to introduce today's guest, Rob Kutner. Rob Kutner is a comedy writer and teacher who's won five Emmys, a Peabody, a Television Critics Award, and a Grammy for his work on such shows as the Daily show with Jon Stewart and Conan. He co created the show Gander and is head writer on the interfaith action comedy animated show God's Gang. In his spare time, Rob is Senior Lecturer in Comedy Writing at Loyola Marymount University School of Film and Television and he's also the author of Snot Goblins and Other Tasteless Tales. Look out for the Little Guy, which is the In Universe memoir of Scott Lang, also known as Ant Man, Apocalypse Howe Turn the End Times into the Best Times and the Future According to Me, as well as the graphic novel shrinkage the Jews 5000 years and counting is the book we're here to discuss, and it appeared in 2025. It's an uproarious pageant of characters from the Bible and Jewish history who together cover an enormous amount of historical and theological terrain, from the Garden of Eden to Gloria Steinem. The reader is treated to first person accounts from many key characters, beginning with the snake in the Garden of Eden, a peek into Moses diaries, family therapy session with the patriarchs and matriarchs, all the way through a movie about Jews role in the history of Hollywood. Together with informative bits of historical background and narration. It's a hilarious, irreverent and, ahem, historically accurate tour de force. And I say ahem there because for the sake of full disclosure, I was one of several, several historians and Jewish study scholars Rob consulted with as he finished the manuscript. Rob, it's a pleasure to welcome you to the podcast.
- [02:01]
A
Thanks. And it's really nice to have an introduction that wasn't just copied from the Amazon page as these things usually are, or from AI.
- [02:08]
B
It wasn't AI and it wasn't from Amazon. I did a little bit of research, but some of it I'm sure you recognize from your own website.
- [02:16]
A
With you, I wouldn't be surprised if you did more than a level research.
- [02:18]
B
But I hit every archive I could find. So, Rob, I wonder if we could start off with I'd love to hear from you and I'm sure listeners are interested in a little bit about your career and how you decided to be a comedy writer and when maybe it became clear to you that it wasn't just a matter of Being a funny person. But this is something you could actually turn into a career.
- [02:42]
A
Well, yes, the teachers in the audience will appreciate that I had the early inkling to being a comedy writer and that I was super annoying in school to my teachers and my classmates because I was always making jokes and I thought everything was funny, even if nobody else realized it yet, is the way I saw it. I didn't really though, see it as a professional until pretty deep into college. You know, nowadays I think people are very professionalized early. We both have kids and know that they're sort of told to pick a lane earlier. But I went into very to college with very academic subjects, anthropology and Russian studies. Not exactly laugh riots. But what I realized was that outside of the classroom, everything I was doing was sort of comedy related, all my extracurriculars. And at some point it just all occurred to me that like, that was where I was gravity. Even though I have an interest in like the life of the mind and reading things by academics like you, I decided that I think that I was probably better served taking my tendency to joke and trying to monetize it.
- [03:40]
B
Well, I think we're all the. We've all benefited from that. How in particular did this book project come together?
- [03:50]
A
So this came about because there is a relatively new imprint of Simon and Schuster called Wicked Sun Press, which is aimed at coming out with, I would say feisty Jewish titles might be their brand for it. Some of them are political, some of them are kind of cultural commentary. And the editor of it of the imprint, Adam Bello, was the son of the novelist Saul Bellow. Also Feisty, had been a fan of some books that were kind of. Kind of the rage. I think there was. There was one in the 70s called 1066 and all that. I don't know if you're familiar with it or maybe historians. It is a. Is a sort of a satirical set of riffs about English history and he was a fan of that. I was a little bit involved with the Daily Shows America, the book, which was sort of an American history and government book, also taken through a satirical lens. And I don't know what the calculation was exactly, but they thought a Jewish summation of summation of Jewish history with a comedic sort of engaging, entertaining angle from their point of view. Bar Mitzvah. Bar mitzvah gift. Perhaps for a teenager who's just starting to learn about this stuff, but is maybe also inclined to check out and for whom a more irreverent, as you said, lively text might be a way to Keep them engaged in Jewish history. So they had the idea we were match made by a Jewish book publicist named Judy Tasch, Book Saffron, who was a mutual both of us. She'd sort of seen that I was. She knows I was a comic writer. She saw that I was also pretty out loud and proud about Jewish identity and what I post online and about the things I'm involved with. And she thought I'd be a good candidate for it. So she introduced me to them and I heard the full pitch and I thought, oh, that is actually a really good idea. I do think that that is something missing from the marketplace and I think that, you know, this was about three or four years ago when they approached me and I think even more so now. I think a bite sized way to engage with Jewish history for a young audience is kind of crucial now that we're sort of seeing the way that that's playing out.
- [06:01]
B
And I think one thing that you actually deal with in the book itself is that we really need a laugh right now and.
- [06:07]
A
Well, we always do.
- [06:08]
B
But I was going to say we always do and maybe now more than ever, but I'm sure in every period they would say now more than ever.
- [06:14]
A
Right. Well, it did actually, you know, it's interesting. The book actually did start. We'll probably get into this more. But it did start before October 7th. It started 2023. It was initiated and as I've said elsewhere, I think that to me there's a little bit of a subtext of like, well, heh, heh, heh, all these bad things happen, but we worked it out in the end. And then October 7th, it was like Jewish history was sort of ripped wide open, I think again and thrown into question. And you know, I don't think as a historian, you know, the history is never settled, but at least from someone on the ground living through it, it felt like we were in this very relatively calm oasis, maybe an oasis away from Jewish history, you might say now in retrospect here in the American Jewish Diaspora. And I think I was working at it throughout that. So it went from one sort of way of looking at like, is history really fraught or is it kind of like have we sort of is like Fukuyama or at the end of Jewish history or not. And in some ways which feels very like kind of short sighted now. It felt like, I think a little bit to American Jews maybe we were and obviously we weren't.
- [07:19]
B
So I guess. Right. I guess it's reassuring to see that the current suffering and trauma is just another episode in a long series rather than reassuring is not the word I.
- [07:31]
A
Would use, maybe for you in terms of work stability.
- [07:35]
B
We won't be out of a job. Well, we actually might be, but that's a different subject. Right. And I was actually going to wait and bring this up later, but I feel like you kind of anticipated it already with your mention of the sort of alluding to the condition of Jews in the United States, because you have this you go through moments after the founding of the state of Israel when there are different waves of immigration by Jews, first from Arab countries, from Iran after the revolution, and from the former Soviet Union. And then you have something in there about 2030, the Jews of the United States. So I don't know if you want to comment on that right now or if we should just leave that and move on.
- [08:16]
A
That'll be a little surprise for the reader. But yeah, I danced around some things like that. But basically, again, the spoiler alert is that I was implying that things were not going to take a positive turn by around 2030, even for the so called and obviously so called sort of safe Diaspora. And obviously that idea came in later, I think post October 7th.
- [08:43]
B
I'm sorry, before the election that brought us Trump 2.0, I guess.
- [08:47]
A
Also I think I'm actually trying to remember the chronology. If you came in and yeah, you're right, it was before that, because you.
- [08:55]
B
Were done before November. I think the book was out around Hanukkah last year.
- [08:58]
A
Right, right. Yeah, you're right. So that was before then, too.
- [09:02]
B
So maybe just to give listeners a taste for this really fun and interesting book, would you be willing to read a passage for us?
- [09:12]
A
Yes. As you said, I have a lot of first person accounts, but I thought maybe for your purposes I would actually read a sample of my attempt to quote, unquote, do history the way the same that you and your readers do, but sort of with my own particular skew on it. So this is something I read a lot at events and it's a way of it kind of exemplifies how I sort of try to take on like the pretty tough, well, the pretty tough chapters of Jewish history is a, you know, there's a lot to choose from. But one of the tougher ones, which was the, you know, the Middle Ages. So this is, I call this Medieval Times, the Jews Middle Ages crisis. Make no mistake, the centuries after the fall of the Roman Empire were basically terrible for everyone. Europe was now dominated by Christianity and feudalism, AKA the fun duo this meant that a tiny elite class kept most of the population in abject poverty. There was also constant warfare, just in case those peasants were getting too used to their sweet life of nothing. Education and literacy were practically non existent. And finally, the bubonic plague decimated a third of the population. No wonder people enjoy spending their weekends dressing up and reliving this magical period. Likewise, the rise of Islam across the Arabian Peninsula sparked centuries of strife and disruption. Many empires fought to fill in the power vacuum, and religious factions fought tooth and sandy nail over who had inherited the true faith. Just think how many lives could have been spared by one good probate lawyer. Unsurprisingly for the Jews, things were even worse. In both cases, the political rulers from top to bottom, derive their political authority from the idea that they are appointed by God, along with their other main source of authority, a gang of beefy guys on horseback wielding swords. This meant they were given license, although some would say obligated, to force everyone under their rule to worship as they did. As for those who didn't, you can see where this is going. In both Europe and Arabia, Jews were relegated to second class status, or more often the status of number two. Jews were forced to live in designated areas and were not legally allowed to own property or practice most professions. On the plus side, zero pressure from Jewish parents to go to law or med school in Europe, Jews in the country were often restricted to the small villages or settles they lived in, while Jews in the city were forced to live in specified neighborhoods or ghettos. That's right, we invented those too. Prophet sharing. That's spelled P R O P H E T. Islam started in the 600s, several centuries after the Jews left Judea and got back to their beloved hobby of refugeeing. This meant there were many Jewish communities and tribes spread out across the Arab world poised to create eternal battles over who really invented hummus. Some of them fought with Muhammad's army as established supremacy over the region. In 641, Muhammad's successor, Caliph Umar, issued a covenant affording protection to the Christians and Jews, but in kind of the same way that the Godfather offers protection. Over the centuries, many other caliphs came and went, and most of them permitted Jewish residency, provided the Jews stayed in their camel lane. You see, Islam had a designated category in its theology for the Jews, Jimmies, the protected ones. This is because Muslims also traced their ancestry back to Abraham or Ibrahim. In other words, centuries of strife can be traced back to data issues and they consider the Torah and many of its leading figures like Moses and David sacred. All of which meant that Jews had a solid, guaranteed place in the Muslim hierarchy. It just needed to be below Islam's. So in practice, Jews living in Arab lands got more freedom to study and practice their own religion. As long as they kept their Jew places, practiced only a handful of acceptable professions for a Jew, and kept quiet, they were largely left alone. Despite the enormous effort this required from Jews for the keep quiet part, the Dark Ages finally turned bad. By contrast, the European Christians had no way to rationalize the continued existence of the Jews in the theological redemption arc embodied by Jesus. Christianity was supposed to have replaced Judaism entirely. And yet, even long after Jesus death and ascension, despite the rise of Christianity around the globe, the Jews still were. Medieval European Christians would have said read the room, except that 99.99% of the peasants couldn't read. Even worse, many believe the Jews killed Jesus, which was at best awkward when it came up at parties and at work. Even though Jesus's death had happened centuries earlier, many people held currently living Jews personally liable for it. That's right, the Jews who invented the very concept of the scapegoat in the Torah got to be the first to test drive it, or strictly speaking, to be test driven out because of it. And for medieval Jews, this accusation took an even darker and more dangerous turn. In this deeply, let's say premedical time when mortality was limited in general and child mortality was rampant, Jews were accused of murdering Christian children. Whenever a disease broke out, Jews were blamed for having caused it by poisoning the wells. When a Christian child went missing, rumors circulated the Jews had kidnapped and ritually slaughtered the child, using their blood to bake Passover monthsite. This is literally impermissible in Judaism, as matzah has to be made without moisture and human blood is not kosher. However, medieval Christian peasants were not schooled in the fine point of Jewish law, or, you know, just plain schooled.
- [14:32]
B
I mean, you have this way of making the darkest moments in history amusing, and I don't. I wanted to actually hone in on that a little bit. Is that something that you struggled with or did that kind of come naturally? Because you're used to making a joke out of everything, as you said, going back to the days when you were in school, did you kind of struggle sometimes with feeling like there was a line there that you didn't want to cross? Or did you just kind of throw caution to the wind and cross the lines and let editors figure out what to do with it?
- [15:05]
A
Yeah, kind of all the above. Pretty Jewish answer there So, I mean, I did struggle with it in some places. I struggled quite a bit, as I think you saw many drafts of it with the Holocaust chapter of how to even, like, engage that as a humor topic. That actually became a fight between me and the editor, which I ended up just turning into the chapter, literally, as having the author having a fight with the editor, because I did.
- [15:26]
B
I was going to ask you about that because I was wondering if that was you having a fight with yourself. But it's literally. Those editorial notes are actually from the editor.
- [15:35]
A
Yeah. The real story here is that I wanted to just put this chapter intentionally. Left blank was sort of my first approach to it. And the editor says, no, you have to engage with it. And then he pitched me an idea for it, which I thought was excruciating, where he said, like, what about a comedy sketch where Woody Allen goes to Auschwitz? And I was like, oh, my God, there's so many reasons I can't do that. And then it occurred to me that maybe that just this process was where the interesting part of the discussion was. And it also kind of gave me an excuse to present the information and then throw in the inappropriate voice of the other saying, like, make a joke at it. Here's the actual horrific information. The editor says, make a joke out of this. And I think that was kind of the only way that I could sort of leave the cards on the table, I think, for that. With something like medieval times like this, where it's a little bit further away and it's sort of, like, been kind of embedded in the culture, it was dark stuff. I mean, as you noted, dark things are things I've had to wrestle with in my career. Like, I work for the Daily show for seven years, so politics gets pretty rough sometimes and continues to. So you have to find ways to. A lot of the times, the approach is to sort of not go right after. You don't make light of the victim's suffering, of course, or poop or make it minimal. You have to kind of go after the perpetrators. So you'll notice I was kind of picky on basically, like, basically the perpetrators of, you know, Christian and Arab oppression. I think at these times, they're the butts of the jokes, I think. And then in a way, that the thing about the blood label was a joke I'd always made, to your earlier point, was a joke I always made with my friends, which is like, you know, they said that we made matzah out of blood. Like, isn't matzah already disgusting enough? Or without that or inedible enough. And I think I put that joke in originally and the editor's editor didn't like it. So I thought I just went for a different angle. I kind of went after why? It's basically I made it ridiculous because even if it was something we would do, it just goes against halacha, it goes against Stuart's law to even do that. Like, it just. It's, to me just the way to engage with a dark thing is to sort of just highlight the absurdity of it, like the absurd thinking and bring that into the light, I think as a disinfectant. And I think that, you know, and I guess I have an appetite for it, maybe for my work or maybe just for my disposition, which may. Some people wouldn't go there. But I think that when you're taking on a Jewish subject, it's a disservice not to try to engage with it, even if you don't succeed at it.
- [17:56]
B
Well, I think that it's actually pretty brilliant the way that the Holocaust chapter ends up unfolding because you kind of are able to make the jokes that one is tempted to make about the Holocaust, but do it in this kind of meta way or like distance yourself from them at the same time. And I think there's something really sophisticated happening where it's kind of showing that you can't. This is different from the medieval period. It's obviously. It's much closer and much more devastating in so many ways. So we can't make fun of it in the same way, but we also can't turn away from the impulse to laugh. Right. Because it's so important to us. So I think somehow through that contorted process with your editor, you managed to hold onto your voice.
- [18:46]
A
I appreciate it. I mean, the other instinct would be to go after Hitler or this also. I struggled with this in Spanish Inquisition or go after Torquemada. And this is what basically Mel Brooks basically has done that famously in both cases. And he often goes through them both after sort of through the guise of musical theater, which is another sort of Jewish related innovation, I think. And so I felt like just because he had done that so well, that it would be a fool's errand to try to sort of go after it, try to replicate with the master done. So it did leave me with sort of like, how do you approach these things? And I had to sort of solve the problem anew.
- [19:19]
B
I guess it hadn't even occurred to me at first how Mel Brooks must have been such a figure to Kind of work around because of his. His history of the world and all of his kind of. In a way, there's a similarity in the kind of jokes that he makes and that you make, where the kind of anachronism over and over again, which is just kind of pure pleasure to read and laugh with. So you have the Marx Brothers illusions there in the film chapter in the film section, which I really enjoyed. But I see. And I think you do make fun of Hitler a little bit, at least with the mustache and the stiff arm. And you can't let them off the hook completely.
- [20:01]
A
Well, in a way, like, if you read it, like, what I'm doing is saying, like, those things have worked up to a point, but now they're kind of cliched. That's the. That's the author's point. In that chapter is the editor. It's kind of spoofy that the editor is saying, like, come on, you can find something to say about him. What about the mustache? And I was like, yeah, I know, but that's been done. And it obviously didn't completely disarm him. You know, helped. It helped us all get through it for a while. But, like, really didn't take down the specter of power that he represents to some, Right?
- [20:30]
B
Ultimately, it didn't.
- [20:31]
A
It's like, you know, you probably noticed that famous quote about. They talk about this is right in your lane. The scathing political satire of the Berlin cabaret. And the British comedian, say, Peter Cook says, yeah, that really did a number on the Nazis. Really took them down, didn't it? The Berlin cabaret really had quite the effect we wanted.
- [20:49]
B
Yeah. And that also made me think of. Is it in Manhattan, the Woody Allen line where his. His friend mentions the devastating editorial about the Nazi march on Skokie. The devastating editorial in the New York Times about it. And because Woody Allen says, like, you need. I think with Nazis, you need bricks and bats.
- [21:07]
A
Yes, right, exactly. And I'm not going to go with bricks and bats either, but, you know, maybe you got to go tougher in some way.
- [21:14]
B
And did you. How did you. I just. I'm curious about the process here. How did you decide what to. I mean, there must be a cutting room floor for this project, right? I mean, did you have sort of, like, events that you wanted to include, but you didn't have enough space or kind of. How did you make decisions about what to focus on and what to leave out?
- [21:34]
A
Well, believe it or not, it was actually kind of the opposite because, well, okay, so there was one. And it was for a very specific reason. So, like, kind of to the earlier point of our conversation, I wanted to do a chapter where it was Israel in the Diaspora, as if they were anthropomorphized people in a couple therapy session, like, working out their differences. And that was also a pre October 7th piece that I engaged in. And that really was a different conversation back then. It's hard to believe. It's like, here's like. That was a vastly different conversation. I think now we obviously still have our differences, but they just have a different cast to them now. I think Israel desperately like arguing about completely different things in a way. But besides that, for me to do that, I had to get into specifics. And some of that was disagreeing about, like the. What they called once fondly the peace process. And, you know, Again, a pre October 7, Netanyahu's approach to peace, which was, you know, not really any, in my opinion, any better than this current one. But it was different. It was a different mentality about everything. And I got the specifics and my imprint is a little bit maybe on the more conservative, if we use those terms anymore side of things, maybe right wing side of that. That argument. I consider myself pretty centrist about the whole thing. I kind of go back and forth really honestly on both sides of the issue. I don't think anyone's really right here. Anyone's really on top of the morality of this. Different topic for different podcasts. I know, but my point is that I live in an uncomfortable middle. I don't have a real certainty of being super critical of Israel or being like super, like, supportive of everything the Israeli government does right now. So that's a messy place to be. And especially if you're going to sort of enshrine something as a discussion with hard points of view and have your own point of view come. It was really hard to land on it. I went back and forth sort of between my editor and one of my good readers who came in from the other side of you, and it kept just shifting. And I was just like, this is hard. And it, it. And also I finally realized that it's not workable because this had just happened. And that history, as I said earlier, is a work in progress. I think we need more distance from it. And even if we had a good point of view on it, the book would come out two years after I wrote that. So God knows what things would be like then. It would just be like, really irrelevant, I think. And I wanted, in my cautious way, this book to at Least have some enduring, some at least a bit of a shelf life until, you know, until we have to update it. I joked in. It came out in March of 2025. And I joked in May online. I said, my Jewish history book has been out. When we. When Israel attacked Iran. I said, my Jewish book, history book's been out three months and it's already out of date. So I ever since back then that even if I could get a beat on it, which I couldn't, really, it would be grossly out of date, inappropriate. So I just took that chapter out. I just said, like, this exercise isn't going to work for these purposes. But in the larger scheme of things, I really was more about, like, trying to keep it trim because there's so much Jewish history to cover to the point where my editor would say, like, I think you should expand this chapter. You should do more of this. And I think, like, I was like, if we want this to be like a handy paperback, I think we should just get in with sort of the headlines of everything, like the main parts of the story that all ties it all together. The main things any Jew sort of knows Jewish history should basically know. And then they should go off. You know, like Hillel said, they should go off and learn themselves. They should. They should get their appetite whetted by the comedy and be curious enough to go read it themselves. And then sort of as an organizing scheme, what I did was really stick to history mostly. Like, I really don't talk about the religion except where it intersects with history. I don't talk about theology that much. I don't really even talk about the rabbis or the main texts of Judaism that much except where they show up in history. And then I also don't. I dig into the 20th century, but I don't sort of, like, go in particularly deep on, like, the Jewish experience here because there's just so much to say about that other than just sort of like, kind of sketching out like. Like the film chapter that you alluded to is really just a comic book that just tells a very, very potted history of, like, Jews in film. It's very, like, shallow in a way, just like the main sketches and same thing. Just kind of our. Our biggest political figures and social justice figures and that we've had. I just sort of skate over that stuff just to present it and put it in front of the reader. And if you want depth or detail, you'll go out elsewhere for it because that's not the. That's not the project of this book.
- [25:58]
B
Coming back to the earlier part of your answer about kind of your politics and the changing political situation. No, no, no, no. I'm not drilling down or anything. I just, I think that being. And I. Look, I don't. I don't think we really want to have conversations with someone who's completely certain in their opinions and not open to some questioning because these are incredibly complicated, challenging circumstances.
- [26:21]
A
Certainly not funny from my point of view.
- [26:23]
B
Right, right. But I do think that being kind of a centrist who is shifting his own point of view and constantly challenging himself and questioning things is really useful for being a comedy writer because you can see the absurdity in all sides. Right. And I know it's harder to laugh if you're entrenched in one position. It's harder to laugh at the advocates for that position. So maybe this is a gift to, to all of your readers.
- [26:51]
A
I just think it's a. I mean, you're acting like it's a conscious mental choice and it's really the way that my brain works. And maybe it's like, I don't know which, you know, this is like, this is like the rubber chicken and egg question. Like, I don't know which one first, the comedic, the, the bent for comedy or the, the, the restless minds. So maybe the two of them just go hand in hand.
- [27:10]
B
Yeah, we'll take the compliment anyway, I think. Yeah. No, I think also you can't fix it to any particular moment because you want people to keep reading this book and things change so fast. And yet in another way, maybe they. They don't really change at all. But I think it was a wise decision to keep it open ended in that way. I was just wondering if writing a kind of Jewish work for primarily a Jewish audience feels different than most of your other work, which is intended for a general audience. And I also wanted to kind of think about the differences between writing a book and writing TV and other kinds of animated stuff and the other material you've worked on.
- [27:55]
A
Yeah, good question. So I think that in some ways it was. I compare it to like there was sort of maybe a relaxed tone and sense of referentiality and idiom I was using, knowing that it's a Jewish audience who would pick up on some of the insider things and the sort of mannerisms and, and even a bit of like, kind of a bit of the sort of self deprecation, the, the gentle but, you know, comedic self deprecation I was taking through the, the whole thing. Like that's something I was doing From a position of sort of comfort about Jews and sort of like you might say, earring our dirty laundry or be, you know, critical of us. One of the funniest comments I got was, I don't know if you know Boaz Apner from the community.
- [28:39]
B
Yes, I do know him.
- [28:40]
A
He's pretty outspoken guy and he was a fan of it. And he said, you, you were so mean to the conservative movement in this. And, you know, as you know, I sort of basically identify with the conservative movement, which I thought that was the conservative movement.
- [28:53]
B
Jewishly.
- [28:54]
A
Jewishly, yes.
- [28:55]
B
Jewish conservative movement. Not politically.
- [28:56]
A
Yeah, there. Right, right. And he's Orthodox. It was interesting that there's probably many in the Orthodox community who would take issue with the barbs. I fired at the Orthodox community. And then as you know, I took them at Reform Reconstructionism. I fired at everybody here and there. I took all kinds of shots. But I think just generally, can you write something critical of Jews? Yes, for a Jewish audience you can. And then at the same time, I think there was a tone of just sort of baseline reverence and respect for us and for the religion. You know, Boaz made this point too, actually. I know I'm quoting Boaz on this. He said, like, I could see this book being done by someone else where it'd just be sort of satirical, nihilistic about religion and God in the background of all this. And that's not a position that I hold, as, you know, since we go to shul together. So that was maybe sort of a guardrail on how negative I got about it. And then to sort of compare it to other forms of writing. I think it was just. It's really just on a way. Maybe it's just about the topic matter because I think that my style is my style. Now you mentioned I wrote this, this book about the apocalypse. It's very sardonic. Also in its way is very dark humor. It's a feel good guide for why the apocalypse is going to. Nothing ever happens to us. And I think if you looked at it, you probably see that a lot of it, the sort of comedy style and some of the types of jokes are probably pretty similar in it just about different topics. So I think maybe this is just my approach. It's just that I get into a slightly more private affair when it's a Jewish audience, I think.
- [30:34]
B
And how about writing books as opposed to writing for tv? Do you have a different voice?
- [30:40]
A
Yeah, I mean, I don't think it's super different, but I think that is also goes back to our earlier conversation about timeliness versus timelessness, if you want to call it that, because I wrote for late night, you know, for 20 years. Like, that's a thing where you write from a place in immediacy. So not only are you sort of, like concentrating a lot of comedic and literary, I guess, attention on a moment with, like, having special urgency, you lack a big picture view of it, if that makes sense. Like, you're. You're meeting the moment with the immediacy and all the energy you expect from like, a late night show. But if you were writing a book about it, you probably would, like, see things in their perspective and you'd probably, to use academic terminology, you'd probably chill out a bit more about how urgent that moment was, if that makes sense. You would sort of put things in a larger perspective. And that's the sort of pattern building that I was doing in this book was like, looking at all these things with, like, you know, they're bad, but, like, they're sort of part of a larger story. And so you bring that sort of level of energy to them. And also that goes into things like references. So, like, if you're a late night show, you're going to make references of the moment. I was very conscious of not putting in references that were like, pop culture references of the moment. For the reasons I've outlined earlier about. That was just. I did. I will confess that I used some, like, turns of phrase, you know, that are kind of in current, you know, current format. You know, there's this section with dealing with dark matters where I presented the Spanish Inquisition as a breakup text chain between Spain and the Jews breaking up with us by text, which was a way again of distancing myself from a really traumatic incident. I used text lingo, texting lingo, which I think is not like, super of the moment. It's sort of of the era. Yeah, it's. It's been around enough. I. I do a chapter where, like, I present a Kabb. I interview between a kabbalist and a lifestyle influencer. And I use some of that, like Instagram, Argo, right now that comes out. But. And I think some of that probably won't age well, but, you know, and I've read satirists like, you know, S.J. perlman and people from, like, previous eras where, like, you can see they were clearly using, like, terms of phrase that were big then, but. But for the most part, I was really trying to kind of clean the language of stuff that would not at least be comprehensible Even if you didn't quite get that this was a cute phrase people used in 2025, you would at least. You would at least be sensible. That wouldn't be like, mystifying. Like, you wouldn't. It wouldn't be like Ulysses, where you have to go look up what that even meant. Right. But I write Ulysses. Let that be the headline.
- [33:09]
B
That's the takeaway.
- [33:11]
A
Yeah.
- [33:12]
B
No, I mean, you're the first person I've interviewed for this podcast who has. Who's won an Emmy, who's won a Grammy, who's written things about snot goblins. And we're breaking all kinds of new ground here. And yes, I think you're the real one right here. Interesting. I think the listeners and the readers are the real winners. So I just. As we wrap up, I'd love to hear about. And I'm sure listeners would love to hear what you're working on now, what some new projects are and if you have another book that you're working on.
- [33:46]
A
Yeah, well, I think it's time for a second edition of this already. If anybody is listening out there ultimately wants to. We have to sell enough copies to read that point. But there's certainly been enough materials since March of 2025. I don't have another current. I have another kid's graphic novel that's coming out in the fall from the same press. It's not as about Snot Goblet cats running a YouTube channel. So a little bit slightly different topic matter than this. And. And then I. And the current thing I'm working on actually is a Jewish men's podcast with the Federation of Jewish Men's Clubs as Rabbi named Rabbi Rauscher is the executive director of it. And we've created this space for, you know, Jewish men to have kind of like more in depth, intimate talks about, you know, stuff men don't always talk about, about their feelings and about being husbands and fathers and sons and. And being a Jewish man. And they. And we bring a light touch to it where he's the sort of, you know, spiritual guy that I'm kind of the comedian. So we, we cover life tones, but we get poignant and we, we have on some pretty interesting guests so far. Just in our first round, we had Josh Molina from the West Wing. We just interviewed Jake Tapper from cnn. I think that'll be coming out soon. We talked at Israeli surreal writer Edgar Kerritt. So we're kind of talking to a lot of different, like, you know, kind of cultural Jewish thought leaders who are men, you know, about what that stuff is like. So that's. That's been a pretty cool thing. It's a bit of a diversion from this, too, I think. It's a bit more, you know, we. We do have jokes, but it's a bit more sincere in its intention, I think, than this is. But, you know, in a way, maybe you could say it sort of part and parcel with continuing the Jewish conversation with kind of a bit of irreverence and honesty.
- [35:28]
B
Yeah. I mean, what could be more Jewish, I guess, than being irreverent and soul searching and.
- [35:33]
A
Yeah, we do it all.
- [35:35]
B
You do it all.
- [35:36]
A
The. The bitter and sweet. The Hillel sandwich.
- [35:39]
B
Well, there you go. And maybe that's a great note to end on. Rod, thank you. Thank you so much for your time. And it's been really a pleasure talking to you and hearing kind of behind the scenes from this. This really wonderful book, 5,000 years and counting. So thank you again, Rob.
- [35:57]
A
Yeah, likewise. Thanks for having me on. And also thanks for your. Thanks for your history read. If you guys have any problem with the fantasy, it's all Paul's fault, you.
- [36:05]
B
Know who to blame. Thank you so much.
- [36:08]
A
Sa.