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A
Oh, for the best, expect the worst Some drinks and pain Some die at first no way of knowing which way it's going Hope for the best, Expect the worst, hope for the best. Welcome to the Commentary Magazine daily podcast. Today is Friday, July 31, 2026. I am Jon Bud Horowitz, the editor of Commentary, here with our special mailbag episode. And joining me to answer your questions, executive editor Abe Greenwald. Hi, Abe.
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B
Hi, Jon.
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A
Senior editor Seth Mandel. Hi, Seth.
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C
Hi, Jon.
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A
And our podcast producer, Noam Bloom. Hi, Noam.
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D
Hi, Jon.
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A
So Noam joined Commentary, what, six months ago? I can't even remember now.
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D
Six months ago.
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A
Six months ago. And he is our chief technical officer and is the person who runs our podcast and helps us on social media and makes us sound good and all of that, and is also co sanguinous with me. So we're gonna start with Noam, A question that only you can answer, which is, somebody wants to know where on earth did this go?
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E
The
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A
interstitial sounds on the podcast, that little piece of music. If you are listening to the podcast, doing the audio version, where did this come from? And our reader says, given my proclivities, surely it must come from a Broadway show or a TV theme song, but neither. But. So let's see how the sausage is made. Why did we do it and what is it?
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D
Well, I wish I had a more interesting answer than it came from some sort of sound library, but that's a. A consequence of the reality of rights management and where and when you can use copyrighted material. I think the. The listener who sent the email was correct that that was the line of thinking when I was trying to figure out a little transition sound to the ads. I've been working on making the ads a little easier to listen to. I added music beds to the ads and I add these little transition sound effects. But it was my, My thought process while scanning through this infinite sound library was to try to captured the vibe of old TV shows or Broadway musicals. I know that that is kind of your vibe, John, and I, I thought it would, it would work well. I think that there were some that I had to reject simply because they created a ridiculous situation where you would say something very terrible and it would be followed by a, you know, into commercial. And so it needed to be something that did not have that vibe, but was also still sort of interesting and sort of fun to listen to.
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A
Right. I think we were concerned because people, I'm sure, note, and they listen that when we started doing this a couple months ago, it would literally be Seth saying, and that's what's wrong with the way they're talking about Netanyahu. And then with a half a second break, it would be like, let me tell you about advertiser X. Da, da, da, da da. Like, with no sound, no sense that there was. Or it would happen in the middle of something I was saying. And then it was like the next word was an ad. But there was no way of noting the transition. And I have to say that I borrowed this idea or I thought of this idea because I was impressed at how they did it at the Ringer Podcast Network, which produces sports and pop culture podcasts and now is on Spotify. And they've been working hard to also create this gap to make it sound like the ads and the podcasts are a little bit different. And so we're happy that you notice. I think it has made the podcast better. Okay, let's go to some more serious questions. So, a wonderfully named Doghouse Riley asks the following. On a political probability scale of 0 to 10, with 0 meaning 0 probability and 10 meaning metaphysical certitude, this is a scale invented by John McLaughlin on the McLaughlin Report, thus indicating the Doghouse Riley is as old as I am, how likely is it that Trump will declare an emergency of some kind as an excuse to alter or cancel the 2028 election? So, Seth, Abe, who wants to, who wants to take this, on how likely on a scale of 1 to 10
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C
is trump 0 to. If it's 0 to 10. Right. Which put in the email, then My answer is 0.1. Because I, I'm inclined to say 0, but I, on the principle of never saying never say never, I would say that we'll, we'll go with 0.1. I just, I, I just don't, I don't think it's likely at all. I don't want to leave out the possibility. And I know that there's some, some language in there that could go either way. I mean, alter the elections, you know, I don't know what we can fit under that umbrella and whether something he's going to do about mail in votes or something like that might qualify. So I'm going to put a positive tenth of a percentage on the positive tenth of a point on the board to cover those possibilities.
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B
I think it's unlikely. Slightly more likely than Seth thinks. I'd say it's about a four. Excuse me?
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C
Four.
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A
That's pretty high.
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B
Okay, well, the thing is, what I think is much closer to metaphysical certitude is that there will be a note, insignificant group of people who claim he has done this either way. And there will also have been things that Trump will have done that are fishy and unappealing, but not exactly what we're talking about. So it's all gonna be much muddier, is my point. And I just think he's always been unpredictable, and he's now perhaps more unpredictable than ever. So that's my thing. But I don't think it's likely.
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A
Look, I think it's an important point that Basically, since the 2000 election, every election in the United States has been contested. First of all, the 2000 election was contested because of actual facts on the ground about the bizarre results in Florida and the problem with the butterfly ballot in Palm beach county and the hanging chads and the 36 days of. Of indecision about who actually won Florida and therefore won the presidency. But in 2004, questions were raised about Kerry in Ohio and whether the Ohio polls had been closed too early and Bush won because he won Ohio. And Christopher Hitchens was a big 2004 elections truther. 2008, I guess, didn't really have much. 2012 had a little bit because of this question of whether or not someone had interfered with the Republican Party ORCA vote gathering machine. 2016, of course, Trump said, Democrats said that Trump Russia won the election for Trump, and Cambridge analytics had won it through Facebook for Trump. And then Trump said he'd actually won and that 3 million votes had been stolen against him in California. And then 2020, obviously he contested that election. And so this is just a feature of our politics. I would give this a 1 to 2. The question of whether or not he finds some lunatic like John Eastman who can explain to him how he can get over the constitutional amendment that says that a president is only limited to two terms by saying something like, no, it's consecutive term, so you don't have a consecutive term, so you could have a third term or something like that. And. But that would happen, of course, before the election, if he were really to start mucking around with things in that lunatic way, which I don't think is entirely beyond the bounds of probability, given who he is, that would obviously have to be resolved before November of 2028. And then the question. And then, of course, if Republicans win and Democrats lose, Democrats will come up with some truth or theory about how Republicans stole the election, which I think is. Is Abe's point. If Trump isn't a nominee or doesn't somehow contrive to do this. I don't think he'll care enough, to be honest. Apres him le deluge. He doesn't care. He doesn't care who's going to win. I mean, he wants him want to be given credit for having gotten somebody elected, but otherwise, I don't think he cares enough to play that game. All right. For aspiring essay writers, Caleb Louden asks, whom would you recommend they read and what specific essays should they read? So, aspiring essay writers, so what essays do you guys think are like lessons in how to write and formulate and produce an essay?
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B
Geez, I, I, I always, to be honest, I always go back to Commentary. I just go back and back and back. The, the, the archives are so vast, so rich, and, you know, there's always something amazing and sort of, you know, they, they, they, that you never saw in there again. They wouldn't to see, to have seen in there. And you can almost just pick a year at random, honestly. I mean, I do this regularly and I'm sort of always rewarded. I'm really having a hard time thinking of a specific essay because there's so many different types of good essay writing, you know, that you can be delighted or shocked or dazzled or you can have a revelation strike you, and all those will happen. If you go through the Commentary archives, I wish I could be more. Maybe as you guys talk, I could think of something more specific, but that's where I am.
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A
Seth, do you have anything?
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C
Yeah. So I tried to think of answers to this question, not in Commentary, just because, for obvious reasons. But yes, you should read Commentary. And I assume probably people listening, many of them do. But I just figured outside of Commentary, I'd give it a shot. And one of the names that I would give them is Patrick Radden Keefe. He writes usually mostly for the New Yorker, but he's the, he wrote a book called say Nothing about the Ira's disappearance policy of making people disappear. And, and that was, and it was made into a very good Hulu show and whatever. But he has, he normally these books of his spring from an essay or an essay idea in the New Yorker. And he does have a book of his, of a collection of like 12 of his essays. So you can get a, you can get a flavor of what he did. The book is called Rogues, but it's just about different personalities and people he's profiled. But it's just very, very, he's just, it's excellent. He's an excellent writer and somebody who writes nonfiction with, you know, and Keeps the tension as if it's, you know, fiction. And so, you know, that's a good, that's a good indication of somebody who reads a lot, a writer who reads a lot. I would also say, you know, I find that when it comes to personal stuff, Caitlin Flanagan does a wonderful job also. She's written about her experience battling cancer. She's, you know, written about all these sort of personal things and she managed to, manages to fold it into her wider story and therefore not be like, this is what she's known for, writing about this sad thing that happened to her or something like that. There's a way she, she manages to weave in life wisdom without sounding corny. She's funny. You know, she manages to avoid a lot of the pitfalls that can come up when you write about personal stuff. So I would say, you know, those two, outside of Commentary, those two are good places for those specific kind of essay writing.
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A
So I just go to George Orwell, who is the greatest essayist probably in the English language, as an essayist, as a master of the form of the essay. And we're talking about essays, short essays, long essays, polemical essays, descriptive essays, repertorial essays, personal. And the book that I read, literally read the covers off and that disintegrated in my hands as a teenager and as a young writer in my twenties, was the four volume collection of Orwell's collected essays and letters and book reviews and things like that, four volumes. And he died at the age of 46. So it should give you an example of just how incredibly prolific he was. And, you know, there are, I don't know, 10 of those famous essays, Shooting an Elephant, which was about literally growing up in India and going on an expedition to shoot an elephant. Such, Such Were the Days, which is about his time being hazed and tormented at an English boarding school. Politics in the English Language, which is one of the sort of source materials for 1984, about the misuse, how the language is used and misused for political ends and aims. Inside the Whale, which is about writing about sex and censorship. And you just go on and on and on. And he was, you know, he was the master of all forms of, of, of essay. And so that's. If you're, if you're an aspiring essayist and you don't read Orwell, your aspirations will not be full, fully fulfilled. Noam, you have anything on this? Is there a. Is there a. Is there an essayist you enjoy particularly? Or is that not your.
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D
I don't know. I I. I was not sent these questions ahead of time, unfortunately, so I did not. I'm. You're. You're catching me off guard. I think that was a. I think you're.
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C
None of us were sent to questions ahead of time. We're all doing this off the cuff, off the top of our heads.
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A
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D
Well, I mean, Mayor Mamdani recently said that protest was the spirit of New York or something along those lines. So I'm sure he would welcome such a counter protest. I'm sure. I do think that it's important to, to show. To have some kind of counter presence. I know that the anti Israel crowd are going to be out in force because that's what they do and they've been egged on by the mayor to participate in these. And to some extent, I think that the presence of pro Israel counter protesters will help show exactly what are the real motives of these protests and will they tend to bring out the. The more ugly side of them. And they're sort of the. They. They let their masks slip more when the people that they hate are standing right in front of them. And so I do think it's important. I just hope that people stay safe. I know that, you know, the idea of standing there in the midst of this throng is scary and requires a lot of courage to do, especially in these days where I feel like the safety of people who express these kinds of opinions are in greater peril in New York. So I would say yes, but also stay safe.
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A
All right, so you got good.
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B
Oh, I thought you were gonna go around, but that's fine.
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A
No, go ahead.
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B
Oh, I was just gonna say, you know, for me, it's like, I think I have to. I have to settle this question for myself still, because I personally don't like protests of any sort of. But to Noam's point, when I see the pro Israel counter protesters out there, I'm always extraordinarily heartened and I'm very
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A
happy that they're there.
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B
So, yes, you know, I don't like
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A
them and I don't like going to them and I don't. You know, this is. I'm the opposite of Mamdani, as I think I said when he said bedrock of New York City is protest. The bedrock of the United States is the opposite of protest. It is involvement in the political process, not standing out in the street yelling. I mean, you can do that. That's free speech. But that is not the bedrock of our system. However, I think back to a moment right before October 7th in 2023, when a left wing peacenik Jew of my acquaintance in New York organized a protest against Bibi Netanyahu at the UN because of the judicial reforms that his government was advocating. And I was so outraged not by the idea that there could be a protest against the judicial reforms in Israel, but that they would do this at the epicenter of global Jew hatred and anti Semitism. That they would do it when the pres. When the Prime Minister of Israel was coming to represent the Jewish state, nominally Zionist. This, this crew, this was not Jewish. This was not Jewish Voice for Peace. This was not, you know, this was a sort of liberal Jewish American Jews who would call themselves Zionists and that they were joining the jackals effectively at the U.N. by having this protest at the U.N. and I think of that, and then I think, yeah, maybe there need to be counter protests because there will be some kind of fake Jewish protest, which is to say there will be a Jewish group that of course, is made up of 85% of non Jews standing in front of the UN saying, as a Jew, I want Bibi Netanyahu to be arrested for war crimes. And if that isn't countered, this mythological notion that Jews believe that Israel is a terrorist state will gain more and more purchase.
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C
So, yeah, and, and, and on that note, just Jews are in a specific position because we really are the only minority that does this to ourselves. There isn't, you know, there, there really weren't like George Floyd counter protests, you know, from the, like, it's just, I mean, they might have been from right wingers, but, you know, there were or, or protests against, you know, the, the, the, you know, some of the, the rules that they were trying to put in place or maybe on behalf or, you know, defending the police or whatever. But we were kind of the only group that does this, that like when there's, when there's something going on with anti Semitism, the Times or the Washington Post or somebody, they have people to call. And so there will always be a part in the story where it says, but some Jews are worried that cracking down on this may crack down on free speech and may curb this blah, blah, blah. I saw somebody wrote a column, my favorite example of this ever recently was somebody wrote a column saying that it's Jewish. History teaches you that you should not target the icc. That Rubio is wrong because you should, you should protect the ICC for Jews. And it is right now an institution that is obsessed only with harming. So, you know, we're, we're. I do think, like, I'm not a big protester or counter protester, but I do kind of feel like along John's point that I like people to see if they can, that, you know, it's very easy for the other side to organize Jews in its in service of the czar. And there should be Jews opposed to the czar also wherever there are Jews in service of the czar.
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A
Excellent. Okay. Susan Schwartz asks the following. Watching anti Israel, anti Semitic narratives and violence spreading like a wildfire here and around the world. Can you name individuals or organizations today that you are seeing out there who could possibly have the courage and the leadership qualities to be the Jewish Churchill or the not Jewish Churchill for the Jews. So is there a. I don't quite know what she means by Churchill. And I have an interesting thing to say about Churchill. But do you see a sort of world historical figure emerging somewhere in the world who could be a Churchill arguing for the civilizational importance of the Jews? And the Jewish state that would transcend current political divisions.
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B
I don't know. I sort of feel like that's not how anti Semitism is ultimately countered, you know, with like a one. With one leader that marshals the forces. You know, I don't. It would be not. I would like to see someone try, that's for sure. I'd applaud them. And there, and there are many great, wonderful people out there who are taking up the cause, but I don't think that's. I don't think people are. I don't think this mania subsides because one person comes out and roars like a lion in our defense. It's a much more complicated process that plays out sadly.
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D
Yeah, I think Abe is right. I think in years past, the communication atmosphere was such that there was space for one big voice to come in and fill the discourse with good arguments. Today, because everything is so flooded, there's so many people with so many platforms, I think it's more important to create a totality of voices to create this sort of space where you hear your. If you browse through your social media feed, you see multiple people making the good arguments as opposed to just one person to sort of stake a claim in the information space for these good arguments. So I think it's less about one big person and more about multiple good people that you see out there. Content creators and other people who help create the, the. The impression with third party observers that it is not just that everyone feels a certain way and, and that way is anti Israel in this case.
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A
Oh, go ahead, Seth. Sorry, did you have something?
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C
Oh, I thought Abe started to say something.
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B
Oh, I was just gonna say also Zelenskyy is the Jewish Churchill.
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A
Oh, okay. Well, you know what's interesting about that is that's why I wanted to bring this up is I'm gonna go totally off to one side. And of course, you know, people worship Churchill more than ever. And, and anyone who appreciates the extraordinary position that Zelensky has taken, he is a little like Churchill in the sense that when Churchill became prime minister of Great Britain after Hitler's invasion of Poland in 1940, there was a real question about whether England would survive. And remember his speech, the Dunkirk speech that made him famous is envisions an invasion of Great Britain by Germany. We will fight them on the beaches and we will never surrender. It was not a given thing that Britain was going to win the war and survive. It could just be France and be swallowed up the way. The way France was. And so yeah, that was a very noble clarion call for. And rallied his people and all of that. But I wanted to mention this because I was listening to the Rest Is History, the podcast, wildly popular podcast with not the actor Tom Holland, but the historian Tom Holland and a colleague whose name I can't quite remember right now. And, you know, this is a fascinating structure, this podcast, because it's basically these two guys who simply talk about a historical event or a historical period as though they are like color commentators during a game. They tell the story and they trade details and they trade back and forth. There's no. They're just storytellers. And they put out one of the greatest two part, three part podcasts I've ever heard about the disaster in World War II at Gallipoli. The 1915 fantasy World War I. You mean World War I. I'm sorry, which was this unimaginable defeat for Britain and Australia and New Zealand on the Turkish coast, colossal casualty number, most of them Australian. And this was all Churchill's plan. And the idea, if you had told people in 1916, with Churchill disgraced because of what had happened at Gallipoli, that he would emerge 25 years later to be the savior of Western civilization, they would have thought you were insane. He had been the most reckless, foolish, and boneheaded and wrong thinking military strategist the world had ever seen, based on what happened at Gallipoli. And therefore it's important to remember just how contingent history is and how if you can't draw a straight line, there could be people right now that we look at and think are lost forever and bozos and ridiculous and deserve to be written out of public life who could emerge 25 years from now as the saviors of the United States and the West. So you gotta sort of keep your powder dry. The great version of this story is Ariel Sharon driven out of Israeli politics after the Sabra and shatila massacres in 1982 and emerging 18 years later after having been disgraced as the Prime Minister of Israel. Something again that no one would ever have a million years have expected would be the would happen after he had been sort of driven from public life.
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D
Okay, so you're saying there's hope for Jackson Hinkle yet?
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A
Oh, man. No, I guess Eli would say there's hope for Laura Loomer yet, given Eli Lake's piece on Laura Loomer, but I'm not willing to go there. Okay, a couple of questions on politics in 28. Can you see a non vance and non Rubio candidate winning the GOP nomination in 28. And Noam Taylor writes, I'm a 22 year old orthodox Jewish conservative. If Rubio doesn't run, who is best suited to take on Vance and stand for actual conservatism? American global leadership, limited government and a strong defense of capitalism. So anybody have a scenario for 28 that does not involve Rubio and Vance?
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C
Yeah, I think so. I mean, it's too, it's, we're too far out from 2028 to, to think that the status quo will remain the status quo. And in this case it very well might be. And it is hard to see options outside of it. But I really do think that we're so far out that I think it depends also how the midterms go. Because you. I could see if Mike Rogers wins the Michigan Senate seat, I could see an immediate boost to his prospects as a guy who takes up that torch. He believes in, you know, a strong American presence in the world. And if he's, if he proves that he can win in a state, you have to win in a swing state. And if he wins, he will. If EL Sayed wins the Democratic nomination and Mike Rogers wins the general, Mike Rogers will have won an elect this general election based on the idea that there is this threat to America and we're going to stop it. And so all those things might converge and then, you know, the two who are always around are, you know, I, Tom Cotton could always run and he, and he's, he's a guy. I mean, we say that all the time, but he's a guy who could unite the different branches. And then lastly, I'm not sure that Mike Pence has given up running. He has put together his own think tank and it seems like a can, it might be a sort of movement or campaign in waiting. We'll see.
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A
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B
John, can I ask you a follow up question on this? There's so many people, I mean, you know, everyone says Vance, Rubio, Vance, Rubio, Vance, Rubio. And then there's this. There are a bunch of people online and elsewhere. Our friend Mark Halpern is one of them who says stop with the Rubio. Rubio's not running. He's not running. He's not running. Cut it. It's a fantasy. He's just not running. Do you think that's the case? I don't know. But I wonder why they're so certain of this.
- [39:09]
A
I honestly don't know. And I think that if circumstances suggested that Rubio had a clear shot also, again, contingent on what happens next year if he and Vance are neck and neck, let's say, or Vance makes a bad mistake, people say, or Rubio has a great moment or something like that, all of this could, I just don't think anybody should think that Vance is going to walk into the nomination. He won one election on his own in a very red state and pulled across the finish line by Trump both in the primary and in the general. And he has shown no particular political skills as far as I can tell. I mean, he hasn't shown like disastrous, he's not Dan Quayle, he hasn't made a disastrous showing as vice president, but he certainly hasn't covered himself in glory. And the very fact that he isn't at 60% in the polls anymore is an indication that he has not made the most of his vice presidency as a stepping stone. So, you know, nobody should think that this is going to be an easy walk for him. There's no reason for it to be. And there are too many people in America who want to be president to allow that to happen. I would say, okay, Abe, there was a question whether I was going to ask this question, but you said you had something interesting to say about it. So this comes out of left field. David Durrett asks, how did the performance and makeup of Alec Guinness as Fagan in David Lean's Oliver Twist, made in 1948, affect your impression of the film today? The depiction of Fagan cannot be ignored. So just quickly to summarize, this is one of the best, is easily the best adaptation, one of the two best adaptations of Dickens novels ever made. This Oliver Twist, it's a remarkable movie along with the other one that David Lean made around the same time of Great Expectations. But Fagan is of course a notorious anti Semitic caricature in Dickens own work and is portrayed as such or this where David Durrett is asking is he? So is it's so obviously an anti Semitic caricature Alec Guinness performance that it is unwatchable today for a general audience. Abe, you said you had some thoughts on this.
- [42:01]
B
Yeah, so I sort of take all portrayals similar to that and in literature and not just in Dickens but Shakespeare and wherever, all sorts of places you wouldn't want to come across them really. It's just historical documents, valuable, you know, in understanding things. And I don't sort of get retroactively horrified. You know, maybe, maybe you can't help it on a sensory level when you, you know, when you see big nose makeup and whatever else. But I mean not intellectually. But I like this question because it reminds me of something that does upset me in a similar vein which is that when I now watch comedy from of any sort, it could be a sitcom, it could be stand up, just from the pre. 10-7-Pre antisemitic mania phase that we're in. So you know, anything from 10 years ago, let's say something like that. And there were light hearted jokes playing with Jewish stereotypes, you know, if you watch like the Family Guy or something, you know, where there's very edgy humor, you know, all about, there's a lot of Jewish jokes, black shows everything. It upsets me for a different reason. Not because I'm offended, but because I look back on that and I think it was such a sign of our cultural health that you could make these lighthearted jokes, you could watch Jackie Mason, you could do. And I mourn for that phase which was a long stretch of popular culture. Now that's what gets me is that the non offensive, kind hearted, well meaning sort of humor has taken on. The events since October 7th have cast a shadow on that.
- [44:25]
C
Can I comment on that? Can I add something to that on that point, Abe? Rachel Brosnahan playing Mrs. Maisel in the Marvelous Mrs. Maisel is, is one of the moments that I loved. And there was this sort of, you know, there became this, there became this complaint about what, what people started calling Jew face instead of blackface. Like people, non Jews playing Jews. I Thought along your lines, I thought that Rachel Brosnahan, who is not Jewish, playing a visibly Jewish woman, which is different than playing a visibly Jewish man, because a visibly Jewish man you could put on a yarmulke, you could maybe throw on some. Pay us whatever the, the garb. Playing a visibly Jewish woman from that period in time requires being Jewy. Right. Require. It requires entering the character in a way that other portrayals of Jews wouldn't. And it's in a certain setting and a scene and the comedy world and this and that. I thought that was tremendous. I really did. And I loved it. I loved that it happened. I love that it was Rachel Brosnahan. I loved the decisions that everybody involved made. And I think it's sim. I. Reflecting on what you're saying, I think the reason I love it so much is similar to what you're saying, which is just you, you know, you can play a Jew and you can, you know, have these portrayals, you know, in various different ways. And you are, when you are, when you are part of that, you are part of the wider society.
- [46:04]
A
You know, a weird thing happened in the last day or two and I can't. There's a fantasy novel series about, set in I think a fantasy version of Africa. I think it's called Children of Blood and Bone or something. Is that, is that right?
- [46:23]
D
That's exactly the title.
- [46:24]
A
Children of Blood and Bone. So it's been made into a movie by a brilliant black director named Gina Blackwood. Blythe Blackwood and the author of the book series wrote the screenplay to the movie and had a full on temper tantrum in social media and elsewhere this week saying it's the worst experience of her life. She hates the movie. It's terrible. She never wants to hear about it again. She sobbed and wept and all of this. And then the story seems to be that she was upset at the casting of one of the roles by an actress.
- [47:12]
D
Yeah.
- [47:12]
A
Amandla Stenberg, who is a light skinned black woman. And this is. And I believe the author of these books believed that all the characters should be dark skinned black women. And she is therefore having a. Like she's trying to destroy the movie which is coming out next year. And I saw the trailer, it looks terrible. So I'm, I looks absolutely awful though. This director's movies are really, really good. She made the Woman King and a couple of other things with Viola Davis. But I thought like this is now the world in which no one is ever gonna be able to do anything now that you would have a problem casting Rachel Brosnahan because she's not Jewish in a Jewish role, though that has never been a problem in Hollywood history.
- [48:09]
D
Now it's Ben Kingsley and Schindler's List.
- [48:13]
C
Yeah, I mean, he was back in the, in the. The movie about kidnapping. What's his face, the Nazi in Argentina. Right. Ben Kinsley played an Israeli in that too, I think.
- [48:29]
A
No, no, no, he played Eichmann. No, he played.
- [48:32]
C
He played Eichmann.
- [48:33]
A
Oh, okay.
- [48:34]
C
So he.
- [48:35]
A
So he does both.
- [48:36]
C
So that makes. That makes playing Jewish Jews even. Even more impressive.
- [48:39]
A
He also played Meyer, Lance. So he's. He's. He's all kinds of Jews. He's ranged. He's noble and. Yeah, nobody's noble. He's noble concentration camp Jews and he Gangster Jews and all of that.
- [48:52]
D
But.
- [48:54]
A
But now we're going to get into this sub. Subculture. Subculture questions like you can't cast a, you know, a secular Jew as a religious Jew or you can't cast. There was this whole thing about how Rachel. It was okay to cast Rachel Zegler in West side Story playing Maria, who was Puerto Rican because she's half Colombian. And then it's like, wait a minute. Why is. What does that have to do with me? It's just being. Because her mother speaks Spanish and people from Puerto Rico speak Spanish. Now. Rachel Zegler is disgusting on Israel. So I hope she never gets work again. Even though she's a brilliant singer and that was a brilliant performance, but nonetheless, we are just getting into this thing where no one is ever gonna be able to do anything. And this is play acting. It's play acting. This is what five year olds do. You're supposed to be allowed to play somebody because it's play. It's not, you know, it's not a diorama, you know, it's play acting. I just think it's a very interesting thing. And by the way, in terms of Oliver Twist in that movie, it is
- [50:10]
D
not
- [50:13]
A
Guinness brilliant performance is not as Fagan as a Jew. It is Fagan as a pedophile. And that is actually what's most remarkable about it if you watch it, is this evocation of this guy who is the leader of this gang of pickpockets in Victorian London. And he is clearly basically there to try to rape them along with getting money from them. And it's like. It's a. It's an absolutely chilling performance.
- [50:46]
C
One more note on the Fagan thing, by the way, just real quick, is that this past year, Allison Epstein wrote a very good Novel called Fagin the Thief. And it is a retelling of the Fagin story and Oliver Twist story from the perspective of a Fagin who is. Who comes up through the faith. So it's a very interesting. It's good. I enjoyed it far more than I expected. I don't always love those sort of revisionist whatever from this perspective. But if you want the perspective of Fagan and his Jewishness and how the story might look if you, if you watched it from a young Jewish boy, go up and through, you know, the
- [51:27]
A
plot that, you know, that's Alison Epstein, you said? Yes, Ellison Fagan, the thief. Okay, okay, one question and then a final note. The question that somebody asked is, is the word goy a slur? Is calling someone goy a slur? Does it mean something different from gentile? So etymologically Noam, native Hebrew speaker Seth, Jew of faith and raised. You know, the word goy means something in Hebrew. Simple, right?
- [52:04]
D
Yes. It means people. A people.
- [52:08]
A
Right, A people. So that's what it means. And you know, Loisa goy el goy harev. There are songs like this. There's all the word is used in the Bible to indicate a. A people. So that being the case is calling somebody a goy, a slur.
- [52:35]
D
I mean, it could be offensive. It's like that saying where the word Jew is not offensive unless you're pointing at someone while saying it.
- [52:45]
B
For me, can I just say, because to me this dovetails into the last. With the last question. To me, it's the flip side of seeing the humor with Jewish stereotypes. Because the concept of goy in my life has always been really always a sort of light hearted, humorous way of referring to non Jewishness in terms of like strapping, you know, a sort of like outdoorsman or someone who's, you know, very good at fixing things. You know what I mean? To me, it has always also fallen into this category of healthy humor that has always been, you know, like, you make fun of someone's goyishness almost
- [53:43]
F
in
- [53:43]
B
a sort of admiring way, you know?
- [53:45]
A
Right.
- [53:46]
C
Also, also you should know that guy isn't real. Shouldn't goy becoming a thing shouldn't really have happened because in the Bible the, you know, the use of the word goy can be used for the Jews also in biblical stories and stuff because the singular can mean any nation. Goyim meant non Jews. Because if you were talking in a biblical narrative, if you use plural for any sort of nations or civilizations, you were obviously talking about people who were not Part of, you know, the sort of Jewish Israelite, whatever you want to call. And so guy. Him really, you know, sort of came to mean the world.
- [54:30]
A
Yeah.
- [54:30]
C
That every. Everybody else. Everybody who's not here and everybody.
- [54:34]
E
Right.
- [54:34]
C
And so it's funny that it took on a singular pejorative in that way. I mean, that it is a natural way for words to evolve. I didn't start with the singular.
- [54:44]
B
I have a funny memory. It's like 30 years ago or something. I was eating at Sammy's Romanian on the Lower east side, you know, Jewishy, you know, kitschy kind of, you know, restaurant. And I was fumbling with the seltzer bottle because they have, like, the spray.
- [55:02]
A
They had seltzer bottles on the tables at Sammy's reunion. You made your own. You made your own egg cream at the table.
- [55:07]
B
Sorry. Thank you. Yeah. And the owner, Stanley, goes, hey, goy. And he takes it out of my hand and. And, you know, and. And sprays it.
- [55:18]
D
That.
- [55:19]
B
To me, you know, like, that's like. That's exactly what I'm talking about.
- [55:22]
A
Yeah, yeah. Quick joke. First Martian comes down to Earth in a. In a. You know, in a flying saucer. President is there to meet him. You know, leaders of all countries come to meet him. Flying saucer lands, door opens up, out walks this guy. He's about five four, tan, kind of gray hair, in a pompadour. It's got a golf cap on. Wearing a kind of checkered jacket, pinky ring, sunglasses. He says, hello there. They're all startled because they figured it would be, you know, like, so you're from. Yeah, from Mars. So does everybody on Mars look like you? And he says, not the goyim. So that is how Jews. That is sort of. It's the not Jewishness. But it isn't. Not a slur. That's the thing. Like, it isn't. If you're being extremely respectful, you would say gentile. If your effort was to say something totally inoffensive, you would say. You would say gentile.
- [56:57]
C
Although, of course, there's also big taken on this offensiveness because of this sort of victim complex of certain people in the. You know, in the. In the. In the frog community, on Twitter and. And other online spaces, this. Yeah. Goy slop and things like that. It's. They, they. It's one of those things that we don't actually really often use it as a slur, but we use it as jokes. But if. So if somebody in this. On this podcast ever calls you a guy, it will always be Affectionately. It will. You know, it's it. You never just, like, pass someone on the street, and they have taken it as a pure insult and adopted it, as if Jews use this as a pure insult. And so therefore, it has become known as. As an insult. But not because of the way Jews actually use it.
- [57:49]
D
Yeah, you get called a goy if you ask for mayonnaise on your corned beef sandwich.
- [57:54]
A
That's a perfect. Right. That's right. That's the perfect example. I mean, there are slurs. There are Yiddish slurs of non Jews. I mean, the biggest one is shiksa, which is a non Jewish woman. And a shiksa is a sort of demeaning or derogatory way to refer to a non Jewish woman who might be stealing a Jewish boy from a Jewish girl and therefore disrupting the transmission, the cultural transmission and heritage of the Jewish people. So shiksa very much, very much a slur.
- [58:27]
B
But, John, even that culturally, you know, over time, has developed certain layers of, like, a reverence. You know, like, they talk about shiksa, goddess and, you know.
- [58:38]
A
Yeah, right. Yeah. And the shaykh's appeal on, of course, on Elaine, having Schick's appeal, which, of course is hilarious on Seinfeld, because Elaine is Jewish. On Seinfeld, they just pretend she's not. Just like they pretend George isn't Jew. They're all Jews. All four of them are Jews. But supposedly Elaine and George are not Jews. This was NBC's concession to America. And of course.
- [59:05]
C
And when you meet George, Elaine, played
- [59:07]
A
by Elaine, based on a Jewish comedian named Elaine Boosler and played by Julie Louis Dreyfus, who was Jewish. So this is a funny little.
- [59:16]
C
And George's parents.
- [59:18]
A
Well, George's parents, yeah. The Costanzas.
- [59:22]
C
The Costanzas are like one of the most famous Jewish comedy couples ever.
- [59:27]
A
Right, Exactly. Okay, so I'm going to end on this because we got about 15 different questions at the same question, and it was, where's Christine? What happened to Christine Rosen? Why isn't Christine Rosen on? What happened? Did you have a fight? Was there a fight? People ask it on YouTube. People ask it everywhere. We got 15 questions about this. I said this at the beginning of the month or when she told me this. Christine, who was on the podcast for eight or nine years, decided that her work schedule, in terms of her writing and the things that she had to do as a fellow at the American Enterprise Institute and others, that preparing for the podcast on a daily basis was too draining and disruptive for the other things that she had to do that were more central to her work life and the things that she wanted to produce. And so, very reluctantly and sadly, she decided that she could no longer be a regular on the podcast. She is still a colonist for Commentary, will be appearing monthly, and she'll come on from time to time. But not only is there no breach, I email her three times a week, desperately trying to guilt her into coming back. I did yesterday. I said, people are just like, I just got these emails, rafts of emails, asking where you are. Doesn't that make you feel guilty? Won't you come back now? And she. Her answer, as would be true of Christina's, oh, that's so nice of them. But she did not take me up on the guilt question. So that is.
- [61:13]
C
It was an opening, John, actually, for, like, a really great fundraising drive or something. If you ever want to see Christine again, Get us to 35,000 subscribers by Rosh Hashanah.
- [61:26]
A
There you go. Okay, you know what? I'll talk to her and see if we can, you know, if she'll be willing to make the ultimate sacrifice of her mourning time for that aim. Anyway, so. Yes. So I think we all had a great time doing this episode. It's great to have Noam on. I told you at the beginning, he's co. Sang with me. He is my nephew, in fact, but this is. He's not an EPO baby. He was doing this very job for TABLET for several years and worked for the Middle East Media Research Institute and is a. A person of great skill and talent and were lucky to have him. And in fact, the only thing that kept me from doing this earlier was the question of whether or not it was cricket or kosher or whatever to do this. But we did it anyway, and we're thrilled, and that's very exciting.
- [62:22]
C
And he built an online following under an anonymous handle for a long time. So many people knew him also had. Knew his skills without having any association, aside from the very fun news cycle where he was repeatedly accused of being Ben Shapiro's father.
- [62:38]
E
Yeah.
- [62:39]
A
And, Noam, you have a podcast of your own.
- [62:41]
D
I do. It's called Ambitious Crossover Attempt. It's a weekly podcast about the intersection of politics and pop culture and such. And thank you, John. You're. You're. You guys are free to check it out where you find your podcasts as well.
- [62:55]
A
There you go. So, ambitious Crossover attempt. We will be back on Monday. So for Seth and Abe, I'm John Pot Horiz. Keep the camel burning.
- [63:20]
E
I'm James Patterson. I write way Too many books. Welcome to Hungry Dogs. The title comes from my maternal grandmother, Isabel Zelvis Morris. Nan used to always say, hungry dogs run faster, James. And I've been running fast ever since. Here's what will be coming your way soon. And this is a really terrific list. I think you'll hear from some incredible people like Stacey Abrams. Yay. BJ Novak. Yay. Kathy Bates, Dolly Parton, Josh Gad. And Pope Leo. Okay, maybe not Pope Leo, but who knows? Maybe he'll show up. Hungry dogs run faster. Thank you, Grandma, for turning me into a hopeless, obsessive, compulsive. Listen to Hungry Dogs with James Patterson. That'd be me on Apple, Spotify, YouTube, or wherever you get your podcasts. Thank you, thank you, thank you.
- [64:17]
G
I started with one shop. No college degree, no big investors. It was just a willingness to work. Over time, that one shop turned into a multi billion dollar business called Crash Champions. All the lessons I learned along the way came from the grind. And that's what my show Pod Crash is all about. We have real conversations with people who've built things the hard way. We talk to founders, athletes, and blue collar leaders who kept going when things got tough. You'll hear stories of grit, leadership and growth, plus real world lessons you can take back to your team and your life tomorrow.
- [64:51]
A
When you get momentum, you step on the gas.
- [64:54]
C
That's how you get separation from everybody else.
- [64:56]
A
I was at Harvard Law School as blah, blah, blah.
- [64:58]
F
I looked up. Let me tell you something. There's kids in my neighborhood putting in
- [65:01]
A
Sheetrock that are smarter than you.
- [65:02]
C
AI is going to disrupt a lot of stuff.
- [65:04]
B
It is never going to disrupt physical
- [65:07]
A
blue collar trade skill.
- [65:08]
C
And the guy just looked at me
- [65:10]
A
and he said, it's bloody impossible. So I asked him this question. I said, it's impossible.
- [65:14]
D
I.
- [65:15]
G
Unless that's. Podcast with me, Matt ebert. Watch on YouTube and listen wherever you get your podcasts.
- [65:25]
F
From the State House to the courthouse, in the emergency room and in the classroom, Americans are losing trust in their leaders. In a 2025 U.S. news and World Report survey, 85% of Americans said government leaders care more about their own power than the people they serve. 73% are disappointed in healthcare leaders, 72% in business, and 68% in education. But there are still leaders worth believing in. I'm Eric Gertler, CEO and executive chairman of U.S. news World Report. This is the Best Leaders podcast sponsored by the Noble Reach Foundation. On this show, we'll go deeper into the stories, challenges and lessons of extraordinary leaders across public service business, healthcare and education. You can find the best leaders podcasts from U.S. news World Report on YouTube, Apple, Spotify, Amazon Music or wherever you get your podcasts.