Hannah (Montana) and Her Sisters

This week on Unorthodox: Miley meets Woody.

Our Jewish guest is word maven Lizzie Skurnick, author of the memoir Shelf Discovery and That Should Be a Word, a clever compendium based on her long-running New York Times Magazine column of the same name. In 2013 she founded Lizzie Skurnick Books, which reissues classic young adult literature, including the All-of-a-Kind Family series from the 1950s. She tells us about her latest project, a crowd-sourced effort to find more interesting versions of expressions we commonly use: Instead of “buzz off,” say, she offers the colorful Yiddish phrase “may you live in a mansion with 100 rooms and drop dead in every one of them.” She welcomes suggestions via Twitter.

Our Gentile of the Week is Bill Schulz, New York Times museum columnist and the former co-host of Fox News Channel’s Red Eye, a satirical 3 a.m. talk show. Fun fact: Amy Schumer was a frequent guest on the show, and Schulz claims she based the character Schultz, the dirtbag magazine editor in her hit film Trainwreck, on him. (Schumer denied it.) He recently took a DNA test and found out he is 10 percent Ashkenazi Jewish, so he asks the panel is if it means he’ll live until 120, cigarette habit be damned.

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Unorthodox is a smart, fresh, fun weekly take on Jewish news and culture hosted by Mark Oppenheimer, Stephanie Butnick, and Liel Leibovitz. You can listen to individual episodes here or subscribe on iTunes.