School Spirit

This week, we present our first-ever Unorthodox live show, which we recorded at the Slifka Center at Yale University. We discuss Ben Carson’s comments about gun control and the Holocaust, plus two other audience-selected News of the Jews items.

Our Jewish guest is Shelly Kagan, Clark Professor of Philosophy at Yale, who inadvertently became the most popular foreign professor in China thanks to online videos of a course he teaches called “Death.” He talks about his reputation as a notoriously tough grader, and what it means that he’s a “non-welfarist consequentialist.”

Our guest gentile of the week—who told us he preferred the term “token goy” or “goykin”—is humorist and WNPR radio host Colin McEnroe. He asks the panel why yarmulkes always seem to fall off his head at bar mitzvah services, and, more seriously, why there seem to be certain tripwires within discussions about Israel that, when crossed, trigger accusations of anti-Jewish sentiment.

Thank you to the Slifka Center’s Rabbi Leah Cohen, Juli Goodman, and Ziv Eisenberg, as well as everyone who joined us for this week’s taping. If you’d like us to record an episode at your university, JCC, or local watering hole, email us at [email protected].

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.