The Fifth Golem
Happy Mother's Day Matt Welch! You make idol worship look good
In studio with the man who birthed us, Matt Welch!
Some of you know that Chaya Leah and I met on a Zoom Happy Hour (remember those?) for listeners of
. I take full credit for sliding into her DMs to find out wtf a girl like her was doing in a place like this.We quickly bonded over our love for the show and its three hosts, , Foster, and former guest and holocaust backup-savior, Michael Moynihan. The rest, as you know, is Jewish history.
Over the course of almost two hours, we cover Matt’s humble beginnings as a newsie in Prague, his career at the LA Times and Reason Magazine, and all the way up to the peak of his success as a reluctant cult leader.
Also in this episode:
Why was Matt blocked by Salman Rushdie on Twitter?
Libertarians are a lot like Jews in the sense that they all hate each other
The miracle that is Lakewood, CA
An Ask a Jew happy hour recap
New York is an absolute shithole and still the best place in the world
THE LONGEST WE'VE EVER GONE WITHOUT TALKING ABOUT THE HOLOCAUST
Family Feud is everything that's right with America
Chaya Leah is very bad with money, despite what you might think
LA Times confidential
Spilling all the tea on The Fifth Column
A newsie in Prague
Does paying a podcaster earn you their love and respect? Absolutely.
Matt wants to go back to Israel (but we recorded this before rockets started raining from Gaza)
Something something baseball
Two more incredible things happened this week:
First, we invited listeners to a happy hour in New York and you weirdos actually showed up! It was incredibly exciting and surreal to meet listeners (and guests!) in person, especially those we termed “strangers”, i.e not related to Chaya Leah. Thank you for raising a toast with us, and we hope to do it again soon! And yes, that’s Nick Gillespie discussing the Talmud)
Second, Chaya Leah was named one of 18 Zionist Women You Should Know by Hadassah! This is due to her contributions to the podcast landscape, one can assume. Also, wow Hadassah, you couldn’t have expanded that to 19?
Finally, it would be weird not to mention the rocket attacks all over Israel over the last few days, courtesy of the Islamic Jihad’s unwavering commitment to eliminating every man, woman and child in Israel. Get over it, guys. We ain’t going anywhere. Praying and hoping for safety and peace in the region amen, inshallah, let’s go.
Questions? Email askajewpod@gmail.com
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Hello I'm here to deliver the missing piece to the nyc urban danger dilemma:
Mental health problems, even profound ones, need to be *destigmatized.* This is what stops people from seeking help before matters have escalated and estranged everyone who once supported them.
I recently went through this myself, its actually why I missed your meetup. Things had gotten out of hand and I had to march my ass into the Bellevue psychiatric hospital (p.s. never do this, go literally anywhere else, that place is a real horror), and I've decided to just be unashamed and see what I can do about all the stigma associated with having these problems. I am one of these people you might come across mumbling nonsense to themselves. Let's just say the symptoms attract abuse, yet at 44 years old I have no history whatsoever of violence. I have to take OLANZapine every day, which is an antipsychotic, mostly because the talking to myself unnerves others. But I'm willing to bet that when you (the rhetorical you, not YOU you, who is wonderful) read the word antipsychotic I probably became a tiny bit radioactive.
We live in a society that once destigmatized gay sex in order to confront the AIDS epidemic. We can do hard things.
Now that you’ve had Moynihan and Matt on, you’ve gotta get Kmele. Every now and again, when he’s off on one of his anti-group identity monologues, it strikes me that some of his hyper-individualistic ideals may be at odds with some Jews’ ideas about community and the like. I remember thinking this one of the times they had Bari Weiss on, though I don’t remember exactly what it was that brought it to mind.
Speaking of Bari, can you bring her and/or Nellie Bowles on?
Regarding the very end of this episode: I understand ChayaLeah’s hesitancy about bowing down to Matt, but I would have no qualms. As a gay man, I’m already doing gilui arayos, so what difference is a little avodah zara gonna make?
PS. Why aren’t more people commenting here? I thought you guys have thousands of listeners worldwide. I wanna know what “Ask a Jew” fans in, I dunno, Qatar or Libya have to say.