Your Robot Therapist Will See You Now

With Christine Rosen

Hello from Tel Aviv, where things are tense, sad, volatile - and yet there’s no place i’d rather be. We came off a surprisingly sad October 7th anniversary - surprising because every day feels like October 7th this last year, so I didn’t expect the anniversary to hit so hard. But a few days of media coverage, ceremonies and a general national mood swing (from low to very low) takes its toll. The thing that really hasn’t sunk in yet is the scale - it seems like you can consume hours on end of stories about heroes, victims, and unimaginable viciousness - and still not scratch the surface of what happened that day.

Yom Kippur was a bit of a break as we put away our phones (ok, in my case turned off notifications and avoided Twitter, but still) and took advantage of the nice weather to walk and bike around the empty streets, only to be interrupted by another missile barrage on central Israel. In Israel nobody drives on Yom Kippur and many people fast - but the rest seems to be up to interpetation and vibes. Some go to synagouge, some watch Netflix, some turn off their phones and some ride electric bikes all through town. Whatever you choose to do, you can’t escape the feeling of the holiday in the air.

I fasted, but I also took my 11-year-old niece down to the beach (don’t tell Chaya Leah) and sat in the water with her just chatting as she ate her tua sandwich while I stared at it longingly. It was different and nice.

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On to the episode!

In this week’s segment “people we thought were Jewish”, we welcome Christine Rosen. Christine is a senior fellow at the American Enterprise Institute, columnist for Commentary magazine, cohosts of The Commentary Magazine Podcast, and author of the new book The Extinction of Experience: Being Human in a Disembodied World.

• Here’s what we covered:

• Why Christine thanks a bunch of Aikido people in her book

• A sharp turn to eugenics

• Chaya Leah’s mother’s theory about children of unattractive people

• In defense of handwriting and note-taking

• Christine writes her first drafts by hand like some kind of crazy person in the roman empire

• What is it with women and fresh new notebooks

• One thing to practice if you want to work on your phone addiction

• The Starbucks Meditation

• Convenience - yay or nay?

• Is human contact a luxury good? Shoutout to friend of the pod Nellie Bowles

• Send this episode to the friend you never talk to but only send podcast episodes to

• IRL friends and internet friends

• I’m not a bad friend, I just have boundaries!

• With great rights come great responsibilities

• The gift of the “ick factor”

• Christine is single and hot (but she won’t date a bot)

• Growing up fundamentalist Christian and raising “Jew-ish” kids in college

• College president struggle sessions