Judy: I keep going on and someone keeps turning me off. That's the thing.

Judith: We’re not changing that, that’s weird…

Emily: Uh oh…hello?

Judith: We hear you.

Emily: Oh good!

Judy: Siman tov and mazel tov [sings]

Judith: Well, I think we should just start and hope for the best. I don't wanna delay and then end up not having…What, what happened to Judy? Oh my God, this is ridiculous.

Stephanie: And we haven't even started talking.

[Theme music plays]

Jen: Welcome to Can We Talk?, the podcast of the Jewish Women’s Archive, where gender, history, and Jewish culture meet…and where things get a little chaotic when four Jewish women podcasters enter a Zoom room.

Here at Can We Talk?, we’re podcast junkies. And we especially like shows that feature Jewish women’s voices. So we decided to bring together some of our favorite Jewish women in podcasting to talk shop.

Stephanie: My name is Stephanie Butnick. I am one of the hosts of the podcast Unorthodox, which is produced by Tablet Magazine. I'm also the director of Tablet Studios, which is the podcast network of Tablet Magazine, which brings you all sorts of smart, interesting, fun Jewish audio content.

Judy: Hi, I'm Judy Gold. I am a comedian extraordinaire. I host the podcast, Kill Me Now with Judy Gold. And I recently wrote a book about free speech from the perspective of a comedian called Yes, I can Say That: When They Come for the Comedians We're All In Trouble, which is coming to life as an off-Broadway show called Yes, I Can Say That.

Emily: Hey, I'm Emily Bazelon. I'm one of three co-hosts of Slate Political Gabfest, which is a podcast that has been going on longer than any of us really remember. And I'm also a staff writer at the New York Times Magazine.

Jen: In this episode of Can We Talk?, Judith Rosenbaum takes us behind the scenes with Stephanie, Judy, and Emily, to talk about what makes their shows Jewish, sharing the mic with men, and answering to their listeners.

[Theme music plays and then fades]

Judith: Welcome all of you. Thank you so much for being with us. We are huge fans of all of yours, and really excited to have this conversation together today.

So we'll start by—I'd love to hear each of you reflect on whether you think there's anything particularly Jewish about the style or rhythm of the show. Obviously, Stephanie, your show is explicitly Jewish. Judy and Emily, yours obviously are not. But I'm thinking about, for example, patterns of speech, interruption/”cooperative overlapping,” as some people call it, in terms of Jewish conversational styles or anything else like that.

Judy: Well, I could start by saying, everything I do is Jewish. And yes, I mean, my brother—I just had Al Franken on the podcast and he said, “Oh my God, you interrupt him so much.” The way I speak, the way I gab, the way I get excited, the way…when I connect, I really connect.

But I also, during my podcast, I have a bell, and anytime anyone says anything remotely Jewish, or mentions the name of someone who is Jewish, I ring a bell. And it’s sort of an homage—

Judith: The Jew Bell, yep.

Judy: Yeah, the Jew Bell. Because I want people to know how much—how much we are in their lives and how much we contribute to this world.

Judith: Emily, does this kind of come up in your own thinking about the show or in any feedback on the show?

Emily: Um, it comes up sometimes in a kind of light way. We sometimes tell John Dickerson, the non-Jew among us, raised Catholic, that, you know, he's kind of an honorary member of the tribe at this point, which I think he finds funny.

Judy was talking about interrupting. I am an inveterate interrupter and it's something I try to keep under control on the podcast, but sometimes I don't. Hilariously, people assume that I'm the one who's being interrupted, all the time, and that David Plotz, who's the third member of our trio, is the one doing the interrupting. It drives David crazy, because he knows that's not true.

A few years ago, one of our listeners did a chart, like went back years and counted interruptions and, in fact, verified that I was the one who was doing the most interrupting. And we talked about it on the show because I wanted to clear David's name, and John's, as well.

Stephanie: Can I interrupt and say that that is the most incredible thing. And it's funny, when we were starting Unorthodox back in 2015, we were sort of pitching it as, “Oh, you know, it's gonna be sort of like a Jewish gabfest, right?” [laughs] Like that sort of same format of people chatting, and interviews and things like that.

And for us, you know, we do like to call it cooperative overlapping. I mean, we have three Jews hosting a podcast. So we're not only podcasters, I like to say, who love to talk, we are Jewish podcasters who literally cannot stop talking.

And we have two guests on each episode; we have a Jewish guest and a Gentile of the Week, and we interrupt them a lot. And it's hard, because sometimes these really nice Gentiles, like they don't know what to do. [other guests laugh]

And we mean it with love, right? If you're really excited about what someone's saying, you jump in and you sort of say, I can't—I totally agree, or I totally disagree.

And for, —I think for people who are raised in sort of, like, boisterous Jewish homes, that's what deep and thoughtful conversation is. It's this exchange, it's, it's fiery, it's loving and it's dynamic, is sort of the best way to describe it. And the funny thing that we found out is that, we realize we have a lot of listeners who are on a conversion journey to Judaism, a journey of discovery of Judaism. And a lot of them find out about Unorthodox through their conversion programs, through their rabbis who say like, read all these books in class, but also listen to this podcast. And people [laughs] they say, you guys talk really fast, you interrupt each other all the time. And I sort of like to call it that je ne sais quoi, of being Jewish, right?

Like, you hear this Jewish conversation and that's what it is. It's fast-paced, it's hopefully smart, it's hopefully funny, it's probing—it's all of these things. And yes, it's deeply interrupting.

Emily: Listen to our podcast, because you might not want to join these people if you don’t like listening to them at this crazy pace. [other guests laugh]

Judith: Emily, I'm glad you brought up that analysis of Gabfest interruptions,  because I remember that and thinking that was so interesting, that there was this assumption that the female podcaster at the table was being talked over.

And I think it brings up that question of the dynamic of what it is to be a woman on a podcast with a bunch of men. And I'd love to hear, Emily, both you and Stephanie talk about how you—both how you think of those dynamics or manage them and how other people receive them or comment on them.

And maybe Emily, you can go first.

Emily: Sure, I mean, I don't think about it very much. And I think I have the luxury of not thinking about it, because David and John and I have done this for a long time. I feel completely comfortable with them and they've always been— I mean, to say that I feel respected feels a little silly. Like, they're my good friends. I'm an equal in the conversation. I get to take it for granted.

It's really unusual, once in a while when we have a guest, I feel a tiny bit less that way, but like, really it's not an issue for me. And I do notice in the world—I mean, as you all know, one thing about podcasts is that when people listen to them, you are in their ears. It's very intimate, they have this relationship with you, which is lovely.

And, you know, sometimes girls or women or moms say to me, it's important that you are one of this trio, or that I'm hearing other women in this space. Like, we need strong women making that clear.

I really appreciate podcasting as a space that I think women have been a strong presence in from the beginning. And that feels to me like it lends itself to that because it's playing with ideas, it's asking questions, it has a chatty character to it. And some of my favorite podcasts are led or entirely done by women.

Judith: Stephanie, what has your experience been like?

Stephanie: When I started the show, I was very intimidated by my co-hosts, who were colleagues. They're two amazing guys, Mark Oppenheimer and Liel Leibovitz, and I thought that they were super smart. You know, they were older than I was, they were more professionally accomplished than I was.

I sort of felt like I had to find my moments to get a funny word in, or get a smart quip in, or get something really thoughtful in. And we actually sort of deconstruct this on the show over the years as that's changed, and as I sort of have confronted them. And this is like year one, this is a long time ago.

But we were able to sort of like…address it on the show, and deconstruct it. And we still talk about it. And so I think there's something really— just like Emily was saying, that intimacy of audio. People write in and say, you know, I love how much more you started talking around episode a hundred, right? [laughs] They’re like, I'm catching up on the old catalog, you really didn't talk at all at the beginning!

But they know that I've shared this sort of story of my own—I say it’s the best professional development you could do, is basically being put on a podcast with two talkative guys. No one's gonna handicap their conversation for you to get in, whether that's in a boardroom or a party, right? Like, you sort of have to be assertive and you can't let other people do it for you. And that, for me, was a really valuable lesson that, oddly enough, I learned from podcasting. And so because it's been sort of a semi-public journey that people have heard and listened to, I like to share that as often as I can.

Judith: Stephanie, I was reading a book recently, the book When Rabbis Abuse by Elana Sztokman. And she quoted from one of the many interviews she did for the book—it was in a section on gender socialization—and she quoted one of her respondents who said something—actually, she doesn't name the podcast, but it's obviously you. This is what she wrote:

“One respondent, describing a popular podcast run by two men and a woman said, ‘I'm just fascinated by the way the two men, and often the guests, talk over Stephanie. She has developed this surgical response. She'll wait it out and then dish a zinger that all the women in the audience will roar at, because we all recognize it as a strategy. You can't talk over them, so you have to be clever and subtle and use humor as a tool to point out the sexism.’”

Stephanie: Wait, have I been immortalized in print?

Judith: You have! [Stephanie laughs] I know, I was like, I wonder if Stephanie knows about this.

Stephanie: That's really funny. Yeah, I mean, I think…I like to think that I can hold my ground a little bit better now. But I like what Emily says, that people assumed she was being talked over, and actually when you go to the tape, when you go to the data, she wasn't.

And so I think a lot of us sort of…put our own thoughts and feelings and experiences on these situations where like, I interrupt all the time. I'm always talking over these guys.

Judy: But you know, what's funny about the end of that quote that you read was that the way they heard you getting your due is exactly the way Jews got their due in the world: through humor. When they finally shut up, we said something funny or clever or something that disarmed them, that made them like us in a way.

Emily: The trickster card when you have nothing else to play.

Judy: Right.

Stephanie: But also the last word. Right?

Judy: Yes!

Emily: Totally.

Judith: Emily, you referenced that sometimes moms will say how important it is to hear women in the podcasting space. And I was thinking about this issue, that you all have kids. Um, do you ever have any, feel any tension around, sort, of being a mom on the show? You know, in terms of referencing your kids, referencing your personal lives?

I mean, on the one hand, podcasting, as a more intimate medium, people often want to hear more personal information from podcasters than they might in other spaces. But often there are still, I think, different standards sometimes, that women are held to about what they share and what they don't share, or it comes off differently.

Stephanie: Yeah, I'm…it turns out I'm a chronic oversharer on this podcast. And I found that, you know, one of the things our listeners really connect with is when we share our own struggles. Like, for example, I once mentioned I didn't have a mezuzah on my door, and people wrote in very eagerly—

Judy: What?!

Stephanie: This was years ago, don't worry. It's been resolved.

Judy: OK, phew.

Stephanie: I just said it and I was like, “Oh, I'm a millennial, I don't want anyone to know anything about me.” And then I was like, wait. I've got all these letters, people saying like, you live in New York City, you host a Jewish podcast—like, if you can't have a mezuzah, then what's gonna happen to the rest of us? You need to do it.

So anyway, turns out I moved apartments and there was some ugly mezuzah on the door and I was like, this does not end like this. So I put up my own. But I realized that people really connected to hearing…like this discomfort, like how do we deal with our Judaism in our own lives? And so I realized with that, that people want to, sort of, know a little bit more.

And so as I became pregnant a few years ago, I wanted to explore the Jewish side of all this stuff. I wanted to know—we did a whole episode, like what are the Jewish superstitions around pregnancy? Like, this is something that a lot of people experience, let's actually dig into it.

And I wanted to put on my, like, journalist hat and say—first of all, as a way to try to understand what was happening to me. Of course, I ended up getting induced before the episode. The whole thing got messed up cuz I was trying to be a journalist and turns out, you know, what is it? “Woman plans, God laughs.” And so the episode came out while I was in the hospital.

So I've been trying to, sort of, share my early journey to motherhood. I have an eighteen-month-old daughter now, and these questions have come up all the time, right? Like, even what preschool am I gonna send her to? I've found that I'm sort of reconsidering my own Jewish identity and engagement in this new context of having a child. And so I'm trying to help my listeners understand these things in a new or different way.

Judy: You know, I have had to deal with this issue, because I'm a standup comic. And, I mean, standup is mostly biographical, a lot of it. My kids are 26 and 21, and I am a gay mother. So I felt it was really important for me to speak out, especially using my comedy. You know, I came out because I had a child in ’96.

And now I feel like…being a gay parent is something I need to talk about, because, you know, we have struggles that other people don't, things that we think about that other people don't. And especially when I'm interviewing someone on my podcast and we're talking about family, I think it's really important to…hear about these experiences and how people navigate the world as parents.

Um, and, but I do respect their—I always ask them first, at this point, can I talk about this, can I talk about that?

Judith: I'm curious also…if you find that you're called to represent in certain ways as a Jew. I mean, we've talked a little bit about Jewish style of podcast, and Stephanie, maybe this is part of your mezuzah story too, right? Like that— not just that people were responding to it, like out of interest, but sort of like out of concern.

Like, wait, why? Right? Why don't you have it? You should have it—sort of judgey in a way. And I'm wondering, Emily, I feel like I've heard you and David talk about this on the podcast, when questions around antisemitism or Israel come up. You know, are people gonna look to you, as if your position is kind of the Jewish position, or do you have something particular to say about those topics? You know, that you have a different role to play in opining about those subjects than John does, maybe?

Emily: Yeah, for sure. I mean, I think in that way that when you're part of a group and your group is the focus of the discussion, you couch things differently. Maybe you feel protective or maybe you wanna explain something. Maybe you wanna be super not defensive. So I definitely am aware of that.

I think one thing that's been especially hard for me, is that I don't know what to say or do about the State of Israel right now. It used to be that that was, uh…you know, there were like a set of questions that you could talk about that didn't feel like total doom. It was always complicated, but I feel much more wary of talking about Israel now, because I feel so sorrowful and uncertain about the future of the State of Israel, but also the future of the Palestinian people, and the way that Bibi Netanyahu's new government is behaving. That has been really distressing. I think we've just basically done more avoiding of that topic as a result.

Judy: I understand why you wouldn't wanna talk about it, but I have been talking about it on stage in the clubs and I've also been talking about it on my podcast. I feel obligated, and I think it's because I had to speak out about being gay. And I think a lot of comics do, you know, speak truth to power, but they wanna talk about these subversive and difficult topics.

Judith: You've all—especially Emily, who's been podcasting for more than fifteen years—but you've all been in this space for a while. And Judy, you mentioned that you have a book, and soon to be a one-woman show about this question of what you're allowed to say.

I'm curious if any of you have something to say about the ways that the discourse has changed over the years you've been on air and has that shaped what you feel you can or can't say on the podcast?

Judy: You know, it's just interesting, because I feel safer in a comedy club. And the comedy clubs that don't allow phones.

Judith: That you won't be recorded, you mean?

Judy: Right. Because, you know, comedians are— a lot of times, they're trying out a work in progress and we don't get it right. Most of the time we go across the line cuz we don't know where the line is until we've crossed it. And so—

Judith: And that's part of what humor is!

Judy: Right.

Stephanie: You know, I think podcasts are so different than written journalism, because you can't really just screenshot something and send it across the internet with a podcast. I mean, if someone says something, like, 33 minutes into a podcast that's, like, a conversation about something, I think there's almost a little bit more freedom. Because it's a little bit more of like a walled garden in a way, right? Like you've said something, it's in a context and like hopefully no one's gonna pull that out. But I think in a way it gives you a little bit more latitude. 

I think that in creating a distinctly Jewish space on this podcast, we're trying to say that things are not off-limits, right? We can't say things are off-limits here. Like, we have this luxury. We are a Jewish space for disagreement. My co-hosts and I disagree on almost everything. Political to, like, the least important things in the entire—like what kind of kugel is best. My hot take is that I do not like kugel. Um, and everyone's like, “You haven't tried my mother's!”

Emily: Yeah. I love your optimism, Stephanie [Stephanie laughs]. I hope you're right [laughs] about the context. I feel just so…committed to being able to play with ideas and ask questions. Like, that's what the spoken form does, that's different from the written form, where it's more buttoned down, you figured out what you want it to say. You can be, I think, held accountable for it in a different way.

At the same time, if we become less tolerant of off-the-cuff remarks, the more they're able to go viral—in exactly the way you're talking about, Judy—the less space there is for that. So, I'm not entirely optimistic [other guests laugh] but I'm clinging to it, because it's how I do so much of my work, and it's so much fun. And it's really important to show other people that there still has to be that space that you can ask dumb questions. That you don't always have to have already figured it out.

I definitely have noticed in the last, I'm not sure how many years, that some listeners who are progressive have become less tolerant of guests who are conservative. And I gotta say, it drives me crazy. I mean, you know, our show is not a show where we're going for ideological balance by any means. But sometimes we wanna have someone come in and mix it up, and we get just furious complaints about that, in a way that I think is super close-minded and not gonna work. Because there’s just a lot of people who don't share a progressive viewpoint, and you should be able to hear it.

Stephanie: It's funny, because we wanna have it both ways in a lot of ways, right? We want our listeners to be very dedicated to these shows. We want them to listen, we want them to donate, we want them to post. We want them to do all these things. And, you know, we're mission-driven. We want them to be connected to us. We wanna feel like we are some accessible portal into Judaism for them.

But then on the same—like, they also hold us to account in many ways. And so if we say something that's wrong, if we get something wrong, they'll write in, right? They're Jews, they'll write in and tell us. Or if we say something that they think is, you know, incorrect, they'll write in to correct us.

And sometimes that can be really fruitful, right? Sometimes it sparks all sorts of conversations. You know, when Mark says, “Jews don't camp.” People got really mad about that and they were like, “I'm part of the Jewish Camping Society.” Or like, Jews don't play hockey—there are a lot of Jews who play hockey. Right. [Agreement in the background] Yeah, you guys know, you know—

Judith: My son goes to school in Quebec because he plays hockey!

Stephanie: I know, I've seen on Facebook. And it's like, so people get really riled up about that stuff. So I think that there's fun ways to engage with disagreement, but I also think we're starting to see that people do feel like some things are beyond the pale in ways. And I wanna be addressing that head-on.

Emily: I like ending on a note of appreciation for listeners, because they're really amazing so much of the time. And we wouldn't be able to get to do this without them. I'm so grateful that people wanna listen.

Judith: Yeah, absolutely. And we chose all of you because we love to listen to you. And there's also like always the conversations that you feel like you're in conversation with, whether or not those people know that you're talking to them in your head. [Theme music fades in] So, thank you for being part of that.

Emily: I loved talking with all of you. It’s super nice to meet you.

Judy: You too.

Stephanie: So nice to meet you.

Emily: Bye!

Jen: That was Emily Bazelon from Slate’s Political Gabfest, Stephanie Butnick from Unorthodox, and Judy Gold from Kill Me Now. Judy’s one-woman show, Yes, I Can Say That, runs until April 16 in New York City.

Thank you for joining us for Can We Talk?, the podcast of the Jewish Women’s Archive. Our team includes Nahanni Rous and Judith Rosenbaum. Our theme music is by Girls In Trouble.

You can listen to Can We Talk? at jwa.org/canwetalk, or wherever you get your podcasts. Please help us spread the word by leaving us a rating and review in your favorite podcast app. And share your feedback about the podcast with us at jwa.org/podcastsurvey.

I’m Jen Richler. Until next time!