Latest / Uncomfortable Conversations with Josh Szeps / Are Jews Okay? (with baklava)

Transcript

Are Jews Okay? (with baklava) · Uncomfortable Conversations with Josh Szeps

• 0:03
  I'm doing the thing that I never want to do as a host,
• 0:06
  which is instruct my producer to go and get a coffee,
• 0:10
  which is so beneath his pay grade that it's offensive.
• 0:13
  But I stood downstairs at the coffee place, and I was already late,
• 0:18
  and I'm standing in line, and the guy in front of me, I'm like,
• 0:21
  okay, it won't take too long for them to make a couple of cups of coffee ahead of mine.
• 0:25
  And he starts going on about how exactly he wants his eggs,
• 0:28
  And then he goes on about how one of them is going to have avocado and one of them is not going to have avocado.
• 0:32
  And then he's calling out to his friends, do you want lemon on the side of the avocado?
• 0:37
  And then she's like, do you want Zatarra sprinkles on the avocado?
• 0:40
  I'm like, for crying out loud, can I get a latte?
• 0:44
  And so I ran up here and now I'm like, Jono, I'm sorry, but you're going to go and get me a coffee.
• 0:50
  And then if it's not the right order, why didn't you have a beautiful coffee waiting for me?
• 0:56
  This is exactly the problem.
• 0:57
  So if I splash scalding hot coffee in my producer's face live, then it'll just add to the quality of the show.
• 1:08
  Don't you, when I watch historical movies, all I do is look at how much help they had.
• 1:13
  And I'm jealous of them.
• 1:14
  They didn't have toilets.
• 1:15
  They didn't have physical help.
• 1:17
  But they had so much physical help.
• 1:20
  I just, I can't get over it.
• 1:22
  I went and saw Louis C.K., scandal noted.
• 1:24
  I went and saw Louis C.K.
• 1:27
  and he was doing a whole bit about how we're so self-certain about how terrible it was for people in the past to own slaves.
• 1:38
  And he's like, and it was.
• 1:39
  I mean, don't get me wrong.
• 1:41
  But we all would.
• 1:44
  Like, if you could own a slave right now, you absolutely would be up for it.
• 1:49
  Like, if there was any way you could get away with it.
• 1:52
  I want somebody to draw a bath for me.
• 1:54
  I don't want to draw my own bath.
• 1:55
  I mean.
• 1:56
  Yes, exactly.
• 1:58
  I don't even have a bath at the moment because I moved into a new house that only has a shower.
• 2:02
  And it's like it's robbed me of one of the great one of life's great joys.
• 2:06
  Yeah, I love taking a bath.
• 2:08
  I do everything in the bath.
• 2:10
  So, Yael and Hayele are with us from the fabulous podcast Ask a Jew.
• 2:15
  Yael, I can tell by your grainy third world webcam that you must be still in the Middle East.
• 2:21
  Is that correct?
• 2:23
  i am in a country called greece um i don't know if you've heard of it it's 1 a.m
• 2:29
  117 actually goodness what are you doing this for because i don't understand how time zones work
• 2:37
  oh man wow thank you by the time i realized this is at 1 a.m i was like oh fuck um although i
• 2:45
  gotta say in greece like people go out at like 11 30 or 12 so one is yeah one in greece is sort of
• 2:51
  like 9 p.m. in any of your eyes?
• 2:54
  No, I've been walking around piles of rocks all day
• 2:58
  with a lot of significance, but yet still piles of rocks.
• 3:02
  Amazing.
• 3:03
  So you were in Israel and then now you're in Greece?
• 3:06
  I was in Israel and I've been in Greece for about 10 days now and heading back to New York soon.
• 3:13
  Yeah, it makes me very much like a snooty American, though, when I travel outside of America.
• 3:20
  Why?
• 3:20
  You know, you do just realize kind of the quiet luxuries.
• 3:24
  Like today I had dinner and I made a check sign to the waiter and he literally was like dumbfounded by my gesture.
• 3:34
  What, he didn't understand what you were saying?
• 3:37
  No, he came over to the table and he was like, do you need help?
• 3:40
  Like, do you need a medical attention?
• 3:41
  Right.
• 3:42
  Are you having a stroke?
• 3:43
  Are you having some kind of a seizure with your hand waving in the air?
• 3:46
  But then also everything is so cheap, which is lovely.
• 3:49
  which is lovely.
• 3:50
  Probably not lovely for their economy,
• 3:51
  but I don't know how that works.
• 3:52
  He may have been a little special, that waiter,
• 3:54
  because I'm pretty sure that the
• 3:56
  come on, you bring me the bill sign in the air thing
• 3:59
  is like universal.
• 4:01
  Yeah.
• 4:02
  And then the bill is like,
• 4:03
  it's funny because my family was with me
• 4:05
  at the beginning of the trip
• 4:07
  and we were looking on ChatGPT
• 4:08
  about how much to tip.
• 4:10
  So, you know, it said like
• 4:12
  you're supposed to tip 10% here,
• 4:14
  which feels wrong,
• 4:15
  especially like as a Jewish person,
• 4:17
  because you're like,
• 4:17
  oh, now they're going to be even more anti-Semitic if I don't tip enough, which the baseline,
• 4:23
  they're already pretty anti-Semitic.
• 4:26
  And then Chachi PT says, my father was reading this,
• 4:30
  and it says, do not tip like in America, like a tip of 20% can be confusing to them.
• 4:38
  Yes.
• 4:38
  I mean, that is true and correct.
• 4:40
  And that's the way it should be.
• 4:41
  I mean,
• 4:41
  for a country that is so hot under its collar about its legacy of slavery,
• 4:46
  the mandatory tipping of 20 to 25 percent seems a little you know it is kind of a legacy of
• 4:52
  slavery and like aristocracy it used to be an english thing where you know there was
• 4:56
  there was so class stratified that you would you know my good man here taking something i think we
• 5:02
  should talk about slavery the whole episode i intend to that's what i've got you both here to
• 5:06
  talk about our our love and appreciation of the great and lost art of owning slaves what um what's
• 5:13
  like in Greece,
• 5:14
  like,
• 5:14
  can you imagine
• 5:15
  knowing that your country
• 5:16
  was great
• 5:17
  thousands of years ago
• 5:18
  and you've done
• 5:18
  nothing important
• 5:20
  ever since then?
• 5:21
  It must be very
• 5:23
  humbling for them,
• 5:24
  don't you think?
• 5:24
  Humbling is one way
• 5:26
  to put it.
• 5:27
  Yeah,
• 5:28
  I've been actually
• 5:28
  thinking about that a lot.
• 5:31
  And I don't know,
• 5:32
  it is late here,
• 5:33
  but I don't know
• 5:33
  how much shit
• 5:34
  I want to talk about
• 5:35
  the Greeks.
• 5:35
  I will say the men
• 5:36
  are very attractive.
• 5:37
  Look,
• 5:37
  look,
• 5:37
  Jono is,
• 5:38
  look at the hand
• 5:39
  bringing into screen
• 5:41
  a disembodied hand.
• 5:42
  Tell him if,
• 5:43
  If he ever puts his hand in the screen one more time.
• 5:47
  I bet he will get a scalding hot cup of coffee in his face.
• 5:50
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• 5:54
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• 5:59
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• 6:06
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• 6:10
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• 6:22
  Back to the show.
• 6:23
  It reminds me of, like, remember during COVID when everyone suddenly had to start giving television interviews from home and there was just a succession of hilarious clips of, you know, the guy on the BBC with the toddler crawling in behind him and then the nanny trying to stay out of shot by crawling in on her hands and knees.
• 6:39
  That was a fun part of it.
• 7:09
  accept the offer.
• 7:11
  I don't remember how detailed your recollection of like 2010 maybe is.
• 7:17
  But during the financial crisis, Brussels basically came back and was like, okay,
• 7:22
  if you're going to stay in the Eurozone, then you're going to have to do this and this and
• 7:25
  this.
• 7:25
  And they had a referendum about it and they were like, no.
• 7:29
  And then everybody was like,
• 7:30
  oh shit.
• 7:30
  And then they scrambled together and they ended up finding a way to overrule the
• 7:34
  referendum.
• 7:34
  But that night I was in Athens and I was having dinner with a whole bunch of kind of
• 7:39
  expat and local Greek journo and academic friends.
• 7:43
  And they were saying, you guys think of Greece as
• 7:46
  being, by you guys, they mean Australians, obviously, or Jews.
• 7:51
  No, they think, they mean
• 7:52
  non-Greeks think of Greece as being like the ugly duckling of Europe and the basket case and the
• 7:57
  country that can't get its shit together in the Eurozone and in Western Europe.
• 8:02
  But a lot of
• 8:03
  Greek people think of Greece as a Balkan country that came good.
• 8:09
  That is, rather than being the least sort of wealthy and most chaotic European country,
• 8:16
  it's the most wealthy and least chaotic country of like the Balkans and Middle East.
• 8:22
  Oh, interesting.
• 8:23
  Actually, that's interesting.
• 8:24
  Yeah.
• 8:25
  I like that for them.
• 8:26
  I like that positively.
• 8:27
  Good for them.
• 8:29
  Positive valence.
• 8:29
  I'm thinking.
• 8:31
  They should never hear how we talk about them in Orthodox Jewish schools.
• 8:35
  Because like, oh, it's like the Greeks tried to kill us and they're nowhere today.
• 8:42
  The Greeks are gone.
• 8:43
  There's no Greeks.
• 8:45
  They don't exist.
• 8:46
  I imagine that Orthodox Jewish schools say that about every single ethnicity and country.
• 8:51
  They're all trying to kill us and they're nowhere.
• 8:54
  When's the last time you heard about Pharaoh?
• 8:57
  Yeah, exactly.
• 8:59
  I mean, Americans will, at some point, Americans will look back on their history and be like, oh, those were the golden days.
• 9:05
  Yeah.
• 9:06
  Right?
• 9:06
  I mean, nothing lasts forever.
• 9:08
  That's true.
• 9:09
  You'd hope that in 3,000 years, America is where Greece is today.
• 9:13
  Yeah.
• 9:13
  Well, right.
• 9:14
  That's true.
• 9:15
  Just hopefully just better sales service.
• 9:18
  Just better all around.
• 9:19
  Oh, yeah.
• 9:20
  That's right.
• 9:20
  Yeah.
• 9:21
  Better understanding of how to sign for a check.
• 9:25
  So congratulations are in order.
• 9:28
  you two because your first live show, your first live podcast, something I've done a lot of,
• 9:33
  I might say, is coming up next month.
• 9:36
  And you've chosen the most obvious Jewish location
• 9:40
  in the United States, Wyoming, for a hotbed of Judaism.
• 9:47
  So why are you going to Wyoming?
• 9:51
  We ran a survey and that's where all of our listeners are.
• 9:54
  That's where all the Jews are.
• 9:56
  because you know what they invited us that's why they invited us because we have a nice
• 10:00
  jewish community and they do like a two-day festival where they kind of try to bring
• 10:06
  together a lot of different yeah it's a conference not a festival but they bring like all their
• 10:10
  elected officials the senators from wyoming the congressman and they kind of talk about different
• 10:16
  things going on in israel with anti-semitism so they brought us in to do a live show and when you
• 10:22
  When you say you're going because they invited you, what you mean is they're going because they're paying for your flights and accommodation?
• 10:29
  I know they're paying for our flights.
• 10:32
  Jew to Jew just had to establish.
• 10:35
  I'm like, I had to look on a map where Wyoming is.
• 10:38
  I'm like, I don't even know.
• 10:39
  Is that near Greece?
• 10:41
  Josh, have you been to Wyoming?
• 10:43
  I've never been to Wyoming.
• 10:45
  No, I'd love to go to Wyoming.
• 10:47
  I have a bit of a special connection to Jackson Hole.
• 10:51
  I've been there.
• 10:51
  This is going to be my sixth time.
• 10:55
  And it's gorgeous in the summer because of Yellowstone and all the parks.
• 10:59
  It's gorgeous in the winter if you like to ski.
• 11:02
  The male to female ratio is about seven to one.
• 11:06
  It's just an absolutely wonderful place.
• 11:09
  Right.
• 11:10
  Getting hit on by a lot of couples.
• 11:11
  I'm very tired.
• 11:12
  I'm going to regret everything I say on this.
• 11:14
  But let's talk more about slavery.
• 11:15
  That's great.
• 11:18
  Are they for it or against it in Wyoming?
• 11:20
  I don't know.
• 11:21
  Actually, that's our debate is with Nadavial, and it's going to be pro-for and against slavery.
• 11:28
  I don't remember which side he is, but we'll find out.
• 11:33
  So, well, as a Jew, obviously, he's pro-genocide, apartheid, and occupation, and thus slavery.
• 11:40
  Comes naturally to us.
• 11:41
  Have you seen, by the way, the brouhaha amidst all of the Odyssey, Christopher Nolan, why are they casting a black actress as the most beautiful woman in the world and a trans actor as a soldier and all that?
• 11:53
  There was a counter left-wing anti-Odyssey, anti-Nolan salvo where there's an organized campaign to recut the movie to exclude the scenes that Nolan shot in Moroccan-occupied Western Sahara because Nolan is an accomplice and an apologist to the crimes of Western civilization.
• 12:17
  Yeah, and they should never film there and never provide tens of thousands of jobs to people in Morocco who they hate.
• 12:27
  I was reading the list of people who've signed the petition,
• 12:32
  and it's Javier Bardem, Pedro Almodovar,
• 12:37
  and I was a little surprised by those two,
• 12:39
  and then Greta Thunberg.
• 12:41
  And I was like, Greta, good for you.
• 12:42
  Greta, you're getting on everything.
• 12:45
  I think he made himself an AI agent
• 12:47
  that just signs all the petitions that come to him.
• 12:50
  He's a President Biden.
• 12:52
  He's a President Biden.
• 12:53
  He has an auto pen.
• 12:54
  An auto pen for petitions.
• 12:57
  I'm sorry.
• 12:57
  I hate Javier Bardem so much.
• 13:00
  But he's so good.
• 13:01
  Yeah, but this motherfucker.
• 13:02
  A lot of people are good.
• 13:04
  No.
• 13:05
  You know?
• 13:07
  Why do you hate him, Kyla?
• 13:08
  This guy is so anti-Israel for so many years.
• 13:11
  Oh, is he?
• 13:11
  And you know what?
• 13:12
  It's just like, for what?
• 13:14
  He's from Spain.
• 13:15
  I mean, half the world speaks Spanish.
• 13:18
  A country that has never done anything wrong.
• 13:20
  Yeah, half the world.
• 13:21
  Oh, you want to talk about fallen empires?
• 13:24
  They couldn't even make it to Eurovision this year.
• 13:26
  because they're so angry at Israel.
• 13:29
  I mean, I got to say,
• 13:30
  it is the post-colonial societies
• 13:32
  that are the most anti-Israel
• 13:34
  because, I mean, you know,
• 13:35
  it's like Spain and, you know,
• 13:37
  and the countries like Australia
• 13:38
  that were the product of colonialism
• 13:41
  where we get to feel super self-righteous
• 13:43
  by distancing ourselves
• 13:45
  from the crimes of our forefathers
• 13:47
  by shitting on the country.
• 13:49
  It's very lame.
• 13:51
  Like, everybody needs to find another obsession.
• 13:53
  I'm very excited about AI center, data centers.
• 13:56
  not building them, but I'm excited about people hating them
• 13:59
  because I think it's shifting the focus a little bit.
• 14:03
  They'll blame us in no time.
• 14:05
  Don't worry.
• 14:05
  Yeah.
• 14:06
  The AI data center is like when you need to get the attention of your baby
• 14:10
  and so you jangle keys in front of its face.
• 14:12
  And you go, look over here.
• 14:13
  Look over here.
• 14:14
  And the baby goes, gaga, goo, goo.
• 14:16
  And they're like, data center, bad.
• 14:18
  Yeah.
• 14:18
  And then they're not talking about Gaza for a split second.
• 14:21
  It's the new Gaza, I think.
• 14:23
  But it's worse than Gossam.
• 14:24
  I'm thinking about Javier Bardem and Penelope Cruz,
• 14:27
  and I'm like, why can't I separate myself?
• 14:30
  Like, I want to separate the art from the artist,
• 14:32
  and we talk about this all the time.
• 14:34
  And I'm able to do it in some cases,
• 14:37
  and then in others, I just, I can't do it.
• 14:39
  I can't look at their faces.
• 14:41
  I can't enjoy them.
• 14:41
  But what are you missing out on with Javier Bardem?
• 14:43
  Like, what is being robbed of your cultural...
• 14:45
  He's a great actor.
• 14:46
  He's a good actor.
• 14:48
  Oh, no, I'll tell you what you're missing out on.
• 14:50
  Nicolas Cage is a great actor,
• 14:51
  and he's never said anything bad about Israel.
• 14:55
  Thanks for the 1993 reference, Yael.
• 14:57
  That's great.
• 14:58
  You know, Con Air is my favorite movie.
• 15:00
  Con Air is one of the best action films.
• 15:02
  Oh my goodness, could I show that to my kids?
• 15:04
  Do you reckon it's too violent or too sexy?
• 15:05
  Probably not yet.
• 15:07
  How old are they?
• 15:08
  They're almost nine.
• 15:09
  That Steve Buscemi character is scary now.
• 15:11
  I reckon they probably could.
• 15:13
  I reckon they'd love it.
• 15:14
  Okay, it's going on the list.
• 15:15
  Con Air.
• 15:16
  Talk amongst yourselves.
• 15:18
  I'm writing down Con Air.
• 15:19
  It's a good lesson for your children.
• 15:22
  that if and when they get sent to prison for a crime that they committed
• 15:29
  and hijacking a plane in order to see their loved ones is an option,
• 15:34
  they should take it.
• 15:35
  I think it's a good lesson.
• 15:35
  It is a good lesson.
• 15:36
  It is a good lesson.
• 15:38
  G'day, humans.
• 15:39
  Well, if you've listened to this much of the episode,
• 15:41
  then you must enjoy it, presumably,
• 15:43
  unless you're just listening for masochistic reasons.
• 15:46
  So you should listen to the rest of it.
• 15:47
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• 15:50
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• 15:53
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• 15:57
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• 16:00
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• 16:09
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• 16:10
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• 16:13
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• 16:16
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• 16:18
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• 16:20
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• 16:24
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• 16:26
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• 16:30
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  and i'll see you the next free episode i guess take care