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Antisemitism is infiltrating mainstream politics and pop culture in new and pernicious ways. Fresh off a meeting at the White House about the rise of antisemitism, George Selim from the Anti-Defamation League describes to Andy how the words from a politician, rapper or comedian can help spark the hate crimes his organization tracks. Rabbi Steve Leder from the Wilshire Boulevard Temple in Los Angeles explains why antisemitism is not only normalized but an acceptable “ism” in many communities, and how to combat it in everyday life.

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Transcript

SPEAKERS

Andy Slavitt, Steve Leder, George Selim

Andy Slavitt  00:18

It’s IN THE BUBBLE with Andy Slavitt. And it’s a Friday conversation. The Southern Poverty Law Center calls anti semitism, the world’s oldest hatred. You know, in many ways, it’s just like any other form of hate, and prejudice. But in other ways, it has some interesting edges and shapes to it. You know, unlike prejudice against people of color, you know, because American Jews or largely speaking, white people, and many are middle and upper middle class. It carries a different kind of edge to it. And as a result, some people experience it some people who claim that they’ve never seen it, it can disappear somewhere between the surface, and sometimes it’s a little bit harder to put your finger on. Another difference is how much antisemitism plays out against the recent history of the Holocaust. As a result, the patterns which lead to genocide are fairly well mapped out in recent history. And that history both haunts us, and it makes us want to believe it just could never happen. Again, here in a place like the United States, you hear it can’t happen here. You hear it can happen here; you hear we need to be on the watch. Never again. And look, probably depending on your age and your generation, and your memory and the stories you heard growing up, you may or may not be thinking about anti semitism taking such a severe form. And of course, there’s other issues, you know, people sentiment towards Israel plays out here to some degree, I think people can often confuse and sometimes purposely confuse a sentiment of being against the actions of the Israeli government with sentiment that is pure, outright hatred against jews. Those are two different things. And there’s a funnier version of this that emerged over the Trump years, where Donald Trump pitched himself as a pro-Israel president, but harbored a lot of antisemitic talk. So it is plain old hatred, but it also has many different edges to it. But recently, things have changed even further. The dog whistles have been replaced by public chants; extremists have lost their need to stay in the shadows. And Hollywood stars, NBA basketball players, rap singers are making real time headlines saying things that even probably five years ago, they simply never could. So that’s the backdrop around our conversation today that I’m really looking forward to because it’s with two people who have, I think, really terrific perspective. First is George Selim, who is a Senior Vice President of National Affairs at the anti-Defamation League. Prior to his appointment at the ADL George served in the Bush administration’s the Obama administration’s Trump administration’s at Homeland Security. And so we’ll talk a little bit about what the White House has had to say. Thanks for joining us in the bubble.

George Selim  03:31

Thank you for having me today.

Andy Slavitt  03:33

My second guest is a real treat to bring you, Rabbi Steve Leder who’s the senior rabbi of Wilshire Boulevard temple in Los Angeles. He’s one of the most influential rabbis in America named that, by a number of publications. And as a real outspoken thought leader in questions like the ones we’re talking today. So let me welcome you, Rabbi.

Steve Leder  03:59

Thank you. Great to be with you.

Andy Slavitt  04:01

So George, anti semitism is clearly becoming more public. Is it also on the rise?

George Selim  04:09

Yes, period, full stop, it is on the rise. And the context here, you kind of alluded to the meeting I attended today. The context here is the White House with some degree of urgency, called the meeting today with the second gentleman, the husband of Vice President Kamala Harris, as well as senior administration officials from the State Department, the West Wing across the executive branch, to really underscore the fact that not only is it on the rise, but we’re really in a historic period with the rise of antisemitic incidents and the normalization of anti semitism in popular culture you know, all the Jewish communal organizations that were represented at this meeting, you know, roughly a dozen or so, as well as the administration officials, we’re all unified underneath the umbrella of the point you just made, which is, we are in an unprecedented time of the normalization of anti semitism, and an all-time high of antisemitic incidents across this country.

Andy Slavitt  05:16

It says, anti semitism that is always been there and buried beneath the surface. It’s not new anti semitism, it’s just now being newly expressed in such a normalized way, or are people becoming more antisemitic?

George Selim  05:31

We get this question all the time. And for more than 40 years, ADL has kind of collected this information and develop the proprietary kind of data set on antisemitic incidents across this country. My sense is that what anti semitism is kind of Jew hatred, if you really want to get down to its core, an act of anti semitism is not an action against an individual person. An act of anti semitism or an antisemitic trope, or conspiracy theory that is antisemitic in nature, is a representation of the fact that the person or group that’s representing that hates Jews, and it’s representing itself or manifesting itself in different ways. And I think at its core, we’ve gotten better at collecting that data. But now there are more platforms in which it can manifest itself. So people always say, well, the social media the problem, social media is the medium, Jew hatred and has anti semitism always been there. It has, is it now on social media? Yes. But was it in the real world in a telephone book and in the yellow pages before, it was there, too.

Andy Slavitt  06:36

So what I think you’re saying is, we may be seeing more of this. But it is not necessarily the case that this is new anti semitism, Rabbi at the late to bring you into the question of how we should be thinking about this moment, relative to where we stand in history.

Steve Leder  06:59

Well, there’s a duality to what I think we should be thinking right now. You know, we have on one side, this Jewish proclivity to believe that every road leads to Auschwitz. And you can understand that from a people that was so battered and abused and abandoned by the world less than a century ago. And then we have the reality that America is different. I still believe that, it is better, it is different. In America, the police run toward the violence against Jews, not away from it. And so there are important differences as well. I don’t think any of this is new. I haven’t heard a single new, creative antisemitic trope being offered by any of these people. I think what is new is, as Georgia said that social media is an accelerant. It spreads the word and it spreads it faster. I think that the anti semitism on the far left is new. The anti semitism on the extreme right is the oldest of stories. And I’m gonna say something because this is a podcast that I think it is an environment in which I can speak openly with you. I think we’re also dealing with a situation now where in anti semitism is not only normalized but an acceptable-ism. In many communities. It is an acceptable way to express your outrage at White people. It is an acceptable way to express your outrage at people who, through the eyes of another are privileged. And the fallacy of that, that the sickness of that is that we’re all privileged or some Jews privileged, yes. Is Ye and Dave Chappelle and Kyrie Irving. Are they privileged? Yes, we’re all privileged in some ways, and we’re all disadvantaged in some ways. But it’s the way in which are all identical. That’s important. And this is what I think is really at the root of this evil and all these isms. What’s important is not how we’re each privileged and disadvantaged, but how we’re each the same in the sense that we are all human. And if you prick us, we all bleed, all human beings and they are 99.9% genetically identical. And therefore, at the root of this evil is the objectification of other human beings. That is the real problem.

Andy Slavitt  09:49

Look at the far left anti semitism is something we maybe should come back to because it’s a very interesting and as you say, perhaps a novel thing. But how the dog whistle, the euphemism whatever word people use globalists or however, people cloaked their language, there became a permission structure to drop the pretense and just say, well, the Jews, the Jews, the Jews, yeah, when, at the same time, for many of our other forms of hatred, it’s become socially less acceptable, and maybe it may be still there, but it’s becoming socially less acceptable to use discriminatory words to describe people in minority groups, whether they’re sexual minority groups with other people of color, any other form of identity, we’ve sort of become a better society. And there’s jokes that people told 20 years ago, they don’t tell today. So I don’t think it’s the case. And you can correct me if I’m wrong, but I think it’s the case that we are becoming coarser towards everyone. But it feels like there is more permission to explicitly express antisemitic feelings today. Why is that?

Steve Leder  11:07

Yeah, it’s what I was intimating before it’s the last acceptable ism because it’s okay to pick on rich white people. Why should we feel sorry for rich White people, and that is a horrible mischaracterization and objectification of Jews. And that is Jew hatred. And that is a complete lack of understanding or empathy. And, we should call it what it is.

George Selim  11:31

I was gonna say, can I add on one point real quick, please, please. I want to expand on the rabbi’s point. And to your question on why it why the normalization has become the way it is. I want to add another dimension to the rabbi’s answer 40 to 50 years ago, if you were a racist, and you were a bigot, and you were a white supremacist, you hate your face underneath a white sheet and a hood and you held cloaked gatherings in rural areas of the South. That’s American history. Those are facts, undisputable. Today, if you hold those same beliefs that the Ku Klux Klan did in the 1940s and 50s and 60s and 70s. You do so on podcasts, okay? You do so on places that some people listening to this may have heard of called Twitter, or Facebook, and then other places where it really proliferates? You know, 4Chan, subreddit threads. And so part of where we’ve come as a society today is that it doesn’t matter how despicable your beliefs are, we’ve created a civilization, where we’re going to let everyone have their beliefs, and we’re going to do so underneath the moniker of free speech. And as someone whose own family, my mother and father are immigrants to this country, as someone whose parents and whose family came to this country, seeking religious liberty and asylum, and all the things that reason people who immigrate to this country come for is that we’ve created a society to where everything is acceptable. And we’re coming close to hitting that tipping point. And I think today’s White House meeting, and just what we see in the news today, and the points that you all covered, when we see rabbis in cities called Colleyville, Texas, get taken hostage at gunpoint, in their house of worship, where they pray each and every day, you know, to events, some type of political Vendetta. And when we see, you know, Jews murdered in cold blood and a synagogue in Pittsburgh, and I could go on with examples, we have to stop as a people and be able to say, Oh, that was just that was just a crazy guy that was just a crazy person. And look at really the symptoms that that allow these views that used to be in the woods that used to be in fields that used to have to cover your head and your body with sheets with for allowing them to be allowed to be displayed, and have these acts of violence and bigotry demonstrate themselves today, there is a deeper set of questions that need to be asked.

Andy Slavitt  14:27

Let me cut to a quick break. And I want to come back and I want to play some of the recent pop culture, things that we’re talking about. Get some reaction from Rabbi Leder and George Selim. We’ll be right back.

Andy Slavitt  15:29

Okay. That of course is Ye on Infowars talking with Alex Jones, not a lot of veiled language there, not a lot of subtlety. And we’re talking about somebody with millions and millions of followers. I think we start with your point, both of you that oftentimes people tend to want to write this as well. This is just one person who is clearly got some mental health issues, or maybe they’re off the ledge or they’re an extremist. Is that the way to look at it? Or does talk like that lead to Pittsburgh? Does talk like that give people permission in their circles, to say similar things? How concerned should we be? George, maybe start with you.

George Selim  16:19

So two quick thoughts. And I would love to kind of wrap I go back and forth with you on this. Yes. Commentary like that, when you have 30 million followers, and you’re a multi-platinum record selling artist does normalize anti semitism and bias and bigotry. Second, no reference to Hitler, outside of a classroom and education material on instruction on factually what occurred during the Holocaust is permissible in popular culture, no comparison to Hitler, no analogy about Hitler, no kind of side remark about Gestapo or the Third Reich unacceptable in normal contemporary culture, and we should not allow it other than in an instructional setting. And last but not least, the outright fake news that 6 million Jews were not killed, is factually incorrect. And part of the broader environment of misinformation, that people are not entitled to their own facts. That is untrue. He’s not allowed to say that. And it’s been proven wrong on every level. And Alex Jones himself has been convicted of spreading falsehoods and lies about the Sandy Hook massacre. And this is just another element where there should be a very serious degree of accountability, as the courts have rendered against Alex Jones.

Andy Slavitt  17:50

Was this discussed in person today at the White House meeting?

George Selim  17:53

Pop culture, normalization of anti semitism, and Kanye West were mentioned, but not in other than part of the contributing nature of the current rise and state of anti semitism.

Andy Slavitt  18:07

Before we get the rabbi, was there any productive thought about how this should be responded to?

George Selim  18:13

Yeah, I mean, and this is part of what ADL is working this faces, increasingly, is on building tables for dialogue between black and Jewish communities across this country. We’ve already started to do some of that I’m sure the rabbi has got some great thoughts on that as well. It’s work that needs to be done. The Jewish community that was represented at the White House today was in and of itself, a diverse group of people representing diverse constituencies because the Jewish community is not a monolith, it in and of itself is diverse. When we talked about the normalization of anti semitism, the second gentleman, Doug Emhoff, made a point repeatedly in his time off camera, when the White House press corps kind of left the room with us, where he said, as long as I have the microphone, and I have the platform to stand up and speak up against anti semitism, I’m going to take that as someone who’s proud of their Jewish heritage, and someone who’s proud of the religion that they practice. And so I think that’s really important. And a number of the people in the room said, hey, like when you say that, that means something to kids on college campuses, that means something to, you know, young adults and children to see the husband of the vice president kind of make that type of acknowledgement. And so I think it is meaningful for senior political officials to stand up and speak out and to assert themselves. I think it’s bananas, that the President of the United States has to tweet that the Holocaust happens. I think it’s bananas that that happened. But you know, what, if you have a platform, and you have a position in public life, if you’re an elected official, or in private life, if you’re the CEO of Adidas North America, you have a duty and a responsibility to condemn that type of hate speech.

Steve Leder  20:02

Loud and proud, loud and proud, that’s the answer. You know, in my part of the garden that I contend I’m trying to raise as many proud Jewish children through our schools in our camps as I possibly can to become proud Jewish adults, and to be proud of who they are, who their people are. And to fight back against anyone who influential or not, speaks with complete and total ignorance about who we are as a people. That I think is the real antidote. I think the interfaith and the inter religious work is very important. But to be honest, we’re talking to our friends there. And we know each other, and it’s important, but it’s, it’s not speaking out against people like Ye. And, you know, there is this thinking we were talking about it before we went live on the podcast, like, are we actually fueling the fire here by paying attention to this guy? I think not. I think it has, he has to be taken seriously, by the way, George is so you know, if you add up all his platforms, he has 53 million followers, three times the number of Jews on the planet. So he’s big. And I know more about him than I can share with you. But let me just say that he’s not going to stop. And we have to fight back and shut it down. And we need as much as we need proud Jews. We need all of our brothers and sisters who we marched with after George Floyd, we need everyone to stand with us. We cannot stand alone. There aren’t enough of us to stand alone. So please, speak out. I thought what John Mellencamp did at the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame was fantastic.

Andy Slavitt  21:52

Can you tell us?

Steve Leder  21:54

Yeah he stood up, they were honoring his longtime music attorney. He talked about his love for him. He called him his Rabbi. And he said, I may not get this exactly right. But that anti semitism is wrong, you know, terrible, stupid. He just came out and said it. This is John Mellencamp, right, a non-Jew from the Midwest. And it’s really important. And I think it’s important that our friends on the left, call it out on the left. I’m not hearing a lot of that. I’m really not.

Andy Slavitt  22:30

So there was a short time after he made his original comments. Dave Chappelle did a stand up on SNL. Let’s play that because it’s a different, I think, a different tone to it. Okay, Rabbi, tell us what he said there and what’s wrong with what he said.

Steve Leder  23:35

So there’s an expression my wife’s from a small town in Indiana, and I learned this expression visiting her family there many, many years ago. The expression is I’m not telling you, I’m just saying, and that’s Dave Chappelle’s shtick, right, he’ll tell you two truths and then sneak in a lie. He wasn’t legitimizing the age old trope about a conspiratorial Jewish cabal running Hollywood, he was just saying, and much like free speech. Not everything is fair game for comedy. There’s nothing funny about it. It’s wrong. It’s wrong every which way, including in comedy. And I’m not a hypersensitive individual. I can take a joke. But he was pretending he wasn’t saying what he was saying. And believing that we’re too stupid to realize what he’s up to.

Andy Slavitt  24:33

George, what’s the impact of a statement with the kind of college subtlety? Although it’s not the first word that comes to mind when I listened to it, to be honest, but a more subtle expression that we heard from Dave Chappelle.

George Selim  24:48

I think in many ways, once you go from the soundtrack, you go from the record, to the movie, to the TV show to the comedy stage. Right to the social media platforms, right, that sequence that’s normalization. That makes it okay. Well, if it’s okay to say it on this record, maybe some people bought the record, maybe some people didn’t. Maybe I mentioned it on this TV show, maybe some people watched them, maybe some people didn’t. Maybe it’s a line in a movie, maybe it’s a theme. And then it makes its way to mainstream culture. And then you have, you know, the crazy conspiracy theories that you know, what, don’t get the COVID 19 vaccine because the government did that. And all the things that come with the conspiracy theories that groups like sovereign citizens in this country believe that they’re immune from, you know, taxation and getting driver’s licenses and registering their vehicles. Like, this feeds an undercurrent that is not significant. It’s not large in terms of numbers, but his lethal. And we know that because Jews have died. Yes, immigrants have died, Latinos have been killed and bled to death on the floor of a Walmart. In El Paso, Texas?

Steve Leder  26:09

Women raped and abused.  kay, so yes, and, and don’t ever believe someone who says, I’m just making an observation that that’s their entire agenda. That’s no one’s entire agenda to make an observation when they’re on a stage. There’s a deeper agenda.

Andy Slavitt  26:31

Let me do one more break. It’s really fascinating conversation. And I want to come back and talk about what we all can do. And particularly in those situations, where we hear somebody start to go there with anti semitism, we’ll be right back.

Andy Slavitt  27:06

Help people at how they should respond, when they hear the uncomfortable comment from a friend or someone they thought was a friend or an acquaintance at a dinner or a friend of a friend. And it has some sort of tone to it off, hey, I’m just making an observation. I’m just saying, isn’t it interesting that it’s hard to deny that? My sense is that there are some Jews who are very comfortable reacting strongly to anti semitism and a great number that are not. And there may be reasons for that, including experience saying, let’s not identify ourselves. Because look what happened in the Holocaust, when we did, let’s assimilate, including now wanting to be seen as being overly sensitive, including perhaps being aware of a certain level of privilege, and a feeling among certain Jews, that whatever anti semitism we have to deal with isn’t as bad as perhaps what other people have to deal with. I think these are all thoughts that go through people’s heads. And I don’t know if in your congregation, you can relate to those things.

Steve Leder  28:12

Absolutely. And I have agents with antisemitic clients, and they don’t know what to do. They call me and say, Listen, this is what he said. And he’s my client. And I’m thinking of firing him. But, and we talk about I mean, there is nuance to some of this, because as I said, that line between free speech and hate speech, between observation and message, you know, it’s intentionally blurred by people. And sometimes it’s hard to know, but I would just go back to this general gut instinct, you know it when you hear it. And I’m a big advocate for probing. Well, tell me what do you mean by that? Why, why is that observation important to you? What are you really saying? And if it’s hurtful, say, you know, something, A, it’s inaccurate, and B, it’s incredibly hurtful to me. And we have to engage, because to ignore it, you know, it’s sort of so overused, that it’s lost its currency, this idea that silence makes us complicit. But it’s not only that silence makes us complicit. Silence is a sin of omission. It’s a sin of omission, because it is a lost opportunity to engage and humanize and educate each other. And that’s, that’s the real lost opportunity. So I believe in in engaging in a respectful, thoughtful way and assume the person isn’t ignorant, but not well informed enough to understand what’s wrong and what’s hurtful about it. And we can learn from each other and that’s the best of America.

Andy Slavitt  29:50

As we finish up here. I want to ask a couple of questions that are very much on my mind. George, are we in a track for this to just get worse at worse, is that where we’re heading?

George Selim  30:02

God, I hope not. My experience working in government on national security and sensitive security matters for almost two decades, has taught me my mentality that I carry with me into the ADL, a civil rights organization is hoped for the best and prepare for the worst. You know, I don’t want to get calls like I did two weeks ago, from, you know, the executive directors of synagogues and Jewish Day School saying is it safe to open up on Monday in New Jersey, or parents in West Bloomfield, Michigan, who reached out to me last week, after someone pulled into the parking lot and was making some threatening comments about Israel being an apartheid state, you know, with as they were dropping off their kids for preschool, you know, I don’t necessarily want to be in that business. But I’ll be in that business. And I’ll be in this line of work for as long as I need to be till those instances get much fewer and much further apart. Because for the past five years that I’ve been here, they’ve been pretty frickin consistent. And they’ve been very frequent. And until this number starts to come down, I hope the ADL doesn’t need someone in the future that served on the NSC staff that worked at DHS that worked at DOJ, I hope we don’t need a former FBI Special Agent in Charge from New Jersey who runs our law enforcement programs. I hope that’s not the ADL of the future. But for the time being, we’re going to be prepared to take the fight to individuals that threaten not just Jewish communities, but any community because of their race, religion, nationality, country of origin, etc, will be prepared to defend communities and people that are targeted because of who they are, or their sexual orientation or any other kind of protected class. And I think that’s the posture collectively as society we need to be prepared for, for the near term.

Andy Slavitt  32:00

So that I hear the prepared part. What I’m not hearing is what can turn this around, what can change this permission structure. I mean, I’ve heard you both talk about dialogue and a bigger table. And maybe look, I think there’s an elephant in the room here. We haven’t talked about Donald Trump, we haven’t talked about Donald Trump, because I find it too easy and convenient to put everything on Donald Trump. And you know, of course, Donald Trump is just one person in the manifestation of others. Yet, it’s undeniable that he said what he said after Charlottesville, there are good people on both sides, it’s undeniable that he dined with a known anti Semite and didn’t denounce it afterwards. And it’s undeniable that 10s of millions of people who follow Him, some of them probably say, hey, if he’s doing it, we got nothing to be embarrassed about.

Steve Leder  32:51

Yeah, and I’m sorry to say this again. But I think it’s very important for those of us who, you know, grew up the way you and I grew up in an inclusive, embracing way, that we have plenty of toxicity and poison coming from highly regarded political figures on the far left. And that also grants permission for people to unleash their hatred. And I don’t know if that was discussed at the White House today or not, like what are we doing in our own house. But it’s obvious that on both sides, this kind of poison is spewed and we need to call it what it is. And I think, look, I won’t walk you through this whole thing. But there’s an essay called the ever dying people about the Jews. And basically, the idea is that every generation of Jews thinks they might be the last, and therefore they never are, because we work so hard not to be because of the reality of that threat. And I think we have to take this threat very seriously, without defining ourselves as victims. You know, Menachem Bagan, I think it was 1981 was asked by a group of Americans what the lessons of the Holocaust were. And the first thing he said, the first lesson he articulated was if someone says they’re out to destroy you, believe them. So that’s one of the two polarities that we need to be focused on it. And that’s what George is living with day in day out for his entire life, professional life. And God bless you, George for that. And we need you for that.

Andy Slavitt  34:32

Let me close with the following question to each of you. What, one or two political things or social things from the administration from Congress, from some part of society would you like to see happen? That would give you the most encouragement of assign in the right direction, George, if it’s okay, we’ll start with you and Rabbi will give you the last word.

George Selim  34:54

You know, there was a rare instance where a letter came from Congress to the White House in the past two days, it was a bipartisan and bicameral letter from both the House and Senate Democrats and Republicans that signed a letter to the administration, you know, basically saying, the administration, the executive branch of the government’s doing a lot to combat anti semitism at the FBI at the Justice Department, at the State Department, etc, you know, what’s missing, we need a whole of government approach for how we’re going to tackle this not abroad with our foreign policy it states where, but here in this country, and these Democrats and Republicans for both the House and Senate came together to ask the executive branch for this, I think a starting point, you made a good point earlier in terms of talking about this at the kitchen table at the household at the community level. That’s an important measure as well, which is part of the long game. But another important part of how our government will demonstrate how it’s different from countries across the globe, is by putting in paper writing down what our national strategy is to stand up and combat anti semitism here in our homelands. And I think there’s a lot of great work happening. That was part of my message today. But it needs to be codified. So that irrespective of the administration, that’s in the House, the Senate or the White House, we as a government can hold ourselves accountable to the ideals that are I think our founders should have should have been enumerating in various kind of, you know, parts of our founding documents of this government.

Andy Slavitt  36:31

Rabbi, last word, what would you most like to see happen?

Steve Leder  36:35

I would like to see an army of people who believe that othering and objectification is wrong, that racism is wrong, that homophobia is wrong, that sexism is wrong, that ageism is wrong. Stand with us, as our allies, in speaking out against legislating against Jew hatred in popular and highbrow culture, in government, in the public sphere, and in the religious sphere.

Andy Slavitt  37:11

Thank you, thank you both for addressing this tough topic. Thank you both for the work you’re doing daily, you should know that it gives people who are worried about this issue, comfort, to know, of the work, George you are doing. And the organization’s doing, as it does for you, Rabbi, as people hear you speak out in a way that calls for, I think, more understanding of not just discrimination against us, but discrimination against everyone. And so pleased that you guys will be still out there. Thank you for being in the bubble.

George Selim  37:51

Thanks for having us.

Steve Leder  37:52

Thank you for the opportunity. Really thank you.

Andy Slavitt  38:08

All right, thank you for listening in to the Friday conversation. I’m curious. We’d love feedback on that show or any of the shows that we’ve done this week we did. Of course, we started the week in Ukraine, then did a global look at COVID and COVID variants. And then today, a deep conversation about what’s going on in this country with anti semitism and the permission structure. And I gotta tell you three great shows again next week, three topics that I think you all care about the maternal mortality crisis in this country. What cryptocurrency has done and is doing to impact us and what is happening there. And then mental health and homelessness in New York, very controversial plan from Mayor Adams, and we will have for you a discussion on are afraid of competition next week. So we are hopefully bringing you things you care about. But tell us if there’s other topics you want to hear about. We’d love to bring them to you. Thank you for listening. Have a great weekend.

CREDITS  39:12

Thanks for listening to IN THE BUBBLE. We’re a production of Lemonada Media. Kathryn Barnes, Jackie Harris and Kyle Shiely produced our show, and they’re great. Our mix is by Noah Smith and James Barber, and they’re great, too. Steve Nelson is the vice president of the weekly content, and he’s okay, too. And of course, the ultimate bosses, Jessica Cordova Kramer and Stephanie Wittels Wachs, they executive produced the show, we love them dearly. Our theme was composed by Dan Molad and Oliver Hill, with additional music by Ivan Kuraev. You can find out more about our show on social media at @LemonadaMedia where you’ll also get the transcript of the show. And you can find me at @ASlavitt on Twitter. If you like what you heard today, why don’t you tell your friends to listen as well, and get them to write a review. Thanks so much, talk to you next time.