Freakonomics Radio - What if Being a Stranger Is Actually Your Superpower_ _ Better in Person

0:00Stephen DubnerThis episode of Better in Person is presented by ChatGPT. Put ChatGPT to work on your most ambitious ideas and projects. Download the new ChatGPT desktop app today. Hey there, it's Stephen Dubner. The bonus episode you are about to hear is an interview with Angela Bookdoll, who is one of the most unusual and interesting rabbis you are likely to meet. This interview comes from a new video talk show we're making called Better in Person.

0:28Stephen DubnerYou can watch it on the Freakonomics YouTube channel or on Apple Podcasts. But we also like to put out this audio version in case your eyes are busy and you only want to use your ears. As always, thanks for listening.

1:07Stephen DubnerBeing open to possibility is part of the job description. Angela Bookdahl has taken that openness a bit further, and it has brought her much more attention than most faith leaders will ever receive. Here she is as a clue on jeopardy. Korea-born Angela Bookdahl is the first Asian-American to be ordained a cantor, as well as this leader of a Jewish congregation. Ben. What is rabbi? We got it. Bookdahl is a central synagogue in New York City. Her services are streamed globally.

1:35Stephen DubnerAnd after the October 7th attacks in Israel, she got a lot of attention for rejecting a binary way of thinking about the crisis. And now Bookdoll is a New York Times best-selling author. Her memoir is called Heart of a Stranger, an unlikely rabbi's story of faith, identity, and belonging. So I really love your book. I think it's... I appreciate that. Thank you.

1:58Stephen DubnerIt's really well written. I mean, I know that I know that it began as sort of one book and became a different one over time, took a long time, right? Four or five years, I guess. It took me four years to write it because it's hard to find time to write in my day job. It's also very concise. So for people who haven't read it, you tell the story of your life, which is a really amazing story in really short chapters, which I appreciate because, you know, our attention spans are short. And you've become, I mean, I think it's.

2:26Stephen Dubnerprobably not an exaggeration to say you're the most famous rabbi in the world at the moment, which is something worth talking about because that recognition and fame has had a lot of ramifications, some good and some, you know, really difficult. But let's start with the autobiography. Like we could literally talk about you and your family story for many hours because it's pretty fascinating going back to 14th century royalty. King Sejong, the great, yeah, that's true. So give us the thumbnail and we'll

2:55Angela Buchdahlfill in some details as we go. So I won't start in the 14th century. I'll just start a few generations back. You know, I think that my story is one of boundary crossing. I was born a biracial child in an ethno national state. Korea. Korea. And so from the very beginning of my life. There was a certain way that I recognized I wasn't like everybody else. And then I moved to the United States when I was about five years old. You should say your father is American and Jewish. My father is American and Jewish. My mother a Korean Buddhist to this day. I love your mother so much. I really do. She's an incredible character in this story as well as my life. She really lived through those hard things. I think if you have a parent who lived through

3:36Angela Buchdahla war, like the ones who come out of it alive, they have a certain kind of fortitude. And exiled, forced exile. And forced exile. So, and that, you know, my mother wasn't actually even born in Korea herself. She was born under Japanese occupation in Japan. So the beginning of her life was already a boundary crossing at a young age as was mine. And I came to the States now, Tacoma is in some ways a random place for a biracial Korean kid to end up Jewish. But it was already my Warnick side my Jewish side's home for three generations. So I was already the synagogue or created the community They helped found the community. It was an incredibly small but tight-knit Jewish community. So I grew up even though my family didn't look like any other Jewish family in our 300 family synagogue I was a Warnick and I saw my grandfather's picture on the wall in an AZA basketball uniform and I felt like okay, I have yes here like I'm

4:32Angela Buchdahlconnected and I have deep roots, so I was welcomed. But the weirdest thing about you, if you don't mind me saying, is how deeply you wanted to be a rabbi from the time you were very young. Someone said to me, you call this the unlikely story of a rabbi. And they said, I read your story. And I was like, it was so likely. You were singing to God when you were eight and leading your sister in prayers when you were a kid. And there was something about that that actually felt deeply ordained. Jews don't call it a calling so much, but I do feel that

5:02Stephen Dubnerthat I was pulled to this in a way that felt like it was beyond my control. Like it was just, it was just all I wanted to do. I love it. I love it. I actually, I'm on sabbatical and I miss being at services on Friday nights. I absolutely love it. Can I ask about the hard parts of being a rabbi? I mean, I always, I just think about the death, all the death that you're offering a lot of condolences to a lot of different people in different circumstances. I mean, here's the interesting thing about doing funerals and being close to death.

5:30Angela BuchdahlIt is very difficult and there's a lot of sadness and sometimes there's tragedy. But there is also in every death a huge amount of awe. And that awe, it gives me a glimpse of the world beyond in a way that actually makes me want to live my life here better and more meaningfully. It just puts what's important into sharp focus every time I do a funeral.

5:54Stephen DubnerYou describe being a rabbi as being in the business of awe in the awe business. I'm in the awe business. Which I really love. I don't know if I believe it. I love it because...

6:03Angela BuchdahlOh, do I need to convince you that I'm in the awe business? A little bit, a little bit. Okay. Well, let me put it in more scientific terms. So Dr. Keltner, who's a scientist at Berkeley, he wrote a book on awe. He studied awe in 26 different countries across thousands of people. So this is not just awe for Jews or awe for Americans. This is awe across geography and time and space. Can you define awe? I would say maybe it is touching and experiencing something that is vast and beyond your comprehension. Okay.

6:33Stephen DubnerDacher Keltner's research identified eight reliable catalysts for all. Nature, intellectual epiphany, art and visual design, spiritual experience, birth and death, music, collective effervescence, and, number one, moral beauty. Moral beauty. This

6:54Angela Buchdahlencounter of the kind of extraordinary acts that normal human beings do, that is what I'm witnessing regularly and lifting up. I mean, and there were a lot of stories of moral beauty that were coming out of Israel, for example, of like selflessness, generosity, kindness, bravery, courage. Those were the stories that I wanted to emphasize because we are caught up in the muck of the worst part of humankind and the media wants to emphasize the worst aspects of human nature and they exist.

7:23Angela BuchdahlYou can find evil in lots of corners and with all peoples. But we've gotten better at bringing it to the forefront. We have. And for some reason, that stuff is what's contagious. But I think that my job is to call to mind that what I see all the time over and over with normal people is acts of moral beauty every day.

7:43Stephen Dubnerhuman beings are the greatest source of all that we have in the world. So I really love your book. I think you're a great teacher. Thank you. I really do. You've been a good speaker, a good writer, a good leader, et cetera. People are attracted to you for good reasons. You've also come to prominence because you're unusual, because you're a female Asian American rabbi, et cetera, et cetera. So I'm curious how your recognition or fame has affected not just your life, but your family's life. I would say the fame part is hard in that the more visible

8:12Angela Buchdahlthe platform, the more you're targeted. And I've seen that, like everything from central synagogue literally being targeted for attacks to my being called in for hostage negotiations because that is unfortunately the world we live in today. So I feel that the weight of that immensely. Yeah, so let's talk about that Coleyville, Texas event. This was, as you described in the book, an armed gunman breaks or is invited into a synagogue in Texas and ends up.

8:41Angela BuchdahlHe was invited in as a stranger who looked like he was coming in from the cold, and the rabbi invited him in. What he actually was was a British citizen, originally a Pakistani Muslim who had moved to England, and in England there is a chief rabbi, and he had grown up on these anti-Semitic tropes that Jews have.

9:01Angela Buchdahlenormous influence power, conspiratorial connections, and basically imagine that the chief rabbi of America could make a few phone calls and get a fiasediki who he called his sister, but she's really a cause celeb in the Pakistani Muslim community known as Lady Al-Qaeda and she's a kind of a notorious terrorist who was sitting in a prison in Texas. So the reason he picked Coleyville, which is not the center of Jewish life, is because it was the synagogue that was the closest to this federal prison. So he figured if he ended up taking Jews...

9:35Angela Buchdahlcaptive in Coleyville, that he could call the quote chief rabbi of America. Which he decided was you. Which he decided was me. Based on you having been to the White House a couple times. Based on Google Internet search. Right. And maybe because I had just been a Jeopardy question like two weeks before. Who knows why the algorithm put me at the top of his list for rabbi to call. But he believed that I could make a few phone calls and get this woman.

9:59Angela Buchdahlbrought to that synagogue. So the end of the story is a relatively happy one, which is that none of the hostages were harmed. The rabbi Charlie, what's his last name? Citrin Walker. I was very struck by Charlie Citrin Walker after this incident. He ended up being on a lot of news media, which I avoided, actually, because I really felt like, first of all, this was his story. I was a side player in this. So I didn't do any TV interviews, and I wanted to remain quiet. He was asked, Are you gonna go back into the synagogue again? Because, you know, that standoff was 10 hours in the synagogue. And he said, of course I'm going back. This week, he said, that's what Jews do. We go back in. And I thought about this deep sense that, like, we choose life. There's this saying, it's like, I've said before you, life and death choose life. Now that seems so obvious, unless you've actually been challenged and faced with death.

10:53Angela BuchdahlThen you realize what courage it takes to choose life. And Charlie was like, of course I'm going back in. And he faced his own death literally for 10 hours sitting there with a man holding a gun to his head. And he said, of course I'm going back.

11:08Stephen DubnerSmart and heroic. Yes, he really was the guy who you call a gunman you might call a terrorist whatever he ends up getting killed in the incident, right? So None of the hostages were killed but still when I think about you know fame Many people I think think of fame as a a pretty good thing and pursue it even on some small level and yet Almost all the people I've known who become famous truly famous like over the years I've written about a bunch, spent time with some. I've never known one who didn't have a really terrible either stalker or threats. It just comes with the territory. So to me, when I think about you, you're a rabbi in New York, prominent rabbi in New York, but then you get thrust into this and you get the call from the guy. Now you've got the FBI on the other line and so on. I think about that as being kind of the cost of being prominent or being famous and being Jewish and a rabbi is

12:03Stephen Dubneryet another layer on top of that. How do you, I mean, did you pull back from your activities? Are you worried about being prominent and recognized? What's your strategy for thinking that through? And I don't mean to ask a question that if you were asking me, I would say let's not talk about it, because it feels like it might be better left unsaid, but I'm curious how you manage that. You know, I...

12:31Angela BuchdahlIt's difficult, but I and I never have pursued fame for its sake I have a message that I want to share and I've always felt like I want to get this out to a wide audience as possible I feel like this is what I'm called to do. I feel the weight in the pain of it I actually would like to be more anonymous when I'm walking in the street. I don't like to Dress up all the time. I don't like I don't like being recognized and so like I I do feel that there is a certain tension that I constantly feel around this. But if I were to pull back, in some ways it allows a small group of haters to win. If I'm pulling back, then I'm not choosing life. Yeah. You were attacked again for not signing a petition condemning Zoran Mamdani when he was running for mayor of New York, an election which he won.

13:21Angela BuchdahlI was thinking about if you were not so prominent, would it have been noticed that your name was not on that petition? No, of course not. But part of the reason that I made a decision that I was never signing any letters, and I made that several years ago, is because I saw the way that even when I agreed with a letter, and I usually agree with 90% of a letter, not 100% of a letter, but even when I agreed with the issue and wanted to lend my voice, I saw the way that my name would be pulled out of the list of a thousand rabbis or whatever it would be, I would be the face of the article, and whatever little tiny bit of that letter I didn't agree with, that would be the thing that would be emphasized the most, and then I became the face of it.

14:01Angela BuchdahlI essentially watched the way that my name was being manipulated and used out of my control. And I will tell you these letters while there is, I understand the impulse to want to sign. There is a kind of herd mentality that I think is not necessarily good. And people said, oh, but a thousand rabbis signed this letter. How could you be the only one that doesn't know? And I said, well, do you know there were a thousand rabbis that also signed a starvation in Gaza letter in August? These letters are a dime, a dozen. People have no idea. These letters are happening all the time. Some of them just get a lot more prominent. There's actually a pressure cooker that happens against rabbis for these letters, that like once you see a certain number of names, you feel pressured to sign them. And then that letter was actually used and cited by Cuomo in the debate itself. And I thought to myself, is this what we want rabbis to be? To be reduced to a pawn in a electoral debate? That's exactly why.

14:52Stephen Dubneryou do not sign letters. There are instances, though, where your notoriety, fame, whatever we want to call it, have been a great help to you, the things that you've been able to accomplish because of it. You got to write the book you wanted to write, to be honest, right? If you didn't have this position, you may not have been able to write this kind of book, which is a book that's not just about you, but it's about what you feel are the essential components of Judaism itself, yeah?

15:18Angela BuchdahlI think the fact that I have a community that has been growing and that has this platform is the reason that I was given the opportunity to share this message more widely in a book and I feel very grateful that that's an opportunity. It feels crazy to me, especially as the kid that grew up and nobody saw me or recognized me as Jewish or many didn't or denied it to now be able to be one of the spokespeople for the Jewish community and I feel the privilege of that and the responsibility of it.

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16:51Stephen DubnerLet's talk about Israel for a minute. So in the last few years, in some quarters, the very word has become a curse word. I mean, I think it's as simple as that. There are people who, when they learn that someone is Jewish or has family in Israel or when they think about Israelis, they say it's an evil people. It's a very high pronounced form of anti-Semitism on some levels.

17:19Stephen DubnerIt's other things on other levels. It's complicated. I think we all recognize that. How can you from your position sort of explain that to the world? Easy question, of course, but do your best. Israel is a country that since its inception has been under attack. I think people have a hard time.

17:40Angela Buchdahlseparating out a government from a country and the people itself. They have a harder time with Israel than with most other countries. That's right. That's right. Because I certainly find that people have no trouble critiquing or even saying, I completely disagree with what our government is doing and might even say, It's immoral, but they would never say therefore all Americans are immoral or therefore the country doesn't have a right to exist. It seems that Israel is the only country for whom the government is indistinguishable from the entire people. So if you do not like the actions of the government, then there was a sense that that entire people is immoral or wrong. What's your position on, let's take Gaza and Israel first. I realize politics is not your realm, but your...

18:27Stephen Dubnerpolitically adjacent, let's call it. So let's say you were asked to come over and be a member of some, let's say a permanent commission to figure out what's the most equitable way to deal with what's going on now to create a future that will provide as much goodwill for as many people there as possible. What are your first three points there? I want to see a Palestinian state. I want to see in the same way that because I'm a Zionist I deeply believe that

18:56Angela Buchdahlthat Jews have a right to self-determination in their land, I actually also must believe that Palestinians have a right to self-determination. You need to live with dignity and peace and security. I know we feel extremely far away from the possibility of a two-state solution, but I want...

19:12Stephen Dubnerto see steps that move us in that possible direction. Where would you propose that that state be? Because for anyone who knows the history of the region, even just the last 40 or 50 years, there have been many proposals, agreements even, to have a two-state solution that then end up being torpedoed.

19:29Angela Buchdahlobviously been a complete breakdown in trust. And right now, even Israelis who five years ago would have thought that a two-state solution was possible, right now, none of them feel it's possible. But everyone is traumatized. There has to be some deradicalization that needs to happen. But we have seen this happen in countries that we thought it was not possible. Northern Ireland. Look, it was happening in Northern Ireland. And places like Germany, which has now become one of the greatest allies of Israel, like, who would have thought that when we came out of the war?

19:57Angela BuchdahlI never give up on peoples. Like we think like that's not possible. There are certain kind of people. I don't believe that. I think people in particular circumstances behave when they are in fear or under occupation. They will behave in different ways than they will when they can live in security and peace. I actually think that the vast majority want that. I also think that we need to make sure that Hamas is not in charge. So I think that it's very important that people distinguish between Hamas and

20:23Stephen Dubnerno longer allow them to be in charge of the Gaza Strip and create a different Palestinian leadership that can be. Let's pretend there is a total recalibration, just for kicks. And it's the creation of a new era. And I say, you know, Angela Bookdoll, you are a really interesting, smart, compassionate Jewish leader. And I think it's a good time for the world to understand what Judaism is and what it's not, okay?

20:51Angela BuchdahlYou describe it in the book as a wisdom literature, really. And there are many wisdom literatures out there that are revered, but they're not typically attached to a living population the same way that Judaism is. So what's your best pitch? Well, it's not maybe a surprise that it's connected to the title of this book, The Heart of a Stranger. And Jews have always been a small, tiny minority. We have in many ways existed as the counterculture for whatever is the predominant culture. That word Hebrew literally means to to cross over, to be a boundary crosser. Because to be a Hebrew is to know what it feels like to be a stranger. And that's the story of 400 years of us as slaves in Egypt. It's the story of us 2000 years historically as a diaspora people living in countries where we were more or less at home, but never fully of the place. And I think that the lesson there is not just that this is what Jews experience, but it's actually the human experience. I'm realizing now

21:49Angela Buchdahlthat we're living in a time and day where I feel the way the Asian community in America feels that they have been misunderstood and hated post-pandemic in a way that we didn't really realize. I think that we understand we still have a real race issue in our country that has not been fully resolved or dealt with. And you could go through every minority group in the ways that they feel and immigrants right now in this country. But you know that white Christian men also feel like strangers right now.

22:19Angela Buchdahland they feel misunderstood and marginalized in this country right now. So the heart of a stranger is a human experience. What I think Judaism has to offer is a blueprint for taking that experience and making that into your superpower of empathy, of creativity, of resilience, of grit. This is what Jews have had to do because we've always been that stranger. And instead, We are seeing ways that people who take that Harvard stranger want to build higher walls, push people more out, demonize the other side even more. And actually, this is the message, I think, that we want to say, no, we want to do the exact opposite. We want to say, you feel like a stranger, so do I. Let that be the first point of human connection between us. Nice. Do you believe in God? I do, but not in the...

23:05Angela BuchdahlAnd not in the traditional biblical notion of a sort of supernatural God that's vengeful, that like chooses who's going to live and who's going to die, not in that kind of a way. I think, though, that there is room for understanding God in a lot of different ways, even biblically. Maybe my favorite name for God in the Bible, there are dozens and dozens of names for God in the Torah. One of them is when Moses directly asks God, what is your name? And God says, Ehyeh, Asher Ehyeh.

23:33Angela BuchdahlI will be what I will be. That's almost like an invitation to say, what do you need this larger force to be in the world? I will be that for you. So I know a lot of Jews who are very...

23:48Stephen Dubnerproud, historical, even scholarly-ish Jews who don't believe in God at all and find it not inconsistent with the tradition because it's an old tradition, there are many branches on the tree. Tell me if that's the case. I mean, if I were to just ask you the basic question, can you be a Jew, a good Jew even, without believing in God? And if the answer is yes or even if the answer is no, are there other religions where that's viable? At 100% no, many good Jews who don't

24:17Angela Buchdahleither don't believe in God or not sure that they believe. You know that Judaism is both a religion and it's a people. Let's talk about that. Which is confusing to a lot of people. But if you just think about it just being the tribe that you're born into and a kind of peoplehood, there are a lot of ways that people understand that their obligation is not necessarily to God, but to a people and to a history and to their ancestors. And that's a real thing. In some ways, it's not that dissimilar from the Korean culture in which there is ancestor worship.

24:52Angela Buchdahlbeholden to are to those who've come before you. But I also think that the distinction here is not just that you can be a Jew through kind of cultural peoplehood. But I also know that so much of even the religiousness of Judaism is about what do you do, not even what do you believe. So how about the Sabbath? Everybody's familiar with the concept of a Sabbath. How does Judaism conceive of it? How is it kind of reverberated out into the world over time?

25:20Angela BuchdahlWell, you say everyone thinks of a Sabbath, but I would say Judaism, that might be the greatest idea that Jews brought to the world. Because there was a time before the Torah that people just worked every day, all day long. They had to grow their food, do whatever they did. They labored every day. And it actually was a radical idea that, no, we're not here on earth only just to work and create and produce every single day of our lives like the same.

25:46Angela BuchdahlActually, you can sanctify time by setting it apart and making it different. And one day a week you should stop working and laboring and creating and producing. You just get to be. That's the whole point of it. That's the point of it all. And that was a radical idea. And by the way, it wasn't just for Jews. It was for everyone. It included our animals, people who worked with us. Everyone should have a Sabbath. We've lost sight of the fact that there is a reason that we're here that is beyond just

26:13Stephen Dubnerproduction, and especially in a very capitalist society, which I'm not against capitalism. It's just that that can't be the be-all end-all of our existence. I want you to say more about sanctifying time, which you just mentioned. I remember there's a book by Abraham Joshua Heschel called The Sabbath, where if I recall correctly, and I probably don't, he described how the Sabbath represents not the earth moving through time, but rather time going across the earth. So how do you learn to think about time differently, whether one wants to specifically sanctify it like you just said, or just treat it like the valuable thing that it is? How do you do that? The way you sanctify time, it's easy and it's hard. You literally have to set it apart as different than all of the time. So the ways that Jews have done that traditionally, as we say,

27:03Angela BuchdahlWe don't run errands. We don't use money. We don't use electricity. We're not on our phones. These are the ways that these laws have evolved. It began with the idea that we don't do malacha. We don't do work.

27:13Angela BuchdahlBut imagine that you really would unplug from all the things that feel like work in your day. And I just think if we took even just an electronics Sabbath. So my husband and I decided more like 20 years ago that we were going to be more observant of Shabbat than we were either of us growing up. And we said no phones to our kids and we have a Shabbat community that has in some ways saved my Jewish family and saved my life and created kind of this tight knit community of people.

27:42Angela BuchdahlYou're a rabbi, it sounds like you would have already had that going now. You know, one of the occupational hazards of being a rabbi is you work on the Sabbath, right? But I would say that for me, Friday night, when I'm leading services, it doesn't feel like work. I am more in the flow leading services than any other time of my week. Okay, now I want to be a rabbi as well. But one thing that...

28:04Stephen Dubnerstrikes me about Judaism, one thing that appeals to me about the tradition, one thing that I really liked about your book, is that Jewish thinking is really allergic to binary thinking. You think about the phrase, turn it and turn it, for everything is in it, right? If you look at something from enough angles, you'll not only learn more, but you'll feel differently about the thing. So can you just talk about how to get less dug in on the binary thinking that we habituate toward and to try to be a little bit more considerate, to turn things more. Do you have any advice for that? Yeah, I mean, I'm sure you've heard the expression two Jews. Three opinions. Three opinions, right? So what's interesting is like, if that joke is about the fact that Jews are very opinionated and always disagree with each other. Let's just say argumentative. Argumentative. Why isn't it two Jews, two opinions?

28:53Angela BuchdahlWhat is the third opinion? And actually, I would say this is about breaking out of the binary. And you break out of the binary when you're willing to engage with the person that you think is your opposite. And when you are in conversation with them, and in Judaism, this is called Tevruta, you actually are always supposed to study Jewish texts with a partner. So you could say that's two people. So you've got two opinions. No. When you are in true Tevruta and you are sparring with someone, you are sharpening your thinking, and you get to a another idea that you could not have gotten to on your own. And to me, this is the genius of Judaism. It's like the fact that you can get to a third opinion, which you could not get to by yourself, you can only get to if you're willing to actually engage the binary. And move beyond it. So that's in like a study situation where you've chosen to be kind of allies. But it's politics also. It's really like it's in every realm. Yeah, how do you, but I don't see a lot of evidence.

29:50Stephen Dubnerof people wanting to bring a third opinion into the room right now. I don't see a lot of illustrations of it. If I look at DC, if I look at just the way that most people are now in their circles, I think we all have these personal circles where we feel comfortable.

30:05Angela Buchdahland where it's a respite from everything else. But everything else, all the stuff that's public or even a little bit public, it feels more like we're in a lockdown binary mode. Well, that's what you said. You just said that when we're comfortable, we can do it. And I think part of the problem is right now, it doesn't just feel like it's a difference of opinion. It feels existential threatening. We are in a place of such fear and such demonization. The polarization has become so extreme that actually engaging with the other side feels like engaging with the enemy in some way. And I think that that's what we have to work against in this environment right now, is that we have to understand that.

30:42Stephen Dubnerthat other side, even if it feels like it is our enemy, we have to engage because we can't move forward by pulling the country farther apart. Okay, but how? Because like, I mean, one version of reducing all of Judaism to one line is when Hillel, a couple thousand years ago, whatever was asked, standing on one foot, what would you say is the message and you'd say, love your neighbor as yourself, right? Is that what Hillel said? He said, what is hateful to you do not do to others. Right. All the rest is.

31:08Stephen Dubnercommentary right so commentary we can comment forever and we do I mean that's what we do but if you know that what is hateful to someone else should be hateful to yourself or if you know that the person sitting across from you you shouldn't hate I feel like the commentary that we've been working on for the past couple thousand years hasn't produced the sort of interpersonal or political peace that we're all after

31:34Angela BuchdahlSo I'm not asking you to solve the history of the world's problems here. No, but I mean, I do think that maybe one of the things we can start with is maybe the first conversation you have with your enemy is not the thing that is your biggest problem. Maybe actually you begin with something that is a little bit of a safer ground, or you just get to know each other as human beings. Right? Sports is great. Weather. But, I mean...

31:53Angela BuchdahlI think that part of the breakdown of what we see in America is that we've lost those third spaces where people who had ideological differences could actually meet. Social clubs, churches, synagogues, bowling groups. These were places where people across ideological difference would meet just as human beings. It's harder to demonize someone if you've actually just bowled together or if you, in my community, we have people across the spectrum. And when we pray together and sing together and serve meals to people who are homeless together, Guess what? We don't have to talk about the hardest thing first. I just know you're a decent human being, because we served a meal together to someone who was hungry. Now we could talk about the harder thing, where at least sort of start with the starting place that you're a good person, that you want good things for people. And if I can start with that, then we can have the harder conversation. But people have decided already that, you know, you're just a bad person. You know what I really like about you? I think you make people want to be better people. Oh, thank you. It's a good thing.

32:50Stephen DubnerThat was such a good conversation. Thank you for bringing your whole badass self to it. You are a badass. You just are. Thank you. You really are. Thank you so much. Rabbi Angela Bookdoll, everybody. Thank you. Remember, this interview comes from our new video, Talk Show Better in Person, which you can watch on the Freakonomics YouTube channel or on Apple podcasts. Let us know what you think. Our email is radio at freakonomics.com.

33:20Stephen DubnerWe will be back soon with a regular episode of Freakonomics Radio. Until then, take care of yourself. And if you can, someone else too. Ellen, is that you? That's a yes when you hear laughter from the other room. Thanks again to ChatGPT for sponsoring today's episode of Better In Person. ChatGPT can help teams move from goals to real outcomes. Put ChatGPT to work on your most ambitious ideas and projects. Download the new ChatGPT desktop app today.