The RDL Podcast with Rabbi Daniel Lapin

Men who marry moneyed maidens hoping to get their hands on her wealth deserve what they get, which most times won’t be good. But girls marrying guys with gold is quite different. Men who make money reveal much of their positive masculine desirability whereas a lady’s bank balance reveals nothing of her feminine desirability. Why do men in uniform fascinate females? Also, learn why, in 1970, AMC paid $75 Million for little more than rights to the Jeep car name. Other topics include: Yin & Yang, Grand Coulee Dam, and why weddings happen after men propose to women (not the reverse). The Beatles lied in 1967 when they sang “All You Need is Love”. The real meaning of the Biblical jewelry when he gave her gold at that desert well where Rebecca was betrothed to Isaac, sight unseen, and the future of Israel was assured. When he says, “I love you”, does he mean it the same way as when he says, “I love roast turkey”? A great Russian novelist accurately wrote “Money is coined liberty”. A financially ambitious man is far more likely to love freedom than a community activist, a politician, or a government bureaucrat. A great American novelist accurately wrote “The man who damns money has obtained it dishonorably but the man who respects it has earned it.” Such a man is a far better bet for a good woman than a man who can do no more than express pretty feelings about her, which, in truth, camouflage selfish intent.

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Many in the Bush family (sorry, I mean dynasty) with their long association with the Republican Party, admitted that they voted for Hillary Clinton in November 2016.  So did dozens of other well-known journalists, pundits, policy-wonks, and political-hangers-on who had long been famous as conservative Republicans.  All these intelligent people decided that Donald Trump was so terrible that Hillary and the four more years of Obamaville that she’d bring to the country would be a preferable fate for America.  Some have now admitted that they were wrong.  Many have not.  My question: What explains how intelligent people can make really stupid decisions?  I ask you to recall your own bad decisions and we'll analyze how they happen.  In this show, we allow ancient Jewish wisdom to explain how easily this can happen to you, how to recognize it in yourself and how to defend against it.  Now for the most valuable part of this show: the Biblical secret for overcoming procrastination and how to use it in your life.  You know that one thing you have been putting off doing? That one thing which would really enhance your life if you could just get around to doing it?  But you procrastinate.  Well, here’s how to put procrastination behind you. Now!

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I was wrong last week. The 737 MAX should have been promptly grounded on March 11th, 2019. Was history being written in the Ethiopian desert and off the coast of Indonesia? Sometimes history is written in just a few days. Are we witnessing the opening moves of America’s slide from #1 to #2 in commercial aviation? Why would the U.S. Justice Department launch an almost unprecedented criminal investigation of Boeing? The crashes of Lion Flight 610 and Ethiopian Flight 302 tragically killed 346 people. Could subsequent events prove even more costly? Were they really accidents or were they completely avoidable consequences of corrupt collaboration between corporate interests and government. Should it worry us that America’s new Secretary of Defense worked for Boeing for thirty years? Boeing’s stock price should tell us something profound. Like Europe’s Airbus, China is waiting to scoop up worldwide twin-engine single-aisle passenger aircraft business. What if America’s FAA has irreparably lost international prestige? Why did Boeing put two huge modern engines on a fifty year-old air frame? Why did they decide to omit information from instruction manuals about a computer system that can override the pilot? You wouldn’t buy a car that did that. Is Western defense and American security being held hostage by “The Swamp”? Also, I reveal my prediction about when the 737 MAX will again take to the skies and tell you why you will remember the first quarter of 2019 as history-making in American politics.

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20 Questions that will help you discover if you truly know how the world REALLY works.  Letters from listeners.  Two Boeing airliners tragically crash; the real reason the 737Max was grounded.   Are we willing and eager to end the more than 30,000 traffic fatalities a year in the United States?  It can be done, you know. How would you vote?  Don’t you care about people’s lives?  The machinery of human society is infinitely more complex than a nuclear power plant.  How, and why the left turned the word “nationalist” into a curse.  Why you risk your life if you identify as a patriotic American on a university campus.  Let the Bible explain why international law is a farce and the United Nations a travesty. The New Zealand mosque massacre.  The American university admission scandal.  Fixing a few of the many fatal flaws in American university education.

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How you answer the question that entitles this show will say a lot about whether you ever will have $5 Million. What produces more happiness, fun or work? Would you accept marital advice from a man who has never lived with a woman? But you might well accept car maintenance advice from a mechanic who has never owned a car. Would you take career advice from a man who has never held a job? But you might accept investment advice from an accountant who has much less money than you. Would any mom accept advice about how many children to have, from a woman who has never had children? There is a crucial difference between data and wisdom. Will the arrival of artificial intelligence and self-driving cars put millions out of work? Could you find as much meaning in leisure as in work? Which is more important: what you know or what you are? Finally, there exist ten measures of human greatness.

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A guard at the notorious San Quentin Penitentiary near San Francisco takes issue with my overly broad characterization last week. Another California corrections officer comments on my preference for fines, flogging and execution over incarceration. A Colombian family writes from Singapore, to where they moved from Malaysia, telling of how they overcame dark times and broke through to prosperity. Then, it's on to the true story of how Bernie and Arthur got fired from a small hardware store in 1978 and started Home Depot. Wasn’t that a great response to losing a job? Also, how 120 million Greeks, Italians, Spaniards, and Portuguese are enjoying their siestas and retirements on the work of 80 million Germans. And that is not to mention the 1.5 million Muslim immigrants they’re also supporting. If you’re trying to start a business or grow one, you have to think outside the box. You must escape the confinement of the conventional. But if you leap too far out of the box, if you’re too unconventional, you might be stepping over the legal line. Yet, if all you do is repeat what others before you have done, your business will fail. What’s one to do? Happily, there is an answer that pops out of one little verse in Deuteronomy and which Jews have used for generations to achieve financial abundance. Now, you can too.

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Who cares what men musicians look like? We only discuss their music. But when lady musicians are dressed a little provocatively, even a little sexily, we’ll comment on their music and also on their appearance. Is this wrong? Is this “sexism” (whatever that means)? There’s a growing group of attractive young female concert pianists who no longer perform in long gowns in muted colors. Few are more noticeable than Yuja Wang, and the music critic of the Los Angeles Times certainly did notice her, which ignited a firestorm of controversy in the Washington Post. Your rabbi found it all highly entertaining and he hopes you will too. And Yuja Wang really is an amazing pianist! Also, a brief rabbinic lesson on zippers in ladies fashion. And now, from the performance to the penitentiary. You’ll never guess what is shared in common by large numbers of men who are serving life sentences but by almost no incarcerated women. Finally, learn why I would shut down every last prison and jail immediately even if it means releasing every convict. And I am tough on crime! Really.

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For those of you who’ve been eagerly awaiting the day I criticize President Donald Trump, today is your day! Listen as I revile and repudiate the following phrase from the State of the Union: “All Americans can be proud that we have more women in the workforce than ever before.” Well, I am not at all proud of that. And neither should you be. The President and his speechwriters were pandering to the high priests of Secular Fundamentalism. 98% of speech therapists are women, but well under 1% of construction industry jobs are held by women. Wives save their husbands from being hermits. Wives and moms build communities and neighborhoods. Huge numbers of wives, whose husbands earn enough, do enthusiastically quit the workforce. And these things are good for everyone other than Democrat Party (Yes! Call it that) politicians who’d rather tax two incomes. Also, hear my interview with Tom Ziglar, who just wrote a terrific new book, 'Choose To Win'. He is not only the son of the late, great Zig Ziglar, but he is also a cherished friend. We cover his book, growing up as the son of Zig, and the marriage of his parents. Secular Fundamentalism, the flip side of the Judeo-Christian Bible faiths, loathes anything with Biblical roots and nothing more than marriage and family. Their message to women is: “You don’t need a husband, all you need is the government.” Why are over 80% of women on welfare, single? Because that is exactly what radical socialists want. But there’s hope.

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Rabbi Daniel Lapin and his wife, Susan, take a lighthearted look at movies. Before World War II, about 0.3% of movies released were what we would call “horror movies”. By 1968, over 2% of movies were horror movies, by 2000 it was 4%, and by 2015 it was 12%. By then, zombies were taking over the (entertainment) world. To date, Hollywood has produced 1,000 more zombie movies than cowboy movies. The Walking Dead? Really? When did the zombie craze really take off? It was 1962. Yes, there’s that date again. Could there be any meaningful correlation between the extirpation of Judeo-Christian Bible faith from everyday life and the rise of zombie horror taking its place? As religion’s ability to help us cope with death declined, did we turn to “zombie-porn”? Michael Jackson, the boy who never grew old, and his music video 'Thriller'. The arrival of ten-minute movies - for your phone! - brought to you by Meg Whitman and Jeffrey Katzenberg. If you don’t consciously “choose life”, the automatic default is death. From abortion to euthanasia, what a large crowd of people does matters.

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How to prepare your children to be able to say “No!”  What are our three main appetites, & how do they differ from one other?  Why do so many smart, accomplished, powerful men who know better, act so badly towards women?  The Torah prohibits Jews from eating pork, yet it is just as healthy as beef. So why are pigs, and other delicious dishes like crabs, lobsters, oysters, rabbits and snails prohibited to the people of Israel? What does this have to do with self-destructive sexual promiscuity? How has not eating pork helped Jews make better financial decisions? Can people of every religious background and no religious background also benefit from these timeless truths? Being engaged is not supposed to be fun.  The difference between investing and gambling.  The big question to ask guys who want to date your daughter.  Develop passion for the work you do.  Four categories that include everything on the planet.  Why executing murderers is moral. 

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