All Aboard: Ep. 81

This week on Unorthodox, Jewish baseball is having a moment.

Our Jewish guest is Adam Irving, whose documentary Off the Rails tells the story of Darius McCollum, an obsessive transit buff with Aspberger’s syndrome who has been arrested 32 times for impersonating New York City subway conductors and bus drivers. Adam tells us how his life has changed since releasing the film (his first) to critical acclaim, getting his start in reality TV, and how he feels about Darrius’s story getting the Hollywood treatment in a forthcoming film starring Julia Roberts as his lawyer.

Our Gentile of the Week is writer and reviewer Macy Halford, whose first book, My Utmost: A Devotional Memoir, tells the story of Macy’s life through the lens of the bestselling Evangelical daily devotional My Utmost for His Highest. She read the book nightly, from her childhood in an Evangelical Christian family in Dallas to her years attending Barnard and then working for the New Yorker, and finally goes in search of its mysterious author, Oswald Chambers. She tells us about being called “an Esther”—hiding among non-believers at the New Yorker—by her mother, and what it was like to visit her family’s conservative Dallas community in the wake of the 2016 election.

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Music Credits: 

"Mikveh Bath" by Golem

"Balkan Español" by Golem

"Sinnerman," written by Les Baxter and Will Holt, performed by Nina Simone

"What's New, Pussycat?" written by Burt Bacharach and Hal David, performed by Franck Pourcel et Son Grand Orchestre

"Belief" by John Mayer