Rabbi Daniel Lapin

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 presti

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. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

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. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

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 s

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 releas

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

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 ab

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.  Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

If you have a few dollars, well, you didn’t MAKE that money—you TOOK  it.  This according to  the economics professors who teach your children and help them form their worldviews.  Do you patronize companies that give some of their profit to charity?  I explain why they would be acting more morally by reducing the  price of the goods you purchase. After all, why is it the company’s job to take additional money from you, the customer, to give to someone who is arbitrarily defined as a ‘charity recipient’. Are companies now in the redistribution business?  Must be why more and more companies boast of how much they ‘give away’.  Majority of students  believe that corporations and businesses are under the moral obligation to fulfill the social promises rashly made by politicians.  They believe that businesses have more important obligations than making money for their owners.  They believe the equation Poverty = Virtue and wealth is, in itself, evidence of moral malfeasance.   Where does this all end?  Can we fix

Here’s a tough one to swallow:  Morality as we know it applies to individuals, not to nations!  The United Nations is nothing but an illusion.  An illusion promoted by some pretty horrid people, to be sure; but an illusion nonetheless.  The International Court in The Hague? Puhleez, it’s a joke.  You can ignore it. Everyone else does. If you don’t like what Russia is doing (whatever that is supposed to be), then stop whining. Just make sure we have the necessary military power and the will to project it.  That way you can tell them to cut it out. Otherwise you’re nothing but a buffoon. Remember one president who told us that he told Mr Putin to “just cut it out”?  If you don’t like China’s progress to colonial power and world domination, well just make sure you have the power. International relations operate not on paper but on power. Spend all your political capital on imaginary climate problems, placating the whining gender/homeless/race/ kindergartens and building windmills, and you can whistle while other

Guess who’s building the Argentina-Chile tunnel in order to lock up the world’s supply of Lithium (ion batteries). Yes, I’m talking about your mobile phone—the one you love so much!  It was in 1956 that we saw one of the first movies to depict a Christian missionary negatively.  Guess who owns Kenya’s new railway. And Kenya’s port of Mombasa (which like Somalia and Yemen, was also named in Hebrew). Guess who owns Zambia’s international airport and its electrical power grid. I hope you’re seeing a pattern here because Our-Hate-America-Left does not.  They are still myopically obsessed with Russia as the existential threat.  Who has just built one of the longest bridges in Africa in the Congo? Hint: It wasn’t the Russians. The Congo possesses huge reserves of both uranium and natural gas. Guess who gets that now.  Both Congos are more concerned about election fraud than we are. In 1900 Joseph Conrad published his wonderful novel set in the Congo, Heart of Darkness.  Francis Ford Coppola based his movie Apocalyp

If you’ve read my book, Thou Shall Prosper-The Ten Commandments for Making Money, then you already know why Jews are disproportionately good with money. You’ve probably already adopted those timeless truths into your own financial life to good effect, but none of that explains why over 80 percent of American comedians of the past 80 years are Jewish. While we’re talking laughter, why are the wicked villains of television and movies characterized by their evil laugh? Was Samson really a comedian? The only one in all of the Bible? Also, why do most jokes revolve around the bedroom, the bathroom, and the church/synagogue? There is some really terrible news for South Africa. The University of Cape Town claims that "1 + 1 = 2" only according to the old, white, colonial way of thinking. Why did Wrestlemania take off so successfully in the 1980s? And we reveal the reason why a shared sense of humor is vital for couples contemplating marriage. Enjoy! Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

What is the semi-addictive behavior in which most of us engage to our own detriment?  To what activity do most of us devote a shockingly high number of hours each week for which we get zero benefit?  What is worse, this activity not only brings no benefit but it actually causes damage to us.  If evil enemies wanted to harm the United States of America and render it weak both economically and militarily, they couldn’t have come up with a better plot than this one in which we willingly collaborate.  Not surprisingly, those weakest members of society, the least productive and most destructive, spend most time on this harmful thing.  Do you really want to promote uniformity of thought? Do you really want to eliminate all individuality and all diversity of outlook?  Well, just continue doing what you’re already doing and encourage others to do the same.  Is there a solution?  Of course!  Do you really think your rabbi would leave you dangling? Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Why did The Donna Reed Show help marriages while The Gilmore Girls hurt them? And how did boys start reneging on the social contract to become men back during the 1960s? Until then, boys sought to grow into men who would marry and who would cherish and protect their wives. Then, in what will turn out to be history’s most remarkable case of mass arrested development, little boys grew into big boys and big boys became 40 year-old adolescents. Men surrendered their natural authority in relationships; then they renounced responsibility. So understandably, the women had to step in; for whether in politics, business, or male/female relationships, nature abhors a vacuum. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Culture is not the same as civilization. There are thousands of cultures but only one civilization. Banks & bathrooms in Beijing, Bombay, and Bangkok grew to resemble such institutions in Boston, Birmingham, and Berlin; not the other way around. Along with millions of others who voted with their feet, you and I also prefer civilization to any of the countless cultures we could have lived in. The problem is that civilization is a frighteningly fragile flower. What happens when we clip that flower off its roots? Why does it take so much more work and time to build a house than to demolish it? What does that have to do with the advantages that liberalism, progressivism, and socialism seem to possess among young voters in many countries? And why politicians and bureaucrats exempt themselves from the laws and regulations they religiously impose upon others. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Numbers are your portal to progress.  What happened to England when all Jews were expelled? What happened to England when they returned?  Start devoting a few hours every week to improving your numerical literacy.  Stop telling yourself you can’t do math.  Nothing too complicated, just start on becoming more familiar with numbers than you are.  In Hebrew all five verbs for counting each also mean aristocrat (count) or prominence, power, and prestige.  Amazing Biblical coincidences.   When you can effectively number something, you can effectively change it.  Your weight, your bank balance, your number of friends, your charitable giving. Numbering everything is a key to success.  Gradually grow in numerical literacy to the point you’ll get to understand statistics, probability and calculus.  Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

By far, the majority of people around you understand money as well as they understand magnetic resonance imaging. Which is to say, not much! As a not-very-successful fisherman in the cool, deep waters of British Columbia, I learned that you can’t possibly put salmon on your grill without understanding salmon. Similarly, you can’t put money in your bank without understanding money. And putting money in your bank is important. In 1925, President Calvin Coolidge said, “The chief business of the American people is business. They are profoundly concerned with producing, buying, selling, investing and prospering in the world.” Isn’t that true for you? The spiritual nature of money and why the week should be five days long but isn’t. Why secular fundamentalists equate economic prosperity with moral depravity. Why atheists usually see profit as plunder. Why no atheistic society has ever created a vibrant economy. How this can help you in your work. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Men are hardwired to want to make their wives happy.  We genuinely are happier when our wives are happy.  And we are miserable when our wives cry.  The problem is that most of us men are pretty clueless as to how to make wives happy.  And what makes it even harder is that wives never want to tell husbands how to make them happy.  While not disparaging gifts, remembering important dates, and breakfast in bed, in this show we explore the other really important things that make wives happy.  For maximum happiness, a newly married man should strive every day to be worthy of his wife’s admiration.  When can he finally relax and just be himself?  When he dies!  How building a beautiful bridge resembles building a beautiful marriage—and how it differs.  A man’s body will always follow the logic of his deepest convictions; he will be attracted to the woman who reflects his noblest vision of himself.  Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Conservatives frequently misunderstand the battleground.  They try to refute beliefs with facts.  Won’t work!  Never has; never will.  Crusaders will always defeat accountants.  Believers will always defeat policy wonks.  The committed will always defeat the complacent.  Remember when the Moors invaded Spain?  Well, one afternoon in the year 720, a brave Catholic priest bravely confronted the Moslem mob saying, “We should get together and hold a big symposium about the future of religious pluralism on the Iberian peninsula.”  The Moslems removed his head, desecrated his church and converted it into a mosque. They then moved on to the next town where the same scenario was repeated. The religious believer doesn’t engage in discussion and debate with heretics.  The religious believer silences, suppresses, and if necessary, does away with the heretic.  Nothing but unconditional surrender is acceptable in religious warfare. Compromise is anathema.  In this show I prove all the above and clearly demonstrate that at

I always thought that the fashion industry was just decadent, but apparently not.  Clothing possesses a profoundly spiritual aspect.  Most male birds like peacocks and cardinals are strikingly colorful while the female looks dull. However, last time I was at a charity banquet, the men were all bland and drab in black suits and white shirts while the women were resplendent in every color of the rainbow.  Does the difference suggest something useful about male/female relationships? Is the Bible, man’s book about God, or God’s book about mankind?  How to make a squirrel hibernate in July. The most effective way to wake up in the morning.  Making your subconscious work for you. Why last week’s podcast was withdrawn. Why the euphemism of ‘sleeping’ with someone makes sense. What happens when we don’t get enough sleep.  Why God just hates unisex clothing. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices