This Normal Life — All about "normal" life in Israel

A couch potato’s TV dreams

by Brian on April 26, 2025

I once had the strangest fantasy: When I retired, I would spend most of my time engaging in one of my favorite pastimes: watching TV.

Well, now I’ve had a taste of that odd vision and it’s not all it’s cracked up to be.

Since my cancer turned aggressive, I haven’t had the energy to get out of the house all that much. So, pretty much every night (and some daytimes, as well), I’ve plopped myself in front of our living room TV and indulged.

After half a year of being a couch potato, though, I’d much rather be outdoors hiking or having fun beyond the telly. I hope that will come back.

My watching preferences vary depending on whether I’m alone, with one of my children, or with my wife, Jody.

Jody and I go for thought-provoking or romantic dramas, documentaries and sitcoms. Here are some of the more recent shows that have hooked us.

Like everyone else with Internet access, we binged on “Adolescence” which was both a technical marvel (each episode famously shot with a single continuous camera) and a riveting drama about an incel-inspired teen murderer.

We followed that up with “This is Us” creator Dan Fogelman’s latest, “Paradise,” which I can’t say much about since, like his previous show, there’s a huge twist that happens at the end of the first episode that I’d be loath to spoil.

Speaking of paradise, “The White Lotus” – with its hotel real estate porn, this season set in lush Thailand – has maintained its quality as a delicious sendup of some of the most entitled characters to grace (and expire on) our TV screens.

We guffawed our way through “Schitt’s Creek,” “Ted Lasso,” “Man on the Inside,” “Fleabag” and Amy Schumer’s delightful “Life and Beth.” But it was “Shrinking” that captivated our obsessive attention. (Who knew Harrison Ford was born to play comedy?)

We’re not averse to subtitles. That has led us to many great Hebrew originals, including “The Beauty Queen of Jerusalem,” “A Body That Works,” “The Baker and the Beauty,” “Seven Figures,” and of course “Shtisel.” (We’re waiting for its Antwerp-set prequel “Kugel” to come out on a streaming service that doesn’t require a VPN to watch it in Israel!)

Japan has long been on our travel bucket list, so I highly recommend Netflix’s “Asura,” about four sisters dealing with infidelity; it’s directed by our favorite Japanese moviemaker, Hirokazu Kore-eda.

As good as it is, “Asura” still pales in comparison to Min Jin Lee’s epic “Pachinko,” which tells the story of Korean immigrants and the racism they experienced – and continue to experience – in the Land of the Rising Sun.

When I’m on my own or with one of the kids, my theme of choice skews more towards science fiction. For that, there’s no better option than AppleTV+, which is the home for hits like “Severance,” “Silo,” “For All Mankind,” “Invasion,” “Dark Matter” and “Foundation.”

Netflix is no slouch in the sci-fi and fantasy department either – see the streamer’s brilliant TV take on “3 Body Problem.” “Black Mirror” posted its latest season to Netflix last week; “Stranger Things” is due to return at some point this year. The final season of Hulu’s “The Handmaid’s Tale” (which nowadays seems less fiction than painfully prophetic) has just gone live, too.

I’ve enjoyed both Marvel’s moves to the small screen (“Wandavision” and “Loki” in particular) and Star Wars’ forays on TV (“The Mandalorian” and “Andor” being my faves). A longtime Star Trek obsessive, I’ve watched every episode of “Strange New Worlds, Picard” and “Discovery” although the most Star Trek-y of all in recent years has been Seth McFarlane’s space-spoof-turned-serious-sci-fi, “The Orville.”

I’m not exclusively a sci-fi snob. I’ve also perversely enjoyed the increasing number of shows about Internet scammers, although some of them have hit a bit too close to home.

“Apple Cider Vinegar” told the uncomfortable tale of wellness influencer Belle Ramsey who scammed friends and family out of hundreds of thousands of dollars by faking terminal brain cancer and then claiming she cured herself through healthy eating.

That was topped by “Scamanda” about another cancer scammer, Amanda Riley, who convinced her church she had lymphoma – hey, that’s my cancer! – but had gone into remission and then relapsed a half dozen times as she bilked parishioners out of their hard-earned cash. She somehow managed to stage photos with actual IVs in her arm.

Other scam-umentaries I’ve binged include “Inventing Anna” (the Anna Delvey story), “The Tinder Swindler,” which exposed to the world Israeli Simon Leviev’s continent-hopping con of gullible Scandinavian women, and multiple takedowns of Purdue Pharma.

So, what’s next on my TV bucket list?

The restaurant drama “The Bear” is supposed to be great if intense.

I watched every episode of “The Americans,” so anything starring Keri Russell, who leads the spy thriller, “The Diplomat,” will surely percolate to the top.

The reviews for Seth Rogen’s Hollywood satire, “The Studio” have been excellent. He already had us laughing with his previous outing, the ribald “Platonic.”

There are still a bunch of classic comedies I’ve never watched, including “Veep,” “Parks and Recreation” and “Community.” And it’s about time I find time for the Israeli mockumentary, “Checkout” (“Kupat Reshit”), which streams on the U.S.-based ChaiFlicks.

There’s one more show Jody and I debated over whether to watch: “Dying for Sex,” about a woman with terminal cancer who decides to spend her final months indulging in, well, it’s in the title. Unlike in “Scamanda” or “Apple Cider Vinegar,” this based-on-a-true story’s protagonist really was sick and eventually died.

Hmm… that might not be the most appropriate escape at this point in my own cancer journey.

I posted my couch potato dream TV list at The Jerusalem Post.

Couch potato photo by Stephen Kong on Unsplash

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Flying through hospitalization

by Brian on April 6, 2025

in Cancer,Food,Health,Science

Throughout my cancer journey, one of my biggest fears has been needing to be hospitalized. The “rule,” when you’re undergoing chemotherapy like mine is that, if your fever spikes beyond 38 degrees Celsius (100.4 degrees Fahrenheit) and it’s after hours (nights, weekends), you need to race to the emergency room, as the chemo depresses the body’s ability to fight off potentially fatal infections.

If you can wait until morning, though, your doctor might choose to admit you as an inpatient rather than put you through the indignity of the ER’s hard plastic chairs and wearisome waits.

My turn for hospitalization finally arrived when a high fever wouldn’t come down and the kidney pain for which I’ve been perkily popping Percocets became too much to handle on my own.

Before being hospitalized, I tried to imagine what it would be like. I envisioned the experience being somewhat akin to taking an international flight to an exotic location.

That, it turns out, was not so far off.

My “seat” in the hematology inpatient ward was more spacious than any in basic economy; it was closer to business class, with a full lie-down bed containing various controls to position one’s head and even a remote control for a flat-screen TV.

I was served three meals a day on plastic trays with plastic cutlery while a bevy of friendly flight – er, hospital – attendants checked in on me regularly to make sure I was OK. True, airlines don’t serve you a mix of medications – painkillers, steroids, stool softeners – but that only contributed to the feeling that I was flying high.

Even the food reminded me of airplane grub – not the nicer meals you get in the upper classes – but for lunch, there was always some sort of meat (variations on chicken with a side of spiced rice, couscous, or steamed veggies) plus a granola cookie for dessert.

Breakfast and dinner largely consisted of the same menu: cottage cheese, a plain white roll, artificially flavored strawberry jam, a couple of cucumbers and tomatoes, plus a hard-boiled egg with sporadic salt. One time, I even got a small container of cherry Jell-O.

Before heading to the hospital, I packed a carry-on wheelie – the same exact bag I take on board for a long flight – although this time, I loaded it up with pajamas, a robe, slippers and toiletries, in addition to the usual: reading material, laptop, charging cables and snacks.

My Hadassah flight included something you don’t get even on El Al (unless you’re a prime minister): an ensuite shower!

The inpatient wards at Hadassah-University Medical Center, Ein Kerem, are functional but embarrassing, with the décor not updated, it would seem, since the 1970s. That, I learned, was thanks to Bernie Madoff: Hadassah had much of its money invested with the notorious Ponzi scammer. When the fraud was exposed, Hadassah ran out of money, just before the ward was to be renovated.

Another annoying overlap with flying: You never know who your “roommate” is going to be, although, in all likelihood, he or she is going to keep you awake half the night through violent snoring.

If this were a friend or family member sleeping next to me, I’d have lightly jostled him or her to stop the discord of nasal extrusion, but in my case, it was an elderly man who spoke no English and little Hebrew, just Yiddish.

He was surrounded by a cadre of black-hatted brethren who didn’t have the ability (or perhaps the desire) to distinguish between morning and evening voices. The flimsy paper curtain between us did nothing to damper the distraction.

Fortunately, my dear friend David had volunteered to sleep over (a pull-out bed had been wedged into the corner). David’s presence came in handy when my roommate’s phone blasted out an alarm at 5:00 am, presumably to wake the faithful in time for morning prayers.

David described it in a recent Jerusalem Post column as being like a “Hassidic fight song, complete with rousing male chorus and a cacophony of horns. It was like being in the front row of a haredi Coachella.”

That too-early alarm was swiftly followed by the first nurse of the morning, who came to check my vitals (temperature and blood pressure). An hour later, another attendant entered, demanding a pint (or so it seemed in the pre-dawn light) of blood. Then came breakfast, more checks, and doctors to update me on my day.

By this point, I was so tired and miserable from not sleeping that Merav, my daughter, who had come to take on the morning shift with me, asked the staff if there was another room I could move to. Miraculously, there was a single room to which I was promptly whisked.

The difference was dramatic. Instead of sharing, I now had a private space where I could finally rest peacefully. Two more days and I was released.

It was during this hospitalization that I had the biopsy that ultimately determined what was going on with my kidney pain and locked in the plan for my coming CAR-T treatment, where, if all goes according to plan, I’ll be readmitted as an inpatient for at least three weeks as I receive back my lab-engineered T-cells.

In a way, this “test run” was calming. I know what to expect, and the protocol for my next stay – after three more chemo sessions intended to sufficiently depress my immune system so it doesn’t reject the T-cells – will definitely be in a private room.

I’m also happy that Hadassah doesn’t give out frequent flyer points. As nice as the doctors, nurses and technicians all are, scoring a free “upgrade” is not on my travel bucket list.

I first wrote about being hospitalized for The Jerusalem Post.

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How not to save a kidney

by Brian on March 23, 2025

in Cancer,Health,Science

He introduced himself as Yuvi HaHiuki – Hebrew for “Yuval the smiley guy” – which was not far off. A burly Israeli who works in the urology department at Hadassah Medical Center at Ein Kerem, a jokester might be just what the doctor ordered in a department where most interventions start with one’s genitalia.

A bit blunt, but the way I finger it, you need all the hands-on levity you can get when the goal is to insert a stent up one’s ureter. That’s the thin tube that connects the kidneys with the bladder and which was the cause of the excruciating pain that sent me to the ER twice and, later, into a regime of aggressive chemotherapy to zap the cancerous tumor that, seemingly overnight, decided to bear down on said tube.

The stent, I was assured, would alleviate the pain. More importantly, it would keep the tumor from collapsing my ureter, leading to irreversible kidney failure.

Hadassah’s outpatient stent clinic is located in a tiny office off a narrow hallway. It mainly deals with kidney stones; ureteral stents allow urine to pass around any such stones that may be blocking the flow.

Unfortunately, there were no appointments for several weeks to insert the stent.

Well, that wasn’t entirely true – there were no appointments if I wanted it done under general anesthesia, which is offered just once a week.

“Ninety-five percent of our patients do it without sedation,” Yuval assured me, with a knowing and (it seemed to me) slightly glib wink.

“Yeah, well, I’m not most patients,” I chided Yuval, vowing that if a medical practitioner was going anywhere near that part of my body, it would not be with a simple “local.” I wanted to be asleep for the entire procedure. Just wake me up when it’s time to go-go.

Moreover, a study in the journal Urology didn’t support Yuval’s statistics; it found that, of the stent insertions it reviewed, 61% were performed under general anesthesia.

Yuval said he’d call as soon as there was a cancellation.

In the meantime, I was getting hooked on Percocet, the strong opioid my doctor had prescribed to temporarily treat the pain from this unexpected event. (The Percocet was unrelated to the fentanyl I’d written about previously, when I received anesthesia for a colonoscopy.)

And then, miraculously, just as we were about to leave the clinic, the phone rang: There was a cancellation – in two days’ time. Back I went to the isolated urology clinic, with the once-again smiling Yuvi HaHiuki.

The main goal – to relieve the pain – was swiftly accomplished, but it was replaced by new lower back pain, which radiated out from the area where the stent had been inserted to encompass both hips and my lower spine.

Bending over – to put on shoes, to pick up something I inadvertently dropped, to carry a grandchild – became a nearly insurmountable challenge.

I was back to popping Percocet again.

Then, some unexpected news arrived: The chemo treatments appeared to be working. The tumor was shrinking! After two months, I could have the stent removed.

When I woke from the anesthesia this time, the back pain was gone. I was ecstatic.

A week later, though, it was back. Not knowing what could have caused this, my doctor ordered a “kidney mapping” procedure. It revealed the upsetting reason: The stent hadn’t helped after all; the impacted kidney had in fact been irreversibly damaged and was now functioning at a paltry 20%.

Why didn’t the stent perform as hoped for? A subsequent CT revealed the cause: There was a new mass next to the kidney. OMG, I panicked – had the cancer returned? It would be extremely rare for that to happen in the middle of treatment.

The exploration continued as my doctor ordered a biopsy of the mass.

We then began the interminable waiting game for results from pathology to come in. I was now firmly strapped into the top car of the cancer coaster, with nowhere to go but down.

It took more than two weeks to get an answer: Yes, it was cancer, and it had transformed. I no longer had slow-growing, non-Hodgkin’s follicular lymphoma. I now was suffering from DLBCL – or “diffuse large B-cell lymphoma.” That explained the rapid growth, the pain, the kidney impact, the fevers, the night sweats, everything.

It also set me on the path I’d been dreading: Given my failed chemo, the next step would be CAR-T therapy.

A few days later, the paperwork had been completed, our HMO gave its approval, and I was hooked up to a machine in the bone marrow transplant unit to extract a substantial number of my T-cells – the process is called leukapheresis, in case you want to Google it – to send off to a lab overseas where the cells will be genetically re-engineered and then re-infused into my body.

One piece of good news: Just two weeks earlier, a brand new CAR-T dubbed Breyanzi was added to the government-approved health basket. It has a similar success profile as previous CAR-Ts (including a 35% chance of an actual cure, something no one was talking about when I was first diagnosed in 2018) with a lower level of toxicity.

If all goes according to plan, I’ll be admitted to the hospital for an extended inpatient stay somewhere around Passover time. I’ll be in an isolation room, as my immune system will be completely shot, but the head of the CAR-T division told me she wants me to move. “Put on your mask and walk around when you’re not connected to an IV,” she advised.

Maybe I’ll visit Yuval. I could use another of his big smiles. I just need to keep him away from any more “breaking and entering” operations.

I first shared my kidney story at The Jerusalem Post.

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My first fentanyl

by Brian on March 9, 2025

in Cancer,Health,Science,Technology

I don’t remember when I fell asleep or when I woke up, but I was in another room. My wife, Jody, said that, when I started talking again, I would repeat the same stories, three, four, even five times in a row.

That’s what a little fentanyl will do for you.

Don’t worry, I didn’t surreptitiously buy some street-corner cocaine that turned out to be laced with fentanyl, nor was I hooked on counterfeit OxyContin or Vicodin that increasingly contains fentanyl at wildly inconsistent – and often deadly – doses.

After years of soaring OxyContin deaths, fentanyl has now surpassed Purdue Pharma’s highly-touted, once-presumed “non-addictive” pain medicine as the world’s deadliest opioid. Fentanyl itself is now responsible for close to 80,000 deaths a year in the U.S. alone. The drug is 10 to 20 times more potent than heroin, 50 times more powerful than oxycodone and 100 times stronger than morphine.

Fentanyl has long been used for pain reduction and sedation in medical settings; it was approved for use in the U.S. in 1968 and plays a critical role in post-surgery recovery and managing end-of-life cancer pain. Because it has such a short time-to-action peak (about five minutes), fentanyl is routinely used in obstetric epidurals. In the military, fentanyl lollipops are given to soldiers following an injury from an IED.

In 2017, fentanyl was the most widely used synthetic opioid in medicine in the U.S.

Because fentanyl is so hardy, even very small amounts can create profound change – from feelings of bliss to fatal overdose. You can pack a lot of fentanyl into a tiny pill, which makes it easily smuggled. NBC News reports that drug cartels “made the business decision that an increase in deaths among their customers was a small price to pay for the profitability of using fentanyl in nearly every illegal drug.”

The musician Prince reportedly overdosed on fentanyl in 2016. Two years later, Tom Petty died from an accidental overdose that included fentanyl in its cocktail mix, as did Michael K. Williams, one of the stars of TV’s The Wire.

Fentanyl has become a left-right political hot potato, too, with Democrats perceived as being soft on prevention while President Donald Trump has taken a tougher line. The GOP national convention in July, for example, featured a speech from a mother who had lost a child to fentanyl. At the DNC, no prime-time speaker mentioned the opioid crisis.

Given all this background, when I saw fentanyl on the list of meds about to be injected into my arm, I was a tad alarmed. But I trusted my doctor who needed to put me under in order to perform a colonoscopy – my first in 13 years.

The colonoscopy’s timing was entirely coincidental and unrelated to my cancer diagnosis, although there is some evidence that Crohn’s disease, which I’ve had since I was 12 years old, is correlated with an increased risk of lymphoma, my personal cancer bugaboo.

Fentanyl – and the other two sedatives in the injection – dormicum and propofol – are a far cry from the first colonoscopy I had when I was pre-teen. In those days, the protocol was “semi-sedation.” The docs wanted you awake enough to tell them, “Ow, that hurts.” Then, at the end of the procedure, they’d give you an extra dose, and you would forget the whole thing.

For my first colonoscopy, the doctor told me afterward about the long and philosophical conversations we had while he was poking around.

I couldn’t recall a thing,

Which got me wondering: If you feel pain but you don’t remember it, did you really feel the pain?

The American Cancer Society recommends that everyone over the age of 50 get a little fentanyl every 10 years – that is, to perform a colonoscopy to rule out colon cancer – which, because it grows so slowly, is usually treatable if caught early. After age 70, most people can stop the scopes (even without an Ezekiel Emmanuel-style “declaration” that you’re ceasing all screening at 75) because it’s more likely that something else will kill them before any colon cancer does.

Colonoscopy is not without risk: Three out of every 1,000 colonoscopies result in some sort of problem, from excessive bleeding after a biopsy to a potentially deadly perforation of the intestinal wall.

Because of the Crohn’s, my gastro doc wants me to come back for another colonoscopy in three years. I won’t be 70 yet; still, I’m not sure I’ll agree.

If I do demur, I’ll be in the right country.

Israeli doctors argue it’s better to do a stool test every year instead of the more invasive procedure only once every decade.

American doctors say no way – colonoscopy is the only way to be sure. (My doctor moved to Israel from the U.S. several years ago, so he’s in favor of the latter approach.)

When I became aware I was about to receive fentanyl in my IV drip, I pointed it out to my gastro.

“You should wake up very happy,” he quipped before I passed out.

I can’t tell you if I was fentanyl-induced giddiness after the procedure, but in the days after the colonoscopy, I was unstoppable, writing articles, conducting Zoom interviews, playing with my grandchildren, and energetically hosting guests that Shabbat.

That doesn’t mean I’ll be frantically seeking my next fentanyl hit on one of Telegram’s illicit drug channels. But I suppose, if I absolutely must be put under again, I won’t say no to a little more of modern medicine’s miracle narcotic.

I first posted about taking this miracle narcotic at The Jerusalem Post.

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Horrors and heroes

by Brian on February 21, 2025

in In the News,War in Gaza

There is a principle in the tractate Brachot of the Mishna that suggests something seemingly outrageous: One is obligated to praise God for both the good and the bad. Not just to perfunctorily recite a blessing, but to make it wholeheartedly.

*Panel discussion at Pardes where this text was presented*

This is not a new concept. When someone dies, Jews traditionally recite the line, “Baruch Dayan Ha’emet” – “Blessed be the True Judge.” I’ve always viewed that as a formulaic and failed attempt to mitigate the pain of loss with a forced reaffirmation of faith.

But the Mishna goes one step further, making it clear that the blessing on the bad should be said with a similar level of enthusiasm as employed in acknowledging the good.

This Mishnaic principle can be confusing. That is, until you look back at the last year and a half since Hamas’s October 7 invasion of southern Israel.

Is there a way to view October 7 – and the subsequent multi-front war, the never-ending missile sirens, the unbearable plight of the hostages, and the disgusting discourse and Israeli infighting – as something to be praised?

Yediot Ahronot’s Nadav Eyal helped me frame the narrative. In a recent article, Eyal wrote, “The word heroism shrinks in shame in the face of the returning hostages.”

Eyal explained what he meant to Dan Senor on his “Call Me Back” podcast.

“Those who have been kept by Hamas are now giving us a gift,” he said.

How so?

By “telling incredible stories of resilience and fortitude. I don’t think we expected these kinds of stories to come after more than a year of captivity, of being held by a fundamentalist, genocidal organization.”

Eyal referenced the painful yet profoundly touching story of some of the women captives meticulously dividing granules of rice evenly between them “down to the last grain” even as they were facing imminent starvation.

“When you are willing to sacrifice yourself for others in this kind of a condition after being held for so many months, and you’re willing to share your food…this is truly heroic,” Eyal continued, returning to the appellation of “gift” as one to all of “Israeli society and the Diaspora Jewish community around the world.”

That “gift” included:

Eighty-year-old Gadi Moses who, Eyal pointed out, walked to freedom through a mob of armed Hamas terrorists with “almost a grin” on his face. (The emaciated hostages released the week after did their best to maintain their dignity.)
Agam Berger, the last of the IDF spotters to be freed, who was filmed just a few days after her release beaming at her younger sister’s graduation ceremony in the IDF.
Emily Damari’s now-infamous missing-fingers hand gesture which encapsulated a nation’s pride as her version of a “thumbs-up” was memed in a thousand ways across the web. Damari also pleaded with her captors to let her friend, the ailing Keith Siegel, go before her. Hamas refused.

It wasn’t just the hostages who have given us a reason to bless the bad of October. 7.

Civilian heroes like Noam Tibon and Yair Golan drove directly into the killing fields of the Nova rave and the kibbutzim under attack to rescue Israelis in their private cars.

Youssef Ziadna, a Bedouin Israeli resident of Rahat, works ferrying Israelis around the South in his minibus. On October 7, he was called by one of his regular customers to collect him from the Nova festival. Ziadna wound up rescuing 30 Jewish Israelis, all while dodging bullets and veering off-road to get them to safety.

Nor can we forget Inbal Rabin-Lieberman, the 25-year-old security coordinator of Kibbutz Nir Am who, upon hearing unusual noises on the morning of October 7, quickly mobilized the kibbutz’s 12-member security team, distributing weapons and strategically positioning them. Rabin-Lieberman’s actions prevented any casualties within her community

When the government went AWOL on October 7, civil society stepped in, organizing food and supplies for soon-to-be-deployed soldiers. When there was no one left to work the fields near Gaza, Israelis from across all ages and demographics volunteered. This can-do spirit will hopefully constitute a cadre of future Israeli leaders.

I would be remiss if I didn’t mention the hundreds of soldiers who fell in battle as they hunted down terrorists and searched for our hostages. Or the incredible fortitude of Rachel Goldberg and Jon Polin, parents of murdered hostage Hersh, who shared a vivid personality with which to identify, humanizing a young man who otherwise would have been a faceless statistic to the rest of the world.

The Mishna’s message goes beyond the heroism of the last year-and-a-half. It suggests that even the most personal of tragedies can and should receive a blessing. The death of a parent, for example, will always be sad, but it also opens up opportunities for change, be that financial freedom or the freedom from enmeshed emotional patterns.

Could I find any positives in my father’s death 15 years ago? To be sure, his suffering from cancer and chemo ended. But it also opened up an opportunity to forge a closer relationship with my mother, who visited Israel for the first time after he had passed away.

Should I be reciting a blessing over my own current cancer status? I don’t think of myself as any kind of hero, but my burdens have certainly made me more rigorous in choosing how and with whom I want to spend my time.

Given the personal and national trauma all around us, wisdom from a 2,000-year-old text, it seems, might be just what we need right now.

I was inspired for this week’s JPost column by a panel discussion held at Pardes Institute of Jewish Studies on the launch of a new book on the Mishna by Rabbi Dov Berkowitz. The specific analysis on “blessing even the bad of Oct. 7” comes from Rabbi Avie Walfish. I wrote this before the return of coffins this week, which makes it even harder to find anything to bless. The picture is from the panel discussion at Pardes.

I first wrote about this Mishnaic principle in The Jerusalem Post.

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Podcasts to make sense of a war

February 8, 2025

Over the course of Israel’s multi-front war with Hamas, Hezbollah the Houthis and beyond, I’ve received much of my news from podcasts. If, before Oct. 7, I was hooked on pop culture, history and science-minded audio programming such as Fresh Air, RadioLab and This American Life, my AirPods have lately been tuned to a more Israel-focused digital frequency. Here […]

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