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Welcome to the Double X Gab Fest for Thursday, August 8th, the No Sex, All Kindness Edition.

I'm Hannah Rosen, editor of Double X, talking to you from the Montpelier, Vermont studio, where I am

on vacation. And I'm joined in New York by Alison Benedict, another editor for Double X. Hi, Allison. Hi, I'm Jellif. You should be. It's really beautiful here. And Noreen Malone of the New Republic. Hi, Noreen. Hello. Just so you know it's really beautiful in New York City this week, too. Is that? Yeah, that's true. She said it was no big deal.

Like, I kept telling her, you know, the weather, like, it couldn't be more perfect.

It's so beautiful outside my window. And she was like, you got nothing on me. It's really nice in New York, too. So I got nothing on her except beauty. It is beautiful. So our three topics today are one, Orthodox Jewish feminists.

Is this a contradiction in terms?

Is this a new movement that will save Israel from fundamentalism? We talked to Slate's own Dahlia Lithwick, fresh from the Holy Land, who has this week's cover story in the New Republic on this subject. Second is Life Without Sex, a new French book. The Art of Sleeping Alone is the latest to extol the virtues of abstaining.

So we at Double X have decided that we are going to abstain two for a year.

I'm just kidding.

That was a joke.

That's not what we're going to do or talk about.

Third is the novelist George Saunders gives a commencement speech about being kind, which we hard-bitten ladies all found surprisingly moving. So we are

going to talk about whether he's right and whether what we regret most in life is moments that

we were not kind. Before we get started, I want to do my usual thank you to a listener. This one,

I haven't shared this with you guys. It comes from Rebecca Ackerman, who's a regular podcast listener and fan.

And this actually came by way of Jess Gross because she'd emailed it to her.

And she says, I listen to the double X gap fest all the time.

And at the end of every show, Hannah says, come on our Facebook page to tell us what you think.

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