Give and Take
263 episodes - English - Latest episode: 2 months ago - ★★★★★ - 94 ratingsSomeone once observed that if Howard Stern and Krista Tippett had a love child, it would be Scott Jones. Scott liked that.
At "Give and Take,” Scott Jones talks with artists, authors, theologians, and political pundits about the lens through which they experience life. With empathy, humor, and a deep knowledge of religion, current events, and pop culture, Scott engages his guests in a free-flowing conversation that's entertaining, unexpected, occasionally bizarre, and oftentimes enlightening. He likes people, and it shows.
Past interviewees include Mark Oppenheimer, Melissa Febos, David French, Miroslav Volf, Dan Savage, Nadia Bolz-Weber, Rob Bell, and (yes) Krista Tippett.
Scott is the former host and producer of the popular Mockingcast podcast (https://themockingcast.fireside.fm) and an in-demand consultant on all things “pod.” He’s also the co-host, with Bill Borror, of New Persuasive Words (https://npw.fireside.fm). Scott is also a prolific writer, a frequent conference speaker, a PhD candidate in Theology, and an ordained minister.
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Episodes
Episode 163: How to Make a Plant Love You, with Summer Rayne Oakes
July 08, 2019 22:00 - 51 minutes - 35.1 MBMy guest is Summer Rayne Oakes. Her new book is How to Make a Plant Love You: Cultivate Green Space in Your Home and Heart (https://www.amazon.com/How-Make-Plant-Love-You/dp/0525540288/ref=sr_1_2?keywords=summer+rayne+oakes&qid=1562628040&s=gateway&sr=8-2). She's an urban houseplant expert and environmental scientist, is the icon of wellness-minded millennials who want to bring nature indoors, according to a New York Times profile. Summer has managed to grow 1,000 houseplants in her Brooklyn ...
Episode 162: Elie Wiesel: An Extraordinary Life and Legacy, with Nadine Epstein
June 26, 2019 15:00 - 36 minutes - 25.2 MBElie Wiesel (1928-2016) is best known as the author of Night, survivor of Auschwitz and a powerful, enduring voice of the Holocaust. A recipient of the Nobel Peace Prize and the Presidential Medal of Freedom, he was a hero of human rights, professor and author of more than 50 books. Among his accomplishments, Wiesel co-founded Moment Magazine with Leonard Fein in 1975 to be a place of conversation for America’s Jews. For editor-in-chief Nadine Epstein, he became a mentor and friend after she ...
Episode 161: Against French-ism, with David French
June 25, 2019 22:00 - 51 minutes - 35 MBMy guest is National Review writer and NY Times best selling author David French. He was the subject of a recent piece in First Things by NY Post op-ed editor Sohrab Ahmari entitled "Against David French-ism." (https://www.firstthings.com/web-exclusives/2019/05/against-david-french-ism) In it Ahmari decries French's commitment to classical liberalism and civility, which make one unable "to fight the culture war with the aim of defeating the enemy and enjoying the spoils in the form of a publi...
Episode 160: The Scientific Attitude: Defending Science from Denial, Fraud, and Pseudoscience, with Lee McIntyre
May 03, 2019 20:00 - 56 minutes - 38.5 MBMy guest is Lee McIntyre. His newest book is The Scientific Attitude: Defending Science from Denial, Fraud, and Pseudoscience (https://www.amazon.com/Scientific-Attitude-Defending-Science-Pseudoscience/dp/0262039834/ref=sr_1_fkmrnull_1?keywords=the+scientific+attitude+lee+mcintyre&qid=1556915331&s=gateway&sr=8-1-fkmrnull). Attacks on science have become commonplace. Claims that climate change isn't settled science, that evolution is “only a theory,” and that scientists are conspiring to keep ...
Episode 159: Divorcing Mom: A Memoir of Psychoanalysis, with Melissa Knox
May 01, 2019 01:00 - 41 minutes - 28.7 MBMy guest is Melissa Knox. Her new memoir is Divorcing Mom: A Memoir of Psychoanalysis (https://www.amazon.com/Divorcing-Mom-Psychoanalysis-Melissa-Knox/dp/1947976052). Psychoanalysis was her family's religion instead of wafers and wine, there were Seconals, Nembutals, and gin. Baptized into the faith at fourteen, Melissa Knox endured her analyst's praise of her childlike, victimized mother who leaned too close, ate off Melissa's plate, and thought pedophile meant silly person. Gaslighted with...
Episode 158: The Perils of Partnership, with Jonathan H. Marks
April 12, 2019 17:00 - 42 minutes - 29 MBMy guest is Jonathan H. Marks. His new book is The Perils of Partnership: Industry Influence, Institutional Integrity, and Public Health (https://www.amazon.com/Perils-Partnership-Influence-Institutional-Integrity/dp/0190907088/ref=tmm_hrd_swatch_0?_encoding=UTF8&qid=&sr=). Countless public health agencies are trying to solve our most intractable public health problems -- among them, the obesity and opioid epidemics -- by partnering with corporations responsible for creating or exacerbating t...
Episode 157: The Risk Of Us, with Rachel Howard
April 10, 2019 12:00 - 43 minutes - 30 MBMy guest is Rachel Howard. Her newest book is The Risk Of Us (https://www.amazon.com/Risk-Us-Rachel-Howard/dp/1328588823). What is the cost of motherhood? When The Risk of Us opens, we meet a forty-something woman who deeply wants to become a mother. The path that opens up to her and her husband takes them through the foster care system, with the goal of adoption. And when seven-year-old Maresa—with inch-deep dimples and a voice that can beam to the moon—comes into their lives, their hearts f...
Episode 156: To Be A Runner, with Martin Dugard
April 10, 2019 00:00 - 45 minutes - 31.5 MBMy guest is Martin Dugard. He's the author of the critically acclaimed To Be A Runner (https://www.amazon.com/Be-Runner-Racing-Mountains-Running/dp/1635653630/ref=sr_1_1?keywords=to+be+a+runner+paperback&qid=1554858046&s=digital-text&sr=8-1-spell). Now with a new introduction and additional stories accumulated in the eight years since its original publication, To Be a Runner is a fresh and exciting update on a running classic. With an exuberant mix of passion, insight, instruction, and humor,...
Episode 155: Seculosity: How Career, Parenting, Technology, Food, Politics, and Romance Became Our New Religion and What to Do about It, with David Zahl
March 26, 2019 13:00 - 1 hour - 46.5 MBMy guest is David Zahl. His newest book is Seculosity: How Career, Parenting, Technology, Food, Politics, and Romance Became Our New Religion and What to Do about It (https://www.amazon.com/Seculosity-Parenting-Technology-Politics-Religion/dp/1506449433/ref=sr_1_1?keywords=seculosity&qid=1553607902&s=gateway&sr=8-1). At the heart of our current moment lies a universal yearning, writes David Zahl, not to be happy or respected so much as enough--what religions call "righteous." To fill the void...
Episode 154: The Girl In The Back, with Laura Davis-Chanin
March 23, 2019 00:00 - 43 minutes - 30.1 MBMy guest is Laura Davis-Chanin. Her new book is The Girl In The Back: A Female Drummer's Life with Bowie, Blondie and the '70s Rock Scene (https://www.amazon.com/Girl-Back-Female-Drummers-Blondie/dp/1617136875). Nineteen seventy-seven. New York City. Dark. Dangerous. Thrilling. Punk Rock. Blondie. David Bowie. Drinking. Drugs. Happening at the speed of light. Seventeen-year old Laura quaking within her skin while the bursting punk rock revolution explodes around her starts a band with her tee...
Episode 153: The Trouble With Men, with David Shields
March 22, 2019 00:00 - 1 hour - 45.8 MBMy guest is David Shields. His new book, The Trouble with Men: Reflections on Sex, Love, Marriage, Porn, and Power (https://www.amazon.com/Trouble-Men-Reflections-Marriage-Century/dp/0814255191) is an immersion into the perils, limits, and possibilities of human intimacy. All at once a love letter to his wife, a nervy reckoning with his own fallibility, a meditation on the impact of porn on American culture, and an attempt to understand marriage (one marriage, the idea of marriage, all marria...
Episode 152: First the Jews: Combating the World’s Longest-Running Hate Campaign, Evan Moffic
March 12, 2019 01:00 - 52 minutes - 35.8 MBMy guest is Rabbi Evan Moffic. His newest book is First the Jews: Combating the World’s Longest-Running Hate Campaign. (https://www.amazon.com/First-Jews-Combating-Longest-Running-Campaign/dp/1501870831/ref=sr_1_1_sspa?keywords=First+The+Jews&qid=1552353394&s=gateway&sr=8-1-spons&psc=1) News reports of and statistics about defaced synagogues and death threats against community centers are on the rise around the world. A rise in anti-Semitism from the right side of the political spectrum has b...
Episode 151: In this World of Wonders, with Nicholas Wolterstorff
March 05, 2019 23:00 - 1 hour - 43.8 MBMy guest is Nicholas Wolterstorff. World-renowned Christian philosopher. Beloved professor. Author of the classic Lament for a Son (https://www.amazon.com/Professor-Emeritus-Philosophical-Theology-Wolterstorff/dp/080280294X/ref=pd_sim_14_1/147-1749716-5340640?_encoding=UTF8&pd_rd_i=080280294X&pd_rd_r=ff8d50ec-3f9c-11e9-870e-afb0e07225f8&pd_rd_w=vBmat&pd_rd_wg=Y10yc&pf_rd_p=90485860-83e9-4fd9-b838-b28a9b7fda30&pf_rd_r=HAW6HG118X3ZAJ4HWQV0&psc=1&refRID=HAW6HG118X3ZAJ4HWQV0). Nicholas Wolterstor...
Episode 150: Hustle and Gig: Struggling and Surviving in the Sharing Economy, with Alexandrea J. Ravenelle
February 13, 2019 19:00 - 45 minutes - 31.5 MBMy guest is Alexandrea Ravenelle. Her new book is Hustle and Gig (https://www.amazon.com/dp/0520300564/ref=cm_sw_r_tw_dp_U_x_Elk6BbY9AFBSR). Choose your hours, choose your work, be your own boss, control your own income. Welcome to the sharing economy, a nebulous collection of online platforms and apps that promise to transcend capitalism. Supporters argue that the gig economy will reverse economic inequality, enhance worker rights, and bring entrepreneurship to the masses. But does it? In Hu...
Episode 149: The Middleman, with Olen Steinhauer
February 08, 2019 22:00 - 51 minutes - 35.4 MBMy guest is Olen Steinhauer. With The Middleman (https://www.amazon.com/Middleman-Novel-Olen-Steinhauer/dp/1250036178/ref=sr_1_1?keywords=the+middleman&qid=1549664956&sr=8-1), the perfect thriller for our tumultuous, uneasy time, Olen Steinhauer, the New York Times bestselling author of ten novels, including The Tourist and The Cairo Affair, delivers a compelling portrait of a nation on the edge of revolution, and the deepest motives of the men and women on the opposite sides of the divide. O...
Episode 148: A Bright Future: How Some Countries Have Solved Climate Change and the Rest Can Follow, with Joshua S. Goldstein
February 06, 2019 16:00 - 51 minutes - 35 MBMy guest is Joshua S. Goldstein. His newest book, co-authored with Staffan A. Qvist, is A Bright Future: How Some Countries Have Solved Climate Change and the Rest Can Follow. (https://www.amazon.com/Bright-Future-Countries-Solved-Climate/dp/1541724100/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1549482449&sr=8-1&keywords=a+bright+future+joshua+goldstein)As climate change quickly approaches a series of turning points that guarantee disastrous outcomes, a solution is hiding in plain sight. Several countries have ...
Episode 147: How To Be Loved, with Eva Hagberg Fisher
February 01, 2019 19:00 - 42 minutes - 29.1 MBMy guest is Eva Hagberg Fisher. Her new book, How To Be Loved (https://www.amazon.com/How-Be-Loved-Lifesaving-Friendship/dp/054499115X), is a luminous memoir about how friendship saved one woman’s life, for anyone who has loved a friend who was sick, grieving, or lost—and for anyone who has struggled to seek or accept help. Eva Hagberg Fisher spent her lonely youth looking everywhere for connection: drugs, alcohol, therapists, boyfriends, girlfriends. Sometimes she found it, but always tempor...
Episode 146: Healing a Community: Lessons for Recovery after a Large-Scale Trauma, with Melissa Glaser
January 25, 2019 20:00 - 38 minutes - 26.4 MBMy guest is Melissa Glaser. Her new book is Healing a Community: Lessons for Recovery after a Large-Scale Trauma (https://www.amazon.com/Healing-Community-Lessons-Recovery-Large-Scale/dp/1942094906). After the horrific tragedy at Sandy Hook Elementary School in Newtown, Connecticut, local caregivers, civic leaders, and first responders had the daunting task of navigating emotional and physical trauma as they stitched their community back together. The recovery process takes years, and as the ...
Episode 145: Aristotle's Way: How Ancient Wisdom Can Change Your Life, with Edith Hall
January 16, 2019 14:00 - 1 hour - 45 MBMy guest is Edith Hall. Her newest book is Aristotle's Way: How Ancient Wisdom Can Change Your Life (https://www.amazon.com/Aristotles-Way-Ancient-Wisdom-Change/dp/0735220808/ref=tmm_hrd_swatch_0?_encoding=UTF8&qid=1547648446&sr=1-1-catcorr). In expert yet vibrant modern language, Hall lays out the crux of Aristotle's thinking, mixing affecting autobiographical anecdotes with a deep wealth of classical learning. For Hall, whose own life has been greatly improved by her understanding of Aristo...
Episode 144: Mortal Republic: How Rome Fell Into Tyranny, Edward J. Watts
January 08, 2019 01:00 - 56 minutes - 38.6 MBMy guest is Edward J. Watts. In Mortal Republic, this prize-winning historian offers a new history of the fall of the Roman Republic that explains why Rome exchanged freedom for autocracy. For centuries, even as Rome grew into the Mediterranean's premier military and political power, its governing institutions, parliamentary rules, and political customs successfully fostered negotiation and compromise. By the 130s BC, however, Rome's leaders increasingly used these same tools to cynically pur...
Episode 143: Reading Well: Finding the Good Life through Great Books, with Karen Swallow Prior
January 04, 2019 02:00 - 47 minutes - 32.4 MBMy guest is Karen Swallow Prior. Her newest book is Reading Well: Finding the Good Life through Great Books (https://www.amazon.com/Reading-Well-Finding-through-Great/dp/1587433966). Reading great literature well has the power to cultivate virtue. Great literature increases knowledge of and desire for the good life by showing readers what virtue looks like and where vice leads. It is not just what one reads but how one reads that cultivates virtue. Reading good literature well requires one to...
Episode 142: God Is In The Crowd, with Tal Keinan
December 19, 2018 23:00 - 1 hour - 42.9 MBMy guest is Tal Keinan. His new book God Is in the Crowd (https://www.amazon.com/God-Crowd-Twenty-First-Century-Tal-Keinan/dp/0525511164)is an original and provocative blueprint for Judaism in the twenty-first century. Presented through the lens of Tal Keinan’s unusual personal story, it a sobering analysis of the threat to Jewish continuity. As the Jewish people has become concentrated in just two hubs—America and Israel—it has lost the subtle code of governance that endowed Judaism with dy...
Episode 141: Thanks A Thousand: A Gratitude Journey, with A.J. Jacobs
December 18, 2018 23:00 - 50 minutes - 34.4 MBMy guest is A.J. Jacobs. The idea for his newest book was simple: this New York Times bestselling author decided to thank every single person involved in producing his morning cup of coffee. The resulting journey takes him across the globe, transforms his life, and reveals secrets about how gratitude can make us all happier, more generous, and more connected. Thanks A Thousand: A Gratitude Journey (https://www.amazon.com/Thanks-Thousand-Gratitude-Journey-Books/dp/1501119923) was the result. ...
Episode 140: Justification, with Michael Horton
December 17, 2018 20:00 - 56 minutes - 39 MBMy guest is Michael Horton. His newest book Justification (https://www.amazon.com/Justification-Two-Set-Studies-Dogmatics/dp/0310597250), is a comprehensive study of the historic Christian doctrine. The doctrine of justification stands at the center of Christian theological reflection on the meaning of salvation as well as our piety, mission, and life together. In his two-volume work on the doctrine of justification, Michael Horton seeks not simply to repeat noble doctrinal formulas and tradi...
Episode 139: A River Could Be a Tree, with Angela Himsel
December 12, 2018 19:00 - 56 minutes - 38.5 MBMy guest is Angela Himsel. Her new book is a memoir entitled A River Could Be a Tree (https://www.amazon.com/River-Could-Be-Tree-Memoir/dp/1941493246). From the time she was a young girl, Himsel believed that the Bible was the guidebook to being saved, and only strict adherence to the church's tenets could allow her to escape a certain, gruesome death, receive the Holy Spirit, and live forever in the Kingdom of God. With self-preservation in mind, she decided, at nineteen, to study at The Heb...
Episode 138: God Over Good, with Luke Norsworthy
December 06, 2018 01:00 - 44 minutes - 30.6 MBMy guest is Luke Norsworthy. His new book is God Over Good (https://www.amazon.com/God-over-Good-Saving-Expectations/dp/0801093325). It's hard to say that God is good when God isn't always what we expect good to be. A good father wouldn't make it so difficult to get to know him, would he? And if God is all-powerful, wouldn't he ensure that we never suffered? Either our understanding of God is incorrect, or our definition of good is inadequate. In a world that is messy and a church that is imp...
Episode 137: Halakhah: The Rabbinic Idea of Law, with Chaim Saiman
December 01, 2018 03:00 - 52 minutes - 36.4 MBMy guest is Chaim Saiman. His newest book is Halakhah: The Rabbinic Idea of Law (https://www.amazon.com/Rabbinic-Idea-Law-Introduction-Halakhah/dp/069115211X). What does it mean for legal analysis to connect humans to God? Can spiritual teachings remain meaningful and at the same time rigidly codified? Can a modern state be governed by such law? Guiding readers across two millennia of richly illuminating perspectives, this book shows how halakhah is not just “law” but an entire way of thinkin...
Episode 136: Flawed Church, Faithful God
November 30, 2018 20:00 - 42 minutes - 29.3 MBMy guest is Joseph D. Small. How can we reconcile the ideal church described by theology with the broken church that we see in the world? In his newest book Joseph Small argues that the church’s true identity is known somewhere in the tension between the two. Small revisits familiar ecclesiological concepts—including the body of Christ, communion of saints, and people of God— but rather than focusing on theological abstractions or worldly cynicism, he evaluates the church in its scriptural, h...
Episode 135: I Think Therefore I Eat, with Martin Cohen
November 30, 2018 16:00 - 40 minutes - 28 MBMy guest is Martin Cohen. Doctors and nutritionists often disagree with each other, while celebrities and scientists keep pitching us new recipes and special diets. No one thought to ask the philosophers—those rational souls devoted to truth, ethics, and reason—what they think. Until now. That's the subject of Martin Cohen's newest book I Think, Therefore I Eat: The World's Greatest Minds Tackle The Food Question. (https://www.amazon.com/gp/search?ie=UTF8&camp=1789&creative=9325&index=books&l...
Episode 134: Doctor, with Andrew Bomback
October 29, 2018 23:00 - 33 minutes - 22.9 MBMy guest is Andrew Bomback. His new book is Doctor (https://www.amazon.com/Doctor-Object-Lessons-Andrew-Bomback/dp/150133817X). It begins with a 3-year-old who asks her physician father about his job, and his inability to provide a succinct and accurate answer inspires a critical look at the profession of modern medicine. In sorting through how patients, insurance companies, advertising agencies, filmmakers, and comedians misconstrue a doctor's role, Andrew Bomback, M.D., realizes that even d...
Episode 133: Road to Disaster, with Brian VanDeMark
October 25, 2018 16:00 - 52 minutes - 35.9 MBMy guest is Brian VanDemark. His newest book Road to Disaster (https://www.amazon.com/dp/B074SGPRZ4/ref=dp-kindle-redirect?_encoding=UTF8&btkr=1)draws upon decades of archival research, his own interviews with many of those involved, and a wealth of previously unheard recordings by Robert McNamara and Clark Clifford, who served as Defense Secretaries for Kennedy and Johnson. Yet beyond that, Road to Disaster (https://www.amazon.com/dp/B074SGPRZ4/ref=dp-kindle-redirect?_encoding=UTF8&btkr=1)...
Episode 132: White Picket Fences: Turning Toward Love in a World Divided by Privilege, with Amy Julia Becker
October 24, 2018 18:00 - 42 minutes - 29.5 MBMy guest is Amy Julia Becker. Her new book White Picket Fences: Turning Toward Love in a World Divided by Privilege (https://www.amazon.com/dp/B07B7R8ZB8/ref=dp-kindle-redirect?_encoding=UTF8&btkr=1)welcomes us into her life, from the charm of her privileged southern childhood to her adult experience in the northeast, and the denials she has faced as the mother of a child with special needs. She shows how a life behind a white picket fence can restrict even as it protects, and how it can pre...
Episode 131: Why Theory, with Todd McGowan and Ryan Engley
October 19, 2018 18:00 - 1 hour - 53 MBMy guests are Todd McGowan and Ryan Engley. They are the co-hosts of Why Theory (https://itunes.apple.com/us/podcast/why-theory/id1299863834?mt=2), a podcast that brings continental philosophy and psychoanalytic theory together to examine cultural phenomenon. Special Guests: Ryan Engley and Todd McGowan.
Episode 130: Whole Again, with Jackson MacKenzie
October 11, 2018 01:00 - 35 minutes - 24.6 MBMy guest is Jackson MacKenzie. Jackson MacKenzie has helped millions of people in their struggle to understand the experience of toxic relationships. His first book, Psychopath Free (https://www.amazon.com/Psychopath-Free-Expanded-Emotionally-Relationships/dp/0425279995/ref=pd_lpo_sbs_14_img_0/144-8048193-9032432?_encoding=UTF8&psc=1&refRID=EZ5WWJ9YFJNZVV9QW85P), explained how to identify and survive the immediate situation. In Whole Again (https://www.amazon.com/Whole-Again-Rediscovering-Rel...
Episode 129: Tradition and its ‘use’: the ethics of theological retrieval, with Simeon Zahl
September 30, 2018 01:15 - 1 hour - 42.4 MBMy guest is Simeon Zahl. He is University Lecturer in Christian Theology at the University of Cambridge. He recently wrote a piece in the Scottish Journal of Theology on the "use" of tradition in theology and what it reveals about the subjective life of the theologian (https://www.cambridge.org/core/journals/scottish-journal-of-theology/article/tradition-and-its-use-the-ethics-of-theological-retrieval/CD350251CF326E5A591AED6694FA8BC8/share/5817ecc6c7c844236ef8227b920756297aad46f5). Building o...
Episode 128: Hitler's American Friends, with Bradley W. Hart
September 29, 2018 02:00 - 47 minutes - 32.5 MBMy guest is Bradley W. Hart. Americans who remember World War II reminisce about how it brought the country together. The less popular truth behind this warm nostalgia: until the attack on Pearl Harbor, America was deeply, dangerously divided. Bradley W. Hart's Hitler's American Friends: The Third Reich's Supporters in the United States (https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/1250148952/ref=dbs_a_def_rwt_bibl_vppi_i0) exposes the homegrown antagonists who sought to protect and promote Hitler, lea...
Episode 127: Nobody Hates Trump More Than Trump: An Intervention, with David Shields
September 27, 2018 18:00 - 53 minutes - 36.8 MBMy guest is David Shields. His new book Nobody Hates Trump More Than Trump: An Intervention (https://www.amazon.com/Nobody-Hates-Trump-More-Than/dp/1945796995), is perhaps the only genuinely original thing you have read yet about Donald Trump. It can be read in a variety of ways: as a psychological investigation of Trump, as a philosophical meditation on the relationship between language and power, as a satirical compilation of the “collected wit and wisdom of Donald Trump,” and above all as...
Episode 126: Weather Woman, with Cai Emmons
September 21, 2018 14:00 - 42 minutes - 28.9 MBMy guest is Cai Emmons. Her newest book, Weather Woman (https://www.amazon.com/Weather-Woman-Cai-Emmons/dp/1597096008/ref=sr_1_1?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1537539428&sr=1-1&keywords=weather+women), is the story of meteorologist Bronwyn Artair who discovers she has the power to change the weather. Feeling out of place in her doctoral program in Atmospheric Sciences at MIT, 30-year-old Bronwyn drops out and takes a job as a TV meteorologist in Southern New Hampshire, much to the dismay of her female ...
Episode 125: Faith in the Shadows, with Austin Fischer
September 21, 2018 13:00 - 51 minutes - 35.4 MBMy guest is Austin Fischer. Too often, our honest questions about faith are met with cold confidence and easy answers. But false certitude doesn't result in strong faith—it results in disillusionment, or worse, in a dogmatic, overweening faith unable to see itself or its object clearly. Even as a pastor, Austin Fischer has experienced the shadows of doubt and disillusionment. In Faith in the Shadows (https://www.amazon.com/Faith-Shadows-Finding-Christ-Midst/dp/0830845437), he leans into peren...
Episode 124: The Tangled Tree: A Radical New History of Life, with David Quammen
September 19, 2018 02:00 - 51 minutes - 35.8 MBMy guest is David Quammen. In his new book The Tangled Tree: A Radical New History of Life (https://www.amazon.com/Tangled-Tree-Radical-History-Life/dp/1476776628), this nonpareil science writer explains how recent discoveries in molecular biology can change our understanding of evolution and life’s history, with powerful implications for human health and even our own human nature. In the mid-1970s, scientists began using DNA sequences to reexamine the history of all life. Perhaps the most s...
Episode 123: Eating NAFTA, with Alyshia Gálvez
September 14, 2018 17:00 - 47 minutes - 32.9 MBMy guest is Alyshia Gálvez. In her gripping new book, Eating NAFTA: Trade Food Policies, and the Destruction of Mexico (https://www.amazon.com/Eating-NAFTA-Policies-Destruction-Mexico/dp/0520291816), Alyshia Gálvez exposes how changes in policy following NAFTA have fundamentally altered one of the most basic elements of life in Mexico – sustenance. Mexicans are faced with a food system that favors food security over subsistence agriculture, development over sustainability, market participatio...
Episode 122: Idleness, with Brian O'Connor
September 01, 2018 15:00 - 52 minutes - 35.9 MBFor millennia, idleness and laziness have been regarded as vices. We're all expected to work to survive and get ahead, and devoting energy to anything but labor and self-improvement can seem like a luxury or a moral failure. Far from questioning this conventional wisdom, modern philosophers have worked hard to develop new reasons to denigrate idleness. In Idleness (https://www.amazon.com/Idleness-Philosophical-Essay-Brian-OConnor/dp/0691167524), the first book to challenge modern philosophy's...
Episode 121: American Hate: Survivors Speak Out, with Arjun Sethi
August 24, 2018 17:45 - 47 minutes - 32.5 MBMy guest is Arjun Sethi. In his new book American Hate: Survivors Speak Out (https://www.amazon.com/American-Hate-Survivors-Speak-Out/dp/1620973715), he chronicles the stories of individuals affected by hate. In a series of powerful, unfiltered testimonials, survivors tell their stories in their own words and describe how the bigoted rhetoric and policies of the Trump administration have intensified bullying, discrimination, and even violence toward them and their communities. Arjun Singh Set...
Episode 120: Talking Tariffs and International Trade, with Steven Wallace
August 21, 2018 18:00 - 50 minutes - 35 MBMy guest is Steven Wallace.Steven Wallace is the founder and CEO of the Omanhene Cocoa Bean Company, the first company to sustain exports of premium chocolate manufactured entirely in Africa, and credited with producing the world's first single-origin chocolate bar in 1994. He shares his experience with tariffs and their impact on international trade and the world economy. Wallace often speaks on economic development, cross-cultural issues, and the challenges of starting a gourmet-food busin...
Episode 119: Learning To Speak God From Scratch, with Jonathan Merritt
August 21, 2018 01:00 - 48 minutes - 33.6 MBMy guest is Jonathan Merritt. His newest book is Learning to Speak God from Scratch: Why Sacred Words Are Vanishing--and How We Can Revive Them. (https://www.amazon.com/Learning-Speak-God-Scratch-Vanishing/dp/1601429304) As America rapidly becomes a pluralistic, postmodern society, many of us struggle to talk about faith. We can no longer assume our friends understand words such as grace or gospel. Others, like lost and sin, have become so negative they are nearly conversation-enders. Jonatha...
Episode 118: From Politics to the Pews: How Partisanship and the Political Environment Shape Religious Identity, with Michele F. Margolis
August 13, 2018 23:30 - 53 minutes - 36.6 MBMy guest is Michele Margolis. Her new book From Politics to the Pews: How Partisanship and the Political Environment Shape Religious Identity (https://www.amazon.com/Politics-Pews-Partisanship-Political-Environment/dp/022655578X)challenges the conventional wisdom that suggests that religious differences between Republicans and Democrats have produced this gap, with voters sorting themselves into the party that best represents their religious views. Margolis offers a bold challenge to the con...
Episode 117: Redeeming Capitalism, with Kenneth J. Barnes
August 10, 2018 17:00 - 49 minutes - 34.2 MBMy guest is Kenneth J. Barnes. His new book Redeeming Capitalism (https://www.amazon.com/Redeeming-Capitalism-Kenneth-J-Barnes/dp/0802875572) explores the history and workings of this sometimes-brutal economic system. He investigates the effects of postmodernism and unpacks biblical-theological teachings on work and wealth. Proposing virtuous choices as a way out of such pitfalls as the recent global financial crisis, Barnes envisions a more just and flourishing capitalism for the good of all...
Episode 116: Disruptive Witness: Speaking Truth in a Distracted Age, with Alan Noble
August 09, 2018 15:00 - 1 hour - 45.5 MBMy guest is Alan Noble. His new book is Disruptive Witness: Speaking Truth in a Distracted Age (https://www.amazon.com/Disruptive-Witness-Speaking-Truth-Distracted/dp/083084483X). These two trends define life in Western society today. We are increasingly addicted to habits―and devices―that distract and "buffer" us from substantive reflection and deep engagement with the world. And we live in what Canadian philosopher Charles Taylor calls "a secular age"―an age in which all beliefs are equally...
Episode 115: Jell-O Girls, with Allie Rowbottom
August 08, 2018 17:00 - 48 minutes - 34 MBMy guest is Allie Rowbottom. Her debut book is Jell-O Girls: A Family History (https://www.amazon.com/JELL-Girls-History-Allie-Rowbottom/dp/0316510610). It's a memoir that braids the evolution of one of America's most iconic branding campaigns with the stirring tales of the women who lived behind its façade - told by the inheritor of their stories. In 1899, Allie Rowbottom's great-great-great-uncle bought the patent to Jell-O from its inventor for $450. The sale would turn out to be one of th...
Episode 114: Believe Me: The Evangelical Road To Donald Trump, with John Fea
August 07, 2018 00:00 - 47 minutes - 33 MBMy guest is John Fea. John is professor of American history at Messiah College in Mechanicsburg, Pennsylvania. His previous books include Was America Founded as a Christian Nation? A Historical Introduction (https://www.amazon.com/America-Founded-Christian-Nation-Revised/dp/066426249X/ref=pd_sim_14_2?_encoding=UTF8&pd_rd_i=066426249X&pd_rd_r=4025d6f0-99d7-11e8-8a63-ad2dc5335592&pd_rd_w=Zrrxa&pd_rd_wg=pMeE8&pf_rd_i=desktop-dp-sims&pf_rd_m=ATVPDKIKX0DER&pf_rd_p=a180fdfb-b54e-4904-85ba-d852197d6...