Hope is Kindled

Send us Fan Mail Welcome back to Hope is Kindled , where stories help us rediscover our moral compass and our shared humanity. In this episode, we explore John Irving’s The Cider House Rules — a powerful reflection on compassion, choice, and the search for belonging. Through the lives of Homer Wells, Dr. Larch, and the residents of St. Cloud’s, we examine what it means to do good in an imperfect w...

Send us Fan Mail In this uplifting and deeply personal episode, Hope is Kindled takes flight with FLY!: Find Your Own Wings and Soar Above Life’s Challenges by Paralympic legend Lex Gillette. Told in my own voice, this episode explores how Lex transformed the loss of sight into a lifelong vision — and how his lessons on trust, focus, and perseverance can help all of us learn to leap. Through biogr...

Send us Fan Mail Today’s episode is different. It may be the most important one we’ve ever done, not because of how polished or clever it might be, but because it goes to the very heart of why this podcast exists. We are going to Middle-earth, to The Hobbit and The Lord of the Rings , not just to admire Tolkien’s epic mythology, but because sometimes stories are the only medicine we have left. Thi...

Send us Fan Mail In this deeply personal episode of Hope is Kindled , we journey into two of the most profound works ever written — Victor Hugo’s Les Misérables and the ancient Book of Job . These stories, though centuries apart, speak in one shared language — the heartbeat of faith and hope. Both works stare directly into the face of suffering and ask the same eternal question: What remains when...

Send us Fan Mail After wandering through ancient epics, storm-swept islands, shadowed courtrooms, and psychedelic buses, Hope is Kindled returns home—home to one of the most essential and beloved works in the American literary canon: Harper Lee’s To Kill a Mockingbird . This episode is more than a discussion. It is a pilgrimage. We trace the novel’s roots through the historical soil of the Jim Cro...

Send us Fan Mail In this episode of Hope is Kindled, we turn to Elizabeth Gilbert’s inspiring manifesto on creativity: Big Magic. Unlike ancient epics or war memoirs, this book speaks directly to our everyday lives, urging us to live with courage, curiosity, and joy. Gilbert reminds us that creativity is not a gift reserved for geniuses—it’s the birthright of every human soul. She shows us that fe...

Send us Fan Mail I had planned to leave Hemingway for another time, but a friend reminded me that his work is too necessary, too urgent, to set aside. And so here we are, bringing Hemingway into Hope is Kindled at this exact moment, because sometimes the timing of a story is as important as the story itself. In this episode, we reflect not on every page or paragraph, but on the power of Hemingway’...

Send us Fan Mail This episode of Hope is Kindled has been one of the most personal journeys I’ve ever taken. I never liked Moby-Dick when I first read it—honestly, I hated it. But over time, I began to realize that the very reasons I resisted the book were the reasons I needed it most. Melville’s story of Captain Ahab’s relentless pursuit of the white whale became a mirror I could no longer look a...

Send us Fan Mail  In this episode of Hope is Kindled , we turn to Papillon , Henri Charrière’s unforgettable tale of resilience, defiance, and the unbreakable human spirit. For the first time on this podcast, you’ll also hear a guest voice—my own—bringing a more personal dimension to the reading and reflection. It felt critical to get this story in at this moment, because Papillon reminds us that...

Send us Fan Mail Homer’s Odyssey is vast, essential, and deeply human—and that’s exactly why this episode was so hard to write. How do you capture three thousand years of longing, shipwrecks, monsters, and homecoming in something short, meaningful, and hopeful? Here we try. We revisit The Iliad ’s rage and set it beside The Odyssey ’s fidelity; we trace real-world straits and mythic hazards; we si...

Send us Fan Mail Few books capture the intensity of youth—and the ache of remembering it—like S. E. Hinton’s The Outsiders . For so many of us, this was one of the first novels that made reading feel real: the late nights spent turning pages under the covers, the underlined lines of poetry that stayed with us, the unforgettable refrain to stay gold . This episode of Hope is Kindled is as much abou...

Send us Fan Mail Far from home as a young teen—on a plane to Russia and later a bus rolling through Belarus and the Baltics—I first discovered Terry Pratchett with Witches Abroad . In those unfamiliar landscapes, Pratchett’s humor gave me joy, comfort, and even sparked conversations with strangers. That book lit a spark that grew into a lifelong love of Discworld, and though I treasure them all, M...

Send us Fan Mail his episode of Hope is Kindled may be one of the most important we have ever undertaken. Frederick Downs’s memoir The Killing Zone: My Life in the Vietnam War strips away illusions and forces us to see war as it really is: brutal, chaotic, and forever scarring those who endure it. In his unflinching honesty, Downs gives us not glorification but truth — and with it, the rare gift o...

Send us Fan Mail This episode of Hope is Kindled has been a long time coming—and one of the most difficult to prepare. How do you begin to approach a work as vast and formidable as Homer’s Iliad ? Its sheer weight can feel overwhelming: an epic of rage, honor, grief, and mortality that has shaped our collective imagination for nearly three thousand years. Homer’s voice set the foundations of Weste...

Send us Fan Mail Sometimes the most meaningful journeys are the ones we never planned. This special, unplanned episode of Hope is Kindled arrives at just the right moment—and for this occasion, we are calling it Hope is Reignited . The new name reflects what this episode is meant to do: to remind us, in a world that feels heavy and uncertain, that the flame of hope can always be rekindled. In turn...

Send us Fan Mail In this episode of Hope is Kindled , we turn to Walt Whitman’s Leaves of Grass —one of the most groundbreaking, soul-stirring works of American literature. Yet when I recently asked a high school senior about Whitman, he had no idea who Whitman even was. And when I typed Leaves of Grass into Google, Whitman wasn’t even the first result. How unbelievable—and heartbreaking—that such...

Send us Fan Mail As I write this, the boys and I are here in the Black Hills—land that still whispers his name, where the wind moves like memory. Crazy Horse. A leader, a visionary, a warrior whose life was marked by both quiet strength and unshakable resolve. We could never hope to capture the full truth of his story in a single podcast episode—it would take a lifetime, and even then, the fullnes...

Send us Fan Mail In this enlightening episode of Hope is Kindled , we journey into the hidden world of Taoist alchemy, inner cultivation, and ancient Chinese mysticism through Opening the Dragon Gate: The Making of a Modern Taoist Wizard by Chen Kaiguo and Zheng Shunchao. This extraordinary biography tells the true story of Wang Liping, the 18th-generation master of the Dragon Gate lineage, traine...

Send us Fan Mail In this harrowing and essential episode of Hope is Kindled , we confront the brutal legacy of racism and injustice in America through John Grisham’s incendiary debut novel, A Time to Kill . Set in the deep South, this courtroom drama forces us to ask impossible questions: What does justice truly look like? Can vengeance ever be justified? And how do we face a system that fails to...

Send us Fan Mail In this powerful and contemplative episode, we explore the provocative teachings of Osho—one of the most controversial and transformative spiritual voices of the twentieth century. With clarity and fire, Osho invites us to dismantle the illusions of the mind and rediscover a direct experience of truth, joy, and presence. But how do we reconcile the wisdom in his words with the cha...

Send us Fan Mail In this episode, we dive into Joseph Heller’s Catch-22 —a novel that laughs in the face of logic and cries behind its grin. Set amid the absurdities of war, Heller’s masterpiece confronts the impossible paradoxes of bureaucracy, mortality, and survival. Through the eyes of Yossarian, we witness a world where insanity is rewarded and reason is punished. And yet… we find something r...

Send us Fan Mail In this soul-stirring episode of Hope is Kindled , we explore Don Miguel Ruiz’s timeless spiritual guide The Four Agreements —a small book rooted in ancient Toltec wisdom that carries the potential to rewrite the way we live, love, and dream. Through stories, reflection, and moments of humor, we unpack the power of being impeccable with your word, not taking things personally, nev...

Send us Fan Mail  In this introspective and cautionary episode of Hope is Kindled , we examine Oscar Wilde’s The Picture of Dorian Gray , a haunting tale of beauty, corruption, and the soul’s decay. With sharp literary analysis and personal reflection, we explore Dorian’s descent under the influence of Lord Henry, the tragedy of Basil’s loyalty, and the novel’s searing critique of vanity and hypoc...

Send us Fan Mail In this foundational episode of Hope is Kindled , we turn to one of the most quietly transformative voices of the 20th century: Mohandas Karamchand Gandhi. Through his autobiography, The Story of My Experiments with Truth , Gandhi invites us not into a tale of triumph, but into a lifelong journey of ethical struggle, inner discipline, and the relentless pursuit of nonviolence. Bor...

Send us Fan Mail In Episode 3 of Hope is Kindled , we delve into the shadowy brilliance of Edgar Allan Poe through his essay The Philosophy of Composition and his iconic poem The Raven . This episode examines Poe’s claim that great writing is not born of mystery but of meticulous design, as he walks readers through the calculated steps behind his most famous work. We explore the tension between ar...