Give and Take

My guest is Yaron Weitzman. He's the author of Tanking to the Top: The Philadelphia 76ers and the Most Audacious Process in the History of Professional Sports. When a group of private equity bigwigs purchased the Philadelphia 76ers in 2011, the team was both bad and boring. Attendance was down. So were ratings. The Sixers had an aging coach, an antiquated front office, and a group of players that...

My guest is Bob Holman. On December 3, 2019, Bowery Books simultaneously released two new books of poetry by Bob Holman—written 50 years apart. LIFE POEM and THE UNSPOKEN serve not only as bookends to a lifetime immersed in words, performance, and the avant garde, but they also show the evolution of an artist, an art form, and a downtown art scene that’s gone from Allen Ginsberg to Lou Reed to Eil...

My guest is Jonathan Haber. He's the author of Critical Thinking . Critical thinking is regularly cited as an essential twenty-first century skill, the key to success in school and work. Given our propensity to believe fake news, draw incorrect conclusions, and make decisions based on emotion rather than reason, it might even be said that critical thinking is vital to the survival of a democratic...

My guest is Lee McIntyre. He's the author of The Scientific Attitude: Defending Science from Denial, Fraud, and Pseudoscience . 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 the truth about vaccines from the public are staples of some politicians' rhetorical repertoire. Def...

For decades, statisticians, social scientists, psychologists, and economists (among them Nobel Prize winners) have spent massive amounts of precious time thinking about whether streaks actually exist. After all, a substantial number of decisions that we make in our everyday lives are quietly rooted in this one question: If something happened before, will it happen again? Is there such a thing as b...

My guest is Patrick Murrary. He was named the Monmouth University Polling Institute’s founding director in 2005. He is frequently called upon by the media to provide commentary on polling and the political world, including appearances on CNN, MSNBC, Fox News, PBS, and National Public Radio. During federal election years, Murray also serves as a national exit poll analyst for major networks. In the...

My guest is Carol Ann Davis. Her new book The Nail in the Tree narrates her experience of raising two sons in Sandy Hook, Connecticut, on the day of and during the aftermath of the shooting there. Part memoir, part art-historical treatise, these meditations lead her to explore crucial subjects, including whether childhood can itself be both violent and generative, the possibility of the integratio...

My guest is Tony Jones. He's the author of numerous books, including Did God Kill Jesus? He also is the host of the Reverend Hunter podcast and the co-host of the Killer Serials podcast. Special Guest: Tony Jones.

My guest is Barbara Freese. Her newest book is Industrial-Strength Denial: Eight Stories of Corporations Defending the Indefensible, from the Slave Trade to Climate Change. In it she argues that corporations faced with proof that they are hurting people or the planet have a long history of denying evidence, blaming victims, complaining of witch hunts, attacking their critics’ motives, and otherwis...

My guest is Luke Conway. He is a professor of psychology at the University of Montana. He just wrote a piece summarizing his research on conservative and liberal experiences of the pandemic. You can find the piece here. Special Guest: Luke Conway.

My guest is Jennifer Briney. She's the host of the wildly popular Congressional Dish podcast which offers granular and entertaining coverage of the U.S. Congress. Special Guest: Jennifer Briney.

My guest is Liel Leibovitz. He's a Senior Writer at Tablet Magazine and a co-host of the wildly popular podcast Unorthodox. His newest book is Stan Lee: A Life in Comics.

My guest is Lauren Sandler. Her newest book is This Is All I Got: A New Mother's Search for Home . More than forty-five million Americans attempt to survive under the poverty line, day by day. Nearly 60,000 people sleep in New York City-run shelters every night—forty percent of them children. This Is All I Got makes this issue deeply personal, vividly depicting one woman's hope and despair and her...

My guest is Edward J. Watts. He holds the Alkiviadis Vassiliadis endowed Chair and is professor of history at the University of California, San Diego. The author and editor of several prize-winning books, including The Final Pagan Generation and Mortal Republic , he lives in Carlsbad, California. Special Guest: Edward J. Watts.

My guest is Noah Rothman. He is the Associate Editor of Commentary and the author of Unjust: Social Justice and the Unmaking of America. Special Guest: Noah Rothman.

My guest is Katherine Stewart. Her newest book is The Power Worshippers: Inside the Dangerous Rise of Religious Nationalism. For too long, she argues, the Religious Right has masqueraded as a social movement preoccupied with a number of cultural issues, such as abortion and same-sex marriage. In her deeply reported investigation, Katherine Stewart reveals a disturbing truth: this is a political mo...

My guest is Isaac Ariail Reed. He's the author of Power in Modernity: Agency Relations and the Creative Destruction of the King’s Two Bodies. In it he proposes a bold new theory of power that describes overlapping networks of delegation and domination. Chains of power and their representation, linking together groups and individuals across time and space, create a vast network of intersecting alli...

My guest is David French. He is a senior editor for The Dispatch and was formerly a senior writer for National Review. David is a New York Times bestselling author, and his next book, The Great American Divorce, will be published by St. Martin’s Press later this year. He is a graduate of Harvard Law School, the past president of the Foundation for Individual Rights in Education, and a former lectu...

My guest is Daniel Cohen. Rabbi Cohen is the author of What Will They Say About You When You Are Gone? Creating a Life of Legacy. He is co-host of the nationally syndicated radio show, The Rabbi and the Reverend, with Reverend Greg Doll, writes for the Huffington Post Blog, and is a Bottom Line Inc. Expert. He serves as Senior Rabbi of Congregation Agudath Sholom, the largest modern orthodox synag...

My guest is Thane Rosenbaum. His newest book is Saving Free Speech...from Itself . In an era of political correctness, race-baiting, terrorist incitement, the ‘Danish’ cartoons, the shouting down of speakers, and, of course, ‘fake news,’ liberals and conservatives are up in arms both about speech and its excesses, and what the First Amendment means. Speech has been weaponized. Everyone knows it, b...

My guest is Katherine Rowland. Tens of millions of American women are dissatisfied with their sex lives. In her provocative and meticulously researched new book, The Pleasure Gap: American Women and the Unfinished Sexual Revolution , Katherine Rowland, a public health researcher and journalist explores our culture's troubled relationship with women's sexuality and the many complex factors that hav...

My guest is Richard Beck. His new book is Trains, Jesus, and Murder: The Gospel according to Johnny Cash . "Saints and sinners, all jumbled up together." That's the genius of Johnny Cash, and that's what the gospel is ultimately all about. Johnny Cash sang about and for people on the margins. He famously played concerts in prisons, where he sang both murder ballads and gospel tunes in the same set...

My guest is Bob Holman. On December 3, 2019, Bowery Books simultaneously released two new books of poetry by Bob Holman—written 50 years apart. LIFE POEM and THE UNSPOKEN serve not only as bookends to a lifetime immersed in words, performance, and the avant garde, but they also show the evolution of an artist, an art form, and a downtown art scene that’s gone from Allen Ginsberg to Lou Reed to Eil...

My guest is Lauren Duca. Her new book is How to Start a Revolution: Young People and the Future of American Politic s. In it this Teen Vogue award-winning columnist shares a smart and funny guide for challenging the status quo in a much-needed reminder that young people are the ones who will change the world. Duca investigates and explains the issues at the root of our ailing political system and...

My guest is Craig M. Gay. His newest book is Modern Technology and the Human Future: A Christian Appraisal. Technology is not neutral. From the plow to the printing press, technology has always shaped human life and informed our understanding of what it means to be human. And advances in modern technology, from computers to smartphones, have yielded tremendous benefits. But do these developments a...