Give and Take

My guests are Rev. Molly Baskette and Dr. Ellen O’Donnell. Their new book is Bless This Mess: A Modern Guide to Faith and Parenting in a Chaotic World . When the two first met, they were both new mothers seeking parenting wisdom. They read a lot of books on the topic, but none of them contained practical suggestions that would help their families psychologically and spiritually while maintaining t...

My guest is Michael Patrick Lynch. His newest book is Know-It-All Society: Truth and Arrogance in Political Culture . Taking stock of our fragmented political landscape, Michael Patrick Lynch delivers a trenchant philosophical take on digital culture and its tendency to make us into dogmatic know-it-alls. The internet―where most shared news stories are not even read by the person posting them―has...

My guest is Chavisa Woods. Her newest book is 1 00 Times: A Memoir of Sexism . In it this award winning author presents one hundred true stories of sexism, harassment, discrimination, and assault. Recounting her experiences with sexist discrimination, sexual harassment, and sexual violence—beginning in childhood, through the present—Woods lays out clear and unflinching personal vignettes that buil...

My guest is Scot McKnight. His newest book is Reading Romans Backwards: A Gospel of Peace in the Midst of Empire . In it he argues that to read Romans from beginning to end, from letter opening to final doxology, is to retrace the steps of Paul. To read Romans front to back was what Paul certainly intended. But to read Romans forward may have kept the full message of Romans from being perceived. R...

My guest is Nathaniel Popkin. Set against the backdrop of 1976 Philadelphia, his new novel The Year of the Return follows the path of two families, the Jewish Silks and African American Johnsons, as they are first united by marriage and then by grief, turmoil, and the difficult task of trying to live in an America failing to live up to its ideals. Paul Silk and Charlene Johnson are journalists who...

My guest is Timothy McMahan King. His new book is Addiction Nation: What the Opioid Crisis Reveals about Us . When a near-fatal illness led his doctors to prescribe narcotics, media consultant Timothy McMahan King ended up where millions of others have: addicted. Eventually King learned to manage pain without opioids—but not before he began asking profound questions about the spiritual and moral n...

My guest is Phillip Cary. His newest book is The Meaning of Protestant Theology: Luther, Augustin, and the Gospel That Gives Us Christ . This book offers a creative and illuminating discussion of Protestant theology. Veteran teacher Phillip Cary explains how Luther's theology arose from the Christian tradition, particularly from the spirituality of Augustine. Luther departed from the Augustinian t...

My guest is Jake Meador. His new book is In Search of the Common Good: Christian Fidelity in a Fractured World . Common life in our society is in decline. Our communities are disintegrating, as the loss of meaningful work and the breakdown of the family leave us anxious and alone―indeed, half of all Americans report daily feelings of loneliness. Our public discourse is polarized and hateful. Ethni...

My guest is Summer Rayne Oakes. Her new book is How to Make a Plant Love You: Cultivate Green Space in Your Home and Heart . 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 apartment (and they're thriving!) He...

Elie 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...

My 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." 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...

My guest is Lee McIntyre. His newest book is 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...

My guest is Melissa Knox. Her new memoir is Divorcing Mom: A Memoir of Psychoanalysis . 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...

My guest is Jonathan H. Marks. His new book is The Perils of Partnership: Industry Influence, Institutional Integrity, and Public Health . 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 those problems. We are told industry mus...

My guest is Rachel Howard. Her newest book is The Risk Of Us . 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—c...

My guest is Martin Dugard. He's the author of the critically acclaimed To Be A Runner . 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, bestselling author and lifelong runner Martin Dugard takes a jo...

My 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 . 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 left by religion, we look to all sorts of everyday ac...

My 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 . 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 s...

My guest is David Shields. His new book, The Trouble with Men: Reflections on Sex, Love, Marriage, Porn, and Power 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 mar...

My guest is Rabbi Evan Moffic. His newest book is First the Jews: Combating the World’s Longest-Running Hate Campaign. 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 been accompanied by a different kind of anti-Semitism from parts of the l...

My guest is Nicholas Wolterstorff. World-renowned Christian philosopher. Beloved professor. Author of the classic Lament for a Son . Nicholas Wolterstorff is all of these and more. His memoir, In This World of Wonders opens a remarkable new window into the life and thought of this remarkable man. Written not as a complete life story but as a series of vignettes, Wolterstorff’s memoir moves from hi...

My guest is Alexandrea Ravenelle. Her new book is Hustle and Gig . 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 mas...

My guest is Olen Steinhauer. With The Middleman , 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. One day in the early summer o...

My 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. As climate change quickly approaches a series of turning points that guarantee disastrous outcomes, a solution is hiding in plain sight. Several countries have already replaced fossil fuels with low-carbon energy sources, an...

My guest is Eva Hagberg Fisher. Her new book, How To Be Loved , 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 fou...