*episode discusses suicide 

 

ASA MERRITT : A former international reporter for NPR, VICE Sports, The Guardian, and ESPN’s “30 for 30” podcast, Asa brings a compassionate documentary eye to ambitious fictional projects. His one-woman play about mass movements, True Believer, had a sold-out run in New York City. To research that piece, Asa traveled to Cairo to meet with underground performers who helped ignite the Arab Spring. With longtime collaborator Matt Kagen, Asa started First Rodeo (@firstrodeoaudio), an audio fiction studio dedicated to pushing the boundaries of genre, combining techniques of journalism and theater. His new Audible original podcast Six Sermons stars Oscar nominee Stephanie Hsu (Everything Everywhere All At Once) and is dedicated to the actor and musician Caz Liske, who died by suicide in Moscow in 2017. Asa lives with his family in Mexico City.

 

In the Audible Original Six Sermons, Pastor Alexis (Oscar nominee Stephanie Hsu, Everything Everywhere All At Once) has huge shoes to fill: those of beloved Pastor William Hoyt (Tony winner Bill Irwin), whose suicide rocked their small-town Ohio congregation. With impassioned sermons and awkward community work (hello, donuts and bowling), Alexis tries to shore up the congregation's faith... even as her own is crumbling. The question haunts her: why'd you do it, Will? I have a feeling you'll be thinking about it, too, long after the audio fades. Stephanie's performance is flat-out mesmerizing, and the story deals with so many pressing issues: mental health challenges, women rising to leadership roles in church, and generational divides. To learn the rhythms of church-running, Asa embedded himself in a Lutheran community for a month, and he enlisted psychologists and pastors to help him write with care about self-harm, the Good Samaritan, and more. (One of many things he learned is that people of different faiths have lots in common with literature students: through rigorous close readings of texts, they find meaning.) Between this knowledge-gathering and Asa's own mental health challenges, Six Sermons is steeped in both painstaking research and lived experience. The resulting story resonates whether you're a believer or not.