It’s been said that, like the Bible, there are few women in the Book of Mormon. And that’s true, in one sense. But in another, women are everywhere there. Fatimah Salleh and Margaret Olsen Hemming are looking for them while they work on the first complete commentary on the Book of Mormon ever written by women.

Transcript available: firesidepod.org/episodes/salleh-olsen.

Buy the book and other merch at firesidepod.org/store.

What happens if we approach some of our favorite books with a similar kind of devotion and attentive reading religious communities bring to their scripture? Vanessa Zoltan breathes new life into our engagement with our favorite books—even the ones that don't hold up well regarding sexism, racism, and more.

Transcript at our website, firesidepod.org/episodes/zoltan.

Buy the book and other merch at firesidepod.org/store.

In his book Against Civility: The Hidden Racism in our Obsession with Civility, Alex Zamalin traces the history of civility from its deployment against African slaves, through Reconstruction and the Civil Rights movement, all the way to today’s Black Lives Matter protests.

Transcript at our website, firesidepod.org/episodes/zamalin.

Buy the book and other merch at firesidepod.org/store.

Ultra-Orthodox Jews structure every aspect of their lives around their religion. But those who come to doubt their beliefs, or who question various practices and rituals, risk losing everything.

Transcript at our website, firesidepod.org/episodes/fader.

Buy the book and other merch at firesidepod.org/store.

Anna Sale says a loss of faith in social institutions has left people seeking alternative ways of celebrating, mourning, and connecting. At a fractured and disconnected moment in time, she urges us to reconnect by having hard conversations that are too-often avoided. Anna Sale is the host of the award-winning podcast Death, Sex, and Money from WNYC Studios, and author of the book “Let’s Talk About Hard Things.”

Is human gender and sexuality fixed and binary, or malleable and multi-various? Taylor Petrey discusses the fascinating twists and turns in Latter-day Saint thought on these questions. By looking at LDS beliefs as they evolve over time, we might get a clearer view of where we are now and what's up ahead.

Transcript at our website, firesidepod.org/episodes/petrey.

Buy the book and other merch at firesidepod.org/store.

Lauren Sandler was a journalist covering homelessness in New York City when she met Camilla, a woman without a home who didn’t seem to fit the homeless stereotype at all. Sandler tells Camilla’s story in This Is All I Got: A New Mother’s Search For Home. It’s an up close and personal account of one woman who shares the fate of millions of Americans battling homelessness and the stunning boring inefficient bureaucracy of it all.

Transcript at our website, firesidepod.org/episodes/sandler.

Buy the book and other merch at firesidepod.org/store.

John Swinton’s path-breaking book, Becoming Friends of Time: Disability, Timefulness, and Gentle Discipleship takes us through a brief history of time, showing how western culture has changed its experience of time in big ways, and how those changes have impacted people with intellectual disabilities, brain trauma, and people with conditions like Dementia. As a theologian, Swinton reflects on what this history suggests for Christianity.

Transcript at our website, firesidepod.org/episodes/swinton.

Buy the book and other merch at firesidepod.org/store.

Anthea Butler is a top expert on religion, politics, and race in the United States. In her latest book White Evangelical Racism she tells the history of the rise of the Religious Right in America—Christians who are politically conservative, predominantly white, and Republican. As church attendance shrinks and public confidence and respect of religious people dwindles, Butler sees a moment of reckoning for American Christianity.

Transcript at our website, firesidepod.org/episodes/butler.

Buy the book and other merch at firesidepod.org/store.