When Tom Whyman started thinking about becoming a father, he worried. Would he and his partner be able to make a living to support a child? What about political upheaval in the UK, or the increasing threat of climate change—not to mention all the little daily ways having a child could change his life. Then a global pandemic shook things up even more. As a philosopher, he asked: What reason is there for hope?

Transcript available: firesidepod.org/episodes/whyman.

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Coming up out of the waters of baptism at a new white Christian church, Danté Stewart envisioned leaving his blackness behind, washing away his boyhood Black Pentecostal baptism, and rising to a colorblind world where all lives matter. But as time passed, as he witnessed more bodies of Black Americans being killed, he felt rage growing inside. An unexpectedly holy kind of rage that prepared him for yet another baptism—this time, by fire.

Transcript available: firesidepod.org/episodes/stewart.

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Masha Rumer immigrated to the United States from the former Soviet Union when she was thirteen. At first, her nationality made her self-conscious; she wanted to blend in with her new American peers as fast as possible. But over time, Masha discovered her love for her homeland never really went away, and she wanted to share it with her own children. Which turned out to be complicated.

Transcript available: firesidepod.org/episodes/rumer.

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David Livingstone Smith has studied dehumanization for decades. He's spent a lot of time researching horrific genocides, lynching, massacres, and other brutalities. Real humans pull the trigger. Real humans administer the poisonous gasses and drop the bombs. People not entirely unlike me and you, although it's a lot more comforting to imagine they're monsters. And in fighting monsters, we risk becoming the very thing we’re fighting against.

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

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When Rachel Held Evans unexpectedly died in 2019, the thirty-seven-year-old Christian writer left behind a husband and two young children, as well as an unfinished book manuscript. Rachel's husband Dan knew she would want that book out in the world, so he enlisted their good friend Jeff Chu—a writer, reporter, and editor—to put all the pieces in place. The technical logistics made it hard enough, but Jeff also had to reckon with his own grief at the loss of such a dear friend.

Full transcript available at firesidepod.org/episodes/chu.

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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.

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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.

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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.

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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.

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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.”