Give and Take

My guest is Rabbi Ben Kamin. He is a nationally-known clergyman, teacher, counselor, and the prize-winning author of twelve books on human values, civil rights, and spirituality. His most recent book is The Blessing Of Sorrow: Turning Grief into Healing.

Special Guest: Ben Kamin.

My guest is Rabbi Herbert J. Cohen. His column, “Kosher Movies,” has appeared in newspapers in Atlanta, Toronto, and Denver. He is the author of several books including Kosher Movies: A Film Critic Discovers Life Lessons at the Cinema, The One of Us: A Life in Jewish Education, Texas Torah, Kosher Parenting and Walking in Two Worlds: Visioning Torah Concepts in Secular Worlds. Rabbi Cohen also blogs regularly in The Times of Israel and the Religion Section of The Huffington Post on the intersection of film and faith.

Special Guest: Herbert J. Cohen.

My guest is Stephanie Feldman. She co-edited Who Will Speak For America?, with Nathaniel Popkin. The editors and contributors to Who Will Speak for America? are passionate and justifiably angry voices providing a literary response to today’s political crisis. Inspired by and drawing from the work of writers who participated in nationwide Writers Resist events in January 2017, this volume provides a collection of poems, stories, essays, and cartoons that wrestle with the meaning of America and American identity. The contributions—from established figures including Eileen Myles, Melissa Febos, Jericho Brown, and Madeleine Thien, as well as rising new voices, such as Carmen Maria Machado, Ganzeer, and Liana Finck—confront a country beset by racial injustice, poverty, misogyny, and violence.

Contributions reflect on the terror of the first days after the 2016 Presidential election, but range well beyond it to interrogate the past and imagine possible American futures.

Who Will Speak for America? inspires readers by emphasizing the power of patience, organizing, resilience and community. These moving works advance the conversation the American colonists began, and that generations of activists, in their efforts to perfect our union, have elevated and amplified.

Stephanie Feldman is the author of the novel The Angel of Losses (Ecco), a Barnes & Noble Discover Great New Writers selection, winner of the Crawford Fantasy Award, and finalist for the Mythopoeic Award, and is the co-editor of the forthcoming multi-genre anthology Who Will Speak for America? (Temple University Press) Her stories and essays have appeared in, or are forthcoming from, Asimov’s, Electric Literature, The Magazine of Fantasy & Science Fiction, The Rumpus, and Vol. 1 Brooklyn. She lives outside Philadelphia with her family.

Special Guest: Stephanie Feldman.

My guest is MaryAnn McKibben Dana. Her newest book is God, Improv and the Art of Living. In it she blends Scripture, psychology, theology, and pop culture in a wise, funny, down-to-earth guide to improv as a practice for life. Offering concrete spiritual wisdom in the form of seven improvi­sational principles, this book will help readers become more awake, creative, resilient, and ready to play--even (and perhaps especially) when life doesn't go according to plan.

"We are all improvisers," says McKibben Dana, "whether we realize it or not. We improvise in order to get through the day. We improvise when life surprises us. We do it without even thinking about it. This book will help you do it better."

Special Guest: MaryAnn McKibben Dana.

My guest is Andrew Selee. In his new book, Vanishing Frontiers: The Forces Driving Mexico and the United States Together, he argues that there may be no story today with a wider gap between fact and fiction than the relationship between the United States and Mexico. Wall or no wall, deeply intertwined social, economic, business, cultural, and personal relationships mean the US-Mexico border is more like a seam than a barrier, weaving together two economies and cultures.

Mexico faces huge crime and corruption problems, but its remarkable transformation over the past two decades has made it a more educated, prosperous, and innovative nation than most Americans realize. Through portraits of business leaders, migrants, chefs, movie directors, police officers, and media and sports executives, Andrew Selee looks at this emerging Mexico, showing how it increasingly influences our daily lives in the United States in surprising ways--the jobs we do, the goods we consume, and even the new technology and entertainment we enjoy.

From the Mexican entrepreneur in Missouri who saved the US nail industry, to the city leaders who were visionary enough to build a bridge over the border fence so the people of San Diego and Tijuana could share a single international airport, to the connections between innovators in Mexico's emerging tech hub in Guadalajara and those in Silicon Valley, Mexicans and Americans together have been creating productive connections that now blur the boundaries that once separated us from each other.

Andrew Selee is president of the Migration Policy Institute and former executive vice president of the Woodrow Wilson Center, where he founded and directed its Mexico Institute. For five years in the 1990s he lived in a shantytown in Tijuana, Mexico, helping to start a community center and home for migrant youth. In the quarter-century since, he has witnessed firsthand the dramatic transformation of this city specifically and the country as a whole. Dr. Selee writes a regular column for Mexico's largest newspaper and has written op-eds for the Wall Street Journal, Washington Post, and Los Angeles Times.

Special Guest: Andrew Selee.

Think you could never go vegan? Think again. As this smart, funny and persuasive manifesto makes clear, you're already 90% vegan anyway. That's right--you already love animals and are slowly but surely eating less meat than you used to. With the insider tips and inspiring stories in this book, you'll be ready to go whole hog (see what we did there?) and eat vegan for good. With a loyal online following that’s growing fast, the Bros are the new face of veganism--loud, proud, and fighting for a better world, one plate at a time.

Special Guest: Matt & Phil Letten, "The Vegan Bros".

My guest is Laura Vanderkam. She is the the acclaimed author of What the Most Successful People Do Before Breakfast. She isn’t like other time-management gurus. She’s not trying to shave off 30 seconds here or there; she’s interested in the emotional and psychological side of the 168 hours everyone has each week. Her newest book is Off the Clock: Feel Less Busy While Getting More Done. Her core message is that you have more time than you think you do, and you can feel less stressed while getting more done. Vanderkam has packed this book with insights from busy yet relaxed professionals, including “time makeovers” of people who are learning how to use these tools. Off the Clock can inspire the rest of us to create lives that are not only productive, but enjoyable in the moment.

Special Guest: Laura Vanderkam .

My guest is Matt Tebbe. He co-founded Gravity Leadership, and is planting a church, The Table Indy, in the northeast suburbs of Indianapolis. He also co-hosts the Gravity Leadership podcast.

Special Guest: Matt Tebbe.

My guest is Benyamin Cohen. His book My Jesus Year: A Rabbi's Son Wanders the Bible Belt in Search of His Own Faith is part memoir, part spiritual quest, part anthropologist’s mission. It's a humorous, personal, ultimately inspirational exploration of Christianity by the son of an Orthodox Rabbi on his journey through America's Bible belt.

Benyamin Cohen is Editorial Director of From the Grapevine. He has written for The Washington Post, The Daily Beast, The Huffington Post, Yahoo News and Slate. His new podcast, Our Friend From Israel, recently launched its debut episode.

Special Guest: Benyamin Cohen.

Nathaniel Popkin is a writer, editor, historian, journalist, and the author of five books, including his most recent novel Everything is Borrowed. A meditation on cruelty and regret, a mesmerizing tour of a city through time, and an evocative portrait of radical Jewish life of another age.

In Everything is Borrowed, acclaimed architect Nicholas Moscowitz lands a major commission, but his drive suddenly falters. The site of the new project awakens guilty memories, and when he digs into the place’s history, he uncovers a 19th-century Moskowitz whose life offers strange parallels to his own. As Nicholas grows obsessed with this shadow man, the dual narratives of Moskowitz and Moscowitz, the city’s past and present, blend in unexpected and poignant ways. Ultimately Nicholas must face certain truths that don’t change over time—and use them to rebuild his own life.

Special Guest: Nathaniel Popkin.