A church welcomes the community to worship inside its halls. So how does it willingly open its doors again after violence shattered lives inside? Houston Chronicle columnist Joe Holley joins host Krys Boyd to tell the story of a small Texas town learning to trust again after experiencing the worst mass shooting inside an American place of worship. His new book is called “Sutherland Springs: God, Guns, and Hope in a Texas Town.”

Patients feel reassured when they have a doctor with a good “bed side manner.” Is that a teachable skill? Dr. Saul J. Weiner, professor of medicine, pediatrics and medical education at the University of Illinois at Chicago, joins host Krys Boyd, to talk about practicing medicine that goes beyond medical charts. His book is “On Becoming a Healer: The Journey from Patient Care to Caring About Your Patients.”

When the coronavirus began to spread, it was common for grocery stores to limit toilet paper to one package per customer. Now some stores are placing caps on packages of beef, pork, and chicken. Yossi Sheffi, director of the M.I.T. Center for Transportation and Logistics, talks to host Krys Boyd about how COVID-19 is impacting the U.S. food supply chain and what that means for your family’s shopping list.

The internet certainly has made our world more interconnected. But to trace the first instances of people connecting the dots worldwide, you’ve got to go back a millennium. Yale historian Valerie Hansen joins host Krys Boyd to talk about the long, winding path to this modern life. Her book is “The Year 1000: When Explorers Connected the World—and Globalization Began.”

Shops and restaurants are part of what make cities vibrant places. And with many of them closed, urban spaces don’t feel the same. Atlantic staff writer Derek Thompson joins host Krys Boyd to talk about how COVID-19 is changing our relationship with the businesses in which we spend our disposable income – and about how that shift affects the places we live. His recent article for The Atlantic is headlined “The Pandemic Will Change American Retail Forever.”

Most of us can trace our family history with paper trails and create intricate family trees. But when your family relies on oral stories passed down through generations, lineage can be hazy. Bettye Kearse joins host Krys Boyd to talk about tracing her own heredity, which lead her to an enslaved woman and a head of state. Her book is “The Other Madisons: The Lost History of A President’s Black Family.”

For people with depression, there’s not a one-size-fits-all treatment. Instead, it can be a lengthy, frustrating process to find the right combination of therapy and medication. Anna Mehler Paperny has experienced that search firsthand, and she joins host Krys Boyd to talk about investigating the complex world of depression treatment in order to save herself. Her new memoir is called “Hello I Want to Die Please Fix Me: Depression in the First Person.”

Every object that’s part of our lives – everything we eat, buy and use – had to be thought of by somebody. And some of those ideas required quite a bit of vision. Science writer Cody Cassidy joins host Krys Boyd to tell the stories of people who changed how we live in ways big and small. Her new book is called “Who Ate the First Oyster?: The Extraordinary People Behind the Greatest Firsts in History.”

Unprecedented world events have shaken us. So how do we confront our fears and move on to richer, more optimistic lives? Eva Holland, correspondent for Outside magazine, joins host Krys Boyd to talk about her own battle with fear and the methods she employed to overcome it. Her book is called “Nerve: Adventures in the Science of Fear.”

Rosie the Riveter is the most famous example of women pitching in behind-the-scenes during World War II. And while she was keeping factories operational on the ground, more than a thousand women took to the air to help win the war from the sky. Katherine Sharp Landdeck, associate professor of history at Texas Woman’s University and a Guggenheim Fellow at the Smithsonian National Air and Space Museum, joins host Krys Boyd to talk about these trailblazing female aviators. Her book is“The Women with Silver Wings: The Inspiring True Story of the Women Airforce Service Pilots of World War II.”