Where do you go to find models of powerful women? Hatshepsut, Circe, Antigone — the ancient world was full of them, real and mythic. For thousands of years, women ruled the world. Today we barely know their names. Why? This week we rediscover the women of ancient myths and legends.

Guests:

Kara Cooney, Madeline Miller, Natalie Haynes, Emily Wilson, Serenity Young, Romare Bearden

All over the country, a chorus of hope is coming from an unexpected group — teenagers. They are marching, protesting and demanding a better future as we – the adults – watch them with a kind of heartbreaking pride. These teenagers are not waiting for adults to figure things out for them.

They have superpowers — innocence, idealism, and Instagram — and they aren't waiting for permission to use them to reshape the conversation around everything from gun control to education to climate change.

What can we learn from teenagers today? What do they have that the rest of us don't?

Guests:

Angie Jiang, Kevin Coval, Luis Carranza, Kee Stein, Frances Jensen, Angie Thomas, Tyler Ruzich

If life is a play, what happens during the last act? What’s it like to live knowing you have a limited amount of time left? This week, we’re talking about how to face, and in some cases, embrace your third act, whenever it arrives. Whether you’re looking at retirement, a late-life job change, an illness or just a lot of birthday candles on the cake — how do you live differently when you reach what’s likely to be your final act?

Guests:

Sabrina Frey, Daniel Pink, Maureen "Ma Dukes" Yancey, Martin Amis

New Years celebrations are all parties and hats, songs and champagne. No one ever seems to talk about the fact that something big just ended. An entire year of life, come and gone. Shouldn’t we pause to mourn, or mark its passing with a little reverence?

We don’t handle endings well, in general. So this hour, let’s learn about how to make a good ending — whether leaving a lover, quitting a job, or getting ready for the end of life itself.

Guests:

Steve Almond, Ilana Gershon, Sean Hemingway, Simon Critchley, David Giffels

Your finger’s hovering over the "delete" button on your Facebook app. Your friends are abandoning Twitter. Every day brings fresh revelations of data breaches, privacy abuses, Russian spies, trolls. Is it time to hit “delete” on all of it?

But then again, we joined these platforms for a reason. In a more perfect world, what could these platforms be doing for us?

Guests:

Jaron Lanier, Ethan Zuckerman, Whitney Phillips, DeRay Mckesson, Yuval Noah Harari

Using a complex network of chemical signals, trees talk to each other and form alliances with fellow trees, even other species. In fact, whole forests exist as a kind of superorganism. And some trees are incredibly old. Did you know a single bristlecone pine can live up to 6,000 years? And the root mass of aspens might live 100,000 years? We explore the science and history of trees and talk with Richard Powers about his epic novel "The Overstory."

Guests:

Mark Hirsch, Richard Powers, Suzanne Simard, Amos Clifford, Daegan Miller

Even the most welcome gift can spark guilt, resentment, obligation or vulnerability. We can be inspired by the generosity of others, or unsettled by uncertainty of how to say thank you, or whether an especially generous gift comes with strings attached.

This hour, unwrapping the tangled emotions behind giving — and getting.

Guests:

Megan Costello, Haddyr Copley-Woods, David Graeber, Anand Giridharadas, Elizabeth Dunn

We’ve been taught to ignore, stifle, or just get over anger for many years — but what if we embraced it? It seems like most of us are feeling angry these days. But what if we took that emotion and instead of letting it eat us up, used it as fuel to do something, to actually help us feel better? Could anger be a useful emotion?

Guests:

Rebecca Traister, Cristen Conger, Caroline Ervin, Richard Davidson, Alice Walker

What's the essence of religion? God? Scripture? Moral codes? Or is it really about something more mysterious and unexplainable?

In this hour, we explore the roots of religion — religion before it's even called "religion." Because if you strip away all the doctrine, the dogma, the rules for how to live — what’s left are primal spiritual experiences. But what do they tell us about ourselves and our world?

Guests:

Elizabeth Krohn, Jeff Kripal, Elaine Pagels, Jericho Brown

Modern anti-depressants have saved a lot of minds. And lives. But our 30-year experiment with modern anti-depressants is taking a toll. What have they done to our bodies? And how do we navigate that trade-off between body and mind? Is it clear that they even work?

There are a lot of us who struggle with mood disorders or mental illness of one sort or another. If you do, we here at TTBOOK want you to know that you’re not alone. If you're looking for more in-depth knowledge on what you might be going through, the National Alliance on Mental Illness is an incredible resource.

And if you just need something to elevate your spirit, check out the playlist that Charles made at the bottom of this page. It's packed with the music he listens to when he’s down and needs a lift. Not a fake happy song kind of lift – something honest but also hopeful.

**WARNING: The conversation with Lauren Slater in this show features frank discussion of depression and self-harm. The audio doesn't contain a trigger warning, but for listeners who may be sensitive to discussion of suicide, please consider listening to other interviews on the show separately, or skipping this episode.

Guests:

Lauren Slater, Charles Raison, Anna Fels, Jaime Lowe