Great storytelling runs deep in the Jewish DNA, from Sholem Aleichem to Philip Roth and Nora Ephron, and that spirit is alive in the tales we selected for today's show from an event we planned called Jew-ish (with a hyphen): True stories of love, latkes, and l'chaim.

You save it to spend it. You crave it, you lend it. Do any of us ever really feel that we have enough money? We posed that question in a call for submissions, and presented a collection of true personal stories about money from a cast of talented writers before a live audience at City Winery's flagship location in New York City. We've selected three of those stories with very different takes on the subject for this week's show. KWON, Beth • Found Money / LEVIN, Ann • How to Think About Money / Suarez-Baez, Emma • What is Enough? / BTL: BASIL, Krystia • Cycle Gap

You save it to spend it. You crave it, you lend it. Does anyone ever really have enough time? It's a precious resource, and our days and our lives are often shaped and guided by the clock. Writer Annie Dillard wrote, “How we spend our days is, of course, how we spend our lives. What we do with this hour, and that one, is what we are doing. A schedule defends from chaos and whim. It is a net for catching days.” Writers, like just about everyone else, often wish we had more time. But we also know that time isn't something you find, but something you make.

Lynn Edelson • Counterpoint / Julie Evans • Baptizing John Coltrane / Leanne Sowul • Over the Rainbow / BTL: Jeremiah Horrigan • One Question, Three Answers

world, serving as our protector, nurturer, and teacher. Our relationships with our mothers is simple and elemental.. while at times being the most fraught and complicated relationship we’ll ever know. And if you ARE a mother, you know it's the hardest job there is. This episode features writers Kate Mayer, Sarah Bracey White, Jennifer Rawlings, and Lucy Iscaro.

When I was a kid, my family took summer camping vacations in the Adirondacks. My parents packed a tent and sleeping bags and food and utensils and a deck of cards, and we drove five hours north from New York City to a kind of paradise with trees beyond counting, sweet, clear lakes for swimming, more stars that I’d ever seen before, and a crackling fire in a ring of stone. Instead of TV, there was conversation and stories of ancestors, and time spent gathering wood and water—time that was altogether different from what we shared at home. Those childhood memories shaped the course of my life—and my choice to settle in New York’s beautiful Hudson River Valley. For today's show, I've selected three stories about the Great Outdoors (not all as bucolic as mine); stories first performed for a live audience in a theater in New York City.

National Library Week is a time to celebrate our nation's libraries, library workers' contributions and promote library use and support. Since 1958, National Library Week's been sponsored by the American Library Association (ALA) and observed in libraries across the country each April. All types of libraries - school, public, academic and special - participate, and you can learn more at the American Library Association website, ALA.org

Read 650 celebrates writers and the spoken word five minutes - and 650 words - at a time, and on today’s show ... Sthree writers present original true stories relating to birthdays -- not always happy, and not necessarily occasions for singing.

How we respond to stressful or even appalling circumstances determines our path and shapes our life. “Hope Happens” is the title of this week’s Read650 podcast, and features three personal stories of resilience, recovery, and renewal. Plus, we go “Between the Lines” with Chicago Tribune columnist Sally Schwartz and learn the one thing she really needs in order to write.

Learning never stops. It begins before birth, in the earliest glimmer of consciousness, when certain sounds or movements or even tastes begin to soothe or agitate the new human growing--and learning --within. Real learning begins when we enter the world, with our lives now a cinematic fast forward through first steps and tying our own shoelaces; to a first bus ride, algebra test, driving test, and swim test; thorugh learning to cook and dance and play an instrument,; from being hired and fired and falling in and out of love-- the gamut of lived human experiences, all of which, in their own way, teach us things. They are rites of passage, or life lessons.