Jonathan Rauch is an important voice for our time. He was for free speech and free thought way before it was cool. In 1993 , he published a book called Kindly Inquisitors: The New Attacks on Free Thought . It was while reading his latest book, Cross Purposes: Christianity's Broken Bargain With Democracy , in preparation for this interview, that I realized that Jonathan's work over the past few years has been in pursuit of one overarching goal. Jonathan is one of the most prescient voices trying ...
Mar 28, 2025•1 hr 2 min
Eliza Griswold's new book Circle of Hope: A Reckoning with Love, Power, and Justice in an American Church is about a church in Philadelphia that was started by a couple who became dramatic converts to Christianity in the 1970's. They became Jesus people. And unlike many others in that movement, they stayed pretty radical. Griswold's book tells the story of this couple's attempt to hand the church off to the next generation. It doesn't go well. I thought the book was an example of something I’ve ...
Oct 09, 2024•38 min
Major Garrett is chief Washington correspondent for CBS News, and as he told me in our conversation, he is an "accidental television journalist" who "never imagined" working in TV and "never wanted it." He was a print reporter for 17 years before entering the world of television. Since then, he's proven to be one of the most formidable, best prepared interviewers in journalism. This dude is rigorous, smart, and fun! And you know what? Damn it, he cares . Major is the host of The Takeout podcast ...
Aug 23, 2024•1 hr
Aurelian Craiutu is the author of Why Not Moderation? Letters to Young Radicals. Craiutu is the chair of Indiana University's political science department. He is reclaiming a word and idea — moderation — that is typically despised and criticized as weak and cowardly. This is a misunderstanding of what moderation is, he insists. Moderation is not for the weak or the indecisive, Craiutu says. Instead, it is a fighting creed which requires courage, strength, and savvy. It's not for everyone, he say...
Jul 30, 2024•40 min
It is the 80th anniversary of D-Day. I just finished watching the ceremony in France, where they honored WWII vets who still live, and those who never came home. It was incredibly moving. But we can't just look back and grow emotional during inspiring video montages. We must think about how to avoid the paths of division that could send future young men and women to similar fates. We can honor those brave WWII vets further — now — by listening to those who are trying to help us remember how to r...
Jun 06, 2024•59 min
John Inazu's new book is Learning to Disagree: The Surprising Path to Navigating Differences with Empathy and Respect . John teaches on criminal law, law and religion and the First Amendment at Washington University in St. Louis. He is an expert on religious freedom. And he is a senior fellow with Interfaith America. He is also a former Air Force officer who was working in the Pentagon on 9/11 when a hijacked airliner hit the other side of that massive building. And finally, he is the son of Jap...
Apr 29, 2024•41 min
We keep looking at our broken political system — the politicians who show up on our TV's and our phones, the lawmakers who end up in Congress, and the general lack of solutions to our biggest problems — and we shake our head. We promise to vote the bums out. We vow to drain the swamp. We pledge to overturn the plutocracy. But we don't think about our assembly line, the system that gives us the choices we are presented with. Remember Lee Drutman's line ? "Who chooses the choices?" That's the righ...
Mar 01, 2024•54 min
Break the system. That's what one New Hampshire voter, a 58-year old retired Army officer, said he wants the president to do, in an interview with Politico Magazine . It's only the most obvious example of many of us tend to do from time to time. We pretend, or actually believe, that politics is a form of magic. In other words, we think we can elect a person, or pass a law — as if we were waving a wand — and this will fix our problems. But Michael Wear argues in The Spirit of Our Politics that a ...
Feb 05, 2024•53 min
The 1950's and 60's were an age of widely shared prosperity in the U.S. — across class and economic lines — that have never quite returned. Things were improving for all parts of society during the post-war period, and for all groups including Black Americans, despite the real presence of racial bias and discrimination against them. And things have not improved equally in recent decades. Things have improved since then. But the rate of steady and ongoing improvement and progress has slowed in ma...
Dec 10, 2023•41 min•Ep. 72
Tim Alberta's new book: The Kingdom, The Power, and the Glory: American Evangelicals In An Age of Extremism, is a sobering look at the results in history when a religious movement morphs into a political movement, and allows its identity to be taken over by political imperatives and goals. Alberta's book documents the spread of Christian Trumpism, aided and abetted by conflict profiteers who have made "fear and hatred a growth strategy" inside the evangelical subculture for decades. But Alberta ...
Dec 01, 2023•1 hr 6 min•Ep. 71
This is a Builders conversation. I'm doing these about once a month to highlight people who are not just cursing the darkness but are also building up their local community — and the country — through making something beautiful, through problem-solving, and by stitching together places of belonging and meaning. (Thank you Joy Moore for the inspiration!) This past summer, we took our kids to visit WERU in Maine, which is near Acadia National Park. The station's General Manager, Matt Murphy, gave ...
Nov 20, 2023•38 min•Ep. 70
This week's podcast interview (audio above) is with Ruy Teixeira, about his new book with John Judis, Where Have All the Democrats Gone?: The Soul of the Party in the Age of Extremes . It is an argument that both parties have been co-opted by big business. It spends all its time blaming the Democrats for their part in this, but that's because the authors believe the Democrats used to be the party of the working person, and that it can and should be again. They also view the Republican party, or ...
Oct 30, 2023•54 min•Ep. 69
I have never cared all that much about the debate over evolution. But I grew up in an evangelical home and church. So in my world, the origins of the species were definitely up for question. To me, it all seemed rather silly. I didn't see any conflict between evolution and the Christian faith, or even between evolution and the Bible. But I have known others who said quite openly that if they ever came to believe that evolution was true, they feared they would lose their faith. Most evolution ske...
Oct 21, 2023•50 min•Ep. 68
In American politics, we saw the latest sign of total dysfunction in Congress, as House Speaker Kevin McCarthy was ousted for daring to pass a bipartisan solution last week to avoid a government shutdown. Many people are desperate for a new kind of politics, and Joel Searby has dedicated the last several years of his life to that cause. Joel worked on the Evan McMullin presidential campaign in 2016, and since then has been involved in numerous efforts to find a new middle way for the many Americ...
Oct 07, 2023•34 min•Ep. 67
I've interviewed Yascha Mounk about his book The Identity Trap: A Story of Ideas and Power in Our Time , which was released this week. "Mounk has told the story of the Great Awokening better than any other writer who has attempted to make sense of it," The Washington Post wrote in a review . Yascha's book says that we can reach across our differences and understand one another, and that we need to make the effort to do so, through conversation, debate, and relationship. I was not aware of the de...
Sep 30, 2023•42 min•Ep. 66
Shannon Harris is on the podcast this week. We talk about her new book The Woman they Wanted: Shattering the Illusion of the Good Christian Wife I have a particular interest in this book because it's a behind the scenes look at the culture of the church I grew up in: Covenant Life Church in Gaithersburg, Maryland. There is national relevance for Shannon's story, however, because she was married to Joshua Harris, author of I Kissed Dating Goodbye , for 21 years. Josh's book was a national best-se...
Sep 16, 2023•51 min•Ep. 65
Andrew is Associate Professor of Sociology and Director of the Association of Religion Data Archives (theARDA.com) at the Center for the Study of Religion and American Culture at IUPUI, Indiana University-Purdue University Indianapolis. Here’s Andrew’s Substack His first book in 2020, Taking America Back for God: Christian Nationalism in the United States , with Samuel Perry, was a data-heavy sociological book that was, in their words, "the first comprehensive empirical analysis of Christian nat...
Sep 02, 2023•49 min•Ep. 64
Large numbers of Americans are unhappy with the idea of a Biden vs Trump rematch, polls show , but both the Democratic and Republican parties appear to be paralyzed, unable to do anything about it.There’s a reason why.Both parties are shells of their former selves , and strong political parties are the foundation of a healthy democracy, many political experts agree . For too long Americans have seen political parties as the villains, and individual politicians and voters as the heroes.That think...
Aug 19, 2023•1 hr 2 min•Ep. 63
Karen Swallow Prior is the author of multiple books, including On Reading Well: Finding the Good Life through Great Books. Her new book is called The Evangelical Imagination: How Stories, Images & Metaphors Created a Culture in Crisis . It's out August 8 from Brazos Press. She is a professor of English literature and a popular speaker and writer. Karen's new book argues that "so much ... that what evangelicals uncritically assume is 'biblical' turns out to be simply Victorian." She explains ...
Aug 05, 2023•40 min•Ep. 59
I interviewed Russell Moore on the podcast this week about his new book Losing Our Religion: An Altar Call for Evangelical America , which is out next Tuesday, July 25. In his book, Moore refers to the "post-2016 era" as an "apocalypse." Now, you hear that word, and you might think Zombies! Both those reactions to the word "apocalypse" have to do with the end of the world. Yet that's not how Moore is using the term. "Apocalypse literally means unveiling and revelation,” Moore told me. “And I thi...
Jul 22, 2023•41 min•Ep. 62
I don't know if I've ever read a book quite like John Blake's "More than I Imagine." The subtitle is: "What a Black Man Discovered About the White Mother He Never Knew" John is a senior writer at CNN. In this conversation, John and I talk about: his very difficult childhood growing up in West Baltimore in the 60's and 70's how he grew up disliking white people even though his mother was white, in part because he was told after his mom disappeared that her family disliked black people how meeting...
Jun 16, 2023•59 min•Ep. 61
A new book, "The Big Break" by Washington Post feature writer Ben Terris, is a story of how many institutions in Washington are failing those within them. But it's also a cautionary tale of how the idealism and passion of youth is being squandered in today's politics by our focus on individualism and our deemphasis on institutions. Ben's book traces the story of several characters over the period of 2021 and 2022, as Washington and the country grappled with the aftermath of the Trump presidency ...
Jun 02, 2023•40 min•Ep. 60
Nobody has covered the Stanford free speech incident more closely than David Lat. He's a legal affairs writer at his Substack, Original Jurisdiction . David is a Harvard undergrad and a Yale law school graduate who has a fascinating backstory. He was originally an assistant U.S. attorney who prosecuted federal crimes under former U.S. Attorney Chris Christie, who of course went on to become governor of New Jersey and ran for president in 2016. We talk about the details of the Stanford free speec...
Mar 31, 2023•46 min•Ep. 58
This interview is with Matthew D. Taylor, who wrote and created a recent podcast series called " Charismatic Revival Fury ." Taylor is the Protestant Scholar at the Institute for Islamic, Christian and Jewish Studies, in Baltimore. We know about the Proud Boys, and the Big Lie, and former President Trump's role in spreading it and deceiving millions of Americans into believing the 2020 election was stolen from them. But there was an element in the crowd spurred on to radical anti-democratic lawl...
Feb 17, 2023•1 hr 48 min•Ep. 57
Sen. Chris Van Hollen (D) represents Maryland in the U.S. Senate. He was in the middle of the fight over the debt ceiling in 2011, as a member of the House. That was the first of several fiscal fights over those years. Now, we're back in another debt ceiling showdown, and I talked with Van Hollen mostly about that. If you want to read what I wrote about this interview, you can click here . See Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#...
Jan 30, 2023•28 min•Ep. 56
Sara Billups is a Seattle-based writer whose book Orphaned Believers is out January 24. "In the wake of the culture wars of the 1980s and 1990s, many young evangelicals found themselves untethered, disillusioned, and—ultimately—orphaned as they grappled with the legalistic, politically co-opted churches of their youth and embarked on a search for a more loving, more biblical expression of the faith and discipleship taught by Jesus," she writes. You can order the book here . Sara and I are fellow...
Jan 19, 2023•48 min•Ep. 55
I talked last week with Yuval Levin about the House Speaker fight and what lessons we might draw from it. This week I've got a different angle on the problems in Congress, and how they might be fixed. House Republicans who blocked Kevin McCarthy’s ascension to the speakership repeated a mantra during the four-day leadership fight that ended after several rounds of dealmaking: Congress is “broken,” they said. It can sound like a talking point, one that’s been recycled year after year to bash the ...
Jan 17, 2023•35 min•Ep. 54
Back in the summer of 2017 when I started this podcast, my first guest was Yuval Levin . And over the years, Yuval has been one of my most consistent conversation partners, in informal lunches and on this podcast. Levin is director of Social, Cultural, and Constitutional Studies at the American Enterprise Institute (AEI). This is his fifth time on this show now. Each time has been a really rich and deep conversation, and this time is no different. I found myself wondering what Yuval would think ...
Jan 12, 2023•58 min•Ep. 53
Tim Schultz is president of the First Amendment Partnership, a group whose core mission is to advocate for religious freedom for all faiths and rights of conscience. Schultz and others say this bill gives something to both gay rights groups and to religious conservatives. It's a compromise, a tradeoff. On the left, there are some activists who say it doesn't do enough, but by and large they say they want it to pass anyway. On the right, there are a lot of prominent religious conservatives who sa...
Nov 28, 2022•57 min•Ep. 52
Paul D. Miller is currently a professor of global politics and security at Georgetown University, and a senior fellow at the Atlantic Council. He worked at the National Security Council under Presidents Bush and Obama, and was a military intelligence officer in the U.S. Army prior to that. Miller's book is " The Religion of American Greatness: What's Wrong with Christian Nationalism ." There are all kinds of books out there on Christian nationalism. But what I like about Paul is that he's coming...
Oct 28, 2022•48 min•Ep. 51
