Paul Scheer is an award-winning actor, screenwriter, comedian and podcast host of How Did This Get Made? So you'd think his most interesting life stories would be about his audition for Saturday Night Live or how he came up through improv comedy to star in shows like The League and Black Monday.

Those are interesting stories, but in his new memoir, Paul gives center stage to family stories. Growing up with a loving mom and dad who divorced, the tyranny of an abusive stepfather, and what it's like to become a marriage partner and a parent in the shadow of traumatic experiences. 

Mainstream feminism today was created mostly by white women, for white women. It has soaked into American pop culture, social media, the economy, politics, and more. Rafia Zakaria wants that to change. In this episode, we discuss her book Against White Feminism: Notes on Disruption.

Laurie Lee Hall was a promising college student studying architecture, and she was “known” to the world as a man. When she encountered The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints she saw a well-defined path that fit the gender she was assigned at birth. So she buried her past to become the perfect Mormon man.

Tara Boyce says parenting with hope is more complicated than she anticipated.

Ross Gay says joy is something like what we feel like when we help each other carry our sorrows.

As a silent epidemic of chronic illnesses afflicts tens of millions of Americans, Meghan O’Rourke calls for revolution.

A transgender scholar makes history writing about transgender history.

The word “heathen” has fallen out of use, but the racist ideas behind it persist in the White American imagination.

A Métis woman reflects on the violence enacted on the bodies and lands of Indigenous people, especially women, in the United States.

A philosopher and prospective father wonders if things in the world are hopeful enough to bring children into it.

A Black Christian writer discovers the sacredness of rage.

An immigrant falls back in love with her culture and yearns to pass it along to her children.

When fighting monsters, we risk becoming monstrous.

After Rachel Held Evans died, Jeff Chu was there to finish her final book.

Reading scripture from the margins can change everything.

Vanessa Zoltan wanted to know if her childhood favorite ‘Jane Eyre’ stands the test of time. What she found can breathe new life into our favorite books.

Alex Zamalin shows how civility has been used to perpetuate oppression in the United States.

Ayala Fader examines the lives of hidden heretics within ultra-Orthodox Jewish communities.

Anna Sale knows how to talk about hard things like death, sex, money, family, and identity.

Taylor Petrey traces the development of doctrine about gender and sexuality within the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints.