I wish you and your loved ones a deeply renewing holiday season. This week, you’ll hear my 2014 conversation with REZA ASLAN about his best-selling book, ZEALOT: The Life and Times of Jesus of Nazareth. He examines Jesus the man through the lens of the time and place in which he lived, first-century Palestine, and labels him a zealot – a radical political opponent of the Roman occupation. Since Jesus was crucified without overthrowing Roman rule, he is one of many “failed messiahs.” But only he among them become the starting point of one of the world’s great religions. This approach offers a Jesus more human, if no less heroic. To learn more visit www.rezaaslan.com. 

As another difficult year comes to an end and we find ourselves wishing others – and ourselves – Happy Holidays, here’s my 2013 conversation with SONJA LYUBOMIRSKY about the provocative findings in her book, THE MYTHS OF HAPPINESS: What Should Make You Happy, but Doesn’t; What Shouldn’t Make You Happy, but Does. She draws on the latest scientific research to show that believing in certain happiness myths can have toxic consequences. We’ll talk about how to take advantage of this research to actually make our lives more happy and fulfilling.

CELINE-MARIE PASCALE, professor of sociology at American University, is a leader in examining how deep inequalities can be normalized through the language we use to describe them. Her book LIVING ON THE EDGE: When Hard Times Become a Way of Life offers the voices of people who struggle to make ends meet, reveals a system that profits from their struggles, and presents a vision for change from the working people who know that the economy we have is unsustainable for most of the U.S. population. You can learn more at cmpascale.org.

The current Supreme Court is the achieved goal of a decades long project on the Right and in the Republican party. Though the 6-3 conservative majority refused to help Trump steal the election, they consistently aid and abet GOP voter suppression and minority rule. Arguments in the Mississippi abortion case indicate their readiness to overrule Roe v Wade. LINDA GREENHOUSE begins her new book, JUSTICE ON THE BRINK, in July 2020, shortly before Ruth Bader Ginsburg’s death, covers McConnell’s unseemly rush to confirm Amy Coney Barrett, and then reports and analyzes each month through the end of the term in June 2021 – providing history and context along the way, gathered in her 30 years covering the Court for the New York Times. We talk about that term and the beginning of the highly consequential new one.

Linda Greenhouse – New York Times

https://www.nytimes.com/by/linda-greenhouse

Linda Greenhouse – Yale Law

https://law.yale.edu/linda-greenhouse