What and Why with Max Roth

Shane Claiborne co-founded the Simple Way, a Christian activist community in Philadelphia. He leads Red Letter Christians, a justice-oriented movement of Christians who believe modern Evangelicals need to pay more attention to the words of Jesus, sometimes printed in red letters in Bibles. I talked with him as he prepared for a revival in North Carolina before flying to Salt Lake City for an event protesting gun violence. That event was inspired in part by the book he co-wrote with Michael Martin called Beating Guns: Hope for People Who are Weary of Violence. See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

Jason Hanson was a CIA officer from 2003 to 2009. Now he runs a security firm and has written Agent of Influence: How to Use Spy Skills to Persuade Anyone, Sell Anything, and Build a Successful Business. We shoot the breeze about spy stuff and work our way to the advice offered in the book. See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

In this week's What and Why, a conversation about violence aimed at people because of their beliefs. This was a television discussion I hosted with a rabbi, an imam, a priest, and a pastor in the wake of attacks on churches, synagogues and mosques around the world, originally aired in the first week of May 2019. See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

"Snared: Lair of the Beast" is the second book in the "Snared" series by Adam Jay Epstein. These are books for middle readers, meaning they are officially intended for readers up to age 14 or so. Unofficially it means they are highly readable with a plot that moves and characters who you really like. Wily Snared is the name of a precocious kid who thinks he's a "hobgoblet" living in a dungeon as the "trapmaster." In truth he's a human with unusual and mysterious parents, something he learns gradually as he joins an adventurous group of dungeon raiders in book one, called "Snared: Escape to the Above." This is a fun father's day conversation and something you can share with kids who love adventure stories and wonder how an author goes about creating them. See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

One of Germany's greatest scholars risked his life and lost his job standing up for Jews as the Nazis took power, protected minorities as a German army officer in Russia, and then died and was erased from history by the Communists in East Germany. Ernst Lohmeyer was just a name on a page when James Edwards stumbled on him as a graduate student. It took four decades, including trips behind the iron curtain, for Edwards to track down this life story of a man who did his best to be good in the worst of times. See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.