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Inspired
Inspired is the nation's leading public radio show about faith, ethics and spirituality. Each week we offer you analyses of the big headlines alongside lesser-told stories – those of Orthodox Jewish artists and African-American atheists, Muslim feminists and spiritual seekers. Through these stories, a rough sketch of our country’s religious landscape begins to emerge. It’s a marketplace of beliefs and ideas too complex for sound bites, and too important to ignore.
This week on Interfaith Voices:
After the Kansas Shooting: Is This Really About Anti-Semitism?
Last Sunday, the day before Passover, a 73-year-old man launched a shooting spree outside of a Jewish community center and Jewish retirement home in Kansas. The suspect was a leader in the Ku Klux Klan, and he’s now being charged with a hate crime. How should we make sense of these horrible actions? Is anti-Semitism on the rise, or was this a one-off rampage by a lone wolf?
Bob Mankoff: ‘I’m Not Arguing, I’m Jewish’
Sitting behind his desk at The New Yorker, Bob Mankoff thinks about humor all day, and then, he goes home to dream about it at night. He’s been the magazine’s cartoon editor since 1997. But Mankoff is more than a cartoon guru; he’s also a serious thinker about the history of humor and its role in society. As it turns out, cartoons provide a powerful lens through which to see religion today.
Mankoff spoke to Nadine Epstein, editor of Moment Magazine. This is part four of our occasional series, “Great Jewish Thinkers” – our collboration with Moment about Jewish trailblazers in arts, politics and culture.
Barbara Ehrenreich: Turning an Investigative Eye Inward
Barbara Ehrenreich is best known for looking outward at injustices in society. In her 2001 book Nickle and Dimed: On (Not) Getting By in America, she went semi-undercover as a minimum wage worker. In her latest book, she turns inward, struggling to sort out a strange mystical encounter she had at 17. Whatever it was, she says, it was most certainly not a brush with God, which she calls ‘the great non-answer.’
Featured speakers/guests:
Carey Gillam, reporter with Reuters
Alvin Rosenfeld, director of the Institute for the Study of Contemporary Antisemitism at the University of Indiana Bloomington
Bob Mankoff, The New Yorker cartoon editor and author of the new book, How About Never–Is Never Good for You?: My Life in Cartoons
Barbara Ehrenereich, author of Living with a Wild God: A Nonbeliever’s Search for the Truth about Everything
