Give and Take

Conversations at the Heart of the Matter

About the show

Someone once observed that if Howard Stern and Krista Tippett had a love child, it would be Scott Jones. Scott liked that.

At "Give and Take,” Scott Jones talks with artists, authors, theologians, and political pundits about the lens through which they experience life. With empathy, humor, and a deep knowledge of religion, current events, and pop culture, Scott engages his guests in a free-flowing conversation that's entertaining, unexpected, occasionally bizarre, and oftentimes enlightening. He likes people, and it shows.

Past interviewees include Mark Oppenheimer, Melissa Febos, David French, Miroslav Volf, Dan Savage, Nadia Bolz-Weber, Rob Bell, and (yes) Krista Tippett.

Scott is the former host and producer of the popular Mockingcast podcast (https://themockingcast.fireside.fm) and an in-demand consultant on all things “pod.” He’s also the co-host, with Bill Borror, of New Persuasive Words (https://npw.fireside.fm). Scott is also a prolific writer, a frequent conference speaker, a PhD candidate in Theology, and an ordained minister.

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Episodes

  • Episode 138: God Over Good, with Luke Norsworthy

    December 5th, 2018  |  44 mins 32 secs

    My guest is Luke Norsworthy. His new book is "God Over Good." It's hard to say that God is good when God isn't always what we expect good to be. A good father wouldn't make it so difficult to get to know him, would he? And if God is all-powerful, wouldn't he ensure that we never suffered? Either our understanding of God is incorrect, or our definition of good is inadequate.

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    Episode 137: Halakhah: The Rabbinic Idea of Law, with Chaim Saiman

    November 30th, 2018  |  52 mins 57 secs

    My guest is Chaim Saiman. His newest book is "Halakhah: The Rabbinic Idea of Law." What does it mean for legal analysis to connect humans to God? Can spiritual teachings remain meaningful and at the same time rigidly codified? Can a modern state be governed by such law? Guiding readers across two millennia of richly illuminating perspectives, this book shows how halakhah is not just “law” but an entire way of thinking, being, and knowing.

  • Episode 136: Flawed Church, Faithful God

    November 30th, 2018  |  42 mins 43 secs

    My guest is Joseph D. Small. How can we reconcile the ideal church described by theology with the broken church that we see in the world? In his newest book Joseph Small argues that the church’s true identity is known somewhere in the tension between the two.

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    Episode 135: I Think Therefore I Eat, with Martin Cohen

    November 30th, 2018  |  40 mins 42 secs

    My guest is Martin Cohen. Doctors and nutritionists often disagree with each other, while celebrities and scientists keep pitching us new recipes and special diets. No one thought to ask the philosophers—those rational souls devoted to truth, ethics, and reason—what they think. Until now. That's the subject of Martin Cohen's newest book "I Think, Therefore I Eat: The World's Greatest Minds Tackle The Food Question."

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    Episode 134: Doctor, with Andrew Bomback

    October 29th, 2018  |  33 mins 22 secs

    My guest is Andrew Bomback. His new book is "Doctor." It begins with a 3-year-old who asks her physician father about his job, and his inability to provide a succinct and accurate answer inspires a critical look at the profession of modern medicine.

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    Episode 133: Road to Disaster, with Brian VanDeMark

    October 25th, 2018  |  52 mins 16 secs

    My guest is Brian VanDemark. His newest book "Road to Disaster," draws upon decades of archival research, his own interviews with many of those involved, and a wealth of previously unheard recordings by Robert McNamara and Clark Clifford, who served as Defense Secretaries for Kennedy and Johnson. Yet beyond that, "Road to Disaster" is also the first history of the war to look at the cataclysmic decisions of those in the Kennedy and Johnson administrations through the prism of recent research in cognitive science, psychology, and organizational theory to explain why the "Best and the Brightest" became trapped in situations that suffocated creative thinking and willingness to dissent, why they found change so hard, and why they were so blind to their own errors.

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    Episode 132: White Picket Fences: Turning Toward Love in a World Divided by Privilege, with Amy Julia Becker

    October 24th, 2018  |  42 mins 59 secs

    My guest is Amy Julia Becker. Her new book "White Picket Fences: Turning Toward Love in a World Divided by Privilege," welcomes us into her life, from the charm of her privileged southern childhood to her adult experience in the northeast, and the denials she has faced as the mother of a child with special needs. She shows how a life behind a white picket fence can restrict even as it protects, and how it can prevent us from loving our neighbors well.

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    Episode 131: Why Theory, with Todd McGowan and Ryan Engley

    October 19th, 2018  |  1 hr 17 mins

    My guests are Todd McGowan and Ryan Engley. They are the co-hosts of "Why Theory," a podcast that brings continental philosophy and psychoanalytic theory together to examine cultural phenomenon.

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    Episode 130: Whole Again, with Jackson MacKenzie

    October 10th, 2018  |  35 mins 46 secs

    My guest is Jackson MacKenzie. Jackson MacKenzie has helped millions of people in their struggle to understand the experience of toxic relationships. His first book, "Psychopath Free," explained how to identify and survive the immediate situation. In "Whole Again," he guides readers on what to do next–how to fully heal from abuse in order to find love and acceptance for the self and others.

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    Episode 129: Tradition and its ‘use’: the ethics of theological retrieval, with Simeon Zahl

    September 29th, 2018  |  1 hr 1 min

    My guest is Simeon Zahl. He is University Lecturer in Christian Theology at the University of Cambridge. He recently wrote a piece in the Scottish Journal of Theology on the "use" of tradition in theology and what it reveals about the subjective life of the theologian.

  • Episode 128: Hitler's American Friends, with Bradley W. Hart

    September 28th, 2018  |  47 mins 19 secs

    My guest is Bradley W. Hart. Americans who remember World War II reminisce about how it brought the country together. The less popular truth behind this warm nostalgia: until the attack on Pearl Harbor, America was deeply, dangerously divided. Bradley W. Hart's "Hitler's American Friends" exposes the homegrown antagonists who sought to protect and promote Hitler, leave Europeans (and especially European Jews) to fend for themselves, and elevate the Nazi regime.

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    Episode 127: Nobody Hates Trump More Than Trump: An Intervention, with David Shields

    September 27th, 2018  |  53 mins 36 secs

    My guest is David Shields. His new book "Nobody Hates Trump More Than Trump: An Intervention," is perhaps the only genuinely original thing you have read yet about Donald Trump.

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    Episode 126: Weather Woman, with Cai Emmons

    September 21st, 2018  |  42 mins 2 secs

    My guest is Cai Emmons, her newest book "Weather Woman," is the story of meteorologist Bronwyn Artair who discovers she has the power to change the weather.

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    Episode 125: Faith in the Shadows, with Austin Fischer

    September 21st, 2018  |  51 mins 32 secs

    My guest is Austin Fischer. Too often, our honest questions about faith are met with cold confidence and easy answers. But false certitude doesn't result in strong faith—it results in disillusionment, or worse, in a dogmatic, overweening faith unable to see itself or its object clearly. Even as a pastor, Austin Fischer has experienced the shadows of doubt and disillusionment. In "Faith in the Shadows," he leans into perennial questions about Christianity with raw and fearless integrity.

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    Episode 124: The Tangled Tree: A Radical New History of Life, with David Quammen

    September 18th, 2018  |  51 mins 20 secs

    My guest is David Quammen. In his new book "The Tangled Tree: A Radical New History of Life," this nonpareil science writer explains how recent discoveries in molecular biology can change our understanding of evolution and life’s history, with powerful implications for human health and even our own human nature.

  • Episode 123: Eating NAFTA, with Alyshia Gálvez

    September 14th, 2018  |  47 mins 54 secs

    My guest is Alyshia Gálvez. In her gripping new book, "Eating NAFTA: Trade Food Policies, and the Destruction of Mexico", Alyshia Gálvez exposes how changes in policy following NAFTA have fundamentally altered one of the most basic elements of life in Mexico – sustenance. Mexicans are faced with a food system that favors food security over subsistence agriculture, development over sustainability, market participation over social welfare, and ideologies of self-care over public health. Trade agreements negotiated to improve lives have sometimes failed, resulting in unintended consequences for people’s everyday lives.