The pandemic has had a profound effect on the entertainment industry, disrupting live performances and posing challenges for production in both film and television. Josh Gad and Ida Darvish are two of the bright lights of Hollywood and they tell us that the creative process continues.

The promise of a liberal arts education has always been the insight offered to us by classic texts about the human experience. Rutgers University professor Emily Allen-Hornblower and her student, Marquis McCray, tell us the appeal is not limited to traditional students in classrooms, but also students learning in environments as challenging as the American judicial system.

Pick up a book, and you can transport yourself to any time in history-or the future, delve into the mystical or the romantic, or help us to open our minds and our hearts. Over the last 30 years, Jonathan Karp, president and CEO of Simon and Schuster, has put more of those books into hands than just about anyone else.

Folk music has a long and rich tradition in the United States, telling stories by capturing life in lyric and melody. Singer-songwriter Mariee Sioux uses those tools to tell stories that reflect her indigenous heritage.

Asian-American hate crimes were brought into tragic focus with the March 16 mass shooting in Atlanta. University of Maryland professor Janelle Wong, a core faculty member in the Asian American Studies Program, discusses the long history of hate.

The Human Rights Campaign estimates that there are 2 million transgender people living in the United States, today. Yet Kylar Broadus says the fight for human rights is not yet won as long as transgender Americans lack equal rights under the law.

Documentary filmmakers take us into the lives of their subjects in a way that the written word can't capture. We see what they see. We get a sense of the physical space they occupy with our own eyes. We hear their voices. Elaine McMillion Sheldon weaves these elements together in powerful films that explore everything from love to addiction.

In his role as editor-at-large of America Magazine, Father James Martin, S.J., provides a spiritual and human perspective to matters of personal faith and public life.

"The Other Black Girl" is one of the most anticipated - and critically acclaimed - releases of 2021. Author Zakiya Dalia Harris discusses her book, which is part thriller and part social commentary.

With the advent of effective vaccines, it feels-we hope not foolishly-like the pandemic may be coming to an end. But Martin Halliwell says the crisis in American public health isn't limited to one particular disease - it's a theme that recurs again and again over the last century in these United States.

On more than one occasion, we've welcomed guests to this show who engage in "speculative" or "useful" fiction. Elliot Ackerman and Admiral James Stavridis are the latest, their new book, titled 2034, looks at what a war between the United States and China might look like in the not-so-distant future.

Personal conviction and democratic activism often go hand-in-hand. Mohammed Ali Kadivar is both a scholar of democracy and an advocate whose family has long been a vocal proponent of it.

Democracy is under attack-in the former Soviet-dominated lands of Eastern Europe, in Turkey, Brazil, India, and yes, even the United States. Scholar Tom Nichols urges us not to just look for leaders to whom we can ascribe blame, but to look at ourselves and discern our own role in the weakening of America's democratic institutions.

It's been 20 years since the attacks of 9/11 and the arrival of American troops in Afghanistan. Now, as American combat troops leave Afghanistan and the Taliban reasserts control, Washington Post reporter Craig Whitlock has pieced together the secret history-warts and all-of America's war in a land long-called "the graveyard of empires."