Ye Gods! with Scott Carter

Robert Costa: Work Hard. Trust in God. Have no Fear.

Journalist, co-author with Bob Woodward of “Peril”, and Chief Election & Campaign Correspondent for CBS News, Robert Costa joins Scott to discuss his Catholic upbringing and how faith brings him a respite from dark times. He muses on his reluctance to talk about himself in his reporting and his dedication to facts and objectivity in every story. Scott and Robert also get into his reporting on former President Donald Trump, the religious right and his understanding of the politics of the conservative Christians in the GOP. 
In My Homily Opinion (IMHO): Judge not, lest ye be judged. But sometimes we can’t help it. Scott discusses the final season of HBO’s Succession and how Logan Roy’s “suspicions” about the afterlife sparked comparisons to real life media moguls Rupert Murdoch and Sumner Redstone.
Guest: Robert Costa is the Chief Election & Campaign correspondent for CBS News, where he covers national politics and American democracy. Based in Washington D.C., he is a regular contributor to the "CBS Evening News with Norah O'Donnell," "Face the Nation with Margaret Brennan," "CBS Mornings," and "Sunday Morning," as well as to CBS News Streaming programs such as "Red & Blue." Before joining CBS News in 2022, Costa and reporting legend Bob Woodward co-wrote "Peril," which was published by Simon & Schuster in September 2021. The book documented the tumultuous transition between the Trump presidency and the Biden presidency and was a No. 1 New York Times bestseller. It was also cited in congressional subpoenas issued by the House committee investigating the January 6, 2021, attack on the U.S. Capitol. From 2014 to 2021, Costa was a national political reporter at The Washington Post. Costa served as the moderator and managing editor of "Washington Week" on PBS from 2017 to 2020. 
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Ye Gods is produced by Efficiency Studios in association with Dossie Media. Special thanks to Associate Producer Robyn Rose Valentine. Hosting services and other fun stuff provided by Podbean. Music licensed by Epidemic Sound.

Larry Wilmore: Mentoring the Soul

Comedian-writer-producer Larry Wilmore has one of the most impressive resumes in TV from In Living Color, to The Bernie Mac Show, The Daily Show to Blackish and HBO’s Insecure. He now hosts the Larry Wilmore: Black on Air Podcast with The Ringer. He stops by to talk about his epiphany as a door-to-door salesman, his Catholic upbringing and his comedic love of The Marx Brothers and their 1930 classic vaudeville film Animal Crackers.
In My Homily Opinion (IMHO): Do we all have a reason why we are here? Scott Carter honors his friend the late and great comedic genius Garry Shandling. Scott tells the story of how writer/director Judd Apatow (Knocked Up, 40 Year Old Virgin), while researching for the documentary The Zen Diaries of Garry Shandling discovered a note from Garry that only Scott could decipher about Brian Wilson of The Beach Boys, and Garry’s legacy as a mentor to Sarah Silverman and many others.
Guest: Emmy Award winner Larry Wilmore has been a television producer, actor, comedian, and writer for more than 25 years. He can currently be heard as host of Larry Wilmore: Black on the Air on The Ringer Podcast Network. The show, which premiered in 2017, features Wilmore’s unique mix of humor and wit as he weighs in on the issues of the week and interviews guests in the worlds of politics, entertainment, culture, sports, and beyond. He can also be seen in the Paramount+ film Jerry and Margo Go Large, alongside Bryan Cranston and Annette Bening. He also serves as executive producer alongside Kerry Washington, in the Hulu legal drama Reasonable Doubt for Hulu’s Onyx Collective. Larry is currently in development on the comedy series Lately for ABC, a behind-the-scenes look at the upstairs-downstairs dynamics of the people who work at a late-night talk show. Wilmore released his first book, “I'd Rather We Got Casinos and Other Black Thoughts”, in January 2009. He lives in Los Angeles.
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Ye Gods is produced by Efficiency Studios in association with Dossie Media. Special thanks to Associate Producer Robyn Rose Valentine. Hosting services and other fun stuff provided by Podbean. Music licensed by Epidemic Sound.

Sam Harris: Consciousness and Spirituality without Religion

Is there a there-there? A place within the mind separate from our thoughts? This week Scott talks to neuroscientist and founder of the Waking Up meditation app, Sam Harris. They discuss how meditation helps us to be happy in the most ordinary of moments and make the most of each moment, vs. the need to extract the greatest pleasure from our greatest moments. 
And that there are things to discover about the nature of the mind that are liberating, with the potential to reduce suffering of emotional anguish and ultimately lead to improvements in wellbeing.
Regarding atheism, Sam remarks that, “it’s not so much a claim that the universe isn't much stranger than we realize, (but) in fact, maybe it’s stranger than we can possibly imagine.” And that there are propensities of the human mind that are universally available regardless of culture or geography, and one can find truths across beliefs in Buddhism, Taoism, Christianity, Judaism,Islam and others, yet we need to have 21st century non-sectarian conversations.
 
Sam shares this quote from Tibetan Lama Kalu Rinpoche: 'What we live in is an illusion. There is a reality, you are that reality. When you understand this, you'll realize that you're nothing and being nothing, you are everything.'  And a recommendation of literature from Leo Tolstoy’s The Death of Ivan Ilyich
 
In My Homily Opinion (IMHO): Scott reads from Oscar Wilde’s “De Profundis” and discusses his belief that there is a need for ritual even in the lives of the irreligious. He asks the listeners if God hides himself from us or do we just not know where to look for him?
Guest: Sam Harris is a neuroscientist, philosopher, and author of five New York Times best sellers. His work covers a wide range of topics—neuroscience, moral philosophy, religion, meditation practice, political polarization, rationality—but generally focuses on how a growing understanding of ourselves and the world is changing our sense of how we should live. His books include The End of Faith, The Moral Landscape, Free Will, Lying, and Waking Up. Sam hosts the popular Making Sense podcast and is the creator of the Waking Up app, which offers a modern approach to living a more examined life, through both in-depth mindfulness training and secular wisdom. Sam has practiced meditation for over 30 years and has studied with many Tibetan, Indian, Burmese, and Western meditation teachers, both in the United States and abroad. He holds a degree in philosophy from Stanford University and a Ph.D. in neuroscience from UCLA.
Photo credit: Christopher Patey
Send your thoughts (and prayers) to YeGodsPodcast@gmail.com
Ye Gods is produced by Efficiency Studios in association with Dossie Media. Special thanks to Associate Producer Robyn Rose Valentine. Hosting services and other fun stuff provided by Podbean. Music licensed by Epidemic Sound.

Susie Essman: Yahrzeit for Gilbert Gottfried

Actress and comic Susie Essman from HBO's Curb Your Enthusiasm joins Scott to discuss praying to the humor gods, the connections between comedy and Judaism, why Larry David the creator of Curb Your Enthusiasm and co-creator of Seinfeld is a sort of Rabbi, plus remembrances of their mutual friend, the late comic genius Gilbert Gottfried. 
In honor of Gilbert Gottfried, this episode is being released near the first anniversary of his passing. In the Jewish tradition, the first anniversary of a death is called Yahrzeit. Sacred readings, candle lighting, charitable giving, and fasting are done in memoriam. 
In My Homily Opinion (IMHO): Scott replies to listener Kathleen Valley Stein's email on the Rubicon moment her family faced, and the subsequent book she wrote Loving Choices, Peaceful Passing Why My Family Chose Hospice
Guest: Susie Essman has played the sassy Susie Greene for all eleven seasons of the critically-acclaimed HBO comedy series, Curb Your Enthusiasm. Her hilarious bouts of withering sarcasm and uninhibited insults have become her character’s trademark. 
The Los Angeles Times calls Susie, “The most lyrical purveyor of profanity on television.  She makes the entire cast of  “The Sopranos” look like rank amateurs.  It really is a gift.”  
Susie’s streetwise vernacular is perfectly suited for her life in Manhattan where she has been a veteran of the world of stand up comedy for thirty-nine years.  She has appeared in her own half-hour HBO comedy special, made numerous appearances on Broad City, The View, Hacks and The Tonight Show, to name just a few of her many television credits.  She has also acted in numerous films. 
Ye Gods is produced by Efficiency Studios in association with Dossie Media. Special thanks to Associate Producer Robyn Rose Valentine. Hosting services and other fun stuff provided by Podbean. Music licensed by Epidemic Sound.
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Ana Marie Cox: Easter Eggs of Love & Grace

Today's conversation touches on topics that may be sensitive to some including attempted suicide. Life can be hard, but suicide is preventable and free and confidential support is available by dialing 988 or go to 988lifeline.org
Guest: Ana Marie Cox is a political columnist and culture critic whose writing has appeared in The New Republic, Sports Illustrated, the New York Times, and NBC.com. Through 2022, she wrote a “Sober Questioning” column at The Cut. She’s also a prolific podcast host including Space the Nation with Dan Drezner and With Friends Like These from Crooked Media. She’s a regular on the Stephen King podcast The Losers Club (a favorite episode is this one on recovery themes in King’s work). Her memoir, “Just Like Your Mother” — a reported account of addiction, recovery, and intergenerational trauma — will be published by Random House in 2024.
In My Homily Opinion (IMHO): It’s the week of Passover and Easter. So in the spirit of renewal and rebirth, Scott Carter is keeping the door ajar with ​​a one-step-at-a-time willingness to consider new things and challenge old beliefs that do not work.
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Ye Gods is produced by Efficiency Studios in association with Dossie Media. Special thanks to Associate Producer Robyn Rose Valentine. Hosting services and other fun stuff provided by Podbean. Music courtesy of Epidemic Sound.

Tim Gunn: Thou Shalt ‘Make it Work’

Tim Gunn stars on the hit Amazon series, "Making The Cut," and served as co-host for 16 seasons of the revolutionary fashion competition series, "Project Runway," and he has written best sellers like Tim Gunn's Fashion Bible. But when people respond to his expertise and energy, they are reacting to – in an age of moral relativism – his affirmation of actual values: work hard, be decent. In this episode we learn more about Tim’s upbringing in the Episcopal church and how it shaped his ability to be a critical thinker. About his reverence for great masterworks of art as evidence of a higher power. About his epiphanies in the classroom, both learning from and being inspired by the students he teaches, while imparting on them the values of craft, curiosity and compassion. And the wisdom matriculated in the school of life through the dogma of perseverance – or simply stated, “make it work.”
In My Homily Opinion (IMHO): Scott Carter asks is teaching the humanities dead?
Article: The New Yorker, The End of the English Major by Nathan Heller
Book: In Defense of a Liberal Education by Fareed Zakaria
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Photo credit: Scott McDermott
Ye Gods is produced by Efficiency Studios in association with Dossie Media. Special thanks to Associate Producer Robyn Rose Valentine. Hosting services and other fun stuff provided by Podbean. Music licensed by Epidemic Sound.

Ken Burns: What Has Been Will Be Again

Whoever wants to know the heart and mind of America had better watch Ken Burns films. His body of work is a moving picture portrait gallery of who we've been as a nation and who we are. No contemporary artist has ever succeeded more by trusting so much in the American public's curiosity and attention span. To paraphrase Ken from his conversation with Scott, history changes but human nature doesn’t necessarily change. Ken references Ecclesiastes 1:9 from the Bible as one summation of that paradox: What has been will be again, what has been done will be done again; there is no new thing under the sun. 
In My Homily Opinion (IMHO): Scott reflects on the Cold War and Cuban Missile Crisis of 1962 as a lesson in choice - Should you answer the belligerent or conciliatory message? 
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Guest: Ken Burns has been making documentary films for over forty years.  Since the Academy Award nominated Brooklyn Bridge in 1981, Ken has gone on to direct and produce some of the most acclaimed historical documentaries ever made, including The Civil War; Baseball; Jazz; The War; The National Parks:  America’s Best Idea; Prohibition; The Roosevelts:  An Intimate History; The Vietnam War; Country Music; and, most recently, The U.S. and the Holocaust. Future film projects include The American Buffalo, Leonardo da Vinci, The American Revolution, Emancipation to Exodus, and LBJ & the Great Society, among others. Ken’s films have been honored with dozens of major awards, including sixteen Emmy Awards, two Grammy Awards and two Oscar nominations.  In September of 2008, at the News & Documentary Emmy Awards, Ken was honored by the Academy of Television Arts & Sciences with a Lifetime Achievement Award.  In November of 2022, Ken was inducted into the Television Academy Hall of Fame.
Photo credit: Alvin Kean Wong
Ye Gods is produced by Efficiency Studios in association with Dossie Media. Special thanks to Associate Producer Robyn Rose Valentine. Hosting services and other fun stuff provided by Podbean. Music courtesy of Epidemic Sound.

Patricia Heaton: Redeemed Catholic

Two-time Emmy winner Patricia Heaton of Everybody Loves Raymond and The Middle shares laughs with Scott while reflecting on newfound clarity in their lives, discussing sobriety, Jesus on the beach eating fish with his disciples among other observations of faith, and Father Barry’s (Karl Malden) inspirational monologue and the enduring poetic fable of the 1954 Academy Award Best Picture On the Waterfront with Marlon Brando and Eva Marie Saint.
In My Homily Opinion (IMHO): Scott supposes that when a friend sends you something about someone else, they are in fact sending you something about themselves. It's a sacred offer to be honored.
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Guest: Patricia Heaton is an actress, author and producer perhaps best known for her role on the beloved and critically acclaimed CBS series “Everybody Loves Raymond” for 9 seasons.  She followed that up with another 9 season run, starring on the ABC cornerstone, single camera comedy “The Middle.” She is co-founder of FourBoys Films which recently released Unexpected.
In addition to her acting and producing credits, Heaton is a bestselling author whose debut book, the autobiographical Motherhood and Hollywood -- How to Get A Job Like Mine appeared on The New York Times best-sellers list.
A committed philanthropist, Heaton is the founding member of World Vision’s Celebrity Ambassador Network. She has traveled to Rwanda, Zambia and Syria with the humanitarian organization which focuses on conducting relief, development, and advocacy activities in its work with children, families, and their communities in nearly 100 countries.
Heaton is a mother to four sons and lives in Nashville with her husband actor-producer David Hunt.
Photo credit: Kate Romero
Ye Gods is produced by Efficiency Studios in association with Dossie Media. Special thanks to Associate Producer Robyn Rose Valentine. Hosting services and other fun stuff provided by Podbean. Music courtesy of Epidemic Sound.

Hari Kondabolu: Hinduism & The Temple of Indian Cinema

Comedian, podcaster and documentarian Hari Kondabolu joins to discuss growing up as a second generation Indian-American and melding the cultural diversity of his hometown Queens, NY with the beautiful Hindu traditions taught to him by his mother while also absorbing through films and the iconic Amar Chitra Katha comic books. Hari and Scott discuss Indian films including the Oscar nominated RRR, and Hari leaves us with a recommendation to experience a classic film that elicits tears at the same scene every time he rewatches: The Apu Trilogy: Pather Panchali.  Hari's new Special "Vacation Baby" debuts on YouTube April 18th.
In My Homily Opinion (IMHO): Scott Carter delights in hearing the voice of his dear friend and future Ye Gods guest Salman Rushdie on Surviving the Fatwa on New Yorker Radio Hour.
దయచేసి ఆలోచనలు మరియు ఆశీర్వాదాలు పంపండి YeGodsPodcast@gmail.com
Guest: Hari Kondabolu is a comedian, writer and podcaster based in Brooklyn. The NY Times called him “one of the most exciting political comics in stand-up today” and described his 2018 Netflix special Warn Your Relatives as “an incisively funny and formally adventurous hour that reveals a comic in command of his powers.” 
In 2017, his HBOMax documentary The Problem with Apu was released to critical acclaim and spurred a global conversation about race and representation. The Nation called it “a devastating critique of the ultimate comedic sacred cow: The Simpsons.” It is now used in high school, college and grad school curriculums around the US.
A regular on the public radio, Hari is a panelist on the NPR game show Wait Wait… Don’t Tell Me. As a podcaster, he co-hosted the popular Politically Reactive with dear friend W. Kamau Bell. Additionally, he also co-hosts what he politely describes as a “pop up podcast,” The Untitled Kondabolu Brothers Podcast with his younger brother Ashok (“Dap” from HBO’s Chillin’ Island and defunct rap group Das Racist.)
Hari attended both Bowdoin College and Wesleyan University, graduating from the former institution with a B.A. in Comparative Politics. A former immigrant rights organizer in Seattle who worked under the leadership of now-Congresswoman Pramila Jayapal, Hari also earned a Masters in Human Rights from the London School of Economics in 2008. He was the “Artist In Residence” at NYU’s APA Institute for the 2014-2015 Academic Year and at Shangri La Museum in Honolulu in 2018.
Ye Gods is produced by Efficiency Studios in association with Dossie Media. Special thanks to Associate Producer Robyn Rose Valentine. Hosting services and other fun stuff provided by Podbean. Music courtesy of Epidemic Sound.

Jonathan Alter and Ken Burns on Jimmy Carter: Faith Without Works is Dead

Scott is joined by journalist and historian Jonathan Alter, the author of His Very Best, Jimmy Carter a Life, which is the result of numerous interviews with the most religious of U.S. Presidents and the gold standard for ex-Presidents.
(31:54) Afterwards, Scott gets a few thoughts on Jimmy Carter from documentary filmmaker and historian Ken Burns, who will be a guest on an upcoming episode of Ye Gods! Ken’s films have been honored with dozens of major awards, including sixteen Emmy Awards, two Grammy Awards and two Oscar nominations.
Guest: Jonathan Alter is an award-winning author, political analyst, documentary filmmaker, columnist, television producer and radio host. Alter’s most recent book is “His Very Best: Jimmy Carter, a Life.” (2020), which received uniformly favorable reviews. His earlier books include three New York Times bestsellers: “The Center Holds: Obama and His Enemies” (2013), “The Promise: President Obama, Year One” (2010) and “The Defining Moment: FDR’s Hundred Days and the Triumph of Hope” (2006), also one of the Times’ “Notable Books” of the year. 
A former senior editor and columnist at Newsweek, Alter is a longtime political analyst for NBC News and MSNBC.  He co-produced and co-directed the HBO documentary “Breslin and Hamill: Deadline Artists,” which won the 2020 Emmy for Outstanding Historical Documentary. In 2013-2014, he was an executive producer of “Alpha House,“ a comedy on Amazon.
Over the years, Alter has written for the New York Times, the Washington Post, the Washington Monthly, the New Yorker, Bloomberg, the Daily Beast and other publications. In 2021, he launched a weekly Substack newsletter called “OLD GOATS, Ruminating with Friends,” which includes frequent columns and his conversations with accomplished people of wisdom and experience. Since 2016, he has hosted “Alter Family Politics“ each week on Sirius XM, 102 with his three adult children.
Email us and describe your indescribable vision: YeGodsPodcast@gmail.com
Ye Gods is produced by Efficiency Studios in association with Dossie Media. Special thanks to Associate Producer Robyn Rose Valentine. Hosting services and other fun stuff provided by Podbean. Music courtesy of Epidemic Sound: “Amazing Grace” performed by Sven Karlsson.

Anna Deavere Smith: Spiritual Maturity in Knowing What You’ve Done

Playwright-actress Anna Deavere Smith stops by on occasion of the 30th Anniversary of her groundbreaking play Twilight: Los Angeles 1992 on stage at The Mark Taper Forum beginning March 8 through April 9, 2023.
In My Homily Opinion (IMHO): The Academy Awards are Sunday, March 12th and Steven Spielberg is once again nominated, this time for The Fabelmans, which got Scott thinking of another Oscar-winning Spielberg film, Close Encounters of the Third Kind. In that 1977 landmark film, Richard Dreyfuss plays one of the characters having visions sparked by, well, a close encounter with another kind. The Dreyfus character tries to sculpt his vision into mashed potatoes compelled, like any visionary, to express feelings he can't describe, even if it means eye rolls from the doubting kind.
Email us and describe your indescribable vision: YeGodsPodcast@gmail.com
Ye Gods is produced by Efficiency Studios in association with Dossie Media. Special thanks to Associate Producer Robyn Rose Valentine. Hosting services and other fun stuff provided by Podbean. Music courtesy of Epidemic Sound.

Jacke Wilson: Thoughts & Prayers & Purple Rain

Author Jacke Wilson joins Scott to discuss love and hate cast into the universe…and affirmations of the soul in Prince’s Purple Rain!  They also swap stories of life changing events that nudge you over from skepticism to qualified or even unqualified belief in something that cannot in this realm exactly be explained.
Guest: Jacke Wilson is the host of The History of LIterature podcast where he journeys through the ancients and classics from Aristotle, the Bible and Confucius, to Charles Dickens, Emily Dickinson and Shakespeare, to contemporary with Toni Morrison, Salman Rushdie and other great authors and books.
In My Homily Opinion (IMHO): Scott Carter asks if our good thoughts and prayers impact the universe, or are we like the tree falling in the forest that nobody hears? 
Send your thoughts (and prayers) to YeGodsPodcast@gmail.com
Ye Gods is produced by Efficiency Studios in association with Dossie Media. Special thanks to Associate Producer Robyn Rose Valentine. Hosting services and other fun stuff provided by Podbean. Music courtesy of Epidemic Sound.

Paul F. Tompkins: Ash Wednesday (Fasting Optional)

On Ash Wednesday, writer-comedian Paul F. Tompkins joins to discuss his Catholic upbringing and faith, praying for the Pope, the Golden Rule, the Reckoning and the meaning of living a life full of joy and sorrow…even in Hollywood.
Guest: Paul F. Tompkins is best known for voicing characters on The Simpsons, Netflix’s Bo Jack Horseman, for creating HBO’s Mr. Show with Bob Odenkirk and David Cross, hosting VH1’s Best Week Ever and myriad podcasts including Stay F. Homekins with Janine Haddad, Threedom with Scott Aukerman and Lauren Lapkus. Check out his live variety show Varietopia.
In My Homily Opinion (IMHO): Scott Carter reflects on Paul’s broken-hearted mother who, after living her entire life as a devout lamb of the Catholic flock, questions God and flees the fold calling it all BS. She's now passed on, which raises the questions: If there is a God, who does God side with? A woman asking questions in good faith or His church in which she'd stopped believing? Does religion today fail many who come to it with broken hearts and just do not get healed? 
Send your thoughts (and prayers) to YeGodsPodcast@gmail.com
Ye Gods is produced by Efficiency Studios in association with Dossie Media. Special thanks to Associate Producer Robyn Rose Valentine. Hosting services and other fun stuff provided by Podbean. Music courtesy of Epidemic Sound.

Introducing YE GODS with Scott Carter

Is there a God, Holy Spirit or Force with us? Each Wednesday award winning Hollywood TV producer and playwright Scott Carter holds an open-minded discussion of personal faith and morals with a diverse roster of interfaith and non-faith celebrity guests. If life is a mystery, whodunit?