This week, scholar Thomas A. Tweed discusses his new book Religion in the Lands that Became America. A sweeping retelling of American religious history, Tweed shows how religion has enhanced and hindered human flourishing from the Ice Age to the Information Age. Tweed is joined by fellow Indigenous Studies professor John N. Low. This conversation originally took place November 10, 2025 and was recorded live at the American Writers Museum.

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This episode is presented in conjunction with the American Writers Museum’s new special exhibit American Prophets: Writers, Religion, and Culture. This exhibit and programming series explores the profound ways writing reflects and influences our understanding of religion. American Prophets is now open.

More about Religion in the Lands that Became America:

Until now, the standard narrative of American religious history has begun with English settlers in Jamestown or Plymouth and remained predominantly Protestant and Atlantic. Driven by his strong sense of the historical and moral shortcomings of the usual story, Thomas A. Tweed offers a very different narrative in this ambitious new history. He begins the story much earlier—11,000 years ago—at a rock shelter in present-day Texas and follows Indigenous Peoples, African Americans, transnational migrants, and people of many faiths as they transform the landscape and confront the big lifeway transitions, from foraging to farming and from factories to fiber optics.

Setting aside the familiar narrative themes, he highlights sustainability, showing how religion both promoted and inhibited individual, communal, and environmental flourishing during three sustainability crises: the medieval Cornfield Crisis, which destabilized Indigenous ceremonial centers; the Colonial Crisis, which began with the displacement of Indigenous Peoples and the enslavement of Africans; and the Industrial Crisis, which brought social inequity and environmental degradation. The unresolved Colonial and Industrial Crises continue to haunt the nation, Tweed suggests, but he recovers historical sources of hope as he retells the rich story of America’s religious past.

About the speakers:

THOMAS A. TWEED is the Harold and Martha Welch Professor of American Studies and professor of history at the University of Notre Dame. A past president of the American Academy of Religion, he is editor of Retelling U.S. Religious History and author of Crossing and Dwelling: A Theory of Religion and Religion: A Very Short Introduction.

JOHN N. LOW received his Ph.D. in American Culture at the University of Michigan, and is an enrolled citizen of the Pokagon Band of Potawatomi Indians. He is also the recipient of a graduate certificate in Museum Studies and a Juris Doctorate from the University of Michigan. He earned a BA from Michigan State University, a second BA in American Indian Studies from the University of Minnesota, and an MA in Social Sciences from the University of Chicago.

Professor Low previously served as Executive Director of the Mitchell Museum of the American Indian in Evanston, Illinois, and served as a member of the Advisory Committee for the Indians of the Midwest Project at the D'Arcy McNickle Center for American Indian and Indigenous Studies at the Newberry Library, and the State of Ohio Cemetery Law Task Force. He has presented frequently at conferences including the Native American and Indigenous Studies Association (NAISA)), American Society for Ethnohist...

This week, we revisit our Faith is Funny program with four comedians—Gibran Saleem, Hari Kondabolu, Peter Sagal, and Kate Sidley—who discuss the role of religion in comedy. This conversation originally took place June 23, 2025 and was recorded live at the Studebaker Theater.

This episode is presented in conjunction with the American Writers Museum’s forthcoming exhibit American Prophets: Writers, Religion, and Culture. This exhibit and programming series explores the profound ways writing reflects and influences our understanding of religion. American Prophets opens November 21, 2025.

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About the comedians:

GIBRAN SALEEM is a writer and comedian whose work spans broadcast and digital platforms. Born in North Carolina to traditional Pakistani immigrants, he was raised in a Muslim household and began performing stand-up in New York while completing a graduate degree in psychology. A semi-finalist for the Humanitas New Voices Fellowship and alum of NYU’s Episodic Writers’ Room, he has also toured with Hasan Minhaj, appeared on FX, ABC, and Hulu, and continues to develop screenwriting projects and perform stand-up across the U.S.

HARI KONDABOLU is a comedian, writer & podcaster based in Brooklyn, NY. He has been described by The NY Times as “one of the most exciting political comics in stand-up today.” He has performed on The Late Show with David Letterman, Conan, Jimmy Kimmel Live, John Oliver’s NY Stand-Up Show, @Midnight & has his own half-hour special on Comedy Central. A former writer & correspondent on the Chris Rock produced FX TV show Totally Biased with W. Kamau Bell. In 2017, he released his critically acclaimed documentary The Problem with Apu on truTV.

PETER SAGAL is the host of NPR’s Wait Wait…Don’t Tell Me!, the most listened-to hour on public radio. A playwright, screenwriter and journalist, he is also the author of The Book of Vice: Naughty Things and How To Do Them and The Incomplete Book of Running, a memoir about the 2013 Boston Marathon bombing and other adventures while running long distances. On TV, Peter has made appearances on Late Night with Jimmy Fallon and other shows, and hosted Constitution USA with Peter Sagal for PBS and National Geographic Explorer for the NatGeo Channel.

KATE SIDLEY is a comedy writer and performer originally from Cleveland, Ohio. She writes for The Late Show with Stephen Colbert and her work can be seen in the New Yorker, McSweeney’s, and Reductress. Kate has multiple Emmy-nominations, a Peabody Award, a Writers Guild Award and, thanks to her years of Catholic school, a visceral aversion to plaid wool skirts. Her forthcoming book is called How to Be a Saint: An Extremely Weird and Mildly Sacrilegious History of The Catholic Church’s Biggest Names.

American Prophets is supported by a grant from Lilly Endowment Inc. through its Religion and Cultural Institutions Initiative.

Beloved author Susan Orlean discusses her new book Joyride, a masterful memoir of finding her creative calling and purpose that invites us to approach life with wonder, curiosity, and an irrepressible sense of delight. Orlean is interviewed by journalist Chris Borrelli.

This conversation originally took place October 24, 2025 and was recorded live at the American Writers Museum. We hope you enjoy entering the Mind of a Writer.

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More about Joyride:

"The story of my life is the story of my stories," writes Susan Orlean in this extraordinary, era-defining memoir from one of the greatest practitioners of narrative nonfiction of our time. Joyride is a magic carpet ride through Orlean's life and career, where every day is an opportunity for discovery and every moment holds the potential for wonder. Throughout her storied career, her curiosity draws her to explore the most ordinary and extraordinary of places, from going deep inside the head of a regular ten-year-old boy for a legendary profile ("The American Man Age Ten") to reporting on a woman who owns twenty-seven tigers, from capturing the routine magic of Saturday night to climbing Mt. Fuji.

Not only does Orlean's account of a writing life offer a trove of indispensable gleanings for writers, it's also an essential and practical guide to embracing any creative path. She takes us through her process of dreaming up ideas, managing deadlines, connecting with sources, chasing every possible lead, confronting writer's block and self-doubt, and crafting the perfect lede—a Susan specialty.

While Orlean has always written her way into other people's lives in order to understand the human experience, Joyride is her most personal book ever—a searching journey through finding her feet as a journalist, recovering from the excruciating collapse of her first marriage, falling head-over-heels in love again, becoming a mother while mourning the decline of her own mother, sojourning to Hollywood for films based on her work including Adaptation and Blue Crush, and confronting mortality. Joyride is also a time machine to a bygone era of journalism, from Orlean's bright start in the golden age of alt-weeklies to her career-making days working alongside icons such as Robert Gottlieb, Tina Brown, David Remnick, Anna Wintour, Sonny Mehta, and Jonathan Karp—forces who shaped the media industry as we know it today.

Infused with Orlean's signature warmth and wit, Joyride is a must-read for anyone who hungers to start, build, and sustain a creative life. Orlean inspires us to seek out daily inspiration and rediscover the marvels that surround us.

SUSAN ORLEAN has been a staff writer at The New Yorker since 1992. She is the New York Times bestselling author of seven books, including The Library Book, Rin Tin Tin, Saturday Night, and The Orchid Thief, which was made into the Academy Award–winning film Adaptation. She lives with her family and her animals in Los Angeles and may be reached at SusanOrlean.com and on Substack at SusanOrlean.Substack.com.

CHRIS BORRELLI is a longtime features writer at the Chicago Tribune and a Nieman fellow at Harvard University. His subjects have included endangered species and Godzilla and hand dryer technology and low-wage restaurant work and prop warehouses and accordion-shop owners and comedy writers and existential threat. He’s a militant Rhode Islander and a Chicago resident....