In The Small and the Mighty, Sharon McMahon proves that the most remarkable Americans are often ordinary people who didn’t make it into the textbooks. Not the presidents, but the telephone operators. Not the aristocrats, but the schoolteachers. Through meticulous research, she discovers history’s unsung characters and brings their rich, riveting stories to light for the first time.

What do you do when you start to feel a shift and must decide if it’s time to make a change? When it comes to navigating big decisions about when to stay and go, how can we know for sure when the time is right? Though we enter and exit many rooms over the course of our life—jobs, relationships, communities, life stages—knowing how and when it’s time to leave is a decision that rarely has a clear answer.

Molly Stillman has lived the type of life that when shared, people stop in their tracks and ask “Wait, what happened?” Molly’s mother, Lynda Van Devanter Buckley, served as an Army nurse during the Vietnam War and wrote the bestselling memoir Home Before Morning. When Molly was seventeen, Lynda passed away after an eight-year battle with an autoimmune disorder due to her exposure to Agent Orange.

Through personal experience and countless conversations, speaker and Bible teacher Jennie Allen has come to realize that most of us need to unlearn some deeply damaging messages about our emotions. We've been taught, for example, that emotions are untrustworthy when, in fact, they are a gift from God to help us notice what is wrong and where we need to heal. Your emotions are not something to suppress or ignore. They are meant to be felt, examined, and shared.

Life is hard for all kinds of reasons. It's tempting to try to move past the pain as quickly as possible. Instead, what if we embraced our struggles to develop the strength of resilience not dependent on circumstances? Writing as a friend who has also walked through difficult times, Rebekah Lyons—the bestselling author of Rhythms of Renewal and the popular host of the Rhythms for Life podcast—reminds us of adversity that always comes with a choice: will discouragement, stress, and fear cause you to crumble, or will you embrace the strength you've already been given?

You live in a world that wasn't designed for you. A world where you're expected to sit still, stay quiet, and focus. Because of the way your brain is wired, you can feel like you’re failing at life. But you are not failing. You are awesome. Award-winning content creators Kim and Penn Holderness are on a mission to reboot how we think about the unfortunately named "attention-deficit/hyperactivity disorder." As always, they are doing it by looking in the mirror, because they don't just study ADHD; they live it.

Most people who talk about motherhood start out by telling you how much they always wanted to be a mom. Not Lisa-Jo Baker. She was 18 and growing up in South Africa when her mom died, and she swore she would never have kids. But then she fell in love with an American boy with cowboy-green eyes, married him, and now, a decade and two continents later, they have three. This is the unlikely story of how she got there.

One gorgeous autumn day, Harrison discovers that his wife—the sweet, funny, loving mother of their three daughters, a woman “who’s spent just about every Sunday of her life in a church”—is having an affair with a family friend. This revelation propels the hysterical, heartbreaking action of How to Stay Married, casting our narrator onto “the factory floor of hell,” where his wife was now in love with a man who “wears cargo shorts, on purpose.” What will he do?

We are constantly being formed by the world around us. To be formed by Jesus will require us to become his apprentice. To live by what the first Christian disciples called a Rule of Life—a set of practices and relational rhythms that slow us down and open up space in our daily lives for God to do what only God can do—transforms the deepest parts of us to become like him.

All My Knotted-Up Life is a beautifully crafted portrait of resilience and survival, a poignant reminder of God’s enduring faithfulness, and proof positive that if we ever truly took the time to hear people’s full stories . . . we’d all walk around slack-jawed.

Never in history, until now, have we been able to hear from so many people around the world who have been brought back from clinical death. Modern medical resuscitation and digital communication have revealed a goldmine of intriguing near-death experiences (NDEs) that show us the character of God. John Burke has spent the last three decades studying the commonalities of more than 1000 NDEs. His investigative journey started as a skeptical agnostic, when his own father was dying from cancer.

Loneliness is the most dangerous and least talked-about epidemic—but Made for People offers a cure. Busyness, fear of vulnerability, and past pain often keep us from the deeper friendships we long for. Discover life-changing habits for friendship that will help you move out of a world of digital loneliness and into a life of being truly known by your friends. Justin Whitmel Earley guides us into a new understanding of why we need friendship to survive, shows us how we can leave behind loneliness, and provides practical habits that help build the life of deep connection we long for.

Where the Light Fell is a gripping family narrative set against a turbulent time in post-World War II America, shaped by the collision of Southern fundamentalism with the mounting pressures of the civil rights movement and '60s-era forces of social change. In piecing together his fragmented personal history and his search for redemption, Yancey gives testament to the enduring power of our hunger for truth and the possibility of faith rooted in grace instead of fear.

We've all had to make decisions in our lives about what to keep and what to toss—habits, attitudes, friends, even homes. In this new collection of essays, Elizabeth Passarella explores the ups and downs of moving forward—both emotionally and logistically—with her welcome candor and sense of humor that listeners have come to love. It Was an Ugly Couch Anyway will make listeners laugh, cry, and feel a little less alone as they navigate their own lives that are filled with uncertainty, change, and things beyond their control.

A unique and intimate exploration of how suffering, spiritual formation, and interpersonal neurobiology intersect, The Deepest Place by award-winning author Curt Thompson shows us how it's not through the absence of grief but in the presence of it that we discover the joy of vulnerable community and a deeper sense of God's abundant love.

Millions of people–looking to cheat on their partners–signed up for Ashley Madison in the early 2000s, seeking a private space to share their public desires. The promise of discretion was shattered in the summer of 2015, when anonymous hackers stole the company’s cache of user information and published it worldwide. The result? One of the most shocking data breaches of the internet age. Overnight, millions of unfaithful spouses had their real names, addresses and sexual preferences published online in a searchable database that anyone could browse.

In this award-winning Audible Studios production, Trevor Noah tells his wild coming-of-age tale during the twilight of apartheid in South Africa. It’s a story that begins with his mother throwing him from a moving van to save him from a potentially fatal dispute with gangsters, then follows the budding comedian’s path to self-discovery through episodes both poignant and comical.

One day, Lori Gottlieb is a therapist who helps patients in her Los Angeles practice. The next, a crisis causes her world to come crashing down. Enter Wendell, the quirky but seasoned therapist in whose of­fice she suddenly lands. With his balding head, cardigan, and khakis, he seems to have come straight from Therapist Central Casting. Yet he will turn out to be anything but.

One moonlit night, 14-year-old Reena Virk went to join friends at a party and never returned home. In this “tour de force of crime reportage” (Kirkus Reviews), acclaimed author Rebecca Godfrey takes us into the hidden world of the seven teenage girls - and boy - accused of a savage murder. As she follows the investigation and trials, Godfrey reveals the startling truth about the unlikely killers. Laced with lyricism and insight, Under the Bridge is an unforgettable look at a haunting modern tragedy.

Boaz Manor was a finance wunderkind. He started a hedge-fund company in Canada and later burst onto Wall Street with a product that could transform the crypto market. By all accounts, he was incredibly hard-working. Possibly brilliant. And...a shameless con man who ended up wanted in multiple countries. Chasing Boaz Manor explores Boaz’s schemes through the perspective of those he left in his wake.

When Michael Lewis first met him, Sam Bankman-Fried was the world’s youngest billionaire and crypto’s Gatsby. CEOs, celebrities, and leaders of small countries all vied for his time and cash after he catapulted, practically overnight, onto the Forbes billionaire list. Who was this rumpled guy in cargo shorts and limp white socks, whose eyes twitched across Zoom meetings as he played video games on the side? In Going Infinite Lewis sets out to answer this question, taking listeners into the mind of Bankman-Fried.

The Mongol army led by Genghis Khan subjugated more lands and people in 25 years than the Romans did in 400. In nearly every country the Mongols conquered, they brought an unprecedented rise in cultural communication, expanded trade, and a blossoming of civilization.

In weeks after the September 11 attacks, 18-year-old Mansoor Adayfi was kidnapped by Afghan militia and sold to US forces for bounty money. After months of interrogations, he was sent to the US military prison at Guantánamo Bay, Cuba, as one of its first prisoners. Like the nearly 800 other men imprisoned at Guantanamo, Adayfi didn’t know why he was imprisoned or for how long. He had never seen a skyscraper and couldn’t imagine what the Twin Towers of the World Trade Center looked like, much less how they were destroyed.

Experience a bold take on this classic autobiography as it’s performed by Oscar-nominated Laurence Fishburne. In this searing classic autobiography, originally published in 1965, Malcolm X, the Muslim leader, firebrand, and Black empowerment activist, tells the extraordinary story of his life and the growth of the Human Rights movement. His fascinating perspective on the lies and limitations of the American dream and the inherent racism in a society that denies its non-White citizens the opportunity to dream, gives extraordinary insight into the most urgent issues of our own time.

In the summer of 1985, a brilliant young British DNA scientist Helena Greenwood is found murdered in her front garden in a quiet suburb in California. The police believe they know the killer’s identity but there’s no evidence against him, and the only thing linking him to the crime is the fact he’d been charged with sexually assaulting Helena just a few months previously.

A sidesplitting, heartrending look at life—and death. This powerfully personal production, recorded live from the Minetta Lane Theatre, cuts through the platitudes, directly reaching out to anyone who has ever experienced loss—or will. So...everyone.

The inspiration for the major motion picture Priscilla directed by Sofia Coppola, this New York Times best seller reveals the intimate story of Elvis Presley and Priscilla Presley, told by the woman who lived it.

What would happen if a shy introvert lived like a gregarious extrovert for one year? If she knowingly and willingly put herself in perilous social situations that she’d normally avoid at all costs? Writer Jessica Pan intends to find out. With the help of various extrovert mentors, Jessica sets up a series of personal challenges (talk to strangers, perform stand-up comedy, host a dinner party, travel alone, make friends on the road, and much, much worse) to explore whether living like an extrovert can teach her lessons that might improve the quality of her life.

For his victims, for their families and for the investigators tasked with finding him, the senselessness and brutality of the Golden State Killer's acts were matched only by the powerlessness they felt at failing to uncover his identity. Then, on April 24, 2018, authorities arrested 72-year-old Joseph James DeAngelo at his home in Citrus Heights, Calif., based on DNA evidence linked to the crimes. Amazingly, it seemed, evil finally had a name. Please note: This work contains descriptions of violent crime and sexual assault and may not be suitable for all listeners.

Just before the small-time bootlegger Max Gerlach died, he tried to reveal his secret: he was the inspiration for the mysterious Jay Gatsby. It’s a nice story, but was he telling the truth? Veteran reporter Joe Nocera and producer Poppy Damon investigate this century-old literary mystery and uncover untold secrets about the Great American Novel.

Do you ever wonder how you woke up one day with all the responsibilities of a grown-up who secretly enjoys buying groceries in bulk, can no longer recognize the tween celebrities on the magazines at checkout, but is still surprised when a Starbucks barista calls you “ma’am” - because your inside self is frozen in time to about 20 years ago? So does Lisa-Jo Baker.

In a world where women can unfriend each other with the swipe of a finger, how do we find friendships that we can trust to last? Maybe by first becoming those kinds of lasting friends ourselves. As the community manager at the website incourage.me since 2010, Lisa-Jo Baker has had the chance to engage hundreds of conversations with women about friendship. She's learned that no one can make us quite as unsure about ourselves as another woman. And nothing can wound as deeply as unkind words from a friend.

Though it's easy for our overwhelming pain to cloud our view of reality, the truth is that, even though we can’t see it or feel it, God is at work in the darkness. Our Creator is in the business of bringing dead—and nearly dead—things to life. Even now, no matter how fresh your wounds might be, he invites you to unearth his hidden treasures in your hurting, to reframe your darkness as a sacred space in which the light of hope can shine most brilliantly. Come join Katherine Wolf as she vulnerably shares her own places of wounding and the life-changing insights she has found there.

Lilly Dancyger always thought of her closest friendships as great loves, complex and profound as any romance. When her beloved cousin was murdered just as both girls were entering adulthood, Dancyger’s devotion to the women in her life took on a new urgency—a desire to hold her friends close while she still could. In First Love, this urgency runs through a striking exploration of the bonds between women, from the intensity of adolescent best friendship and fluid sexuality to mothering and chosen family.

In this groundbreaking devotional book, Emotionally Healthy Spirituality Day by Day, Peter Scazzero introduces the ancient spiritual discipline of the Daily Office. The basic premise is simple: We need to stop intentionally, to be with God more than once a day so that we truly practice of the presence of God.

After years of biopsies, best-selling author Sarah Thornton made the difficult decision to have a double mastectomy. But, after her reconstructive surgery, she was perplexed: What had she lost? And gained? An experienced sleuth, she resolved to venture behind the scenes to uncover the social and cultural significance of breasts.

On this journey, Wilbert shares her story of alienation and disorientation after years of religious and political unrest in the evangelical church. In doing so, she looks to an unlikely place—the forest—to learn how to live and even thrive when everything seems to be falling apart.

Reuben, aged 38, was living in a home for adults with learning disabilities. He hadn’t established an independent life in the care system and was still struggling to accept that he had Down syndrome. Depressed and in a fog of antidepressants, he hadn’t spoken for over a year. The only way he expressed himself was by writing poems or drawing felt-tip scenes from his favorite musicals and films. Increasingly isolated, cut off from everyone and everything he loved, Reuben sent a text message: brother. do. you. love. me.

Do you beat yourself up when what you feel doesn’t align with the person you think you should be? You “should” be a good friend, but you feel hurt by past betrayals. You “should” be content, but you feel lonely or unfulfilled. You “should” have faith, but you feel discouraged by unanswered prayers. Instead of working through these inner tensions, you guilt-trip or gaslight yourself, which just leaves you feeling stuck, defeated, and trapped by conflicting feelings. But there is another path.

What do you do when you start to feel a shift and must decide if it’s time to make a change? When it comes to navigating big decisions about when to stay and go, how can we know for sure when the time is right? Though we enter and exit many rooms over the course of our life—jobs, relationships, communities, life stages—knowing how and when it’s time to leave is a decision that rarely has a clear answer.