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 Send your thoughts (and prayers) to YeGodsPodcast@gmail.com 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. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

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?  Send your thoughts (and prayers) to YeGodsPodcast@gmail.com 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. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

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. Send your thoughts (and prayers) to YeGodsPodcast@gmail.com 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. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

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. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

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. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

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. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

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. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

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. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

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? Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices