How believing in the end of the world can be the best thing that ever happens to you. Writer Sarah Vowell talks about three end-of-the-world groups she comes to know. (16 minutes)
Song:
“Modern World” by The Modern Lovers
More in Religion
Act Two: Wedding Crasher
Abby Stein’s youngest sister got married last month, the last of 13 kids in their family.
Act Three: Seance Fiction
In the 1920s, at the height of the Spiritualism movement, a friendship blossomed between two men with opposing views on the topic: Harry Houdini and Sir Arthur Conan Doyle.
Act Two: Jews for Jesus, for Just One Day
Alex Edelman grew up in an Orthodox Jewish household in Boston.
More by Sarah Vowell
Act One
Sarah Vowell and her twin sister, Amy, retrace the Trail of Tears. They visit the town in Georgia that was the capital of the Cherokee Nation before the Cherokee were expelled. They enjoy a tourist trap hotel in Chattanooga. They go to Ross's Landing, the embarkment point for the water route of the Trail of Tears. (27 minutes)
Act Two
Sarah Vowell's story continues. She and Amy visit the home of President Andrew Jackson, the villain in the Trail of Tears drama. They drive west to Cherokee graves in Kentucky and a commemorative marker that's been placed, oddly, at an Arkansas high school. They head into Oklahoma, where the Cherokee settled and where they were born. Sarah talks with her oldest living relative about the Trail. And she and Amy end their trip at the place where they first heard about the Trail of Tears: an amphitheater where every summer, they saw a dramatic two hour recreation of the Trail. (23 minutes)
Act Two: One Sinatra Fan ... Versus All Of Network TV.
Before Sinatra died, Sarah Vowell appeared on this radio program and made a prediction about how network news would cover Sinatra's death ... and she made a simple plea.