Religion

Aziz Ansari is in the midst of a whirlwind year. In January, the comic hosted Saturday Night Live the day after President Trump's inauguration — an experience he describes as "one of the most watched stand-up sets I'll ever do in my life, if not the most."

One morning in early March, I got into my car and drove to see the Mount Carmel Jewish Cemetery in Northeast Philadelphia. The graveyard is 20 minutes from my house. It's filled with the remains of Jewish Philadelphians, the majority of them from the 19th century.

New Yorker staff writer Elif Batuman's new novel, The Idiot, follows a young woman's first year at Harvard University, and how she finds love through email.

Jay Bakker is the son of televangelists Jim and Tammy Faye Bakker. In 1989 his father, Jimmy, was convicted of defrauding his followers at the Praise The Lord ministry, and sent to prison. Then his parents divorced. Bakker was 13 years old at the time. In his new memoir, Son of a Preacher Man: My Search for Grace in the Shadows, (Harper), he writes of returning to faith after a long period of alcoholism and disillusionment. Jay Bakker now heads his own ministry, Revolution, in Atlanta, ministering to skateboarders, punk rockers, and hippies, and other neglected kids.

Imam Khalid Latif is one of the people profiled in The Secret Life of Muslims, a digital series about Islamophobia. He is also the first Muslim chaplain at New York University.

Comic Zahra Noorbakhsh on why she finds herself wanting to connect with her religious traditions. She co-hosts the podcast Good Muslim Bad Muslim.

Smith, who died on Friday, was a Methodist minister who traveled the world studying Christianity, Judaism, Islam, Buddhism, Confucianism, Hinduism and other religions. Originally broadcast in 1996.

Omar Saif Ghobash was 6 when an assassin killed his father, who was a diplomat from the United Arab Emirates. His new book is a collection of letters to his sons, urging them to reject extremism.

n her new memoir, On Living, Kerry Egan describes her hospice work and the impact it's had on her own life. She says that despite the sadness and loss that is implicit in her work, there is also great joy.

Author Frederick Clarkson wrote the book Eternal Hostility: The Struggle Between Theocracy And Democracy, on the growing religious movement to influence government. Clarkson has written articles on the religious right's plans to take over the Republican Party, and how elements of the right encouraged citizen militias.