Richard Schoch returns to discuss How Sondheim Can Change Your Life, his latest book that offers new insights into the work of Stephen Sondheim, how it was created, how it’s affected audiences for over 60 years, and – yes – what life lessons can be gleaned from his shows. Richard reveals some fascinating inside publishing baseball; reasons for the addition of the song “Something Just Broke” in Assassins; academic backup from Mandy Patinkin; how he makes a close reading of the text so personal and readable; and a surprisingly cogent answer to the facile question of whether Sondheim is our modern Shakespeare. (Length 29:49)

Actor/comedian Mike McShane (Robin Hood: Prince of Thieves, Whose Line Is It, Anyway?) is playing Ebenezer Scrooge in A Red Carol, a new adaptation of A Christmas Carol for the legendary San Francisco Mime Troupe. Mike discusses how this "activist adaptation" differs from other takes on the Dickens classic; how he’s able to combine serious dramatic acting with, in his words, "as cheap comedy as you can get this year” and how a clown can play Hamlet easier than a proper actor can play a clown; the disconnect between Christmas Carol audiences in the theater and the same people passing unhoused people on the street; how two veterans of West End Shakespeare are both playing Scrooge for American theater institutions in San Francisco and Chicago; how Alan Rickman came up with his great lines in Robin Hood: Prince of Thieves; and the glory of creating politically activist theater that’s also ridiculously funny and entertaining. (Length 21:21)

Humorist and novelist James Finn Garner returns to discuss his New York Times bestselling collection Politically Correct Holiday Stories and how the holidays represent a deeply personal literary tradition. Jim shares how challenging it was to walk that satirical line between poking fun at holiday cant while still embracing genuine sentiment; how a holiday story was his first published work; how bedtime stories were easier to satirize because everything’s so black and white; how play can be the best form of celebration; how he wants to shift holiday paradigms and sit down to a feast of mutual delusions; and the thing that made a hard-boiled humorist go all soft and squishy inside. (Length 19:22)