WESTMONT, IL—InterVarsity Press is pleased to announce that sociologist and pop-culture expert Nancy Wang Yuen will return as host of the fourth season of The Disrupters podcast. The first episode, featuring New York Times bestselling author Jemar Tisby, will release on October 31.
Yuen is the author of Reel Inequality: Hollywood Actors and Racism and coeditor of Power Women: Stories of Motherhood, Faith, and the Academy. She has appeared on PBS, NPR, MSNBC, BBC World, and Dr. Phil. She is a guest writer at CNN, Elle, Los Angeles Times, NBC, Newsweek, and Vanity Fair.
The first two seasons of The Disrupters were hosted by Esau McCaulley, author of Reading While Black: African American Biblical Interpretation as an Exercise in Hope, associate professor of New Testament at Wheaton College, and a contributing opinion writer for the New York Times. Interviews with guests such as Beth Moore, Sho Baraka, Tish Harrison Warren, Dominique Gilliard, and others focused on a specific disruption—a break, interruption, or disturbance—in the church.
With the return of Yuen for season four of The Disrupters, IVP benefits from a successful host series pivot. In season three, Yuen shifted focus from a negative disruption of the evangelical church to a more positive posture of disruption of the secular workplace. By speaking with guests who were actively living out their faith in places of cultural importance, this season demonstrated how faith can be lived out in peaceable but nonetheless disruptive ways to improve the world.
Season three asked the question, Is it possible to be a faithful Christian in the face of overwhelming problems such as racism and sexism within the US church?
Season four follows up an affirmative answer with a simple follow-up question: How? Through both her life experiences and interviews, Yuen will explore the nature of Christian spirituality in the real world. Guests will include people with experience, insights, and advice in doing just that.
Yuen said, “This season, I invite listeners to join me on my spiritual journey toward liberation. Each week, a new guest will help me process the foibles of evangelicalism, teach me how to heal from spiritual trauma, and share fresh new ways of doing faith.”
Confirmed guests for season four of The Disrupters include the following:
October 31
Jemar Tisby is the author of the New York Times bestselling book The Color of Compromise: The Truth about the American Church’s Complicity in Racism. His writing has been featured on CNN, the Washington Post, The Atlantic, and the New York Times. He is the founder and president of The Witness: A Black Christian Collective, and the cohost of the Pass the Mic podcast.
November 7
Jon Ward is chief national correspondent at Yahoo News, author of Testimony and Camelot’s End, and host of The Long Game podcast.
November 14
Michael Te Pei Chang is a former professional tennis player and coach. He was the youngest man in history to win a singles major, winning the 1989 French Open at age seventeen. Chang won a total of thirty-four top-level professional singles titles and reached a career-best ranking of number two in the world in 1996. Chang was inducted into the International Tennis Hall of Fame in 2008. He is also the author of Holding Serve: Persevering On and Off the Court.
November 21
Christina Barland Edmondson is the cohost of the Truth’s Table podcast and Get in the Word with Truth’s Table, and is the coauthor of Faithful Antiracism: Moving Past Talk to Systemic Change. Edmondson is also a certified cultural intelligence facilitator, public speaker, mental health therapist, and consultant in the areas of ethics, equity, and Christian leadership development.
This season will also include a four-part Christmas miniseries releasing on November 28, December 5, 12, and 19. The series will feature Yuen and Tisby, who will be discussing the Christmas-Industrial Complex.
The Disrupters podcast will be available through Apple Podcasts, Spotify, and other major podcast distributors. For a sneak peek, check out the trailer for the fourth season of The Disrupters at ivpress.com/disrupters.
