The most popular episode of one of the most popular religion podcasts begins with a sound check: “Check one-two, we’re ready to go.”

That Sounds Fun podcast host Annie F. Downs and her guest, comedian John Crist, are recording in her father’s office, surrounded by boxes of tax returns, forced to share one microphone. For the next hour and a half, the two drift, as close friends would, from lighthearted jabs to the deep and serious, from their complicated dating lives as Christian celebrities to their respective rehab visits.

Lyndon LaRouche, an American political activist who pushed eclectic—and in his latter years mostly conspiratorial—views on American policies, died Tuesday, his political action committee confirmed. He was 96.

LaRouche grew up in Massachusetts, where he first joined the Socialist Workers Party in 1949. While teaching classes on Marxism to university students in New York in the late 1960s, he organized the National Caucus of Labor Committees (NCLC), a political activist network he hoped would control America’s trade unions and overthrow the government.

Rabbi Jeffrey Kahn and his wife Stephanie debated for years whether to open their medical marijuana dispensary on Saturday, the day Jews observe Sabbath. Some clients said it was the best day to visit, but still the Kahns hesitated.

This past April, nearly five years after opening, they decided to do it.

This summer, as millions of Americans slather on the SPF and race for the beach, many others will be stuck at home, feeling lonely and forgotten as they aimlessly scroll through your happy Instagram photos. Put “loneliness of summer” into a search engine and you’ll find articles defining summer as “a season of intense loneliness and isolation. All your friends are on vacation for weeks at a time. … Ecstatic Facebook updates about festivals, BBQ’s and exotic holiday destinations only seem to rub your nose in the fact that you’re stuck at home.”

Perhaps it’s a good thing The Greatest Showman embellishes its portrayal of Barnum & Bailey Circus, which shut down last May because of declining attendance. The musical, which tells the story of founder P.T. Barnum and his traveling show of oddities, may have the same glittery get-ups, midgets, and elephants, but the movie’s directors knew even the first freak show needs a boost of freakiness to work in 2017.

Almost half of all the women who abort each year have had prior abortions, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention and the Guttmacher Institute. This percentage hasn’t budged much for the last 20 years—and those repeat abortions are a huge challenge for the pro-life movement.

Cassi Pavlo knows that firsthand. She’s now pro-life and the director of patient resources at the Rockville Women’s Center in Maryland, but she had an abortion when she was 16 and two more abortions during the next four years.

In one corner sits Stedfast Baptist in Fort Worth, Texas, where Pastor Donnie Romero isn’t ashamed to use words this magazine won’t print to describe the homosexuals he’d rather not see. “I’m not gonna let any of these dirty [vulgarity] inside my church,” preaches Romero in a December 2014 sermon. “They are all pedophiles.”