Hanukkah, and a Rediscovery of Jewish Customs
Book designer Scott-Martin Kosofsky tells us what he learned about the meaning of custom, scripture, and prayer, as well as his insights into what he calls this surprising season of Hanukkah.

L'Arche: A Community of Brokenness and Beauty
During this "radio pilgrimage" into the world of L'Arche — communities formed around people with mental disabilities and others who share life with them — we discover a religious idea of difference as normal and imperfection as a source of strength.

Einstein and the Mind of God: Einstein's Ethics
String theorist S. James Gates, Jr. and science writer Thomas Levenson delve into Einstein's Jewish identity, his passionate engagement around issues of war and race, and modern extensions of his ethical and scientific perspectives.

Einstein and the Mind of God: Einstein's God
With physicists Freeman Dyson and Paul Davies, and through the words of Albert Einstein himself, we explore Einstein's way of thinking about mystery, eternity, and the mind of God.

A Midwife to the Dying
The Terri Schiavo case raised ethical and medical issues that remain with us today. But missing in that debate was a real attention to the quality and the meaning of death. Joan Halifax tells us what she's learned and how she lives differently after three decades accompanying others to the final boundary of human life.

At Table: The Meaning of Communion
Communion is a foundational ritual of Christian tradition. Its mystery and power are rooted in the human paradigm of sharing a meal. We'll explore a Protestant and a Catholic perspective on the origins and social relevance of this practice so important to Christians of every variety.

Studs Terkel on Work, Life, and Death
We explore Studs Terkel's accumulated wisdom, at 93, on the big questions of work and life, loss and death. A contented agnostic, he also has much to say about religion and his lifelong pursuit to understand "what makes people tick."

Religious Passion, Pluralism, and the Young
Al-Qaeda appeals powerfully, if destructively, to the need of young people to be important and make a difference in the world, says our guest Eboo Patel; it is the most effective "youth program" in the world today. Patel is a 30-year-old American Muslim, a former Rhodes Scholar, who is out to change that.

Living Reconciliation: Two Ecumenical Pioneers
Rev. Joan Brown Campbell and Bishop Thomas Hoyt Jr. both discovered ecumenism — the movement to reconcile Christian churches — during the Civil Rights era. They'll describe what they've learned about grappling with vexing clashes of difference, and why reconciliation among different Christians still matters in a multi-religious, post-Katrina world.

Truth and Reconciliation
As final reparations are being made to the victims of the brutal Apartheid regime in South Africa, host Krista Tippett speaks with two people who worked closely with South Africa's Truth and Reconciliation Commission. We'll explore the religious dimension of this extraordinary process.

Evangelicals Out of the Box
Stereotypes tell us this: Evangelical Christians are politically conservative, closed-minded, morally judgmental, and anti-science. We speak with Jamie Smith and Nancey Murphy, two creative members of a new generation of Evangelical thinkers and teachers, who defy stereotypes and reveal an evolving character for this vast movement that describes 40 percent of Americans.

Muslim Women and Other Mis- understandings
Is there such a thing as the Muslim world? Is the "veil" a sign of submission or courage? Is our Western concern about women in Islam really a concern for the well-being of women? Our guest, Egyptian-American Leila Ahmed, challenges current thought on these and other questions.

The Soul in Depression
We explore the spiritual aspect of clinical depression and its aftermath with author Andrew Solomon, Quaker author and educator Parker Palmer, and poet and psychologist Anita Barrows.

The Biology of the Spirit
We speak with a surgeon and author who reflects on life by way of elegant detail about physiological realities. He speaks about his sense of wonder at the body's capacity to sustain life and support our pursuits of order and meaning, and why he believes the spirit is an evolutionary accomplishment of the brain.

Surviving the Religion of Mao
We speak with Chinese-American author Anchee Min on what she learned about the human spirit in a forced labor camp in Communist China, and how she's found healing in America.

Seeing Poverty after Katrina
Hurricane Katrina brought urban poverty in America into all of our living rooms. In this program, David Hilfiker tells the story of how poverty and racial isolation came to be in cities across America. He lives creatively and realistically with questions many of us began to ask in the wake of Hurricane Katrina.

Conservative Politics and Moderate Religion
Statesman and Episcopal priest, John Danforth, has emerged as a cautionary Republican voice. He speaks about the values that have helped him navigate the line between private faith and public life and his current concerns about religion in his own party and in the world.

Marriage, Family, and Divorce
Rabbi Elliot Dorff and Christian theologian Luke Timothy Johnson help us explore the nuances of Jewish and Christian teachings and reveal the striking practicality of Jewish tradition across the ages and the surprising ambiguities of the New Testament.

The Spirituality of Addiction and Recovery
Due to sensitive material, this program is no longer available.

A Spirit of Defiance
In this close-up look at the human dynamics of the war on terror, Mariane Pearl speaks about her husband, journalist Daniel Pearl, who was murdered in Pakistan shortly after 9/11. She talks about Buddhism, her ethic of spiritual defiance, and her hopes for the future.

Listening Generously: The Healing Stories of Rachel Naomi Remen
Physician and author Rachel Naomi Remen speaks about the art of listening to patients, the difference between curing and healing, and how our losses actually help us to live.

Religion and Violence
Theologian Miroslav Volf grew up in war-torn Croatia, and knows Christianity's violent potential from experience. He's spent his life as a scholar and activist trying to make sense of that — asking what goes wrong when religion is used to justify violence, and how that can be made right again.

Progressive Islam in America
We speak with a spectrum of American Muslims who describe themselves as devout and progressive: Omid Safi, Kecia Ali, Precious Rasheeda Muhammad, and Michael Wolfe. In this country, they say, Islam has found a home like no other.

The Religious Roots of American Democracy
Philosopher Jacob Needleman explains the spiritual sensibility of America's founders. He says that they perceived democracy not simply as a set of external structures but as inward work on one's character, spirit, and intellect.

Room for J: One Family's Struggle with Schizophrenia
Joel Hanson has schizophrenia and believes he is God. Dan and Sue Hanson reflect on living with their son and how they have learned to see mental illness, normalcy, and religion differently.

Science and Hope
George Ellis, a Templeton prize-winning cosmologist and Quaker activist from South Africa, has worked on cutting-edge theories about the origins of the universe and the nature of space and time. He believes that there is a moral foundation to the cosmos just as there are physical laws that govern it.

In Praise of Play
If sport is an American religion, is that bad for us? What is the metaphysic of baseball? We speak with a theologian and sports fan, Joe Price, who has spent much of his career studying the religious character of rituals in sporting events and the spiritual significance of fans' attention to sports.

Faith Fired by Literature
Art, life, and religious faith converge in Paul Elie's unusual biography of the intersecting stories of four literary Americans of the 20th century: Trappist monk Thomas Merton, social activist Dorothy Day, and fiction writers Walker Percy and Flannery O'Connor.

A Midwife to the Dying
The Terri Schiavo case raised ethical and medical issues that remain with us today. But missing in that debate was a real attention to the quality and the meaning of death. Joan Halifax tells us what she's learned and how she lives differently after three decades accompanying others to the final boundary of human life.

Religion and Our World in Crisis
Rabbi Harold Schulweis and Islamic scholar Khaled Abou El Fadl break new ground in interfaith dialogue and understanding as they explore the dynamics of their own religious lives and the beauty and problems of their traditions.

A History of Doubt
Poet and historian Jennifer Michael Hecht has published a sweeping, lyrical history of the world's great doubters, and she shows that the act of questioning, as much as the act of believing, has changed the world.

Serving Country, Serving Allah
Major Abdul-Rasheed Muhammad, the first Muslim chaplain in the U.S. Army, reflects on living his faith and serving his country at this moment in history. He led Muslim prayers at the Pentagon in the weeks following 9/11 and has just returned from active duty in Iraq, where he helped renovate a mosque.

Globalization and the Rise of Religion
Experts once predicted that as the world grew more modern, religion would decline. Precisely the opposite has proven true. Two leading thinkers, Boston University sociologist Peter Berger and Harvard Business School's Rosabeth Moss Kanter, discuss why religion of all kinds is increasingly shaping discussions of world politics and the global economy and political order.

Approaching Prayer
Americans are religious and non-religious, devout and irreverent. But in astonishing numbers, across that spectrum, most of us say that we pray. We open up the subject of prayer and explore how it sounds and what it means in three different traditions and lives, with Hindu musician Anoushka Shankar, writer and translator Stephen Mitchell, and professor of church history Roberta Bondi.

The Tragedy of the Believer
Author and Nobel laureate, Elie Wiesel, helps us mark Yom HaShoah, or Holocaust Remembrance. A survivor of the Holocaust, in which he lost most of his family, he is a seminal chronicler of that event and its meaning. Wiesel shares some of his thoughts on modern-day Israel and Germany, his understanding of God, and his practice of prayer after the Holocaust.

The Buddha in the World
Krista Tippett speaks with Indian journalist Pankaj Mishra who pursued the history and meaning of the Buddha — not as a religious figure, but as a critical social thinker. In an intellectual and personal adventure, he pondered the Buddha's ideas in Kashmir and Afghanistan, Europe and post 9/11 America - and found a new way to critique and live in the modern world.

Exodus, Cargo of Hidden Stories
We explore the central narrative of the Jewish people that is remembered and retold in the eight days of Passover. Our guide through Exodus, Avivah Zornberg, is a teacher in Israel and the United Kingdom and one of the world's compelling interpreters of the Torah and rabbinic tradition. We find meaning in the story that Cecil B. DeMille and Disney never imagined.

Reflections on the Death Penalty in America
With Sr. Helen Prejean, Rabbi Elie Spitz, and Debbie Morris, we ask religious questions about one of America's most controversial public policies of life and death. We explore the meaning of the biblical teaching to take "an eye for an eye" and the human impulses towards revenge, forgiveness, and justice.

The Morality of Nature
From a non-theological angle, two scientists, Jelle de Boer and Ursula Goodenough, trace how natural disasters have sometimes fueled religious agendas and movements, and how strictly scientific perspectives can both challenge and illuminate religious questions.

The Religious Legacy of John Paul II
John Paul II's papacy was dramatic and historic on many fronts. We explore some of the critical religious issues of his 26 years as pontiff and discuss the great and contradictory impact he made on the Catholic Church in America and abroad.

The Jewish Roots of the Christian Story
New Testament writings about Jews may sound inflammatory in modern ears. Joel Marcus, a New Testament scholar at Duke Univesity with ties to both Judaism and Christianity, helps us put these writings in context and look for meaning in the Passion story that Hollywood and popular culture can't convey.

Brother Thây: A Radio Pilgrimage with Thich Nhat Hanh
Vietnamese Zen Buddhist monk and poet, Thich Nhat Hanh, was nominated for a Nobel Peace prize by Martin Luther King, and influenced the thought of Thomas Merton. He speaks about his teachings of engaged Buddhism, "being peace," and walking meditation.

Quarks and Creation
Scientist and theologian John Polkinghorne applies the insights of quantum physics to religious mysteries and the evolution debate.

A Theological Perspective on Cloning
Jewish bioethicist Laurie Zoloth examines the moral implications of human cloning and raises provocative questions about what's at stake for our society.

Studs Terkel on Work, Life, and Death
American legend Studs Terkel — radio personality, oral historian, and one of America's greatest raconteurs — discusses the themes of his remarkable book, Will the Circle Be Unbroken? Reflections on Death, Rebirth, and Hunger for a Faith. A self-professed agnostic in his ninth decade, Terkel reflects on the essence of work, life, and death.

Joe Carter and the Legacy of the African-American Spiritual
A genre born in slavery, the Negro spiritual has claimed a place at the heart of our nation's musical, and religious, life. Discover the beauty, lament, and hope of this singular, musical tradition.

Moral Man and Immoral Society: The Public Theology of Reinhold Niebuhr
Challenging Christians as often as consoling them, 20th century theologian Reinhold Niebuhr was an influential, boundary-crossing voice in American public life who was taken seriously by both religious and secular Americans. We describe Niebuhr's legacy and ask what insights he brings to the political and religious dynamics of the early 21st century.

A Return to the Mystery: Religion, Fantasy, and Entertainment
From the Harry Potter series to Mel Gibson's The Passion of the Christ, Americans are hungry for movies, fiction, and TV shows that explore spiritual — even theological — themes. We explore how religion and fantasy in modern media reflect, and may be shaping, the spiritual sensibility of younger Americans.

The Gods of Business
We speak with international business analyst Prabhu Guptara, who offers fascinating observations about how the world's many religions have shaped global business practices. Can we imagine a place for ethics - even religious values - in the global economy?

The Future of Moral Values
We look deeply into the connotations of "moral values" in our public life, for those who cited it on election day and those who vehemently rejected it in the weeks that followed. We ask about the real and enduring issues that lie just beneath the moral values debate, and why they matter for our future.

Gay Marriage: Broken or Blessed? Two Evangelical Views
We speak with two evangelical Christians who are struggling with the question of gay marriage in provocative and contrasting ways. They discuss the religious virtues at stake and share their concerns that our public conversation on this subject must move beyond judgment and name-calling.

The Spirit of Islam
We experience the religious thought and spiritual vitality of two Muslims — male and female — both American and both with roots in ancient Islamic cultural, intellectual, and spiritual traditions. They reveal how sound, music, and poetry offer a window into the subtleties and humanity of Islamic religious experience.