Approaching Prayer
We explore creative and generous approaches to prayer in three very different lives: Hindu chant with musician Anoushka Shankar; poetry and "non-religious" prayer with translator Stephen Mitchell; and theologian Roberta Bondi on learning to pray with the Desert Fathers and Mothers. Also, a reflection on prayer by poet and memoirist Patricia Hampl.

Planting the Future
For the holiday season, a story of human activism, courage and hope. Krista speaks with Kenyan environmentalist and 2004 Nobel Peace Prize Laureate Wangari Maathai. Sitting in her remarkable presence, it is not hard to imagine that this woman stood up to a dictator and won, and that she has fought off encroaching desert by planting 30 million trees. Maathai speaks about the global balance of human and natural resources, and she shares her thoughts on where God resides.

No More Taking Sides: An Israeli-Palestinian Story
Robi Damelin lost her son David to a Palestinian sniper. Ali Abu Awwad lost his older brother Yousef to an Israeli soldier. But, instead of clinging to traditional ideologies and turning their pain into more violence, they've decided to understand the other side — Israeli and Palestinian — by sharing their pain and their humanity. They tell of a gathering network of survivors who share their grief, their stories of loved ones, and their ideas for lasting peace. They don't want to be right; they want to be honest.

Muslim Women
and Other Misunderstandings
Is our Western concern about women in Islam really a concern for the well-being of women? Is the veil a symptom of their problems, or ours? Our guest Leila Ahmed provides essential background and challenges Western thinking on these and other questions.

Money and Moral Balance
The sales are starting, the stores are open late, and many of us are gearing up to spend more money than we actually have in a holiday season with deep roots in religion. With family financial advisor Nathan Dungan, we'll explore turmoil many of us experience with money in our day-to-day lives — and how we might work towards a moral and practical balance for ourselves and the next generation.

The Spirituality of Parenting
"We want our children to be gracious and grateful, we want them to have courage in difficult times, we want them to have a sense of joy and purpose. That's what it means to nurture their spiritual life." For Thanksgiving, we bring back our conversation with Rabbi Sandy Sasso, who helps children and adults of many backgrounds discuss religion and ethics together.

The Soul in Depression
Nearly ten million Americans are diagnosed with clinical depression. As a society, we're increasingly aware of the many faces of depression, and we've become conversant in the language of psychological analysis of depression and medical treatment for it. But there is a growing body of literature by people who have struggled with depression and found it to be a lesson in the nature of the human soul. Krista engages some of these voices experiencing a range of varieties of depression and religious perspective.

The Heart's Reason: Hinduism and Science
U.S. culture's clash between religion and science is almost exclusively driven by Christian instincts and arguments. Hindu physicist V.V. Raman offers another view of religion, the universe, and the complementarity of the questions of science and faith.

America's Changing Religious Landscape: A Conversation with Martin Marty
A great public theologian and historian, Martin Marty offers personal and historical perspective on religion in modern life including the nature of fundamentalism and the decline of America's mainline Protestant majority as Evangelical Christianity gains in influence.

The Religious Roots of American Democracy
Philosopher Jacob Needleman speaks on the spiritual and moral ideals of the American founders — and how these ideals resonate in our culture today. Democracy, Needleman says, is inner work, not just a set of outward structures.

A Spirit of Defiance
The kidnapping and murder of The Wall Street Journal correspondent Daniel Pearl continue to capture people's attention: HBO is airing a documentary about Pearl and his convicted murder, and a feature film based on Mariane Pearl's story is in production with actress Angelina Jolie playing the lead. Krista speaks with Mariane Pearl about her husband, about Buddhism and her ethic of spiritual defiance, and her hopes for the future.

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; religious movements are surging and driving alternative globalizations across the world. Boston University sociologist, Peter Berger, and Harvard business professor, Rosabeth Moss Kanter, explore why religion of all kinds is shaping the global economy and political order.

The Body's Grace: Matthew Sanford's Story
An unusual take on the mind-body connection with author and yoga teacher Matthew Sanford. He's been a paraplegic since the age of 13. He shares his wisdom for us all on knowing the strength and grace of our bodies even in the face of illness, aging, and death.

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

Listening Generously: The Medicine of Rachel Naomi Remen
Physician and author Rachel Naomi Remen intertwines stories from life and her practice of oncology. She gives perspective on the core human experiences of loss and disappointment and the achievable work of healing and repair. How we approach this, she says, profoundly shapes our individual lives and that of our society.

Conservative Politics and Moderate Religion
Politics driven by a religious agenda, Sen. John Danforth says, is true neither to his understanding of Christian faith nor to the traditional values of the Republican Party. This veteran politician 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.

Hearing Muslim Voices Since 9/11
During the past five years, Muslim guests on SOF have conveyed a thoughtful, questing, diverse, and compelling faith. Step back with us and hear these voices from the traditional and evolving center of Islam. And, Krista speaks with Seyyed Hossein Nasr, an esteemed Muslim scholar who brings a broad religious and historical perspective to hard questions about Islam and the West that have lingered uncomfortably in American life since 9/11.

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; he believes it is the most effective "youth program" in the world today. Eboo Patel is a 30-year-old American Muslim, a former Rhodes Scholar, who is out to change that.

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

The Freelance Monotheism of Karen Armstrong
Armstrong, a renowned thinker on the role of religion in the modern world, reflects on the poetry of theology and her life as a freelance monotheist.

Surviving the Religion of Mao
Chinese-American author Anchee Min discusses what she learned about the human spirit in a forced labor camp in Mao's China, and how she's found healing in America. Min is the author of several books including her acclaimed memoir of surviving China's cultural revolution, Red Azalea, and her historical novel about the last days of imperial China, Empress Orchid.

Gay Marriage: Broken or Blessed? Two Evangelical Views
Our culture's acrimonious debate on the morality of gay marriage has been framed in religious — largely conservative Christian — terms. With Richard Mouw and Virginia Ramey Mollenkott, we go behind the rhetoric to explore the human confusion, hopes, and fears this subject arouses. We'll name hard questions that these religious people on both sides of the issue are asking themselves, and that they would like to ask of others.

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

Evolution and Wonder: Understanding Charles Darwin
From the Scopes Trial to school board controversies in our day, Charles Darwin and his theory of evolution are portrayed as a refutal of the very idea of God. With Darwin biographer James Moore, we learn about the world in which Darwin formulated his ideas and how he took religion seriously.

The Tragedy of the Believer
With Nobel Laureate Elie Wiesel, we explore the literary and religious journey that unfolded after Night, his memoir of the Holocaust that has climbed to bestseller lists five decades after its publication. We hear passages of his varied writings of the last 50 years. And, we explore his thoughts on God and evil, youth in Jerusalem and Berlin, and prayer after the Holocaust.

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 with celebrated performer Joe Carter.

Obedience and Action
In over 50 years as a Benedictine nun, Sister Joan Chittister has emerged as a powerful and uncomfortable voice in Roman Catholicism and in global politics. If women were ordained in the Catholic Church in our lifetime, some say, Joan Chittister would be the first female bishop.

Heart and Soul: The Integrative Medicine of Dr. Mehmet Oz
The word "healing" means "to make whole." But historically, in a field like cardiology, Western medicine has taken a divided view of human health. It has stressed medical treatment of biological ailments. Cardiovascular surgeon Mehmet Oz speaks about the intersection of Western medicine, human spirituality, and the physiology of the human heart.

The Spirituality of Parenting
How to nurture the spiritual and moral awareness of the children in our lives? Rabbi Sandy Sasso has written books that help children and adults of many backgrounds discuss religion and ethics together. The spiritual life, she says, begins not in abstractions, but in concrete everyday experiences. And children need our questions as much as our answers.

A History of Doubt
Poet and historian Jennifer Michael Hecht says that as a scholar she always noticed the "shadow history" of doubt out of the corner of her eye. She shows how non-belief, skepticism, and doubt have paralleled and at times shaped the world's great religious and secular belief systems. She suggests that only in modern time has doubt been narrowly equated with a complete rejection of faith, or a broader sense of mystery.

Deciphering the Da Vinci Code
New Testament scholars, Luke Timothy Johnson and Bernadette Brooten, give us the basic picture of what really happened in the fluid early years of Christianity. Why were some of the books early Christians read included in the Bible while others were left out? How did it happen that modern Christians inherited an erroneous view of women in the early Church, including Mary Magdalene?

The Soul of War
For Memorial Day, Iraq veteran, Chaplain Major John Morris, speaks about the bruising imprint of war on a soldier's spirit, even in the cause of right; and ways for civilian society to reckon with this as military men and women return home.

The Need for Creeds
Jaroslav Pelikan was one of this country's greatest religious scholars. In his 80th year, he published the largest collection in modern times of Christian creeds from across the globe. He'll discuss why creeds are so difficult for modern people and why, in his view, human beings will always need them.

The Evolution of American Evangelicalism
Richard Cizik of the National Association of Evangelicals speaks about his own 'conversion' to the science of climate change, and why on many practical fronts American evangelicals are not who soundbites suggest they are.

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.

Spiritual Tidal Wave: The Origins and Impact of Pentecostalism
The birth of the Pentecostal movement began 100 years ago on Azusa Street in Los Angeles. We'll cover this global gathering and revival that is reshaping Christianity, culture, and politics worldwide.

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

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.

Planting the Future
A 2004 Nobel Peace Prize recipient and native Kenyan, Wangari Maathai was the first African woman to win the award. She is founder of the Green Belt Movement — a grassroots organization that empowers African women to improve their lives and conserve the environment through planting trees.

Pagans Ancient and Modern
Adrian Ivakhiv is an environmentalist who pursued the ecological impulse of Paganism from its ancient roots to its modern revival in Europe and North America. We hear his observations about the spirit of Paganism and its influence on everyday Western culture — and even on old-time religion.

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.

Two Narratives, Reflections on the Israeli-Palestinian Present (part 2)
Mohammed Abu-Nimer and Sami Adwan, two Muslim Palestinians, talk about the intersection of the spiritual and the political in their lives in the West Bank and from within Israel itself.

Two Narratives, Reflections on the Israeli-Palestinian Present (part 1)
We seek to understand the difficulty of peace in a land that its inhabitants, on both sides of conflict, consider holy. We listen to journalist Yossi Klein Halevi's perceptions and perspectives as an Israeli Jew.

Brother Thay: A Radio Pilgrimage with Thich Nhat Hanh
With this Zen master, poet, and teacher admired by people of many faiths and no faith at all, we explore practical spiritual insights and tools for living in a world of anger and violence.

The Gods of Business
As the Enron trial unfolds in Houston, we explore how religious traditions influence — or fail to influence — corporate morality, from the office to macroeconomics. Why is it easy to be set private ethics aside in the marketplace, and what is the global human cost of that disconnect?

The Face of the Prophet: Cartoons and Chasm
Vincent Cornell, an American Muslim and religious scholar, helps untangle the knot of violent and bewildered reactions to the Danish cartoons depicting the Prophet Muhammad. Ferment and crisis in the faith he loves, Cornell says, has been building for 300 years.

Sacred Wilderness, An African Story
Isabel Mukonyora has followed and studied a religious movement of her Shona people, the Masowe Apostles, that embraces Christian tradition while addressing the drama of African life and history. Through her stories we explore modern African spirituality, diaspora, and finding meaning, as Mukonyora says, "in the margins."

Ethics and the Will of God: The Legacy of Dietrich Bonhoeffer
The German theologian wrestled with religious principles in the thick of political and personal crisis during Hitler's regime. With filmmaker Martin Doblmeier, we explore Bonhoeffer's religious creativity and the present-day resonance of his ideas.

The Buddha in the World
Indian journalist Pankaj Mishra 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.

Globalizing the Sacred
U.S. involvement in Latin America has long had a boomerang effect in terms of politics, trade, and immigration to this country. Manuel Vasquez, a Salvadoran-American scholar of religion, believes that in the global age, religious dynamics back and forth across the Americas may have equally dramatic consequences. We explore how religion will shape that development and how religion itself might be changed.

Stress and the Balance Within
The American experience of stress has spawned a multi-billion dollar self-help industry. Doctor Esther Sternberg, a biomedical researcher and neural-immune expert, is wary of that. But she says that until very recently, modern science did not have the tools or the inclination to take emotional stress seriously. She shares fascinating new scientific insight into the molecular level of the mind-body connection.

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 with celebrated performer Joe Carter.