Sponsor
Support Speaking of Faith with your Amazon.com purchases
Search Amazon.com:
Keywords:
  • News/Talk
  • Music
  • Entertainment
August 7, 2008
The word "Vodou" evokes images of sorcery and sticking pins into dolls. In fact, it's a living tradition wherever Haitians are found based on ancestral religions in Africa. We walk through this mysterious tradition — one with dramatic rituals of trances and dreaming and of belief in spirits, who speak through human beings, with both good and evil potential.

» Visit the Web site.
 
 
Featured Shows:
The Business of Doing Good
The Business of Doing Good
Jonathan Greenblatt is among a new generation of entrepreneurs who want to lead a fundamental shift in corporate culture as well as philanthropy — a merger between making a profit and doing good. We explore his way of seeing the world and his economics of "ethical brand architecture" and "fiercely pragmatic idealism."
Play, Spirit, and Character
Play, Spirit, and Character
Stuart Brown, a physician and director of the National Institute for Play, says that pleasurable, purposeless activity prevents violence and promotes trust, empathy, and adaptability to life's complication. He promotes cutting-edge science on human play, and draws on a rich universe of study of intelligent social animals.
Recovering Chinese Religiosities.
Recovering Chinese Religiosities
Put the words "religion" and "China" in a sentence together, and Western imaginations may go to indifference at best, to brutal repression at worst. Anthropologist and filmmaker Mayfair Yang says that the upheavals of the 20th Century created an amnesia — in the West as in China itself — about this rich, pluralistic spiritual inheritance.
 
Joe Carter and the Legacy of the African-American Spiritual.
Joe Carter and the Legacy of the African-American Spiritual
We celebrate the life of Joe Carter, who explored the meaning of the Negro spiritual in word and song — through its hidden meanings, as well as its beauty, lament, and hope.
The Ethics of Eating
The Ethics of Eating
Barbara Kingsolver describes an adventure her family undertook to spend one year eating primarily what they could grow or raise themselves. As a citizen and mother more than an expert, she turned her life towards questions many of us are asking. Food, she says, is a "rare moral arena" in which the ethical choice is often the pleasurable choice.
Presence in the Wild
Presence in the Wild
A Unitarian Universalist minister and author, Kate Braestrup is called in when children disappear in the woods or when snowmobilers disappear under the ice. She likes to say that she is "religious but not spiritual" — a doer whose sense of God emerges from what happens between and among people.
Krista's New Book:

Speaking of Faith: Why Religion Matters--and How to Talk About It by Krista TippettFree Six-Week Discussion Outline (PDF)
Religion matters. But how do we talk about it with our friends and colleagues? Use this outline as a guide for your book club, congregation, or religious education group.

And, if you don't have the book yet, you can get a 30% discount through Pretty Good Goods. The paperback now has a revised introduction, reader's guide, and helpful index.

Every purchase helps support this program.

SOF on iTunes U:

SOF on iTunes UTake public radio and go where curiosity leads you. Our programs are now available on iTunes U — award-winning, thought-provoking journalism for educators, classrooms, and students of life.

Visit American Public Media's iTunes U site or find out more about Speaking of Faith's iTunes U offerings.

Sponsors:

Lilly Endowment Inc.
The Ford Foundation

The Henry Luce Foundation


The George Family Foundation

Upcoming Shows:

The Power of Eckhart Tolle's Now (August 14)
Krista creates a certain kind of space in her interviews, and this conversation is no exception. Tolle shares his youthful experience of depression and despair — suffering that led him to his own spiritual breakthrough, and ultimately, freedom and peace of mind. He also explicates his view of what he calls "the pain body" — the accumulated emotional pain that may influence us and our relationships in negative ways. And Tolle talks about spirit and God, and what those concepts mean to him.

Share Your Story:

"The Touch of Alzheimer's Disease"
The average lifespan of men and women is on the rise. And, with it, an increasing number of people are suffering from Alzheimer's disease or taking care of someone with Alzheimer's.

Each person with this illness has a distinct experience and a distinct story, a story often carried in memory by a caregiver or loved one. If your life has been touched by Alzheimer's, we'd like to hear your story. How has this disease changed the way you think about love, memory, personality and humanity?

» Share your story and your images with us.

Blog: SOF Observed

SOF Observed
What we've blogged about in the past week:

» Quoting Eckhart Tolle
Pain bodies and Reinhold Niebuhr converge, here and now.

» Leonard Cohen in a 19th-Century Vernacular
Stand in a square. Propose a song. Tune up and find a pitch. Sing communally. Now in 35 states.

» The Personal Impact of Baghdad High
Finding a new way to pay attention to the Iraq War, through the humanity of teenagers.

» A Quote from Bill Gates
On the heels of last week's show...

» Being Here Now, Again
Our upcoming program with Eckhart Tolle inspired our managing producer to remember the words of Ram Dass, and a few others.

SoundSeen:
Narrated Slideshow

» "Vodou Brooklyn"
Photographer Stephanie Keith met a Vodou priest at a Buddhist interfaith event. He invited her to photograph and experience the religious world of his Haitian culture. More than ten ceremonies later, she offers her images and reflections on these late-night rituals.

Buy CDs and Transcripts:

Join the Conversation
Recent rebroadcasts of "The Spirituality of Parenting" and "Brother Thay: A Radio Pilgrimage with Thich Nhat Hanh" are springboards, listeners tell us, for new conversations. But how do they talk about it outside the radio hour?

We've created a series of guides developed for 13 SOF programs to help facilitate discussion within families or among communities. Purchase these resources and learn new ways to speak together.

SOF Podcast:

Listen to Krista and her guests on Speaking of Faith at any time and any place you like. Just subscribe to the free SOF Podcast. Then, every Thursday you'll be able to automatically download an mp3 of the latest program to your computer — all for no charge.

SOF E-mail Newsletter:

SOF E-mail NewsletterSign up for our free newsletter where you can read Krista's thoughts on each week's program. Plus, you'll receive exclusive extras such as downloadable files, transcripts, and exclusive interviews not heard on the radio.