March 2010
37 posts
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Longing for Passovers and Memories Missed: Pesach...
by Mary Moos, guest contributor
At Monday night’s Passover Seder we used hard-covered, bound copies of a Haggadah with a copyright date of 1923. The first user of the book — a relative or friend of our host family — had carefully inscribed his name on the inside cover.
In the many years since my conversion from Roman Catholicism to Judaism, I’ve used a variety of Haggadot but none...
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"Pentecostal Scholars Call for Academic Freedom" →
by Trent Gilliss, senior editor
The ELCA’s (Evangelical Lutheran Church in America) vote lifting its ban on openly gay and lesbian clergy, has garnered quite a bit of media attention during the past year. While we here at SOF dive into a project culling out the many personal perspectives on this complex issue, homosexuality and its place within civic and religious life is serving as an...
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“The silence of the Vatican is contempt. Its failure to fully examine its central...”
– —Martin Kimani, from his scathing critique of the Catholic Church in today’s Cif section of The Guardian titled “For Rwandans, the Pope’s Apology Must Be Unbearable.”
Trent Gilliss, online editor
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Science That Liberates Us from Reductive Analyses
Krista Tippett, host
We originally produced “Getting Revenge and Forgiveness” in the bitter midst of the 2008 election season. And when we first decided on the current program schedule just weeks ago, we had no idea that this show would land in another dramatic moment of recriminatory public emotion, over health care and other issues, in an already charged political climate.
Now, as...
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"Super Size Me: How the Last Supper Became a... →
by Trent Gilliss, online editor
The science editor of The Independent reports on a scientific study finding that “the artistic renditions of the Last Supper over the past thousand years show that the size of the plates and the amount of food being eaten by Jesus Christ and his disciples have grown significantly over the centuries.”
Oh, the Cornell University group found that in the...
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Honoring Passover and Evolving Tradition Shubha...
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Romero Inspires "An Unlikely Range of People"
Colleen Scheck, senior producer
“Let no one be offended because we use the divine words read at our mass to shed light on the social, political and economic situation of our people.”
These are the opening lines of the last sermon given by Archbishop Oscar Romero before his assassination 30 years ago today. This past weekend over 10,000 Catholics participated in a commemorative...
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"Sikh Army Captain Graduates" →
Shubha Bala, associate producer
For the first time since 1984, a Sikh has graduated as an officer in the U.S. Army. Sikhs believe that “the unshorn hair wrapped in a turban and beard are required to keep adherents in the natural state in which God made them.” Captain Tejdeep Singh Rattan received an exception that allows him to keep his turban and beard, the first time such an...
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“Going against your core values and losing sight of them. I quit meditating. I...”
– —Professional golfer Tiger Woods offered this response to Kelly Tilghman’s first question about his loss of being in control.
One of yesterday’s two big interviews in which Woods answered questions for the first time since his November 27, 2009 crash, he also was asked about the...
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Mapping Religion in Online Realms (or Maps of...
Trent Gilliss, online editor
Over at Floatingsheep, Mark Graham has been rendering some superb data sets about religion as it manifests itself in various ways on the Internet. There’s some good learning to be had but they are also a lot of fun so I’m taking it a bit further by pulling maps from two discrete entries and pairing them for a bit of play.
First, my sub-dollar 2-liter...
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A Senator's "Conscience Picture"
Trent Gilliss, online editor
NYT’s Lens blog posted a fun entry about Senator Patrick Leahy’s personal photography as he operates from a unique vantage point within the hallowed halls and meeting rooms of Washington D.C. As interesting as the many photos of presidents and legislators are, it’s this “conscience picture” — a portrait he took of an El Salvadoran man in...
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If Jesus Wore a T-shirt
David Black, guest contributor
I almost never buy T-shirts. When my son Josh was younger and going through that gotta-have-that-shirt stage, he bought enough for a regiment: sports shirts, camp shirts, school shirts, fund-raiser shirts — whatever was on the market. And when he began to outgrow the T-shirt phase, I inherited more hand-me-downs than a man could use. I kept only enough to handle...
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"His Next Act: Driving Out Apartheid’s Ghost" →
Shubha Bala, associate producer
Krista’s recent interview with Desmond Tutu (listen for it at the end of April) has us all contemplative about the current state of South Africa. The New York Times recently published this article about renowned playwright Athol Fugard:
“The hope is that the Fugard and its resident acting ensemble will attract people of all races to mingle on its...
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Thinking of Anne Lamott As We Create a New Show...
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“Everyone talks about how Johnny has fallen from grace. In reality, he’s...”
– —Rielle Hunter, referring to former senator and presidential candidate John Edwards in her candid and somewhat befuddling interview with Lisa DePaulo in April’s GQ magazine.
Trent Gilliss, online editor
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What's Your Hindu Star Birthday?
Shubha Bala, associate producer
A couple of weeks before my birthday, my mom sent me an e-mail reminding me when my “star birthday” was — March 14th, by the way — and saying she was donating to a local temple on that day so they can provide free food for the congregation. Although I’ve always been told when my star birthday was, this was the first time I went on a quest to find...
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Producing a "LIVE" Event
Colleen Scheck, senior producer
We were pleased to see The Daily Beast featured the New York Public Library’s backstage clip of their event with Krista last week. It’s a short snippet, and, with a bit of prime-time drama-like production, it effectively captures the substance and tenor of the event.
We’d been in touch with Paul Holdengräber and Meg Stemmler at the NYPL for...
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Behind the Scenes: Editing for Story Nancy...
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Einstein and Buddhism, The Elusive Quote
Shubha Bala, associate producer
A listener, Russell, e-mailed the other day saying he had been on his own sleuthing expedition expedition to find the original source of an Einstein quote about Buddhism being the cosmic religion of the future. It was referenced in the Particulars section of our show “The Buddha in the World.” He had come up empty-handed and wrote to ask if we knew...
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The Plight of the "Distant Stranger"
Trent Gilliss, online editor
Many of us have read Nick Kristof’s columns over the years. And, perhaps, like me, you’ve been moved by his words, shaken by his stories, struck dumb with melancholy and grief. But, inevitably, the “plight of the ‘distant stranger’” assumes its role in feeling the events happening over there.
The HBO documentary, Reporter,...
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WatchThe Ramayana, Illustrated Shubha Bala, associate producer
Sanjay Patel, supervising animator at Pixar, has come out with his second illustrated book on Hinduism, Ramayana: Divine Loophole. Patel is one of the few people who have presented Hindu mythology in a way for North American kids to understand, and enjoy. But he also presents the Ramayana, one of the Hindu epic mythological stories, in a...
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WatchTonight! SOF Live from the New York Public Library » chat while you watch on our SOF Live page
Wednesday, March 3, 2010 (7pm Eastern) Celeste Bartos Forum of The New York Public Library 42nd Street at 5th Avenue New York, NY
Starting at 6:45pm Eastern tonight, we’ll be streaming live video of a public event with Krista and and Andrew Solomon, a former guest on “The Soul in...
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"U.S. Plans New Measure for Poverty" →
Shubha Bala, associate producer
“It establishes a poverty threshold that depends on the cost of food, shelter, clothing and utilities ‘plus a little more’ for ‘a population that is not poor but is somewhat below the median.’”
Poverty measurements are a pet interest of mine, along with everything we can chalk up to the logistical challenges of aid. The U.S. has...
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“Checking your Amazon ranking every 7 minutes would qualify as what Buddhists...”
– —Robert Wright, in “Self, Meditating” on his NYT blog.
We’re experiencing some of the same “attachment” now that Krista’s new book is out. Several minutes of this morning’s staff meeting was dedicated to some impromptu analysis of the Einstein’s God...
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Moralist, Moralism, and Morals →
Trent Gilliss, online editor
A fair amount of righteousness and morality talk in this profile piece on Rupert Murdoch for New York Magazine:
“For Murdoch, these conflicts amount to holy missions. While others may see him as an opportunistic predator, ready to lay waste to whatever falls under his gaze, Murdoch sees himself as a moralist, the enemy of entrenched, arbitrary power.”
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