July 2010
32 posts
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Albert Einstein's Faith: Was the Great Physicist...
by Krista Tippett, host
Albert Einstein’s famous equation, E=mc2, remains difficult for me to grasp fully. But I feel I have come to understand something of the man — his expansive spirit, his relentless curiosity, and his reverence for the beauty and order of nature and thought. I was daunted as I began, but delving into Einstein was a delight.
And there is a logic of sorts to that, as...
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What's Your Favorite SOF Moment? →
“Well, I think perfection is the booby prize in life, actually. It’s very isolating, very separating, and it’s also impossible to achieve. So you’re always struggling to become something you’re not.” —Rachel Naomi Remen
This comment from Krista’s conversation with Dr. Remen is one of my favorite SOF moments. And hearing it again set me on a trip down...
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What Does WikiLeaks Reveal About Our Inner Selves?
by Nancy Rosenbaum, associate producer
Julian Assange of WikiLeaks holds a copy of The Guardian newspaper that features a report using the site’s leaked documents on the Afghanistan war. (photo: Peter Macdiarmid/Getty Images)
[Governments] used to be able to control what…newspapers and news organizations would do in part by informally controlling their access to information, by in...
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A Gift He Wouldn’t Give Anyone
by Krista...
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The Gift of Matthew Sanford
by Maria Clara Paulino, guest contributor
When I first heard the interview with Matthew Sanford on the radio, I was moved beyond words. I wanted to hear it again. The second time I heard it, online, I was more moved still.
I wanted to understand what had touched me so deeply beyond his extraordinary story of loss and victory, and the candid and engaging quality of his telling. There was...
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Alan Rabinowitz: A Twitterscript
by Anne Breckbill, associate web developer
On June 30, Krista interviewed Alan Rabinowitz for this week’s show “A Voice for the Animals” — discussing topics ranging from his severe stutter, Dawi (the last pure Mongoloid pygmy), large wild cats, genetic corridors, and his recent cancer diagnosis. We live-tweet (SOFtweets) all of our interviews now. Here is the Twitterscript of...
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“This is not simply something from below, but it’s being met from above in...”
– —Tom Banchoff, director of Georgetown University’s Berkley Center for Religion, Peace and World Affairs
All this week, NPR has been airing Louisa Lim’s reports from Beijing that highlight various aspects of religious growth and change in China, including stories about burgeoning...
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The Gift of Stuttering and Animals
by Shubha...
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The Pleasurable Choice Is the Ethical Choice
by...
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What Stories Do We Tell?
by Pádraig Ó Tuama, guest contributor
Last year, while working with a primary school class here in Belfast, a child said:
“Pádraig, let me ask you a question. God loves us right?”
Avoiding the complexity of anthropomorphic projections of human experiences onto God, I answered, from the heart of me, with what I hope.
“Yes,” I said.
“And God made us all didn’t...
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What's for (Vegan) Supper?
by Anne Breckbill, associate web developer
Vegetarian activists demonstrate during a “Veggie Pride” event in Lyon, France. (photo: Jean-Philippe Ksiazek/AFP/Getty Images)
Exhaustion. A tough day and I was late leaving work when I realized that it was my night to cook for my vegan housemates. What easy, go-to meal did I have in my repertoire that I could whip up quickly without...
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My Grandfather's Faith: Contradictions and...
Krista Tippett, host
The crescent-topped dome of Masjid An-Nasr peeks through trees of a residential neighborhood in Oklahoma City. (photo: Andrew Shockley/Flickr)
My grandfather was the Reverend Calvin Titus Perkins, known by all as C.T. He was a Southern Baptist evangelist — a traveling preacher in Oklahoma, the former Indian Territory. He arrived, when he was a very young boy and it was a...
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WatchWhat Is a Unitarian Universalist? Nancy Rosenbaum, associate producer
Thousands of Unitarian Universalists recently descended upon Minneapolis for their General Assembly, an annual event where “UUs” tend to a mix of congregational business, learning, worship, and fun. On the first evening of festivities, we put several questions to about a dozen attendees:
What’s a Unitarian...
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From “Conflict Resolution” to...
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“I am asking some of you old timers, the Gen-Xers, to take a breath and see how...”
– —Abhi, blogger for Sepia Mutiny
Do cultural identity and role models have a different form between generations? I had to wonder after reading this article from The New York Times about Indians in U.S. politics. Nikki Haley, the Republican nominee for governor of South Carolina, and Bobby Jindal,...
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“It is impossible for someone like myself, who grew up in one of the...”
– —Mary O’Hara, from her op-ed “Poverty Is the Backdrop to the Riots in Northern Ireland” in today’s Guardian.
As I read this, I couldn’t help but think of our recent interview with John Paul Lederach and his emphasis on peace as a long-term effort that comes about by...
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Found in Translation
Susan Carpenter Sims, guest contributor
I’m a research junkie and a word nerd. When I was in graduate school, I spent a year researching one of the earliest Old English poems, “The Dream of the Rood.” The project began as a lexical analysis for a linguistics class, and what I discovered was that many words had multiple senses — and the available translations didn’t...
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"Turkey: Christians in Danger" →
Trent Gilliss, senior editor
John Cullinan has written a thought-provoking piece in National Review Online that challenges Western media with glossing over of anti-Christian sentiments in Turkey and the recent spate of killings of Catholic clergy in the country:
“…it’s also a fact that the killing of Catholic clerics in Muslim-majority states tends nowadays in the West to be passed...
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Soccer, Futbol: Beauty in Simplicity
Shubha Bala, associate producer Trent Gilliss, senior editor
The World Cup final expects to draw 700 million viewers in a few hours. And with all the fanfare and elaborate ceremonies preceding this championship game, soccer at its core is a game of universal appeal and absolute simplicity. Nowhere is this more obvious than on the continent of Africa itself.
We saw a continent come together to...
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A New Generation, A Simple Revolution Krista...
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WatchArranged Marriage: An Expert on Choice Speaks Across Cultures Shubha Bala, associate producer
When I was 11, I bombarded my uncle with questions while we sat on the floor going through photos and letters from Indian families seeking a marriage arrangement between him and their daughters. At some point I naively asked, “But won’t you want to meet all the women before deciding on the...
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Shane Claiborne: Interview with a New Monastic
Trent Gilliss, senior editor Nancy Rosenbaum, associate producer
Your community, The Simple Way, has expanded in the last several years, even in terms of physical space. What used to be one house is now six residences. I imagine life at The Simple Way has changed quite a bit. How has it changed from its humble beginnings? We are turning into a little more of an intentional village than an...
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Evangelical Environmental Evolution
Krista Tippett, host
News this week of a remarkable conversion, as the Southern Baptist Convention — the largest Protestant denomination in the U.S. and one of the most socially conservative — takes on environmental stewardship with both humility and boldness. The Southern Baptist Declaration on Environment and Climate Change is introduced with words like this:
“We believe our current...
