October 2011
77 posts
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“To make a revolution, people must not only struggle against existing...”
– Grace Lee Boggs, from her autobiography Living for Change
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Samhain, The Thinning Veil Between Worlds, with a...
by Peg Aloi, guest contributor
Photo by Jordi Puig/Flickr, cc by-nc-sa 2.0
Like most Americans of my generation, I looked forward to trick or treating at Hallowe’en for many years. It was fun to get dressed up and wander the neighborhood with a plastic pumpkin, feeling it grow heavier with candy and other treats. And in those days, the treats were wonderful: homemade cookies! Candy apples!...
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Sunday Morning Exercise: Take "The Wug Test"
by Nancy Rosenbaum, producer
Jean Berko Gleason is the mother of the “wug test” whose findings rocked the world of linguistics when they were first published in 1958. The test demonstrated that children as young as three or four can internalize complex grammatical codes no one has necessarily ever tried to teach them — like forming plurals — and apply these rules broadly, even to made-up...
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Anonymous asked: krista thank you for being curious about looking into our inter soul
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“The news from St Paul’s comes in a brief press release received by Riazat...”
– During live coverage, The Guardian’s Peter Walker sums up St. Paul’s Cathedral’s stance as it seeks to remove Occupy London protestors from its steps. Only the Brits can cut through the muck with one succinct line.
~Trent Gilliss, senior editor
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Facing Our Darkness on Halloween Night
by Caroline Oakes, guest contributor
Photo by Susy Morris/Flickr, CC BY-NC 2.0
Like most people, since I was a child, Halloween brings a heady rush of excitement that definitely goes beyond costumes, jack-o-lanterns, and even trick-or-treating for good chocolate.
Year after year, exhilaration sets in as children and parents begin their animated zig-zagging through neighborhoods in the deep dark...
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“During the past few decades, marriage has become more associated with...”
– —Ralph Ricahrd Banks on the racial gap in marriage and how the institution is tied to inequality
~Trent Gilliss, senior editor
Anonymous asked: Can you tell me where I can find copies of poems that are read by guests on your show (On Being)? I am thinking, in particular, of a couple of poems by Rilke from the program "A Wild Love for the World" but I do not know where to find them on the website. Thanks, Sarah
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themozartproject asked: Do you know the name of the choir and the director?
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Zombies, Zombies Everywhere
by Nancy Rosenbaum, producer
A mass of people dress up for the Toronto Zombie Walk. (photo: Sam Javanrouh/Flickr, cc by-nc 2.0)
For some reason we’re experiencing a zombie moment. From zombie crawls across the globe to the record-breaking 11 million people who tuned in to watch the season premiere of AMC’s The Walking Dead, zombies are seemingly everywhere this season. Even sober...
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Paul Brandeis Raushenbush: A Twitterscript
by Susan Leem, associate producer
Krista’s interview with Paul Brandeis Raushenbush, the senior religion editor at the Huffington Post, is in the can. His pedigree reaches back to towering figures of the 20th century: social gospel reformer Walter Rauschenbusch (great-grandfather) and U.S. Supreme Court Justice Louis D. Brandeis (grandfather). He reminds us that religion is a valuable and...
Anonymous asked: No flash player, please. IPad wisely does not use.
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WatchNovelist Asks Ira Glass If He’d Hide His Family in the Attic
by Trent Gilliss, senior editor
“If there’s another Holocaust, can I hide in your attic?”
Novelist Shalom Auslander puts this question to the host of This American Life and a couple of other TAL alumni — Sarah Vowell and John Hodgman — as part of his promotional effort for his new book, Hope: A Tragedy....
Anonymous asked: Is the Desmond Tutu "I love mangos" interview available on line
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A Universal Human Rights Logo Delivers a Message...
by Susan Leem, associate producer
The Human Rights Logo Initiative chose Serbian artist Predrag Stakić’s entry as the winner of its competition to design the Universal Human Rights Logo.
“Free as a Man” evokes the peace dove and the five fingers of a hand reaching up to be counted and acknowledged. Have a look at the other finalists’ entries for more great concepts around...
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Joanna Brooks: a Twitterscript
by Susan Leem, associate producer
Joanna Brooks describes herself as an unorthodox Mormon who continues to practice her faith from inside the tradition. She’s a literature professor, journalist at Religion Dispatches, and blogger at Ask Mormon Girl. And Politico named her as one of “50 politicos to watch” as many Americans experience this so-called “Mormon moment” of...
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“Proposition 8 encapsulates so many elements that intrigued me: a story of love,...”
– —Steven Greenstreet, from his interview with ReadysetDC
With all the discussion swirling about the filmmaker’s controversially titled Hot Chicks of Occupy Wall Street, it’s intriguing to learn that he’s also the director and producer of 8: The Mormon Proposition, a very good...
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What Are You Watching on TV This Season?
by Nancy Rosenbaum, producer
Women gone wild. The rise of the anti-hero. Reenchanting the world. Nostalgia for the recent past.
These are just a few of the themes peppering our television landscape. How do these narratives reflect who we are (or want to be)? Why are we longing for stories about these kinds of characters and situations at this particular moment? Where do religious themes and...
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Which Catholic Values and Social Teachings Get...
by Martin Marty, guest contributor from Sightings
Maureen Dowd wrote an almost innocuous column in The New York Times in which she noted, or argued, that “American bishops have been inconsistent in preaching their values.” Any reader who is up on the teachings of the company of bishops should not be surprised that they are inconsistent or that Ms. Dowd caught them in action. Such a...
Anonymous asked: Do offer any paid traineeships? I really admire your program. I also admire the courage of your program in speaking on religion, spirituality, ethics in a society where there is such a void on these topics yet such a hunger for meaning, spirituality at the same time. Thank you.
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“The problem starts with the ridiculous crowns we claimed for ourselves and with...”
– —Gideon Levy, from his op-ed in Haaretz, “Shalit Is Returning to a State in Psychosis”
A stark contrast to the perspective of Yossi Klein Halevi and the quotation we posted from his latest piece on Gilad Shalit’s release and the trading of prisoners with Hamas. Both should be...
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“Cotton Mather called them ‘the hidden ones.’ They never preached or...”
– —Laurel Thatcher Ulrich, from her paper “Vertuous Women Found: New England Ministerial Literature, 1668–1735” in the 1976 spring edition of American Quarterly
Did you know that the ubiquitous slogan contained within the quotation above doesn’t end with a period but a semicolon?...
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Desmond Tutu's Letter of Affirmation to the...
by Trent Gilliss, senior editor
This May the General Assembly of the Presbyterian Church (U.S.A.) passed and ratified an amendment to its Book of Order, which now permits “the ordination of non-celibate unmarried persons, including gays and lesbians.” The decision has created tumult within the denomination itself and with other branches of the Church, most notably by the National...
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Why I Cried When Steve Jobs Died
by Jennifer Cobb, guest contributor
Image by Charis Tsevis/Flickr, CC BY-NC-ND 2.0
It took me by surprise that I cried when Steve Jobs died. I was surprised to feel so moved by the loss of someone who was essentially a modern industrialist. But of course, his acumen as a businessman was not what I was mourning. Jobs’ work has moved us in ways that the work of his contemporary Bill Gates never...
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“For more than a year the Shalits have lived in a tent near the prime minister’s...”
– —Yossi Klein Halevi, from “Everyone’s Son” in Tablet
This beautifully written essay is poignant, well-reasoned, and honest. And perhaps that’s what makes me so uncomfortable about this necessary read. Yossi Klein Halevi, whom On Being recently interviewed during our trip to...
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Brazilians Celebrate Its Patron Saint, Nossa...
by Nancy Rosenbaum, producer
A man makes an offering to Our Lady of Aparecida during the patron saint’s feast day on October 12, 2004. (photo: Mauricio Lima/AFP/Getty Images)
Approximately 100 miles north of São Paulo in Brazil lies the town of Aparecida, home to the Basílica do Santuário Nacional de Nossa Senhora Aparecida, the second largest basilica in the world. Only Saint...
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Reflections from the Typing Pool
by Amy Gottlieb, guest contributor
Every day is the anniversary of something. The date on the calendar ripples with other dates, other stories.
It’s now a month since the tenth anniversary of 9/11, when, two days earlier, a dozen of us marched into Manhattan’s Bryant Park wearing somber black vintage clothing, clutching manual typewriter boxes in our hands. Our up-dos and pearls lent us an air...
