Beauty At Work

What does innovation look like in the field of spiritual care, when fewer people belong to congregations, yet more people still need meaning, accompaniment, and spiritual support? My two guests today have been researching this question extensively.

Wendy Cadge is President of Bryn Mawr College and a nationally renowned sociologist of religion and spirituality. She is the founder of the Chaplaincy Innovation Lab, which brings together chaplains, educators, and social scientists to study and support spiritual care across public institutions and community settings. Her work focuses on religious diversity, spirituality, and the role of chaplaincy in contemporary society.

Michael Skaggs is Director of Programs and Co-Founder of the Chaplaincy Innovation Lab. A historian of American religion based at the University of Notre Dame, his research explores interfaith dialogue, maritime and port chaplaincy, American Catholicism, and emerging models of spiritual care. He oversees education, professional development, and public-facing initiatives for the Lab.

In this second part of our conversation, we talk about:

1. The biggest challenges facing chaplaincy and spiritual care today
2. Business models and sustainability in spiritual care work
3. Barriers faced by spiritual care providers from minority faith traditions
4. What the “spiritual infrastructure of the future” really means
5. How congregational closures are reshaping where people find meaning and care
6. The promises and dangers of AI in spiritual care

To learn more about Wendy and Michael’s work, you can find them at:

• Wendy Cadge: https://www.brynmawr.edu/inside/people/wendy-cadge 
• Michael Skaggs: https://chaplaincyinnovation.org/team/michael-skaggs-phd 

Links Mentioned:

• Chaplaincy Innovation Lab – https://chaplaincyinnovation.org/ 
• Templeton Religion Trust – https://templetonreligiontrust.org/ 

This season of the podcast is sponsored by Templeton Religion Trust.

Support the show

What does innovation look like in the field of spiritual care, when fewer people belong to congregations, yet more people still need meaning, accompaniment, and spiritual support? My two guests today have been researching this question extensively.

Wendy Cadge is President of Bryn Mawr College and a nationally renowned sociologist of religion and spirituality. She is the founder of the Chaplaincy Innovation Lab, which brings together chaplains, educators, and social scientists to study and support spiritual care across public institutions and community settings. Her work focuses on religious diversity, spirituality, and the role of chaplaincy in contemporary society.

Michael Skaggs is Director of Programs and Co-Founder of the Chaplaincy Innovation Lab. A historian of American religion based at the University of Notre Dame, his research explores interfaith dialogue, maritime and port chaplaincy, American Catholicism, and emerging models of spiritual care. He oversees education, professional development, and public-facing initiatives for the Lab.

In this first part of our conversation, we discuss:

1. The origins and mission of the Chaplaincy Innovation Lab
2. Traditional and emerging models of chaplaincy and spiritual care
3. The blurry boundaries of chaplaincy
4. Real applied value of good social, scientific, and historical research
5. Public perceptions of chaplains versus how chaplains describe their work
6. Chaplaincy as religious leadership in the future
7. The role of chaplains in addressing loneliness and isolation
8. Spiritual care beyond formal religion
9. Community-based and workplace chaplaincy models

To learn more about Wendy and Michael’s work, you can find them at:

• Wendy Cadge: https://www.brynmawr.edu/inside/people/wendy-cadge 
• Michael Skaggs: https://chaplaincyinnovation.org/team/michael-skaggs-phd 

Links Mentioned:

• Chaplaincy Innovation Lab – https://chaplaincyinnovation.org/ 
• Templeton Religion Trust – https://templetonreligiontrust.org/ 

This season of the podcast is sponsored by Templeton Religion Trust.

Support the show

Scott D. Anthony is a globally recognized expert on navigating disruptive change and a passionate optimist about humanity’s capacity to adapt in a constantly evolving world. He is a Clinical Professor of Strategy at Dartmouth’s Tuck School of Business, where he teaches courses on leading disruptive change, horizon scanning, and AI-enabled decision-making.

Scott’s work builds on more than two decades of field research and close mentorship under Clayton Christensen, spent over 20 years at Innosight, and is the author of several influential books, including his latest, Epic Disruptions.

In this second part of our conversation, we talk about:

1. The three clear patterns of disruption
2. What Shiseido’s transformation reveals about balancing heritage and reinvention
3. Models of social generativity
4. Relationship between change and discomfort
5. The invisible “ghosts” that haunt organizations
6. Competing against non-consumption and why “something is better than nothing” drives disruption
7. The systemic dimension of innovation
8. The three shadows of innovation
9. What past disruptions can teach us about governing AI responsibly
10. What disruptive innovation might look like in religious and spiritual communities

To learn more about Scott’s work, you can find him at: 

https://www.innosight.com/ 

Books and resources mentioned:

• Epic Disruptions (by Scott D. Anthony)
• The Innovator’s Dilemma (by Clayton M. Christensen)
• The First Mile (by Scott D. Anthony)

This season of the podcast is sponsored by Templeton Religion Trust.

Support the show

Scott D. Anthony is a globally recognized expert on navigating disruptive change and a passionate optimist about humanity’s capacity to adapt in a constantly evolving world. He is a Clinical Professor of Strategy at Dartmouth’s Tuck School of Business, where he teaches courses on leading disruptive change, horizon scanning, and AI-enabled decision-making.

Scott’s work builds on more than two decades of field research and close mentorship under Clayton Christensen, spent over 20 years at Innosight, and is the author of several influential books, including his latest, Epic Disruptions.

In this first part of our conversation, we discuss:

1. The meaning of innovation: something different that creates value
2. How the meaning of “innovation” shifted from something dangerous to something sacred
3. Scott’s first encounter with Clayton Christensen
4. Clay Christensen’s regret over how the term “disruption” has been misused
5. The four big questions Scott poses about innovation
6. What Gutenberg’s printing press reveals about collective creativity and unintended consequences
7. The predictable and unpredictable nature of innovation
8. Lessons from a failed medical tourism venture on testing real demand

To learn more about Scott’s work, you can find him at: 

https://tuck.dartmouth.edu/faculty/faculty-directory/scott-d-anthony

https://www.innosight.com/ 

Books and resources mentioned:

• Epic Disruptions (by Scott D. Anthony)
• The Innovator’s Dilemma (by Clayton M. Christensen)
• The First Mile (by Scott D. Anthony)

This season of the podcast is sponsored by Templeton Religion Trust.

Support the show

Jaron Lanier, E. Glen Weyl, and Taylor Black join Beauty at Work for a wide-ranging conversation on artificial intelligence, innovation, and the deeper questions of meaning, faith, and human flourishing that surround emerging technologies.

Jaron Lanier coined the terms Virtual Reality and Mixed Reality and is widely regarded as a founding figure of the field. He has served as a leading critic of digital culture and social media, and his books include You Are Not a Gadget and Who Owns the Future? In 2018, Wired Magazine named him one of the 25 most influential people in technology of the previous 25 years. Time Magazine named him one of the 100 most influential people in the world. Jaron is currently the Prime Unifying Scientist at Microsoft’s Office of the Chief Technology Officer, which spells out “Octopus”, in reference to his fascination with cephalopod neurology. He is also a musician and composer who has recently performed or recorded with Sara Bareilles, T Bone Burnett, Jon Batiste, Philip Glass, and many others.

E. Glen Weyl is Founder and Research Lead at Microsoft Research’s Plural Technology Collaboratory and Co-Founder of the Plurality Institute and RadicalxChange Foundation. He is the co-author of Radical Markets and Plurality and works at the intersection of economics, technology, democracy, and social institutions.

Taylor Black is Director of AI & Venture Ecosystems in the Office of the Chief Technology Officer at Microsoft and the founding director of the Leonum Institute on Emerging Technologies and AI at The Catholic University of America. His background spans philosophy, law, and technology leadership.

In this second part of our conversation, we talk about:

1. The idea that modern technology and AI, in particular, have taken on religious or idolatrous qualities

2. Why the Talmud offers a powerful model for collective intelligence without erasing individual voices

3. The dangers of excessive anonymity in digital systems and AI training

4. The idea of “superintelligences” as collective human systems like corporations, democracies, and religions

5. Vatican-led efforts toward algorithmic ethics and the protection of human dignity

6. Where Glen and Jaron disagree about human-centered AI

7. AI as a tool for metacognition

8. How imagination, storytelling, and shared meaning can shape the future of innovation

To learn more about Jaron, Glen and Taylor’s work, you can find them at: 

• Jaron Lanier - https://www.jaronlanier.com/ 
• Glen Weyl - https://glenweyl.com/ 
• Taylor Black - https://www.linkedin.com/in/blacktaylor/ 

Books and Resources mentioned:

• You Are Not a Gadget (Jaron Lanier)
• Who Owns the Future? (Jaron Lanier)
• Radical Markets (Eric Posner & E. Glen Weyl)
• Plurality (Audrey Tang & E. Glen Weyl)
• The Human Use of Human Beings (Norbert Wiener)
• The Fellowship of the Ring (J.R.R. Tolkien)

This season of the podcast is sponsored by Templeton Religion Trust.

Support the show

Jaron Lanier, E. Glen Weyl, and Taylor Black join Beauty at Work for a wide-ranging conversation on artificial intelligence, innovation, and the deeper questions of meaning, faith, and human flourishing that surround emerging technologies.

Jaron Lanier coined the terms Virtual Reality and Mixed Reality and is widely regarded as a founding figure of the field. He has served as a leading critic of digital culture and social media, and his books include You Are Not a Gadget and Who Owns the Future? In 2018, Wired Magazine named him one of the 25 most influential people in technology of the previous 25 years. Time Magazine named him one of the 100 most influential people in the world. Jaron is currently the Prime Unifying Scientist at Microsoft’s Office of the Chief Technology Officer, which spells out “Octopus”, in reference to his fascination with cephalopod neurology. He is also a musician and composer who has recently performed or recorded with Sara Bareilles, T Bone Burnett, Jon Batiste, Philip Glass, and many others.

E. Glen Weyl is Founder and Research Lead at Microsoft Research’s Plural Technology Collaboratory and Co-Founder of the Plurality Institute and RadicalxChange Foundation. He is the co-author of Radical Markets and Plurality and works at the intersection of economics, technology, democracy, and social institutions.

Taylor Black is Director of AI & Venture Ecosystems in the Office of the Chief Technology Officer at Microsoft and the founding director of the Leonum Institute on Emerging Technologies and AI at The Catholic University of America. His background spans philosophy, law, and technology leadership.

In this first part of our conversation, we discuss:

1. How aesthetic experience shapes worldview, imagination, and intellectual vocation

2. The historical rivalry between artificial intelligence and cybernetics

3. The danger of treating AI as an object of faith or a replacement for human meaning

4. The psychological and spiritual costs of assuming people will become obsolete

5. A tension between two different modalities of beauty

To learn more about Jaron, Glen and Taylor’s work, you can find them at: 

• Jaron Lanier - https://www.jaronlanier.com/ 
• Glen Weyl - https://glenweyl.com/ 
• Taylor Black - https://www.linkedin.com/in/blacktaylor/ 

Books and Resources mentioned:

• You Are Not a Gadget (Jaron Lanier)
• Who Owns the Future? (Jaron Lanier)
• Radical Markets (Eric Posner & E. Glen Weyl)
• Plurality (Audrey Tang & E. Glen Weyl)
• The Human Use of Human Beings (Norbert Wiener)
• The Fellowship of the Ring (J.R.R. Tolkien)

This season of the podcast is sponsored by Templeton Religion Trust.

Support the show

Alan Moore is a craftsman of beautiful business. He is a business innovator, author, and global speaker whose life’s work centers on one simple but radical idea: beauty is not a luxury in business, but a necessity.

He has designed everything from books to organizations, working across six continents with artists, entrepreneurs, and leadership teams. He has advised companies including PayPal, Microsoft, and Interface, taught at institutions such as MIT, INSEAD, and the Sloan School of Management, and helped guide some of the world’s most innovative enterprises.

He is the author of four books, including No Straight Lines: Making Sense of Our Nonlinear World and Do Design: Why Beauty Is Key to Everything. His work has been featured in outlets such as the BBC, The Guardian, Stanford Social Innovation Review, and The Huffington Post.

In this second part of our conversation, we talk about:

1. Beauty as a quest for truth rather than surface aesthetics

2. What it means to create something like a jewel

3. Inevitability in design

4. Beauty as a metric for innovation

5. The distinction between extractive and regenerative approaches

6. Beauty as a verb and everyday practices for “doing beauty.” 

To learn more about Alan’s work, you can find him at:

https://thebeautifuldesignproject.com/ 

Books and resources mentioned:

• No Straight Lines: Making Sense of Our Nonlinear World (by Alan Moore)
• Do Design: Why Beauty Is Key to Everything (by Alan Moore)

This season of the podcast is sponsored by Templeton Religion Trust.

Support the show

Alan Moore is a craftsman of beautiful business. He is a business innovator, author, and global speaker whose life’s work centers on one simple but radical idea: beauty is not a luxury in business, but a necessity.

He has designed everything from books to organizations, working across six continents with artists, entrepreneurs, and leadership teams. He has advised companies including PayPal, Microsoft, and Interface, taught at institutions such as MIT, INSEAD, and the Sloan School of Management, and helped guide some of the world’s most innovative enterprises.

He is the author of four books, including No Straight Lines: Making Sense of Our Nonlinear World and Do Design: Why Beauty Is Key to Everything. His work has been featured in outlets such as the BBC, The Guardian, Stanford Social Innovation Review, and The Huffington Post.

In this first part of our conversation, we discuss:

1. Beauty as a sense of homecoming to self, family, and the natural world

2. Why beauty is felt in the body, not just understood in the mind

3. Beauty as something soulful, universal, and deeply human

4. Living and working through the transition from analog to digital culture

5. Innovation as seeing latent potential and unmet human needs

6. The idea of beauty as the “ultimate metric” for decision-making

7. How beauty challenges dominant ideas of success, value, and the good life

To learn more about Alan’s work, you can find him at:

https://thebeautifuldesignproject.com/ 

Books and resources mentioned:

• No Straight Lines: Making Sense of Our Nonlinear World (by Alan Moore)
• Do Design: Why Beauty Is Key to Everything (by Alan Moore)

This season of the podcast is sponsored by Templeton Religion Trust.

Support the show

Lisa Z. Lindahl is an award-winning inventor, artist, author, and entrepreneur best known for transforming women’s sports with her 1977 invention of the first sports bra, the Jogbra. As CEO of JBI Inc. from 1977–1992, she helped shape a global industry, earning ten patents and seeing her invention archived at the Smithsonian National Museum of American History and even displayed at The Metropolitan Museum of Art as a “revolutionary piece of women’s undergarments.”

In 1999, she co-founded Bellisse and co-invented the Compressure Comfort® Bra, a breakthrough medical garment now supporting breast cancer survivors worldwide. She has been inducted into the National Inventors Hall of Fame (2022), received a U.S. Congressional Commendation, and has long served as an advocate for women’s health, most notably through her leadership roles at the Epilepsy Foundation of America.

She is the author of Beauty as Action (2017), her philosophical guide to practicing “True Beauty,” and the acclaimed memoir Unleash the Girls (2019).

In this second part of our conversation, we talk about:

1. True beauty is harmony rather than glamour
2. The problem of living in a culture rooted in fear, competition, and accumulation
3. “Practicing beauty” works through simple, everyday disciplines
4. Lisa’s 16 practices of beauty
5. The three-legged stool of truth, beauty, and justice

To learn more about Lisa’s work, visit:

• https://www.lisalindahl.com/ 
• https://beautyinaction.com/ 

Links Mentioned:

• Beauty as Action by Lisa Z. Lindahl
• Unleash the Girls (Lisa’s memoir on inventing the sports bra)

This season of the podcast is sponsored by Templeton Religion Trust.

Support the show

Lisa Z. Lindahl is an award-winning inventor, artist, author, and entrepreneur best known for transforming women’s sports with her 1977 invention of the first sports bra, the Jogbra. As CEO of JBI Inc. from 1977–1992, she helped shape a global industry, earning ten patents and seeing her invention archived at the Smithsonian National Museum of American History and even displayed at The Metropolitan Museum of Art as a “revolutionary piece of women’s undergarments.”

In 1999, she co-founded Bellisse and co-invented the Compressure Comfort® Bra, a breakthrough medical garment now supporting breast cancer survivors worldwide. She has been inducted into the National Inventors Hall of Fame (2022), received a U.S. Congressional Commendation, and has long served as an advocate for women’s health, most notably through her leadership roles at the Epilepsy Foundation of America.

She is the author of Beauty as Action (2017), her philosophical guide to practicing “True Beauty,” and the acclaimed memoir Unleash the Girls (2019).

In this first part of our conversation, we talked about:

1. Lisa’s earliest encounters with beauty, from frozen rivers to childhood moments of oneness with nature
2. The story behind the first Jogbra prototype and why sewing “stretch on stretch” is its own art
3. Why the need for the sports bra was far greater than she ever imagined
4. The surprising moment when she realized that “beauty is what really matters.”
5. What she means by true beauty and why she believes it is eternal

To learn more about Lisa’s work, visit:

• https://www.lisalindahl.com/ 
• https://beautyinaction.com/ 

Links Mentioned:

• Beauty as Action by Lisa Z. Lindahl
• Unleash the Girls (Lisa’s memoir on inventing the sports bra)

This season of the podcast is sponsored by Templeton Religion Trust.

Support the show