Becoming Wise

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.

Patrick Bellegarde-Smith is a professor at the University of Wisconsin in Milwaukee and author of many books about Vodou. This interview is edited and produced with music and other features in the On Being episode “Patrick Bellegarde-Smith — Living Vodou.” Find more at onbeing.org.

This is On Being’s unedited conversation with Marilynne Robinson and Marcelo Gleiser. She’s a Pulitzer Prize-winning novelist and essayist. He’s an astrophysicist and professor at Dartmouth College. Krista Tippett spoke with them on October 15, 2012 at a public event in Philadelphia, “The Mystery We Are.” Download the mp3 of the produced show at onbeing.org.

What do a fiction writer and an astrophysicist have in common? Marilynne Robinson and Marcelo Gleiser connect the dots between the cosmos, our minds, and all the ways we discover the story of where we came from.

In this unedited interview, talk show pioneer Phil Donahue opens up on his remarkable perspective on the last half century of America and who we are now. He shares with Krista Tippett his personal transformations on race, gender roles, and parenting in the dramatic era he captured on television.

Talk show pioneer Phil Donahue opens up on his remarkable perspective on the last half century of America and who we are now. He shares his personal transformations on race, gender roles, and parenting in the dramatic era he captured on television.

What might words like repentance or forgiveness mean, culturally, in this moment? These are questions of the emerging church, a loosely-defined movement that crosses generations, theologies and social ideologies in the hope of reimagining Christianity. With Phyllis Tickle and Vincent Harding, an honest and sometimes politically incorrect conversation on coming to terms with racial identity in the church and in the world.

This is the unedited version of On Being’s produced show, “Racial Identity in the Emerging Church and the World.” Emerging church elder Phyllis Tickle and civil rights veteran Vincent Harding in an honest and sometimes politically incorrect conversation on coming to terms with racial identity in the church and in the world.

Parallel realities and the deep structure of space-time sound like science fiction. These are matters of real scientific inquiry. Lord Martin Rees is an astrophysicist and self-professed atheist who paints a fascinating picture of how we might be changed by what we do not yet know.

Some of the biggest philosophical and ethical questions of this century may be raised on scientific frontiers — as we gain a better understanding of the deep structure of space and time and the wilder “microworld.” Astrophysicist Martin Rees paints a fascinating picture of how we might be changed by what we do not yet know: “If science teaches me anything, it teaches me that even simple things like an atom are fairly hard to understand. And that makes me skeptical of anyone who claims to have the last word or complete understanding of any deep aspect of reality.” This is On Being’s complete, unedited interview with Lord Rees. See more at http://www.onbeing.org/program/cosmic-origami-and-what-we-dont-know/250