This is a clip from our episode featuring Aaron Weiss, PhD, Adjunct Professor of Philosophy and Religion at the California Institute of Integral Studies in San Francisco, CA. He discusses the portability of Buddhism across cultures, as it has moved across landscapes and communities since its inception in India. Questions of cultural diffusion and cultural appropriation comes up along the way.

Details for the full episode are here.

This week's episode of Spotlights is a clip from our interview with Norman Wirzba, PhD, the Gilbert T. Rowe Distinguished Professor of Theology at Duke University, and Senior Fellow at Duke's Kenan Institute for Ethics. He reflects on the problematic assumptions of transhumanism and the importance of discerning the appropriate limits of technological and economic development.

Details for the full episode are here.

This week’s episode of Spotlights features Madeline Stevens, a graduate student in the Environmental Studies program at the University of Montana. She talks about the interdisciplinary work being done in her program as well as her personal and professional engagement with the intersection of religion and the environment, including the thesis she is completing on the relationship between faith and environmental education. We talk about the relationship between science and religion, Evangelical Christianity, curriculum development, personal transformation, and more.

This week's episode of Spotlights features Aaron Weiss, PhD, Adjunct Professor of Philosophy and Religion at the California Institute of Integral Studies in San Francisco, CA. He talks about Tibetan Buddhism and philosophical perspectives on place, particularly in light of his recently defended dissertation, Buddhist Topology and the Practice of Lama Orgyan Khandro Norlha. Along the way, he also discusses questions of translation, cultural appropriation, and the complex challenges and responsibilities facing scholar-practitioners of Buddhism. More resources for studying the intersection of Buddhism and ecology can be found on the Yale Forum on Religion and Ecology website.

In this week’s episodes of Spotlights, our host Sam Mickey discusses some of his work in the field of religion and ecology. While we normally put the spotlight on other academics, activists, and artists, some people have asked to hear more about the host’s perspective on things, so in this episode Sam discusses one of his books, On the Verge of a Planetary Civilization: A Philosophy of Integral Ecology (Rowman & Littlefield). Published in 2014, the questions and problems that book engages are still relevant to today’s theoretical and practical challenges for living peacefully and sustainably on Earth. 

This week, Spotlights features a clip from our episode with Johnna Arnold, an artist, photographer, educator, and urban farmer based in Oakland, CA. In this clip, she discusses her meditation-based participatory art project, Expanding Space, which is currently on exhibit as part of Creative Attention: Art and Community Restoration at the Palo Alto Art Center, in Palo Alto, California. 

Details for the full episode can be found here.

This week's episode of Spotlights features Johnna Arnold, an artist, photographer, educator, and urban farmer based in Oakland, CA. Her work revolves around human beings, the environments we build, and the ways these systems affect our lives. She discusses her personal and professional journey toward the intersection of art and ecology, including a body of photographic prints that work with used motor oil, expressing the dynamics of the Capitalocene. It is extra special to have her on the podcast, since many of our videos (including this one) have a print of her artwork hanging in the background, with the phrase "Interconnections Abound."

This week, Spotlights features a clip from our episode with Dr. Pankaj Jain, Head of the Department of Humanities & Languages and Chair of The India Centre at FLAME University. We talk about the place of animals in Indian religion, culture, and ecology, including questions about vegetarianism, veganism, agriculture, and animal sanctuaries. Details for the full episode are available here. 

This week's episode of Spotlights features Pankaj Jain, PhD, an internationally recognized academic leader in sustainability, Jain studies, film studies, and diaspora studies. He is the Head of the Department of Humanities & Languages and Chair of The India Centre at FLAME University. We discuss connections between dharma and ecology in Hinduism and Jainism, with particular attention to three books by Dr. Jain, Dharma and Ecology of Hindu Communities: Sustenance and Sustainability (Routledge, 2011), Science and Socio-Religious Revolution in India: Moving the Mountains (Routledge, 2016), and Dharma in America: A Short History of Hindu-Jain Diaspora (Routledge, 2019).  He tweets at @ProfPankajJain, and his podcast #DiscoverIndia is on Spotify, Apple, Google, YouTube, Gaana, and other platforms.

This episode of Spotlights features an audio excerpt from a conversation between Sam Mickey and Mirei Takashima Claremon. They discuss the the meaning of freedom and its relevance to contemporary social and environmental issues, concluding with some speculation about what a a transition to a more sustainable and just world might look like. For more information about Mirei's work, you can find the episode she did for the Yale Forum on Religion and Ecology podcast here.