S10 E5—Where does racism come from? Many of us assume it's rooted in hatred or fear, but what if it actually comes from greed? As we approach Juneteenth, a day that commemorates freedom while reminding us of the work still before us, pastor and historian Malcolm Foley, PhD, joins Amy Julia Becker to talk about his book The Anti-Greed Gospel. He traces the roots of racism to economic exploitation and invites the church to respond with solidarity, truth-telling, and tangible love.

00:00 Introduction to the Link Between Greed and Racism
10:56 Ida B. Wells and the Power of Economic Appeals
18:11 The Cycle of Exploitation and Status
22:54 Creative Resistance to Exploitation, Violence, and Lies
29:05 Economic Solidarity in Contemporary Church
35:23 Examples of Creative Anti-Violence in Action

MENTIONED IN THIS EPISODE:

• The Anti-Greed Gospel: Why the Love of Money Is the Root of Racism and How the Church Can Create a New Way Forward by Malcolm Foley
• Book of Revelation
• Matthew 6:24
• Acts 2 and 4
• Philippians 2

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ABOUT OUR GUEST:

Malcolm Foley (PhD, Baylor University) is a pastor, historian, and speaker who serves as special adviser to the president for equity and campus engagement at Baylor University. He has written for Christianity Today, The Anxious Bench, and Mere Orthodoxy. Foley copastors Mosaic Waco, a multicultural church in Waco, Texas, where he lives with his wife, Desiree.

Insta & threads: @revdocmalc

@BrazosPress

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S10 E4—Do you ever wonder what your life would look like if you had made different decisions a long time ago? Author Karen Swallow Prior joins Amy Julia Becker for a conversation about regret, human limitations, and her experience of not having children. Together, they explore what it means to face the losses of the past while remaining open to the unexpected opportunities and possibilities that can emerge alongside them.

00:00 Introduction to Personal Narratives
04:22 Navigating Infertility and Ethical Dilemmas
07:10 The Role of Faith and Community in Decision-Making
11:01 Control, Risk, and Reproductive Technologies
17:30 The Intersection of Calling and Life Choices
20:57 Navigating Regret, Limits, and Choices
25:07 Historical Context of Childlessness
29:07 Imagination and Reality in Family Dynamics
37:25 Reimagining the Good Life Without Children

MENTIONED IN THIS EPISODE:

• Christianity Today essay by Karen Swallow Prior: “The Birds and the Bees, Babies and Me”
• Institute for Family Studies essay by Amy Julia Becker: “Confessions of a Middle-Aged Mother”
• You Have a Calling: Finding Your Vocation in the True, Good, and Beautiful by Karen Swallow Prior
• The Midnight Library by Matt Haig

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ABOUT OUR GUEST:

Karen Swallow Prior, Ph.D. is the 2025-26 Karlson Scholar at Bethel Seminary. She is a popular writer and speaker, a contributing writer for The Dispatch, and a columnist for Religion News Service. Her writing has appeared in The New York Times, The Atlantic, Vox, The Washington Post, Christianity Today, and many other places. Her most recent book is You Have a Calling: Finding Your Vocation in the True, Good, and Beautiful (Brazos 2025).

CONNECT with Karen: karenswallowprior.com

• Facebook: Karen Swallow Prior
• Instagram: karenswallowprior
• X: @KSPrior 
• Substack: @karenswallowprior

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S10 E3—The return of the R-word is about more than language. The words we choose both reflect and shape our moral imagination. When disability becomes an insult or a political weapon, it influences how we understand human worth, vulnerability, and belonging. In this conversation, Christina Cipriano, PhD, joins Amy Julia Becker to explore her research on political language and disability, including the return of the R-word. They discuss what these patterns reveal about the systems shaping care, education, and belonging, and they consider: how can we resist dehumanizing language and  choose words that move us toward justice and joy?

00:00 Introduction to Disability Discourse Matters
06:53 Asset-Based vs. Deficit-Based Perspectives
10:27 Personal Narratives and Language Choices
19:49 The Rise, Fall, and Rise of the R Word
23:42 Dehumanization in Political Rhetoric
28:47 Historical Context of Disability Discourse
33:00 Disability Language and Future Generations
40:48 Reimagining Disability and the Good Life

MENTIONED IN THIS EPISODE:

• Disability Discourse Matters
• The Education Collaboratory at Yale | Child Study Center
• Spread the Word – Special Olympics
• Montclair University: Use of the Slur [r-word] Triples on X After Elon Musk Shares the Word in a Post
• Be Unapologetically Impatient by Christina Cipriano
• Euphemism Treadmill article

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ABOUT OUR GUEST:

Christina Cipriano, PhD, is currently an associate professor of applied developmental and educational psychology at the Yale Child Study Center in the Yale School of Medicine and Director of the Education Collaboratory. This fall Dr. Cipriano will transition to be the inaugural Joseph W. and Alma W. Keilty Endowed Chair in Education and Professor with tenure at the University of Massachusetts Amherst and the Education Collaboratory will be moving to the College of Education at UMass Amherst. An award-winning scholar and internationally regarded expert in the science of learning and development, Chris received her PhD from Boston College, her EdM from the Harvard Graduate School of Education, and her undergraduate degree from Hofstra University. Dr. Cipriano has published over one hundred and twenty papers, commentaries, and reports, spanning top-tier journals such as Child Development and the Review of Educational Research as well as media outlets including The Washington Post, NPR, The New York Times, PBS, and Education Week. Her award-winning and best-selling new book, Be Unapologetically Impatient: The Mindset Required to Change the Way We Do Things (2025), is the latest must-read for every educator, provider, parent, and person interested in improving the lives of children and families, right now. A prolific public scholar, educator, and speaker, Chris privileges her positionality as a first-generation high school graduate and mother of four children in her science.

https://www.drchriscip.com/

https://www.disabilitydiscoursematters.org/

https://www.beunapologeticallyimpatient.com/

https://medicine.yale.edu/profile/christina-cipriano/

https://www.linkedin.com/in/christinacipriano/

LinkedIn @ChristinaCipriano

Instagram @DrChrisCip

BlueSky @DrChrisCip

Twitter @DrChrisCip

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S10 E2—What do you do when you’ve done all the “right” spiritual things and still feel exhausted? Tish Harrison Warren, a writer and Anglican priest, joins Amy Julia Becker to explore burnout, spiritual dryness, midlife weariness, and the practices that help us stay rooted when God feels distant. For those who are tired, discouraged, or wondering why faith feels harder than it used to, here’s hope for the long middle of life from Tish’s latest book, What Grows in Weary Lands.

00:00 Introduction to Tish Harrison Warren
03:29 Exploring Spiritual Weariness and Doubt
14:47 Understanding Fortitude and Resilience
23:23 The Imagined Good Life
30:20 Navigating the Desert of Faith
35:10 The Practice of Stability
44:04 Community in Seasons of Aridity

MENTIONED IN THIS EPISODE:

Books by Tish Harrison Warren: 

• What Grows in Weary Lands 
• Liturgy of the Ordinary 
• Prayer in the Night 

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ABOUT OUR GUEST:

Tish Harrison Warren is an Anglican priest and the author of several books, including Liturgy of the Ordinary, which won Christianity Today’s 2018 Book of the Year, and Prayer in the Night, which won Christianity Today’s 2022 Book of the Year and the 2022 ECPA Christian Book of the Year. She formerly wrote a weekly newsletter for The New York Times, which focused on faith in public discourse and private life. She was also a columnist at Christianity Today. Her articles and essays have appeared in Comment Magazine, The Point Magazine, Religion News Service, and elsewhere. She currently serves as the C.S. Lewis Theological Writer-in-Residence for The Anglican Episcopal House of Studies at Baylor’s George W. Truett Theological Seminary. She is a senior fellow with the Trinity Forum and an assisting priest at Immanuel Anglican Church. She lives in Austin, Texas, with her husband and three children.

https://tishharrisonwarren.com/

https://www.instagram.com/tishharrisonwarren/

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S10 E1—When you walk into a room, what does that room tell you about who you are as a human being? What assumptions go into our restaurants and civic buildings and churches and homes and schools? What do they say about who we are and about how we relate to each other? Artist and design researcher Sara Hendren joins Amy Julia Becker to explore how modern spaces—from office buildings to nursing homes—shape what we believe about dignity, dependence, and belonging. Together they uncover how design can either diminish or restore our shared humanity, and why the good life depends on reimagining how we live together.

00:00 Introduction to Design and Humanity
05:24 Understanding the Machine Model and Anti-Human Design
14:32 What Spaces Communicate About Being Human
29:29 Design Choices and Human Dignity
34:49 Innovations in Dementia Care Design
37:26 Art and Dignity for Individuals with Disabilities
41:32 The Metaphysics of Dignity and Human Connection
51:07 Designing for the Good Life: Relationality and Community

MENTIONED IN THIS EPISODE:

• What Can a Body Do? How We Meet the Built World by Sara Hendren
• Previous podcast conversation: “S3 E15 | Who Belongs? Disability and the Built World with Sara Hendren”
• Comment Magazine essay by Sara Hendren: “Pattern Recognition: Design for humans in unexpected places.”
• Short film: Simple Machine
• Being Mortal by Atul Gawande

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ABOUT OUR GUEST:

Sara Hendren is an artist, design researcher, writer, and professor at Northeastern University. Her book What Can a Body Do? How We Meet the Built World explores the places where disability shows up in design at all scales: assistive technology, furniture, architecture, urban planning, and more. It was named one of the Best Books of 2020 by NPR and won the 2021 Science in Society Journalism book prize.

Her art and design works have been exhibited on the White House lawn under the Obama presidency, at the Victoria & Albert Museum, the Seoul Museum of Art, the Vitra Museum, and many others, and her work is held in the permanent collections at MoMA and the Cooper Hewitt. She has been an NEH Public Scholar and a fellow at New America, and her commentary and criticism have been published in Harper’s, Art in America, The New York Times, the Washington Post, and elsewhere.

Website: sarahendren.com

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What makes a life good? In this new season of Reimagining the Good Life, Amy Julia Becker invites listeners into thoughtful conversations about faith, family, disability, belonging, beauty, repair, community, and what it means to be human. This season features interviews with:

• Tish Harrison Warren about persevering with grace through midlife
• Malcolm Foley about the role of greed and pride in racism and what we can do to respond with love
• Brian Brock about disability and creation
• Dr. Chris Cipriano at Yale about politics and language and disability 
• Rabbi Danya Ruttenberg about her book On Repentance and Repair 
• Craig Thomas, author of the book That's Not How It Happened and co-creator of How I Met Your Mother, about how we tell the story of family and Down syndrome.

Follow the show now and join us beginning May 19 for a new season of Reimagining the Good Life.

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Exciting news! New episodes are dropping on my Take the Next Step podcast, and I’m sharing this one here so you won’t miss out. Be sure to follow Take the Next Step with Amy Julia Becker wherever you listen so you are sure to get future episodes. https://pod.link/1838911087

More about Take the Next Step: amyjuliabecker.com/step/

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What if inclusion in schools didn’t have to be a constant fight? Adrian Wood, PhD, shares what actually helped her son with autism thrive in their public school system. Adrian and Amy Julia Becker explore:

• Building trust with educators
• Collaboration and creativity
• Navigating IEPs and transitions
• Small changes that make a big difference

Ask Me Anything: Record (or email) your question for our upcoming Ask Me Anything episode: amyjuliabecker.com/qr/

04:30 Navigating Public School for Children with Disabilities
 06:53 Creative Thinking and Working Together as a Team
 15:55 Strategies for Success 

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MENTIONED IN THIS EPISODE:

• VLOG: Tales of an Educated Debutante

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ABOUT:

Adrian Wood is the creator of the vlog Tales of an Educated Debutante. She has a PhD in Educational Research and contributes to Today Parents, The Today Show, and the Love What Matters blog. She lives in rural eastern North Carolina with her family. She is the co-author of Autism Out Loud.  

CONNECT with Adrian on her website (talesofaneducateddebutante.com), Facebook, Instagram, and YouTube. 

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Take the Next Step is produced in collaboration with Hope Heals. Hope Heals creates sacred spaces of belonging and belovedness for families affected by disabilities to experience sustaining hope in the context of inclusive, intentional, inter-ability communities. Find out more about our resources, gatherings, and inter-ability communities at hopeheals.com. Follow on Instagram @hopeheals.

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S9 E9 — Our culture feels like a battlefield, but perspectives and actions change when we see it as a garden we’ve forgotten how to tend. Artist and author Makoto Fujimura shares with Amy Julia Becker how art, wonder, and imagination can restore our capacity to love, hope, and tend culture with care. Together they explore his book Art Is: A Journey into the Light, slow art, spiritual imagination, and a gentler way to live faithfully in a fractured world.

00:00 Introduction to Makoto Fujimura and the Process of Art
07:08 Stewardship Responsibility for Imagination and Creativity
13:34 The Importance of Slow Art and Observation
19:19 Engaging with Darkness in Art
22:15 The Role of Artists within the Darkness of Society
29:07 Giving Away Beauty: The Heart of Art
34:07 Imagination, Faith, and Love
42:58 Culture Care: Changing the Metaphor
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MENTIONED IN THIS EPISODE:

• Art Is: A Journey into the Light, Art and Faith: A Theology of Making, and Culture Care: Reconnecting with Beauty for Our Common Life by Makoto Fujimura
• Embers International
• Amy Julia’s episode with Justin Giboney: “How the Civil Rights Generation Can Lead Us Out of the Culture War” with Justin Giboney 
• Amy Julia’s Take the Next Step podcast - new episodes beginning February 4, 2026

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ABOUT OUR GUEST:

Makoto Fujimura is a leading contemporary artist whose process driven, refractive “slow art” has been described by David Brooks of New York Times as “a small rebellion against the quickening of time”. In addition to his work as an artist, Mako is an author whose latest work is entitled Art Is: A Journey into the Light. From 2003 to 2009, he served as a Presidential appointee to the National Council on the Arts. He is a celebrated speaker and advocate for the arts and has received five Honorary Doctor of Arts degrees.

https://makotofujimura.com/

https://www.instagram.com/iamfujimura/

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S9 E8 — We're living through a season of deep division, political unrest, and global instability. Justin Giboney, political strategist and author of Don't Let Nobody Turn You Around, joins Amy Julia Becker to help us recover a moral imagination shaped by faith—one that resists polarization, refuses hatred, and offers a better way forward in public life.

00:00 Guidance from the Civil Rights Generation
07:18 The Black Church's Public Witness
10:00 The Civil Rights Movement vs Progressive Activism
13:52 Forgiveness and Redemption
17:28 Navigating the Culture Wars
25:39 The AND Campaign: Bridging Divides in Politics
28:51 Cultivating Moral Imagination
31:51 The Impact of Social Media
37:52 Practices for Living Out a Moral Imagination
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MENTIONED IN THIS EPISODE:

• Don't Let Nobody Turn You Around: How the Black Church's Public Witness Leads Us out of the Culture War by Justin Giboney

 • AND Campaign: andcampaign.org

 • Church Politics podcast

 • Amy Julia's Take the Next Step podcast: amyjuliabecker.com/step/

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ABOUT OUR GUEST:

Justin Giboney (JD, Vanderbilt University) is an author, ordained minister, attorney, and political strategist. He is the founder and president of the AND Campaign, a Christian civic organization focused on raising civic literacy, promoting civic pluralism, and equipping Christians to engage politics with the love and truth of Jesus Christ. Justin is dedicated to promoting Christ-centered values as the basis for engagement in politics and social issues. 

BOOK: Don’t Let Nobody Turn You Around

INSTAGRAM: https://www.instagram.com/justinegiboney/

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S9 E7 — Your body is trying to tell you something. Are you listening? In this episode, corporate lawyer Justin Whitmel Earley joins Amy Julia Becker to explore how spiritual life is also embodied life. As you reflect on the year ahead, this conversation invites you to think not in terms of resolutions, but in terms of habits that nurture health and wholeness. Justin and Amy Julia reflect on:

• How breathing can reconnect body and soul
• How fasting, feasting, and everyday meals contribute to the spiritual life
• How to understand pain and sickness in a world that is both beautiful and broken
• Why sleep matters spiritually

00:00 Intro: Anxiety Journey
05:20 The Body and Soul Connection
09:25 Cultural Disconnect
14:46 Breath: A Practice to Reconnect Body and Soul
23:35 Food: Fasting, Feasting, and Ordinary Fare
32:08 Understanding Pain and Sickness in a Broken World
38:18 The Spiritual Significance of Sleep

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MENTIONED IN THIS EPISODE:

• Bible verses: Ephesians 2; Genesis 1-2; Genesis 2:7; Genesis 2:9; Psalm 23
• Kelly Kapic interview with Amy Julia
• Embodied Hope by Kelly Kapic

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ABOUT OUR GUEST:

Justin Whitmel Earley is a writer, speaker, and lawyer. He is the author of The Common Rule, Habits of the Household, and Made for People, though he spends most days running his business law practice. Through his writing and speaking, Justin empowers God’s people to thrive through life-giving habits that form them in the love of God and neighbor. He continually explores both how physical habits are more spiritual than we think and how spiritual habits are more physical than we think. He lives with his wife and four boys in Richmond, Virginia, spends a lot of time around fires and porches with friends, and is a part-owner of a local gym. You can follow him online at justinwhitmelearley.com.

ONLINE:

Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/justinwhitmelearleyauthor/

Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/justinwhitmelearley/

X: https://x.com/Justin_W_Earley

YouTube: www.youtube.com/@justinwhitmelearley1630

Website: https://www.justinwhitmelearley.com/

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