Tapestry

Religion scholar Joseph Laycock has been playing Dungeons and Dragons for a long time. He says that even though D&D was once a source of a moral panic, there is nothing satanic about it. Instead, Laycock sees the game as its own kind of spiritual practice. He says the imagination has always occupied a strange place in spirituality - as though it’s either a divine gift or some kind of curse.

Cat Van Wert and Mike McPhaden both play D&D with their respective families. They share the moments when Dungeons and Dragons felt like more than a game.

Tapestry producer Arman Aghbali brings us the story of one player's attempt to resurrect his character and the spiritual challenge that occurred along the way.

Tapestry features two documentaries this week: Strange Heart tells the story of a woman who, since receiving a heart transplant six years ago, reports that she hasn’t felt emotion and hasn’t experienced love in quite the same way. And Windhorse follows a couple in Nova Scotia as they give back the land they bought 30 years ago to Indigenous communities.

Joy Clarkson reveals how she came up with the title for her latest book by embracing a teasing insult on Twitter. In "Aggressively Happy: A Realist's Guide to Believing in the Goodness of Life", she argues that a headstrong pursuit of happiness is not only an appropriate response to the weariness of life, it’s a necessary one.

Bunmi Laditan is a writer and poet best known for her satirical Twitter account @HonestToddler. She retraces her spiritual path from her family's background as Yoruba Christians, to Judaism and beyond, and shares humourous and heartfelt selections from her book, "Help Me God, I'm a Parent: Honest Prayers for Hectic Days and Endless Nights."

Toronto Raptors and Argos chaplain Herbie Kuhn believes he has an immense duty to the players he supports. And sometimes that means he can’t ask God to intervene, even in the diciest games.

Carine Abouseif had to reassess her relationship to exercise over the pandemic, especially as commutes and gym classes were replaced by exercise videos. Carine dives into the history of these videos, and how they've changed our relationship to our bodies.

For Leo Alcorn, there’s a tangible link between the galaxy clusters she studies and the cosmic horror of HP Lovecraft. The prime directive: embrace the void. Hilding Neilson is an Indigenous astronomer who thinks a lot about who our relations are — and that includes the stars.

Abdullah Shihipar discusses the implicit balance between faith and agency in the Arabic word “inshallah” (God-willing), and why he encourages non-Muslim friends to start using the expression. He is also pretty sure that all cats are Muslim.

When difficult things happen, there’s an understandable human impulse to make it to the other side of catastrophe as quickly as you can. But biochemist and biologist Beronda Montgomery says we could stand to learn something about slowing down from trees.

John Stackhouse says he knows there are so many reasons to view his faith, Christianity, with skepticism. But Stackhouse wants to meet those misgivings head-on in the book, Can I Believe?: Christianity for the Hesitant. Later, Kate Bowler says she lived life looking for the best, but when that proved impossible, now she searches for "good enough."

David Chalmers is a professor of philosophy and neural science at New York University. He argues that there’s nothing ‘virtual’ about virtual reality. It's all real. Later we hear from the co-screenwriter of the movie Free Guy — Matt Lieberman. He speaks to Tapestry about how you might spot the difference between the life you’re living right now and a computer simulation.

Dr. Marc Agronin on his new book "The End of Old Age," and how to preserve the memory of a loved one in such a way that the loved one can talk back, long after they're gone.

Hiraeth is a Welsh word with no direct English translation. It suggests longing and homesickness, but that doesn't quite capture it. For Pamela Petro, it's a sense of incompleteness that can make you feel unfulfilled in the present. Though Petro was not born in Wales, she explores her connection to Wales in her memoir The Long Field.

And Tapestry producer Kent Hoffman explores his feelings of hiraeth through his own ties to Wales and his thoughts on moving on.