The Sacred

What happens when the AI tools we used to make life easier started to change the way we think?

Journalist and author Jamie Bartlett joins Elizabeth Oldfield for a live recording to explore what AI reveals about human nature, why we keep using tools we’re worried about, and what we risk losing when we let machines do our thinking for us.

We talk about:

• How using AI has affected Jamie’s own writing and thinking

• Why language models can be so good at flattering us and exploiting our own biases

• What it means to remain thoughtful and human in an age of increasingly capable machines

• How we can learn to ask better questions - not just of AI, but of ourselves Jamie Bartlett is a journalist and author whose work explores the social and political consequences of technology.

His books include How to Talk to AI, The People vs. Tech and Radicals.

Thank you to everyone who joined us in the room and to those who sent us their thoughts on AI ahead of the evening.

🎙️ Listen to The Sacred: linktr.ee/sacredpodcast

📖 Follow Elizabeth Oldfield: www.elizabetholdfield.com/

💡 The Sacred is produced by Theos Think Tank in partnership with Comment Magazine, and with support from The Jerusalem Trust and Open Society Foundations

👉 Read Jamie's latest book, How to Talk to AI: https://www.penguin.co.uk/books/475950/how-to-talk-to-ai-by-bartlett-jamie/9780753561980

👇 Our guests and listeners to our podcast come from all kinds of perspectives and what draws us together is a desire to be self-aware about our own values and curious about other peoples. Comment your reflections below, we read them all.

Copyright: "Make You Mine - Instrumental" by Brooke Annibale Licensed by The Musicbed LLC"Beyond the Veil (feat. Khamir Music)" by Simon Wester Licensed by The Musicbed LLC

What Does It Take to Create a Shared Home in a Divided City?

In Jerusalem, two women from opposite sides of the Israeli-Palestinian divide, Riman Barakat and Karen Brunwasser, have spent more than a decade building FeelBeit, a shared arts and cultural space where Israeli and Palestinian artists and communities are invited to ‘feel at home’ together.

In this moving conversation, recorded live at Aspen Ideas Festival, we explore what it takes to build trust across a profound divide—and what happens when that trust is tested by violence, grief and fear.

We also cover:

• Friendship and why relationships can be a form of peacebuilding
• What happened at FeelBeit after October 7 and in the years since
• The power of art to hold grief, anger, joy and hope at the same time
• Why “compassion over righteous indignation” and “self-love and self-critique” might be some of the hardest—and most necessary—practices for our societies

🎙️ Listen to The Sacred: linktr.ee/sacredpodcast

📖 Follow Elizabeth Oldfield: www.elizabetholdfield.com/

💡 The Sacred is produced by Theos Think Tank in partnership with Comment Magazine, and with support from The Jerusalem Trust and Open Society Foundations

👉 Check out FeelBeit: https://feelbeit.com/underconstruction/

Our guests and listeners to our podcast come from all kinds of perspectives and what draws us together is a desire to be self-aware about our own values and curious about other peoples. Comment your reflections below, we read them all 👇

Can you really vote your way to a good society - or does it have to be built house by house, street by street?

Dr James Vitali - Head of Political Economy at Policy Exchange, a Sandhurst-trained army reservist, local councillor, and author of The Ownership Society: How Bourgeois Values Can Save Britain - talks about the Dorset church at the heart of his childhood, what military service taught him about sacrifice and leadership, and why he believes Britain's real crisis is moral, not economic.

In this conversation we also explored:

• Growing up between Navy deployments, and the community that stepped in

• "Servant leadership" and why politics keeps failing to practise it

• Home ownership, responsibility, and not being able to buy

• Thatcher, Tocqueville, and where conservatism lost the plot

• The human cost of localism - and what to do with the suffering in between

🎙️ Listen to The Sacred: linktr.ee/sacredpodcast

📖 Follow Elizabeth Oldfield: www.elizabetholdfield.com/

💡 The Sacred is produced by Theos Think Tank in partnership with Comment Magazine, and with support from The Jerusalem Trust and Open Society Foundations

👉 Read James' book, The Ownership Society: How Bourgeois Values Can Save Britain https://www.politybooks.com/bookdetail?book_slug=the-ownership-society-how-bourgeois-values-can-save-britain--9781509569526

👇 Our guests and listeners to our podcast come from all kinds of perspectives and what draws us together is a desire to be self-aware about our own values and curious about other peoples. Comment your reflections below, we read them all.

Chapters:

00:00 – Intro: meeting James Vitali

01:56 – What is sacred to you?

04:13 – A rooted military childhood in Dorset

10:32 – Faith, and how it shapes his politics

15:27 – Sandhurst and learning servant leadership

18:37 – Why politics became technical instead of moral

20:43 – Thatcher's legacy and "no such thing as society"

29:24 – Almshouses and the Vale Pantry: ownership in action

32:24 – The Ownership Society: why "bourgeois values"?

37:30 – A state that isn't neutral: "statecraft is soulcraft"

44:12 – Elizabeth's own story, and why ownership matters to the soul

53:07 – Closing reflections: "biography over beliefs"

COPYRIGHT: "Video Cat Jazz" - Pär Hagström (Licensed by Epidemic Sound) & "Beyond the Veil" (feat. Khamir Music) by Simon Wester (Licensed by Musicbed).

What does it mean to prepare to die—and then discover that you need to prepare to live again?

In this conversation, poet Christian Wiman reflects on faith, poetry, love, mortality, and his experience of living for more than 20 years with cancer. 

He talks about his turbulent childhood, how poetry transformed his anger into something creative, and why he believes poems can open us to something beyond ourselves.

The conversation also explores:

• Wiman’s journey from economics to poetry
• What a poem actually is—and why sound can matter more than meaning
• Attention and his idea of “productive inattention”
• Faith, suffering, and writers including Simone Weil and Etty Hillesum

Wiman also reads three poems: Five Houses Down, 2047 Grace Street, and In the Time of Fire.

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🎙️ Listen to The Sacred: linktr.ee/sacredpodcast

📖 Follow Elizabeth Oldfield: www.elizabetholdfield.com/

💡 The Sacred is produced by Theos Think Tank in partnership with Comment Magazine, and with support from The Jerusalem Trust and Open Society Foundations

👉 See Christian Wiman's Poetry: https://www.poetryfoundation.org/poets/christian-wiman --

👇 Our guests and listeners to our podcast come from all kinds of perspectives and what draws us together is a desire to be self-aware about our own values and curious about other peoples. Comment your reflections below, we read them all.

What are we losing by spending so much of our lives behind screens?

COVID-19 brought the whole world online, and as a podcast we kind of stayed there. This season, we made a commitment to only recording in person, mostly at Elizabeth’s community house in south London.

As a result, we sensed a big shift in our connection with guests and we thought we’d take an opportunity to reflect on a few things that we’d forgotten along the way:

• Being in-person is key to meeting people as real humans and creating non-transactional relationships

• Something shifts when we eat snacks together and see each other’s homes

• Screens and the ease of our digital lives mean we spend less time in our bodies. It’s much more convenient — but what’s the hidden cost?

• We shrink when were alone, and we trust others less

We feel challenged to spend more time with people in our bodies — looking each other in the eye, sharing physical space, and being present.

We’d love to hear whether you’ve sensed a difference in our latest in-person episodes and your thoughts on being together in person.

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🎙️Listen to The Sacred Podcast: https://linktr.ee/sacredpodcast

📖 Follow Elizabeth Oldfield: https://www.elizabetholdfield.com/

💡Produced by Theos Think Tank in partnership with Comment Magazine and with support from The Jerusalem Trust and Open Society Foundations

What do you do when you feel like an outsider?

We spoke to Rabbi Angela Buchdahl who turned her experience of being a cultural and religious outsider into a source of strength.

Raised in a biracial, mixed-faith American-Korean family, her identity was both welcomed and questioned in Korean and Jewish communities.

She later would later go on to become one of the most prominent and influential public rabbis in the United States, the first female East Asian senior rabbi at NYC's Central Synagogue, and writer of the bestselling memoir Heart of a Stranger.

We spoke about:

• Owning multiple identities, not fitting in and how to create a steady sense of self
• The religious conversion instinct and how to have religious humility
• Key Hebrew ideas that Rabbi Angela lives by
• The radical offering of religious communities in our divided times: community, awe, proximity
• Navigating tokenism as the first East Asian ordained rabbi

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🎙️Listen to ⁠The Sacred Podcast⁠: https://linktr.ee/sacredpodcast

📖 Follow ⁠Elizabeth Oldfield: https://www.elizabetholdfield.com/

💡Produced by ⁠⁠Theos Think Tank⁠⁠ in partnership with ⁠⁠Comment Magazine⁠⁠ and with support from ⁠⁠The Jerusalem Trust⁠⁠ and ⁠⁠Open Society Foundations

👉 Follow Rabbi Angela Buchdahl: https://www.instagram.com/rabbibuchdahl/?hl=en

Our guests and listeners to our podcast come from all kinds of perspectives and what draws us together is a desire to be self-aware about our own values and curious about other peoples. Comment your reflections below, we read them all👇

We talk a lot about the harms and benefits of AI, but we don’t talk enough about what the conversations about AI might actually be doing to us.

Perhaps the biggest challenge in the mix may not be the technology itself, but how it changes the way we think, communicate, and relate to each other as humans.

We’re creating some space for a different kind of conversation about AI with Jamie Bartlett on 8th September in London. We’d love to see you there!

🔗 Grab a ticket here: https://www.eventbrite.co.uk/e/the-sacred-live-ai-and-the-future-of-being-human-tickets-1994014009580 - use code: SACRED-EARLY-BIRD for a £12 ticket! Promo ends 8.08.26

Why do stories matter? Why have human beings always told stories - and what if the oldest stories still have something vital to teach us?

In this episode of The Sacred, Elizabeth Oldfield sits down with psychologist, mythologist and bestselling author Dr Sharon Blackie to explore why myths and fairy tales aren't just relics of the past, but tools for making sense of life today.

From a childhood marked by hardship to decades studying narrative psychology, Sharon shares how stories help us navigate change and uncertainty by showing us how people find courage, resilience and meaning in the face of life's hardest moments.

⚠️ Content note: This episode includes discussion of rape, sexual violence and domestic abuse. Listen with care.

Together they explore:

• Why stories shape the way we understand ourselves
• What fairy tales can teach us about resilience and healing
• Why men need less heroic storylines
• The forgotten wisdom hidden in traditional myths
• Women's stories, identity and reclaiming lost voices
• Our relationship with nature and what ancient stories reveal about living well today

Whether you love folklore or have never picked up a fairy tale since childhood, this conversation is ultimately about how to make sense of suffering, rediscover hope, or find meaning in uncertain times.

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Dr Sharon Blackie is an award-winning psychologist, mythologist and author of If Women Rose Rooted, Hagitude, Wise Women and The Enchanted Life. Her work explores mythology, psychology, ecology and the stories that shape who we become.

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Our guests and listeners to our podcast come from all kinds of perspectives and what draws us together is a desire to be self-aware about our own values and curious about other peoples. Comment your reflections below, we read them all👇

🎙️Listen to ⁠The Sacred Podcast⁠: https://linktr.ee/sacredpodcast

📖 Follow ⁠Elizabeth Oldfield: https://www.elizabetholdfield.com/

💡Produced by ⁠⁠Theos Think Tank⁠⁠ in partnership with ⁠⁠Comment Magazine⁠⁠ and with support from ⁠⁠The Jerusalem Trust⁠⁠ and ⁠⁠Open Society Foundations

👉 See Dr Sharon Blackie's work: https://sharonblackie.net/

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Chapters:

0:00 — What is Sacred to you? Dr Sharon Blackie answers

2:30 — Finding the divine in everything

4:16 — Growing up with poverty, violence, and resilience

5:43 — The working-class values we’ve forgotten

6:13 — The formidable women who raised her

8:29 — Living with an alcoholic parent

9:50 — The fairy tale that changed her life

10:47 — Why every great story begins with catastrophe

12:03 — Grimm’s fairy tales vs Disney

13:02 — Why we need the original fairy tales

14:10 — Fairy tales were never just for children

15:06 — What fairy tales teach us about surviving hard times

16:14 — Leaving corporate life to find her real calling

17:39 — Learning to stop being afraid of life

20:47 — From neuroscience to narrative therapy

26:39 — When women were the wisdom keepers

28:28 — Christianity, myth, and the loss of women’s voices

31:29 — Rethinking masculinity and femininity

33:08 — Can we still talk about "women"?

38:14 — What fairy tales teach us about work and resilience

39:57 — Healing without getting stuck in your wounds

43:15 — Becoming whole through story

45:06 — Why good parents are missing from fairy tales

49:44 — Beyond the Hero’s Journey: a new way to live

COPYRIGHT: "Burn Out" - Victor Lundberg (Licensed by Epidemic) & "Beyond the Veil" (feat. Khamir Music) by Simon Wester (Licensed by Musicbed)

Whether we know it or not, economics shapes almost every part of our lives - where we live, whether we can afford children, how much time we have with the people we love, and even the choices we think are available to us. But most of us rarely stop to ask what economics is actually for.

In this episode, Elizabeth Oldfield sits down with economist and Works in Progress editor Sam Bowman for a conversation that goes far beyond markets, GDP and public policy. Together we explore freedom, human flourishing, progress, and the surprising moral questions that sit beneath economic thinking.

We spoke about:

• Why economics is really about people, not money

• The relationship between freedom, wealth and human flourishing

• Whether we really need wealth to be happy

• Does the pursuit of prosperity comes at the expense of the things that make life meaningful?

Whether economics fascinates you or completely intimidates you, this conversation offers a fresh take on one of the most significant forces shaping modern life.

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Our guests and listeners to our podcast come from all kinds of perspectives and what draws us together is a desire to be self-aware about our own values and curious about other peoples.

Comment your reflections below, we read them all👇

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🎙️Listen to ⁠The Sacred Podcast⁠: https://linktr.ee/sacredpodcast

📖 Follow ⁠Elizabeth Oldfield: https://www.elizabetholdfield.com/

💡Produced by ⁠⁠Theos Think Tank⁠⁠ in partnership with ⁠⁠Comment Magazine⁠⁠ and with support from ⁠⁠The Jerusalem Trust⁠⁠ and ⁠⁠Open Society Foundations

👉 Follow Sam Bowman: https://x.com/s8mb

Chapters:

0:00 — Intro: How Economics Is Secretly Shaping Your Life

1:37 — What Is Sacred To You? Sam Bowman Answers

6:50 — Why Freedom Isn’t Just “Leave People Alone”

8:48 — What If People Choose Harmful Things?

11:37 — Ozempic and the New Meaning of Self-Control

15:25 — Can You Have Morality Without God?

21:30 — No Child Should Grow Up Worried About Money

25:22 — Is Travel Overrated?

31:51 — Why Most People Are Too Risk-Averse

35:14 — The Real Purpose of Economics

38:42 — Who Gets to Decide What Gets Built?

43:32 — What “Neoliberal” Actually Means

50:31 — Can Growth Continue Forever?

54:11 — Are Emissions Rising Because of AI?

57:41 — Does Wealth Really Make Us Happier?

61:32 — Britain’s Biggest Problem: Housing

65:18 — Elizabeth's Reflections

What does it mean to be visibly Muslim in British public life right now?

Mehreen Khan has been living that question since she was eleven years old - when 9/11 turned her faith into something she had to defend.

She's now Economics Editor at The Times, the first woman and first person of colour in the role, and one of the most outspoken Muslim voices in mainstream British journalism.

We cover:

• What Islam really means to her — the concept of fitrah and why faith makes you a better journalist

• How 9/11 turned Islam into a punk identity for Mehreen and ego death

• Being the first woman and first person of colour as Economics Editor at The Times Davos, elite financial circles, and what you see when you're inside the room

• Money: why economics is never morally neutral, and what it might look like to bring moral imagination back to capitalism
• What it means to be visibly Muslim in Britain right now
• Why Mehreen is quietly rooting for the revival of Christianity in British public life

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Our guests and listeners to our podcast come from all kinds of perspectives and what draws us together is a desire to be self-aware about our own values and curious about other peoples. Comment your reflections below, we read them all👇

🎙️Listen to ⁠The Sacred Podcast⁠: https://linktr.ee/sacredpodcast

📖 Follow ⁠Elizabeth Oldfield: https://www.elizabetholdfield.com/

💡Produced by ⁠⁠Theos Think Tank⁠⁠ in partnership with ⁠⁠Comment Magazine⁠⁠ and with support from ⁠⁠The Jerusalem Trust⁠⁠ and ⁠⁠Open Society Foundations

👉 See Mehreen's work: https://www.thetimes.com/profile/mehreen-khan