The Spirit Of Things - Program Podcast

Professor Elaine Pagels has spent decades seeking to understand religion and, as her latest book reveals, this isn’t a merely academic exercise but a quest bound up with her own experience of life and bereavement.

It's the end of the Merkel era in Germany. We take a look at the faith and politics of this remarkable leader who has been at the helm of Europe's largest economy for almost 16 years. Then, we step a little further back in German history to explore the life and work of Karl Barth, a prolific theologian who was one of the main authors of the Barmen Declaration – a document resisting the Nazification of the church.

What happens when a sceptical writer immerses herself in peak Christian belief at a creationist museum? What happens when a Christian minister confronts the past and present horrific failures of the church? Hear from authors Sarah Krasnostein and John Dickson about what they learned when they confronted belief and unbelief, how it moved and changed them.

"Abandon all hope, ye who enter here." To mark 700 years since Dante's death on 14 September 1321, we're taking a close look at his life and masterpiece, The Divine Comedy. Join Dr Meredith Lake and a host of Dante experts and enthusiasts as we journey from hell to purgatory to paradise.

Soulmates. Star-crossed lovers, couple goals, my other half. Or besties, brother-from-another-mother, my person. Whatever form they come in, they're the people we can't live without. So, what role do soulmates have in shaping our thoughts and ideas, emotions and behaviours, and all the significant and trivial aspects of our daily lives?

Strangers. We pass them in the street. We live next door to them. We have conversations with them online. What brings strangers together, and what keeps us apart? Why do our interactions with strangers matter? In this episode we explore interactions between strangers in our pandemic world, and in a community reeling from tragedy.

Siblings. Most of us have them, and they're the closest and longest relationships many of us will have in our lifetimes. So, how do sibling relationships shape us? And what can we learn from brothers and sisters in religious traditions, fairytales and folklore?

Acclaimed ethologist and 2021 Templeton Prize winner, Jane Goodall, tells us about the many teachers who have gifted her with lessons on humanity and hope: from her childhood reading tree to her first dog, the Gombe forest and, of course, her beloved chimps.

As the Tokyo Olympics draws to a close, we mark another significant date on the calendar: Hiroshima Day. Hear from two women about their work to spread peace around the world by planting Hiroshima A-bomb survivor trees in 36 countries so far – and counting.

A lapsed Catholic and a professor of theology on why there's a whole lot more to atheism than mere unbelief, and how atheists and theists may have more in common than you think.

Join Soul Search host Meredith Lake and curator Sue Cramer as they take you on an audio tour of Hilma af Klint's works of incredible vibrancy and power that demonstrate her spiritual adventurousness and bravery – incredible, massive paintings that were kept secret for decades after her death.

Muslim cameleers have a rich history in Australia – that you may not have heard much about. They're the men who transformed the economic, cultural and spiritual life of many outback communities at the turn of the 20th century.

What are the possibilities for a grounded spirituality, in the aftermath of colonisation? Indigenous theologian Garry Deverell has lived the search for a spirituality that connects land and body. He joins Meredith Lake to discuss ritual, reconnection and reconciliation.

This NAIDOC week Meredith Lake hands over the mic to guest presenter Brooke Prentis. Brooke is a Wakka Wakka woman who was born on Yidinji country, grew up mainly in Gubbi Gubbi country, but now lives on Gadigal land in Sydney. She's also an Aboriginal Christian leader and she shares about her journey of faith, the Aboriginal Christian leaders that inspire her, and what she's up to in her current role as CEO of Common Grace, a Christian movement in Australia.

In the lead up to the Olympic Games in Tokyo we look at the relationship between religion and sport. We speak to young Christian athlete Nicola McDermott, Olympian and Shia Muslim Hayder Shkara, and Japanese writer Shotaro Honda Moore.

Mountains have often been the location for spiritual experiences, or breakthroughs. On Soul Search today, we're turning to the mountains in our third — and final — episode on Sacred Landscapes. We meet Dr Thomas Michael, an expert on the religious significance of mountains in Eastern and Western thought, and Gary Khor, Grandmaster of tai chi, who goes on regular journeys to sacred mountains in China.

Trees have a special place in the human imagination and they feature in many of the world’s cultural and religious traditions. The ancient Hebrew poets even imagined trees themselves shouting for joy in praise of a divine creator. Today we explore the forest as a sacred landscape in Northern Ethiopia, and at the Wat Buddha Dhamma Monastery nestled within the Dharug National Park in New South Wales.

How do the places we love shape our sense of the sacred? And how are our spiritual lives nurtured by the bush, the mountains — or even the sea? In the first episode of our 3-part series Sacred Landscapes, we hear from Mary Evelyn Tucker, co-founder and director of the Forum on Religion and Ecology at Yale University, who tells us why religion and spiritual matter in the Anthropocene. Then we hear from Rev Dr Jione Havea, a pastor from Tonga, on what it means to him to belong to the islands and to their seas.

Many Indigenous languages have a word that means something like ‘deep listening’. In Ngan'gikurunggurr, a Northern Territory language, that word is dadirri. We hear from renowned Aboriginal elder and Senior Australian of the Year, Dr Miriam Rose Ungunmerr-Baumann, who advocates for a kind of listening — a quiet awareness — that sums up a whole way of being. We also meet Wiradjuri and Wailwaan woman Fleur Magick Dennis on a different kind of meditation and ethical reflection this Reconciliation week.

Do you ever look around and think, there must be a better way to do life, here? On Soul Search, we’re meeting people asking the big question of how to live well in the world as we find it. We hear from Dr Jonathan Cornford, a political economist on a mission to live more slowly, gently, and simply, and Asher Packman, the current President of Meditation Australia.