I first recorded a podcast with mathematician & musician Eugenia Cheng in 2018 after reading her book "How to Bake Pi." I loved our conversation and so was delighted when she reached out to me last fall about possibly recording another podcast, this time on a different topic. Eugenia had recently had a final traumatic pregnancy loss which ended her hopes of ever bearing children, after several years of painful attempts and miscarriages. In her looking for attempt to look for resources to hel...
Jun 05, 2022•1 hr 20 min•Ep. 112
My guest this episode is Benjamin Saulsberry, the Public Engagement and Museum Education Director of the Emmett Till Interpretive Center in Sumner, Mississippi. The story of Emmett Till’s lynching and murder has long had a haunting effect on me, partially because I Iive about a mile north of the church where his funeral was held in 1955 and I went on a personal pilgrimage a few years ago where I walked 13 miles from that church to his grave site in suburban Chicago. A story about Till’s death wa...
Jan 04, 2022•40 min•Ep. 111
One of the benefits of doing a podcast is it gives me the opportunity to reach out to people whose work I’ve long admired and see if there’s any chance they’d like to talk to me. It’s always a joyful surprise when many of them say yes. That was the case when I heard from Kathleen Norris and when she agreed to this conversation. I was greatly formed in my early days of ministry by her books, “The Cloister Walk” and “Amazing Grace: A Vocabulary of Faith,” and she’s written numerous other poems and...
Aug 06, 2021•39 min•Ep. 110
My guest this week is Tyler Sit, the founding pastor of New City Church in Minneapolis, a community that describes itself as focuses on environmental justice and radical inclusion as a queer and people of color affirming place of worship. Tyler recently wrote a book called “Staying Awake: The Gospel for Changemakers” which gives an overview of some of the core spiritual practices at New City. It can be a bit of a challenge to find communities that fully embrace practices like centering marginali...
Jun 16, 2021•47 min•Ep. 109
My guest for this episode is Dr. Wil Gafney. Dr. Gafney is Professor of Hebrew Bible at Brite Divinity School in Fort Worth, Texas. She is the author of several books including Womanist Midrash: A Reintroduction to Women of the Torah and of the Throne . She is also an Episcopal priest. We talked about a lot about biblical interpretation, including womanist biblical interpretation. For those who aren’t familiar with the word womanist, it was coined by the author Alice Walker and briefly means a b...
May 18, 2021•33 min•Ep. 108
Jan Richardson is an artist, writer, and United Methodist pastor and has traveled widely as a retreat leader and conference speaker. Jan has written many books, including her most recent one, Sparrow: A Book of Life and Death and Life in which she shares in vulnerable and beautiful ways about the ache of grief and loss after the sudden death of her husband in 2013. We reflect on the nature of grief, how many people feel like they get grief “wrong” and also how failure is integrated into the crea...
Apr 14, 2021•48 min•Ep. 107
My guest for this podcast is Eboo Patel. Eboo is the founder of IFYC, Interfaith Youth Core, and is now a national figure in developing interfaith conversations and relationships. Named by U.S. News & World Report as one of America’s Best Leaders of 2009, Eboo served on President Obama’s Inaugural Faith Council and is the author of several books, including "Acts of Faith: The Story of An American Muslim, in the Struggle for the Soul of a Generation" and "Out of Many Faiths: Religious Diversi...
Dec 18, 2020•36 min•Ep. 106
My guest for this episode is Sheldrick Holmes. I don’t know about you, but it seems like every day I read about one of my favorite restaurants or businesses having to close because of the pandemic. It made me curious about how does a restaurant actually make ends meet in times like this? So I reached out to one of my new favorite coffee places in my neighborhood, The Grail Café, which opened just two months before the pandemic hit. They’ve hung in there and I reached out to the owner, Sheldrick ...
Oct 15, 2020•34 min•Ep. 105
My guest this week is church planter and pastor Kevin Makins. Kevin is the founder of Eucharist Church in Hamilton, Ontario, and he recently wrote the book, “Why Would Anyone Go to Church?” The book is a very honest look at how his church came to be and his own personal joys and struggles in that process. We also do some reflections on the state of the church in Canada. You can follow him on Twitter and Instagram @kevinmakins.
Oct 01, 2020•40 min•Ep. 104
I’m continuing this little mini-series about journalism as I talk to free-lance journalist, Derrick Clifton. Derrick is a journalist focused on the intersections of identity, culture and social justice issues. Their work has appeared at NBC News Digital, Vice, The Triibe and various other news and culture outlets. They were most recently the communications manager for ProPublica Illinois, the first regional newsroom operation of ProPublica. Derrick has some engaging and honest things to say abou...
Sep 17, 2020•37 min•Ep. 103
A common topic for conversation these days centers around what information we’re receiving and whether we can trust that information. Because I have a little background in journalism, information sharing has always been of interest to me so I’m doing three episodes in a row dedicated to this topic. First up is a conversation with Charles Whitaker, the dean of the Medill School of Journalism at Northwestern University. Before joining the Medill faculty, Charles was a senior editor at Ebony magazi...
Sep 03, 2020•43 min•Ep. 102
The Democratic National Convention is happening right now so I thought it might be a good time to share the conversation I had in January 2019 conversation with then-mayoral candidate (and now Chicago mayor) Lori Lightfoot.
Aug 20, 2020•31 min•Ep. 101
Normally right now, many of us would be glued to the TV watching the Summer Olympics, but, of course, it has become one of the many unfortunate pandemic postponements this year. Since 1960, the Paralympics have also been held the same year as the Olympics and they too have been postponed. Today I talk with one of the athletes who would have competed in this year’s competition, Susannah Scaroni. Susannah is a wheelchair racer with an emphasis on the marathon. She competed in the 2012 and 2016 par...
Aug 06, 2020•41 min•Ep. 100
My guest this week is Denise Pope. Denise is a Senior Lecturer at the Stanford University Graduate School of Education and the author of “Doing School”: How We Are Creating a Generation of Stressed Out, Materialistic, and Miseducated Students . She’s also the co-founder of Challenge Success, an organization that partners with schools, families, and communities to embrace a broad definition of success and to implement research-based strategies that promote student well-being and engagement with l...
Jul 23, 2020•35 min•Ep. 99
My guest for this this week's episode is Leslie Jordan. Between 2009 and 2018, Leslie was a part of the Grammy-nominated Christian music group, All Sons & Daughters . Now, she lives in the Nashville area with her family and is releasing solo music and overseeing, The Fold , a non-profit that creates spaces and opportunities for songwriters and artists to collaborate and find their voices. We had a wide-ranging conversation on her own faith life and how it’s changed over the years, her experi...
Jul 09, 2020•46 min•Ep. 98
My guest this week is David Bailey. David is the founder of Arrabon , an organization that helps Christian leaders and communities engage in the work of reconciliation and culture creation, especially racial reconciliation. Out of this work has come two additional musical ministries called Urban Doxology and The Porter’s Gate worship project . I reached out to David several weeks ago and was so pleased when he accepted and it so happened that we scheduled our conversation for last Wednesday in t...
Jun 06, 2020•46 min•Ep. 97
My guest this week is Caitlin Kirby. Caitlyn will start soon as a science literacy researcher at the University of Nebraska, but the reason she was brought to my attention is because, of all things, something she wore. When Caitlyn defended her Ph.D. dissertation, she wore a skirt made out of rejection letters and emails that she had received during her graduate studies. Of course, I had to ask her about how rejection and failure played into this decision. You can follow Caitlyn on Twitter @kirb...
May 14, 2020•16 min•Ep. 96
The episode this week is a rebroadcast of my conversation with Rutha Mae Harris. Ms. Harris is a retired teacher who lives in Albany, Georgia, but she’s perhaps more widely known as one of the original Freedom Singers, a group of activitists and musicians who worked with the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee in the early 1960s. The group traveled across the country raising money and awareness for SNCC and their work during the Civil Rights Movement and also providing inspiration for all ...
Apr 23, 2020•31 min•Ep. 95
My guest this week is author and activist Shane Claiborne. Shane has been one of the most notable Christian social justice advocates for the last two decades and is the author of several books including his first, “The Irresistible Revolution” and his latest “Beating Guns: Hope for People who are weary of violence.” We talked about how he’s adjusting to living during this pandemic, the span of his career, why he still has hope. To find out more about Shane and his ministry, you can go to his web...
Apr 09, 2020•52 min•Ep. 94
My guest this week is Trey Hall, Director of Evangelism and Growth for the British Methodist Church and the other co-founder of Urban Village Church. Urban Village celebrates its 10th birthday on March 28 and so I thought it would be fun to have Trey on not only to share about his own personal story and journey but for us to do a little reminiscing about the last 10 years. All this, plus Trey talks about his current position and the state of the church in Great Britain. To find that web site tha...
Mar 25, 2020•1 hr 11 min•Ep. 93
