On Being with Krista Tippett

Is our Western concern about women in Islam really a concern for the well-being of women? Is the veil a symptom of their problems, or ours? Our guest Leila Ahmed provides essential background and challenges Western thinking on these and other questions.

The sales are starting, the stores are open late, and many of us are gearing up to spend more money than we actually have in a holiday season with deep roots in religion. With family financial advisor Nathan Dungan, we'll explore turmoil many of us experience with money in our day-to-day lives — and how we might work towards a moral and practical balance for ourselves and the next generation.

"We want our children to be gracious and grateful, we want them to have courage in difficult times, we want them to have a sense of joy and purpose. That's what it means to nurture their spiritual life." For Thanksgiving, we bring back our conversation with Rabbi Sandy Sasso, who helps children and adults of many backgrounds discuss religion and ethics together.

Nearly ten million Americans are diagnosed with clinical depression. And, as we have become more conversant about the disease, a body of literature has appeared by people who have struggled with depression and found it to be a lesson in the nature of the human soul. Krista engages some of these voices: author Andrew Solomon, poet and psychologist Anita Barrows, and Quaker educator Parker Palmer.

U.S. culture's clash between religion and science is almost exclusively driven by Christian instincts and arguments. Hindu physicist V.V. Raman offers another view of religion, the universe, and the complementarity of the questions of science and faith.

The great public theologian and historian Martin Marty describes how religion in U.S. politics has been gathering narrative shape for decades. He offers wisdom, good humor, and a generous imagination about evolving religious dynamics in U.S. and global life.

Philosopher Jacob Needleman speaks on the spiritual and moral ideals of the American founders, and how these ideals resonate in our culture today. Democracy, Needleman says, is inner work, not just a set of outward structures.

In this close-up look at the human dynamics of the war on terror, Mariane Pearl speaks about her husband, journalist Daniel Pearl, who was murdered in Pakistan shortly after 9/11. She talks about Buddhism, her ethic of spiritual defiance, and her hopes for the future.

Experts once predicted that as the world grew more modern, religion would decline. Precisely the opposite has proven true. Two leading thinkers, Boston University sociologist Peter Berger and Harvard Business School's Rosabeth Moss Kanter, discuss why religion of all kinds is increasingly shaping discussions of world politics and the global economy and political order.

This program presents an unusual take on the mind-body connection with author and yoga teacher Matthew Sanford. He's been a paraplegic since the age of 13. He shares his wisdom for us all on knowing the strength and grace of our bodies even in the face of illness, aging, and death.

Art, life, and religious faith converge in Paul Elie's unusual biography of the intersecting stories of four literary Americans of the 20th century: Trappist monk Thomas Merton, social activist Dorothy Day, and fiction writers Walker Percy and Flannery O'Connor. "Certain books, certain writers," Elie says, "reach us at the center of ourselves."

Physician and author Rachel Naomi Remen intertwines stories from life and her practice of oncology. She gives perspective on the core human experiences of loss and disappointment and the achievable work of healing and repair. How we approach this, she says, profoundly shapes our individual lives and that of our society.

John Danforth — a former U.S. Senator and UN Ambassador, a lawyer who is also an Episcopal priest — has emerged as a cautionary Republican voice. He speaks about the values that have helped him navigate the line between private faith and public life and his current concerns about religion in his own party and in the world.

Dramatic headlines convey a predominantly violent picture of global Islam. But, during the past five years, Muslim guests on Speaking of Faith have conveyed a thoughtful, questing, diverse, and compelling faith. Step back with us and hear these voices from the traditional and evolving center of Islam. And, Krista Tippett speaks with Seyyed Hossein Nasr, an esteemed Muslim scholar who brings a broad religious and historical perspective to hard questions about Islam and the West that have lingered uncomfortably in American life since 9/11.

Eboo Patel, a 30-year-old Indian-American Muslim and former Rhodes Scholar, is setting out to change the way young people relate to their own religious traditions and those of others. Al Quaeda is the most effective youth program in the world, he says, and we neglect this work at our peril.