On Being with Krista Tippett

Joel Hanson has schizophrenia and believes he is God. His parents reflect on living with their son and how they have learned to see mental illness, normalcy, and religion differently. Is there room in our culture to consider a schizophrenic personality as another form of human difference and diversity?

The birth of the Pentecostal movement began 100 years ago on Azusa Street in Los Angeles. We take our show on the road to cover this global gathering and revival that is reshaping Christianity, culture, and politics worldwide. Guests include Cecil Robeck and Arlene Sanchez Walsh.

Science and religion are often pitted against one another; but how do they complement, rather than contradict, one another? We learn how scientist and theologian John Polkinghorne applies the deepest insights of modern physics to think about how the world fundamentally works, and how the universe might make space for prayer.

Avivah Zornberg is one of the great, creative interpreters of Talmud and Torah in the ontemporary world. She guides us through the Exodus story that is commemorated during the eight days of Passover. Passover is also the backdrop of the Easter events of the Christian New Testament. We find meaning in the text that Cecil B. DeMille and Disney never imagined — about the worst and the best of human nature, and the realities and ironies of human freedom.

Wangari Maathai, a native Kenyan, was the first African woman to be awarded the Nobel Peace Prize. She is founder of the Green Belt Movement — a grassroots organization that empowers African women to improve their lives and conserve the environment through planting trees. Deforestation and climate change have plunged Africa into the worst drought in decades. After helping plant 30 million trees, she speaks about the global balance of human and natural resources and shares her thoughts on where God resides.

Adrian Ivakhiv is an environmentalist who pursued the ecological impulse of Paganism from its ancient roots to its modern revival in Europe and North America. We hear his observations about the spirit of Paganism and its influence on everyday Western culture — and even on old-time religion.

We explore creative and generous approaches to prayer in three very different lives: Hindu chant with musician Anoushka Shankar; poetry and "non-religious" prayer with translator Stephen Mitchell; and theologian Roberta Bondi on learning to pray with the Desert Fathers and Mothers. Also, a reflection on prayer by poet and memoirist Patricia Hampl.

In the second of a two-part series, continue listening to experiences and perceptions that divide Israelis and Palestinians even as they share a land they both consider holy. Two Muslim Palestinians, Mohammed Abu-Nimer and Sami Adwan, speak about the intersection of the spiritual and the political in their lives.

In the first of a two-part series, we'll seek to understand the difficulty of peace in a land that its inhabitants, on both sides of conflict, consider holy. We listen this hour to journalist Yossi Klein Halevi's perceptions and perspectives as an Israeli Jew.

Vietnamese Zen master and poet, Thich Nhat Hanh, offers stark, gentle wisdom for living in a world of anger and violence. We speak with him and others at an unusual retreat attended by law enforcement officials.

As the Enron trial unfolds in Houston, we speak with international business analyst Prabhu Guptara of UBS in Switzerland. He has fascinating perspective on how an Enron scandal can happen and why it matters to people around the world. He explains how the United States can be one of the world's most religious countries -- yet at the same time, a culture in which moral values can fail to penetrate the workplace.

We seek to untangle the knot of violent and bewildered reactions to cartoons depicting the Prophet Muhammad. Vincent Cornell, a professor of history and director of the King Fahd Center for Middle East and Islamic Studies at the University of Arkansas, provides insight into this complex issue.

Isabel Mukonyora has followed and studied a religious movement of her Shona people, the Masowe Apostles, that embraces Christian tradition while addressing the drama of African life and history. The founder of this movement, Johane Masowe, emphasized an ancient Jewish and Christian pull to the wilderness. Through her stories we explore modern African spirituality, diaspora, and finding meaning, as Mukonyora says, "in the margins."

With Bonhoeffer documentarian Martin Doblmeier, we explore this 20th-century theologian who was executed for his complicity in a plot to assassinate Adolph Hitler. Bonhoeffer's example and his extant writings, including "Letters and Papers from Prison," continue to inspire with creative and challenging ideas about "religionless Christianity," the nature of ethics, and the "will of God" versus "tribal" religion.

In an intellectual and personal adventure across India and Europe, Afghanistan and America, Pankaj Mishra, an Indian journalist and author of "An End to Suffering: The Buddha in the World," pursued the history and the meaning of the Buddha -- not as a religious figure but as a critical social thinker. He came to doubt some of the most basic assumptions about politics and progress that define the modern world.