Listen Live on KKFI
Every Sunday at 3:00amAbout the Show
Inspired
Inspired is the nation's leading public radio show about faith, ethics and spirituality. Each week we offer you analyses of the big headlines alongside lesser-told stories – those of Orthodox Jewish artists and African-American atheists, Muslim feminists and spiritual seekers. Through these stories, a rough sketch of our country’s religious landscape begins to emerge. It’s a marketplace of beliefs and ideas too complex for sound bites, and too important to ignore.
The Long and Storied History of Solidarity of Irish and Black Activists
This special segment was produced by NPR’s Code Switch, co-hosts BA. Parker and Gene Denby explore the curious twists and turns in the relationship between freedom-seeking activists across oceans and borders. The show begins with an observation and question: Why is there a portrait of Frederick Douglass hanging in an Irish-themed pub in Washington, D.C.? To get to the answer, Parker and Denby take listeners on a deep dive into the history between Black civil rights leaders and Irish republican activists that begins with Frederick Douglass’ visit to Ireland in 1845. The story continues into the 20th century with Bernadette Devlin, a Catholic activist and young MP serving in the UK parliament in 1969. Devlin’s assumptions about solidarity are challenged by unexpected realities about intergroup relationships and, well, race when she travels to the United States in 1969 looking for US support.
Vaccine Hesitancy: Faith Leaders Work to Rebuild Trust (encore)
In the first year of the global pandemic, COVID-19 deaths among Native Americans were significantly higher than any other ethnic or racial group in America due to exceedingly poor public health infrastructure. To combat the inequity, a group of public health workers in North Carolina led by Dr. David Tillman, supported by a grant from Interfaith America, worked to foster trusting relationships to tackle vaccine hesitancy and combat misinformation with the Coharie tribe in Sampson County. Independent and award-winning Producer Monique Parsons filed this story from North Carolina.
