National • News & Public Affairs
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.
Inspired (formerly Interfaith Voices) 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.
That’s why Inspired matters.
We believe interfaith understanding is more than hollow jargon. It is integral to being informed and engaged citizens in the most religiously diverse country on earth. Polite society might try to avoid talking about religion and politics, but Inspired believes that we must talk about both – together.
We strive to:
- educate the public about the religious and ethical issues behind the news
- explore the mystery of spiritual experience
- invite guests and listeners from a wide diversity of traditions, including those with no religion
- promote dialogue, especially on contentious moral topics
- present many faith traditions and points of view – faithfully, clearly and compellingly
Inspired does not preach or proselytize, and is not affiliated with any religious organization. We are an independent public radio program.
Upcoming Episodes
May 26, 2024 National, News & Public Affairs
A Different View of American Buddhism
The spiritual journey of activist and author Chenxing Han began on the road during a gap year between high school and college. Traveling through Asian countries, Han encountered the many variations and schools of Buddhism. She found herself drawn to its precepts and rituals. While studying the faith and training to be a chaplain, one question persisted when she returned to the United States: Where are all the Asian-American Buddhists in American Buddhism? She set out to answer this question and emerged — not only with a master’s thesis — but also a new framework for thinking about American Buddhists. Released in January, Be the Refuge: Raising the Voices of Asian Americans wrestles with questions of belonging, identity, and race at a time when a new wave of anti-Asian violence threatens the Asian American community. Han offers allies and younger generations historical context and a new understanding of the diversity of American Buddhism.
Read MoreMay 19, 2024 National, News & Public Affairs
The Uncommitted Bubble, Muslim Voters and Biden
Leaders from American Muslim organizations talk about the campaigns underway to identify, register, and get Muslim American voters to the polls on Super Tuesday and why building momentum for the uncommitted has become a priority after the Michigan primary. Then, we hear a special installment from The Spiritual Edge about the efforts of Sister Aisha al-Adawiya to make space for women in America’s mosques.
ListenMay 5, 2024 National, News & Public Affairs
Building Alliances and Restoring Trust
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.
Read MoreApril 21, 2024 National, News & Public Affairs
AI in Israel’s Bombing Campaign in Gaza, and the Religion Beat in Dallas
Israel's bombing campaign in Gaza is employing AI tools and a shocking redefinition of collateral damage that raises ethical questions. Then we talk to the new religion beat reporter for the Dallas Morning News.
Read MoreApril 14, 2024 National, News & Public Affairs
Plant Time: Inside a Psychedelic Church
At Sacred Garden Community Church in Berkeley, California, services and sacraments are centered on entheogen -- a chemical produced naturally by some plants that, when ingested, can sometimes lead to a heightened sense of spiritual or religious enlightenment. Some call these hallucinogens or psychedelics. They include ayahuasca, mescaline, peyote cacti, and psilocybin mushrooms – all known by indigenous peoples for thousands of years. Psychedelic congregations like Sacred Garden are one of the fastest-growing faith communities in the U.S. and beyond and are taking root in Christian, Jewish, Buddhist, and non-denominational settings. But how sustainable is this model of worship? Is it another form of cultural appropriation? What is the future – if any – of so-called “psychedelic churches?
Read MoreApril 7, 2024 National, News & Public Affairs
Supporting Religious Feminists and Stories from the Hindu Beat
Dr. Mary Hunt is a feminist theologian, scholar, and activist who reflects on how women find their voice and express leadership in religious spaces inside and beyond institutions. Religion News Service National Religion Reporter Richa Karmarkar reviews some of the trends she follows on the Hindu beat.
Read MoreMarch 31, 2024 National, News & Public Affairs
The New Longevity – Living Longer, Living Spiritually
According to Stanford University's Center on Longevity, half of today's five-year-olds may live to 100. And by 2050, all newborns can expect to live at least that long. Doctors, educators, social scientists, and other professionals are increasingly focusing on "the new longevity"—expanding the quality of our increasingly lengthy lifetimes. This week, we look at the spiritual power and possibilities of the new longevity.
Read MoreMarch 17, 2024 National, News & Public Affairs
Muslim Wellness Foundation Founder: Our story does not start with oppression.
Dr. Kameelah Mu’Min Oseguera is the Founder and President of the Muslim Wellness Foundation (MWF), a nonprofit organization dedicated to promoting healing and emotional well-being in the American Muslim community. Oseguera joins to discuss her work at the Omar Ibn Said Institute for Black Muslim Studies and Research and explains why she sees interrogating the Western narrative of the enslaved as interconnected to Black Muslim mental health and well-being.
Read MoreFebruary 4, 2024 National, News & Public Affairs
How Far to the Promised Land with Rev. Esau McCaulley
In 2017, an unexpected traffic accident killed Rev. Esau McCaulley’s father. His family then asked him to take on a difficult task: delivering a eulogy for a father who abandoned him. The ritual of learning about his father led him on a journey to discover parts of his family and his story that were until then missing. In conversations with elders, he saw complexity and began to interrogate the ideas of Black success that sometimes made him feel trapped. Those stories also provided a sharp contrast to the history he learned in school. Today, he sees the controversies around lessons on Black American history connected to a persistent mythology that the Civil War was not fought because of slavery but Southern heritage.
Read MoreJanuary 21, 2024 National, News & Public Affairs
Two Pillars of the Civil Rights Movement
We consider the legacies of James Baldwin and the Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. and the challenges they put before the world today.
Read MoreJanuary 7, 2024 National, News & Public Affairs
Ronit Y. Stahl, author of “Enlisting Faith,” gives a brief history of chaplaincy in the military. Then, the filmmakers of the new documentary Three Chaplains discuss the challenging nature of the work of Muslim chaplains in the U.S. military. They follow two men's careers and that of the first female Muslim chaplain in the U.S. Armed Forces. The filmmakers describe the pressing issues these chaplains confront daily and tell how they – two civilians – were moved and changed during seven years working on the film.
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