16 Must-Listen Podcast Episodes about our Interfaith Nation

Yolanda Pierce, Dean of the Howard University School of Divinity and a Professor of Religion & Literature, speaks on the “TheoEd Podcast” about her personal experiences with her grandmother and growing up in the church.   

Krista Tippett sits down with Eboo Patel for the first episode of “Interfaith America with Eboo Patel,” and Tippett has her own family of podcasts including “On Being.” This “Future of Hope” episode features a great conversation between theologian Kate Bowler and journalist Wajahat Ali where they give practical wisdom for facing uncertainty and mortality, talk about losses they did not foresee and new beginnings they would not have chosen.  

In this IA staff recommended “On Being” episode, Krista talks with Resmaa Menakem on “Notice the Rage; Notice the Silence.” Resmaa is a Minneapolis-based therapist and trauma specialist who looks to the wisdom of elders, and very new science, about how all of us carry in our bodies the history and traumas behind everything we collapse into the word “race.”  

In this “The Ezra Klein Show” episode with Richard Powers, Ezra calls their conversation a gift: “If you haven’t read [Powers’ 2019 Pulitzer Prize-winning “The Overstory”] yet you should. It’ll change you. It changed me. I haven’t walked through a forest the same way again. And I’m not alone in that. When I interviewed Barack Obama this year, he recommended ‘The Overstory,’ saying, ‘It changed how I thought about the earth and our place in it.’” This conversation touches on mortality, animism, politics, old-growth forests, extraterrestrial life, Buddhism and beyond. 

In this IA staff recommended episode, “Time After Time,” of “Good Faith with David French and Curtis Chang,” French and Chang dive into the issue of time and how our understanding of time horizons can profoundly impact our perspective on the world, whether it is getting worse or better, and what actions that should lead us to take.  

In this “Interfaith Voices” conversation, Ambereen Khan talks with the Rev. Bob Roberts on his interfaith work with GlocalNet in Texas and the hope he sees in the younger generation of Christians. Here are some other great “Interfaith Voices” episodes: 

• In this episode about the Hindu Heritage Summer Camp, we see one camper, Radhika Amin’s last summer attending the camp in upstate New York. The camp hosts 200 8- to 15-year-olds in two-week sessions at the rural campus on the outskirts of Rochester, New York. 
• Listen to co-authors, Laura Shovan and Saadia Faruqi, speak about their middle grade novel about a friendship between two young girls, one Jewish and one Muslim, as they find friendship in an unlikely place, an afterschool cooking club. 

Religion News Service reporter and author Bob Smietana speaks with Rabbi Jack Moline from the “State of Belief” podcast to discuss his new book, “Reorganized Religion: The Reshaping of the American Church and Why it Matters.” 

In this IA staff recommended episode of “Kelly Corrigan Wonders,” Corrigan talks with Anthony Ray Hinton on imagination, God, and solitary confinement. Hinton is an American activist and author who was wrongly convicted of murder in Alabama in 1985 and exonerated after 30 years in prison. This episode deepened our understanding of compassion and forgiveness in very difficult circumstances.  

In the “Jane Goodall Hopecast,” Dr. Goodall speaks with author, botanist, professor, and enrolled member of the Citizen Potawatomi Nation, Robin Wall Kimmerer. In this thoughtful conversation, Goodall and Kimmerer consider how much more there is to not only learn about plants, but to learn from them as well.   

Another episode on the natural word and human’s connection to it comes in this memorable story from the “This is Love” podcast, Something Large and Wild. This story is a favorite of the “This is Love” podcast team, and we can see why! 

In this “Saved in the City” episode, co-hosts Katelyn Beaty and Roxy Stone talk with Nikki Toyama-Szeto, the president of Christians for Social Action, about her experiences as a leader and how she’s learned to lead authentically from both her race and gender. 

In this Faith Angle Forum conversation, Kristin Kobes Du Mez and Walter Kim dig deeper into evangelicalism beyond headlines about the group’s voting patterns and political influence. They look at the possibilities and limitations for evangelical Christian renewal as well as the topics of gender equality, racial justice, and global Christianity. 

In addition to Tippett’s episode on the power of conversation, the second episode of “Interfaith America with Eboo Patel” episode, features a compelling conversation with author and activist Simran Jeet Singh. Singh reflects on being a Sikh American and how his faith inspires him to fight racism with love. 

We hope you give a few of these memorable episodes a listen and email us your recommended episodes!