The Sacred

Theos Think Tank

A podcast about our Sacred values and how we can talk to people who are different from ourselves.

Each episode features a conversation with someone who has a public voice, from academics to journalists, playwrights and politicians. We ask them where they have come from, what they are trying to do and what might help heal our very divided public conversations.

The Sacred is hosted by Elizabeth Oldfield and produced in partnership with Comment Magazine, and with support from The Jerusalem Trust and Open Society Foundation

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245 episodes
Updated Wednesday

Episodes245

Newest first

Sep 14, 2022 · 7 min
Sacred Reflection: Queen Elizabeth II and her role in reconciliation
The United Kingdom, Commonwealth and indeed the entire world were sent into shock after Her Majesty Queen Elizabeth II died on Thursday 8 September at the age 96, and after 70 years on the throne. Elizabeth Oldfield reflects on Her Majesty’s role in the area of reconciliation throughout the many years she reigned, and how we might show compassion to those who have responded differently to her death.
Jun 8, 2022 · 47 min
Jenny Odell on attention, where we put it, and how it can polarise society
Jenny Odell is an American multi-disciplinary artist, former art teacher at Stanford University and author of the New York Times best selling book, How to Do Nothing: Resisting the Attention Economy. She spoke about attention, where we put it, how it shapes and forms us, and how it could be the key to understanding our increasingly polarised societies. Read the full transcript here: https://www.theosthinktank.co.uk/comment/2022/06/08/jenny-odell-on-attention-where-we-put-it-and-how-it-forms-us
Jun 1, 2022 · 51 min
Kate Maltby on her Jewish heritage, identity issues and the power of live theatre
Kate Maltby is a columnist for The i Paper, theatre critic and senior research associate at Jesus College Cambridge. She spoke about her Jewish heritage, the power and (almost) sacredness of live theatre and of dealing with identity issues. Read the full transcript here: https://www.theosthinktank.co.uk/comment/2022/06/01/kate-maltby-on-her-jewish-heritage-identity-issues-and-the-power-of-live-theatre
May 25, 2022 · 51 min
Francesca Stavrakopoulou on vegetarianism and studying theology as an atheist
Francesca is Professor of Hebrew Bible and Ancient Religion at the University of Exeter, and a patron of Humanists UK. Her latest book is called God: An Anatomy. She spoke about her vegetarianism, her experience of growing up in a single parent household with not a lot of money and studying theology as an atheist at the University of Oxford.
May 18, 2022 · 42 min
Christie Watson on humour, compassion and why nursing and writing belong together
Christie is an award-winning novelist, memoirist and professor of medical and health humanities at UEA. She was a registered pediatric nurse for 20 years spending most of her career in pediatric intensive care and as a resuscitation officer. She speaks about humour as an antidote to darkness, why nurses’ stories are so rarely told, how she found meaning in the practice of care, and why compassion is what we should be judged on.
May 11, 2022 · 49 min
Danny Kruger MP on conservatism, Christianity and why running a charity is hard work
Danny Kruger MP is a Conservative Member of Parliament for the Devizes constituency in Wiltshire. He and his wife founded and ran Only Connect, a charity that works with men and women in prison or recently released, with the aim of helping them live crime-free lives. Prior to this he worked as a speechwriter for the Conservative party, for a think tank, and as a journalist. He speaks about his conservatism, his conversion to Christianity in his 20’s, and why he thinks running a charity is harder than being an MP. We recorded this while Danny was driving, so you may hear a faint ticking noise from his indicator. Read the full transcript here: https://www.theosthinktank.co.uk/comment/2022/05/11/danny-kruger-mp-conservatism-christianity-and-why-running-a-charity-is-hard-work
May 4, 2022 · 46 min
Frank Cottrell–Boyce on wonder, forgiveness and the writer's calling
Frank Cottrell-Boyce is a screenwriter and novelist. He is best known for his screenplays for 24 Hour Party People, Welcome to Sarajevo and others, his award–winning children’s books, including Millions, and for being the writer of the 2012 Olympic opening ceremony, one of many collaborations with his friend, Danny Boyle. He speaks about his sacramental faith, the place of forgiveness in society, and what he sees as the writer's calling. We had a few sound issues with this recording but we hope you agree it is still well worth listening to. Read the full transcript here: https://www.theosthinktank.co.uk/comment/2022/05/04/frank-cottrellboyce-on-wonder-forgiveness-and-the-writers-calling
Apr 27, 2022 · 51 min
James Perry on interdependence and the purpose of business
James is co–chair and co–founder of COOK, the very fancy and very delicious frozen food company. He is also co–founder and board member of the B Corp, co–chairman of B Lab UK and a founding partner of Snowball, which is a multi–asset impact investment manager. He has also been deputy chairman of the social Stock Exchange. Wherever people have been thinking about how business and capital can be used for positive social purpose, you will find James. He speaks about his three sacred values of original goodness, interdependence and autonomy, feeling politically homeless, and why he thinks it’s possible for business to do good in the world.
Apr 20, 2022 · 55 min
Jenn Ashworth on Mormonism, class and the universal experience of suffering
Jenn is an award-winning novelist, a Fellow of the Royal Society of Literature and a Professor of writing at Lancaster University. In this episode she speaks about her childhood Mormonism, class, the turbulence around identity and free speech on university campuses, and how society is thinking more about trauma and what that might mean. Read the full transcript here: https://www.theosthinktank.co.uk/comment/2022/04/20/jenn-ashworth-on-mormonism-class-and-the-universal-experience-of-suffering
Apr 13, 2022 · 50 min
Charlie Gilmour on fatherhood and the cost of writing a memoir
Charlie is a journalist and a critically acclaimed memoirist. His memoir, ‘Featherhood’ won all manner of awards. Charlie is the adopted son of David Gilmour of Pink Floyd and Polly Samson, who’s also a writer. Charlie was famously arrested and imprisoned after being photographed swinging from the Cenotaph during the student protests in 2010. His memoir covers his time in prison, his attempts to reconnect with his biological father and his strange and beautiful relationship with an adopted magpie. In this episode, Charlie speaks about whether it is possible to have an ethical memoir, what we are doing when we consume true stories in society, and what that means for the ways we engage with each other across our differences. Read the full transcript here: https://www.theosthinktank.co.uk/comment/2022/04/13/charlie-gilmour-on-fatherhood-and-the-cost-of-writing-a-memoir
Jan 26, 2022 · 52 min
Vanessa Zoltan on radical hospitality, atheist chaplaincy and treating texts as sacred
Vanessa worked in education and nonprofits before attending Harvard Divinity School to become a non–denominational atheist chaplain. Whilst at Harvard she and Casper Ter Kuile who was also a guest on the podcast, launched a class and then a very successful podcast based around the idea of reading Harry Potter as a sacred text. She is now CEO and founder of Not Sorry Productions, which produces the podcasts ‘Harry Potter and the Sacred Text’, ‘Twilight in Quarantine’, and ‘Hot and Bothered’, which is about treating romance novels as sacred. Her first book is called ‘Praying with Jane Eyre.’ In this episode she speaks about her childhood raised in an atheist but practising Jewish home as the granddaughter of four Holocaust survivors, what she means by reading other texts as sacred and what we might all learn from it. You can read a full transcript here: https://www.theosthinktank.co.uk/comment/2022/01/26/vanessa-zoltan-on-radical-hospitality-atheist-chaplaincy-and-treating-texts-as-sacred
Jan 19, 2022 · 54 min
Rupert Read on nonviolence, the climate crisis and the power of emotions
Rupert is an associate professor of Philosophy at the University of East Anglia. He is author of over a dozen books on philosophy and the climate crisis, and he was previously a spokesperson for Extinction Rebellion. As part of that movement, he took part in many mass protests, and he was arrested while protesting climate change denying think tanks. He speaks about his sacred value of nonviolence, which has inspired many of those actions, the role of philosophy in public conversations, and how he navigates the emotional fallout of thinking a lot about the climate emergency. You can read a full transcript here: https://www.theosthinktank.co.uk/comment/2022/01/19/rupert-read-on-nonviolence-the-climate-crisis-and-the-power-of-emotions
Jan 12, 2022 · 52 min
Minna Salami on feminism, racism and ‘sensuous knowledge’
Minna is a social critic, feminist theorist and poet, and she’s founder of the blog, MsAfropolitan. She’s the author most recently of ‘Sensuous knowledge: a black feminist approach for everyone’. She speaks about her childhood in Nigeria and Finland, her experiences with racism, her deep feminist identity, and what a more holistic approach to knowledge might look like. You can read a full transcript here: https://www.theosthinktank.co.uk/comment/2022/01/12/minna-salami-on-feminism-racism-and-sensuous-knowledge
Jan 5, 2022 · 47 min
Stuart Ritchie on scepticism, and the role and reliability of science
Stuart is a lecturer at the Social, Genetic, and Developmental Psychiatry Centre at King’s College London. He's been a researcher in human cognitive abilities, and his most recent book is 'Science Fictions', a popular science book that presents an insider's view on how fraud, bias, negligence and hype affect scientific research. In this episode he talks about being an overconfident frontman in a band in his teenage years, having a similar rhetorical style to Boris Johnson, the role science plays in public, and how scientists could use a little bit more ethics training. You can read a full transcript here: https://www.theosthinktank.co.uk/comment/2022/01/05/stuart-ritchie-on-scepticism-and-the-role-and-reliability-of-science
Dec 22, 2021 · 42 min
Eli Pariser on curiosity, the value of democracy and why we need shared public digital spaces
Eli Pariser has had a long and distinguished career in tech entrepreneurship and is currently running the organisation New Public, which is trying to help thinkers, designers and technologists build the digital public spaces of the future. He helped set up MoveOn and Avaaz, which were pioneers in the digital organising space in the early days of the internet. He coined the term 'filter bubble', and wrote the New York Times best-selling book of the same name. In this episode Eli speaks about some of the trends that have led to our current situation in terms of division, his sacred value of curiosity, his love for democracy, and why we need to build shared public digital spaces in the same way that we have public parks. Read the full transcript here: https://www.theosthinktank.co.uk/comment/2021/12/22/eli-pariser-on-curiosity-the-value-of-democracy-and-why-we-need-public-digital-spaces We are taking a break next week for Christmas but our next episode will be released on Wednesday 5th January.
Dec 15, 2021 · 58 min
Louise Perry on motherhood, consent and the case against the sexual revolution
Louise is a writer and campaigner. She has a weekly column in the New Statesman and is press officer for the campaign group 'We can’t consent to this', which documents cases in which UK women have been killed and the defendants have claimed in court that they died as a result of consensual rough sex. She has a book out next year on the case against the sexual revolution. In this episode Louise speaks about motherhood, sex, consent and the outworking of the sexual revolution. Please be aware that the conversation features criticism of the surrogacy industry and references to sexual violence. Louise’s six-month-old was in a sling during the interview, so you might hear some very charming baby noises. You can read a full transcript here: https://www.theosthinktank.co.uk/comment/2021/12/15/louise-perry-on-motherhood-consent-and-the-sexual-revolution
Dec 8, 2021 · 53 min
David Brooks on his conversion, vulnerability and the challenges of talking about morality
David is an op ed columnist for the New York Times, a radio and television host, author of multiple bestselling books, and Chair of Weave the social fabric project at the Aspen Institute, among many other things. He speaks about the distancing effects of fame, his midlife crisis and subsequent conversion to Christianity, and the challenges of talking about morality in public life at the immense difficulty of dying to ourselves. You can find a full transcript here: https://www.theosthinktank.co.uk/comment/2021/12/08/david-brooks-on-his-conversion-vulnerability-and-the-challenges-of-talking-about-morality
Dec 1, 2021 · 45 min
Ryan North on kindness, comics and the appeal of superheroes
Ryan North is a writer for television, video games, and especially comic books. Some of his most recent projects include 'How To Invent Everything: A Survival Guide for the Stranded Time Traveller', a graphic novel adaptation of Kurt Vonnegut's 'Slaughterhouse-Five', and the 'Unbeatable Squirrel Girl', which he wrote for Marvel Comics for five years. He also writes, as he has done since his early 20s, Dinosaur Comics, which is a daily webcomic using the same images with different words every day. Ryan speaks about his childhood as a nerdy kid in rural Canada, his route to becoming a professional comic writer even though he can't draw, navigating gender in comics and graphic novels, and why human beings are so drawn to this idea of superheroes. You can read a full transcript of the conversation here: https://www.theosthinktank.co.uk/comment/2021/12/01/ryan-north-on-kindness-comics-and-the-appeal-of-superheroes Follow us on Twitter @sacred_podcast
Sep 15, 2021 · 36 min
Sarah Eberle on what gardening teaches us and why nature is good for the soul
In the final episode of this series, Elizabeth speaks to Sarah Eberle, the most-decorated RHS garden designer. She has made RHS Chelsea Flower Show history by winning a Gold Medal in every category there is to enter. This year, Sarah turns her hand to the Psalm 23 Garden in the Urban Garden section for the Bible Society. In this episode she speaks about why nature is sacred to her, what gardening teaches us about compassion and humility, the legacy of her unconventional schooling and her free-range childhood, and why gardening can bring people together across divides. Follow us on Twitter and Instagram @sacred_podcast
Sep 8, 2021 · 41 min
Jillian Richardson on the normality of loneliness and finding belonging outside religion
Jillian is a loneliness expert, facilitator and events host. She is the author of ‘Un-Lonely Planet’. She speaks about the drivenness of her East Coast American childhood, how she balances vulnerability in her public profile, the shame and rawness of talking about loneliness, and how her adventures in finding belonging in secular congregations eventually led her to join a church. Follow us on Twitter and Instagram @sacred_podcast