The amazing story of how Timothy Leary and his psychedelic gang gave birth to New Age spirituality and changed America.

Jim Wallis, progressive evangelical writer and activist, says the financial crisis is a moral crisis. We’ll hear his case for new values.

After 9/11, three men came together — a pastor, a rabbi, and an imam — to learn from each other. They call themselves the Interfaith Amigos. They’re with us.

Computer visionary David Gelernter turns his sights to the spiritual, and a stirring sense of what it means to be a Jew.

The Catholic Church in Rome moves to scrutinize — maybe rein in — American nuns. We’ll talk with sisters on the front lines.

Midway in our first hour today, we had a robust exchange between Rev. Katherine Ragsdale and progressive evangelical Jim Wallis over finding “common ground” on the abortion issue.

Dr. George Tiller was murdered for performing abortions. In the gunfire, the defense of abortion can get lost. Episcopal priest Katherine Ragsdale makes it loud and clear.

We’ll hear the speech and the controversy over abortion, the president, and Catholicism.

Former LA Times reporter William Lobdell tells of his own journey into and out of born-again religious faith.

Galileo Galilei and Pope Urban VIII, back, onstage, in a play by Richard Goodwin. Faith and science tangle again.

Heavens and Hells and more – a top neuroscientist offers forty ways to imagine the afterlife.

Theologian Martin Marty and physician Jerome Groopman join us for a conversation about hope in turbulent times — where we find it, and how we hold on.

A conversation with celebrated novelist E.L. Doctorow on creation from Genesis to Huck Finn, Hemingway to Einstein.

Descartes said “I think, therefore I am.” Bestseller Russell Shorto reminds us it’s more complicated than that, in his new tale of faith, reason, and “Descartes’ Bones.”

Philosopher Susan Neiman gets back to basics in her new book “Moral Clarity: A Guide for Grown-Up Idealists.”

Kerry Kennedy — daughter of Bobby and niece of JFK — joins us to talk about what it means to be Catholic now.

Forty years after Robert Pirsig began the journey that became “Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance,” we retrace his tracks and his philosophy of life.

“He does not speak for me,” says Barack Obama, of his former Chicago pastor, Reverend Jeremiah Wright. But Jeremiah Wright keeps speaking anyway.
After weeks of lying low, in the past week Rev. Wright has been all over: with Bill Moyers Friday night, preaching in Dallas and speaking before the NAACP on Sunday, taking questions at [...]

Next week Pope Benedict makes his first papal visit to the United States. He won’t come wagging his finger at a country in moral decline, as some may expect. We’re told he will come with a gentle message, eager to share his church’s values of honesty and love of faith.
But the big question is how [...]

In our post-9/11 world, religion is often seen as one of the most divisive forces. And for good reason. Religious extremism drives conflicts from Afghanistan to Iraq, fuels terrorism from Europe to Sri Lanka, and makes enemies of Israelis and Arabs.
And yet, says scholar Alan Wolfe, the world is not headed for a new era [...]