The Sacred

Sarah Stein Lubrano is a DPhil researcher in the Department of Politics in Oxford and the Head of Content at The School of Life. The School of Life, founded by philosopher Alain de Botton, describes itself as a global organisation helping people lead more fulfilled lives. Sarah helped build their 4.5 million subscriber YouTube channel and designs and delivers a range of courses on emotional intell...

Tom Holland is a historian, biographer and broadcaster. He is the author of Rubicon, Persian Fire, Millennium and In the Shadow of the Sword among many others. He has just published Dominion, which tells the story of the influence of Christianity on the Western world. In this episode he talks about losing his childhood faith, falling in love with the classical world, and why he’d really like to be...

This episode was recorded at The Cultures of Unbelief Conference at the Pontifical Gregorian University in Rome in May 2019. The conference marked the end of the major Understanding Unbelief research programme run by the University of Kent and partners over three years involving 22 projects globally. The conference also marked fifty years since another conference convened by the Vatican, called Th...

In this episode, you'll hear a conversation with Rhik Samadder, who's a journalist, actor, presenter, and author. He rose to public prominence writing 'Inspect a gadget,' the weekly kitchen-gadget column with a cult following in the Guardian, and now writes weekly about wellness trends. He's also the author of 'I Never Said I Loved You,' a memoir about depression published in August 2019. You'll h...

Douglas Alexander served as an MP for 18 years and spent 9 years in government under Tony Blair and Gordon Brown, holding a range of cabinet positions and serving as UK Governor to the World Bank. He’s now a Senior Fellow at Harvard University and Chair of Trustees at Unicef. In this episode, he talks about his Church of Scotland faith, joining the Labour party in his early teens, why he doesn’t m...

Tanya Muneera Williams is one half of hip-hop, reggae and spoken work duo, Poetic Pilgrimage. She is an artist, a poet and an activist and regularly appears on BBC Radio 2 to deliver ‘Pause For Thought’. Tanya is of Jamaican heritage and converted to Islam in 2005. In this episode, Tanya talks about her sacred value of allowing alternative stories to be told, her experience moving from Christianit...

Pádraig Ó Tuama is a poet, theologian and peace maker. Until recently he was the leader of the Corrymeela community, which is Ireland’s oldest peace and reconciliation organisation. They describe themselves as 'people who seek to engage with the differences of our world... people who disagree with each other on matters of religion, politics and economics and people who wish to name our own complic...

Mim Skinner is the author of ‘Jailbirds’ which contains stories of her time teaching art in a women’s prison. She currently runs the women’s project for the charity Handcrafted, supporting women to connect to community, housing and recovery through creativity. She is also co-founder of Refuse which works to intercept food which would otherwise go to landfill and do some good with it. In this episo...

Hussein Kesvani is a journalist, editor and producer based in London. He is the Europe editor of MEL Magazine, has written for BuzzFeed, Vice, The Guardian, the New Statesman and The Spectator, and is the author of 'Follow Me, Akhi: The Online World of British Muslims,' available from Hurst Publishers. That book is now available for purchase here: https://www.hurstpublishers.com/book/follow-me-akh...

Sanderson Jones is a comedian, a social entrepreneur and the co-founder of Sunday Assembly, a worldwide movement of secular congregations. In this episode, he talks about his early experiences of religion, the impact of losing his mum as a child, his sacred value of life and why he feels we all need more meaning and belonging.

Ash Sarkar is a writer, broadcaster, journalist and lecturer. She is a Senior Editor at Novara Media, an independent left-wing media organisation, and regularly appears as a pundit on television and radio. In this episode she discusses her sacred value of human life, being a ‘red diaper baby’, rediscovering Islam and her worries that adversarial debates are shaping us in unhealthy ways.

Justin Welby has been the Archbishop of Canterbury since 2013. Prior to this, he served as Bishop of Durham and Dean of Liverpool Cathedral. He spent the first 15 years of his ordained life in Coventry diocese. He was ordained in 1992 after an 11-year career in the oil industry. In this podcast, he talks about the difficulties of leading the global Anglican Communion, how he was dragged reluctantl...

Matthew Taylor is the Chief Executive of the RSA, author of the 2016 Taylor Report review of modern employment commissioned by Theresa May, and panellist on the BBC Radio 4 programme The Moral Maze. He was formally head of the Number 10 Policy Unit under Tony Blair, Director of IPPR, Assistant General Secretary of the Labour Party and a county councillor. This episode covers his sacred values of h...

Rev Sally Hitchener is an Anglican priest and Associate Vicar of St-Martin-in-the-Fields, Trafalgar Square. She was previously co-ordinating Anglican Chaplain and inter-faith advisor at Brunel University, and is the founder of Diverse Church, a charity which supports LGBT+ Christians. In this episode she discusses her sacred value of gift, her experiences as a gay female priest, and why sometimes...

David Allen Green is a lawyer and legal commentator. He is a contributing editor at the Financial Times and a former legal correspondent for the New Statesman. He led the defence at the Twitter Joke Trial in 2012 and is now known for his commentary on the legal complexities surrounding Brexit. This interview explores why he became a lawyer instead of a historian, the responsibility that comes with...

Christina Patterson is a writer and broadcaster. A former chief executive of the Poetry Society and columnist for The Independent, she now writes for The Guardian, The Sunday Times and The Daily Mail about culture, society, politics and books. She is a regular commentator on radio and TV news programmes and a regular guest on Sky News. She is the author of The Art of Not Falling Apart which you ca...

James Cary is a comedy writer. He has written sitcoms for BBC TV and radio, including Miranda, Bluestone 42, Think the Unthinkable and Hut 33. He is the author of Writing That Sitcom, Death by Civilisation and most recently The Sacred Art of Joking. He is also a member of General Synod. We spoke about how he doesn't feel fully at home in either his church tribe or his comedy tribe, why he doesn't...

Shadi Hamid is a political scientist and senior fellow at the Brookings Institution, in their Project on U.S. Relations with the Islamic World in the Center for Middle East Policy. Hes also a contributing editor for The Atlantic. He's the author most recently of Islamic Exceptionalism: How the Struggle Over Islam is Reshaping the World (https://www.amazon.com/Islamic-Exceptionalism-Struggle-Islam-...

Ariane Sherine is a comedy writer, journalist and in 2009 was creator of the Atheist Bus Campaign. She was written comedy for the BBC, Channel 4 and beyond, journalism for The Spectator, The Guardian, Telegraph and Sunday Times, and is the author of The Atheists Guide to Christmas and Talk Yourself Better: a Confused Person’s guide to Therapy, Self-help and Counselling. We spoke about a traumatic...

Nick Payne is an award winning playwright and screenwriter. His plays 'Constellations', and 'If There is I Haven’t Found it Yet' have been performed in London and New York and his series 'Wanderlust' was recently screened on BBC 1 and Netflix. Nick adapted Julian Barnes's The Sense Of An Ending for BBC Films which was released in 2017 with Jim Broadbent. Jake Gyllenhaal will star in Nick's play A...

There is no full episode of The Sacred as we are taking a break over Christmas. Instead, here's a short message from Elizabeth about dealing with difference in our very own homes and some announcements about next year's exciting line-up.

Andrew Copson is Chief Executive of Humanists UK, previously known as the British Humanist Association, and was formerly Director of Education and Public Affairs at the same organisation. He is also President of the International Humanist and Ethical Union, the global umbrella body for atheist, humanist, sceptic and secularist organisations. He has contributed to several books on secularism and hu...

Remona Aly is a journalist who writes for the Guardian, presents Pause For Thought on BBC Radio 2, Something Understood on BBC Radio 4, and the podcast Things Unseen. Previously, she was the deputy editor of emel, a glossy Muslim lifestyle magazine, and is director of communications of the Exploring Islam Foundation. In this episode she discusses how she finds riches and wisdom in a wide range of...

Dr Seth Anziska an American historian living in London. He is the Mohamed S. Farsi-Polonsky Lecturer in Jewish-Muslim Relations at University College London and a visiting fellow at the U.S./Middle East Project. His writing has appeared in the New York Times, Foreign Policy, and Haaretz, and He is the author of Preventing Palestine: A Political History from Camp David to Oslo In this episode, Seth...

Chine McDonald is the media and PR lead for Christian Aid, one of the world's largest and best known non profit organisations. She was previously director of communications & membership for the Evangelical Alliance, overseeing the editorial and fundraising teams, as well as the team that looks after 3,600 church and 600 organisation members. She read theology at Cambridge University, where she was...