The Sacred

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....

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 r...

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...

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,...

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 transcri...

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 b...

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', an...

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 spe...

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 di...

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...

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...

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 Twit...

Tim is a journalist, historian and broadcaster specialising in US history, politics and religion. He is leader writer for the Daily Telegraph, and contributing editor at the Catholic Herald. His new book ‘Whatever Happened to Tradition?’ is out in October 2021: https://www.bloomsbury.com/uk/whatever-happened-to-tradition-9781472974129. In this episode he speaks about his Baptist, socialist and spi...

Arifa is the chief theatre critic at The Guardian. She is a former contributor to The Observer and previously worked as the arts editor at Tortoise Media. She is also a trustee of the Orwell Foundation, and has been a judge for the UK Theatre Awards and the Women's Prize for Fiction among others. She is also author of ‘Consumed’ about the life and early death of her sister from tuberculosis. Arifa...

Miriam has been Conservative MP for Penistone and Stocksbridge since 2019. She was born and brought up in Sheffield, studied genetics at Cambridge and taught science before having children. In this episode she speaks about her Christian faith, becoming a Conservative as an adult almost by accident, her unusual path to being elected as an MP and why she thinks we should talk more about family and p...

Mike Mchargue, also known as ‘Science Mike’, is a podcaster of very long-standing. He was formerly co-host of 'The Liturgists' and host of ‘Ask Science Mike’ and he’s now host of 'The Cozy Robot Show'. He’s also the author of ‘Finding God in the Waves’ and more recently ‘You’re a Miracle and a Pain in the Ass’. He speaks about the process of losing his childhood faith and subsequently finding his...

Sohrab is an Iranian–American columnist, journalist, editor and author. He’s written or edited for the Wall Street Journal, the New York Post and First Things among others. He was born in Tehran and emigrated to the US in his early teens, converting in 2016 to Catholicism, which he recounts in his book ‘From fire by water.’ His most recent book is ‘The Unbroken Thread: discovering the wisdom of tr...

In this series we’ll be talking to Conservative MP Miriam Cates, journalist Sohrab Ahmari, ‘Science Mike’ Mike McHargue, writer Tim Stanley, theatre critic Arifa Akbar, loneliness expert Jillian Richardson and award-winning garden designer Sarah Eberle. Tune in and join us for the next series of The Sacred. Episodes out weekly from Wednesday 4th August.

Sam is a novelist and author of ‘Idiopathy’, ‘Perfidious Albion’ and most recently ‘Come Join Our Disease’, which the Sunday Times has said confirms him as one of the most accomplished novelists of his generation. In this episode he speaks about his sense that novels should tackle big ideas, his discomfort with the idea of freedom and our society’s diminishing sense of compassion.

Chris is Head of the Anomalistic Psychology Research Unit in the Psychology Department at Goldsmiths University, a fellow at the British Psychological Society and a patron of Humanists UK. In this episode he speaks about what being a sceptic means to him, the difficulty of living out a fully materialist worldview, why even scientists have to take some things on faith and much more.

Grace is an American journalist. She has written for the New York Times, the Washington Post, the Wall Street Journal, the American Conservative among many others, and usually with a family or a farming focus. She has recently written a book called ‘Uprooted’ which explores the effects of the rural brain drain on farming communities, the huge ecological problems that global agri-business brings an...

Guvna B is a multi MOBO award-winning rapper, hip hop artist and author. He’s presented TV and radio documentaries for BBC, is a Sky Sports pundit and his most recent book is ‘Unspoken: Toxic Masculinity and How I Faced the Man Within the Man.’ In this episode he speaks about how his childhood as a first-generation immigrant on a council estate has shaped him, how he’s thought about his creativity...

Suzanne is a journalist and columnist who for many years was at The Guardian, but has also written for the Mail on Sunday, Marxism Today and now writes for The Telegraph. In this episode she speaks about her rebellious youth, her atheism, how she understands the role of a journalist and briefly about her departure from The Guardian last year.

Rachel is a poet and a priest in the Church of England. She lectured in philosophy before being ordained and has a PhD in 19th century women’s poetry and the Bible. Her most recent books include full length poetry collection ‘A Kingdom of Love’, ‘Dazzling Darkness’ and ‘Fierce Imaginings’. In this episode she speaks about her conversion in her 20s, how that connected with her identity as a trans w...

Dina is a novelist and also the author of the non-fiction book ‘The Ungrateful Refugee’. In this episode, she speaks about her childhood in war-torn Iran, refugee hostels in Rome and eventually in Oklahoma, why many refugees feel the need to show why they were a good investment, the nature of storytelling and more.