Religion & Spirituality

Nézet-Séguin chose Verdi's Requiem for his 2012 inaugural performance as music director of the Philadelphia Orchestra. He says the piece now helps him find a sense of connection during the pandemic.

Pulitzer Prize-winning playwright Ayad Akhtar centers his new novel on a Muslim man who, like Akhtar, is the son of Pakistani immigrants living in Wisconsin.

Race and belonging are the central themes of Yaa Gyasi's work. Her 2016 debut novel, Homegoing, about slavery, won a National Book critic's circle award, and the National Book Foundation's 5 under 35 honor.
Gyasi's new novel, Transcendent Kingdom, draws on Gyasi's life as the daughter of immigrants from Ghana.

The Catholic nun became an opponent of the death penalty following the events in her book Dead Man Walking. She details her spiritual journey in River of Fire. Originally broadcast Aug. 12, 2019.

The president isn't known for his faith. Instead, author Sarah Posner says he connects with Evangelicals by voicing the legal, social, religious and cultural grievances of the Christian right.

Bart Ehrman says the ideas of eternal rewards and punishments aren't found in the Old Testament or in the teachings of Jesus. His new book is Heaven and Hell: A History of the Afterlife.

James McBride is best known for his memoir, The Color of Water, about being the son of an African American father and a white mother. His new novel, Deacon King Kong, takes place in 1969, in a Brooklyn housing project, similar to the one he grew up in., and involves the wide consequences of a shooting.

Kim Ghattas grew up in Lebanon during the civil war and covered the Mideast for the BBC for 20 years. She says events in the region in 1979 set off waves of extremism and violence that continue today.

Dass, who died Dec. 22, was a practitioner of Eastern-inspired philosophy who became interested in the religious potential of LSD in the '60s and '70s. Originally broadcast in 1990.

Religion scholar Elaine Pagels lost her young son to terminal illness and her husband a year later in an accident. She spoke to Fresh Air in November 2018 about loss and faith.

This week, we're listening back to some favorite Fresh Air interviews from the past decade. The Nobel Prize winner, who died in 2019, spoke about aging and regret in this 2015 interview.

In a new film by writer/directors Josh and Benny Safdie, Adam Sandler plays a jewelry store owner and gambler who's deep in debt. The brothers' father worked in Manhattan's diamond district.

New Yorker staff writer Andrew Marantz spent years with far-right online extremists, embedding with them and watching them spread false news by exploiting social media. His new book is Antisocial.

Judd Apatow was a teenager when he first "met" comic Garry Shandling in a phone interview for his high school radio show. Years later, their paths intersected again when Shandling, who was hosting the Grammy Awards, hired Apatow to write jokes for him.

As a black gay kid growing up in Texas in the 1990s, poet Saeed Jones remembers getting negative messages about his identity from every aspect of his life. It was around the time of Matthew Shepard's murder in Wyoming, and Jones felt alone and unsafe.

Sam Esmail, the creator of the TV series Mr. Robot, talks about hacking, social anxiety, and growing up an Egyptian Muslim family in America.

Tan France is the fashion expert on the Neflix series 'Queer Eye.' He grew up in a traditional Muslim family in England.

Amber Scorah has written a new memoir about being a 3rd generation Jehovah's Witness, leaving her faith, and then dealing with a tragedy without her faith to turn to.

In 2015, a woman named Dee Dee Blanchard was found stabbed to death in the Missouri home she shared with her teenage daughter, Gypsy Rose.