Sacred & Profane

Sep 10 2024 39 ep. 21 mins 277

Sacred & Profane Podcast artwork

We may imagine that the sacred is set apart from life, but religion is involved in every aspect of our day-to-day world. How we live together and apart. How we argue. How we flourish. The sacred is the profane.

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What the Future Holds

Sep 10 2024 18 mins

We started our series with an exploration of how religious doctrine and belief became deeply entwined with both colonialism and the petroleum industry. We followed the stories of contemporary Americans whose religious beliefs -- and beliefs about climate -- shape their determination to stop pipelines and restore local ecosystems. But what about our future? We spoke with the Rev. Ma

The Food that Grows on the Water

Aug 27 2024 18 mins

There is a very long relationship between the Anishinaabe people and manoomin (sometimes known as 'wild rice' in English). The tribe received a prophecy to travel west from the Atlantic Coast to the Great Lakes region-- they would know they had arrived in the right place when they found food that grows on the water. Manoomin is both a culinary staple and a spiritual and cultural on

Rewind: We Hold These Truths

We'll be back with more episodes from our season on climate in the coming weeks. Until then, we're returning to our archive for an episode we recorded back in 2021 that feels especially relevant.Each year, Americans celebrate the Fourth of July with fireworks, parades, and barbecues. Celebrating July Fourth is part of what some scholars identify as America’s civil religion. And l

A Church, an Ashram, and a Pipeline

Apr 30 2024 29 mins

In 2014, Virginia’s Dominion Energy announced it would be building a new pipeline intended to carry fracked methane from West Virginia to a storage facility in North Carolina. The planned route brought the pipeline right through Virginia’s rural Buckingham County, with a compressor station proposed near a historic Black church and cemetery in the small community of Union Hill.D

Ad Astra

Apr 08 2024 19 mins

Millions of Americans are traveling hundreds of miles for a chance to witness 2024’s total solar eclipse. As many eyes turn towards this rare event, we’re turning our attention to another wonder, one we sometimes take for granted: the night sky. Humans have a relationship with the moon and stars stretching back for millennia. Observing the night sky has given us practical thing

Planet B

Mar 26 2024 24 mins

As the climate crisis on Earth worsens, some Americans — including the world’s richest man, Elon Musk — have begun to think about a plan (and planet) B. They dream of escaping an increasing polluted Earth in favor of creating an advanced society on our nearest neighbor, Mars.To investigate the roots of our fascination with Mars, we headed to Lowell Observatory in Flagstaff, A

Church in the Wilderness

Mar 12 2024 16 mins

In 2021, the Biden administration laid out a goal of conserving 30% of the United States’ land and seas by 2030. That number comes from a UN agreement that urges member countries to protect at least a third of their land and seas from human development in order to promote biodiversity and fight climate change.But historically, environmental conservation in the United States was l

Make the Desert Bloom

Feb 27 2024 19 mins

Brigham Young lead his followers west in 1846, fleeing religious persecution. Young was looking for a place that his fellow Americans would consider too inhospitable to follow -- a place that would transform believers into a new people, where they could "blossom as the rose."But it was also clear as much as the desert would transform the church, the church would have to transform t

Alternative Energy

Feb 13 2024 17 mins

Energy vortexes and the climate crisis collide in Sedona, Arizona, where New Age practitioners are drawn to a stunning but swiftly changing landscape. We spoke with scholar Susannah Crockford about her own time spent in Sedona, and the tension between a movement that may love the landscape but prioritizes individual healing over collective action. And our hosts headed to Sedona to

Holy Oil

Jan 30 2024 20 mins

On this season of Sacred & Profane, we explore how religions have shaped the climate crisis -- and how they offer ways to imagine a different future.In the United States, Christianity and oil have been entangled since the industry's beginning. Our guest Darren Dochuk says Pennsylvania's oil fields gave rise to "two gospels of crude;" competing versions of Christianity that would ha