How do we live together when we profoundly disagree?

Najeeba Syeed and Eboo Patel explore the ethics and future of interfaith work amid deep divides across religious communities. They focus on the impact of global wars and crises on religious communities and discuss the role of institutions in promoting interfaith understanding through open-mindedness and deep listening.

Guest Bio: Najeeba Syeed is the inaugural El-Hibri endowed Chair and Executive Director of the Interfaith Institute at Augsburg University in Minneapolis, Minnesota. She has been a professor, expert practitioner, and public speaker for the last two decades in conflict resolution, interfaith studies, mediation, restorative Justice, education, and social, gender, and racial equity.

She has facilitated conflict resolution processes for conflicts in many schools, communities, and environmental and public controversies. She served as the co-chair of the American Academy of Religion’s Religion and Politics Section and was a member of the Academy’s Religion, Social Conflict, and Peace Section.  She was elected by the body of the American Academy of Religion to serve on the governing body of the Program Committee. She is a past board member of the National Association for Community Mediation, National Coalition for Dialogue and Deliberation and serves on the Higher Education Advisory Council for Interfaith America, and Advisory Council for Peace and Conflict Resolution at the Tanenbaum Center and past chair of the Pasadena Commission on the Status of Women. She served on the Teaching Team for the Luce American Academy of Religion Summer Seminar on Religious Pluralism and Comparative Theologies.

Widely known for his role as Dwight Schrute on the NBC sitcom The Office, Emmy Award nominee Rainn Wilson talks about his new book 'Soul Boom: Why We Need a Spiritual Revolution,' the future of religion and spiritual themes in Hollywood, and the spirituality of his famous character Dwight Schrute.  

Guest Bio: Rainn Percival Dietrich Wilson is an American actor, comedian, podcaster, producer, writer, and director — widely known for his role as Dwight Schrute on the NBC sitcom The Office (2005–2013), for which he earned three consecutive Emmy Award nominations for Outstanding Supporting Actor in a Comedy Series. 

Other film credits include lead roles in the comedies The Rocker (2008) and Super (2010), as well as supporting roles in the horror films Cooties (2014) and The Boy (2015). In 2009, he provided his voice for the computer-animated science fiction film Monsters vs. Aliens as the villain Gallaxhar and voiced Gargamel in Smurfs: The Lost Village. He has played a small recurring role of Harry Mudd on Star Trek: Discovery (2017) and Star Trek: Short Treks (2018), as well as a supporting role in The Meg (2018). He is also the voice of Lex Luthor in the DC Animated Movie Universe. Outside of acting, Wilson published an autobiography, The Bassoon King, in 2015 and co-founded the digital media company SoulPancake in 2008. 

You can tune in to all episodes on our website, Apple, Spotify, and wherever you listen to your favorite podcasts. New episodes drop every Tuesday at 5 a.m. CST. 

Ayad Akhtar, American playwright, novelist, and screenwriter, joins Eboo Patel at the Chicago Humanities Festival to discuss art, creativity, and cultural sensitivity. They emphasize the need to engage with and respect different identities in a diverse democracy rather than resorting to simplistic labels like "victim" or "racist." 

Bio: Ayad Akhtar is a novelist and playwright. His work has been published and performed in over two dozen languages. He won the Pulitzer Prize for Drama, the Edith Wharton Citation of Merit for Fiction, and an Award in Literature from the American Academy of Arts and Letters. 

Akhtar is the author of Homeland Elegies (Little, Brown & Co.), which The Washington Post called "a tour de force" and The New York Times called "a beautiful novel…that had echoes of The Great Gatsby and that circles, with pointed intellect, the possibilities and limitations of American life." His first novel, American Dervish (Little, Brown & Co.), was published in over 20 languages. As a playwright, he has written Junk (Lincoln Center, Broadway; Kennedy Prize for American Drama, Tony nomination); Disgraced (Lincoln Center, Broadway; Pulitzer Prize for Drama, Tony nomination); The Who & The What (Lincoln Center); and The Invisible Hand (NYTW; Obie Award, Outer Critics Circle John Gassner Award, Olivier, and Evening Standard nominations). 

Prominent law and religion professor John Inazu discusses the political flip-flop of conservative Christians in America, the role of evangelical Christians in creating safe spaces, and the importance of navigating differences with empathy and respect.  

Guest Bio: John Inazu is the Sally D. Danforth Distinguished Professor of Law and Religion and holds a joint appointment in the Washington University Law School and the John C. Danforth Center on Religion and Politics. 

Inazu's scholarship focuses on the First Amendment freedoms of speech, assembly, and religion and related legal and political theory questions. Inazu is the special editor of a volume on law and theology published in Law and Contemporary Problems, and his articles have appeared in several law reviews and specialty journals. He has written broadly for mainstream audiences in publications including USA Today, Los Angeles Times, and The Washington Post. 

You can tune in to all episodes on our website, Apple, Spotify, and wherever you listen to your favorite podcasts. New episodes drop every Tuesday at 5 a.m. CST. 

Danielle Allen is a political scientist, professor, and director of the Edmond & Lily Safra Center for Ethics at Harvard University. Allen explains the Declaration of Independence's error about democracy, how she navigates a cluttered world of power, and the opportunities she sees to marry religious ideologies with civic identities. 

Guest Bio: Danielle Allen is James Bryant Conant University Professor at Harvard University and Director of the Allen Lab for Democracy Renovation at Harvard Kennedy School's Ash Center for Democratic Governance and Innovation. She is a professor of political philosophy, ethics, and public policy. She is also a seasoned nonprofit leader, democracy advocate, tech ethicist, distinguished author, and mom.  

You can tune in to all episodes on our website, Apple, Spotify, and wherever you listen to your favorite podcasts. New episodes drop every Tuesday at 5 a.m. CST. 

Jonathan Eig, an American journalist, and biographer, gives us a deeper insight into MLK Jr.'s life as a civil rights activist and the lessons we can still learn from his work about the role of religion in activism. He also discusses MLK's hopes for our nation and why young people today are skeptical of the Church. 

Bio: Jonathan Eig is the bestselling author of six books, including his most recent King: A Life, which The New York Times hailed as a "monumental" new biography of Martin Luther King Jr., and is a National Book Award nominee. 

Jonathan's previous book, Ali: A Life, won a 2018 PEN America Literary Award and was a Mark Lynton History Prize finalist. His works have been translated into more than a dozen languages. He served as consulting producer for the PBS series "Muhammad Ali," directed by Ken Burns. The Esquire magazine named Ali: A Life is one of the 25 most excellent biographies of all time. Joyce Carol Oates called it "an epic of a biography" that "reads like a novel." His books have been listed among the best of the year by The New York Times, The Washington Post, and The Wall Street Journal. 

You can tune in to all episodes on our website, Apple, Spotify, and wherever you listen to your favorite podcasts. New episodes drop every Tuesday at 5 a.m. CST. 

Amanda Ripley is a New York Times bestselling author, journalist, and co-founder of Good Conflict, a media and training company that helps people reimagine conflict. As the violence abroad and at home escalates, Ripley and Patel discuss “high conflict” – what it is, how it impacts individuals and society, and ways to resolve high-conflict situations.

GUEST BIO: 

Amanda has spent her career trying to make sense of complicated human mysteries by following survivors of all kinds. Her most recent book is High Conflict: Why We Get Trapped and How We Get Out, winner of a 2022 Christopher Award. Her previous books include The Unthinkable: Who Survives When Disaster Strikes—and Why, which was published in 15 countries and turned into a PBS documentary, and The Smartest Kids in the World—and How They Got That Way, a New York Times bestseller which was also turned into a documentary film. 

Her work has also appeared in the New York Times, the Atlantic, the Wall Street Journal, Slate, The Guardian, the Harvard Business Review, and the Times of London. Her stories helped Time win two National Magazine Awards. Previously, she served as an Emerson Collective Senior Fellow and the host of the weekly Slate podcast How To!

You can tune in to all episodes on our website, Apple, Spotify, and wherever you listen to your favorite podcasts. New episodes drop every Tuesday at 5 a.m. CST. 

You can tune in to Season 1 and learn more about the podcast on our website, Apple, Spotify, and everywhere else you listen to your favorite podcasts. 

New episodes drop every Tuesday at 5 a.m. CST.  

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In Season 2, the Interfaith America with Eboo Patel podcast explores how we engage religious diversity in different sectors of our nation, from Hollywood to politics, journalism to academia. Featuring prominent public figures including Rainn Wilson, Jonathan Eig, and Danielle Allen, Eboo Patel engages in meaningful conversations to understand how our nation’s constantly evolving religious diversity shapes our democracy.

Kwame Anthony Appiah is a British-born American philosopher, writer, and scholar of African and African American studies, best known for his contributions to political philosophy, moral psychology, and the philosophy of culture. 

Appiah tackles life’s dilemmas in The Ethicist column in the New York Times magazine. In his recent book The Lies that Bind, Appiah helps us rethink the way we understand group identity. His earlier book Cosmopolitanism defined a diversity paradigm and was widely influential in the Obama era.

Appiah is the son of Joseph Appiah, a Ghanaian-born barrister, and Peggy Cripps, daughter of the British states-person Sir Stafford Cripps. He attended Bryanston School and later Clare College, Cambridge, where he earned a Ph.D. in philosophy in 1982. He taught philosophy, African studies, and African American studies at Yale University (1981–86), Cornell University (1986–89), Duke University (1990–91), and Harvard University (1999–2002). In 2002 he joined the University Center for Human Values at Princeton University, where he stayed until moving to New York University in 2014.

You can learn more about Appiah on his website.

Visit Interfaith America to learn more about the organization and our podcast. 

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Guest Bio: 

Kwame Anthony Appiah is a British-born American philosopher, novelist, and scholar of African and African American studies, best known for his contributions to political philosophy, moral psychology, and the philosophy of culture. 

Appiah tackles life’s dilemmas in The Ethicist column in the New York Times magazine. And in his book The Ties that Bind, he illustrates how identities are defined by conflict, while Cosmopolitanism is a proclamation that every single one of us matters and that we are responsible for our collective wellbeing no matter the differences. 

Appiah is the son of Joseph Appiah, a Ghanaian-born barrister, and Peggy Cripps, daughter of the British statesperson Sir Stafford Cripps. He attended Bryanston School and later Clare College, Cambridge, where he earned a Ph.D. in philosophy in 1982. He taught philosophy, African studies, and African American studies at Yale University (1981–86), Cornell University (1986–89), Duke University (1990–91), and Harvard University (1999–2002). In 2002 he joined the University Center for Human Values at Princeton University, where he stayed until moving to New York University in 2014.

You can learn more about Appiah on his website.

Visit Interfaith America to learn more about the organization and our podcast. 

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More than ever, the world needs builders – people ready to roll up their sleeves and build solutions for the challenges we face. In this season finale episode, Eboo Patel, Founder and President of Interfaith America, speaks with four leaders already building Interfaith America. Grounded in their faith communities and ethical traditions, these panelists respond from their beliefs to provide hope and inspiration. 

This panel discussion was a part of the opening plenary at the 2022 Interfaith Leadership Summit. 

Guest Bios:

Panelist: Allison Josephs (she/her)

Allison Josephs is the founder and executive director of Jew in the City, a nonprofit that changes negative perceptions of religious Jews and makes engaging and meaningful Orthodox Judaism known and accessible.  

She has been involved in the field of Jewish Outreach for over twenty years and is the Partner in Torah mentor to actress Mayim Bialik. Variety named her as an advocate for inclusivity in the entertainment industry in its 2022 Inclusion Impact Report. Allison has been quoted or written about in numerous publications, including Vanity Fair, The Wall Street Journal, The New York Times, People Magazine, NYPost, Daily News, TMZ, The Daily Beast, and Hollywood Reporter. She has appeared on numerous television and radio networks including CBS, ABC, Fox5, TLC, Associate Press TV, and NPR; her articles have appeared in publications including The Washington Post, JTA, Jewish Week, Jerusalem Post, The Forward, and Kveller.

Panelist: Nisha Anand (she/her)

Nisha Anand is an Indian-American activist, mom of two teenagers, and leader for racial justice. Once a radical grassroots activist arrested in Burma for passing out pro-democracy leaflets, Nisha’s expansive organizing experience and work with mentors like Van Jones, solidified her belief in the power of working with unlikely partners to find real solutions. As Dream Corps’ CEO, Nisha leads a diverse group of people who are learning, like her, the value of unconventional relationships. Nisha’s journey from punk-rock protester to common ground champion is documented in her TED talk, The Radical Act of Choosing Common Ground.

Panelist: Sarwang Parikh (he/they)

Sarwang Parikh is a Licensed Marriage & Family Therapist (LMFT) in CA. He was born and raised within a devotional Hindu Gujarati Indian culture from an immigrant, working-class family in the South. They have been steeped in the practices and study of Yogic sciences & Buddhism for nearly 20 years. Sarwang earned his MA from CIIS in Integral Counseling Psychology, BA in Psychology and Religious Studies from University of SC. Additionally, they have advanced training in the healing arts and have completed Spirit Rock's two-year Dedicated Practitioners Program (DPP5) within the tradition of Theravāda Vipassanā. Sarwang is a long-time sangha member and community teacher at East Bay Meditation Center (STL teacher training); mentors youth with iBme; and currently serves as the Interim Director at Buddhist Peace Fellowship

Panelist: Ulysses W. Burley III (he/him)

Dr. Ulysses W. Burley III is the founder of UBtheCURE, LLC – a proprietary consulting company on the intersection of Faith, Health, and Human Rights. Ulysses served as a member of the Executive Committee of the World Council of Churches as well as the United States Presidential Advisory Council on HIV/AIDS (PACHA) under the Obama Administration. He has been recognized by the National Minority Quality Forum as a top 40 under 40 Minority Health Leader for his work in faith and HIV in communities of color and serves on the NMQF Advisory Board. Ulysses is an internationally recognized speaker and award winning writer on topics including faith, HIV/AIDS policy, LGBTQIA, gender and racial justice, food security, and peace in the Middle East.

Registrations are now open for 2023 Interfaith Leadership Summit -- the largest gathering of students and educators with a commitment to American religious pluralism. Join the hundreds of people who care about the future of our religiously diverse society as they learn to bridge divides and forge friendships across lines of religious and worldview differences. Learn new skills and return to your campus inspired and ready to build.

Visit Interfaith America to learn more about the organization and our podcast.

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