Hello on being community. I'm Lily Percy on being's executive producer. You might also know me from our lovely Fetzer ad support from being with

Chris and Tiff it comes from the Fetzer Institute. That's me. I speak English. I can't. I'm joined by Aaron Farrell who's our chief operating officer Aaron. Hi. That's her voice. You can distinguish it from the other woman talking.

Okay, me and Casper Turkile. Hello. I need to introduce you first. Oh, I'm sorry. Oh, we're waiting for your name to be mentioned and then you just come in.

Casper Turkile, the new executive director for on being's impact lab. Is that your actual title? Is that correct? Yeah.

Yeah. Okay. That's my actual title. We're going to talk about you in a minute. Calm down. But really we're going to start by asking our beloved leader, Chris, to tip it a few questions and share with you some exciting updates that are going on with on being.

So, Chris, the most people because they're devoted listeners know all of the backstory to on being and how you started it and where it's come. But I'd love to hear from you in your own words. What is the story behind on being? How did this all begin?

Oh, such a big question. Bigger with every passing year. Exactly.

It's such an interesting question because I feel like the world has changed so much. So in the mid 90s, late 90s, having been a journalist coming out of Divinity School.

So this was the moral majority. This was this moment where a lot of very loud strident religiosity had kind of claimed its place and was everywhere and actually religion was in the headlines.

And then in the years I was creating the show, you know, we went through September 11th. We had an evangelical president in the White House.

So there was a lot of religiosity in the headlines and my and a lot of kind of new curiosity about it, but also a lot of religious people getting quiet because they didn't want to be associated with the blau voice.

And journalists I felt colluding with handing over the microphones and cameras to the loudest voices. What time period would this be? This would be like a thousand mid to late 90s.

And then into the turn of the century. And I just felt that this is such an important part of life. This huge part of life, which we call religion, you know, where religion happens, spirituality, moral imagination.

And that we didn't have any places where we were talking about the sweep of that. And even, you know, even when when these voices hit the news, you didn't get the spiritual content of this part of life, much less the intellectual content of this part of life.

And then the nuance and really the breadth of the ways this is lived. And so that was my desire to do that. And I thought public radio would be a place to do that. But I think what we started doing from the very beginning was, you know, drawing out a different kind of conversation voices that weren't being heard.

It was very focused on religion, per se. And then we moved through the backlash to that, which is what I think the new atheist was, new atheist movement was interesting to me about all of that, you know, this kind of very strident anti-religion.

Coming through all of that, this new conversation that's happening across these lines, across religious lines, across boundaries of religious and non-religious, all kinds of scientific inquiry and theology and spiritual inquiry.

And so when you ask me like what this is and what it's become, it's been so fluid and evolving. And that's also why you decided, and your team decided at the time, I think this is 2010 to change the name of the show from speaking of faith to on being. Yes. This kind of fluidity.

That kind of fluidity and who we realized was in the audience. So from the very beginning, it was so fascinating, even when the show was called speaking of faith.

There was, as I came to understand the, how problematic the word faith is, you know, it is a Christian word. It's a word that's meaningful for many Christians. It's not even a Jewish word. It's not a Muslim word.

But ultimately, it was a name we were always having to explain away and overcome. And it didn't, it wasn't actually hospitable to the bread that people who were actually listening.

And also, I think ultimately after five years, it didn't describe what was happening in the show because speaking of faith kind of sounds like you're speaking of certainties and beliefs. And in fact, we're, what I realized is what we're really exploring.

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