This is On Being's Unheard Cut. I'm Krista Tippett. You're listening to my unedited conversation with Nathan Schneider.

He's the author of God In Proof, the story of a search from the ancients to the internet, and Thank You Anarchy.

Notes from the Occupy Apocalypse. I spoke with him on August 8, 2014 at the Chautauqua institution in New York.

Download the MP3 of our produced show with Nathan Schneider at onbeing.org.

Good afternoon, everyone. And welcome back to this excellent week presented by the Department of Religion 2 o'clock Interfaith Lecture Series.

I'm Maureen Revenio, and I serve as Associate Director for the Department of Religion, bringing you greetings from Reverend Dr. Robert Franklin, who is our Director.

So, as we begin, we do have a few announcements today. Audio recordings of today's lecture will be available in the amphitheater gazebo later this afternoon, and video discs may also be ordered at the gazebo and picked up at a later time.

For those who will be leaving Chautauqua tomorrow, we're so glad you've been here and we will miss you so much.

But we suggest that as you consider leaving your, that will you will consider leaving your non perishable foods for the food bank, please leave them at the Scott Street Entrance of Herbal Church or at the Post Office.

One more announcement this afternoon at five o'clock, we will celebrate once again Kabbalat Shabbat, the Jewish welcoming the Sabbath service which takes place each week at the Bell Tower.

It's a lovely service, and if you've never been, I encourage you to go. You will absolutely love it. All are cordially welcomed to attend and participate.

And these are the events sponsored by the Department of Religion for which we thank you so much for your support.

Now, our Interfaith Lecture Series this week has focused on the American Consciousness. Let me offer a brief summary of our journey together through this topic this week.

On Monday, Christa Tippett interviewed Roberto Mangubera Unger from Harvard Law School, one of the world's great living philosophers.

He suggested that America is in a time in which the transformative imagination to quote him, necessary to conceive of new ways of solving societal problems of inequality, oppression, and alienation, he says that the transformative imagination is paralyzed.

We need, as it were, prophets like Jefferson, Whitman, Lincoln, Emerson, and Dewey to help us redistribute advantage and power.

Education is the key he said to this process of change, and is, as it were, again, a down payment on a future, a better future.

Professor Unger thus welcomes the social dislocation caused by civil disobedience and disruption, as, quote, without trauma, there is no transformation.

On Tuesday, after a long, rainstorm delay, the interview with Professor Imani Perry of Princeton explored her understanding of race, difference, and prejudice in the 21st century.

She felt that American consciousness rests upon, quote, myth of our innocence, which makes honest, courageous dialogue about race and topics very difficult.

Today, to improve the general welfare, everyone should be working on better strategies of power sharing.

On Wednesday, Richard Rodriguez, formally of the NewsHour, expressed frustration with our attempts to simplify complex conversations about culture and race by reducing them to binary black and white terms.

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