Program podcast: Recent Episodes
ABC Radio
Contemporary and ancient, Australian and bilingual, live and recorded: here poetry speaks for itself in a rich radio world complete with sound and music.
Australia’s very first interfaith network runs a thriving ‘faith tour’, with the cooperation of sixty or so volunteers and the myriad mosques, temples and churches in its cluster of ten suburbs. Join a busload of Catholic school students on tour and encounter elephant-eared Ganesha, the Buddha’s relics, and mosque dress code.
The story of One Thousand and One Nights , re-told by Moroccan poet and feminist Rachida Madani.
Food, water, shelter and clothing are the necessities of life but for Barry Hill, poetry should also be on the list.
The law is set up to dispense justice and compensation. But justice doesn't always means the same thing to everybody - and for people who have been the victims of terrible crimes, compensation is far from being the end of the story.
Financial pressures are escalating for traditional Christian churches, as secularism rises and child abuse compensation payouts loom. Find out how the mission of the church is changing by the enforced sale of many of their buildings and properties to pay debts.
This Encounter in the Central Australian desert introduces Morris Stuart, a former pastor who was born in British Guyana in the Caribbean. He uses sacred music to help empower indigenous people, working with local choirs in Central Australia, Alice Springs and, most recently, with the famous South African Soweto Gospel Choir.
'Texts and Traditions' takes a brace of texts that have found new, 21st century interpreters. Studies of a 19th century manuscript of Hindu deities, the statutes of confraternities in 16th century Bologna, and a 10th century manuscript copy of some of Pope Gregory the Great’s sixth century letters throw surprising light on the present. Or is it that the present illuminates the past?
On the centenary of the outbreak of the WWI, we focus on the men and women known affectionately as ‘padres’, chaplains who have served the Australian Army officially since 1913. At the heart of the program is the untold story of one of Australia’s earliest WWI padres, an Anglican minister who by war's end was Major The Reverend R.H. Pitt-Owen.
Tasmanian Rob Cordover had motor neurone disease and in 2009, before he could choke to death, he died with medical help. That help can get you 14 years’ jail in Australia. His wife Nica, their kids, and their helpers still can’t be sure the police are not coming.
This week we explore the early history of Muslim immigration to Australia, focusing on the connections between Muslim immigrants and Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islanders. A story of surprising encounters and unexpected histories.
As Indonesians made their democratic voting choices in 2014, they were also flagging a way forward for the nation's significant Islamic education sector and its key institutions, the pesantren, the madrasah and the State Islamic universities. In Encounter, find out about pesantren, and hear of an ambitious dream for Indonesian Islamic higher education as a new global centre for Muslim intellectual life.
Everyone seems to think they know what karma means, but Buddhists and Hindus are facing challenges today due to a misunderstanding of karma and its twin rebirth.
No-one really knows how old Zoroastrianism is. Herodotus makes mention of something like it in the fifth century BCE, but Zoroastrianism almost certainly pre-dates Judaism, and may even be older than the Vedic tradition which gave birth to Hinduism. Surprisingly, the adherents of this ancient religion believe their theological goal to be still incomplete.
Jews often say that Judaism is about "deed, not creed", and that the ethical question of how to live is far more urgent that the theological one of what to believe. Why then does Judaism have such a rich history of thought and philosophy? And what is the origin of the stereotype of the "Jewish intellectual"?
In recent years, Muslims in the West have come under increasing pressure to practice "moderate" Islam - i.e. an Islam that embraces the various legacies of the European Enlightenment, which include secularism and a certain kind of rationality. But is a moderate or "reasonable" religion one that sells itself short?
First in a three-part series on faith and reason. Religion comes under fire from atheists because it's supposedly irrational, requiring the believer to sign up to propositions that amount to nonsense. How do—or how should—faith and reason interact?
Encounter visits the underside of Los Angeles, where the United States' economic recession is biting hard into the lives of the poor and the marginalised.
For several decades, Peter Sculthorpe has been Australia's most prolific and profiled composer. In that time he has developed his own vision for the spiritual and moral dimensions of Australia. In conversation with Florence Spurling, Peter Sculthorpe takes us from Tasmania to the many places his music and spirit have since travelled.
The third program in Encounter's archive series. In January 1988, Australia was getting started on its Bicentenary celebrations - but in indigenous communities, many were wondering just what it was that they were supposed to be celebrating. This program visits the Tasmanian Aboriginal Centre, and hears reflections from local indigenous people on 200 years of trauma and triumph.
Shakespeare has acquired quasi-religious status in Western culture and beyond. But how do we trace the religious threads in Shakespeare’s own life and work? and why have his plays become so influential?
The first in a month-long series of programs from the Encounter archives. This week: an extraordinary story of grief, courage, resilience - and unexpected joy, as a Melbourne family comes to terms with their son's severe injury in a road accident.
He was seen in person by more people than anyone else in human history. Pope John Paul II brought the Catholic Church to the world as the second-longest serving pontiff, and was beloved for it. On the eve of his canonisation by the Vatican, we ask - what forces shaped this man? And what sort of legacy did he leave the world?
First in a two-part series on the two-part Papal canonisation that's about to take place in Rome. This week: Pope John XXIII, the man who fifty years ago began driving the locomotive of Catholic Church reform by inaugurating the Second Vatican Council. But who was he? And how is his influence being felt in the Church and in secular society today?
On a slow boat journey from Constantinople to Venice in the early 15th century, scholar and papal diplomat Nicholas of Cusa set modern scientific method in train when he conceived of the value of ignorance as a means towards knowledge. The more one learns of one’s unknowing the more learned one is.
In this year of the 100th anniversary of World War I —the 'founding catastrophe' of the 20th century—we look at life for German Jews before, during and after the Great War.
Our cultural obsession with body image is often blamed on the media. But from the story of Eve and her suspect desire for forbidden fruit to the persistence of such ascetic traditions such as fasting, Christianity has influenced the ways in which we shape our bodies in the service of transforming our souls.
If someone tells you to go to Hell, you’ve probably got a good picture in your mind of what you’ll find when you get there: Somewhere deep underground, devils with pointy tails, lots of fire and brimstone. But where does our western idea of Hell come from and why does it take this particular form? And what can Hell's most famous architect – Dante – teach us about living together in the modern world?
The second of the Ten Commandments says that “thou shalt not make unto thee any graven image”. And yet the making and selling of Christian devotional objects has become a thriving business today.
Hindus are more relaxed about the role of objects in religious practice – but even so, the secular appropriation of Hindu icons can cause offence. This week Allison Chan explores the world of religious material culture.
For 2000 years Christians have pondered Jesus’ words at the Last Supper—‘Do this in memory of me’—and in thanksgiving Christians of almost all persuasions do take bread and sometimes wine, bless it and share it. This practice has profoundly influenced ‘western culture’ and it remains provocative – to religious, intellectual and social action and thought.
The whistleblower performs a valuable service in a world where large corporate entities have a lot of power, but not always a lot of moral restraint in protecting and furthering their interests.
The arrival of baby twins, less than two years after that of their older sibling, sends Michael McGirr in search of an ancient practice for which bed is the ideal setting. It's called sleep. In this book, both a personal journey and a profound exploration of one of life's true constants, Michael muses on the many benefits of sleep, mourns its demise, and explains aspects of its strange personality. And despite their reluctance to ever all be asleep at the same time, he celebrates the three small children who came to him after a long vocation as a Catholic priest and brought him such joy and tiredness.
In this remarkable memoir, Anna Goldsworthy recalls her first steps towards a life in music, from childhood lessons with a local jazz muso to international success as a concert pianist. Guided by her teacher Mrs Sivan, who inspires and challenges in equal measure, she discovers passion and ambition, confronts doubt and disappointment, and learns much more than just tone and technique. Writing with wit and affection, Anna captures the hopes and uncertainties of youth, the fear and exhilaration of performing and the complex bonds between teacher and student.
Despite buying a magnificent book case for his library Rick knows that books don't furnish a room, but a self.
At thirty-eight Susan was living in London, with a new husband and pregnant with her first child; at the precipice of a completely new journey and experience Susan began to see that her life was being controlled by a power greater than herself.