Soul Search
Soul Search explores contemporary religion and spirituality from the inside out — what we believe, how we express it, and the difference it makes in our lives
- Update frequency
- every 7 days
- Average duration
- 54 minutes
- Episodes
- 255
- Years Active
- 2021 - 2025
Icons and iconoclasts part 1
We live in a highly visual culture — the image is king, and image-breaking is a key form of protest. But this is hardly new; idols, icons and iconoclasts have been part of the human story for millenn…
00:54:06 |
Thu 12 Oct 2023
Why do we scapegoat?
James Alison says scapegoating is one of our oldest social behaviours. But casting someone out to maintain group cohesion has its obvious drawbacks — particularly for the person taking the fall! As a…
00:54:06 |
Thu 05 Oct 2023
Shakespeare’s religious world
William Shakespeare's world was marked by social change, spiritual tumult, and cosmic disorientation. Elizabeth I was on the throne, defining and defending England's Protestant reformation, and Europ…
00:54:06 |
Thu 28 Sep 2023
Khalil Gibran’s The Prophet at 100
It’s been 100 years since the publication of The Prophet by Khalil Gibran, a book beloved by everyone from Indira Ghandi to Elvis Presley. What is the story behind one of the most enduring spiritual …
00:54:07 |
Thu 21 Sep 2023
Future of religion — A changing climate
None of us are immune from the reality of a changing climate, or perhaps even from the local disasters that seem to accompany it. But what does a changing climate mean for the ways people live out th…
00:54:03 |
Thu 14 Sep 2023
Future of religion — From the Torres Strait to Uluru
“Sovereignty is a spiritual notion”. The Uluru Statement from the Heart makes clear that Indigenous cultures and spiritualities are key to the story of the future of religion in Australia.
As Austra…
00:54:06 |
Thu 07 Sep 2023
Future of religion — Where is Christian theology headed?
The world Christians live in is changing, so Christian theology is too. David Bentley Hart — one of the world’s most prominent and influential theologians — calls elements of mainstream Western Chris…
00:54:06 |
Thu 31 Aug 2023
Future of religion — Digital utopias and spiritual imagination
The year is 2087 and Istanbul is a glittering, technological metropolis — but is this digital utopia more, or less, religious than today? Religious affiliation and the category of “religion” itself i…
00:54:05 |
Thu 24 Aug 2023
Overcoming poverty and prejudice — The women creating communities of justice
Meet two women who’ve tried to change the world — to give shape to a certain freedom, or liberation, for their community. From Catholic Liberation Theology in the Philippines to a hijabi mountaineer …
00:54:05 |
Thu 17 Aug 2023
Does your religion make you laugh?
Religion isn’t always serious business. While the sacred is sometimes considered off-limits for comedy, religious people actually do use humour to bond with each other and teach the tenets of their f…
00:54:05 |
Thu 10 Aug 2023
Solitude and the ache for humans
On SBS’s hit show Alone Australia, contestants had to spend weeks in the wilderness without any human contact. Isolation can be hard — many people fear it — but some embrace solitude as an opportunit…
00:54:06 |
Thu 03 Aug 2023
Making peace with mortality
Everyone dies, but in the last 200 years or so, our beliefs about death have changed dramatically. From pandemic meditations on mortality to the history of euthanasia, attitudes about death are part …
00:54:06 |
Thu 27 Jul 2023
The Dalai Lama and the Scottish hermit
The 14th Dalai Lama is arguably the most prominent Buddhist in the world. He has influenced the West considerably, including religious traditions other than his own. How did this come to be, and who …
00:54:05 |
Thu 20 Jul 2023
The soul and the self
Is it possible to really, actually, know yourself? Descartes said the self was the only thing we can know — I think therefore I am — but other philosophical traditions say the self doesn’t even exist…
00:54:06 |
Thu 13 Jul 2023
Skin-on-skin — birth, spirituality and parenthood
Birth: we all go through it — according to some religions, at least twice! For Flesh Week, Soul Search looks at ideas and experiences of birth, including the Christian story of Mary as the mother of …
00:54:06 |
Thu 06 Jul 2023
Reckoning and reconciliation at Glebe’s scarred tree
Under one of the last remaining scarred trees in Sydney, Pastor Ray Minniecon is imagining a reconciled community.
00:52:20 |
Thu 29 Jun 2023
The great Medieval mystic and writer — Julian of Norwich
In a plague-riven Medieval Europe, a woman wrote a book in English that has inspired 650 years of devoted readers.
00:53:34 |
Thu 22 Jun 2023
Pádraig Ó Tuama on poetry, rage, and remaking religion
The search for a language that can hold rage and heal pain.
00:54:08 |
Thu 15 Jun 2023
The sacred river
The river is sacred to many cultures, including the Barkindji community of NSW. For them, the beloved Barka, also known as the Darling River, is a life source and Ancestor.
00:54:06 |
Thu 08 Jun 2023
Forest bathing and the 'more than human world'
The Indigenous people of Papua have a philosophy of nature that’s helping them resist deforestation. And, we explore shinrin-yoku – the Japanese art of forest bathing.
00:54:05 |
Thu 01 Jun 2023
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