Ministry of Ideas

The vast range of choices we can make about our lives is one of the great blessings of modernity. But that very freedom makes it hard to know what to believe or where we belong. Even more difficult is that capitalism is constantly shaping our values and perceptions towards its own ethos. Perhaps there is a way out through making our worlds smaller.Guest: Paul Froese is a Professor of Sociology at Baylor University and the Director of the Baylor Religion Surveys. He is the author of three books, his most recent is On Purpose: How We Create the Meaning of Life.Making Meaning is a limited series from Ministry of Ideas that explores how life can be lived more meaningfully. Featuring meditations by some of the world’s most sensitive and insightful thinkers, Making Meaning will give you fresh perspective and encouragement to live with greater intention and fullness. Making Meaning is produced by Jack Pombriant and Zachary Davis. Artwork by Dan Pecci. Learn more at ministryofideas.org and find us on Twitter @ministryofideas. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

The realization that our lives are incredibly brief and we are almost certainly not going to be remembered by anyone 100 years from now can cause deep angst—but it can also liberate us to abandon work and activities that smother our spirit and instead embrace the exquisite pleasures of friendship, nature and simply being alive.Guest: Wendy Syfret is a Melbourne based writer, editor, and author of The Sunny Nihilist: How a Meaningless Life Can Make You Truly Happy.Making Meaning is a limited series from Ministry of Ideas that explores how life can be lived more meaningfully. Featuring meditations by some of the world’s most sensitive and insightful thinkers, Making Meaning will give you fresh perspective and encouragement to live with greater intention and fullness. Making Meaning is produced by Jack Pombriant and Zachary Davis. Artwork by Dan Pecci. Learn more at ministryofideas.org and find us on Twitter @ministryofideas. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Experiencing a crisis of meaning, a time when our life and world no longer cohere, is painful and wrenching. But these encounters with the abyss can also be moments of rebirth and expansion, when we lay down our smaller selves and discover deeper and more abundant ways of relating to the earth and one another.Guest: Mark Vernon is a psychotherapist and writer, with an interest in ancient philosophy, and a focus on the skills and insights that illuminate our inner lives. His most recent book is Dante’s Divine Comedy: A Guide for the Spiritual Journey.Making Meaning is a limited series from Ministry of Ideas that explores how life can be lived more meaningfully. Featuring meditations by some of the world’s most sensitive and insightful thinkers, Making Meaning will give you fresh perspective and encouragement to live with greater intention and fullness. Making Meaning is produced by Jack Pombriant and Zachary Davis. Artwork by Dan Pecci. Learn more at ministryofideas.org and find us on Twitter @ministryofideas. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Music is not merely entertainment—it is a living tradition, a connective tissue linking generations together in a shared pursuit of joy and significance. And through those links across time and space, we build a world of meaning, one improvisation at a time.Guest: Vijay Iyer is an American composer, pianist, bandleader, producer, and writer based in New York City. The New York Times has called him a "social conscience, multimedia collaborator, system builder, rhapsodist, historical thinker and multicultural gateway." Iyer received a 2013 MacArthur Fellowship,a Doris Duke Performing Artist Award, a United States Artists Fellowship, a Grammy nomination, and the Alpert Award in the Arts. In 2014 he received a lifetime appointment as the Franklin D. and Florence Rosenblatt Professor of the Arts at Harvard University, where he is jointly appointed in the Department of Music and the Department of African and African American Studies.Making Meaning is a limited series from Ministry of Ideas that explores how life can be lived more meaningfully. Featuring meditations by some of the world’s most sensitive and insightful thinkers, Making Meaning will give you fresh perspective and encouragement to live with greater intention and fullness. Making Meaning is produced by Jack Pombriant and Zachary Davis. Artwork by Dan Pecci. Learn more at ministryofideas.org and find us on Twitter @ministryofideas. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Meaning is more than an abstraction—it is a sense that we matter to one another, woven together with threads of reciprocity. But in those times when we feel lost and cut off from our sources of strength, we may have to simply move forward in faith, holding out hope for renewal and restoration.Guest: The Rev. Dr. Stephanie M. Crumpton is a professor of practical theology at McCormick Theological Seminary. Prior to that, she was an assistant professor of practical theology at Lancaster Theological Seminary in Lancaster, Pennsylvania. She taught and lectured at Hood Theological Seminary, Chicago Theological Seminary, Candler School of Theology at Emory University and the Interdenominational Theological Center.Making Meaning is a limited series from Ministry of Ideas that explores how life can be lived more meaningfully. Featuring meditations by some of the world’s most sensitive and insightful thinkers, Making Meaning will give you fresh perspective and encouragement to live with greater intention and fullness. Making Meaning is produced by Jack Pombriant and Zachary Davis. Artwork by Dan Pecci. Learn more at ministryofideas.org and find us on Twitter @ministryofideas. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

The experience of existence is one of bewilderment and even anguish. Anguish because we feel that we are incomplete beings longing for completion, mired in immanence yet yearning for transcendence. Often, that questing spirit can lead us on the journey to God.Guest: John Cottingham is Professor Emeritus of Philosophy at the University of Reading and an Honorary Fellow, St John’s College at Oxford University. He has published over thirty books—including In Search of the Soul and How to Believe.Making Meaning is produced by Jack Pombriant and Zachary Davis. Artwork by Dan Pecci. Learn more at ministryofideas.org and find us on Twitter @ministryofideas. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

In music, Kimbra found a way to create and share gifts. And through that gifting, she provides space for others to find deep connection and belonging. But music also offers something more mysterious—a language to wrestle with meaning, an attempt to capture and express the experience of life.Guest: Kimbra is a two-time Grammy Award and six-time Aria winner who mixes pop, R&B, jazz, and rock. Some of her most famous singles include “Cameo Lover,” “Belong,” and “Somebody that I Used To Know.”Making Meaning is a limited series from Ministry of Ideas that explores how life can be lived more meaningfully. Featuring meditations by some of the world’s most sensitive and insightful thinkers, Making Meaning will give you fresh perspective and encouragement to live with greater intention and fullness. Making Meaning is produced by Jack Pombriant and Zachary Davis. Artwork by Dan Pecci. Learn more at ministryofideas.org and find us on Twitter @ministryofideas. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

The human being is a storytelling animal, and no story is more important to us than our own. But we don’t write that story in a vacuum. We are born in media res and must develop ways of making sense of ourselves if we want to truly flourish.Guest: Jennifer Frey is an associate professor of philosophy at the University of South Carolina and host of the philosophy and literature podcast Sacred and Profane Love. She writes about virtue, action, practical reason, and what it might mean to live well as a human person.Making Meaning is a limited series from Ministry of Ideas that explores how life can be lived more meaningfully. Featuring meditations by some of the world’s most sensitive and insightful thinkers, Making Meaning will give you fresh perspective and encouragement to live with greater intention and fullness. Making Meaning is produced by Jack Pombriant and Zachary Davis. Artwork by Dan Pecci. Learn more at ministryofideas.org and find us on Twitter @ministryofideas. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

It’s common to look beyond life—to eternity or God—for meaning. But as the experience of seeing a cherry tree in bloom reveals, there is deep value in the immanent, the immediate, the now.Guest: Julian Baggini is a philosopher, journalist and the author of over 20 books about philosophy written for a general audience. He is co-founder of The Philosophers' Magazine and has written for numerous international newspapers and magazines. In addition to writing on the subject of philosophy he has also written books on atheism, secularism, and the nature of national identity.Making Meaning is a limited series from Ministry of Ideas that explores how life can be lived more meaningfully. Featuring meditations by some of the world’s most sensitive and insightful thinkers, Making Meaning will give you fresh perspective and encouragement to live with greater intention and fullness. Making Meaning is produced by Jack Pombriant and Zachary Davis. Artwork by Dan Pecci. Learn more at ministryofideas.org and find us on Twitter @ministryofideas. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Organizing our lives around the pursuit of happiness—defined as positive feelings—can ultimately leave our souls hungry. Instead, we should try connecting ourselves to deeper things: compassion, community, ritual, and awe.Guest: Emily Esfahani Smith is a writer, editor, and speaker in Washington DC. She draws on psychology, philosophy, and literature to write about the human experience—why we are the way we are and how we can find grace and meaning in a world that is full of suffering. Her book The Power of Meaning, an international bestseller, has been translated into 16 different languages.Making Meaning is a limited series from Ministry of Ideas that explores how life can be lived more meaningfully. Featuring meditations by some of the world’s most sensitive and insightful thinkers, Making Meaning will give you fresh perspective and encouragement to live with greater intention and fullness. Making Meaning is produced by Jack Pombriant and Zachary Davis. Artwork by Dan Pecci. Learn more at ministryofideas.org and find us on Twitter @ministryofideas. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices