Future Perfect

Latest Episodes:

The benefits of contemplating death Aug 12, 2020

Show notes

Co-host Sigal Samuel talks to Nikki Mirghafori, a Buddhist meditation teacher and AI researcher, about how to practice mindfulness of death

Relevant resources:

“Our calm is contagious”: How to use mindfulness in a pandemic, by Sigal Samuel

It’s okay to be doing okay during the pandemic, by Sigal Samuel

Are we morally obligated to meditate? by Sigal Samuel

Featuring:

Nikki Mirghafori, a Buddhist meditation teacher and AI researcher

Host:

Sigal Samuel (@SigalSamuel), staff writer, Vox

More to explore:

Subscribe to Vox’s Future Perfect newsletter, which breaks down the big, complicated problems the world faces and the most efficient ways to solve them.

Credits:

Producer/Editor: Jackson Bierfeldt

Editor: Elbert Ventura

Executive Producer: Liz Nelson

About Vox:

Vox is a news network that helps you cut through the noise and understand what's really driving the events in the headlines.

Please consider making a contribution to Vox to support this show: bit.ly/givepodcasts. Your support will help us keep having ambitious conversations about big ideas.

Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

A nun on the radical possibilities of Christianity Aug 05, 2020

Show notes

Co-host Sean Illing talks to Sister Ilia Delio, a Franciscan nun and Catholic theologian, about the power of love and suffering in Christianity.

Relevant resources:

The Unbearable Wholeness of Being: God, Evolution, and the Power of Love, Ilia Delio

Making All Things New: Catholicity, Cosmology, Consciousness, Ilia Delio

Featuring:

Ilia Delio, a Franciscan Sister of Washington, DC, and Villanova University theology professor

Host:

Sean Illing (@seanilling), senior interviews writer, Vox

More to explore:

Subscribe to Vox’s Future Perfect newsletter, which breaks down the big, complicated problems the world faces and the most efficient ways to solve them.

Credits:

Producer/Editor: Jackson Bierfeldt

Editor: Elbert Ventura

Executive Producer: Liz Nelson

About Vox:

Vox is a news network that helps you cut through the noise and understand what's really driving the events in the headlines.

Please consider making a contribution to Vox to support this show: bit.ly/givepodcasts. Your support will help us keep having ambitious conversations about big ideas.

Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Why Cornel West is hopeful (but not optimistic) Jul 29, 2020

Show notes

Co-host Sigal Samuel talks to Cornel West, professor of the Practice of Public Philosophy at Harvard, about Black liberation theology, existentialism, and other philosophies that can help us through these times.

Relevant resources:

Cornel West and Tricia Rose on The Tight Rope, Apple Podcasts

Featuring:

Cornel West (@CornelWest), professor of the Practice of Public Philosophy at Harvard

Host:

Sigal Samuel (@SigalSamuel), staff writer, Vox

More to explore:

Subscribe to Vox’s Future Perfect newsletter, which breaks down the big, complicated problems the world faces and the most efficient ways to solve them.

Credits:

Producer/Editor - Jackson Bierfeldt

Editor - Elbert Ventura

Executive Producer Liz Nelson

About Vox:

Vox is a news network that helps you cut through the noise and understand what's really driving the events in the headlines.

Please consider making a contribution to Vox to support this show: bit.ly/givepodcasts. Your support will help us keep having ambitious conversations about big ideas.

Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

What Camus’s "The Plague" can teach us about this pandemic Jul 22, 2020

Show notes

Co-host Sean Illing talks to Robert Zaretsky, professor of French history at the University of Houston, about Albert Camus’s novel The Plague.

Relevant resources:

The Plague, by Albert Camus

Simone Weil: An Anthology, by Simone Weil

Albert Camus: Elements of a Life, by Robert Zaretsky

Featuring:

Robert Zaretsky, professor of history at the University of Houston

Host:

Sean Illing (@seanilling), senior interviews writer, Vox

More to explore:

Subscribe to Vox’s Future Perfect newsletter, which breaks down the big, complicated problems the world faces and the most efficient ways to solve them.

About Vox:

Vox is a news network that helps you cut through the noise and understand what's really driving the events in the headlines.

Please consider making a contribution to Vox to support this show: bit.ly/givepodcasts. Your support will help us keep having ambitious conversations about big ideas.

Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Muslim mystics on the power of pain Jul 15, 2020

Show notes

Co-host Sigal Samuel talks to Omid Safi, professor of Islamic Studies at Duke University, about the benefits of solitude and suffering, according to Sufis like Rumi.

Relevant resources:

Radical Love: Teachings from the Islamic Mystical Tradition, by Omid Safi

Featuring:

Omid Safi (@ostadjaan), professor of Islamic Studies at Duke University

Host:

Sigal Samuel (@SigalSamuel), staff writer, Vox

More to explore:

Subscribe to Vox’s Future Perfect newsletter, which breaks down the big, complicated problems the world faces and the most efficient ways to solve them.

About Vox:

Vox is a news network that helps you cut through the noise and understand what's really driving the events in the headlines.

Please consider making a contribution to Vox to support this show: bit.ly/givepodcasts. Your support will help us keep having ambitious conversations about big ideas.

Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

A rabbi explains how to make sense of suffering Jul 08, 2020

Show notes

Co-host Sean Illing talks to David Wolpe, senior rabbi at Sinai Temple in Los Angeles, about God and how to make sense of suffering in human life.

Relevant resources:

Making Loss Matter : Creating Meaning in Difficult Times by Rabbi David Wolpe

Religion without God: Alain de Botton on "atheism 2.0." by Sean Iling

Featuring:

David Wolpe (@RabbiWolpe), senior rabbi at Sinai Temple in Los Angeles

Host:

Sean Illing (@Seanilling), senior interviews writer

More to explore:

Subscribe to Vox’s Future Perfect newsletter, which breaks down the big, complicated problems the world faces and the most efficient ways to solve them.

About Vox:

Vox is a news network that helps you cut through the noise and understand what's really driving the events in the headlines.

Please consider making a contribution to Vox to support this show: bit.ly/givepodcasts. Your support will help us keep having ambitious conversations about big ideas.

Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

On Buddhism and Blackness Jul 01, 2020

Show notes

Co-host Sigal Samuel talks to Valerie Brown, a mindfulness teacher with a racial justice lens, about how to use Buddhist spiritual teachings not just to soothe us as individuals, but to tackle broader inequality, especially racial inequality.

Relevant resources:

"A New Paradigm For Racial Justice and the Global Pandemic" by Valerie Brown and Marisela Gomez, Order of Interbeing

"It’s okay to be doing okay during the pandemic" by Sigal Samuel, Vox

"“Our calm is contagious”: How to use mindfulness in a pandemic" by Sigal Samuel, Vox

Featuring:

Valerie Brown (@Valeriebrown951), Principal, Lead Smart Coaching

Host:

Sigal Samuel (@SigalSamuel), Staff writer, Vox

More to explore:

Subscribe to Vox’s Future Perfect newsletter, which breaks down big, complicated problems the world faces and the most efficient ways to solve them.

About Vox:

Vox is a news network that helps you cut through the noise and understand what's really driving the events in the headlines.

Please consider making a contribution to Vox to support this show: bit.ly/givepodcasts Your support will help us keep having ambitious conversations about big ideas.

Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Introducing Future Perfect: The Way Through Jun 30, 2020

Show notes

We’re living through challenging times: a pandemic, a historic economic collapse, racial injustice, and social unrest. But it would be a mistake to believe that what we’re experiencing is somehow unique in human experience. People have confronted crises for millennia, grappling with the same anguish and anxiety we’re feeling now. And they’ve left us with rich wisdom about how to navigate suffering.

There’s comfort in that — and that’s the idea at the heart of a new podcast series from Vox’s Future Perfect. In eight episodes hosted by Vox’s Sean Illing and Sigal Samuel, we’ll explore different philosophical teachings and faith traditions from around the world to help us process what we’re living through — and maybe even find something meaningful, ennobling, and fortifying in this common experience.

More to explore:

Subscribe to Vox’s Future Perfect newsletter, which breaks down big, complicated problems the world faces and the most efficient ways to solve them.

About Vox:

Vox is a news network that helps you cut through the noise and understand what's really driving the events in the headlines.

Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

The money in the moon Jul 17, 2019

Show notes

Fifty years ago this summer, Apollo 11 landed on the moon.

Now, NASA’s talking about going back.

But is it worth it?

We talk to lunar geologists about what we’ve already learned from the first Apollo missions, and what’s left to discover.

Then, we take a trip, not through space, but through time—back to a scientific expedition in Greenland almost a century ago. The science done there might have seemed insignificant at the time, but has since proved an important first step towards our current understanding of global warming.

Further reading:

Brian's in-depth explainer on moon rocks

Jon Gertner's book about epic Greenland expeditions, The Ice At The End of The World

For more on ice coring, this National Geographic article is great, as is this 60 Minutes episode

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Your PTA vs. equality Jul 10, 2019

Show notes

Big philanthropists can threaten democracy. But so can small ones, like you and me. One big example? Parent-teacher associations. We examine how rich PTAs can hoard opportunity and deny resources to poor kids.

Dana Goldstein on the Malibu-Santa Monica PTA warsThe harm done by parents who hoard donationsRob Reich on superrich PTAsA Center for American Progress report on PTA donations in rich schoolsThe case that the importance of private donations is overstated

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