Faith, culture, and public life in conversation.
Harvard Divinity School is a rotating collection of conversations, essays, and talks where religion is treated as lived practice, public force, and intellectual discipline. Its best moments move patiently from personal story to ethical claim.
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Harvard Divinity School is not one neatly bounded host-led program. It is a rotating audio space where talks, interviews, student conversations, and narrated essays sit beside one another under the pressure of serious questions. The throughline is religion in lived form. Faith appears in public protest, in family memory, in recovery practice, in creative work, in scriptural interpretation, and in the uneasy places where inherited belief no longer fits cleanly. The show can be intimate. The Hope Podcast episodes often begin with home, spiritual autobiography, and the small disclosures that make a larger argument possible. Amy Brenneman speaks about creative life, Al-Anon, and hope as action. Leah Gawel connects religious trauma, art, and the making of a verbatim play. Jamie Feinberg reflects on theology as intellectually rigorous and personally vulnerable. Julia Jackson brings hope into conversation with mortality, reading, and a longing for otherwise. The public theology episodes carry a different weight. Reverend Kelly Brown Douglas speaks about immigration raids, clergy witness, sacred dignity, Black faith tradition, and hope as something enacted rather than merely felt. The cultural conversations broaden the field again. Pop Apocalypse considers religious studies, acting, dreamwork, artificial intelligence, hip-hop, and apocalyptic imagination as part of the same inquiry into meaning and transformation. The narrated Bulletin essay on sleep is slower and more literary, moving from an Arctic island under the midnight sun into questions of science, care, and the porous border between waking and dreaming. Across these formats, the show favors patience over conclusion. It allows uncertainty to remain audible. It is at its strongest when a speaker begins with a concrete life and gradually shows how theology, ethics, or art has been there all along. For PlayNext, it belongs with listeners who want religion treated neither as slogan nor curiosity, but as a demanding vocabulary for dignity, imagination, grief, and public responsibility.
Made for: For listeners drawn to theology, ethics, religious studies, spiritual autobiography, and the public consequences of belief. It especially suits people who prefer reflective conversation to quick answers.
What sets it apart: Its range sets it apart: student spiritual lives, public justice, popular culture, long-form essays, and scholarly framing all share the same feed. The show treats religion as both intimate practice and public argument.
Expand your understanding of the ways religion shapes the world with lectures, interviews, and reflections from Harvard Divinity School.
Based on 6 episodes we listened to · September 2026
Religion becomes tangible here through spiritual autobiography, artistic practice, public conversation, and close attention to how belief shapes ordinary decisions.
Harvard Divinity School moves between intimate conversation, public programming, and narrated essays, letting religion appear through lived practice as often as formal theology.
The Leftovers gets a divinity-school afterparty, where your questions about mercy outlast the plot.
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Short reviews from the PlayNext desk, based on the episodes we processed.
Leah Gowell connects inherited theology, religious trauma, and documentary art in a focused Hope Podcast conversation.
Leah Gowell's account of growing up in Milwaukee in the Wisconsin Evangelical Lutheran Synod gives this episode its clearest through line. She describes a small, confessional, strict, conservative world that once held her full belief, then follows the pressure points that made…
A patient talk on hope, recovery, and a life organized by practice.
Hyatt O'Connor's conversation with Master of Religion and Public Life student Amy Brenneman follows a life shaped by central Connecticut, Los Angeles, Martha's Vineyard, and years on the road, then brings that geography back to church, Al-Anon, and hope as action.
A thoughtful turn through home, calling, and the work of saying hope out loud.
Jamie Feinberg's Hope Podcast conversation moves from Boston, Brookline, and Newton into the practical work of pursuing a passion while studying at Harvard Divinity School.
Midnight sun, sleep science, and family memory settle into one Arctic piece.
Sacred Sleep of the Wandering Fool opens in the Norwegian Sea with Sarabin Levy-Brightman on a tiny island, asleep in the midnight sun and wondering what rest means when waking does not bring daylight.
Amy Brenneman, religion, and The Leftovers come together in a conversation that keeps circling ambiguity.
Pop Apocalypse uses Amy Brenneman's interview to move steadily from career background into religion, dream work, and The Leftovers. Matt Dillon frames her as an actress, writer, producer, and activist, then keeps returning to the details that give the conversation its shape: her…
A Buddhist-minded reflection on compassion as practice, from spiritual aspiration to medical care and service.
Compassion is treated less as a feeling than as a discipline in motion. The episode opens with a Medicine Buddha mantra, then moves through Harvard Divinity School, Buddhist reflection, and a film centered on care for children in Nepal.
Measured theology for lived Christian questions.
Moral language for common life.
A season-by-season history show pairing dramatized Rasputin and Salem narratives with historian interviews.
Two Bible translators unpack Scripture's hardest passages, from Revelation's 666 to the Witch of Endor.
Weekly Portuguese-language sermons from Pastor Pedro Bastoge on scripture, end times, and church life.
MJ Dorian's solo deep dives trace genius through Blake, McQueen, da Vinci, and Jung's Red Book.
Harvard Divinity School hosts a talk with the Sabal Foundation about manifesting compassion through grassroots action.
Actress Amy Brenneman discusses her dual life in Hollywood and religious studies with host Matt Dillon.
This episode features an interview with photographer Shannon Taggart about her work capturing spiritualism and the invisible in art, following a discussion of upcoming Harvard Divinity School events.
Harvard Divinity School professor Catherine Brekus explains that estimates of church attendance in the 1770s range from 10% to 20% nationally to as high as 80% in New England, while Christianity remained a central cultural language.
This episode features an interview with Reverend Kelly Brown Douglas discussing how faith shapes public life and social justice, focusing on moral imagination and hope in response to issues like immigration and political division.
Hyatt O'Connor and Jordan Ahmed host Harvard Divinity School's Hope Podcast with Leah Gowell, a third-year Master of Divinity student building Broken Covenant and helping launch the April 16-17 religious trauma symposium.
Hyatt O'Connor sits down with Amy Brenneman, a Master of Religion and Public Life student at Harvard Divinity School, to talk about coming back to Harvard, writing the unknowns in a creative life, and hope as an action.
This interview explores actress Amy Brenneman's integration of her Harvard comparative religion studies, Jungian dreamwork, and acting career, focusing on how these elements influence her roles and creative process.
This episode features an interview with Julia Jackson, a Master of Divinity candidate at Harvard Divinity School, discussing how hope and mortality are interconnected, the role of reading, and her personal spiritual journey.
Jamie Feinberg joins the Hope Podcast with Hyatt O'Connor and Jordan Ahmed.
It opens in late June 2024.
This episode explores apocalyptic themes in popular culture through a discussion with Paul Miller (DJ Spooky), focusing on A.I., hip-hop, and the digital uncanny.
This episode explores the intersection of madness, mysticism, and philosophy through discussions of art, literature, and personal experiences, featuring insights from various guests on the Pop Apocalypse podcast.
This episode features an interview with photographer Shannon Taggart about capturing the invisible and spiritualism in art, following up on previous discussions about spiritualism in women's art.
This episode features an interview with author Jennifer Higgie about her book 'The Other Side', which explores how modern women artists incorporated spiritual experiences into their art.