A weekly podcast about building great relationships, cultivating wonder, and making things better for other people. Hosted by veteran community-builder Bart Campolo, Humanize Me features friendly, thoughtful conversations with a wide array of scientists, activists, artists and oddballs.
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An simple index of episodes can be found here.
Humanize Me is a production of Jux Media.
How do we recapture political nuance, thoughtfulness and open-mindedness at a time when alternative media has hooked us on politics and broke our democracy?
Claire Potter is a Professor of History and co-Executive Editor of Public Seminar at The New School for Social Research in Greenwich Village, New York City. In this conversation, she and Bart Campolo talk about the state of our political discourse and the attitudes that can promote the change we all want to see.
Claire’s website can be found at ClairePotter.com.
Bart talks to Joe Blankholm, a professor at the University of California, Santa Barbara, who with his colleagues is conducting a survey of secular communities across the United States.
Take the survey at secularcommunities.com/scs!
From a listener:
“I left my faith about 14 years ago. It has been a lonely experience, especially since back then, there wasn’t the same connections through the internet that there are now. It seems like deconstruction is almost pop culture now, and being talked about everywhere. Anyways, I appreciate what you’re doing and I’m inspired by your vision. I still ‘feel’ like a pastor in a lot of ways and like how you are helping people take the good parts of church and recreate them in a new context. I have been thinking about getting connected to others in the same boat as me. People who have left Christianity and are looking for community. I am from Kitchener, Ontario and I wondered if you had any connections to groups that I could connect with up here. I’m looking for a way to just talk about my experience of leaving faith and the lonely place it can be. If you don’t have any recommendations, I’d love any tips or suggestions for getting likeminded people together, online right now because of COVID. I know that’s a big question but any insight would be great.” – Brian
Bart thinks it’s harder as an adult than when you were in high school or college, but has some thoughts that may inspire you to make some practical moves. Some things we mention during the episode:
Brene Brown: The power of vulnerability (TED Talk)
How can we learn to have our disagreements across ideological divides more constructively and respectfully? David C. Smalley may be something of an expert at this point, having conducted hundreds of long-form conversations – many of them with Christians – on his podcast for the last 11 years.
In this episode with Bart Campolo, David talks about how he approaches these on-air disagreements, and what allows him to stay friends with many of his guests after they hang up the phone.
Some takeaways: Keep watch over the temperature of a conversation, break anger with kindness, see insecurities for what they are, understand they see you as a victim of bad ideas, cultivate patience, ask lots of good questions and let them talk (which is actually thinking out loud), ‘put on’ their ideology for the conversation to explore it with them, be a tourist in their world with genuine curiosity.
Subscribe to the David C. Smalley podcast in your favorite podcast app, and connect with him at his website, DavidCSmalley.com.
Bart and John share thoughts about the Inauguration of President Biden, the emotions it raises, what is entailed in turning the page as a nation, how to begin to bring Trump’s most fervent supporters back into conversation, the importance of rituals like this, the Inauguration as a civic religious ceremony, and the actual religion in the ceremony including the biggest bible we’ve ever seen.
Amanda Gorman’s poem:
When day comes we ask ourselves,
where can we find light in this never-ending shade?
The loss we carry,
a sea we must wade
We’ve braved the belly of the beast
We’ve learned that quiet isn’t always peace
And the norms and notions
of what just is
Isn’t always just-ice
And yet the dawn is ours
before we knew it
Somehow we do it
Somehow we’ve weathered and witnessed
a nation that isn’t broken
but simply unfinished
We the successors of a country and a time
Where a skinny Black girl
descended from slaves and raised by a single mother
can dream of becoming president
only to find herself reciting for one
And yes we are far from polished
far from pristine
but that doesn’t mean we are
striving to form a union that is perfect
We are striving to forge a union with purpose
To compose a country committed to all cultures, colors, characters and
conditions of man
And so we lift our gazes not to what stands between us
but what stands before us
We close the divide because we know, to put our future first,
we must first put our differences aside
We lay down our arms
so we can reach out our arms
to one another
We seek harm to none and harmony for all
Let the globe, if nothing else, say this is true:
That even as we grieved, we grew
That even as we hurt, we hoped
That even as we tired, we tried
That we’ll forever be tied together, victorious
Not because we will never again know defeat
but because we will never again sow division
Scripture tells us to envision
that everyone shall sit under their own vine and fig tree
And no one shall make them afraid
If we’re to live up to our own time
Then victory won’t lie in the blade
But in all the bridges we’ve made
That is the promise to glade
The hill we climb
If only we dare
It’s because being American is more than a pride we inherit,
it’s the past we step into
and how we repair it
We’ve seen a force that would shatter our nation
rather than share it
Would destroy our country if it meant delaying democracy
And this effort very nearly succeeded
But while democracy can be periodically delayed
it can never be permanently defeated
In this truth
in this faith we trust
For while we have our eyes on the future
history has its eyes on us
This is the era of just redemption
We feared at its inception
We did not feel prepared to be the heirs
of such a terrifying hour
but within it we found the power
to author a new chapter
To offer hope and laughter to ourselves
So while once we asked,
how could we possibly prevail over catastrophe?
Now we assert
How could catastrophe possibly prevail over us?
We will not march back to what was
but move to what shall be
A country that is bruised but whole,
benevolent but bold,
fierce and free
We will not be turned around
or interrupted by intimidation
because we know our inaction and inertia
will be the inheritance of the next generation
Our blunders become their burdens
But one thing is certain:
If we merge mercy with might,
and might with right,
then love becomes our legacy
and change our children’s birthright
So let us leave behind a country
better than the one we were left with
Every breath from my bronze-pounded chest,
we will raise this wounded world into a wondrous one
We will rise from the gold-limbed hills of the west,
we will rise from the windswept northeast
where our forefathers first realized revolution
We will rise from the lake-rimmed cities of the midwestern states,
we will rise from the sunbaked south
We will rebuild, reconcile and recover
and every known nook of our nation and
every corner called our country,
our people diverse and beautiful will emerge,
battered and beautiful
When day comes we step out of the shade,
aflame and unafraid
The new dawn blooms as we free it
For there is always light,
if only we’re brave enough to see it
If only we’re brave enough to be it
What does it take to cope in a high-pressure, competitive environment… without falling into harmful behavior? Ali Tamposi is a grammy-nominated songwriter who has written for some of the biggest names in pop music: Kelly Clarkson, Justin Bieber, Miley Cyrus, John Legend, Ozzy Osbourne and many others. She’s also Bart Campolo’s daughter-in-law-to-be.
In this conversation, Bart and Ali talk about what it’s like in a songwriting session, how high-pressure, competitive environments can bring out everyone’s insecurities, the better of two coping strategies, how gender plays a role, how a good key relationship can make all the difference, and how you can’t always change the room, but rather what you bring to it.
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