Encounter - Program podcast
By ABC Radio National
To listen to an audio podcast, mouse over the title and click Play. Open iTunes to download and subscribe to podcasts.
Podcast Description
Encounter invites you to connect intellectually, emotionally and intuitively across a broad spectrum of topics. The program regularly reflects on the religious experience of multicultural Australia, giving access to voices and experiences that are not often heard in the mainstream media.
| Name | Description | Released | Price | ||
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
|
1 |
The Tax Man Cometh | Carbon Tax, Mining Tax, or simply struggling with your annual return, one thing is clear – Australians don’t like paying taxes. While most of us understand our moral and ethical responsibilities towards creating a just and equitable society, we disagree profoundly on how best to do it. But is our social democratic model of tax and welfare working as well as it should, and if not, can philosophy and theology offer an alternative vision of a virtuous economy? | 26 5 12 | Free | View In iTunes |
|
2 |
Culture shock | Any convert will tell you that adopting a new religion means adopting a new culture. But while some religions are happily tribal, others—such as Christianity and Islam—claim to embody truths 'beyond' culture. | 12 5 12 | Free | View In iTunes |
|
3 |
The Red Thread: Buddhist love and sex | This week we’re looking through a Buddhist lens at the emotionally rich, spiritually challenging and sometimes painful area of love and sex. We’ll meet a monk and a nun, a scholar of Tantra and several lay teachers who’ll explore the 21st century dilemmas of dating, one-night stands, celibacy, love, sex, pornography, and broken hearts. Theravadan, Tibetan and Zen practitioners will talk about the Buddhist teachings on desire and attachment; the qualities of an open heart and what constitutes sexual misconduct. | 5 5 12 | Free | View In iTunes |
|
4 |
Lead Us To a Place | This week we visit Katanning, a small town in rural Western Australia where the local people and churches have a long history of acceptance and welcome to new arrivals, their faiths and cultures. | 28 4 12 | Free | View In iTunes |
|
5 |
Art for Faith's Sake | With the London Olympics coming up, a UK group is getting into gear to make great London churches places of hospitality—where ‘the stones will speak’. They say that the stones of these churches—in other words, the architecture and art—tell of religious faith and ideas, not just of aesthetic history, and the task is to help tourists understand this language and vocabulary. | 21 4 12 | Free | View In iTunes |
|
6 |
The Good Book | Most people know that the Bible is a literary classic, whose influence on secular Western culture has been profound. But fewer and fewer people actually read it. Are we disconnecting from our biblical roots, and at what cost? And what are the tensions between reading the Bible as literature, and reading it as a sacred text? | 14 4 12 | Free | View In iTunes |
|
7 |
Dutiful sons and daughters | The commandment "Honour thy father and thy mother" is fundamental to family values in the West. But our modern fetish for autonomy makes a practical ethics of caring for parents complicated. This week Encounter explores Christianity, Confucianism and the bonds of filial affection. | 7 4 12 | Free | View In iTunes |
|
8 |
Suicide | In Western societies where death is an uncomfortable topic, suicide has been rendered culturally invisible. But suicide claims six lives a day in Australia, and the annual toll is higher than the combined totals for road deaths and homicides. The taboo on talking about suicide is gradually lifting, and opening up a conversation that may have great public benefit. | 30 3 12 | Free | View In iTunes |
|
9 |
Schizophrenia | More likely than Indigenous Australians to meet an early death, people with schizophrenia are also more likely to be the victims of crime than the perpetrators of it. The set of brain disorders we call schizophrenia affects 1% of our society and forms the subject of intense and dedicated research for medical scientists. We hear from Professor John McGrath, a world leader in researching the role of Vitamin D in schizophrenia. We also hear from clinical psychologists in Australia and North America who work with those experiencing the illness, especially among the African American community. Religious hallucinations and delusions may form part of the complexity of schizophrenia—and there is a deep commitment from many of Australia’s Christian churches to support those who grapple with this illness. | 23 3 12 | Free | View In iTunes |
|
10 |
Dragons and unicorns | A couple of months ago Chinese communities around the world celebrated the Year of the Water Dragon with dragon dancing, dragon boat racing and noisy parades through city streets. These celebrations are culturally important and lots of fun, but does the centre of attention, the dragon, tell us anything about our spiritual lives today? Mythical creatures surround us. They appear in contemporary books, computer games and films. So this Encounter, produced by Kerry Stewart, goes to eastern and western lands, to find out if dragons and unicorns have lost their symbolic potency or if people are still feeling their power and glimpsing them in clouds and forests. | 16 3 12 | Free | View In iTunes |
|
11 |
Robert Kenny re the Moravian connection | Robert Kenny explores the Moravian connection to 19th century Victoria | 9 3 12 | Free | View In iTunes |
|
12 |
A Question of Culture – Indigenous and Christian encounters | What is the relationship between religion and culture: does one in some sense define the other? | 9 3 12 | Free | View In iTunes |
|
13 |
The Syrian mosaic | We all know what's happening in Syria—or do we? The picture is often portrayed in stark black and white: a brutal government versus its pro-democracy citizenry. But religious and communal ties within and without Syria reveal a more complex pattern of relationships at play. | 2 3 12 | Free | View In iTunes |
|
14 |
Witches, demons and the western imagination | It is 400 years since the Lancashire witch trials in England. In August 1612, Grace Sowerbutts told a Lancaster court a story involving her grandmother and her aunt in the murder and eating of an infant, together with stories of their involvement in Satanic sex. Professor Philip Almond examines this story and raises wider questions about the European witch craze from 1400 to 1700. Were there Satanic cults? Were the persecutions of witches the repression of a European pre-Christian religion? Were the persecutions about hunting women rather than hunting witches? How has the witch craze of early modern Europe been interpreted over time by scholars of demonology—and how has Wicca developed into our own time? | 24 2 12 | Free | View In iTunes |
|
15 |
What canst thou say | The Quakers are a religious organisation with a commitment to peace. But in the UK, they've been disturbing the peace with their support for gay marriage and a boycott on goods produced in Israeli settlements. | 17 2 12 | Free | View In iTunes |
|
16 |
Extra: Sydney Emanuel Synagogue Rabbi Paul Jacobson talks about the Talmud | -- | 10 2 12 | Free | View In iTunes |
|
17 |
Extra: Darim Online President Lisa Colton talks about social media strategies for Jewish organisations. | -- | 10 2 12 | Free | View In iTunes |
|
18 |
Extra: Futurist Alex Pang talks about "contemplative computing" | -- | 10 2 12 | Free | View In iTunes |
|
19 |
Worship 2.0 | Mobile social media are increasingly the media through which people conduct their religious lives. This has major implications for bricks-and-mortar places of worship—and for institutional religious authority. | 10 2 12 | Free | View In iTunes |
|
20 |
Bridging Codes | How does Australia's obsession with sport play out in one of the country's most disadvantaged religious communities? Greater Western Sydney has never embraced Aussie Rules. Will the AFL Giants' explicit efforts to reach out to the NRL-mad Muslim community of western Sydney work? | 3 2 12 | Free | View In iTunes |
|
21 |
Burma on the brink | But on the brink of what? With political reform apparently under way, both Burmese and international observers are optimistic about Burma’s future. But there are dangers ahead, and some feel that the Burmese government is opting for economic growth and stability rather than true freedom. Certainly for Burma’s long-suffering Christian and Muslim populations, the future looks uncertain. | 27 1 12 | Free | View In iTunes |
|
22 |
You Can't Dream in Latin | Latin is a practical language well suited to the engineers and soldiers of the Roman empire. But how has this pragmatism influenced Western Christianity and how does it compare with the Eastern churches and their Greek tradition? We delve into the language, its history and its place in the Christian story, where the traditional Roman Catholic Latin mass is making itself felt in a controversial new English translation. | 21 1 12 | Free | View In iTunes |
|
23 |
A Town Without A Temple? | New waves of immigration made Hinduism the fastest growing religion in Australia in the period 2000 - 2006. According to the 2006 Census, there were 150,000 Hindus in Australia. Melbourne is quite a cultural centre for Hindus - you can see that in the growing number of temples and even in the proliferation of cultural organisations teaching dance and music associated with Hindu culture. This Encounter catches up the evolution of the Melbourne Hindu community and with its creative contributions to Hindu religious culture. | 14 1 12 | Free | View In iTunes |
|
24 |
James Alison: Sexuality, Certainty and Salvation | Priest and theologian James Alison believes that there are bright glimmers of hope to be found in the Catholic Church's wrestling with issues around homosexuality. He reflects on his own experience as a gay Catholic, on the givenness of sexual orientation, and on what he calls "the shape of God's affection". | 7 1 12 | Free | View In iTunes |
|
25 |
Auburn | This week Encounter takes a trip to the western Sydney suburb of Auburn which has been declared a Refugee Welcome Zone. We find out how local community groups and people of faith are helping new arrivals to settle and get on with their neighbours. | 31 12 11 | Free | View In iTunes |
|
26 |
Video: Impact on Heaven - It's about Housing People | An exploration for Homeless Persons Week which confronts key issues in the international and Australian struggle to house and support the homeless. We hear from Micah Projects whose roots lie in St Mary's Catholic Community, South Brisbane and which was the first agency in Australia to set up the successful 50 lives-50 homes campaign. | 24 12 11 | Free | View In iTunes |
|
27 |
Godvertising | Encounter delves into the business of branding churches, running Muslim and Christian advertising campaigns and selling products using religious imagery. | 17 12 11 | Free | View In iTunes |
|
28 |
God is...? But God is not...? | It matters what kind of God you believe in and in contemporary Indonesia the answers to these questions are worked out even in politics and public life. | 10 12 11 | Free | View In iTunes |
|
29 |
Ageing Well | Talk of Australia's greying population often focuses on the 'burden' of ageing, and the cost to society and families. But as more people live longer, some are exploring the deeper dimensions of later life, and casting new light on the privilege and challenge of growing older. On Encounter this week, we think about flourishing and resilience in our later years. | 26 11 11 | Free | View In iTunes |
|
30 |
The Secular Dharma | Buddhist practitioners in the West will often say that Buddhism is not a religion as such. But author and Buddhist scholar Stephen Batchelor believes that even the "-ism" of Buddhism represents a departure from the teachings of the Buddha himself. So what role do philosophy, belief and the Big Questions have in the practices of compassion, meditation and awareness? | 19 11 11 | Free | View In iTunes |
|
31 |
Gambling Spirit | Legislation to limit gambling may be coming for Australia, and most religious groups support the proposed reforms. But gambling and religion have more in common than we might think. Some people seek transcendence via prayer or meditation, others get on the pokies for a fast and heady connection to the Divine. | 12 11 11 | Free | View In iTunes |
|
32 |
A Sense of Awe | As science untangles the mysteries of the universe, is the magic going too? Are we becoming disenchanted, and do we stand to lose our sense of awe and wonder? Chris Mulherin puts the questions to international thinkers on science and faith. | 5 11 11 | Free | View In iTunes |
|
33 |
Shalom from the Silk Road: The Story of the Bukharians | The Bukharians are the Jews of Central Asia, and they have lived at the crossroads of the East for millennia. Today they stand at a crossroads in their identity, feeling the pressures of modernity and diaspora. This week we visit Uzbekistan, New York and Melbourne to hear their stories. | 12 2 11 | Free | View In iTunes |
| Total: 33 Episodes |
Customer Reviews
Bridging the gap 2011 09 18
Excellent counter to antireligious prejudice with scientific understanding
- Free
- Category: Spirituality
- Language: English
- © Copyright 2012, Australian Broadcasting Corporation. All Rights Reserved.
