Finding My Religion, a Podcast – Details, episodes & analysis

Marianne Cantwell is the best-selling author of Free Range Humans, a coach, and motivational speaker whose TEDx Talk has nearly half a million views. She sat down with us to talk about her life growing up in Australia, the benefits of being an outsider, and the power of living in the liminal spaces of life. 

Arnold Eisen a professor and author and is one of the foremost experts on Amerian Judaism today. He recently finished serving as the Chancellor of the Jewish Theological Seminary for the past 13 years, the first non-rabbi to hold that position. 

Arnie sits down with us to talk about his childhood in Philadelphia, his own spiritual development, and the issues facing all of us in 2021. 

Rabbi Sharon Brous is a leading voice in reanimating religious life in America, working to develop a spiritual roadmap for soulful, multi-faith justice work in Los Angeles and around the country.

Rabbi Brous is the senior and founding rabbi of IKAR which was started in 2004 and has become a model for Jewish revitalization in the US and beyond. She sits down with us to discuss what it means to be comfortable or uncomfortable in a religious community, what role religion plays in our political and personal lives, and the nature of faith. 

Aziza Hasan is the Executive Director of NewGround: A Muslim-Jewish Partnership for Change. In this episode we discuss Aziza's experience growing up in Jordan and moving to Kansas at the age of 17, her time in a Mennonite college, and what she has learned from her encounters with different faiths. 

In this episode we sit down with Alx Utterman, a spiritual healer and founder of The Universal Church of Baba's Kitchen. 

Trained in India in the disciplines of Reiki, healing and meditation, Alx sits down with us to talk about the journey that led her to studying in India for five years and her life as a healer. 

In this episode, we sit down with Rabbi Bradley Shavit Artson, Dean of the Ziegler School of Rabbinic Studies in Los Angeles California. The two of them discuss the nature of life in the 21st century, the current political and ideological climate and how to find our way back. They discuss how science, religion, and spirituality can help lead us into a new era of cooperation. 

In his Yom Kippur sermon, Ben Goldstein talks about the distinction people make between spirituality and religion. This sermon contains a lot of the principles that we will explore throughout the episodes of our podcast.

Mac Brandt is an actor who has appeared in several hit television shows. In 2020 he starred as the villain in Lovecraft Country on HBO, produced by Jordan Peele. He was also a regular on the show Kingdom.

 I've had the privilege of knowing Mac for many years. In this episode we talk about his upbringing in Chicago, his spiritual development, and what motivates him to always be helping those less fortunate. 

I have had the privilege of knowing Mary Jo Barrett for the last ten years. She is one of the wisest people I know, and it was an absolute blessing to sit down and have her share her wisdom with our audience.

Mary Jo is a nationally prominent expert in the treatment of trauma and traumatic violence in the family. Her model is a collaborative, resilience-oriented approach that helps families create healing plans that can provide lasting change. Mary Jo also works extensively with helping therapist prevent Compassion Fatigue and heal from Vicarious Traumatization. She is a leading authority on family violence, including the physical and sexual abuse of children, neglect, incest, and spouse abuse, and has been working on these issues since 1974.

Tahil Sharma is the Regional Coordinator for North America for the United Religions Initiative, the world's largest interfaith network. Tahil has been doing interfaith work for 8 years and has been continuously exploring the intersection of religion/spirituality with themes of human rights and social justice.

He sits down to talk to us about his interfaith work, growing up as a Sikh/Hindu man in the United States, and what is demanded of someone who considers themselves to be religious.