Episodes by Circa

The story of Elizabeth Ann Seton, founder of the Sisters of Charity, and the enduring power of service as a spiritual calling.

How William Wilberforce's interior transformation on a carriage ride gave him the moral grounding to abolish the British slave trade.

Ryōkan Taigu was an Edo-period Zen monk whose life of radical simplicity and chosen joy continues to illuminate what it means to be fully, deliberately alive.

Harmonia explores Judith Sargent Murray, whose radical belief in the equality of every soul helped build the world we live in today.

A reflection on Lessing and the moment when humanity began learning to discover spiritual truth as responsibly as scientific truth.

Tikhon of Zadonsk answered 18th-century Russian nihilism not with argument but with love --- and inspired Dostoevsky's greatest characters.

French mystic Louis Claude de Saint-Martin spent his life shedding every exterior spiritual system to arrive at one conviction: the faculty above reason belongs to every soul.

Harmonia recalls Ann Lee, the visionary leader who shaped one of the most radical spiritual communities in American history.

How Phillis Wheatley's poetry created undeniable proof of human dignity, giving future generations the language to imagine justice.

John Woolman's gentle witness against slavery through everyday choices helped Quakers become the first American denomination to oppose it, offering a model for moral clarity that remains urgent today.

The story of Benjamin Lay, the radical Quaker abolitionist who lived in a cave and refused to let good people look away from slavery.

The story of Quaker abolitionist Anthony Benezet and the profound spiritual distinction between forgiveness as personal work and justice as collective architecture.

Scientist, mystic, and forerunner --- Emanuel Swedenborg followed reason to the edge of what reason can reach, and kept going.

Charles Wesley wrote 6000 hymns that gave ordinary people a sacred voice --- and Harmonia wonders why we've stopped singing together.

Kimpa Vita, 21-year-old Kongolese prophet burned at the stake in 1706, asked a question the world is still answering.

French mystic Jeanne Guyon was imprisoned in the Bastille for teaching that the interior life belongs to every soul --- and sang.

A reflection on Samuel Sewall, and how public repentance reshaped moral responsibility.

Pierre Bayle championed tolerance and intellectual humility in an age of religious violence, offering a model for living with deep disagreement without dehumanization.

Sor Juana Ins de la Cruz wrote theology, poetry, and defiance by candlelight.

John Bunyan chose a prison cell over silence, and gave the world a map of the soul that still finds its way to ordinary people today.

Nicolas Steno founded modern geology and modeled how science and spiritual inquiry can illuminate different layers of the same reality.

A reflection on Zera Yacob and the moral courage to test belief against reason, justice, and human dignity.

Brother Lawrence discovered that ordinary work, done with love and attention, becomes prayer itself---a truth that still matters today.

John Amos Comenius championed universal education for all children while in exile, planting seeds that grew into modern schooling and global learning infrastructure.

Blaise Pascal's wager invites us to live as if love is real---even in a world where certainty has faded and old religious forms no longer hold.