Listen Now

Assistant professor of religion Alexander Hampton and opera singer Nicole Percifield teamed up at the University of Toronto to launch the Dawn Chorus project — incorporating birdsong recorded by students into a composition sung by Percifield, to celebrate and raise awareness of the wildlife existing within urban centres.

For churchgoers, COVID brought some big adjustments. Lockdowns and social distancing meant that many believers stayed at home — either sleeping in, or watching the service over Zoom. But a few pastors responded to the moment by seizing it. They built new churches in virtual reality. Plus: how the pandemic has shaped religious practices — for the worse, but also for the better.

Weeks into the war, Russian missiles struck the Ukrainian Evangelical Theological Seminary in Kyiv, blowing out most of the windows and causing extensive damage to the buildings. Reverend Ivan Rusyn is president of the seminary. His faith in God has only gotten stronger – but he has a different perspective on pacifism than he did before the war.

Joy Clarkson reveals how she came up with the title for her latest book by embracing a teasing insult on Twitter. In "Aggressively Happy: A Realist's Guide to Believing in the Goodness of Life", she argues that a headstrong pursuit of happiness is not only an appropriate response to the weariness of life, it’s a necessary one. Bunmi Laditan is a writer and poet best known for her satirical Twitter account @HonestToddler. She retraces her spiritual path from her family's background as Yoruba Christians, to Judaism and beyond, and shares humourous and heartfelt selections from her book, "Help Me God, I'm a Parent: Honest Prayers for Hectic Days and Endless Nights."

Toronto Raptors and Argos chaplain Herbie Kuhn believes he has an immense duty to the players he supports. And sometimes that means he can’t ask God to intervene, even in the diciest games. Carine Abouseif had to reassess her relationship to exercise over the pandemic, especially as commutes and gym classes were replaced by exercise videos. Carine dives into the history of these videos, and how they've changed our relationship to our bodies.

With a double-major from Harvard in astrophysics and folklore, Moiya McTier bills herself as the 'folklorist to the stars' and the 'astrophysicist for the folks'. Later, Chief Fred Sangris, an elder of the Yellowknives Dene First Nation, reflects on traditional Dene wayfinding – navigating by way of the stars.

For Leo Alcorn, there’s a tangible link between the galaxy clusters she studies and the cosmic horror of HP Lovecraft. The prime directive: embrace the void. Hilding Neilson is an Indigenous astronomer who thinks a lot about who our relations are — and that includes the stars.

Abdullah Shihipar discusses the implicit balance between faith and agency in the Arabic word “inshallah” (God-willing), and why he encourages non-Muslim friends to start using the expression. He is also pretty sure that all cats are Muslim. When difficult things happen, there’s an understandable human impulse to make it to the other side of catastrophe as quickly as you can. But biochemist and biologist Beronda Montgomery says we could stand to learn something about slowing down from trees.

John Stackhouse says he knows there are so many reasons to view his faith, Christianity, with skepticism. But Stackhouse wants to meet those misgivings head-on in the book, Can I Believe?: Christianity for the Hesitant. Later, Kate Bowler says she lived life looking for the best, but when that proved impossible, now she searches for "good enough."

Technology is designed to grab your attention — but that's not all you end up paying, according to James Williams. He worked for Google for more than a decade before becoming an Oxford scholar. He is the author of Stand Out of Our Light: Freedom and Resistance in the Attention Economy. And for the French philosopher Simone Weil, the act of paying attention was a moral imperative — so much so that some argue it cost her her life.

The pandemic has changed the way we view time, making planning for the future feel daunting. But Amy Shearn has found creative inspiration in the uncertainty of lengthy commitments — from writing a novel to constructing the 10,000-year Clock. And Reverend Paula Hollingsworth, Chaplain at London’s St. Paul's Cathedral, is the author of The Spirituality of Jane Austen. She outlines the evolution of faith in Jane Austen's novels and her personal life , and discusses what we can garner about Jane's stance on the abolitionist movement from Mansfield Park.

Strangers can change our lives every day in sometimes small ways, and in other times, ways that leave a legacy. Colleen Kinder is the editor of Letter to a Stranger: Essays to the Ones Who Haunt us, a collection of letters to those strangers who are hard to forget.

How do you keep up with the news while protecting your mental health? Cynthia Wallace has some suggestions. And funeral pianist Amy Boyes shares the surprising things she’s learned about the power of music when it’s time to say goodbye.

David Chalmers is a professor of philosophy and neural science at New York University. He argues that there’s nothing ‘virtual’ about virtual reality. It's all real. Later we hear from the co-screenwriter of the movie Free Guy — Matt Lieberman. He speaks to Tapestry about how you might spot the difference between the life you’re living right now and a computer simulation.

Dr. Marc Agronin on his new book "The End of Old Age," and how to preserve the memory of a loved one in such a way that the loved one can talk back, long after they're gone.

Nalini Nadkarni is a canopy biologist who has always found sanctuary in trees. Beyond her scientific studies, she’s extolled the spiritual benefits of being around our flora friends – a feeling that’s prevailed across many religions.

Hiraeth is a Welsh word with no direct English translation. It suggests longing and homesickness, but that doesn't quite capture it. For Pamela Petro, it's a sense of incompleteness that can make you feel unfulfilled in the present. Though Petro was not born in Wales, she explores her connection to Wales in her memoir The Long Field. And Tapestry producer Kent Hoffman explores his feelings of hiraeth through his own ties to Wales and his thoughts on moving on.

Chenxing Han is the author of Be the Refuge: Raising the Voices of Asian American Buddhists. Later, we visit a couple Toronto moms to see how they're faring two years into the pandemic with producer Arman Aghabli’s documentary Being Everything.

Productivity expert Oliver Burkeman changed the way he looked at time management and believes you should too. He is the author of Four Thousand Weeks: Time Management for Mortals. Faith Hill asks the question, if we can't stop frantic self-improvement two years into a pandemic… when can we? She is an associate editor at The Atlantic.

One of the world’s great spiritual teachers died late last month, but when Tapestry first ran this episode in 2017, Thich Nhat Hanh had just turned 91. Tapestry marked the occasion with a special episode: Coming Home to the Present: the Life and Work of Thich Nhat Hanh.