Episodes by Circa

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.

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.

Though she never left her cell, Mara de Jess de greda became a spiritual presence across cultures, continents, and centuries.

Roger Williams, the exiled minister who refused to let faith become a tool for political power

Nicholas Ferrar built a household of continuous prayer and beauty at Little Gidding, showing how faith becomes real at the family scale.

How Felipe Guaman Poma's unread chronicle created permanent indigenous witness, demonstrating that truth-telling has value independent of immediate results.

Jean de Léry's encounter with the Tupinambá people in 1558 Brazil pioneered cultural humility as spiritual practice, offering timeless wisdom for our interconnected world.

John of the Cross found enlightenment not despite his suffering but through it --- and left the world love poetry to prove it.

Mughal emperor Akbar gathered mystics, priests, monks, and scholars into a single candlelit room

As empire and inquisition tightened their grip on Spain, this barefoot nun turned inward-and found a kind of freedom no authority could touch.