Something Understood
Ethical and religious discussion that examines some of the larger questions of life, taking a spiritual theme and exploring it through music, prose and poetry
Something Understood - 04/02/2007
Mark Tully talks to Hindu scholar Chakravarthi Ram-Prasad about the strengths and weaknesses of India's historical approach to its religious and cultural pluralism.
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Something Understood - 06/04/2008
Adjoa Andoh considers how the act of befriending someone in need can change lives.
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Something Understood - 08/06/2008
Mike Wooldridge reflects on the first hour or so after dawn - the hopes and fears, the opportunities and delights, the prayers and rituals of early morning across the globe.
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Something Understood - 08/07/2007
Mark Tully considers the spiritual dimensions of exercise and sport.
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Something Understood - 10/10/2010
Mark Tully celebrates the art of Fables and asks why they are still considered such powerful teaching tools. With stories from Israel, Germany and the Lebanon.
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Something Understood - 18/02/2007
Just before the start of Lent, Mark Tully asks 'are human beings basically good, or basically bad'?
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Something Understood - 21/10/2007
Mark Tully considers why we all need second chances, why we should always be prepared to give them to others, and how one second opportunity can turn a whole life around.
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Something Understood - 22/04/2007
Lost and Found: Mark Tully considers losing and finding. From the lost sheep and coins of scripture to Marlene Dietrich's earring, why do we mind losing things so much?
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Something Understood - 24/10/2010
Serbian writer Vesna Goldsworthy asks how emigres and exiles find their voices in a foreign country and explores the difference between speaking a language and truly inhabiting it.
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Something Understood - 28/10/2007
Katy Radford considers how some people find the resources to survive trauma and escape being victims.
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Something Understood - 29/07/2007
Madeleine Bunting explores our complex and contradictory relationship with the wild.
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Something Understood - 30/09/2007
Mark Tully considers claims by scientists and climate change campaigners that we could be on the brink of a Sixth Extinction.
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Something Understood - A Good Judge
Mark Tully explores how we judge another person's character. On what clues do we base our assessments and can we learn to read the clues more accurately?
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Something Understood - A Mirror for the Soul
Mike Wooldridge considers the Sufi tradition - its history, beliefs and practices and the mystical experience that lies at its very heart.
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Something Understood - A Precious Commodity
Silence is something many of us crave in a world full of clamour, but, as Fergal Keane discovers, it means much more than the mere absence of noise.
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Something Understood - A Sense of Home
Poet Laureate Andrew Motion revisits Stisted, the village where he spent the first nineteen years of his life, and considers the complex feelings associated with a sense of home.
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Something Understood - A Short Madness
Fergal Keane reflects on the value of anger, and asks whether is it a force for energy or the cause of destructive behaviour.
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Something Understood - A Sympathy in Choice
Mark Tully asks what triggers our sympathy, especially for someone we've previously ignored or despised. What happens when our heart is turned from indifference to compassion?
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Something Understood - Absolutely Honest
Mark Tully asks if absolute honesty is always the best policy, and questions philosopher AC Grayling about his suggestion that dishonesty can sometimes even be virtuous.
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Something Understood - Ageing Well
Mark Tully talks to Sr Pia Buxton CJ about the spirituality of ageing. How can we grow old gracefully and positively in our youth-obsessed and careless culture?
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Something Understood - All the Rage
Mark Tully asks why are so many of us so angry all the time. Are the roots of this anger social, spiritual or economic and how can it be reined in or even re-channelled for good?
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Something Understood - Ambition
Mark Tully asks how ambitious we should be and whether ambition can be detrimental to spiritual growth. In fields such as politics, can too much ambition be dangerous?
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Something Understood - An Opinion of Dignity
Mark Tully explores the meaning of dignity. For some, dignity is an innate and noble quality of humanity, for others it is a meaningless notion.
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Something Understood - Apocalypse Now?
Mark Tully reflects on the reasons behind the current raft of films with apocalyptic themes. Why has every age and every culture created myths of catastrophe and destruction?
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Something Understood - Archbishop Desmond Tutu
In a special edition for Easter Day, Mark Tully talks to Desmond Tutu, the former Archbishop of Cape Town and Nobel Peace Laureate.
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Something Understood - As You Have Lived
Mark Tully explores how the way we choose to live our lives reveals our most powerful beliefs and motivations, whether we are conscious of them or not.
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Something Understood - At the End of the Year
Mark Tully draws on the ancient prayer tradition of the Examen, a night-time reflection, to look back on the old year and forward to the new.
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Something Understood - Attitude Problem
Mark Tully considers the impact of our mental attitude on situations, events and objects.
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Something Understood - Because of the Fire
Jane Ray reflects on moments and chance encounters which can prove to be life changing. With readings from Ezra Pound, Thomas Hardy and Carol Ann Duffy.
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Something Understood - Behaving Virtually
Mike Wooldridge considers some of the questions raised by the expansion of the digital world. Is there any room for the spiritual in the virtual?
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Something Understood - Being Mum
Being Mum: On this Mothering Sunday, Fergal Keane considers some of the aspects of being a good mother.
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Something Understood - Better to Light a Candle
Better to Light a Candle: Rabbi Julia Neuberger explores the symbolism of candles at this time of year.
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Something Understood - Birth
At the time of the year when we celebrate the most famous of all nativities, poet laureate Andrew Motion considers perceptions of birth.
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Something Understood - Blame it on the Universe
Mark Tully wonders why so many people now talk about The Universe where they would once have spoken about God.
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Something Understood - Born Lucky
Mark Tully explores how the circumstances of our birth - year, era, parents, birth order, star sign, religion - shape our personalities and affect the course of our lives.
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Something Understood - Breathe Easy
Mark Tully explores the power of the breath as the source of our physical, mental and spiritual health.
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Something Understood - Building Bridges
Writer Christie Dickason considers the physical and metaphorical significance of bridges - connecting peoples, cultures and countries, but also underlining differences.
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Something Understood - Buying and Selling
Mark Tully examines the troubled relationship between buyer and seller, talking to business guru Charles Handy.
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Something Understood - Cantus Firmus
Mark Tully explores the notion of a cantus firmus, the musical term translated by former Dean of Westminster Michael Mayne as the enduring melody of a life.
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Something Understood - Carried on the Wind
Carried on the Wind: Pamela Marre reflects on the invisible power of the wind, drawing on ancient tales which advise us not to fight it, but instead to bend and remain unbroken.
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Something Understood - Charm
Mark Tully investigates the danger and usefulness of charm, with guest Tony Benn. Featuring music from Handel, Gluck and Gerard Souzay.
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Something Understood - Childhood Innocence
Jonathan Charles considers the innocence of children and reflects on the charm of those adults who still retain something of the child within.
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Something Understood - Committees
Are committees good or bad for us? Mark Tully asks whether they are an efficient way of making decisions or an excuse for postponing or avoiding difficult problems.
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Something Understood - Cricket
Mark Tully celebrates cricket as a symbol of an ideal society, with historian Ramanchandra Guha.
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Something Understood - Dark Sanctuary
Fergal Keane explores the physical and fairytale world created by the forest.
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Something Understood - Deeper than Desire
Deeper than Desire: Mark Tully considers the human experience of longing. What is longing, how is it different from other human desires and can it ever be satisfied?
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Something Understood - Do you See what I See?
Do you See what I See? Mike Wooldridge explores some of the complex and ultimately unanswerable questions about the nature of human perception, with the help of Prof Raymond Tallis.
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Something Understood - Downsizing
How easy is it to make do with less? Mark Tully considers how we deal with enforced downsizing through financial necessity. Should we all consume less for the common good?
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Something Understood - Drudgery Divine
Scholar and priest Teresa Morgan explores some of the many ways in which we see work - as a necessary evil, an act of love, a right, a gift and an expression of faith.
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Something Understood - Dust Yourself Off
Food writer Marguerite Patten reflects on her wartime experiences as a home economist, the deaths of her parents, her marriage of over five decades and her passion for nature.
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Something Understood - Earth's Crammed With Heaven
Mark Tully considers where heaven is to be found, in conversation with his friend and veteran documentary maker Jonathan Stedall.
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Something Understood - East/West
BBC Foreign Correspondent Jonathan Charles, who has spent the past two decades journeying to remote parts of the world, reflects on whether travel really does broaden the mind.
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Something Understood - Emerging from the Ruins
Emerging from the Ruins: Mark Tully considers life after downfall, personal, emotional or financial. Including a conversation with Jonathan Aitken.
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Something Understood - Emerging from the Ruins
Emerging from the Ruins: Mark Tully considers life after downfall, personal, emotional or financial. Including a conversation with Jonathan Aitken.
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Something Understood - Enduring
Life is sometimes described as an endurance test. Mark Tully considers the qualities that help people survive its tribulations.
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Something Understood - Enduring Love
Enduring Love: How does love between two people survive the disappointments, betrayals and routine of everyday life? Fergal Keane reflects on what makes a lasting relationship.
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Something Understood - Enduring Love
Enduring Love: How does the love between two people survive the disappointments, betrayals and routine of everyday life? Fergal Keane reflects on what makes a lasting relationship.
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Something Understood - Entitlement
Mark Tully explores the complex relationship between a sense of entitlement and the claiming of rights.
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Something Understood - Everything in the Garden
The journalist Madeleine Bunting reflects on the appeal of gardens and gardening.
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Something Understood - Expanding God
Expanding God: Mike Wooldridge explores how our expanding knowledge of the cosmos challenges us to expand our vision of God.
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Something Understood - Family Ties
Mark Tully reflects on how family relationships and responsibilities shift between the generations, from becoming a parent to losing your parents.
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Something Understood - Fear and Compassion
Fear and Compassion: Mark Tully considers the idea that people rediscover their compassion when they stop being afraid.
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Something Understood - Feast and Famine
Writer and broadcaster Irma Kurts reflects on the human obsession with food.
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Something Understood - Finding Your Father
Nigerian-born Gospel singer and broadcaster Muyiwa Olarewaju tells the story of his search for a father, and explores the nature of both spiritual and natural fatherhood.
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Something Understood - Follow My Leader
Mark Tully considers great leaders and the source of their power to galvanise the cynical and apathetic to hope and action on local, national and global levels.
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Something Understood - Francis, the Saint Whose Time Has Come
Mike Wooldridge visits the unique Franciscan community at Hilfield in Dorset to explore why Franciscan spirituality has such a particular relevance and appeal today.
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Something Understood - Freedom and Control
Mark Tully considers a paradox that controls can create creativity. Sonnets are bound by prescribed form, but with Wordsworth, or Beethoven they transcend the rules they depend on.
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Something Understood - Freedom From Control
Mark Tully considers that, for some, creativity is only possible when normal boundaries are abandoned. He asks whether creativity is enhanced or obstructed by lack of control.
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Something Understood - Freely Given
Mark Tully explores the notion of a gift culture. How does a gift culture differ from a commodity culture and what are the intrinsic benefits of such a way of living?
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Something Understood - Fruits of Failure
Mark Tully considers our current obsession with success at all costs and suggests there can be a genuine value in experiences of failure.
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Something Understood - Fullness of Life
Mark Tully talks to Abbot Christopher Jamison of Worth Abbey about his new book on happiness and asks what practical guidance the monastic tradition can offer.
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Something Understood - Future Perfect
Future Perfect: Mark Tully considers how far it is possible for us to create the future. Some contemporary theologians argue that it is not only possible but also our moral duty.
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Something Understood - Future Perfect
Future Perfect: Mark Tully considers how far it is possible for us to create the future. Some contemporary theologians argue that it is not only possible but also our moral duty.
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Something Understood - Genius
Mark Tully explores the nature of genius. Are geniuses born or made, what sets them above the merely excellent and what are they like to live with?
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Something Understood - God Be In My Head
Tom Robinson considers how the benediction God Be In My Head touches our lives, thoughts and feelings, through readings and music.
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Something Understood - Good People, Be Civil
Good People, Be Civil: Mark Tully asks if it is true, as the Chief Rabbi has recently argued, that we have lost the culture of civility.
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Something Understood - Happy Talk
Happy Talk: Mark Tully asks if happiness can be taught. Lessons in happiness and well-being are beginning to feature in the school curriculum.
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Something Understood - Harvest Festival
Mark Tully talks to Prof Michael Northcott about the broken relationship between food production and consumption.
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Something Understood - Homesickness
Mark Tully explores homesickness, a yearning more complex than nostalgia for homeland. How true is it that all older people are homesick for the culture of their childhood?
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Something Understood - Hospitality
For Palm Sunday, Mark Tully explores the deeper spiritual meaning of hospitality, with Jean Vanier, founder of the L'Arche community for adults with learning disabilities.
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Something Understood - I Don't Believe in Being Lost
Broadcaster Anita Rani explores the significance of being lost, both physically and spiritually. She talks to Reverend Peter Owen-Jones about his experiences in the wilderness.
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Something Understood - I Want to Be Left Alone
I Want to Be Left Alone: Mark Tully considers our need for privacy and how we balance this with our responsibilities to others.
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Something Understood - I Wish You Enough
I Wish You Enough: Mark Tully considers blessings - what do we wish for other people and why? Is there any evidence to suggest that blessings attract the good things invoked?
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Something Understood - If Only We Could Bottle It
Felicity Finch reflects on those indefinable moments when we feel more completely alive than seems possible. With readings from Federico Garcia Lorca and John Burnside.
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Something Understood - In Such a Hurry
Rosemary Hartill wonders why we all seem to be in a perpetual hurry, and why we seem to believe being busy is a virtue.
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Something Understood - In the Midst of Life We Are in Debt
In the Midst of Life We Are in Debt: People have always generated wealth from others' need for money. Judith French reflects on usury.
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Something Understood - Is This the Way?
Mark Tully considers many people's new-found reliance on 'sat nav' and wonders what else we lose when we lose the ability to find our way through a landscape.
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Something Understood - Knights in Shining Armour
Sometimes the figure offering salvation from physical or spiritual peril isn't who we'd expect, as Tom Robinson reflects.
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Something Understood - Laugh and the World Laughs With You
The ability to laugh can help us through the best and worst of times. Irma Kurtz reflects on laughter and its importance to spiritual wellbeing.
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Something Understood - Lest We Forget
Lest We Forget: On Remembrance Sunday, Mike Wooldridge considers what happens to our collective memory when we lose our first-hand witnesses.
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Something Understood - Limbo
Mark Tully considers the state of limbo, where time can seem to stand still. How do we cope with situations where we are unable to move forward?
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Something Understood - Listening
Violinist Ruth Waterman reflects on the art of listening, drawing on the work of Matthew Arnold, William Blake and Goran Simic and the music of Gershwin and Purcell.
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Something Understood - Little Angels Here Below
Little Angels Here Below: Writer and performer Judith French considers the ways of children and angels.
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Something Understood - Living in the Mind
Mark Tully examines the skill of 'Living in the Mind', with Derek Jacobi and Isla Blair reading excerpts from Lawrence and Keats.
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Something Understood - Living Smart, Living Simple
Living Smart, Living Simple: Mark Tully is joined by environmental campaigner Jonathon Porritt to explore how we can live better but more simply.
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Something Understood - Longing for the Sea
Mark Tully discusses our longing for the sea with National Poet of Wales Gwyneth Lewis, and explores its connection with spiritual belief. With music by Bach, Britten and Trenet.
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Something Understood - Making Peace
Mike Wooldridge considers the growing role of international mediators in brokering peace between intractable parties in conflict.
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Something Understood - Miracles of Thrift
Mark Tully wonders why habits of thrift have been lost in a generation, and asks how they can be recovered - and even celebrated once again - in response to the needs of the day.
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Something Understood - Mirror Image
Mark Tully reflects on reflections - in mirrors, photographs, film and art. What particular insight do these different reflectors offer us?
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Something Understood - Money Worries
Mark Tully explores the complexities of our relationship with money. He asks why we spend so much time worrying about money and how it can affect our relationships.
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Something Understood - Mothering Sunday
Madeleine Bunting explores the delights, dilemmas and dangers of modern parenting.
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Something Understood - Moving On
In Something Understood this week Mark Tully explores the physical and emotional upheaval of moving home.
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Something Understood - Mysticism and Resistance
Mark Tully considers the link between mysticism and resistance. He tests Thomas Merton's suggestion that the monk is someone who takes up a critical attitude to the world.
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Something Understood - Mythos and Logos
Mark Tully explores the difference between a scientific understanding of the world and a mythological understanding.
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Something Understood - Named and Shamed
Mark Tully explores the complex nature of shame. Why are we so obsessed with naming and shaming and why is the fear of shame so powerful?
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Something Understood - Nor Any Drop
Madeleine Bunting explores our relationship with water - practical, cultural, economic and spiritual. How will we adapt to mounting global anxiety about flood and drought?
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Something Understood - Not Cute Enough
Mark Tully considers our responses to beauty: what our attitudes reveal and to what extent such attitudes are culturally conditioned. How much is beauty in the eye of the beholder?
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Something Understood - On Walking
The writer Melissa Viney reflects on one of her favourite pastimes - walking. What many of us take for granted as a rather mundane activity provides others with spiritual comfort.
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Something Understood - One Foot in Front
Mark Tully considers the potentially subversive nature of walking. While walking may have immense therapeutic benefits, it is also about protest and pilgrimage.
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Something Understood - Ordinary Time
Mark Tully celebrates what award-winning novelist Marilynne Robinson has called 'the dear ordinary', and what GK Chesterton described as, 'the ecstasy of being ordinary'.
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Something Understood - Partition and Democracy
Partition and Democracy: Mark Tully celebrates 60 years of Indian independence with an exploration of the special character of Indian democracy.
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Something Understood - Perchance to Dream
The writer and broadcaster Irma Kurtz considers the complexity of dreams and dreaming.
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Something Understood - Pilgrim or Tourist?
Satish Kumar explores the difference between a tourist and a pilgrim, and asks if pilgrimage can become a way of life.
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Something Understood - Place of Safety
Mark Tully contemplates the secure environments we construct for our own protection, and the places of safety we yearn for within ourselves.
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Something Understood - Reflections
Reflections: Katy Radford considers how individuals and societies relate to their own reflections, from the distortions of magicians to the significance of religious traditions.
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Something Understood - Reinventing Ritual
Mark Tully asks how, in an increasingly secular age, our deep need for rituals and rites of passage is being expressed and nourished.
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Something Understood - Religion Good? Religion Bad?
Mark Tully enters the current debate about the nature of religion. Is religion dangerous or would the human race be far worse off without faith.
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Something Understood - Remembering Merton
The Archbishop of Canterbury Dr Rowan Williams talks to Mike Wooldridge about the influential Trappist monk and activist Thomas Merton, who died 40 years ago.
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Something Understood - Resisting the Tug
Mark Tully talks to Simon Small about the importance of rediscovering the lost art of contemplation. How can we find the inner stillness so crucial to living life fully?
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Something Understood - Risk Assessment
Risk Assessment: Mike Wooldridge explores the implications of our increasingly risk-averse attitude to life, adventure, decision-making and bringing up children.
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Something Understood - Roots and Wings
Roots and Wings: Mark Tully reflects on the most important gifts that parents can bestow upon their children.
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Something Understood - Running Away
Running Away: Mark Tully considers the human need to escape, whether from the modern world, from other people or even from ourselves. He asks if religion can provide an escape.
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Something Understood - Running on Empty
Writer Blake Morrison considers the physical and spiritual isolation of the runner with reference to fellow writers Haruki Murakami, Alan Sillitoe and Sharon Olds.
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Something Understood - Season of Gifts
Season of Gifts: Fergal Keane looks beyond the material to the spiritual as he explores Christmas traditions of giving and receiving.
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Something Understood - Sent to Spy
Sent to Spy: Mark Tully explores the psychology of spying. From the dark days of Cold War espionage to the reality of CCTV cameras, how are we affected by constant surveillance?
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Something Understood - Sent to Spy
Sent to Spy: Mark Tully explores the psychology of spying. From the dark days of Cold War espionage to the reality of CCTV cameras, how are we affected by constant surveillance?
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Something Understood - Serpents and Doves
Serpents and Doves: Mark Tully considers Jesus's instruction to his disciples to be wise as serpents and innocent as doves as they set out on their mission.
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Something Understood - Signposts and Route Maps
Felicity Finch considers goal-orientated and extemporised lives, drawing on the words of acting teacher Utah Hagen and music by Liszt, Clara Schumann and Ornette Coleman.
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Something Understood - Sleep
Mark Tully considers why sleep is so important to our physical, mental and spiritual wellbeing.
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Something Understood - Sleeping On It
Mark Tully asks how real problem solving is best achieved: by the unconscious or by rational thought?
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Something Understood - Snakes and Ladders
The writer Sarah Cuddon examines the way the game of Snakes and Ladders mirrors our experience of life and our attitudes towards fate and morality.
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Something Understood - Solitude
Melissa Viney draws upon her own experience of aloneness to reflect on different states of solitude.
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Something Understood - Spiritual Emergency
Mark Tully explores the concept of Spiritual Emergency. The term was coined by Stanislav Grof to describe a spiritual awakening of extreme intensity.
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Something Understood - Spirituality and Interfaith Dialogue
Spirituality and Interfaith Dialogue: Mark Tully asks if spirituality would be a more effective starting point for interfaith dialogue than religion.
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Something Understood - Spools of Time
The distinguished Canadian broadcaster Chris Brookes reflects on how memories are captured in the mundane objects we gather around ourselves.
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Something Understood - Spring Forward
Fergal Keane looks forward to Spring, both as a season and a metaphor for better times to come.
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Something Understood - Square Pegs
Square Pegs: Mark Tully considers the lot of those who don't quite fit in.
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Something Understood - Square Pegs
Square Pegs: Mark Tully considers the lot of those who don't quite fit in.
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Something Understood - Stacks of Wisdom
Mark Tully celebrates libraries. They have contained the collected wisdom of groups and nations, but do they remain as important in the modern media age?
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Something Understood - Stolen Identity
Stolen Identity: Mark Tully considers modern concerns over identity theft. Stolen identity has been a recurrent theme in fiction, but our fascination with the idea has become real.
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Something Understood - Stolen Identity
Stolen Identity: Mark Tully considers modern concerns over identity theft. Stolen identity has been a recurrent theme in fiction, but our fascination with the idea has become real.
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Something Understood - Stories from Scraps
Mark Tully considers one of the fastest-growing social networking activities in the country - not the much-publicised online communities, but scrap-booking.
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Something Understood - Stories of the Nativity
In a Christmas edition of Something Understood, Mark Tully considers traditional nativity stories with historian Diarmaid McCulloch and with readers Derek Jacobi and Isla Blair.
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Something Understood - Striving for Imperfection
Classicist Llewelyn Morgan considers the problem of aspiring towards perfection, and how an acceptance, and even celebration, of our failings may be the better path to follow.
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Something Understood - Sweet Surrender
When should we accept our lot and when should we rage against circumstances? Fergal Keane considers the notion that serenity comes when you trade expectations for acceptance.
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Something Understood - That Hurts!
Madeleine Bunting explores the complex experience and language of pain. She considers whether the experience of pain gives us a means of connecting with others.
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Something Understood - The Animal Inside
The Animal Inside: Poet Christie Dickason reflects on that magical world where humans lived as equals with animals, asking whether we acknowledge our shared past.
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Something Understood - The Art of Faith: Part 1
Mike Wooldridge explores the universal principles that underlie all sacred art.
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Something Understood - The Art of Faith, part 2
In conversation with the Director of the British Museum, Neil MacGregor, Mike Wooldridge considers the difference between sacred art and religious art.
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Something Understood - The Ascent
Writer Sarah Cuddon reflects on her fascination with mountains, and how other writers and climbers, from Wordsworth to Andrew Greig, have felt about 'the ascent'.
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Something Understood - The Beauty of Birds
Mark Tully considers the spiritual inspiration poets and musicians have found in birds. With poetry by Thomas Hardy, George Herbert and Isaac Rosenberg.
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Something Understood - The Best Words
Mark Tully talks to poet and novelist Louis de Bernieres about the difference between poetry and prose.
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Something Understood - The Blizzard's Dance
Mark Tully explores the lure - for some - of bitter cold and deep snow.
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Something Understood - The Bullying Circle
Mark Tully considers bullying: the bully, the bullied and the circle of bystanders and followers who make bullying possible.
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Something Understood - The Carer and the Cared For
The Carer and the Cared For: Mark Tully considers the relationship between people who are gravely ill and the people who care for them.
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Something Understood - The Chalice of Being
Mark Tully explores former UN Secretary General Dag Hammarskjold's exhortation that each morning we must hold out the chalice of our being - to receive, to carry, to give back.
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Something Understood - The Consolations of Autumn
Writer and broadcaster Hazhir Teimourian asks if youth, as with spring and summer, is overrated, drawing on the words of sages and poets from the most ancient times to our own era.
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Something Understood - The Currency Exchange
Canadian radio producer Chris Brookes explores the nature of exchange in our day-to-day lives, comparing the value of two currencies that we deal in - money and kindness.
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Something Understood - The Dance of Life
The Dance of Life: Felicity Finch reflects on childhood ballet lessons, adult salsa classes and observations of dance-like movement in everyday life.
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Something Understood - The Exercise of Conscience
Mike Wooldridge explores the decision of the conscientious objector.
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Something Understood - The Extraordinary Mary Ward
Mike Wooldridge explores the life and legacy of Mary Ward, who scandalised the Church authorities of the early-17th century by redefining religious life for women.
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Something Understood - The Festive Spirit
Journalist Madeleine Bunting explores the traditional desire of communities to create and celebrate festivals.
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Something Understood - The Good, the Bad and the Dirty
The Good, the Bad and the Dirty: Mark Tully meditates on the realities and contradictions of our relationship with dirt. Are our attitudes to dirt innate or culturally determined?
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Something Understood - The Greening of God
The Greening of God: Mike Wooldridge considers the complex relationship between cosmology, theology and climate change. He talks to author Judy Cannato.
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Something Understood - The Horse: A Special Gift to Mankind
Mark Tully looks at the spiritual, symbolic and personal appeal of horses.
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Something Understood - The Judas Kiss
Mark Tully explores the conflict between loyalty and betrayal. What circumstances force us to choose between loyalty and betrayal, and what determines our final choice?
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Something Understood - The Library of Secrets
The Library of Secrets: US writer and broadcaster Dmae Roberts reflects on the enduring allure of secret places and the tension that can exist between the secret and the private.
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Something Understood - The Lost Dimension of Depth
Mark Tully considers what theologian Paul Tillich called the 'lost dimension of depth' in modern life. What is lost when we're consumed by trivia, and how can it be recovered?
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Something Understood - The Martyrs of Charterhouse Square
Mark Tully tells the remarkable story of the first martyrs of the English Reformation.
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Something Understood - The Mother as Muse
The writer Sarah Cuddon reflects on the idea of the mother figure as a muse. With references to writers Collette and Virginia Woolf and music by John Lennon and Montserrat Figueras.
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Something Understood - The Mystery of Belief
The Mystery of Belief: Mike Wooldridge considers the nature of belief. Is belief a matter of the head or the heart, and what traits do secular and religious believers share?
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Something Understood - The Mystery of Belief
The Mystery of Belief: Mike Wooldridge considers the nature of belief. Is belief a matter of the head or the heart, and what traits do secular and religious believers share?
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Something Understood - The New Age of the Engineer
Is it true that the creativity and contribution of Britain's engineers has gone largely unrecognised and unappreciated. If so, why?
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Something Understood - The New Freedom
The New Freedom: Mark Tully discovers how networking can empower all of us to bring about change in the world.
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Something Understood - The Past Is a Foreign Country
The Past Is a Foreign Country: Mark Tully considers how we look back on the past. Do we feel regret or joy about what is behind us? What do we have to do to move on to the future?
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Something Understood - The Path of the Convert
The Path of the Convert: Guardian columnist Madeleine Bunting meets Yahya Birt, who converted to Islam as a student. What leads someone to convert to another faith?
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Something Understood - The Pearl of Great Price
Mark Tully considers the enduring symbolism of pearls and the mystical properties with which they are endowed in myth and religious tradition.
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Something Understood - The Poetry of Healing
The poet Kenneth Steven considers why people seek out poetry at a time of crisis.
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Something Understood - The Power of a Name
Mark Tully considers the power of a name to shape our sense of self, our wellbeing, our relationships and our path through life.
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Something Understood - The Problem with Passion
Mark Tully asks what the self-help manuals really mean when they advise us to 'discover our passion' if we want to live a fulfilled life.
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Something Understood - The Puritan Gift
Mark Tully talks to Will Hopper, one of the authors of The Puritan Gift. Where does the Puritan work ethic come from and why has it had such a major global impact?
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Something Understood - The Rescuers
Mark Tully explores the theme of rescue. A mainstay of myth and fairytale, adventure and romance, why is the longing for rescue so pervasive, and the need to rescue so powerful?
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Something Understood - The Road Taken
Mike Wooldridge explores what happens when we have to choose between different paths in life and how are our lives shaped by such decisions.
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Something Understood - The Science Test
Mark Tully considers the purpose and scope of science. What are the big questions that it can and cannot answer? If science can tell us 'what' and 'how', can it not tell us 'why'?
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Something Understood - The Sculptors of Peace
Mike Wooldridge talks to the Chief Rabbi, Jonathan Sacks, about the particular - and unprecedented - challenges that confront religion and society in the 21st century.
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Something Understood - The Second Coming
Writer and performer Judith French considers why almost every culture has a legend of a second coming, be it a Messiah, King Arthur or even a Superman.
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Something Understood - The Singing Manifesto
Recorded in San Francisco, American public radio producers The Kitchen Sisters, Davia Nelson and Nikki Silva, talk about their distinctive approach to interviewees.
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Something Understood - The Things We're Handed Down
The Things We're Handed Down: On Father's Day, Fergal Keane considers how we can instil in our children a sense of values in a world of materialistic cynicism.
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Something Understood - The Tree of Life
Mike Wooldridge considers 'The Tree of Life', from Genesis to Darwin to DNA, in conversation with geneticist Professor Steve Jones.
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Something Understood - The Violence Within
Mark Tully explores the relationship between inner violence experienced as anger, repression and envy, and outer violence, expressed as cruelty, aggression and greed.
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Something Understood - The Vital Green
Mark Tully explores the many-shaded nature of Green, from green imagery in myth, literature, art and faith, to green's crucial biological function.
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Something Understood - The Wandering Minstrel
Writer Irma Kurtz reflects on the medieval troubadours and how they have evolved in modern times.
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Something Understood - The World's Well
The World's Well: Mike Wooldridge explores health and well-being in a world increasingly divided by economic inequality and increasingly united by accessible information.
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Something Understood - This is My Body
With guest Father Timothy Radcliffe, Mark Tully explores the physical, emotional, legal and spiritual meaning of Jesus' words at the Last Supper.
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Something Understood - Tiny Survivals
Classicist Llewelyn Morgan considers how seemingly inanimate fragments of history are capable of evoking the most vivid lives.
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Something Understood - To Change or Not to Change
To Change or Not to Change: Mark Tully asks how we can strike a creative balance between staying true to our essential nature and adapting to new needs and circumstances.
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Something Understood - Together Alone
The Scottish poet Kenneth Steven reflects on how solitude refreshes the human spirit.
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Something Understood - Tomorrow
Classicist Llewellyn Morgan explores how different attitudes towards tomorrow reflect the way in which we deal with our fear of the unknown.
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Something Understood - Tradition and Reform
Mark Tully considers the tensions between traditionalists and reformers in the main faith traditions. He talks to Rabbi Miriam Berger about a gender-inclusive, Jewish prayer book.
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Something Understood - Translation
For Pentecost, Mark Tully talks to Bible translator Father Nicholas King about the process of translation. With poems from Keats and Kei Miller, and music by Ella Fitzgerald.
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Something Understood - True North
True North: Mark Tully explores the claim that the deepest craving in the human spirit is for knowledge of the right direction.
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Something Understood - Truth Lies Somewhere
Truth Lies Somewhere: With Mark Tully. Can there be such a thing as absolute truth or is the concept always relative?
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Something Understood - Understanding Prayer
Mark Tully talks to the Archbishop of Canterbury, Dr Rowan Williams, about his personal understanding of prayer, once described by the poet George Herbert as 'something understood'.
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Something Understood - View from Above
View from Above: Felicity Finch reflects on how the space above us and the heights we strive to reach can affect how we perceive our earthbound lives below.
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Something Understood - Voices of Brass
A programme for Remembrance Sunday on the power of the military band.
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Something Understood - Volunteer Vision
Mike Wooldridge celebrates the role of the volunteer with Glyn Roberts, whose own voluntary organisation has sent over two million tools to help poor craftsmen in Africa and Asia.
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Something Understood - Waiting in Emptiness
Waiting in Emptiness: Mark Tully asks why emptiness is regarded as such a high ideal in spiritual teachings when it is normally associated with feelings of hopelessness and despair.
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Something Understood - Waiting in Emptiness
Waiting in Emptiness: Mark Tully asks why emptiness is regarded as such a high ideal in spiritual teachings when it is normally associated with feelings of hopelessness and despair.
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Something Understood - Weaving
Mark Tully explores weaving as a metaphor for how we should live our life, beginning in Gandhi's house. He believed that weaving was a necessary spiritual discipline.
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Something Understood - Westminster Abbey
Mark Tully explores the sacred spaces of Westminster Abbey with the Dean, the Very Rev Dr John Hall.
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Something Understood - Who To Trust?
Mark Tully talks to the Master of Wellington College, Anthony Seldon, about the loss of trust in public and private life. Are we really less trusting than previous generations?
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Something Understood - Wild Swimming
Writer Sarah Cuddon reflects on what draws people into the open sea and the wild water of rivers and talks to Kate Rew, founder of the Outdoor Swimming Society.
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Something Understood - Words My Mother Taught Me
Pamela Marre, a storyteller from a non-orthodox Jewish family, looks at how ancient wisdom is passed down through families.
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Something Understood - Wrestling and Resting
Mark Tully explores different approaches to the intractable issues in our lives. When is it better to wrestle with them head-on, and when is it better to seek a gentler resolution?
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Something Understood - Yearning to be Heroes
Mark Tully asks if we all have it within us to be heroes, and how the heroic can be awakened within us. Is it possible to train ourselves to act heroically?
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