12:00: "No Small Endeavor" Holiday Special 2025: "Practices of Hope"
1:00: "A Season's Griot 2025"
We bring you special programming on December 26, 2025. Happy Kwanzaa to all who celebrate!
In the first hour, when the headlines numb and the culture wars grind us down, what if hope isn’t a mood at all—but a practice you can do with your body, your friends, and your city? In this holiday special, Lee C. Camp revisits four conversations to find practices of hope: meditation teacher Tara Brach on healing the “trance of unworthiness;” songwriter Tom Paxton on the folk community that fueled social change; marine biologist Ayana Elizabeth Johnson on climate imagination; and educator Sharon McMahon on everyday civic action. Together they offer three grounded practices—for self, for community, and for the common good—that help us act toward a more beautiful future:
- Practice 1—Self: Tara Brach’s “two wings” of mindfulness and compassion help us befriend reality and begin change from within (“What is happening inside me right now? … Can I be with this?”).
- Practice 2—Community: Tom Paxton’s Greenwich Village years show how laughter, critique, and shared craft create courage—and movements. Make something together offline and let belonging fuel hope.
- Practice 3—Civic: Ayana Elizabeth Johnson invites a shift from apocalypse to imagination—joining others to scale solutions we already have; Sharon McMahon reminds us everyone can do something. Start local and “join something.”
Then in our second hour, a beloved program returns. Hosted by the late beloved storyteller, Madafo Lloyd Wilson, "A Season's Griot" is an annual one-hour special that captures the tales and traditions of African American and African peoples. The show’s poet laureate, Beverly Fields Burnette, and other members of the "Season’s Griot" family return with familiar and favorite elements of Griot.
