Hooshmand has lived amongst both the poorest nations and the wealthiest nations of the world for more than four decades, where he witnessed inequality in standards of living and the widening gap between the rich and the poor. It was this condition that fueled his passion for studying, researching, and exploring alternative solutions to tackle some of the challenging economic questions of our time. Hooshmand got involved in social and economic development projects in Bangladesh as well as later in the West Indies. He created the work Principles of Spiritual Economics which is a compilation of Baha'i writing on economics. He wrote the book Economics and the Bahá'í Faith, that explains the Bahá'í teachings on economics and their implications for the Bahá'í community and the wider society.

Rebecca is a singer-songwriter who has produced five musical CDs and an audiobook. We play selections from her CDs Alientame, Conscious Peace, Befriend Me, and Pioneer Winds. Her most recent CD is called To The Peoples of the World and we play the title track in the interview.

Shango is a music producer and performer (playing drums, singing, and playing different kinds of flutes and other instruments). He produced and recorded an album called Talisman that features musical compositions by his mother, Leonor Dely. We feature music from that album in the interview. He has started a musical project with junior youth in the Canary Islands. He shares one piece that is a work in progress to give us an idea of the project.

Sheyda is a pianist, singer-songwriter, guitarist, and mathematician. She draws on her multicultural heritage and her upbringing in Albania to blend traditions and sounds into music for the soul, one that inspires across cultures and generations. Her first CD is called In Awe released in 2015. She is currently working on a new release. The songs we listen to in the interview are new compositions with guitar. After the interview we play a concert that features her songs with piano.

Genevieve is a singer-songwriter whose music is inspired by many years of travels and is infused with jazz and world beat music.. In 2009 she produced her first children's CD called Sunshine in You. She has most recently produced a music video called Kune. We feature Genevieve's music in the interview including Kune and selections from Sunshine in You.

Carolyn and her husband Don started a camp in Vermont in the 60's in which kids from diverse backgrounds, and from both privileged and underserved communities, came together and learned outdoor living skills. The camp was called High Rise. They later created the Institute of Human Understanding to facilitate their work overseas. Carolyn talks about their work in Nicaragua to help a remote indigenous community be represented in Baha'i administration. She also describes the remarkable work that was done in Honduras for the education and upliftment of young girls.

Mark is a professor of film, television & media arts at Southwestern College in Chula Vista, CA. He holds a Master of Fine Arts degree from the University of California Los Angeles (UCLA), School of Theater, Film, & Television (TFT). After working in the film industry in Los Angeles for ten years, he went to Papua New Guinea for 11 years where he worked as director of Educational Television in the Department of Education. He produced a number of educational and documentary films in support of projects sponsored by the UN.

Shar, holds a Bachelor of Arts degree in Indigenous Studies and has travelled to more than 40 countries, including being a guest of the Berber nomads in the Spanish Sahara, the Aborigines in far northern Queensland, Australia, and the Bribri in Costa Rica's rainforest. Shar has worked in various media for 20 years including documentary film production for Canadian Broadcasting Company Radio and TV, and feature newspaper and magazine writing. She is author of the memoir "The Bridegroom from Baghdad", which we feature in this interview.

Audrey introduces us to her first biography entitled "When Reason Sleeps: The Story of a Baha'i arrested, imprisoned, and executed and his wife's escape". The protagonist is a woman from Iran named Mehrangiz or Mehri by those who know her. Audrey tells the story of Mehri's husband, who was arbitrarily arrested, imprisoned and executed in Iran simply for being a Baha'i, and recounts Mehri's own imprisonment in a squalid prison a year after her husband's execution, and her dramatic escape from Iran from religious persecution. Audrey describes the process she went through to capture Mehri's story.

Jeanne is Director of the Multi-Racial Unity Living Experience, which her students adoringly refer to as MRULE. MRULE is an undergraduate race relations program dedicated to social justice at Michigan State University. She is an affiliate faculty member of the Center for Integrative Studies in Social Science, the African Studies Center, and the Center for Gender in Global Context. She specializes in race, class, gender, and intersectional analysis bridging theory and practice. She created an offshoot to MRULE in Johannesburg, South Africa called VVOCF, which stands for a Tsonga (saang·guh) word that means Our Children's Future. It is a youth center that became a hub for community building activities. She was also instrumental in creating a small non-profit in the US to complement the work of VVOCF called Global Youth for Education and Change (GYEC).

Serge is an accomplished jazz pianist, arranger, composer and educator. Serge has an early education bi-lingual school based on the arts called Affinity Arts International School {https://www.affinityarts.com.br/}, which we talk about in the interview. In the interview we play a number of Serge's original compositions. You can find links to Serge's music at his Instagram page @SergeJazz. From there you can find his YouTube channel.

Clyde describes her spiritual search starting with her southern baptist background. Her spiritual exploration leads her to Islam and then ultimately to the Baha'i Faith. Once she became a Baha'i her horizons widened that included a trip to Zimbabwe that had her come back with a new appreciation of her identity, which she describes in the interview. Recently she had started a support group where she lives called Made It Home, that supports African-American mothers who have lost their sons.

Deborah has a PhD in Intercultural Communication from Howard University. She is an artist and freelance writer. Her many varied occupations include teaching piano, copyediting, translating, designing gardens, working on radio documentaries and a kids' educational TV series, and teaching communication classes to outpatient adults (i.e., formerly hospitalized) with emotional and mental illnesses. She was a professor of communication, media and culture for 20 years and a Department Chair for seven years. She has written her first novel, Sylvie Denied. We talk about her debut novel and she reads a couple of excerpts in the interview. Her website is DeborahClarkVance.com.

Hushidar is professor emeritus at Central Michigan University. He taught courses in psychology of human development, educational psychology, mental health, and creativity. He is the author of more than 50 volumes. His works cover the subjects of the Bible, the Qur'án, and the fulfillment of prophecies in both. He has written a 3-volume set of prophecies on the coming of Jesus called "I Shall Come Again", "Lord of Lords", and "King of Kings". He also wrote a book just as comprehensively for Moslems titled "Baha'u'llah in the Quran", that was written in Farsi and is now being translated into English. You can find his books at his website globalperspective.org, and he is offering them online for free at his website TheKnowledgOfGod.com.

Tadia co-produced and performed the musical drama A WOMAN AND HER WORDS, a theater production based on the true story of Tahirih, a woman whose compelling but obscure life has been hidden from the western world until now, who was a 19th century notable Persian poetess and Eastern woman writer. Tahirih was one of the first 18 disciples of the Bab, the forerunner to Baha'u'llah, the prophet founder of the Baha'i Faith. After retiring the production Tadia co-produced the soundtrack CD entitled: A Woman and her Words: The Story of Tahirih, with Ellis Hall Jr. Subsequently they produced a 2nd CD of Tahirih's poems put to music entitled: Solace of the Eyes: The Songs of Tahirih. It is from this 2nd CD that we feature selections in the interview. Tadia is also a global business consultant and host of the radio program Womanosity for Women with Curiosity on Woman Radio that broadcasts globally.

When Eric was 7 years old he was in the kitchen doing the dishes when a song came on the radio. He doesn't remember which song it was, but he does remember the feeling that song gave him. He immediately stopped doing the dishes, quickly ran into the living room and stared at the stereo system. His sister called him back to finish the dishes, but he couldn't move. He was transfixed, mesmerized. He literally couldn't take his eyes off the stereo. He was so moved by emotion that all he remembered thinking was “I want to make people feel like that!” Since then Eric has studied classical guitar in Portugal, was in a band in LA with his brother playing fusion of rock with flamenco, and scored the music for the movie Waiting Alone. He has produced four solo albums and a number of current released singles. We feature his music in the interview You can find his music here.

Elaheh noticed a sense of anxiety in her young daughter and decided to create a children's book to help her daughter. That one children's illustrated book grew to a website called plant-love-grow and she has been writing, illustrating, and publishing children's books for the last 15 years. Her stories focus on inner growth through practical and sustainable methods and tools. With a background in Applied Human Sciences and Human Relations, and now as a Child Behavior Consultant, she brings creativity, passion, understanding, and a practical perspective as she helps families learn and grow. We talk about her work in the interview.

I recorded an interview with Alhan Irwin, her brother Abir Majid, and her sister Ruwa Pokorny. Their mother, Anisa Abdul-Razzaq Abbas, wrote a memoir entitled Without Hesitation, about her imprisonment for being a Baha'i in Iraq. Alhan translated the book into English, and we discuss not only her mother's imprisonment but her father's and Abir's experience in prison; all for the same reason.

Janet has had a varied career that had live and work in such diverse places as Scotland, Fiji in the South Pacific, the Republic of Maldives in the Indian Ocean, and Haifa in Israel where she served in the Baha'í World Centre Library. Janet wrote a biography on Louise Mathew Gregory, a British woman whose destiny led her to marrying an African-American in the US in 1912. The biography is entitled A Seed In Your Heart. We talk about the story of Louise Mathew Gregory in the interview.

Born in the light of the inauguration of the Baha'i House of Worship in Chile, a wonderful new musical initiative was created by a group of three Baha'is in Santiago, Chile who call themselves “Arrayanes”. Arrayanes is a trio of close three friends – Carlos Medina, Felipe Duhart and Eduardo Rioseco – bound together by friendship, laughter, and love of God. The result is the creation of an album full of uplifting Latin American melodies and rhythms in pop-folk style. We feature a number of songs from the album in the interview. In this interview, I'm speaking with Eduardo Rioseco, one of the members of Arrayanes.

Wade grew up in a dysfunctional family in which he lived with a drunken mother after his parents divorced. He was then kidnapped by his father and then later returned to his mother again who was still in the same dysfunctional state. He ended up living again with his father and it was then that he became involved in the Worldwide Church of God, traveling the world and preaching the coming of the Messianic return of Jesus. Wade tells the story of his spiritual journey that ultimately led him to the Baha'i Faith in a 3 volume series, each volume having its own specific title. He is now owner of an author-driven publishing company called Something or Other Publishing.

Jody Cooper is a singer songwriter who was part of the a cappella group Sense of Sound in Liverpool, whose collaborations include Seal, Damon Albarn, Jon Bon Jovi and Imogen Heap. You can find Jody's music on his website JodyCooperMusic.com. We feature his music in the interview.

Mikhail was born and raised in Moscow, where he received his bachelor's degree in international journalism. In 1990 he moved to the United States to pursue his doctoral studies. Mikhail works as an adjunct professor of religion and philosophy at the University of the Arts in Philadelphia, where he received The President's Distinguished Teaching Award in 2010. He co-chairs and serves on the faculty of the Department of Religion, Philosophy, and Theology at the Wilmette Institute as well as on the faculty of Temple University in Philadelphia. He is the author of more than two hundred scholarly, journalistic, and creative works that are published or presented all over the world. He has authored and edited twelve books, including the monograph, Theory of Religious Cycles: Tradition, Modernity, and the Bahá'í Faith and an anthology entitled Russian Philosophy in the 21st Century that was published in 2020.

Harold is a Community Interfaith Educator, a designer and teacher of community courses on world religions and world history. He was a Unitarian minister for twenty-five years, and has been a Baha'i interfaith educator since 2000. He has written extensively on religion and interfaith issues. We discuss his work, "Founders of Faith: The Parallel Lives of God's Messengers" in the interview.

Linda's ancestors are from the city of Nayriz in Iran and accepted the teachings of the Bab and later became Baha'is. The Bab was the prophet forerunner of Baha'u'llah and Baha'u'llah is the prophet-founder of the Baha'i Faith. She received her PhD from John Hopkins University School of Public Health and worked in the field of public health teaching at Johns Hopkins and Emory University. She is a children's book author and we discuss her two children's books in the interview: I Love My Name and Together Even When We're Apart: My Neighborhood's Stories of the Covid-19 Pandemic.

Nauzanin is a filmmaker in Edmonton Canada who has directed and produced films such as My Lyric I Never Knew, The Stoic, and Precarity which we discuss in the interview. Her production studio, 1844studios, supports women of color in film. A Canadian woman of Caribbean and Middle Eastern descent, Nauzanin's nuanced stories reflect the uniqueness of her heritage as well as her international life. You can find her work on FaceBook.

Gary is a social and economic development worker now living in Ukraine. Combining a PhD in agricultural science with an MBA in management, he managed projects in Central America, Africa, South Asia and the ex-Soviet Union. Since 1975, his work and profession has been in agricultural and rural development. During the past 20 years, Gary used Baha'i consultation in his work and teams. His passion is to correlate Bahá'í social principles with current realities in the world and to work for a sustainable future in a united world. He now lives on a small farm and runs a residential vacation school with his wife, called the Land of Virtues, for groups of children, youth, and adults striving to build a culture based on universal spiritual principles. Gary makes reference to a Bahai'i-inspired organization called ebbf which is an organization aspiring ethical people buidling the future.

Andrea was born and raised in Qeqertarsuaq (Disco Island) Greenland and her heritage and culture is Inuit. She is a journalist and works with a radio program on the national radio station Greenlandic Broadcasting Corporation (KNR). The program covers cultural and spiritual topics in the native Inuit language. She has been a Bahá'í for almost four years. She conveys most clearly in the interview that spirituality is very important for her. We talk about her journalistic work and her goals for the future in the interview.

Sahar authors a short story collection called Chills which we talk about in the interview. We also talk about her illustrated books for young children and her young adult series called Spirit Within Club. She has a blog which you can find at SaharsBlog.com, which she describes in the interview.

Grant is a former teacher, scriptwriter, novelist, poet, and singer-songwriter. He has produced six albums of music, and the scripts for three feature films. Two of them were wartime stories. He also wrote a Depression-era odd couple tale called Starlight Hotel based on his own novel, The Dream Monger. In this interview we are featuring Grant's music which you can find on 9StarMedia.

Vedad is a professional singer who blends her native Persian singing and chanting with the Spanish Flamenco genre. After the revolution in Iran, she moved to Spain, where she earned a degree in Fine Art from The University of Madrid. She adopted Spain's culture and learned to sing the Flamenco music of Spain. After she moved to America, she continued to study and perform. We feature her music in the interview with her guitarist Bob Clifton. Visit her Facebook fan page.

Nasim is a certified yoga therapist and holistic coach. She is also a singer-songwriter who has published a CD called The Longing, an EP called Trust, and a single called Healing. We play her musical compositions in the interview.