Bishop Budde Conversation
The Forum at Grace Cathedral
Mariann Edgar Budde is the bishop and spiritual leader of the Episcopal Diocese of Washington, D.C., and the Washington National Cathedral. On January 21, 2025, many Americans were introduced to Bishop Budde thanks to what The New York Times called “an extraordinary act of public resistance.” During her prayer service for Donald J. Trump’s second inauguration, Bishop Budde addressed the president directly, imploring him “to have mercy on the people in our country who are scared now,” from those who are part of the LGBTQ+ community, to immigrants and refugees. But...
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Yuria Celidwen Forum
The Forum at Grace Cathedral
How do we cultivate collective flourishing? When facing the monumental challenges of our world, we often end up disconnecting to focus on our mental health. Dr. Yuria Celidwen explains this focus on our state of mind alone is precisely why so many of us struggle to flourish. “What’s been overlooked is the Indigenous perspective of relationality,” she says. “It is the understanding that happiness is only possible in community, when we cultivate our relationships toward all kin, from human to more-than-human, and our living Earth.” Dr. Celidwen’s research shows the...
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Shelia Warren Forum
The Forum at Grace Cathedral
Grace Cathedral, San Francisco The internet is broken, and it’s urgent that we fix it. We can – and must – do more to safeguard the health and well-being of our children, our democracy, and our society as a whole. Project Liberty is stitching together an ecosystem of technologists, academics, policymakers, and citizens committed to building a better internet—where the data is ours to manage, the platforms are ours to govern, and the power is ours to reclaim. Join Malcolm Clemens Young, Dean of Grace Cathedral, for a conversation with Sheila Warren, Chief Strategy and...
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Conversation with Nico Lang on American Teenager: How Trans Kids Are Surviving Hate and Finding Joy in a Turbulent Era
The Forum at Grace Cathedral
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Tom Steyer Forum
The Forum at Grace Cathedral
Every day the news is filled with stories of extreme weather that threatens our cities, our health, our futures: tornadoes wiping out whole communities; droughts that ignite catastrophic wildfires; storms flooding roads and destroying infrastructure; rising water levels that jeopardize entire nations; new climate-related diseases that threaten our health. Just as World War II raised an existential threat that united Americans in a common cause, the dangers of climate change are similarly challenging all of our previously held notions of the future—and our only hope is to unite together to...
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Amy-Jill Levine Forum
The Forum at Grace Cathedral
In her book Jesus For Everyone, Not Just Christians renowned biblical scholar and author Amy-Jill Levine uses stories told by and about Jesus to address the issues dividing us today: economics, family values, the legacy of slavery, nationalism, healthcare, and politics. Join Malcolm Clemens Young, Dean of Grace Cathedral, for a conversation with Dr. Levine about why Jesus’s historic and cultural influence makes him fascinating, provocative, and relevant for everyone, not only Christians. Recorded on April 12, 2025. Give to Grace You can help us bring the arts to life at...
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Marion Nestle Forum
The Forum at Grace Cathedral
Dietary guidelines, alcohol, ultra-processed foods. It seems like new recommendations come out every day. Who is making our food choices? Marion Nestle, one of the seven most powerful foodies (Forbes Magazine), is a molecular biologist and nutritionist who started the country’s first academic food-studies program at NYU, bringing attention to the roles that culture, capitalism, and politics play in what and how much we eat. Join Malcolm Clemens Young for a conversation with Nestle about how to navigate the science, what we might expect from the...
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Obi Kaufmann Forum
The Forum at Grace Cathedral
How do we live with fire? Fire is an essential part of California’s ecology. Humans have been using it to shape the California landscape for thousands of years. But today many Californians’ relationship to fire is one of fear. Obi Kaufmann, author of the best-selling California Field Atlas, now asks: How do we live with fire? What makes fire essential to a healthy and biodiverse Golden State, and how do we benefit from its teachings? With the same solution-minded ethic as his much-admired The State of Water: Understanding California’s Most Precious Resource, in The State of Fire: Why...
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The Forum with BJ Miller
The Forum at Grace Cathedral
At the end of our lives, what do we most wish for? For many, it’s simply comfort, respect, love. On November 10, as we celebrate All Souls’ Day at our Choral Eucharist service, please don’t miss the opportunity to hear also from renowned hospice and palliative care specialist, public speaker, and connector BJ Miller. On this day of prayer and remembrance for those we love and see no longer, who better to hear from than this deep thinker about how to create a dignified, graceful end of life. Miller is the co-author with Shoshana Berger of the book A Beginner’s Guide to the End:...
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The Forum with Patrick Makuakāne
The Forum at Grace Cathedral
We are thrilled to announce Patrick Makuakāne as our 2024 Artist in Residence. Patrick is a kumu hula (master teacher) whose work blends traditional hula with contemporary music and movements and uplifts Hawaiian culture and history. With his San Francisco-based dance company, Nā Lei Hulu i ka Wēkiu, he has forged his own unique form of hula—hula mua, or hula that evolves. Join Malcolm Clemens Young for a conversation with Makuakāne about exploring the cathedral’s 2024 theme, “the Year of Memory” and inviting the divinity of hula into the cathedral space. Give to...
info_outlineThe Oxford English Dictionary is one of mankind’s greatest achievements, and yet, curiously, its creators are almost never considered. Who were the people behind this unprecedented book? As Dr. Sarah Ogilvie reveals, they include three murderers, a collector of pornography, the daughter of Karl Marx, a president of Yale, a radical suffragette, a vicar who was later found dead in the cupboard of his chapel, an inventor of the first American subway, a female anti-slavery activist in Philadelphia . . . and thousands of others.
The Dictionary People: The Unsung Heroes Who Created the Oxford English Dictionary is a history and celebration of the many far-flung volunteers who helped define the English language, word by word. Of deep transgenerational and broad appeal, a thrilling literary detective story that, for the first time, unravels the mystery of the endlessly fascinating contributors the world over who, for over seventy years, helped to codify the way we read and write and speak. It was the greatest crowdsourcing endeavor in human history, the Wikipedia of its time.
Along with being a Washington Post Best Book of the Year, a Women’s Prize for Non-Fiction Finalist, and the New York Times Book Review Editors’ Choice, responses to the book include: “The pages come alive with humor, surprise, passion, charm, empathy, intrigue, humanness, and love” (Anna Deavere Smith); “This is an exquisitely written book” (Jamaica Kincaid); “An unmissable wonderful achievement” (Stephen Fry); and “Utterly fascinating, entertaining, astonishing, and as clever as a box of monkeys” (Joanna Lumley).
Join Malcolm Clemens Young for a conversation with Ogilvie about the previously untapped archives she discovered and the never-before-heard full story of the making of one of the most famous books in the world.
Give to Grace
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About the Guest
Dr. Sarah Ogilvie is a Senior Research Fellow in the Faculty of Linguistics, Philology, and Phonetics at the University of Oxford. She is the Director of Oxford’s MSc in Digital Scholarship. Before Oxford, she taught at Stanford and Cambridge Universities, and worked at Amazon’s innovation lab in Silicon Valley. Dr. Ogilvie is a linguist, lexicographer, and computer scientist who works at the intersection of technology and the social sciences. Her research focuses on lexicography, endangered languages, language documentation, field methods, historical development of language, corpus linguistics, and digital humanities. She directs the Dictionary Lab, a lab for digital research on dictionaries and language. She completed her doctorate in linguistics at the University of Oxford, and is originally from Australia where she studied for a BSc in computer science and pure mathematics at University of Queensland and MA in linguistics at the Australian National University. Dr. Ogilvie is a former editor of the Oxford English Dictionary and has written books on its history and making, including The Dictionary People: the unsung heroes who created the Oxford English Dictionary (Chatto & Windus (UK), Knopf (USA), 2023) and Words of the World: A Global History of the Oxford English Dictionary (Cambridge University Press, 2013).
About the Moderator
The Very Rev. Dr. Malcolm Clemens Young is the dean of Grace Cathedral. He is the author of The Spiritual Journal of Henry David Thoreau and The Invisible Hand in Wilderness: Economics, Ecology, and God, and is a regular contributor on religion to the Huffington Post and San Francisco Examiner.
About The Forum
The Forum is a series of stimulating conversations about faith and ethics in relation to the important issues of our day. We invite inspiring and illustrious people to sit down for a real conversation with the Forum’s host and with you. Our guests range from artists, inventors and philosophers to pop culturists and elected officials, but the point of The Forum is singular: civil, sophisticated discourse that engages minds and hearts to think in new ways about the world. More about Grace Forum Online:
gracecathedral.org/the-forum.