The Forum at Grace Cathedral

Grace Cathedral

Recorded live at San Francisco's Grace Cathedral, The Forum is a series of stimulating conversations about faith, ethics and culture in relation to the important issues of our day. Host and Dean of Grace Cathedral Malcolm Clemens Young invites artists, inventors, philosophers, pop culturists, elected officials and other inspiring guests to share in a civil, sophisticated discourse that engages hearts and minds to think in new ways about the world.

  1. APR 15

    Dave Evans: How to Live a Meaningful Life

    Dave Evans Forum: How to Live a Meaningful Life Grace Cathedral, San Francisco  In a world grappling with major societal shifts and increasing isolation, it's easy to feel like nothing we do matters. So many of us feel like something is missing, disconnected, and stuck. There must be more to life than simply surviving each day—but how do we uncover it?  Bestselling author Dave Evans, with Bill Burnett, the "empowering" (Publishers Weekly) visionaries behind Stanford's renowned Life Design Lab, have already inspired millions of readers to use design thinking principles to craft lives and careers they love. Now, in How to Live a Meaningful Life, they take on the most profound design problem of all: how to make a life rich with meaning and purpose. Evolving their revolutionary framework, Burnett and Evans present the latest research on what makes life worth living, showing us how to bring wonder, coherence, flow, and community into our everyday experiences. Instead of cramming more into an already packed life, they give us the steps we need to extract more out of it, moment by moment. Join Malcolm Clemens Young, Dean of Grace Cathedral, for a conversation with Evans about how to transform your ordinary days into ones brimming with joy, purpose, and meaning. Recorded at Grace Cathedral on April 12, 2026. Give to Grace You can help us bring the arts to life at Grace with a gift today to The Forum. gracecathedral.org/give  Become a GraceArts Member Love engaging dialogue? We offer a special cultural membership program, GraceArts, focused exclusively on the arts and well-being. GraceArts allows a wider community to belong to and support Grace, with discounts and benefits on a robust schedule of events. Learn more and join at gracecathedral.org/join. About the Guest Dave Evans is all about helping you design a life and a way to live it that brings you fully alive. After 30+ years in tech (led the Apple mouse, a co-founder of Electronic Arts, etc.) he pivoted from making things to designing lives in 2007 and co-founded the Stanford Life Design Lab, then co-authored the worldwide bestseller, Designing Your Life. He and Bill Burnett lead a movement to help people get unstuck and design the meaningful lives they deserve. 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.  Learn more about The Forum here:    gracecathedral.org/the-forum

    1h 2m
  2. MAR 25

    Ana Raquel Minian: In the Shadow of Liberty

    Ana Raquel Minian Forum: In the Shadow of Liberty Grace Cathedral, San Francisco  Many Americans have watched in horror as children are torn from their parents and American citizens have been killed under the current administration's immigration policy. But as historian Ana Raquel Minian reveals in In the Shadow of Liberty: The Invisible History of Immigrant Detention, this is only the latest chapter in a saga tracing back to the 1800s—one in which immigrants to the United States have been held without recourse to their constitutional rights. Braiding together the vivid stories of four migrants seeking to escape the turmoil of their homelands for the promise of America, In the Shadow of Liberty gives this history a human face, and explores how sites of rightlessness have evolved, and what their existence has meant for our body politic. Though these "black sites" exist out of view for the average American, their reach extends into all of our lives: the explosive growth of the for-profit prison industry traces its origins to the immigrant detention system, as does the emergence of Guantanamo and the gradual unraveling of the right to bail and the presumption of innocence. Through these narratives, we see how the changing political climate surrounding immigration has played out in individual lives, and at what cost. Join Malcolm Clemens Young, Dean of Grace Cathedral, for a conversation with Minian about the hidden story of immigrant detention in the United States, and what history can teach us in the current moment. Recorded at Grace Cathedral on March 22, 2026. Give to Grace  You can help us bring the arts to life at Grace with a gift today to The Forum. gracecathedral.org/give Become a GraceArts Member Love engaging dialogue? We offer a special cultural membership program, GraceArts, focused exclusively on the arts and well-being. GraceArts allows a wider community to belong to and support Grace, with discounts and benefits on a robust schedule of events. Learn more and join at gracecathedral.org/join. About the Guest Ana Raquel Minian is a Professor in the Department of History at Stanford University and an award-winning author. They are the recipient of numerous prestigious honors, including the Andrew Carnegie Fellowship (2020), awarded to the nation's most creative thinkers, and PEN America's Nonfiction Award (2025) for their second book. Their first book, Undocumented Lives: The Untold Story of Mexican Migration (Harvard University Press, 2018), won wide acclaim and multiple awards. Minian's second book, In the Shadow of Liberty: The Invisible History of Immigrant Detention (Viking, 2024), winner of PEN America's Nonfiction Award, was widely reviewed, including by the American Bar Association, the Los Angeles Review of Books, and the New York Times, which selected it as an Editors' Choice Book. In 2022, Minian launched and now co-directs the Migration and Asylum Lab, which brings together scholars from multiple disciplines and institutions to support asylum adjudication processes. At Stanford, they teach courses on migration, Latinx history, Mexican American history, social movements, and the histories of incarceration and detention. 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.  Learn more about The Forum here:     gracecathedral.org/the-forum

    1 hr
  3. MAR 18

    Rebecca Solnit Forum: Notes on a World of Change

    Rebecca Solnit Forum: Notes on a World of Change Grace Cathedral, San Francisco  As white nationalist and authoritarian movements push toward isolation and individualism, other currents continue to gather strength. Antiracism, feminism, expansive understandings of gender, environmental thinking, scientific discovery, and Indigenous and non-Western ways of knowing resonate across borders and generations, pointing toward a more relational and interconnected world. Few writers trace these converging currents with the clarity and moral imagination of  Rebecca Solnit. A writer, historian, and activist, Solnit is the author of more than twenty books exploring feminism, western and urban history, popular power, social change and insurrection, wandering and walking, hope and catastrophe. Across her work, she listens for the deeper frequencies of change—the ways ideas, struggles, and solidarities echo across time. In The Beginning Comes After the End: Notes on a World of Change, a sequel to her enduring bestseller Hope in the Dark, Solnit reflects on the profound shifts that have unfolded since 1960, and the long vibrations of change that often go unheard in the moment. Join Malcolm Clemens Young, Dean of Grace Cathedral, for a conversation with Rebecca Solnit about how social, political, scientific, and cultural transformations resonate across the past seventy-five years—and how listening for those resonances can help us imagine what comes next. Recorded at Grace Cathedral on March 15, 2026. Give to Grace  You can help us bring the arts to life at Grace with a gift today to The Forum. gracecathedral.org/give Become a GraceArts Member Love engaging dialogue? We offer a special cultural membership program, GraceArts, focused exclusively on the arts and well-being. GraceArts allows a wider community to belong to and support Grace, with discounts and benefits on a robust schedule of events. Learn more and join at gracecathedral.org/join. About the Guest Writer, historian, and activist Rebecca Solnit is the author of more than twenty books on feminism, western and urban history, popular power, social change and insurrection, wandering and walking, hope and catastrophe. Her books include Orwell's Roses; Recollections of My Nonexistence; Hope in the Dark; Men Explain Things to Me; A Paradise Built in Hell: The Extraordinary Communities that Arise in Disaster; and A Field Guide to Getting Lost. A product of the California public education system from kindergarten to graduate school, she writes regularly for the Guardian, serves on the board of the climate group Oil Change International, and recently launched the climate project Not Too Late (nottoolateclimate.com). 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.  Learn more about The Forum here:     gracecathedral.org/the-forum

    1h 7m
  4. MAR 4

    Adam Hochschild Forum: American Midnight

    Adam Hochschild Forum: American Midnight Grace Cathedral, San Francisco  Between World War I and the Roaring Twenties lies a largely forgotten chapter of American history—one whose tensions still echo a hundred years later. In these turbulent years, democracy was tested by war, pandemic, and violence driven by conflicts over race, immigration, and labor rights. In American Midnight: The Great War, a Violent Peace, and Democracy's Forgotten Crisis, legendary historian Adam Hochschild brings this moment vividly to life, revealing both the repression that darkened the era and the Americans who struggled to repair a fractured nation. The forces they confronted did not disappear; they continue to reverberate.  Join Malcolm Clemens Young, Dean of Grace Cathedral, for a conversation with Hochschild on how the past resonates into the present, and shapes the questions we're asking today. Recorded at Grace Cathedral on March 1, 2026. Give to Grace  You can help us bring the arts to life at Grace with a gift today to The Forum. gracecathedral.org/give Become a GraceArts Member Love engaging dialogue? We offer a special cultural membership program, GraceArts, focused exclusively on the arts and well-being. GraceArts allows a wider community to belong to and support Grace, with discounts and benefits on a robust schedule of events. Learn more and join at gracecathedral.org/join. About the Guest Adam Hochschild (pronunciation: "Hoch" as in "spoke"; "schild" as in "build") is the author of eleven books. American Midnight: The Great War, a Violent Peace, and Democracy's Forgotten Crisis is his most recent. His preceding book, the biography Rebel Cinderella: From Rags to Riches to Radical, the Epic Journey of Rose Pastor Stokes, was published in 2020.  Spain in Our Hearts: Americans in the Spanish Civil War, 1936-1939, appeared in 2016. Of his earlier books, Bury the Chains: Prophets and Rebels in the Fight to Free an Empire's Slaves won the Los Angeles Times Book Prize, the PEN USA Literary Award, and was a finalist for the National Book Award. King Leopold's Ghost: A Story of Greed, Terror and Heroism in Colonial Africa and To End All Wars: A Story of Loyalty and Rebellion, 1914-1918 were both finalists for the National Book Critics Circle Award. His Finding the Trapdoor: Essays, Portraits, Travels and the recent Lessons from a Dark Time and Other Essays collect his shorter pieces, including magazine reporting from five continents. Earlier in his career, he was a reporter for the San Francisco Chronicle, a commentator on National Public Radio's "All Things Considered," and a co-founder, editor, and writer at Mother Jones magazine.  He has received the Theodore Roosevelt-Woodrow Wilson Award from the American Historical Association and in 2014 was elected a fellow of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences. He is a three-time winner of the California Book Awards' Gold Medal for Nonfiction. 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.  Learn more about The Forum here:    gracecathedral.org/the-forum

    1h 4m
  5. FEB 25

    Eugene Kirpichov: Regenerative Economics

    The Forum with Eugene Kirpichov Grace Cathedral, San Francisco  Many believe today's economic model is failing. There is a science-based, hopeful alternative: a regenerative model that works like a living system, helping leaders, communities, and citizens navigate climate chaos, inequality, and ecological breakdown with clarity and purpose. Instead of reacting to crisis after crisis, a regenerative economy creates the conditions for systems to thrive, adapt, and evolve. Eugene Kirpichov left a rewarding and fulfilling career as a machine learning engineer at Google because he could no longer justify working on anything other than climate change. He founded the community Work on Climate with a mission to mobilize humanity's talent to build a regenerative green economy. Work on Climate quickly built the world's largest and most successful community of its sort – with tens of thousands of members around the globe, thousands of whom have found purposeful work that heals the planet, getting hundreds of millions of people to contribute their talent to fixing climate change. Join Malcolm Clemens Young, Dean of Grace Cathedral, for a conversation with Kirpichov about how regenerative economics can bring our economic systems back into tune with the living systems they depend on. Recorded at Grace Cathedral on February 22, 2026. Give to Grace  You can help us bring the arts to life at Grace with a gift today to The Forum. gracecathedral.org/give Become a GraceArts Member Love engaging dialogue? We offer a special cultural membership program, GraceArts, focused exclusively on the arts and well-being. GraceArts allows a wider community to belong to and support Grace, with discounts and benefits on a robust schedule of events. Learn more and join at gracecathedral.org/join. About the Guest Eugene leads Work On Climate, managing staff and driving top-level strategy and partnerships. In his past life as a software engineer, he worked on Google's bigdata and AI systems. Eugene dedicates his free time to climbing, enjoying art and music, and his two cats This One and That One. 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.  Learn more about The Forum here:     gracecathedral.org/the-forum

    1h 5m
  6. FEB 18

    Randall Balmer Forum: America's Best Idea

    The Forum with Randall Balmer Grace Cathedral, San Francisco  The 1st Amendment to the US Constitution codified the principle that government should play no role in favoring or supporting any religion, while allowing free exercise of all religions (including unbelief). More than 200 years later, the results from this experiment are overwhelming: The separation of church and state has shielded the government from religious factionalism, and the United States boasts a diverse religious culture unmatched in the world. But changes have been taking place at an accelerating pace in recent years. The current Supreme Court has shifted away from excluding the influence and practice of religion at public institutions and in our laws and policies, and moved dramatically toward protecting the inclusion and promotion of religion in publicly funded undertakings. Moreover, adherents to a Christian Nationalism ideology have grown more vocal and emboldened, and are increasingly moving into positions of power. Randall Balmer, one of the premier historians of religion in America, reviews both the history of the separation of church and state and various attempts to undermine that wall in his New York Times bestseller, America's Best Idea: The Separation of Church and State.Despite the fact that the 1st Amendment and the separation of church and state has served the nation remarkably well, he argues, its future is by no means assured. Join Malcolm Clemens Young, Dean of Grace Cathedral, for a conversation with Balmer about everything you need to know for shaping and defending your own beliefs on the role of religion in American life. Recorded at Grace Cathedral on February 15, 2026. Give to Grace You can help us bring the arts to life at Grace with a gift today to The Forum. gracecathedral.org/give  Become a GraceArts Member Love engaging dialogue? We offer a special cultural membership program, GraceArts, focused exclusively on the arts and well-being. GraceArts allows a wider community to belong to and support Grace, with discounts and benefits on a robust schedule of events. Learn more and join at gracecathedral.org/join. About the Guest Randall Balmer (Ph.D., Princeton University), a prize-winning historian, Emmy Award nominee and ordained Episcopal priest, is the John Phillips Professor in Religion at Dartmouth College. He was professor of American religious history at Columbia University for twenty-seven years, and he has been a visiting professor at Princeton, Yale, Drew, Emory, and Northwestern universities and in the Columbia University Graduate School of Journalism. He is the author of more than a dozen books, including Evangelicalism in America and Redeemer: The Life of Jimmy Carter. Mine Eyes Have Seen the Glory: A Journey into the Evangelical Subculture in America, now in its fifth edition, was made into a three-part series for PBS. He is writing and will host his third PBS documentary, a history of the Orthodox Church in Alaska. His commentaries about religion in America appear in newspapers across the country. 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.  Learn more about The Forum here:    gracecathedral.org/the-forum

    55 min
  7. FEB 11

    Maggi Dawn: Beginnings and Endings & Giving It Up

    The Forum with Maggi Dawn Grace Cathedral, San Francisco     Author, professor, and priest Maggi Dawn has written two guides to the church year: Beginnings and Endings (and what happens in between): Daily Bible readings from Advent to Epiphany and Giving It Up: Daily Bible Readings from Ash Wednesday to Easter Day.     Our everyday lives are full of small-scale beginnings and endings – births, deaths, marriages, careers, house moves and so on. How do the grand-scale beginnings and endings of Advent help to guide us as we seek to follow Jesus in the 21st century?     The idea of 'giving something up for Lent' is widely known, but how many know that the ancient discipline of the Lenten fast had several purposes? – a reminder of our daily dependence on God for all our needs, to draw us closer to God in prayer, to reconnect with the idea of community, and to help us follow Christ's journey through the wilderness and on to Jerusalem.     Join Malcolm Clemens Young, Dean of Grace Cathedral, for a conversation with Dawn about how Lent can be a time for exploring a different kind of 'giving up' – one that can transform our lives – and how ancient wisdom informs the human experience that happens inbetween beginnings and endings, grand and small scale.     Recorded at Grace Cathedral on February 8, 2026.    Give to Grace   You can help us bring the arts to life at Grace with a gift today to The Forum. gracecathedral.org/give      Become a GraceArts Member  Love engaging dialogue? We offer a special cultural membership program, GraceArts, focused exclusively on the arts and well-being. GraceArts allows a wider community to belong to and support Grace, with discounts and benefits on a robust schedule of events. Learn more and join at gracecathedral.org/join.    About the Guest  The Rev. Dr. Maggi Dawn is an author, songwriter, professor, and priest in the Episcopal Church, currently serving as Diocesan Theologian in the Episcopal Diocese of Rhode Island. Maggi travels widely throughout the USA, leading clergy and parish retreats, and giving sermons and lectures. After a first career as a writer and performer in the music business, Maggi studied theology at the University of Cambridge (UK), and since then has taught and researched at the Universities of Cambridge and Durham in the UK, and at Yale University, where she was Associate Dean and Professor at the Divinity School.     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.  Learn more about The Forum here:     gracecathedral.org/the-forum

    59 min

Ratings & Reviews

4.6
out of 5
9 Ratings

About

Recorded live at San Francisco's Grace Cathedral, The Forum is a series of stimulating conversations about faith, ethics and culture in relation to the important issues of our day. Host and Dean of Grace Cathedral Malcolm Clemens Young invites artists, inventors, philosophers, pop culturists, elected officials and other inspiring guests to share in a civil, sophisticated discourse that engages hearts and minds to think in new ways about the world.

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