Today’s episode of The Signal is a year-end rebroadcast of a show we put together in November 2005, a show that asks a deceptively simple question: What does it mean to you to believe?

For this project, we teamed up with Urbanite magazine writer Jason Tinney and spent a month criss-crossing the city, recording conversations with nine Baltimoreans of nine different faiths and philosophies:

• Quaker Meri Robie-Craven
• Orthodox Muslim Kamil Madina
• Atheist Tom Chalkley
• Kadampa Buddhist Monk Kelsang Atisha
• Temple Oheb Shalom Jewish Cantor Lisa Levine
• Universal Methodist / Episcopalian Alice Ike
• Keetowah Joseph Stands with Many
• Unity Fellowship Church of Baltimore Pastor Anthony McCarthy
• And Catholic Rafael Mejia

Our interviewees came from radically different spiritual backgrounds, but their comments revealed a surprising amount of common ground beneath the differences that often seem to divide us. In November 2005, excerpts of these interviews appeared in The Urbanite magazine, and on today’s rebroadcast of The Signal, you’ll get to hear the voices behind them.

Interactive artist Frank Warren is the mind behind PostSecret. He’s standing in a Georgetown art gallery next to an enlarged image form one of the thousands of postcards that have been anonymously sent to him. The message on this one says: sometimes I fake empathy to get people to like me

• A conversation with interactive artist Frank Warren, the creator of PostSecret. Over the past year, Warren has received thousands of anonymous postcards inscribed with the deep, dark thoughts we keep from others and the things we often prefer to hide from ourselves.
• A visit to The American Dime Museum for a conversation with director Dick Horne. He’ll be showing off some of his favorite side-show treasures, artifacts that look like they’d be at home on the front page of The Weekly World News
• And writer Rafael Alvarez shares a holiday story about Aunt Lola’s Kitchen, a place where the aroma of fresh-baked cookies can evoke powerful memories of Christmas past.

Here’s the recipe for Rafael Alvarez’s Highlandtown Pizzelles:

“In my story, Basilio figures out a way to work the pizzelle iron himself, but it can be pretty difficult. Two people are really needed when an old-fashioned iron is in play. As for finding such an iron, try eBay or antiques stores in neighborhoods that were once Italian strongholds. New-fangled electric pizzelle irons are easy to find at Bed, Bath & Beyond or any housewares store.” —RA

6 eggs
1/2 cup vegetable oil
1 1/2 tablespoons oil of anise
1/2 tablespoon lemon extract
2 1/2 cups sugar
2 1/2 cups sifted flour

Mix eggs, vegetable oil, anise and lemon extract in a deep pot or bowl. Thoroughly mix in the sugar with an electric mixer, adding flour gradually for proper consistency, which should be thick like dough— not like batter.
Drop a dollop of dough molded into a sphere roughly the size of a golf ball into the center of the hot open iron. Close the handles of the iron and hold them tightly together for about the time it takes to say a quick “Hail Mary”— perhaps 20 seconds, or so. Then turn the iron onto the other side and repeat the process. After 20 seconds, open the iron and pluck the cookie by the edges with the tines of a fork.

Hint: Dribble a little oil over the dough in the pot every now and then to keep it moist and to prevent it sticking to the iron, which will ruin the cookie. Makes approximately 7 dozen cookies.

Another anonymous postcard that was mailed to Frank Warren, the creator of PostSecret.

Everybody’s got a secret…