ReContraHumanos, a podcast that dares to ask the essential questions

How can we live more humane lives, what makes a life worth living? These are the questions that animated Manuel de la Chica to start your podcast "ReContraHumans". Through various interviews, he seeks to find humanity: "this podcast proposes to listen to those who have sought meaning for their lives in books, art or spirituality in order to live being more human". He started in June and has already published a first season of one episode every 15 days. We spoke with him about his initiative.

How is it born ReContraHumans And what were you looking to contribute to the world with this project? 

-The idea of starting a podcast had been with me for a few months [I've been listening to podcasts for more than ten years and last year I defended a doctoral thesis on them], but I didn't take the plunge until May. I had been producing podcasts for the Hakuna Foundation's Soul College for a few months, but I always wanted more. I wanted to talk to people who, because of the subject matter, were outside of what we were recording and I wanted to do something more personal, something that was more in line with my concerns and my topics of interest. When planning the topics and guests for the first season of ReContraHumanos, I thought more about the people I wanted to talk to, because it seemed to me that they had something to say to the world, than about those who could listen to it, because I didn't know who it would reach.

The title already suggests a provocation: What does it mean to you to be "re-human"?

-It means to be very, very, human. The name comes from the influence of several Argentine friends. For them, using "re" as a prefix is like adding a "muy". And when they want to emphasize it more, they use a "recontra". In addition, one of these friends told me about Juan Pablo Berra, an Argentine philosopher, who talks about the "re-con-tra-human method". That is, to be authentically human we need to register what we live, become aware of it and, from there, we will be able to transform our lives. Both inspirations share something that the theology of the body discovered for me: that the lives we live, wounded by sin, are not as human as we think. The authentic human life is the redeemed life. And here spirituality plays a fundamental role, but also beauty, goodness and truth.

Your episodes deal with philosophy, spirituality, literature, art... What unites all these fields in the search for human meaning? What have you learned from your guests about what it means to be a person?

-All these experiences are profoundly human and, therefore, are ways that man has within his reach to understand himself as a being distinct from the rest of creation and called to an alliance with his Creator. I would say that all of them speak of the fact that there are always new ways from and in which to live this personal relationship. Because love -and here desires and the way they manifest themselves play a key role- is also creative and always opens new paths.

Do you believe that spirituality, far from being something marginal, is still an essential path to understand the human being in depth?

-Yes, spirituality is indispensable to know the human being. But spirituality as an abstract and disincarnated entity would not be enough to know him. In fact, this disincarnated spirituality breaks man from the inside. From the moment God chose to become a man in order to communicate with men, the human being has to enter into the human in order to know God. Spirituality, if it wants to be true to itself, can only be true to itself in the incarnate. And, therefore, there is nothing in the incarnated human that is alien to it. And that includes the arts, philosophy... All that which in the tradition is known as the humanities.

How do you value the reception that ReContraHumanos is having? Did you expect this interest?

-It's been beautiful. Not only because of the numbers on Spotify -which says that more than 1200 different people have listened to it- but, above all, because of specific messages from followers of the podcast who send me photos of their notes or tell me that they have listened to an episode several times. For me that means a concrete face with whom I can establish a personal relationship. Since I put a face to those people, I know who I'm talking to on the podcast. And I also know that these people care about me and look forward to the next episode, because stopping to write to you, sharing an episode or commenting on it after listening to it is a sign that that hour of listening has helped them to recognize something of that message in their own life experience and that they are called to a transformation.

If you had to leave our readers with just one idea, what does it mean to "live being more human"?

-I would tell them that it means living in greater awareness of the mystery that is our life and of the greatness of the vocation to which we have been called. In the words of John Paul II, each person is "partner of the Absolute", and that means to be a companion -one who shares the bread with- God, called to continue co-creating the world with Him, to rescue beauty and joy in it. Because we were created for a love that we will never understand, but in which we can immerse ourselves to enjoy it more.