Wiser Than Me with Julia Louis-Dreyfus

Episode: Julia Gets Wise with Sister Helen Prejean
Date: January 7, 2026
Host: Julia Louis-Dreyfus
Guest: Sister Helen Prejean

Episode Overview

In the Season 4 premiere of "Wiser Than Me," Julia Louis-Dreyfus sits down with Sister Helen Prejean, the legendary anti-death penalty activist and author of Dead Man Walking. The conversation explores Sister Helen’s journey from her Southern Catholic upbringing to her transformative work on death row, her views on women in the Catholic Church, and her enduring passion for justice, mercy, and community. The episode is alternately funny, moving, and full of practical wisdom about aging, vocation, grief, and hope.

Key Discussion Points & Insights

1. Sister Helen’s Early Life and Influences

• Background: Raised in a joyful, religious, and politically active Catholic family in Baton Rouge, Louisiana.
  – “My mom, Gusta May, had a great sense of humor and was very charming.” (12:05)
• Learning to Argue: Her father, an attorney, taught her “you can't just do it on emotion when you're arguing. You got to know your facts, and you want to try to present them in a persuasive way.” (12:13)
• On Storytelling: “The storytelling part of how you tell the facts, maybe that has been the draw of Dead Man Walking.” (13:09)

2. Growing Up with Jim Crow and Awakening to Social Justice

• Privilege and Blindness: Sister Helen unpacks her early unawareness of racial injustice:
  – “The only way I knew African American people growing up was as our servants. I never went to school with black kids… Culture really determines how we see things.” (14:14)
• A Shift in Perspective: Living in the inner city of New Orleans, she met African American people as equals and began “to wake up because I met African American people as my peers.” (15:40)

3. Vocation and Nuns’ Life: Before and After Vatican II

• Ambition and Blind Obedience: Helen’s youthful ambition (“I’m either gonna be the Pope or the president”) and her immersion into a life of silent obedience as a nun. (17:18)
• Transformation through Vatican II:
  – “The best way to be holy is to be obedient… along comes Vatican II... Each person to discern how God's moving in your soul so that you could freely start to think, what do I want to do?... That’s how I could have the freedom to get involved with the death penalty and to move into a poor neighborhood.” (18:21–19:48)
• Habit and Identity: The drastic changes in dress and identity post-Vatican II, and the fierce debates they sparked among nuns. (20:00–31:49)

4. Women in the Catholic Church

• Writing to the Pope:
  – “You’re depriving women’s presence, their insights, their experience, and all the policy making that's done in the church. It's all males…” (32:54)
• Church’s Need for Women’s Wisdom:
  – “As long as that's deprived in the church of that voice and that wisdom, we never can be whole.” (34:48)

5. Awakening to Social Justice at 40

• Turning Point: “At 40, I woke up.” After hearing a nun speak on social justice, she realized:
  – “It lit my soul on fire when she said, good news to the poor is... they have a right to resist [the system] and to struggle for what is rightfully theirs.” (35:46)
• Confronting Her Own Privilege:
  – “It's not that I was so blooming virtuous... I was privileged out the kazoo with resources all around me.” (38:29)

6. Work With Death Row Inmates & The Broken System

• Masking and Denial:
  – “The Supreme Court... cannot acknowledge that taking a human being... and killing them, is an act of corruption, cruelty.” (39:26)
• Systemic Racism:
  – “Over 70% of all death sentences today… [are] because you killed a white person.” (41:50)
• On Guilt and Innocence: Despite the system’s flaws, “people are always more than a single act. We can never define a person by actions.” (41:03)

7. On Learning from Mistakes

• Engaging Victims’ Families:
  – “It was cowardice, wasn’t it?... It was a terrible mistake to have avoided [victims’ families]… ever after that, I always reached out.” (44:11)

8. Grief and Friendship

• Losing her best friend, Sister Christopher:
  – “The loss of it. Then I try to move to a place… of being grateful. Well, thank God I had that friendship… we can’t make it without friendship.” (47:41–48:48)
• Advice on Grief:
  – “You really do have to allow yourself to grieve… feel the sadness. And to let it be in you and then to embrace it.” (52:35)

9. Aging, Fun, and Film

• On Staying Young:
  – “There’s a whole part of me that feels young because I'm curious and always learning and very engaged in creative change.” (09:16)
• Fun Activities: Card games, cooking, friends, movies: “If you ever come to New Orleans, I’ll cook for you... some good gumbo.” (10:16)

10. Hope and Social Change

• Fundamental Truth:
  – “We can change things by going to each other and speaking to each other and sharing our experiences… consciousness changes and conscience changes, and we change things.” (54:18)
• Advice for Action:
  – “Don’t go it alone. Reach out to others to be able to do something together.” (61:01)

Notable Quotes & Memorable Moments

• On nuns adapting after Vatican II:
  “Kids, man, the kids are going, ‘Hey, the nuns got hair! The nuns got hair!’” (31:27)

• On Men & Wisdom in the Church:
  “When all those little males get together and it's only little males doing stuff—not as good. Just get a few women in there.” (34:48)

• On Grief:
  “The amputation thing is gone. It's gone. She's gone... But... I try to move to a place of being grateful.” (47:41)

• On Facing Death:
  “When we approach death, the part of me that is afraid is the very human part of me... You got to go deeper than the fear, or you'll just be paralyzed by it.” (50:44)

• On Regret:
  “When you write your book, write about the mistakes you made. Don’t just take people on the tips of the waves where you do it right.” (44:11)

• On Social Change:
  “When we reach out our hand to act, to reach out to another, no matter how small it is, we feel the life coursing through us.” (55:16)

Noteworthy Segments & Timestamps

• Introduction & Sister Helen’s Background: 08:57 – 13:48
• Awakening to Racism and Social Justice: 14:14 – 15:40
• Vatican II and Nuns’ Identity Change: 18:21 – 31:49
• Women’s Role in the Church: 32:39 – 34:48
• Transformative Moment at Age 40: 35:39 – 39:21
• The Realities of the Death Penalty System: 41:14 – 44:11
• Grief, Loss, and Friendship: 47:41 – 49:49
• Finding Joy in Aging: 09:02–10:20, 55:36–56:12
• Resilience and Hope in Activism: 54:18 – 55:16
• On the Art of Storytelling in Film (Dead Man Walking): 57:05 – 58:52

Tone & Style

Sister Helen is warm, funny, direct, and doesn’t shy away from calling out injustice. She has Southern charm, candor, and humility, frequently mixing humor (“privileged out the kazoo”) with deep spiritual and ethical reflections. Julia’s tone is admiring and playful, keeping the conversation accessible and curious.

Key Takeaways

• Wisdom, bravery, and mercy are deeply interlinked—and grown over a lifetime of community, reflection, and courageous action.
• Aging can bring not just losses but a growing sense of agency, purpose, and playful delight.
• Social change—and personal transformation—begin with curiosity, with “waking up” to the realities and suffering around us, and connecting boldly with others.
• To face injustice or grief, “don't go it alone.” Community, action, and truth-telling are the antidotes to paralysis and despair.

For more insights or behind-the-scenes details, the “Wiser Than Me” newsletter is available at wiserthanme.substack.com.