Podcasts about Religious experience

Episode 101. This is the second part of my discussion with Judith Pajo and Zeyneb Sayilgan about living our faiths in America and Germany. While we have all lived in both countries, we practice different faiths, representing the three Abrahamic religions––Judaism, Christianity, and Islam respectively.  In the first part released on 12 June, we discussed our backgrounds, immigration patterns, religious identity and the dynamic of universalism and particularism. In this part, we continue the conversation about the universal and the particular, the problem with identity boxes, and the value or challenge of diversity, before shifting to the issues of the abuse of religion in national efforts to claim power. Bio for Judith:Judith Pajo, PhD, grew up in both Germany and the United States. She studied Catholic theology and cultural anthropology on both sides of the Atlantic and has been teaching at Pace University in New York City. Her new research on interfaith dialogue among Jews, Christians, and Muslims in Europe and North America, conceived a little over a year ago, is transforming her Catholic faith. She is currently working on an article about cultural transgressions in interfaith work. Judith lives in Queens, NY. Links for Judith: Profile at Pace University LinkedIn – Judith Pajo Bio for Zeyneb:Zeyneb Sayilgan, PhD, is the Muslim Scholar at ICJS, The Institute for Islamic, Christian, and Jewish Studies in Baltimore, where her research focuses on Islamic theology and spirituality as articulated in the writings of Muslim scholar Bediüzzaman Said Nursi (1876-1960). She is the host of the Podcast On Being Muslim. You can read her publications on her blog.Links for Zeyneb: On Being Muslim podcastZeyneb's blogICJS website – www.icjs.orgTranscript on BuzzsproutMore episodes about living abroad:Daniel Stein Kokin 'Reinterpreting Jewish Liturgy'Oliver Bradley 'A Jew in Germany'Social Media and other links for Méli:Website – the Talking with God ProjectMeli's emailLinkedIn – Meli SolomonFacebook – Meli SolomonFollow the podcast!The Living Our Beliefs podcast is part of the Talking with God Project.

Episode 100.   For this episode, I've invited two women, Judith Pajo and Zeyneb Sayilgan, for a group discussion about living our faiths in America and Germany. We each have unique patterns of immigration in addition to different religious identities and practice. Judith grew up in both countries as a Catholic, Zeyneb likewise grew up in Germany and is a lifelong Muslim, while I grew up in the US and lived in Germany for nearly nine years, having become a practicing Jew as an adult. In comparing our unique religious experiences in these two countries, we found engaging layers of issues that we hope to further explore.   A small note. Because this conversation was so extensive, I've divided it into two episodes of approximately 30 minutes each. This first part includes discussion of our background, religious identity and the dynamic of universalism and individuality. Part two will be released in two weeks. Bio for Judith:Judith Pajo, PhD, grew up in both Germany and the United States. She studied Catholic theology and cultural anthropology on both sides of the Atlantic and has been teaching at Pace University in New York City. Her new research on interfaith dialogue among Jews, Christians, and Muslims in Europe and North America, conceived a little over a year ago, is transforming her Catholic faith. She is currently working on an article about cultural transgressions in interfaith work. Judith lives in Queens, NY. Links for Judith: Profile at Pace University LinkedIn – Judith Pajo Bio for Zeyneb:Zeyneb Sayilgan, PhD, is the Muslim Scholar at ICJS, The Institute for Islamic, Christian, and Jewish Studies in Baltimore, where her research focuses on Islamic theology and spirituality as articulated in the writings of Muslim scholar Bediüzzaman Said Nursi (1876-1960). She is the host of the Podcast On Being Muslim. You can read her publications on her blog.Links for Zeyneb: On Being Muslim podcastZeyneb's blogICJS website – www.icjs.orgTranscript on BuzzsproutMore episodes about living abroad:Daniel Stein Kokin 'Reinterpreting Jewish Liturgy'Oliver Bradley 'A Jew in Germany'Transcript on BuzzsproutSocial Media and other links for Méli:Website – the Talking with God ProjectMeli's emailLinkedIn – Meli SolomonFacebook – Meli SolomonFollow the podcast!The Living Our Beliefs podcast is part of the Talking with God Project.

In this interview, Lamorna Ash, author of Don't Forget We're Here Forever: A New Generation's Search for Religion, and one of my favourite modern writers, talked about working at the Times Literary Supplement, netball, M. John Harrison, AI and the future of religion, why we should be suspicious of therapy, the Anatomy of Melancholy, the future of writing, what surprised her in the Bible, the Simpsons, the joy of Reddit, the new Pope, Harold Bloom, New Atheism's mistakes, reading J.S. Mill. I have already recommended her new book Don't Forget We're Here Forever, which Lamorna reads aloud from at the end. Full transcript below.Uploading videos onto Substack is too complicated for me (it affects podcast downloads somehow, and the instructions to avoid this problem are complicated, so I have stopped doing it), and to upload to YouTube I have to verify my account but they told me that after I tried to upload it and my phone is dead, so… here is the video embedded on this page. I could quote the whole thing. Here's one good section.Lamorna: Which one would you say I should do first after The Sea, The Sea?Henry: Maybe The Black Prince.Lamorna: The Black Prince. Great.Henry: Which is the one she wrote before The Sea, The Sea and is just a massive masterpiece.Lamorna: I'll read it. Where do you stand on therapy? Do you have a position?Henry: I think on net, it might be a bad thing, even if it is individually useful for people.Lamorna: Why is that?Henry: [laughs] I didn't expect to have to answer the question. Basically two reasons. I think it doesn't take enough account of the moral aspect of the decisions being made very often. This is all very anecdotal and you can find yourself feeling better in the short term, but not necessarily in the long-- If you make a decision that's not outrageously immoral, but which has not had enough weight placed on the moral considerations.There was an article about how lots of people cut out relatives now and the role that therapy plays in that. What I was struck by in the article that was-- Obviously, a lot of those people are justified and their relatives have been abusive or nasty, of course, but there are a lot of cases where you were like, "Well, this is a long-term decision that's been made on a short-term basis." I think in 10 years people may feel very differently. There wasn't enough consideration in the article, at least I felt, given to how any children involved would be affected later on. I think it's a good thing and a bad thing.Lamorna: I'm so with you. I think that's why, because also the fact of it being so private and it being about the individual, and I think, again, there are certain things if you're really struggling with that, it's helpful for, but I think I'm always more into the idea of communal things, like AAA and NA, which obviously a very particular. Something about doing that together, that it's collaborative and therefore there is someone else in the room if you say, "I want to cut out my parent."There's someone else who said that happened to me and it was really hard. It means that you are making those decisions together a little bit more. Therapy, I can feel that in friends and stuff that it does make us, even more, think that we are these bounded individuals when we're not.Henry: I should say, I have known people who've gone to therapy and it's worked really well.Lamorna: I'm doing therapy right now and it is good. TranscriptHenry: Today I am talking to Lamorna Ash. Lamorna is one of the rising stars of her generation. She has written a book about a fishing village in Cornwall. She's written columns for the New Statesman, of which I'm a great admirer. She works for a publisher and now she's written a book called, Don't Forget, We're Here Forever: A New Generation's Search for Religion. I found this book really compelling and I hope you will go and read it right now. Lamorna, welcome.Lamorna Ash: Thank you for having me.Henry: What was it like when you worked at the Times Literary Supplement?Lamorna: It was an amazing introduction to mostly contemporary fiction, but also so many other forms of writing I didn't know about. I went there, I actually wrote a letter, handwritten letter after my finals, saying that I'd really enjoyed this particular piece that somehow linked the anatomy of melancholy to infinite jest, and being deeply, deeply, deeply pretentious, those were my two favorite books. I thought, well, I'll apply for this magazine. I turned up there as an intern. They happened to have a space going.My job was Christmas in that I just spent my entire time unwrapping books and putting them out for editors to swoop by and take away. I'd take on people's corrections. I'd start to see how the editorial process worked. I started reading. I somehow had missed contemporary fiction. I hadn't read people like Rachel Kask or Nausgaard. I was reading them through going to the fiction pages. It made me very excited. Also, my other job whilst I was there, was I had the queries email. You'd get loads of incredibly random emails, including things like, you are cordially invited to go on the Joseph Conrad cycle tour of London. I'd ask the office, "Does anyone want to do this?" Obviously, no one ever said yes.I had this amazing year of doing really weird stuff, like going on Joseph Conrad cycling tour or going to a big talk at the comic book museum or the new advertising museum of London. I loved it. I really loved it.Henry: What was the Joseph Conrad cycling tour of London like? That sounds-Lamorna: Oh, it was so good. I remember at one point we stopped on maybe it was Blackfriars Bridge or perhaps it was Tower Bridge and just read a passage from the secret agent about the boats passing underneath. Then we'd go to parts of the docks where they believe that Conrad stayed for a while, but instead it would be some fancy youth hostel instead.It was run by the Polish Society of London, I believe-- the Polish Society of England, I believe. Again, each time it was like an excuse then to get into that writer and then write a little piece about it for the TLS. I guess, it was also, I was slightly cutting my teeth on how to do that kind of journalism as well.Henry: What do you like about The Anatomy of Melancholy?Lamorna: Almost everything. I think the prologue, Democritus Junior to the Reader is just so much fun and naughty. He says, "I'm writing about melancholy in order to try and avoid melancholy myself." There's six editions of it. He spent basically his entire life writing this book. When he made new additions to the book, rather than adding another chapter, he would often be making insertions within sentences themselves, so it becomes more and more bloated. There's something about the, what's the word for it, the ambition that I find so remarkable of every single possible version of melancholy they could talk about.Then, maybe my favorite bit, and I think about this as a writer a lot, is there's a bit called the digression of air, or perhaps it's digression on the air, where he just suddenly takes the reader soaring upwards to think about air and you sort of travel up like a hawk. It's this sort of breathing moment for a reader where you go in a slightly different direction. I think in my own writing, I always think about digression as this really valuable bit of nonfiction, this sense of, I'm not just taking you straight the way along. I think it'd be useful to go sideways a bit too.Henry: That was Samuel Johnson's favorite book as well. It's a good choice.Lamorna: Was it?Henry: Yes. He said that it was the only book that would get him out of bed in the morning.Lamorna: Really?Henry: Because he was obviously quite depressive. I think he found it useful as well as entertaining, as it were. Should netball be an Olympic sport?Lamorna: [laughs] Oh, it's already going to be my favorite interview. I think the reason it isn't an Olympic-- yes, I have a vested interest in netball and I play netball once a week. I'm not very good, but I am very enthusiastic because it's only played mostly in the Commonwealth. It was invented a year after basketball as a woman-friendly version because women should not run with the ball in case they get overexerted and we shouldn't get too close to contacting each other in case we touch, and that's awful.It really is only played in the Commonwealth. I think the reason it won't become an Olympic sport is because it's not worldwide enough, which I think is a reasonable reason. I'm not, of all the my big things that I want to protest about and care about right now, making that an Olympic sport is a-- it's reasonably low on my list.Henry: Okay, fair enough. You are an admirer of M. John Harrison's fiction, is that right?Lamorna: Yes.Henry: Tell us what should we read and why should we read him?Lamorna: You Should Come With Me Now, is that what it's called? I know I reviewed one of his books years ago and thought it was-- because he's part of that weird sci-fi group that I find really interesting and they've all got a bit of Samuel Delany to them as well. I just remember there was this one particular story in that collection, I think in general, he's a master at sci-fi that doesn't feel in that Dune way of just like, lists of names of places. It somehow has this, it's very literary, it's very odd, it's deeply imaginative. It is like what I wanted adult fiction to be when I was 12 or something, that there's the way the fantasy and imagination works.I remember there was one about all these men, married men who were disappearing into their attics and their wives thought they were just tinkering. What they were doing was building these sort of translucent tubes that were taking them off out of the world. I remember just thinking it was great. His conceits are brilliant and make so much sense, whilst also always being at an interesting slant from reality. Then, I haven't read his memoir, but I hear again and again this anti-memoir he's written. Have you read that?Henry: No.Lamorna: Apparently that's really brilliant too. Then he also, writes those about climbing. He's actually got this one foot in the slightly travel nature writing sports camp. I just always thought he was magic. I remember on Twitter, he was really magic as well. I spent a lot of time following him.Henry: Are you optimistic or pessimistic about the future of writing and literature and books and this whole debate that's going on?Lamorna: It's hard to. I don't want to say anything fast and snappy because it's such a complicated thing. I could just start by saying personally, I'm worried about me and writing because I'm worried about my concentration span. I am so aware that in the same way that a piano player has to be practising the pieces they're going to play all the time. I think partly that's writing and writing, I seem to be able to do even with this broken, distracted form of attention I've got. My reading, I don't feel like I'm getting enough in. I think that means that what I produce will necessarily be less good if I can't solve that.I've just bought a dumb phone on the internet and I hope that's going to help me by no longer having Instagram and things like that. I think, yes, I suppose we do read a bit less. The generation below us is reading less. That's a shame. There's so much more possibility to go out and meet people from different places. On an anthropological level, I think anthropology has had this brilliant turn of becoming more subjective. The places you go, you have to think about your own relationship to them. I think that can make really interesting writing. It's so different from early colonial anthropology.The fact that, I guess, through, although even as I'm saying this, I don't know enough to say it, but I was going to say something about the fact that people, because we can do things like substacks and people can do short form content, maybe that means that more people's voices are getting heard and then they can, if they want to, transfer over and write books as well.I still get excited by books all the time. There's still so much good contemporary stuff that's thrilling me from all over the place. I don't feel that concerned yet. If we all do stop writing books entirely for a year and just read all the extraordinary books that have been happening for the last couple of thousand, we'd be okay.Henry: I simultaneously see the same people complaining that everything's dying and literature is over and that we have an oversupply of books and that capitalism is giving us too many books and that's the problem. I'm like, "Guys, I think you should pick one."Lamorna: [laughs] You're not allowed both those arguments. My one is that I do think it's gross, the bit of publishing that the way that some of these books get so oddly inflated in terms of the sales around them. Then, someone is getting a million pounds for a debut, which is enormous pressure on them. Then, someone else is getting 2K. I feel like there should be, obviously, there should be a massive cap on how large an advance anyone should get, and then more people will actually be able to stay in the world of writing because they won't have to survive on pitiful advances. I think that would actually have a huge impact and we should not be giving, love David Beckham as much as I do, we shouldn't be giving him five million pounds for someone else to go to write his books. It's just crazy.Henry: Don't the sales of books like that subsidize those of us who are not getting such a big advance?Lamorna: I don't think they always do. I think that's the problem is that they do have this wealth of funds to give to celebrities and often those books don't sell either. I still think even if those books sell a huge amount of money, those people still shouldn't be getting ridiculous advances like that. They still should be thinking about young people who are important to the literary, who are going to produce books that are different and surprising and whose voices we need to hear. That feels much more important.Henry: What do you think about the idea that maybe Anglo fiction isn't at a peak? I don't necessarily agree with that, but maybe we can agree that these are not the days of George Eliot and Charles Dickens, but the essay nonfiction periodicals and writing online, this is huge now. Right? Actually, our pessimism is sort of because we're looking in the wrong area and there are other forms of writing that flourish, actually doing great on the internet.Lamorna: Yes, I think so too. Again, I don't think I'm internet worldly enough to know this, but I still find these extraordinary, super weird substats that feel exciting. I also get an enormous amount of pleasure in reading Reddit now, which I only just got into many, many years late, but so many fun, odd things. Like little essays that people write and the way that people respond to each other, which is quick and sharp, and I suppose it fills the gap of what Twitter was.I think nonfiction, I was talking about this morning, because I'm staying with some writers, because we're sort of Cornish, book talk thing together and how much exciting nonfiction has come out this year that we want to read from the UK that is hybrid-y nature travel. Then internationally, I still think there's-- I just read, Perfection by Vincenzo, but there's enough translated fiction that's on the international book list this year that gets me delighted as well. To me, I just don't feel worried about that kind of thing at all when there's so much exciting stuff happening.I love Reddit. I think they really understand things that other people don't on there. I think it's the relief now that when you type in something to Google, you get the AI response. It's something like, it's so nice to feel on Reddit that someone sat down and answered you. Maybe that's such a shame that that's what makes me happy now, that we're in that space. It does feel like someone will tell you not just the answer, but then give you a bit about their life. Then, the particular tool that was passed down by their grandparents. That's so nice.Henry: What do you think of the new Pope?Lamorna: I thought it was because I'd heard all the thing around fat Pope, thin Pope, and obviously, our new Pope is maybe a sort of middle Pope, or at least is closer to Francis, but maybe a bit more palatable to some people. I guess, I'm excited that he's going to do, or it seems like he's also taking time to think, but he's good on migration on supporting the rights of immigrants. I think there's value in the fact of him being American as this being this counterpoint to what's happening in America right now. If feels always feels pointless to say because they're almost the idea of a Pope.I guess, Francis said that, who am I to judge about people being gay, but I think this Pope has so far has been more outly against gay people, but he stood up against JD Vance and his stupid thoughts on theology. I'm quietly optimistic. I guess I'm also waiting for Robert Harris's prophecy to come true and we get an intersex Pope next. Because I think that was prophecy, right? What he wrote.Henry: That would be interesting.Lamorna: Yes.Henry: The religious revival that people say is happening, particularly among young people, how is AI going to make it different than previous religious revivals?Lamorna: Oh, that's so interesting. Maybe first of all, question, sorry, I choked on my coffee. I was slightly questioned the idea if there is a religious revival, it's not actually an argument that I made in the book. When I started writing the book, there wasn't this quiet revival or this Bible studies and survey that suggests that more young people are going to church hadn't come out yet. I was just more, I guess, aware that there were a few people around me who were converting and I thought it'd be interesting if there's a few, there'll be more, which I think probably happens in every single generation, right? Is that that's one way to deal with the longing for meaning we all experience and the struggles in our lives.I was speaking to a New York Times journalist who was questioning the stats that have been coming out because first it's incredibly small pool. It's quite self-selecting that possibly there are people who might have gone to church already. It's still such a small uptick because it makes it hard to say anything definitive. I guess in general, what will the relationship be between AI and religion?I guess, there are so many ways you could go with that. One is that those spaces, religious spaces, are nicely insulated from technology. Not everywhere. Obviously, in some places they aren't, but often it's a space in which you put your phone away. In my head, the desire to go to church is as against having to deal with AI or having to deal with technology being integrated to every other aspect of my life.I guess maybe people will start worshiping the idea of the singularity. Maybe we'll get the singularity and Terminator, or the Matrix is going to happen, and we'll call them our gods because they will feel like gods. That's maybe one option. I don't know how AI-- I guess I don't know enough about AI that maybe you'll have AI, or does this happen? Maybe this has happened already that you could have an AI confession and you'd have an AI priest and they tell you--Henry: Sure. It's huge for therapy, right?Lamorna: Yes.Henry: Which is that adjacent thing.Lamorna: That's a good point. It does feel something about-- I'm sure, theologically, it's not supposed to work if you haven't been ordained, but can an AI be ordained, become a priest?Henry: IndeedLamorna: Could they do communion? I don't know. It's fascinating.Henry: I can see a situation where a young person lives in a secular environment or culture and is interested in things and the AI is the, in some ways, easiest place for them to turn to say, "I need to talk about-- I have these weird semi-religious feelings, or I'm interested." The AI's not going to be like, "Oh, really? That's weird." There's the question of will we worship AI or whatever, but also will we get people's conversions being shaped by their therapy/confessors/whatever chat with their LLM?Lamorna: Oh, it's so interesting. I read a piece recently in the LRB by James Vincent. It was about AI relationships, our relationship with AI, and he looked at AI girlfriends. There was this incredible case, maybe you read about it, about a guy who tried to kill the Queen some years back. His defense was that his AI girlfriend had really encouraged him to do that. Then, you can see the transcripts of the text, and he says, "I'm thinking about killing the Queen." His AI girlfriend is like, "Go for it, baby."It's that thing there of like, at the moment, AI is still reflecting back our own desires or refracting almost like shifting how they're expressed. I'm trying to imagine that in the same case of me saying, "I feel really lonely, and I'm thinking about Christianity." My friend would speak with all of their context and background, and whatever they've got going on for them. Whereas an AI would feel my desire there and go, "That's a good idea. It says online this." It's very straight. It would definitely lead us in directions that feel less than human or other than human.Henry: I also have this thought, you used to, I think you still do, but you see it less. You used to get a Samaritan's Bible in every hotel. The Samaritans, will they start trying to install a religious chatbot in places where people--? There are lots of ways in which you could use it as a distribution mechanism.Lamorna: Which does feel so far from the point. Not to think about the gospels, but that feeling of something I talk about in the book is that, so much of it is human contact. Is that this factor of being changed in the moment, person to person. If I have any philosophy for life at the moment is this sense of desperately needing contact that we are saved by each other all the time, not by our telephones and things that aren't real. It's the surprise.I quote it in the book, but Iris Murdoch describes love is the very difficult realization that someone other than yourself is real. I think that's the thing that makes us all survive, is that reminder that if you're feeling deeply depressed, being like, there is someone else that is real, and they have a struggle that matters as much as mine. I think that's something that you are never going to get through a conversation with a chatbot, because it's like a therapeutic thing. You are not having to ask it the same questions, or you are not having to extend yourself to think about someone else in those conversations.Henry: Which Iris Murdoch novels do you like?Lamorna: I've only read The Sea, The Sea, but I really enjoyed it. Which ones do you like?Henry: I love The Sea, The Sea, and The Black Prince. I like the late books, like The Good Apprentice and The Philosopher's Pupil, as well. Some people tell you, "Don't read those. They're late works and they're no good," but I was obsessed. I was absolutely compelled, and they're still all in my head. They're insane.Lamorna: Oh, I must, because I've got a big collection of her essays. I'm thinking is so beautiful, her philosophical thought. It's that feeling, I know I'm going the wrong-- starting in the wrong place, but I do feel that she's someone I'd really love to explore next, kind of books.Henry: I think you'd like her because she's very interested in the question of, can therapy help, can philosophy help, can religion help? She's very dubious about therapy and philosophy, and she is mystic. There are queer characters and neurodivergent characters. For a novelist in the '70s, you read her now and you're like, "Well, this is all just happening now."Lamorna: Cool.Henry: Maybe we should be passing these books out. People need this right now.Lamorna: Which one would you say I should do first after The Sea, The Sea?Henry: Maybe The Black Prince.Lamorna: The Black Prince. Great.Henry: Which is the one she wrote before The Sea, The Sea and is just a massive masterpiece.Lamorna: I'll read it. Where do you stand on therapy? Do you have a position?Henry: I think on net, it might be a bad thing, even if it is individually useful for people.Lamorna: Why is that?Henry: [laughs] I didn't expect to have to answer the question. Basically two reasons. I think it doesn't take enough account of the moral aspect of the decisions being made very often. This is all very anecdotal and you can find yourself feeling better in the short term, but not necessarily in the long-- If you make a decision that's not outrageously immoral, but which has not had enough weight placed on the moral considerations.There was an article about how lots of people cut out relatives now and the role that therapy plays in that. What I was struck by in the article that was-- Obviously, a lot of those people are justified and their relatives have been abusive or nasty, of course, but there are a lot of cases where you were like, "Well, this is a long-term decision that's been made on a short-term basis." I think in 10 years people may feel very differently. There wasn't enough consideration in the article, at least I felt, given to how any children involved would be affected later on. I think it's a good thing and a bad thing.Lamorna: I'm so with you. I think that's why, because also the fact of it being so private and it being about the individual, and I think, again, there are certain things if you're really struggling with that, it's helpful for, but I think I'm always more into the idea of communal things, like AAA and NA, which obviously a very particular. Something about doing that together, that it's collaborative and therefore there is someone else in the room if you say, "I want to cut out my parent."There's someone else who said that happened to me and it was really hard. It means that you are making those decisions together a little bit more. Therapy, I can feel that in friends and stuff that it does make us, even more, think that we are these bounded individuals when we're not.Henry: I should say, I have known people who've gone to therapy and it's worked really well.Lamorna: I'm doing therapy right now and it is good. I think, in my head, it's like it should be one among many and I still question it whilst doing it.Henry: To the extent that there is a religious revival among "Gen Z," how much is it because they have phones? Because you wrote something like, in fact, I have the quote, "There's a sense of terrible tragedy. How can you hold this constant grief that we feel, whether it's the genocide in Gaza or climate collapse? Where do I put all the misery that I receive every single second through my phone? Church can then be a space where I can quietly go and light a candle." Is it that these young people are going to religion because the phone has really pushed a version of the world into their faces that was not present when I was young or people are older than me?Lamorna: I think it's one of, or that the phone is the symptom because the phone, whatever you call it, technology, the internet, is the thing that draws the world closer to us in so many different ways. One being that this sense of being aware of what's happening around in other places in the world, which maybe means that you become more tolerant of other religions because you're hearing about it more. That, on TikTok, there's loads of kids all across the world talking about their particular faiths and their background and which aspera they're in, and all that kind of thing.Then, this sense of horror being very unavoidable that you wake up and it is there and you wake up and you think, "What am I doing? What am I doing here? I feel completely useless." Perhaps then you end up in a church, but I'm not sure.I think a bigger player in my head is the fact that we are more pluralistic as societies. That you are more likely to encounter other religions in schools. I think then the question is, well then maybe that'll be valuable for me as well. I think also, not having parents pushing religion on you makes kids, the fact of the generation above the British people, your parents' generations, not saying religion is important, you go to church, then it becomes something people can become more curious about in their own right as adults. I think that plays into it.I think isolation plays into it and that's just not about technology and the phone, but that's the sense of-- and again, I'm thinking about early 20s, mid 20s, so adults who are moving from place to place, who maybe feel very isolated and alone, who are doing jobs that make them feel isolated and alone, and there are this dearth of community spaces and then thinking, well, didn't people used to go to churches, it would be so nice to know someone older than me.I don't know how this fits in, but I was thinking about, I saw this documentary, The Encampments, like two days ago, which is about the Columbia University encampments and within that, Mahmood Khalil, who's the one who's imprisoned at the moment, who was this amazing leader within the movement and is from Palestine. The phone in that, the sense about how it was used to gather and collect people and keep people aware of what's happening and mean that everyone is more conscious and there's a point when they need more people in the encampments because the police are going to come. It's like, "Everyone, use your phone, call people now." I think I can often be like, "Oh no, phones are terrible," but this sense within protest, within communal activity, how valuable they can be as well.I haven't quite gotten into that thought. I don't know, basically. I think it's so hard. I've grown up with a phone. I have no sense of how much it plays a part in everything about me, but obviously, it is a huge amount. I do think it's something that we all think about and are horrified by whilst also seeing it as like this weird extension of ourselves. That definitely plays into then culturally, the decisions we make to either try and avoid them, find spaces where you can be without them.Henry: How old do you think a child should be when they're first given a phone? A smartphone, like an iPhone type thing?Lamorna: I think, 21.Henry: Yes?Lamorna: No, I don't know. I obviously wouldn't know that about a child.Henry: I might.Lamorna: I'd love to. I would really love to because, I don't know, I have a few friends who weren't allowed to watch TV until they were 18 and they are eminently smarter than me and lots of my other friends. There's something about, I don't know, I hate the idea that as I'm getting older, I'm becoming more scaremongering like, "Oh no, when I was young--" because I think my generation was backed in loads of ways. This thing of kids spending so much less time outside and so much less time being able to imagine things, I think I am quite happy to say that feels like a terrible loss.I read a piece recently about kids in New York and I think they were quite sort of middle-class Brooklyn-y kids, but they choose to go days without their phones and they all go off into the forest together. There is this sense of saying giving kids autonomy, but at the same time, their relationship with a phone is not one of agency. It's them versus tech bros who have designed things that are so deeply addictive, that no adult can let go of it. Let alone a child who's still forming how to work out self-control, discipline and stuff. I think a good parenting thing would be to limit massively these completely non-neutral objects that they're given, that are made like crack and impossible to let go of.Henry: Do you think religious education in schools should be different or should there be more of it?Lamorna: Yes, I think it should be much better. I don't know about you, but I just remember doing loads of diagrams of different religious spaces like, "This is what a mosque looks like," and then I'd draw the diagram. I knew nothing. I barely knew the difference between the Old Testament and the New Testament. In fact, I probably didn't as a teenager.I remember actually in sixth form, having this great philosophy teacher who was talking about the idea of proto antisemitism within the gospels. I was like, "Wait, what?" Because I just didn't really understand. I didn't know that it was in Greek, that the Old Testament was in Hebrew. I just didn't know. I think all these holy texts that we've been carrying with us for thousands of years across the world have so much in them that's worth reading and knowing.If I was in charge of our R.E., I would get kids to write on all holy texts, but really think about them and try and answer moral problems. You'd put philosophy back with religion and really connect them and think, what is Nietzsche reacting against? What does Freud about how is this form of Christianity different like this? I think that my sense is that since Gove, but also I'm sure way before that as well, the sense of just not taking young people seriously, when actually they're thoughtful, intelligent and able to wrestle with these things, it's good for them to have know what they're choosing against, if they're not interested in religion.Also, at base, those texts are beautiful, all of them are, and are foundational and if you want to be able to study English or history to know things about religious texts and the practices of religion and how those rituals came about and how it's changed over thousands of years, feels important.Henry: Which religious poets do you like other than Hopkins? Because you write very nicely about Hopkins in the book.Lamorna: He's my favorite. I like John Donne a lot. I remember reading lots of his sermons and Lancelot Andrews' sermons at university and thinking they were just astonishingly beautiful. There are certain John Donne sermons and it's this feeling of when he takes just maybe a line from one of Paul's letters and then is able to extend it and extend it, and it's like he's making it grow in material or it's like it's a root where suddenly all these branches are coming off it.Who else do I like? I like George Herbert. Gosh, my brain is going in terms of who else was useful when I was thinking about. Oh it's gone.Henry: Do you like W.H. Auden?Lamorna: Oh yes. I love Auden, yes. I was rereading his poems about, oh what's it called? The one about Spain?Henry: Oh yes.Lamorna: About the idea of tomorrow.Henry: I don't have a memory either, but I know the poem you mean, yes.Lamorna: Okay. Then I'm trying to think of earlier religious poets. I suppose things like The Dream of the Rood and fun ways of getting into it and if you're looking at medieval poetry.Henry: I also think Betjeman is underrated for this.Lamorna: I've barely read any Betjeman.Henry: There's a poem called Christmas. You might like it.Lamorna: Okay.Henry: It's this famous line and is it true and is it true? He really gets into this thing of, "We're all unwrapping tinsely presents and I'm sitting here trying to work out if God became man." It's really good. It's really good. The other one is called Norfolk and again, another famous line, "When did the devil first attack?" It talks about puberty as the arrival of the awareness of sin and so forth.Lamorna: Oh, yes.Henry: It's great. Really, really good stuff. Do you personally believe in the resurrection?Lamorna: [chuckles] I keep being asked this.Henry: I know. I'm sorry.Lamorna: My best answer is sometimes. Because I do sometimes in that way that-- someone I interviewed who's absolutely brilliant in the book, Robert, and he's a Cambridge professor. He's a pragmatist and he talks about the idea of saying I'm a disciplined person means nothing unless you're enacting that discipline daily or it falls away. For him, that belief in a Kierkegaardian leap way is something that needs to be reenacted in every moment to say, I believe and mean it.I think there are moments when my church attendance is better and I'm listening to a reading that's from Acts or whatever and understanding the sense of those moments, Paul traveling around Europe and Asia Minor, only because he fully believed that this is what's happened. Those letters and as you're reading those letters, the way I read literature or biblical writing is to believe in that moment because for that person, they believe too. I think there are points at which the resurrection can feel true to me, but it does feel like I'm accessing that idea of truth in a different way than I am accessing truth about-- it's close to how I think about love as something that's very, very real, but very different from experiential feelings.I had something else I wanted to say about that and it's just gone. Oh yes. I was at Hay Festival a couple of weeks ago. Do you know the Philosopher Agnes Callard?Henry: Oh, sure.Lamorna: She gave a really great talk about Socrates and her love of Socrates, but she also came to my talk and she and her husband, who I think met through arguing about Aristotle, told me they argued for about half a day about a line I'd said, which was that during writing the book, I'd learned to believe in the belief of other people, her husband was like, "You can't believe in the belief of other people if you don't believe it too. That doesn't work. That doesn't make sense." I was like, "That's so interesting." I can so feel that if we're taking that analytically, that if I say I don't believe in the resurrection, not just that I believe you believe it, but I believe in your belief in the resurrection. At what point is that any different from saying, I believe in the resurrection. I feel like I need to spend more time with it. What the slight gap is there that I don't have that someone else does, or as I say it, do I then believe in the resurrection that moment? I'm not sure.I think also what I'm doing right now is trying to sound all clever with it, whereas for other people it's this deep ingrained truth that governs every moment of their life and that they can feel everywhere, or perhaps they can't. Perhaps there's more doubt than they suggest, which I think is the case with lots of us. Say on the deathbed, someone saying that they fully believe in the resurrection because that means there's eternal salvation, and their family believe in that too. I don't think I have that kind of certainty, but I admire it.Henry: Tell me how you got the title for this book from an episode of The Simpsons.Lamorna: It's really good app. It's from When Maggie Makes Three, which is my favorite episode. I think titles are horribly hard. I really struck my first book. I would have these sleepless nights just thinking about words related to the sea, and be like, blue something. I don't know. There was a point where my editor wanted to call it Trawler Girl. I said, "We mustn't. That's awful. That's so bad. It makes me sound like a terrible superhero. I'm not a girl, I'm a woman."With this one, I think it was my fun title for ages. Yes, it's this plaque that Homer has put-- Mr. Burns puts up this plaque to remind him that he will never get to leave the power plant, "Don't forget you're here forever."I just think it's a strong and bonkers line. I think it had this element of play or silliness that I wanted, that I didn't think about too hard. I guess that's an evangelical Christian underneath what they're actually saying is saying-- not all evangelicals, but often is this sense of no, no, no, we are here forever. You are going to live forever. That is what heaven means.That sense of then saying it in this jokey way. I think church is often very funny spaces, and funny things happen. They make good comedy series when you talk about faith.Someone's saying she don't forget we're here forever. The don't forget makes it so colloquial and silly. I just thought it was a funny line for that reason.Then also that question people always ask, "Is religion going to die out?" I thought that played into it. This feeling that, yes, I write about it. There was a point when I was going to an Extinction Rebellion protest, and everyone was marching along with that symbol of the hourglass inside a circle next to a man who had a huge sign saying, "Stop, look, hell is real, the end of the world is coming." This sense of different forms of apocalyptic thinking that are everywhere at the moment. I felt like the title worked for that as well.Henry: I like that episode of The Simpsons because it's an expression of an old idea where he's doing something boring and his life is going to slip away bit by bit. The don't forget you're here forever is supposed to make that worse, but he turns it round into the live like you're going to die tomorrow philosophy and makes his own kind of meaning out of it.Lamorna: By papering it over here with pictures of Maggie. They love wordplay, the writers of The Simpsons, and so that it reads, "Do it for her," instead. That feeling of-- I think that with faith as well of, don't forget we're here forever, think about heaven when actually so much of our life is about papering it over with humanity and being like, "Does it matter? I'm with you right now, and that's what matters." That immediacy of human contact that church is also really about, that joy in the moment. Where it doesn't really matter in that second if you're going to heaven or hell, or if that exists. You're there together, and it's euphoric, or at least it's a relief or comforting.Henry: You did a lot of Bible study and bible reading to write this book. What were the big surprises for you?Lamorna: [chuckles] This is really the ending, but revelation, I don't really think it's very well written at all. It shouldn't be in there, possibly. It's just not [unintelligible 00:39:20] It got added right in the last minute. I guess it should be in there. I just don't know. What can I say?So much of it was a surprise. I think slowly reading the Psalms was a lovely surprise for me because they contain so much uncertainty and anguish, and doubt. Imagining those being read aloud to me always felt like a very exciting thing.Henry: Did you read them aloud?Lamorna: When I go to more Anglo Catholic services, they tend to do them-- I never know how to pronounce this. Antiphonally.Henry: Oh yes.Lamorna: Back and forth between you. It's very reverential, lovely experience to do that. I really think I was surprised by almost everything I was reading. At the start of Kierkegaard's Fear and Trembling, he does this amazing thing where he does four different versions of what could be happening in the Isaac and Abraham story underneath.There's this sense of in the Bible, and I'm going to get this wrong, but in Mimesis, Auerbach talks about the way that you're not given the psychological understanding within the Bible. There's so much space for readers to think with, because you're just being told things that happened, and the story moves on quickly, moment by moment. With Isaac and Abraham, what it would mean if Isaac actually had seen the fact that his father was planning to kill him. Would he then lose his faith? All these different scenarios.I suddenly realised that the Bible was not just a fixed text, but there was space to play with it as well. In the book, I use the story of Jacob and the angel and play around with the meaning of that and what would happen after this encounter between Jacob and an angel for both of them.Bits in the Gospels, I love the story of the Gerasene Demoniac. He was a knight. He was very unwell, and no one knew what to do with him. He was ostracised from his community. He would sit in this cave and scream and lacerate himself against the cave walls. Then Jesus comes to him and speaks to him and speaks to the demons inside him. There's this thing in Mark's Gospel that Harold Bloom talks about, where only demons are actually able to perceive. Most people have to ask Christ who he really is, but demons can perceive him immediately and know he's the son of God.The demons say that they are legion. Then Jesus puts them into 1,000 pigs. Is it more? I can't remember. Then they're sent off over the cliff edge. Then the man is made whole and is able to go back to his community. I just think there's just so much in that. It's so rich and strange. I think, yes, there's something about knowing you could sit down and just read a tiny bit of the Bible and find something strange and unusual that also might speak to something you've read that's from thousands of years later.I also didn't know that in Mark's Gospel, the last part of it is addended, added on to it. Before that, it ended with the women being afraid, seeing the empty tomb, but there's no resolution. There's no sense of Christ coming back as spirit. It ended in this deep uncertainty and fear. I thought that was so fascinating because then again, it reminds you that those texts have been played around with and thought with, and meddled with, and changed over time. It takes away from the idea that it's fixed and certain, the Bible.Henry: What did you think of Harold Bloom's book The Shadow of a Great Rock?Lamorna: I really loved it. He says that he treats Shakespeare more religiously and the Bible more like literature, which I found a funny, irreverent thing to say. There's lovely stuff in there where, I think it was Ruth, he was like, maybe it was written by a woman. He takes you through the different Hebrew writers for Genesis. Which again, becoming at this as such a novice in so many ways, realising that, okay, so when it's Yahweh, it's one particular writer, there's the priestly source for particular kinds of writing. The Yahwist is more ironic, or the God you get is more playful.That was this key into thinking about how each person trying to write about God, it's still them and their sense of the world, which is particular and idiosyncratic is forming the messages that they believe they're receiving from God. I found that exciting.Yes, he's got this line. He's talking about the blessings that God gives to men in Genesis. He's trying to understand, Bloom, what the meaning of a blessing is. He describes it as more life into a time without boundaries. That's a line that I just found so beautiful, and always think about what the meaning of that is. I write it in the book.My best friend, Sammy, who's just the most game person in the world, that you tell them anything, they're like, "Cool." I told them that line. They were like, "I'm getting it tattooed on my arm next week." Then got me to write in my handwriting. I can only write in my handwriting, but write down, "More time into life without boundaries." Now they've just got it on their arm.Henry: Nice.Lamorna: I really like. They're Jewish, non-practicing. They're not that really interested in it. They were like, "That's a good line to keep somewhere."Henry: I think it's actually one of Bloom's best books. There's a lot of discussion about, is he good? Is he not good? I love that book because it really just introduces people to the Bible and to different versions of the Bible. He does all that Harold Bloom stuff where he's like, "These are the only good lines in this particular translation of this section. The rest is so much dross.He's really attentive to the differences between the translations, both theologically but also aesthetically. I think a lot of people don't know the Bible. It's a really good way to get started on a-- sitting down and reading the Bible in order. It's going to fail for a lot of people. Harold Bloom is a good introduction that actually gives you a lot of the Bible itself.Lamorna: For sure, because it's got that midrash feeling of being like someone else working around it, which then helps you get inside it. I was reading that book whilst going to these Bible studies at a conservative evangelical church called All Souls. I wasn't understanding what on earth was going on in Mark through the way that we're being told to read it, which is kids' comprehension.Maybe it was useful to think about why would the people have been afraid when Christ quelled the storms? It was doing something, but there was no sense of getting inside the text. Then, to read alongside that, Bloom saying that the Christ in Mark is the most unknowable of all the versions of Christ. Then again, just thinking, "Oh, hang on." There's an author. The author of Mark's gospel is perceiving Christ in a particular way. This is the first of the gospels writing about Christ. What does it mean? He's unknowable. Suddenly thinking of him as a character, and therefore thinking about how people are relating to him. It totally cracks the text open for you.Henry: Do you think denominational differences are still important? Do most people have actual differences in dogma, or are they just more cultural distinctions?Lamorna: They're ritual distinctions. There really is little that you could compare between a Quaker meeting and a Catholic service. That silence is the fundamental aspect of all of it. There's a sense of enlighten.My Quaker mate, Lawrence, he's an atheist, but he wouldn't go to another church service because he's so against the idea of hierarchy and someone speaking from a pulpit. He's like, honestly, the reincarnated spirit of George Fox in many ways, in lots of ways he's not.I guess it becomes more blurry because, yes, there's this big thing in the early 20th century in Britain anyway, where the line that becomes more significant is conservative liberal. It's very strange that that's how our world gets divided. There's real simplification that perhaps then, a liberal Anglican church and a liberal Catholic church have more in relationship than a conservative Catholic church and a conservative evangelical church. The line that is often thinking about sexuality and marriage.I was interested, people have suddenly was called up in my book that I talk about sex a lot. I think it's because sex comes up so much, it feels hard not to. That does seem to be more important than denominational differences in some ways. I do think there's something really interesting in this idea of-- Oh, [unintelligible 00:48:17] got stung. God, this is a bit dramatic. Sorry, I choked on coffee earlier. Now I'm going to get stung by a bee.Henry: This is good. This is what makes a podcast fun. What next?Lamorna: You don't get this in the BBC studios. Maybe you do. Oh, what was I about to say? Oh, yes. I like the idea of church shopping. People saying that often it speaks to the person they are, what they're looking for in a church. I think it's delightful to me that there's such a broad church, and there's so many different spaces that you can go into to discover the church that's right for you. Sorry. I'm really distracted by this wasp or bee. Anyway.Henry: How easy was it to get people to be honest with you?Lamorna: I don't know. I think that there's certain questions that do tunnel right through to the heart of things. Faith seems to be one of them. When you talk about faith with people, you're getting rid of quite a lot of the chaff around with the politeness or whatever niceties that you'd usually speak about.I was talking about this with another friend who's been doing this. He's doing a play about Grindr. He was talking about how strange it is that when you ask to interview someone and you have a dictaphone there, you do get a deeper instant conversation. Again, it's a bit like a therapeutic conversation where someone has said to you, "I'm just going to sit and listen." You've already agreed, and you know it's going to be in a book. "Do you mind talking about this thing?"That just allows this opportunity for people to be more honest because they're aware that the person there is actually wanting to listen. It's so hard to create spaces. I create a cordon and say, "We're going to have a serious conversation now." Often, that feels very artificial. I think yes, the beauty of getting to sit there with a dictaphone on your notebook is you are like, "I really am interested in this. It really matters to me." I guess it feels easy in that way to get honesty.Obviously, we're all constructing a version of ourselves for each other all the time. It's hard for me to know to what extent they're responding to what they're getting from me, and what they think I want to hear. If someone else interviewed them, they would probably get something quite different. I don't know. I think if you come to be with openness, and you talk a bit about your journey, then often people want to speak about it as well.I'm trying to think. I've rarely interviewed someone where I haven't felt this slightly glowy, shimmery sense of it, or what I'm learning feels new and feels very true. I felt the same with Cornish Fisherman, that there was this real honesty in these conversations. Many years ago, I remember I got really obsessed with interviewing my mom. I think I was just always wanting to practice interviewing. The same thing that if there's this object between you, it shifts the dimensions of the conversation and tends towards seriousness.Henry: How sudden are most people's conversions?Lamorna: Really depends. I was in this conversation with someone the other day. When she was 14, 15, she got caught shoplifting. She literally went, "Oh, if there's a God up there, can you help get me out of the situation?" The guy let her go, and she's been a Christian ever since. She had an instantaneous conversion. Someone I interviewed in the book, and he was a really thoughtful card-carrying atheist. He had his [unintelligible 00:51:58] in his back pocket.He hated the Christians and would always have a go at them at school because he thought it was silly, their belief. Then he had this instant conversion that feels very charismatic in form, where he was just walking down an avenue of trees at school, and he felt the entire universe smiling at him and went, "Oh s**t, I better become a Christian."Again, I wonder if it depends. I could say it depends on the person you are, whether you are capable of having an instant conversion. Perhaps if I were in a religious frame of mind, I'd say it depends on what God would want from you. Do you need an instant conversion, or do you need to very slowly have the well filling up?I really liked when a priest said to me that people often go to church and expect to be changed in a moment. He's like, "No, you have to go for 20 years before anything happens." Something about that slow incremental conversion to me is more satisfying. It's funny, I was having a conversation with someone about if they believe in ghosts, and they were like, "Well, if I saw one, then I believe in ghosts." For some people, transcendental things happen instantaneously, and it does change them ultimately instantly.I don't know, I would love to see some stats about which kinds of conversions are more popular, probably more instant ones. I love, and I use it in the book, but William James' Varieties of Religious Experience. He talks about there's some people who are sick-souled or who are also more porous bordered people for whom strange things can more easily cross the borders of their person. They're more likely to convert and more likely to see things.I really like him describing it that way because often someone who's like that, it might just be described as well, you have a mental illness. That some people are-- I don't know, they've got sharper antennae than the rest of us. I think that is an interesting thought for why some people can convert instantly.Henry: I think all conversions take a long time. At the moment, there's often a pivotal moment, but there's something a long time before or after that, that may or may not look a conversion, but which is an inevitable part of the process. I'm slightly obsessed with the idea of quests, but I think all conversions are a quest or a pilgrimage. Your book is basically a quest narrative. As you go around in your Toyota, visiting these places. I'm suspicious, I think the immediate moment is bundled up with a longer-term thing very often, but it's not easy to see it.Lamorna: I love that. I've thought about the long tail afterwards, but I hadn't thought about the lead-up, the idea of that. Of what little things are changing. That's such a lovely thought. Their conversions began from birth, maybe.Henry: The shoplifter, it doesn't look like that's where they're heading. In retrospect, you can see that there weren't that many ways out of this path that they're on. Malcolm X is like this. One way of reading his autobiography is as a coming-of-age story. Another way of reading it is, when is this guy going to convert? This is going to happen.Lamorna: I really like that. Then there's also that sense of how fixed the conversion is, as well, from moment to moment. That Adam Phillips' book on wanting to change, he talks about our desire for change often outstrips our capacity for change. That sense of how changed am I afterwards? How much does my conversion last in every moment? It goes back to the do you believe in the resurrection thing.I find that that really weird thing about writing a book is, it is partly a construction. You've got the eye in there. You're creating something that is different from your reality and fixed, and you're in charge of it. It's stable, it remains, and you come to an ending. Then your life continues to divert and deviate in loads of different ways. It's such a strange thing in that way. Every conversion narrative we have fixed in writing, be it Augustine or Paul, whatever, is so far from the reality of that person's experience.Henry: What did the new atheists get wrong?Lamorna: Arrogance. They were arrogant. Although I wonder, I guess it was such a cultural moment, and perhaps in the same way that everyone is in the media, very excitedly talking about revival now. There was something that was created around them as well, which was delight in this sense of the end of something. I wonder how much of that was them and how much of it was, they were being carried along by this cultural media movement.I suppose the thing that always gets said, and I haven't read enough Dawkins to say this with any authority, but is that the form of religion that he was attempting to denigrate was a very basic form of Christianity, a real, simplified sense. That he did that with all forms of religion. Scientific progress shows us we've progressed beyond this point, and we don't need this, and it's silly and foolish.I guess he underestimated the depth and richness of religion, and also the fact of this idea of historical progress, when the people in the past were foolish, when they were as bright and stupid as we are now.Henry: I think they believed in the secularization idea. People like Rodney Stark and others were pointing out that it's not really true that we secularized a lot more consistency. John Gray, the whole world is actually very religious. This led them away from John Stuart Mill-type thinking about theism. I think everyone should read more John Stuart Mill, but they particularly should have read the theism essays. That would have been--Lamorna: I've only just got into him because I love the LRB Close Reading podcast. It's Jonathan Rée and James Wood. They did one on John Stuart Mill's autobiography, which I've since been reading. It's an-Henry: It's a great book.Lamorna: -amazing book. His crisis is one of-- He says, "The question of religion is not something that has been a part of my life, but the sense of being so deeply learned." His dad was like, "No poetry." In his crisis moment, suddenly realizing that that's what he needed. He was missing feeling, or he was missing a way of looking at the world that had questioning and doubt within it through poetry.There was a bit in the autobiography, and he talks about when he was in this deep depression, whenever he was at 19 or something. That he was so depressed that he thought if there's a certain number of musical notes, one day there will be no more new music because every single combination will have been done. The sense of, it's so sweetly awful thinking, but without the sense-- I'm not sure what I'm trying to say here.I found his crisis so fascinating to read about and how he comes out of that through this care and attention of beautiful literature and thinking, and through his love of-- What was his wife called again?Henry: Harriet.Lamorna: Harriet. He credits her for almost all his thinking. He wouldn't have moved towards socialism without her. Suddenly, humans are deeply important to him. He feels sorry for the fact that his dad could not express love or take love from him, and that that was such a terrible deficiency in his life.Henry: Mill's interesting on religion because he looks very secular. In fact, if you read his letters, he's often going into churches.Lamorna: Oh, really?Henry: Yes, when he's in Italy, because he had tuberculosis. He had to be abroad a lot. He's always going to services at Easter and going into the churches. For a secular person, he really appreciates all these aspects of religion. His stepdaughter was-- there's a diary of hers in their archives. She was very religious, very intense. As a young woman, when she's 16, 17, intensely Catholic or Anglo-Catholic. Really, it's quite startling.I was reading this thing, and I was like, "Wait, who in the Mill household is writing this? This is insane." There are actually references in his letters where he says, "Oh, we'll have to arrive in time for Good Friday so that she can go to church." He's very attentive to it. Then he writes these theism essays, right at the end of his life. He's very open-minded and very interrogatory of the idea. He really wants to understand. He's not a new atheist at all.Lamorna: Oh, okay. I need to read the deism essays.Henry: You're going to love it. It's very aligned. What hymns do you like?Lamorna: Oh, no.Henry: You can be not a hymn person.Lamorna: No. I'm not a massive hymn person. When I'm in church, the Anglican church that I go to in London now, I always think, "Remember that. That was a really nice one." I like to be a pilgrim. I really don't have the brain that can do this off the cuff. I'm not very musically. I'm deeply unmusical.There was one that I was thinking of. I think it's an Irish one. I feel like I wrote this down at one point, because I thought I might be asked in another interview. I had to write down what I thought in case a hymn that I liked. Which sounds a bit like a politician, when they're asked a question, they're like, "I love football." I actually can't think of any. I'm sorry.Henry: No, that's fine.Lamorna: What are your best? Maybe that will spark something in me.Henry: I like Tell Out My Soul. Do you know that one?Lamorna: Oh, [sings] Tell Out My Soul. That's a good one.Henry: If you have a full church and people are really going for it, that can be amazing. I like all the classics. I don't have any unusual choices. Tell Out My Soul, it's a great one. Lamorna Ash, this has been great. Thank you very much.Lamorna: Thank you.Henry: To close, I think you're going to read us a passage from your book.Lamorna: I am.Henry: This is near the end. It's about the Bible.Lamorna: Yes. Thank you so much. This has definitely been my favourite interview.Henry: Oh, good.Lamorna: I really enjoyed it. It's really fun.Henry: Thank you.Lamorna: Yes, this is right near the end. This is when I ended up at a church, St Luke's, West Holloway. It was a very small 9:00 AM service. Whilst the priest who'd stepped in to read because the actual priest had left, was reading, I just kept thinking about all the stories that I'd heard and wondering about the Bible and how the choices behind where it ends, where it ends.I don't think I understand why the Bible ends where it does. The final lines of the book of Revelation are, "He who testifies to these things says, Yes, I am coming soon. Amen. Come, Lord Jesus, the grace of the Lord Jesus be with God's people. Amen." Which does sound like a to-be-continued. I don't mean the Bible feels incomplete because it ends with Revelation. What I mean is, if we have continued to hear God and wrestle with him and his emissaries ever since the first overtures of the Christian faith sounded.Why do we not treat these encounters with the same reverence as the works assembled in the New Testament? Why have we let our holy text grow so antique and untouchable instead of allowing them to expand like a divine Wikipedia updated in perpetuity? That way, each angelic struggle and Damascene conversion that has ever occurred or one day will, would become part of its fabric.In this Borgesian Bible, we would have the Gospel of Mary, not a fictitious biography constructed by a man a century after her death, but her true words. We would have the conversion of the Ethiopian eunuch on the road between Jerusalem and Gaza from Acts, but this time given in the first person. We would have descriptions from the Picts on Iona of the Irish Saint Columba appearing in a rowboat over the horizon.We would have the Gospels of those from the early Eastern Orthodox churches, Assyrian Gospels, Syriac Orthodox Gospels. We would have records of the crusades from the Christian soldiers sent out through Europe to Jerusalem in order to massacre those of other faiths, both Muslim and Jewish. In reading these accounts, we would be forced to confront the ways in which scripture can be interpreted

This week, Richard Saville-Smith joins Kelly and John to talk about his book Acute Religious Experiences – Madness, Psychosis, and Religious Studies, which was published by Bloomsbury in 2023. Saville-Smith is an independent researcher who focuses on the intersection of madness, mental disorders, and acute religious experiences, from a mad studies perspective. He earned his PhD in Philosophy and Religious Studies from the University of Edinburgh in 2020. They discuss the relatively little-known academic field of mad studies - which seeks to destigmatize and depathologize the concept of madness - and how the fields of psychiatry and religious studies, often operating in conflict with one another, have distorted our understanding of the authenticity of acute religious experiences like the ones described in the lives of Joan of Arc or Jesus. Richard is on Bluesky @dranamorphosis

““Believest thou…?”: Faith, Cognitive Dissonance, and the Psychology of Religious Experience” by Wendy Ulrich at the 2005 FAIR Conference It's an old and frequent spiritual question, and it shows up […] The post Classic FAIR – Faith and Cognitive Dissonance – Wendy Ulrich, 2005 appeared first on FAIR.

What are Adverse Religious Experiences (AREs) and spiritual abuse? Aren't they the same thing as religious trauma? Join Andrew and Laura on this week's episode to discuss AREs, spiritual abuse, dynamics of power and control, how this relates to fundamentalism and how all of this…isn't religious trauma? You heard us correctly!  Andrew and Laura discuss all of this AND how these things can result in religious trauma on this episode of Sunday School Dropouts!This podcast is brought to you by the Center for Trauma Resolution and Recovery: an online trauma coaching company whose practitioners are trauma informed and trauma trained to work with individuals, couples and families who have experienced high control religion, cults, and religious trauma. For more information on the support that CTRR provides, for resources–including courses, workshops, and more–head to traumaresolutionandrecovery.com or follow us on Instagram: @traumaresolutionandrecovery The views and opinions expressed by Sunday School Dropouts are those of the hosts and not necessarily reflect the official policy or position of the Center for Trauma Resolution and Recovery. Any of the content provided by our guests, sponsors, authors, or bloggers are their own ideas and opinions.The Sunday School Dropouts podcast is not anti-religion but it is anti -harm, -power and control, -oppression and, -abuse and will speak to the harmful practices and messaging of fundamentalist groups. Follow Andrew on Instagram and TikTok @deconstruct_everything Follow Laura on Instagram and TikTok @drlauraeanderson or on her website: www.drlauraeanderson.com Hosts: Laura Anderson and Andrew KerbsMusic by Benjamin Faye Music @heytherebenji Editing and Production by Kevin Crowe

Archibald Alexander's Thoughts on Religious Experience stands as a classic in Reformed pastoral theology, offering a penetrating exploration of the inner dynamics of Christian life. Drawing from decades of ministerial experience, Alexander traces the spiritual journey from early convictions and conversion to the trials and consolations of aged believers. With careful attention to the work of the Holy Spirit and the role of Scripture, he examines the diverse patterns of growth, doubt, assurance, and sanctification that mark the believer's pilgrimage. The expanded 1844 edition includes pastoral letters that provide seasoned counsel across generational lines, enriching the book's enduring value for spiritual formation.

“All of this together shaped how I began to think about mind, not as something to be mastered, but as a landscape of the unspoken whether it was ghosts or griefs or desires that were hard to relinquish. I saw that the ghost was not always an ‘other'. It was often intimate, tied to lost ones, sometimes to unmet desires, to unbearable longings, but in some ways possession was an attempt to keep close what was slipping away. The ghost doesn't just haunt, it feels as if it wants something, and we just have to learn to develop ears to listen to what it wants.”  Episode Description: We acknowledge Loewald's concept of 'ghosts becoming ancestors' and consider the similarities and differences with those who hold 'ghosts' to be literal. Shalini shares with us her journey to open herself to the uncertainty and ambiguity of these externalized entities while appreciating both their cultural and intrapsychic sources. We learn of her family's involvement with exorcisms, especially her grandmother's "fearless warmth" and "empathy that saw beyond the terror of the ghosts." She considers the many facets of mind that are represented by 'ghosts' and the essential value of approaching them as guides to the "landscape of the unspoken." Shalini describes a long term engagement that she had with an individual who "taught me to receive the inchoate and horrific...to contain the brokenness and not interpret it away.. and to appreciate the glimpses of beauty in the most grotesque parts of self."   Our Guest: Shalini Masih, a psychoanalytic psychotherapist and writer, grew up in India amidst priests and healers, witnessing spirit possession and exorcism. Now based in Worcestershire, UK, she holds a Master's degree in Psychoanalytic Studies from Tavistock & Portman, London, and a PhD from the University of Delhi. Mentored by psychoanalysts Michael Eigen and Sudhir Kakar, she's an award-winning scholar of the American Psychological Association. She has taught and supervised psychoanalytic psychotherapists in Ambedkar University, Delhi and in Birkbeck, University of London. Her acclaimed paper, 'Devil! Sing me the Blues', was nominated for Gradiva Awards in 2020. Her debut book is Psychoanalytic Conversations with States of Spirit Possession: Beauty in Brokenness.  Recommended Readings: Kakar, Sudhir. Shamans, mystics, and doctors: A psychological inquiry into India and its healing traditions. Chicago, IL: University of Chicago Press, 1991.   Kakar, Sudhir. Mad and Divine. India: Penguin Books India, 2008.   Eigen, Michael. “On Demonized Aspects of the Self” In The Electrified Tightrope. Routledge. 2018.   Kumar, Mansi, Dhar Anup & Mishra, Anurag. Psychoanalysis from the Indian Terroir: Emerging Themes in Culture, Family, and Childhood. New York:Lexington Books, 2018.   Meltzer, Donald, and Williams, Meg H. The apprehension of beauty: The role of aesthetic conflict in development, art and violence. Karnac, London: The Harris Meltzer Trust, 2008.   Obeyesekere, Gananath. Medusa's Hair: An Essay on Personal Symbols and Religious Experience. Chicago, IL: University of Chicago Press, 1981.   Ogden, Thomas. This Art of Psychoanalysis—Dreaming Undreamt Dreams and Interrupted Cries. East Sussex: Routledge, 2005   Botella, Cesar, and Botella, Sara. The Work of Psychic Figurability: Mental States without Representation. Brunner-Routledge. Taylor and Francis Group: Hove and New York. 2005.   Winnicott. Donald W. “Transitional objects and transitional phenomena.”  International Journal of Psycho-Analysis, 34, (1953): 89–97

Andrew Callaghan opens up about faith, death, and the search for meaning with Patrick Bet-David. From childhood beliefs to losing a puppy, the conversation turns deep. They explore religion, Iran, dogs in heaven, and the evolving journey of finding your spiritual identity.

This series focuses on Harold Begbie's book Life Changers. Published in 1922 it describes key elements in Frank Buchman's program of radical change from which AA drew so many of its principles and practices. Studying the source material for the 12-Steps can give us insights into the transformational process the Group was trying to achieve both in individuals and in nations. They can prove invaluable to anyone whose recovery has lost its “zing” or to individuals unable to recover because of a “watered down” recovery approach. Fr. Bill focuses on chapters 3 through 9 of Life Changers drawing broadly from the stories of some who attended the 1922 house party and the elements that helped bring about their change. Show notes: Life Changers:https://www.amazon.com/Life-Changers-13th-Harold-Begbie/dp/1439232067War of the Gods in Addiction by David Schoen:https://www.amazon.com/War-Gods-Addiction-David-Schoen/dp/1882670574Varieties of Religious Experience by William James (free / pdf version)https://csrs.nd.edu/assets/59930/williams_1902.pdf

For our April episode on books, we, the CPT staff, have been reading:CR Wiley, In the House of Tom Bombadil (2021)Ryan Holiday, The Obstacle Is the Way (2014)Percival Everett, James (2024)Harold Netland, Religious Experience and the Knowledge of God (2022)Exiles in Babylon

This episode is a replay. In this preview of our Brave New World series, Evgeny talks to psychologist and researcher Bill Richards, whose book Sacred Knowledge: Psychedelics and Religious Experiences is considered a seminal work in the field and is now in its 10th edition. To listen to the whole interview, and hear previous episodes, search 'Brave New World' in your podcast provider. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Today we drive into what we learned over the years in regards to our spirit and our religious experiences. My guest King Sha and I have a great conversation where we touch on catholic understanding, moorish learning and spirituality necessity to name a few. Let this episode make you think about your own beliefs and how they define you. Want to learn more about me. YouTube/ Facebook/ Instagram @elitemotivation411 Follow up with your own private unfoldment. Schedule a session below Scared Services or to get a copy of her ebook https://linktr.ee/EliteM411 Find out more about us on IG/FB @elitemotivation411 on YOUTUBE Learn more about King Sha find him on Instagram @king.shareef.el

In this episode we explore the fascinating world of neuroscience with Dr. Jeremy Teissere, Stanley Road Professor of Neuroscience at Muhlenberg College, who introduces us to the discipline's key questions and recent developments. Then, we turn to the enduring legacy of William James, the early 20th century thinker at the intersection of psychology, philosophy, and religion. We consider how James's pioneering insights into mystical states, consciousness, and conversion continue to resonate with modern neuroscientific understanding.Send us a text

Questions? Comments? Text Us!What happens when a philosophy professor, known for teaching logic and critical thinking, has an undeniable encounter with God? Dr. Jerry L. Martin was a lifelong agnostic until one day, to his great surprise, God spoke to him. As a philosopher, he had no choice but to investigate.In this episode of From God to Jerry to You, Jerry takes a deep dive into one of the most pivotal moments in spiritual history: Moses and the burning bush. He unpacks not just what happened, but what it means for all of us. Why did God choose a burning bush? What was significant about Moses' response? And what can we learn from this moment about how the divine reaches out to us today?With his signature curiosity and philosophical rigor, Jerry distills 9 key lessons from Moses' encounter- lessons that challenge us to pay attention, trust, and respond when something greater calls. Jerry also reflects on how his own encounter with God mirrored aspects of Moses' story, from the shock of the experience to the life-altering consequences of obedience and saying "yes" to the divine.This isn't just a story from ancient scripture- it's a blueprint for how spiritual awakenings unfold and an invitation to examine your own encounters with the unseen.Are you paying attention?Visit godanautobiography.com for more information and to get your copy of God: An Autobiography, As Told To A Philosopher—the true story of an agnostic philosopher who heard the voice of God and recorded their conversations.Other Series:The podcast began with the Dramatic Adaptation of the book and now has several series:Life Wisdom Project: How to live a wiser, happier, and more meaningful life with special guests.From God To Jerry To You: Calling for the attention of spiritual seekers everywhere, featuring breakthroughs, pathways, and illuminations.Two Philosophers Wrestle With God: Sit in on a dialogue between philosophers about God and the questions we all have.What's On Our Mind- Connect the dots with Jerry and Scott over the most recent series of episodes.What's On Your Mind: What are readers and listeners saying? What is God saying?Resources:READ: "You Could Be Wrong."FROM GOD TO JERRY TO YOU PLAYLISTWould you like to be featured on the show or have questions about spirituality or divine communication? Share your story or experience with God!#fromgodtojerrytoyou #FGTJTY #godanautobiography #experiencegod #SpiritualAwakeningShare Your Story | Site | Facebook | Instagram | Twitter | YouTube

62: BREAKING DAWN | Hanan, the Tagalog Goddess of the DawnIt's a new day, a new episode, and finally time to talk about Hanan, the long-overdue Tagalog goddess of dawn! She's been there all along, ushering in the sunrise, bringing in the harvest, and very recently being recruited as the unofficial goddess of the New Year. But why do we know so little about her?Join us as we uncover Hanan's origins, from her celestial family (yes, she's sisters with Mayari and Tala) to her often-overlooked role in Philippine mythology. We take a deep dive into the myth where she blinds the Bakunawa in a cosmic battle to save the moon, a tale that somehow feels like The Nutcracker meets True Blood. We also discuss how modern Filipinos have unofficially assigned her the job of goddess of fresh starts, why her PR team (if she had one) is seriously slacking, and how this forgotten dawn deity deserves a Sailor Moon-style transformation sequence (artists, we need you on this). ✨ Start your day with us, a quiz, and a whole lot of mythological nerding out.—The Gods Must Be Crazy is a podcast on Philippine Mythology hosted by friends Anama Dimapilis and Ice Lacsamana, avid mythology nerds and semi-professional gossips. Follow us over at @godsmustbecrazy.pod on Instagram and Facebook for more good stuff. We welcome any suggestions on future topics or episodes.  You can also join us on Patreon at www.patreon.com/thegodsmustbecrazypodcast.You can also find us on Youtube – Gods Must Be Crazy Podcast channel, where we post some of our episodes and interviews. For other inquiries, please email us at godsmustbecrazy.pod@gmail.comThe intro and outro music is by Brian O'Reilly (@dendriform on Instagram).—Sources:"Exploring the Tagalog Story of Hanan in Philippine Mythology." Wars and History. "Hanan: The Morning Goddess." Mythlok. "Hanan." Treasury of Tagalog. Accessed January 23, 2025. URL: https://tagalogmyth.wixsite.com/treasuryoftagalog/hanan. "Hanan, Tagalog Goddess of Dawn + Full Moon in Scorpio." Hella Pinay.  "Hanan (goddess)." EverybodyWiki Bios & Wiki.  "Philippine Mythology Gods and Goddesses: An Ultimate Guide." FilipiKnow.  "Exploring Philippine Mythology: Gods and Goddesses of Tagalog Pantheon." Yodisphere.  "Hanan | Facts, Information, and Mythology." Pantheon.org. URL: https://pantheon.org/articles/h/hanan.html. "Ancient Philippines: Rituals for Land, Weather and Sailing." The Aswang Project. URL: https://www.aswangproject.com/ancient-philippines-rituals/. "Religious Experiences and Spirituality: Indigenous Religions in Pre-colonial Philippines." Slideshare.net. URL: https://www.slideshare.net/indigenous-religions-philippines. "PRE-COLONIAL PERIOD: Philippine History." StudyLib. URL:  https://studylib.net/doc/pre-colonial-period-philippine-history. "Indigenous Religions of the Philippines: Preserving Ancient Beliefs." Pinas Culture. Accessed January 23, 2025. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Annapurna_(goddess) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hanan_(given_name)  https://www.imdb.com/title/tt27929190/#:~:text=Inspired%20by%20Philippine%20mythology%2C%20the,create%20ripples%20throughout%20the%20universe. 

NB: Sign up for Alexis Sears's 92NY online poetry class now—deadline Wednesday, Feb 26!SLEERICKETS is a podcast about poetry and other intractable problems. My book Midlife now exists. Buy it here, or leave it a rating here or hereFor more SLEERICKETS, check out the SECRET SHOW and join the group chatLeave the show a rating here (actually, just do it on your phone, it's easier). Thanks!Wear SLEERICKETS t-shirts and hoodies. They look good!SLEERICKETS is now on YouTube!Some of the topics mentioned in this episode:– Sign up for Alexis Sears's 92NY online poetry class now—deadline Wednesday, Feb 26!– The Shape that Am I by Patricia Lockwood– COINTELPRO: The FBI's Secret War on Political Freedom by Nelson Blackstock– Dan Deacon– Antichrist (2009)– Immersion (Piss Christ) by Andres Serrano– The Motte-and-Bailey Fallacy– The Varieties of Religious Experience by William James– The God Delusion by Richard DawkinsFrequently mentioned names:– Joshua Mehigan– Shane McCrae– A. E. Stallings– Ryan Wilson– Morri Creech– Austin Allen– Jonathan Farmer– Zara Raab– Amit Majmudar– Ethan McGuire– Coleman Glenn– Chris Childers– Alexis Sears– JP Gritton– Alex Pepple– Ernie Hilbert– Joanna PearsonOther Ratbag Poetry Pods:Poetry Says by Alice AllanI Hate Matt Wall by Matt WallVersecraft by Elijah BlumovRatbag Poetics By David Jalal MotamedAlice: Poetry SaysBrian: @BPlatzerCameron: CameronWTC [at] hotmail [dot] comMatthew: sleerickets [at] gmail [dot] comMusic by ETRNLArt by Daniel Alexander Smith

Questions? Comments? Text Us!In this episode of What's On  Your Mind we explore two powerful listener stories that highlight the theme of obedience, faith, and divine encounters. Raymond shares an unexpected moment of overwhelming emotion and spiritual awakening while listening to a song, leading him to an intense experience of seeking forgiveness and hearing a divine voice. Meanwhile, Beverly reflects on her lifelong spiritual journey beyond traditional religion, searching for a deeper connection with the ‘God force' in unexpected places.Dr. Jerry L. Martin and Scott Langdon discuss these profound experiences, exploring the significance of divine nudges, obedience, and personal faith transformations. How do we recognize and respond to moments of spiritual awakening? What does it mean to ‘get up' after encountering God?Join us for an inspiring conversation on the personal and institutional aspects of faith, and share your own story at questions@godanautobiography.com.Subscribe and listen now!Discover the InspirationExplore the book that sparked it all: God: An Autobiography, As Told to a Philosopher. Get your copy on Amazon.Other Series:Life Wisdom Project- How to live a wiser, happier, and more meaningful life with special guests.From God To Jerry To You- A series calling for the attention of spiritual seekers everywhere, featuring breakthroughs, pathways, and illuminations.Two Philosophers Wrestle With God- Sit in on a dialogue between philosophers about God and the questions we all have.What's On Our Mind- Connect the dots with Jerry and Scott over the most recent series of episodes.What's On Your Mind- What are readers and listeners saying? What is God saying?Resources:READ: "Everything God Has Spoken, We Will Do"WATCH: From God To Jerry To You - Steps to God-Centered PrayerWHAT'S ON YOUR MIND PLAYLISTHashtags: #whatsonyourmind #godanautobiography #experiencegodWould you like to be featured on the show or have questions about spirituality or divine communication? Share your story or experience with God! We'd love to hear from you!Share Your Story | Site | Facebook | Instagram | Twitter | YouTube

On this episode of Crazy Wisdom, Stewart Alsop speaks with Dimetri Kofinas, host of Hidden Forces, about the transition from an "age of answers" to an "age of questions." They explore the implications of AI and large language models on human cognition, the role of narrative in shaping society, and the destabilizing effects of trauma on belief systems. The conversation touches on media manipulation, the intersection of technology and consciousness, and the existential dilemmas posed by transhumanism. For more from Dimetri, check out hiddenforces.io (https://hiddenforces.io).Check out this GPT we trained on the conversation!Timestamps00:00 Introduction to the Crazy Wisdom Podcast00:10 The Age of Questions: A New Era00:58 Exploring Human Uniqueness with AI04:30 The Role of Podcasting in Knowledge Discovery09:23 The Impact of Trauma on Belief Systems12:26 The Evolution of Propaganda16:42 The Centralization vs. Decentralization Debate20:02 Navigating the Information Age21:26 The Nature of Free Speech in the Digital Era26:56 Cognitive Armor: Developing Resilience30:05 The Rise of Intellectual Dark Web Celebrities31:05 The Role of Media in Shaping Narratives32:38 Questioning Authority and Truth34:35 The Nature of Consensus and Scientific Truth36:11 Simulation Theory and Perception of Reality38:13 The Complexity of Consciousness47:06 Argentina's Libertarian Experiment51:33 Transhumanism and the Future of Humanity53:46 The Power Dynamics of Technological Elites01:01:13 Concluding Thoughts and ReflectionsKey InsightsWe are shifting from an age of answers to an age of questions. Dimetri Kofinas and Stewart Alsop discuss how society is moving away from a model where authority figures and institutions provide definitive answers and toward one where individuals must critically engage with uncertainty. This transition is both exciting and destabilizing, as it forces us to rethink long-held assumptions and develop new ways of making sense of the world.AI is revealing the limits of human uniqueness. Large language models (LLMs) can replicate much of what we consider intellectual labor, from conversation to knowledge retrieval, forcing us to ask: What remains distinctly human? The discussion suggests that while AI can mimic thought patterns and compress vast amounts of information, it lacks the capacity for true embodied experience, creative insight, and personal revelation—qualities that define human consciousness.Narrative control is a fundamental mechanism of power. Whether through media, social networks, or propaganda, the ability to shape narratives determines what people believe to be true. The conversation highlights how past and present authorities—from Edward Bernays' early propaganda techniques to modern AI-driven social media algorithms—have leveraged this power to direct public perception and behavior, often with unforeseen consequences.Trauma is a tool for reshaping belief systems. Societal upheavals, such as 9/11, the 2008 financial crisis, and COVID-19, create psychological fractures that leave people vulnerable to radical shifts in worldview. In moments of crisis, individuals seek order, making them more susceptible to new ideologies—whether grounded in reality or driven by manipulation. This dynamic plays a key role in how misinformation and conspiracy theories gain traction.The free market alone cannot regulate the modern information ecosystem. While libertarian ideals advocate for minimal intervention, Kofinas argues that the chaotic nature of unregulated information systems—especially social media—leads to dangerous feedback loops that amplify division and disinformation. He suggests that democratic institutions must play a role in establishing transparency and oversight to prevent unchecked algorithmic manipulation.Transhumanism is both a technological pursuit and a philosophical problem. The belief that human consciousness can be uploaded or replicated through technology is based on a materialist assumption that denies the deeper mystery of subjective experience. The discussion critiques the arrogance of those who claim we can fully map and transfer human identity onto machines, highlighting the philosophical and ethical dilemmas this raises.The struggle between centralization and decentralization is accelerating. The digital age is simultaneously fragmenting traditional institutions while creating new centers of power. AI, geopolitics, and financial systems are all being reshaped by this tension. The conversation explores how Argentina's libertarian experiment under Javier Milei exemplifies this dynamic, raising questions about whether decentralization can work without strong institutional foundations or whether chaos inevitably leads back to authoritarianism.

A new Craftwork episode featuring a conversation with John Kaag, a philosopher and author who is also now the co-founder and chief creative officer of Rebind, a company that creates interactive reading experiences using AI and featuring leading authors and scholars like Margaret Atwood, Clancy Martin, John Banville, Roxane Gay, Deepak Chopra, and others. Kaag is professor of Philosophy at the University of Massachusetts, Lowell. Kaag specializes in American philosophy and is the Donohue Professor of Ethics and the Arts at UMass Lowell, External Professor at the Santa Fe Institute and Advisor at Outlier.org. In February 2023, Kaag delivered the lecture "William James and the Sick Soul" for Harvard Divinity School's William James Lectures on Religious Experience series. He lives in Carlisle, MA with his wife, Kathleen, and their two children. *** Otherppl with Brad Listi is a weekly literary podcast featuring in-depth interviews with today's leading writers. Available where podcasts are available: Apple Podcasts, Spotify, YouTube, etc. Subscribe to Brad Listi's email newsletter. Support the show on Patreon Merch Instagram  TikTok Bluesky Email the show: letters [at] otherppl [dot] com The podcast is a proud affiliate partner of Bookshop, working to support local, independent bookstores. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Questions? Comments? Text Us!In this From God To Jerry To You, we explore the perplexing story of Abraham and Isaac to uncover deeper themes of obedience and spiritual growth. Join Dr. Jerry L. Martin as he shares his remarkable conversations with God, offering fresh insight into how a seemingly troubling biblical account reveals profound wisdom for modern seekers. Discover how divine will aligns with human fulfillment, guiding us toward greater harmony, transformation, and love. By challenging common assumptions about sacrifice and submission, we learn to see obedience in a more liberating light.Press play to hear the message: From God to Jerry, to you.Visit godanautobiography.com for more information and to get your copy of God: An Autobiography, As Told To A Philosopher—the true story of an agnostic philosopher who heard the voice of God and recorded their conversations.Other Series:The podcast began with the Dramatic Adaptation of the book and now has several series:Life Wisdom Project: How to live a wiser, happier, and more meaningful life with special guests.From God To Jerry To You: Calling for the attention of spiritual seekers everywhere, featuring breakthroughs, pathways, and illuminations.Two Philosophers Wrestle With God: Sit in on a dialogue between philosophers about God and the questions we all have.What's On Our Mind- Connect the dots with Jerry and Scott over the most recent series of episodes.What's On Your Mind: What are readers and listeners saying? What is God saying?Resources:READ: "I Am Pulling Life Forward."FROM GOD TO JERRY TO YOU PLAYLIST#fromgodtojerrytoyou #FGTJTY #godanautobiography #experiencegodWould you like to be featured on the show or have questions about spirituality or divine communication? Share your story or experience with God!Share Your Story | Site | Facebook | Instagram | Twitter | YouTube

Send us a textJoin me as I recount my profound religious experience story that led to my Protestant to Catholic conversion during my time at Oxford. This video delves into the significant religious paradigm shift and spiritual transformation that redefined my personal faith journey and understanding of Catholic doctrines. Witness how an unexpected moment at a Catholic mass prompted a deep reflection on my religious identity and beliefs.Support the show--------------------------If you would want to support the channel and what I am doing, please follow me on Patreon: www.patreon.com/christianityforall Where else to find Josh Yen: Philosophy YT: https://bit.ly/philforallEducation: https://bit.ly/joshyenBuisness: https://bit.ly/logoseduMy Website: https://joshuajwyen.com/

Today's Topics: 1) Gospel - Luke 4:14-22 - Jesus returned to Galilee in the power of the Spirit, and news of Him spread throughout the whole region.  He taught in their synagogues and was praised by all. He came to Nazareth, where He had grown up, and went according to His custom into the synagogue on the sabbath day.  He stood up to read and was handed a scroll of the prophet Isaiah.  He unrolled the scroll and found the passage where it was written: The Spirit of the Lord is upon Me, because He has anointed Me to bring glad tidings to the poor. He has sent Me to proclaim liberty to captives and recovery of sight to the blind, to let the oppressed go free, and to proclaim a year acceptable to the Lord. Rolling up the scroll, He handed it back to the attendant and sat down, and the eyes of all in the synagogue looked intently at Him.  He said to them, “Today this Scripture passage is fulfilled in your hearing.” And all spoke highly of Him and were amazed at the gracious words that came from His Mouth. Bishop Sheen quote of the day 2) California governor says Pacific Palisades wildfire has destroyed many structures as winds kick up https://www.yahoo.com/news/strongest-winds-over-decade-could-061003709.html 3) D.C. Cardinal Robert McElroy: Mass deportation of illegals is "incompatible with Catholic doctrine" https://www.breitbart.com/immigration/2025/01/07/d-c-cardinal-mass-deportation-illegals-incompatible-catholic-doctrine/  4) Immanentism: Catholicism and Religious Experience, by Dennis Q. McInerny, Ph.D. https://fssp.com/immanentism-catholicism-and-religious-experience-by-d-q-mcinerny-ph-d/

In this compelling episode of the Soberoso Podcast, titled "Untold Faith: Finding God Through Addiction Recovery," host Dora invites her husband Fred to share his deeply personal journey with listeners for the very first time. Raised in a religious home as a preacher's kid, Fred opens up about his battle with alcoholism and the profound loneliness that accompanied hiding his struggles from the world. Despite possessing deep religious knowledge, Fred found his understanding of God truly stretched and reshaped only when facing the depths of his addiction and becoming willing to set aside everything he thought he knew about God.Set Aside Prayer Recently celebrating three years of being clean and sober, Fred recounts his transformative path to recovery and spiritual awakening. This first-time public sharing offers a raw and honest look at how Fred rediscovered God outside the traditional church setting.Join us for an inspiring and enlightening episode that uniquely explores the intersection of faith and addiction recovery, offering hope to those who feel lost. Whether you're journeying towards sobriety or searching for deeper spiritual meaning, Fred's story is a testament to the resilience of the human spirit and the possibility of finding untold faith beyond the pews.For anyone who would like to reach out to Fred and connect on his experiences and insights, please contact him at fmeyerroofing@gmail.comSoberoso Podcast Season 4 EP12Send Soberoso A TextSupport the showThank you for joining us on this episode of Soberoso. Remember, no matter where you are on your journey, you are not alone. Join us in "Sharing Our Passion For Recovery" one story at a time. If you enjoyed this episode, please leave us a review and don't forget to subscribe for more inspiring stories each week. Until the next time stay safe, stay sober and to thine ownself be true!Follow Soberoso Podcast on

In this episode I continue my exploration of William James' The Varieties of Religious Experience, with a focus on the conversion process and the subconscious mind.

In this episode I dive into the healthy mind and the sick soul, the foundational concepts of William James' masterpiece, The Varieties of Religious Experience. This is the first of a two-part series.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ASFH_O4sDo4 Guest: Gary Dorrien is Reinhold Niebuhr Professor of Social Ethics at Union Theological Seminary and Professor of Religion at Columbia University.  He is the author of more than twenty books and three hundred articles that range across social ethics, philosophy, theology, political economics, social and political theory, religious history, cultural criticism, and intellectual history. He is the recipient of many awards including the Grawemeyer Award in 2017 for his book The New Abolition: W. E. B. Du Bois and the Black Social Gospel.  His latest book is Over from Union Road My Christian-Left-Intellectual Life. The post The Religious Experience & Social Movements appeared first on KPFA.

There can be no doubt that as a matter of fact a religious life, exclusively pursued, does tend to make the person exceptional and eccentric. I speak not now of your ordinary religious believer, who follows the conventional observances of his country, whether it be Buddhist, Christian, or Mohammedan. His religion has been made for...

What is the Heartbeat of Religious Experience?

In this episode of the Cold-Case Christianity Podcast, J. Warner examines the nature of religious experience. Can experiences such as these serve as an evidence for the existence of God? Can we trust our experiences? Is there some way to test test such experiences to make sure they are from God?

This is a crossover episode in which https://x.com/loubohan interviews me for his podcast Deus Ex Machina.I was obviously in an exuberant mood for this interview - it's one of my favorites!Deus Ex Machina podcast:https://open.spotify.com/episode/7mXUfNJdNnOjGfu6VGactr?si=Y3j1OZG4QsGdPhXd8dKsrw…Timestamps:(00:00) - Growing up in Iowa. Athletics, Chinese culture. KMT and military family background. (11:48) - Hearing about the Cultural Revolution from my dad: his family experienced it firsthand in Zhejiang. Meanwhile, US experts and academics were entirely deluded about reality in PRC (20:55) - "Experts" are often miscalibrated (35:03) - Physicists and finance. Was Charlie Munger right to say it's a waste of talent to channel top brains into finance? (45:15) - Hedgehogs, Foxes, and Eagles. Polymathy. (48:41) - Development of modern China as the greatest story of the last 50 years. My first visit to China: the Shenzhen Special Economic Zone in 1992. US-China competition and the future of Asian Americans. (56:52) - Genomic Prediction. Genomics of cognitive ability. Leftists holding back genetic science. PING = NIH-funded Pediatric Imagining, Neurocognition, and Genetics study. Stephen J. Gould was a fraud. Asian culture (pragmatic realism) and resistance to woken... (01:05:20) - Physics and Free Will. Meat machines programmed by evolution to have an illusion of self? (01:10:04) - Copenhagen Interpretation of QM: Is there true randomness in Physics? Many Worlds, Foundations of QM, and groupthink in modern physics. (01:19:09) - Christianity, raised as a Methodist by my mother, whose family has been Christian since the 19th century. Religious Experience vs Physics viewpoint. Meat machines programmed by evolution to have mystical religious feelings? (01:21:28) - Raising children, family, happiness, the meaning of life in view of my father's life (01:24:34) - The meaning of life, "All is Vanity" (Ecclesiastes), Religion Music used with permission from Blade Runner Blues Livestream improvisation by State Azure.–Steve Hsu is Professor of Theoretical Physics and of Computational Mathematics, Science, and Engineering at Michigan State University. Previously, he was Senior Vice President for Research and Innovation at MSU and Director of the Institute of Theoretical Science at the University of Oregon. Hsu is a startup founder (SuperFocus.ai, SafeWeb, Genomic Prediction, Othram) and advisor to venture capital and other investment firms. He was educated at Caltech and Berkeley, was a Harvard Junior Fellow, and has held faculty positions at Yale, the University of Oregon, and MSU. Please send any questions or suggestions to manifold1podcast@gmail.com or Steve on X @hsu_steve.

When you learn the skills for super-communication, you can connect with almost anyone you meet. In the second part of this special episode, bestselling author Charles Duhigg shares more of what it takes to be a super-communicator in work and in life. YOU WILL LEARN:· How to recognize the 3 types of conversations that typically happen. · Why a conversation doesn't have to be perfect to be great.· Why you can disagree and still feel connected. MENTIONED IN THIS EPISODE: Charles DuhiggS1E14 An Interview with Daniel Goleman S2E125 How to Live the Good Life with Dr. Robert Waldinger The Peak Experience “The Varieties of Religious Experience,” by William James Die Hard NOTEWORTHY QUOTES FROM THIS EPISODE: “When someone expresses something to us and we match them, what we're really saying is, ‘I want to connect with you.'” – Charles Duhigg “If we get focused on trying to have the perfect conversation, we don't actually have a conversation.” – Charles Duhigg “We think that a great conversation is something where we sound so erudite and so perfect. It's exactly the opposite. A great conversation is a mess to everyone except the people in it, because you feel that sense of connection.” – Charles Duhigg “My hope is that when we become better communicators, when we learn the skills for super- communication…that all the people that we encounter in our lives we can have a connection with, without having to agree about everything.” – Charles Duhigg “This world has always been at its best when people can disagree with each other and still feel connected.” – Charles Duhiggitsagoodlife.com Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

On "The Varieties of Religious Experience," the conclusion of lecture 15. Why do some saintly types engage in ascetic practices like voluntary poverty? James thinks we could all do with some self-discipline of this sort, as extreme as the examples of literary saints may be. Self-denial is a less destructive way of expressing a martial character than actually going to war. Read along with us, starting on p. 352 (PDF p. 369). Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

In the second episode of our "Shook by a Book" series, Kelly connects with Pulitzer Prize-winning reporter and bestselling author Charles Duhigg about a century-old book assigned to him in college which influenced his thinking and life choices.  Charles is the author of Supercommunicators, and The Power of Habit.  (He and Kelly actually share the same editor at Random House.)  This book Charlie picked, William James's The Varieties of Religious Experience, gets at the psychological need for religion, the power of choice and how context influences our behavior.  It also serves as a springboard for Kelly and Charlie to go deep on their careers, families and life decisions.Special thanks to The Teagle Foundation for their generous support of this series. This episode was recorded at the Aspen Ideas Festival. 

Why do tech CEOs and visionaries use religious language—and what, if anything, does it have to do with organized religion? We talk Mary-Jane Rubenstein, Professor of Religion and Science in Society at Wesleyan, about unity, infinity, simulated realities, NASA, and how human beings have sought to make meaning of their world. Reading List: Homo Deus by Yuval Noah Harari Astrotopia by Mary-Jane Rubenstein Worlds Without End by Mary-Jane Rubenstein Parable of the Sower by Octavia Butler The Ones Who Walk Away from Omelas by Ursula K. Le Guin The Broken Earth Trilogy by N.K. Jemisin Penseés by Blaise Pascal Fear and Trembling by Søren Kierkegaard The Imitation of Christ by Thomas à Kempis The Varieties of Religious Experience by William James

I recently heard a friend of mine say, "Every Christian needs an Isaiah moment." This suggests a deeper experience with God than only knowing God through doctrine or creed. On Soul02, we explore the definition of a divine experience and its implications for both the individual and the world around us.  Connect with us: YouTube: YouTube.com/@soul02-oxygen Facebook: @LP.Oxygen https://www.facebook.com/LP.Oxygen Instagram: LP.Oxygen Twitter: @Soul025 Buzzsprout: Soul02-Buzzsprout Spotify: Soul02 - Spotify Apple: Soul02-Itunes Stitcher: Soul02-Stitcher

Abram Van Engen is the Stanley Elkin Professor in the Humanities and Chair of the Department of English at Washington University in St. Louis. He specializes in American literature, and is the author of City on a Hill: A History of American Exceptionalism. We talk with him about his latest book, Word Made Fresh: An Invitation to …

We sit down for a discussion about the futility of rationalism, by way of William James' Varieties of Religious Experience. We start with the question of utopias, and try to diagnose why, if they're doomed to fail, it's still worth trying to create them, and then move on to the question of the scientific project - which seems to be an attempt to create a rationalist utopia. James' take on mystical experiences - that they're nearly universally accessible, though rarely long dwelt in - seems to suggest that there is something about the tremulous experience of being alive that will leave us with the feeling of being part of something larger than ourselves no matter how rational we get. So, then, if we can never escape the mystical experience, is it worth trying? And if it is, and we take the project of science to be worthwhile, where does the mystic live? Sign up for our Patreon and get episodes early + join our weekly Patron Chat https://bit.ly/3lcAasB AND rock some Demystify Gear to spread the word: https://demystifysci.myspreadshop.com/ OR do your Amazon shopping through this link: https://amzn.to/4g2cPVV (00:00:00) Go! (00:08:52) Capitalism vs. Utopia (00:20:06) The Nature of Utopian Projects (00:23:16) The challenges of maintaining utopian communities (00:26:21) The importance of starting small for larger projects (00:30:30) Navigating local laws and governance in new communities (00:34:13) The inherent risks of utopian projects (00:39:05) Embracing flexibility for successful organizations (00:44:04) Exploring the interface of science and mysticism (00:46:48) Exploration of Mystical Experiences and Science (00:51:25) Science and the Unseen (00:59:04) The Challenge of Defining Consciousness (01:06:00) Technology and Labor Dynamics (01:10:52) Dealing with Technology's Impact on Human Experience (01:13:11) William James and the Nature of Poverty (01:16:27) The Relationship Between Mystics and Society (01:20:21) Personal Accounts of Mystical Experiences (01:25:15) Balancing Mystical Insights and Practicality (01:30:21) Critique on Integrating Mysticism into Science (01:34:08) The interplay of belief and the unseen in religious and scientific contexts (01:37:00) The mystical dimensions of quantum physics and human experience (01:39:38) Art and mysticism: the limitations of science in capturing experiences (01:45:09) The inadequacies of science in addressing consciousness and existence (01:50:45) The pursuit of knowledge and the limits of scientific authority #sciencepodcast, #longformpodcast, #UtopianVision, #ScienceVsMysticism, #WilliamJames, #Philosophy, #Mysticism, #Rationalism, #DavidGraeber, #Utopia, #Psychology, #PhilosophicalDebate, #DemystifyingScience, #PodcastDiscussion, #CulturalCritique, #HumanExperience, #ConsciousnessExploration Check our short-films channel, @DemystifySci: https://www.youtube.com/c/DemystifyingScience AND our material science investigations of atomics, @MaterialAtomics https://www.youtube.com/@MaterialAtomics Join our mailing list https://bit.ly/3v3kz2S PODCAST INFO: Anastasia completed her PhD studying bioelectricity at Columbia University. When not talking to brilliant people or making movies, she spends her time painting, reading, and guiding backcountry excursions. Shilo also did his PhD at Columbia studying the elastic properties of molecular water. When he's not in the film studio, he's exploring sound in music. They are both freelance professors at various universities. - Blog: http://DemystifySci.com/blog - RSS: https://anchor.fm/s/2be66934/podcast/rss - Donate: https://bit.ly/3wkPqaD - Swag: https://bit.ly/2PXdC2y SOCIAL: - Discord: https://discord.gg/MJzKT8CQub - Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/groups/DemystifySci - Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/DemystifySci/ - Twitter: https://twitter.com/DemystifySci MUSIC: -Shilo Delay: https://g.co/kgs/oty671

Continuing on The Varieties of Religious Experience (1902). Does James' claim that science and culture shouldn't ignore the subjective point of view really mean that the religious objects that motivate people are metaphysically real? Is the "unseen realm" part of our common world? Get more at partiallyexaminedlife.com. Visit partiallyexaminedlife.com/support to get ad-free episodes and tons of bonus discussion. Sponsors: Give online therapy a try at BetterHelp.com/partially. Check out The Overwhelmed Brain podcast at theoverwhelmedbraincom. Check out Mark's Big Books in Continental Philosophy fall class at partiallyexaminedlife.com/class. Learn about our new book at partiallyexaminedlife.com/book.

On The Varieties of Religious Experience (1902), focusing on lectures 1-3 and 20. What is religion and how should philosophers study it? James describes it as a sincere, full-life reaction to the world, more emotional than intellectual, and conveys the experiences of the extreme "religious geniuses" that are merely received second or third hand by the believing masses. Get more at partiallyexaminedlife.com. Visit partiallyexaminedlife.com/support to get ad-free episodes and tons of bonus discussion. Check out Mark's Big Books in Continental Philosophy fall class at partiallyexaminedlife.com/class. Learn about our new book at partiallyexaminedlife.com/book.

Dr. Nathan S. French A school field trip to Washington, D.C. is a formative rite of passage shared by many U.S. school students across the nation. Often, these are framed as “field trips.” Students may visit the White House, the U.S. Capitol Building, the Supreme Court, the Library of Congress, Declaration of Independence (housed in the National Archive), the National Museum of the American Indian, the National Museum of African American History and Culture, the Jefferson Memorial, Arlington National Cemetery, or the Smithsonian Museum – among others. For many students, this is the first time they will connect the histories of their textbooks to items, artifacts, and buildings that they can see and feel. For those arriving to Washington, D.C. by airplane or bus, the field trip might also seem like a road trip. Road trips, often involving movement across the U.S. from city-to-city and state-to-state are often framed as quintessential American experiences. Americans have taken road trips to follow their favorite bands, to move to universities and new jobs, to visit the hall of fame of their favorite professional or collegiate sport, or sites of family history. As Dr. Andrew Offenberger observes in our interview, road trips have helped American authors, like Kiowa poet N. Scott Momaday, make sense of their identities as Americans. What if, however, these field trips to Washington, D.C. and road trips across the country might amount to something else? What if we considered them to be pilgrimages? Would that change our understanding of them? For many Americans, the first word that comes to mind when they hear the word, “pilgrimage,” involves the pilgrims of Plymouth, a community of English Puritans who colonized territory in Massachusetts, at first through a treaty with the Wampanoag peoples, but eventually through their dispossession. For many American communities, the nature of pilgrimage remains a reminder of forced displacement, dispossession, and a loss of home and homeland. Pilgrimage, as a term, might also suggest a religious experience. There are multiple podcasts, blogs, and videos discussing the Camino de Santiago, a number of pilgrimage paths through northern Spain. Others might think of making a pilgrimage to the Christian, Jewish, or Muslim sacred spaces in Israel and Palestine often referred to as the “Holy Land” collectively – including the Temple Mount, the Dome of the Rock, and the Church of the Holy Sepulchre (among others). Mark Twain's Innocents Abroad, is a classic example of this experience. Some make pilgrimage to Salem, Massachusetts each October. Others even debate whether the Crusades were a holy war or pilgrimage. American experiences of pilgrimage have led to substantial transformations in our national history and to our constitutional rights. Pilgrimage, as a movement across state, national, or cultural boundaries, has often been used by Americans to help them make sense of who they are, where they came from, and what it means, to them, to be “an American.” The word, “pilgrimage,” traces its etymology from the French, pèlerinage and from the Latin, pelegrines, with a general meaning of going through the fields or across lands as a foreigner. As a category used by anthropologists and sociologists in the study of religion, “pilgrimage” is often used as a much broader term, studying anything ranging from visits to Japanese Shinto shrines, the Islamic pilgrimage of Hajj, “birthright” trips to Israel by American Jewish youth, and, yes, even trips to Graceland in Memphis, Tennessee – the home of Elvis Presley. Arnold van Gennep (1873-1957) defined pilgrimage as one of a number of rites of passage (i.e., a rite du passage) that involves pilgrims separating themselves from broader society, moving themselves into a place of transition, and then re-incorporating their transformed bodies and minds back into their home societies. That moment of transition, which van Gennep called “liminality,” was the moment when one would become something new – perhaps through initiation, ritual observation, or by pushing one's personal boundaries outside of one's ordinary experience. Clifford Geertz (1926-2006), a contemporary of Turner, argued that a pilgrimage helps us to provide a story within which we are able to orient ourselves in the world. Consider, for example, the role that a trip to Arlington National Cemetery or the Tomb of the Unknown Soldier plays in a visit by a high school class to Washington, D.C. If framed and studied as a pilgrimage, Geertz's theory would suggest that a visit to these sites can be formative to an American's understanding of national history and, perhaps just as importantly, the visit will reinforce for Americans the importance of national service and remembrance of those who died in service to the defense of the United States. When we return from those school field trips to Washington, D.C., then, we do so with a new sense of who we are and where we fit into our shared American history. Among the many examples that we could cite from American history, two pilgrimages in particular – those of the Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. and Malcolm X – provide instructive examples. Held three years after the unanimous U.S. Supreme Court decision in Brown v. Board of Education, the 1957 “Prayer Pilgrimage for Freedom,” led by Dr. King brought together thousands in order to, as he described it, “call upon all who love justice and dignity and liberty, who love their country, and who love mankind …. [to] renew our strength, communicate our unity, and rededicate our efforts, firmly but peaceably, to the attainment of freedom.” Posters for the event promised that it would “arouse the conscience of the nation.” Drawing upon themes from the Christian New Testament, including those related to agape – a love of one's friends and enemies – King's speech at the “Prayer Pilgrimage” brought national attention to his civil rights movement and established an essential foundation for his return to Washington, D.C. and his “I Have a Dream Speech,” six years later. In April 1964, Malcolm X departed to observe the Muslim pilgrimage ritual of Hajj in the city of Mecca in the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia. Hajj is an obligation upon all Muslims, across the globe, and involves rituals meant to remind them of their responsibilities to God, to their fellow Muslims, and of their relationship to Ibrahim and Ismail (i.e., Abraham and Ishamel) as found in the Qur'an. Before his trip, Malcolm X had expressed skepticism about building broader ties to American civil rights groups. His experience on Hajj, he wrote, was transformational. "The holy city of Mecca had been the first time I had ever stood before the creator of all and felt like a complete human being,” he wrote, “People were hugging, they were embracing, they were of all complexions …. The feeling hit me that there really wasn't what he called a color problem, a conflict between racial identities here." His experience on Hajj was transformative. The result? Upon return to the United States, Malcolm X pledged to work with anyone – regardless of faith and race – who would work to change civil rights in the United States. His experiences continue to resonate with Americans. These are but two stories that contribute to American pilgrimage experiences. Today, Americans go on pilgrimages to the Ganges in India, to Masada in Israel, to Mecca in Saudi Arabia, and to Bethlehem in Palestine, and to cities along the Trail of Tears and along the migration of the Latter-Day Saints church westward. Yet, they also go on pilgrimages and road trips to the Pro Football Hall of Fame, to the baseball hall of fame in Cooperstown, to the national parks, and to sites of family and community importance. In these travels, they step outside of the ordinary and, in encountering the diversities of the U.S., sometimes experience the extraordinary changing themselves, and the country, in the process. * * * Questions for Class Discussion What is a “pilgrimage”? What is a road trip? Are they similar? Different? Why? Must a pilgrimage only be religious or spiritual? Why or why not? How has movement – from city to city, or place to place, or around the world – changed U.S. history and the self-understanding of Americans? What if those movements had never occurred? How would the U.S. be different? Have you been on a pilgrimage? Have members of your family? How has it changed your sense of self? How did it change that of your family members? If you were to design a pilgrimage, what would it be? Where would it take place? Would it involve special rituals or types of dress? Why? What would the purpose of your pilgrimage be? How do other communities understand their pilgrimages? Do other cultures have “road trips” like the United States? Additional Sources: Ohio History and Pilgrimage Fort Ancient Earthworks & Nature Preserve, Ohio History Connection (link). National Geographic Society, “Intriguing Interactions [Hopewell],” Grades 9-12 (link) Documentary Podcasts & Films “In the Light of Reverence,” 2001 (link) An examination of Lakota, Hopi, and Wintu ties to and continued usages of their homelands and a question of how movement through land may be considered sacred by some and profane by others. Melvin Bragg, “Medieval Pilgrimage,” BBC: In our Time, February 2021 (link) Bruce Feiler: Sacred Journeys (Pilgrimage). PBS Films (link) along with educator resources (link). The American Pilgrimage Project. Berkley Center, Georgetown University (link). Arranged by StoryCorps, a collection of video and audio interviews with Americans of diverse backgrounds discussing their religious and spiritual identities and their intersections with American life. Dave Whitson, “The Camino Podcast,” (link) on Spotify (link), Apple (link) A collection of interviews with those of varying faiths and spiritualities discussing pilgrimage experiences. Popular Media & Websites “Dreamland: American Travelers to the Holy Land in the 19th Century,” Shapell (link) A curated digital museum gallery cataloguing American experiences of pilgrimage to Jerusalem, Israel, and Palestine. LaPier, Rosalyn R. “How Standing Rock Became a Site of Pilgrimage.” The Conversation, December 7, 2016 (link). Talamo, Lex. Pilgrimage for the Soul. South Dakota Magazine, May/June 2019. (link). Books Grades K-6 Murdoch, Catherine Gilbert. The Book of Boy. New York: Harper Collins, 2020 (link). Wolk, Lauren. Beyond the Bright Sea. New York: Puffin Books, 2018 (link). Grades 7-12 Chaucer, Geoffrey. The Canterbury Tales. New York: Penguin Books, 2003 (link). Malcolm X. The Autobiography of Malcolm X: As Told to Alex Haley. New York: Ballantine Books, 1992 (link). Melville, Herman. Clarel: A Poem and Pilgrimage in the Holy Land. New York: Library of America, n.d. (link). Murray, Pauli. Song in a Weary Throat: Memoir of an American Pilgrimage. New York: Liveright, 1987 (link). Reader, Ian. Pilgrimage: A Very Short Introduction. New York: Oxford University Press, 2015 (link). Twain, Mark. The Innocents Abroad. New York: Modern Library, 2003 (link). Scholarship Bell, Catherine. Ritual Theory, Ritual Practice. New York: Oxford University Press, 2009. Bloechl, Jeffrey, and André Brouillette, eds. Pilgrimage as Spiritual Practice: A Handbook for Teachers, Wayfarers, and Guides. Minneapolis, MN: Fortress Press, 2022. Frey, Nancy Louise Louise. Pilgrim Stories: On and Off the Road to Santiago, Journeys Along an Ancient Way in Modern Spain. First Edition. Berkeley: University of California Press, 1998. Lévi-Strauss, Claude Patterson, Sara M., “Traveling Zions: Pilgrimage in Modern Mormonism,” in Pioneers in the Attic: Place and Memory along the Mormon Trail. New York: Oxford University Press, 2020 (link). Pazos, Antón. Redefining Pilgrimage: New Perspectives on Historical and Contemporary Pilgrimages. London: Routledge, 2014 (link). Reader, Ian. Pilgrimage: A Very Short Introduction. New York: Oxford University Press, 2015 (link). Van Gennep, Arnold. The Rites of Passage. Translated by Monika B. Vizedom and Gabrielle L. Caffee. Chicago: The University of Chicago Press, 1960 (link)

Part 1 of Episode 150! Yay!! And now for something completely different. This episode is a bit of a departure from our regular show. We invite Alex Criddle and Cody Noconi, researchers into the psychedelic origins of Mormonism, to respond to the recent debate on the Mormon Book Reviews channel between ourselves and Mormon apologist, Brian Hales. Brian attempts to provide the apologetic response to the theory that Joseph Smith utilized psychedelics (entheogens) in the early history of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints in order to facilitate visionary experiences for the early Saints. Disinformation requires much greater effort than simply stating information so we do our best to debunk his debunking (rebunk the theory?). This one is a long haul so we split it into 2 episodes to make it a little more digestible.   Show notes: Video version: https://youtu.be/3l0L1EHtQOo Support our research and outreach: https://www.patreon.com/SeerStonedProductions Original here: Psychedelics & Early Mormonism Theory Brian Hales Responds on Mormon Book Reviews https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uE7J0y_cPpg Further information: “The Higher Powers of Man” - Frederick M. Smith was a prophet of the RLDS Mormons and paternal grandson of the founder Joseph Smith. In 1918 Frederick published this Ph.D. dissertation breaking down altered states of consciousness from an early psychologist's perspective, specifically, religious states of ‘ecstacy' as he called it. A lengthy chapter devoted to peyote is particularly worth reading. “The Higher Powers: Fred M - Smith and the Peyote Ceremonies” - Shelby Barnes' 1995 paper highlighting the curious psychedelic interests of Frederick M. Smith. While Barnes does not make any direct connections to Joseph Smith and psychedelics, Barnes does note that Frederick's interests were an attempt to find the reliable keys to visionary revelation that his grandfather Joseph had demonstrated. “Restoration and the Sacred Mushroom”  - Dr. Robert Beckstead's seminal research paper presented at the August 2007 Sunstone Symposium. Beckstead's paper was the first to propose the possibility that Joseph Smith used psychedelics to facilitate visionary experiences. “A 1920's Harvard Psychedelic Circle with a Mormon Connection: Peyote Use amongst the Harvard Aesthetes” Alan Piper's 2016 paper highlighting Frederick M. Smith's interest in psychedelics, and how as a standing Mormon prophet Fred was funding a 1920s group of Harvard students with peyote. “Revelation Through Hallucination: A discourse on the Joseph Smith-entheogen theory” - Bryce Blankenagel and Cody Noconi's 2017 follow-up paper further explores the hypothesis originally put forward by Dr. Robert Beckstead a decade earlier. “The Entheogenic Origins of Mormonism: A Working Hypothesis” - Dr. Robert Beckstead, Bryce Blankenagel, Cody Noconi, and Michael Winkelman's paper published in the Journal of Psychedelic Studies in June 2019. This was the first paper on the subject published in an academic journal. “Visions, Mushrooms, Fungi, Cacti, and Toads: Joseph Smith's Reported Use of Entheogens” Brian Hales' 2020 response paper to the one published in the Journal of Psychedelic Studies. As a believing Mormon engaged in academic apologetics, Hales details what he perceives to be holes in the proposed hypothesis. “The Psychedelic History of Mormonism, Magic, and Drugs” - Cody Noconi's book published in 2021. “Psychedelics as a Means of Revelation in Early and Contemporary Mormonism (Part 1)” Alex Criddle's 2023 paper that was originally presented at the Forms of Psychedelic Life conference at UC Berkeley (April 14-15, 2023). “Psychedelics as a Means of Revelation in Early and Contemporary Mormonism (Part 2)” A continuation of Alex Criddle's 2023 paper. “A Real Spiritual High: In Defense of Psychedelic Mysticism” An enlightening philosophical essay from Alex Criddle. Bibliography and further reading: The Varieties of Religious Experience, by William James The Higher Powers of Man, by Frederick M. Smith The Magus, by Francis Barrett  A Key to Physic, and the Occult Sciences, by Ebenezer Sibly Hearts Made Glad: The Charges of Intemperance Against Joseph Smith the Mormon Prophet, by Lamar Peterson The Seven Sisters of Sleep, by Mordecai Cubitt Cooke The Encylopedia of Psychoactive Plants: Ethnopharmacology and Its Applications, by Christian Rátsch Plants of the Gods: Their Sacred, Healing, and Hallucinogenic Powers, by Richard Evans Shultes, Albert Hoffman, and Christian Rátsch The Dictionary of Sacred and Magical Plants, by Christian Rátsch Witchcraft Medicine: Healing Arts, Shamanic Practices, and Forbidden Plants, by Claudia Muller-Ebeling, Christian Rátsch, and Wolf-Dieter Storl Sex, Drugs, Violence and the Bible, by Chris Bennett and Neil McQueen Liber 420: Cannabis, Magickal Herbs and the Occult, by Chris Bennett Cannabis: Lost Sacrament of the Ancient World, by Chris Bennett Plants of the Devil, by Corinne Boyer The Immortality Key: The Secret History of the Religion with No Name, by Brian C. Muraresku Veneficium: Magic Witchcraft, and the Poison Path, by Daniel A. Schulke Thirteen Pathways of Occult Herbalism, by Daniel A. Schulke The Botany and Chemistry of Hallucinogens, by Richard Evans Shultes and Albert Hoffman Where the Gods Reign: Plants and Peoples of the Colombian Amazon, by Richard Evans Shultes Vine of the Soul: Medicine Men, Their Plants and Rituals in the Colombian Amazonia, by Richard Evans Shultes and Robert F. Raffauf Ethnobotany: Evolution of a Discipline, Richard Evans Shultes and Siri von Reis Persephone's Quest: Entheogens and the Origins of Religion, by Jonathan Ott, R. Gordon Wasson, Stella Kramrisch, and Carl A. P. Ruck Pharmacotheon: Entheogenic Drugs, Their Plant Sources and History, by Jonathan Ott Plant Intoxicants: a Classic Text on the Use of Mind-Altering Plants, by Ernst Bibra and Jonathan Ott Age of Entheogens & the Angels' Dictionary, by Jonathan Ott Drugs of the Dreaming: Oneirogens: Salvia Divinorum and Other Dream-Enhancing Plants, by Jonathan Ott, Gianluca Toro, and Benjamin Thomas The Road to Eleusis, by R. Gordon Wasson, Albert Hofmann, Carl A. P. Ruck, Huston Smith Sacred Knowledge: Psychedelics and Religious Experiences, by William A. Richards Entheogens, Myth, and Human Consciousness, by Carl A.P. Ruck and Mark Alwin Hoffman Mushrooms, Myth and Mithras: The Drug Cult that Civilized Europe, by Carl A.P. Ruck, Mark Alwin Hoffman and Jose Alfredo Gonzalez Celdran Sacred Mushrooms of the Goddess: Secrets of Eleusis, by Carl A.P. Ruck The Apples of Apollo: Pagan and Christian Mysteries of the Eucharist, by Carl A.P. Ruck, Clark Heinrich, and Blaise Daniel Staples Psychedelic Mystery Traditions: Sacred Plants, Magical Practices, Ecstatic States, by Thomas Hatsis The Witches' Ointment: The Secret History of Psychedelic Magic, by Thomas Hatsis Alchemically Stoned: The Psychedelic Secret of Freemasonry, by PD Newman Angels in Vermillion: The Philosophers' Stone: From Dee to DMT, by PD Newman Theurgy: Theory and Practice: The Mysteries of the Ascent to the Divine, by PD Newman The Psychedelic History of Mormonism, Magic, and Drugs, by Cody Noconi Magic Mushrooms in Religion and Alchemy, by Clark Heinrich Psychedelic Medicine, by Richard Miller Mushroom Medicine: The Healing Power of Psilocybin & Sacred Entheogen History, by Brian Jackson The Religious Experience: It's Production and Interpretation., by Timothy Leary Cleansing the Doors of Perception: The Religious Significance of Entheogenic Plants and Chemicals, by Huston Smith The Psychedelic Explorer's Guide, by James Fadiman Psilocybin Mushrooms of the World: An Identification Guide, by Paul Stamets Soma: divine mushroom of immortality, by Robert Gordon Wasson The Philosophy of Natural Magic, by Heinrich Cornelius Agrippa Dwellers on the Threshold; Or Magic and Magicians, with Some Illustrations of Human Error and Imposture, by John Maxwell The History of Magic, by Eliphas Levi Encyclopedia of Freemasonry and Its Kindred Sciences, by Albert Mackey The German Sectarians of Pennsylvania, by Julius F. Sachse God on Psychedelics: Tripping Across the Rubble of Old-Time Religion, by Don Lattin The Peyote Effect: From the Inquisition to the War on Drugs, byAlexander Dawson The Psychedelic Experience: A Manual Based on The Tibetan Book of the Dead, by Timothy Leary, Ralph Metzne, and Richard Alpert Entheogens and the Future of Religion, by Robert Forte How To Change Your Mind, by Michael Pollan The Harvard Psychedelic Club: How Timothy Leary, Ram Dass, Huston Smith, and Andrew Weil Killed the Fifties and Ushered in a New Age for America by Don Lattin Psychedelic Drugs Reconsidered, by James B. Bakalar and Lester Grinspoon The Peyote Cult, by Weston LaBarre DMT: The Spirit Molecule: A Doctor's Revolutionary Research into the Biology of Near-Death and Mystical Experiences, by Rick Stassman A Hallucinogenic Tea Laced With Controversy, by Marlene Dobkin de Rios and Roger Rumrrill Occurrence and Use of Hallucinogenic Mushrooms Containing Psilocybin Alkaloids, by Jakob Kristinsson and Jørn Gry Psychedelics Encyclopedia, by Peter G Stafford Neuropsychedelia: The Revival of Hallucinogen Research Since the Decade of the Brain, by Nicolas Langlitz Stairways To Heaven: Drugs In American Religious History, by Robert W. Fuller Mescaline: A Global History of the First Psychedelic, by Mike Jay DMT and the Soul of Prophecy: A New Science of Spiritual Revelation in the Hebrew Bible, by Rick Strassman Liquid Light: Ayahuasca Spirituality and the Santo Daime Tradition, by G. William Barnar Distilled Spirits: Getting High, Then Sober, with a Famous Writer, a Forgotten Philosopher, and a Hopeless Drunk, by Don Lattin The Mystery of Manna: The Psychedelic Sacrament of the Bible, by Dan Merkur Psychedelic Sacrament: Manna, Meditation and Mystical Experience, by Dan Merkur LSD and the Divine Scientist: The Final Thoughts and Reflections of Albert Hofmann, by Albert Hoffman The Doors of Perception, by Aldous Huxley Changing Our Minds: Psychedelic Sacraments and the New Psychotherapy, by Don Lattin LSD: Doorway to the Numinous: The Groundbreaking Psychedelic Research into Realms of the Human Unconscious, by Stanislav Grof LSD and the Mind of the Universe by Christopher Bache Plant Teachers: Ayahuasca, Tobacco, and the Pursuit of Knowledge by Jeremy Narby and Rafael Chanchari Pizuri Visionary Vine: Psychedelic Healing in the Peruvian Amazon by Marlene Dobkin de Rios The Antipodes of the Mind by Benny Shannon Ancient Psychedelic Substances by Scott Fitzpatrick Psychoactive Sacramentals: Essays on Entheogens and Religion by Stan Grof, Huston Smith, and Albert Hofmann  The Shaman and Ayahuasca: Journeys to Sacred Realms by Don Jose Campos The Religion of Ayahuasca: The Teachings of the Church of Santo Daime by Alex Polari de Alverga Email: glassboxpodcast@gmail.com  Patreon: https://www.patreon.com/GlassBoxPod  Facebook page: https://www.facebook.com/glassboxpodcast Twitter: https://twitter.com/GlassBoxPod  Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/glassboxpodcast/  Merch store: https://www.redbubble.com/people/exmoapparel/shop Or find the merch store by clicking on “Store” here: https://glassboxpodcast.com/index.html One time Paypal donation: bryceblankenagel@gmail.com   

Part 2 of Episode 150! Yay!! And now for something completely different. This episode is a bit of a departure from our regular show. We invite Alex Criddle and Cody Noconi, researchers into the psychedelic origins of Mormonism, to respond to the recent debate on the Mormon Book Reviews channel between ourselves and Mormon apologist, Brian Hales. Brian attempts to provide the apologetic response to the theory that Joseph Smith utilized psychedelics (entheogens) in the early history of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints in order to facilitate visionary experiences for the early Saints. Disinformation requires much greater effort than simply stating information so we do our best to debunk his debunking (rebunk the theory?). This one is a long haul so we split it into 2 episodes to make it a little more digestible.   Show notes: Video version: https://youtu.be/3l0L1EHtQOo Support our research and outreach: https://www.patreon.com/SeerStonedProductions Original here: Psychedelics & Early Mormonism Theory Brian Hales Responds on Mormon Book Reviews https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uE7J0y_cPpg   Further information: “The Higher Powers of Man” - Frederick M. Smith was a prophet of the RLDS Mormons and paternal grandson of the founder Joseph Smith. In 1918 Frederick published this Ph.D. dissertation breaking down altered states of consciousness from an early psychologist's perspective, specifically, religious states of ‘ecstacy' as he called it. A lengthy chapter devoted to peyote is particularly worth reading. “The Higher Powers: Fred M - Smith and the Peyote Ceremonies” - Shelby Barnes' 1995 paper highlighting the curious psychedelic interests of Frederick M. Smith. While Barnes does not make any direct connections to Joseph Smith and psychedelics, Barnes does note that Frederick's interests were an attempt to find the reliable keys to visionary revelation that his grandfather Joseph had demonstrated. “Restoration and the Sacred Mushroom”  - Dr. Robert Beckstead's seminal research paper presented at the August 2007 Sunstone Symposium. Beckstead's paper was the first to propose the possibility that Joseph Smith used psychedelics to facilitate visionary experiences. “A 1920's Harvard Psychedelic Circle with a Mormon Connection: Peyote Use amongst the Harvard Aesthetes” Alan Piper's 2016 paper highlighting Frederick M. Smith's interest in psychedelics, and how as a standing Mormon prophet Fred was funding a 1920s group of Harvard students with peyote. “Revelation Through Hallucination: A discourse on the Joseph Smith-entheogen theory” - Bryce Blankenagel and Cody Noconi's 2017 follow-up paper further explores the hypothesis originally put forward by Dr. Robert Beckstead a decade earlier. “The Entheogenic Origins of Mormonism: A Working Hypothesis” - Dr. Robert Beckstead, Bryce Blankenagel, Cody Noconi, and Michael Winkelman's paper published in the Journal of Psychedelic Studies in June 2019. This was the first paper on the subject published in an academic journal. “Visions, Mushrooms, Fungi, Cacti, and Toads: Joseph Smith's Reported Use of Entheogens” Brian Hales' 2020 response paper to the one published in the Journal of Psychedelic Studies. As a believing Mormon engaged in academic apologetics, Hales details what he perceives to be holes in the proposed hypothesis. “The Psychedelic History of Mormonism, Magic, and Drugs” - Cody Noconi's book published in 2021. “Psychedelics as a Means of Revelation in Early and Contemporary Mormonism (Part 1)” Alex Criddle's 2023 paper that was originally presented at the Forms of Psychedelic Life conference at UC Berkeley (April 14-15, 2023). “Psychedelics as a Means of Revelation in Early and Contemporary Mormonism (Part 2)” A continuation of Alex Criddle's 2023 paper. “A Real Spiritual High: In Defense of Psychedelic Mysticism” An enlightening philosophical essay from Alex Criddle. Bibliography and further reading: The Varieties of Religious Experience, by William James The Higher Powers of Man, by Frederick M. Smith The Magus, by Francis Barrett  A Key to Physic, and the Occult Sciences, by Ebenezer Sibly Hearts Made Glad: The Charges of Intemperance Against Joseph Smith the Mormon Prophet, by Lamar Peterson The Seven Sisters of Sleep, by Mordecai Cubitt Cooke The Encylopedia of Psychoactive Plants: Ethnopharmacology and Its Applications, by Christian Rátsch Plants of the Gods: Their Sacred, Healing, and Hallucinogenic Powers, by Richard Evans Shultes, Albert Hoffman, and Christian Rátsch The Dictionary of Sacred and Magical Plants, by Christian Rátsch Witchcraft Medicine: Healing Arts, Shamanic Practices, and Forbidden Plants, by Claudia Muller-Ebeling, Christian Rátsch, and Wolf-Dieter Storl Sex, Drugs, Violence and the Bible, by Chris Bennett and Neil McQueen Liber 420: Cannabis, Magickal Herbs and the Occult, by Chris Bennett Cannabis: Lost Sacrament of the Ancient World, by Chris Bennett Plants of the Devil, by Corinne Boyer The Immortality Key: The Secret History of the Religion with No Name, by Brian C. Muraresku Veneficium: Magic Witchcraft, and the Poison Path, by Daniel A. Schulke Thirteen Pathways of Occult Herbalism, by Daniel A. Schulke The Botany and Chemistry of Hallucinogens, by Richard Evans Shultes and Albert Hoffman Where the Gods Reign: Plants and Peoples of the Colombian Amazon, by Richard Evans Shultes Vine of the Soul: Medicine Men, Their Plants and Rituals in the Colombian Amazonia, by Richard Evans Shultes and Robert F. Raffauf Ethnobotany: Evolution of a Discipline, Richard Evans Shultes and Siri von Reis Persephone's Quest: Entheogens and the Origins of Religion, by Jonathan Ott, R. Gordon Wasson, Stella Kramrisch, and Carl A. P. Ruck Pharmacotheon: Entheogenic Drugs, Their Plant Sources and History, by Jonathan Ott Plant Intoxicants: a Classic Text on the Use of Mind-Altering Plants, by Ernst Bibra and Jonathan Ott Age of Entheogens & the Angels' Dictionary, by Jonathan Ott Drugs of the Dreaming: Oneirogens: Salvia Divinorum and Other Dream-Enhancing Plants, by Jonathan Ott, Gianluca Toro, and Benjamin Thomas The Road to Eleusis, by R. Gordon Wasson, Albert Hofmann, Carl A. P. Ruck, Huston Smith Sacred Knowledge: Psychedelics and Religious Experiences, by William A. Richards Entheogens, Myth, and Human Consciousness, by Carl A.P. Ruck and Mark Alwin Hoffman Mushrooms, Myth and Mithras: The Drug Cult that Civilized Europe, by Carl A.P. Ruck, Mark Alwin Hoffman and Jose Alfredo Gonzalez Celdran Sacred Mushrooms of the Goddess: Secrets of Eleusis, by Carl A.P. Ruck The Apples of Apollo: Pagan and Christian Mysteries of the Eucharist, by Carl A.P. Ruck, Clark Heinrich, and Blaise Daniel Staples Psychedelic Mystery Traditions: Sacred Plants, Magical Practices, Ecstatic States, by Thomas Hatsis The Witches' Ointment: The Secret History of Psychedelic Magic, by Thomas Hatsis Alchemically Stoned: The Psychedelic Secret of Freemasonry, by PD Newman Angels in Vermillion: The Philosophers' Stone: From Dee to DMT, by PD Newman Theurgy: Theory and Practice: The Mysteries of the Ascent to the Divine, by PD Newman The Psychedelic History of Mormonism, Magic, and Drugs, by Cody Noconi Magic Mushrooms in Religion and Alchemy, by Clark Heinrich Psychedelic Medicine, by Richard Miller Mushroom Medicine: The Healing Power of Psilocybin & Sacred Entheogen History, by Brian Jackson The Religious Experience: It's Production and Interpretation., by Timothy Leary Cleansing the Doors of Perception: The Religious Significance of Entheogenic Plants and Chemicals, by Huston Smith The Psychedelic Explorer's Guide, by James Fadiman Psilocybin Mushrooms of the World: An Identification Guide, by Paul Stamets Soma: divine mushroom of immortality, by Robert Gordon Wasson The Philosophy of Natural Magic, by Heinrich Cornelius Agrippa Dwellers on the Threshold; Or Magic and Magicians, with Some Illustrations of Human Error and Imposture, by John Maxwell The History of Magic, by Eliphas Levi Encyclopedia of Freemasonry and Its Kindred Sciences, by Albert Mackey The German Sectarians of Pennsylvania, by Julius F. Sachse God on Psychedelics: Tripping Across the Rubble of Old-Time Religion, by Don Lattin The Peyote Effect: From the Inquisition to the War on Drugs, byAlexander Dawson The Psychedelic Experience: A Manual Based on The Tibetan Book of the Dead, by Timothy Leary, Ralph Metzne, and Richard Alpert Entheogens and the Future of Religion, by Robert Forte How To Change Your Mind, by Michael Pollan The Harvard Psychedelic Club: How Timothy Leary, Ram Dass, Huston Smith, and Andrew Weil Killed the Fifties and Ushered in a New Age for America by Don Lattin Psychedelic Drugs Reconsidered, by James B. Bakalar and Lester Grinspoon The Peyote Cult, by Weston LaBarre DMT: The Spirit Molecule: A Doctor's Revolutionary Research into the Biology of Near-Death and Mystical Experiences, by Rick Stassman A Hallucinogenic Tea Laced With Controversy, by Marlene Dobkin de Rios and Roger Rumrrill Occurrence and Use of Hallucinogenic Mushrooms Containing Psilocybin Alkaloids, by Jakob Kristinsson and Jørn Gry Psychedelics Encyclopedia, by Peter G Stafford Neuropsychedelia: The Revival of Hallucinogen Research Since the Decade of the Brain, by Nicolas Langlitz Stairways To Heaven: Drugs In American Religious History, by Robert W. Fuller Mescaline: A Global History of the First Psychedelic, by Mike Jay DMT and the Soul of Prophecy: A New Science of Spiritual Revelation in the Hebrew Bible, by Rick Strassman Liquid Light: Ayahuasca Spirituality and the Santo Daime Tradition, by G. William Barnar Distilled Spirits: Getting High, Then Sober, with a Famous Writer, a Forgotten Philosopher, and a Hopeless Drunk, by Don Lattin The Mystery of Manna: The Psychedelic Sacrament of the Bible, by Dan Merkur Psychedelic Sacrament: Manna, Meditation and Mystical Experience, by Dan Merkur LSD and the Divine Scientist: The Final Thoughts and Reflections of Albert Hofmann, by Albert Hoffman The Doors of Perception, by Aldous Huxley Changing Our Minds: Psychedelic Sacraments and the New Psychotherapy, by Don Lattin LSD: Doorway to the Numinous: The Groundbreaking Psychedelic Research into Realms of the Human Unconscious, by Stanislav Grof LSD and the Mind of the Universe by Christopher Bache Plant Teachers: Ayahuasca, Tobacco, and the Pursuit of Knowledge by Jeremy Narby and Rafael Chanchari Pizuri Visionary Vine: Psychedelic Healing in the Peruvian Amazon by Marlene Dobkin de Rios The Antipodes of the Mind by Benny Shannon Ancient Psychedelic Substances by Scott Fitzpatrick Psychoactive Sacramentals: Essays on Entheogens and Religion by Stan Grof, Huston Smith, and Albert Hofmann  The Shaman and Ayahuasca: Journeys to Sacred Realms by Don Jose Campos The Religion of Ayahuasca: The Teachings of the Church of Santo Daime by Alex Polari de Alverga  Email: glassboxpodcast@gmail.com  Patreon: https://www.patreon.com/GlassBoxPod  Facebook page: https://www.facebook.com/glassboxpodcast Twitter: https://twitter.com/GlassBoxPod  Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/glassboxpodcast/  Merch store: https://www.redbubble.com/people/exmoapparel/shop Or find the merch store by clicking on “Store” here: https://glassboxpodcast.com/index.html One time Paypal donation: bryceblankenagel@gmail.com   

You may not think of your work as your religion, but for many, it's trying to become exactly that! Without us even realizing it. Question is – is that a good thing? A bad thing? Or just a thing? Today's guest, sociologist, Associate Professor of Ethnic Studies at UC Berkeley, and Co-Director of the Berkeley Center for the Study of Religion, Carolyn Chen, has a lot to say about this silent, yet deeply impactful, phenomenon. She spent years studying workplace culture, with a focus on the near-religious cultures of Silicon Valley. As home to startups, major tech companies, and some of the world's most innovative and, arguably, faithful entrepreneurs and professionals, she noticed the lines between doing meaningful work and religion have not only been blurred, but work has, in many ways, squeezed out and even become employees' religion. Problem is – the goal is not personal and societal betterment, but rather in service of one central purpose: working harder and smarter, and generating innovation and profit. In our conversation, we explore big questions like why are so many people leaving traditional religion? How do religion and spirituality meet our needs in the first place, and what are the ways big tech or corporations are filling those gaps? What does it look like for us to choose what we want to worship and find meaning and belonging in healthy, nontraditional spaces? And, is this conversion of work into faith, actually a societally destructive phenomenon, even while organizations benefit from it?  We're in conversation with: SPARKED GUEST: Carolyn Chen | Website | Instagram Carolyn is the author of Getting Saved in America: Taiwanese Immigration and Religious Experience and co-editor of Sustaining Faith Traditions: Religion, Race and Ethnicity among the Latino and Asian American Second Generation. Her latest book, Work Pray Code: When Work Becomes Religion in Silicon Valley, is an account and exploration of her time spent interviewing the best and the brightest in the tech world to unfold how tech giants are reshaping spirituality to serve their religion of peak productivity.   YOUR HOST: Jonathan Fields Jonathan is a dad, husband, award-winning author, multi-time founder, executive producer and host of the Good Life Project podcast, and co-host of SPARKED, too! He's also the creator of an unusual tool that's helped more than 650,000 people discover what kind of work makes them come alive - the Sparketype® Assessment, and author of the bestselling book, SPARKED. How to submit your question for the SPARKED Braintrust: Wisdom-seeker submissions More on Sparketypes at: Discover Your Sparketype | The Book | The Website Find a Certified Sparketype Advisor: CSA Directory Presented by LinkedIn.

I recently returned to my old hometown, Winston-Salem, NC, for a live podcast at Lot63 in Old Salem. There, I was joined by two of my old Profs at Wake Forest University Divinity School, Dr. Bill Leonard and Dr. Craig Atwood,  the brand new Dean of the Divinity School, Dr. Corey Walker, and music from a fellow alum Kyle Caudle. In this half of the live show, I talk with my former Church History Professor, Bill Leonard, and the new Dean of Wake Forest University Divinity School, Corey Walker. It was one epic live show and a powerful and provocative conversation! Corey D. B. Walker is Dean of the School of Divinity at Wake Forest University. As a scholar, he's committed to a broad vision of human flourishing. His research, teaching, and public scholarship span the areas of African American philosophy, critical theory, ethics, and religion and American public life. An accomplished scholar and academic leader, Dean Walker has held faculty and academic leadership appointments at Brown University, University of Virginia, Virginia Union University, and Winston-Salem State University and visiting professorships at Friedrich-Schiller-Universität Jena, Union Presbyterian Seminary, and the University of Richmond. Dean Walker is the 2023-2024 Phi Beta Kappa Frank M. Updike Scholar. He is author and editor of several books and has published over sixty articles, essays, and book chapters in a wide variety of scholarly journals and publications. A much sought after speaker, Dean Walker engages congregations and communities across the nation and has appeared on a variety of media programs in the United States and abroad. Bill Leonard is the Founding Dean and Professor of Divinity Emeritus at Wake Divinity. Leonard's research focuses on Church History with particular attention to American religion, Baptist studies, and Appalachian religion. He is the author or editor of some 25 books including Christianity in Appalachia (1999); Baptist Ways: A History (2003); The Challenge of Being Baptist (2010); Can I Get a Witness?: Essays, Sermons and Reflections (2013); and  A Sense of the Heart: Christian Religious Experience in the U.S., (2014). In March 2015 he delivered the William James Lecture on Religious Experience at Harvard Divinity School and in February 2017 he gave the William Self Lectures on Preaching at McAfee School of Theology, Mercer University. His newest book, The Homebrewed Christianity Guide to Church History: Flaming Heretics and Heavy Drinkers, was  published by Fortress Press in July 2017. Leonard is on the board of the Journal of Disability and Religion, The Baptist Quarterly (England), the Day1 Preaching Network, the Institute for Rural Journalism and Community Issues, and the Governing Board of the Cooperative Baptist Fellowship. Leonard writes a twice-monthly column for Baptist News Global, is an ordained Baptist minister, and a member of First Baptist Church, Highland Avenue (American Baptist Churches, USA) in Winston-Salem. If you live in Winston-Salem, you can join us LIVE at Lot 63 for a zesty podcast recording. Info here. If you're considering a future in theological education, Wake Forest University's Divinity School is a top choice. My family and I are proud alumni, and we all cherish the education and experiences we gained there. With the dynamic leadership of Corey Walker as the new Dean, the future of the school is bright! If you live in Winston-Salem, you can join us LIVE at Lot 63 for a zesty podcast recording. Info here. JOIN our current class, GOD AFTER DECONSTRUCTION with Thomas Jay Oord Come to THEOLOGY BEER CAMP. Follow the podcast, drop a review, send feedback/questions or become a member of the HBC Community. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Dr. Laura Anderson is a psychotherapist, trauma resolution coach and consultant, writer and educator specializing in complex and developmental trauma, dynamics of power and control and religious trauma based out of Nashville, TN. ✖️✖️✖️Resources Mentioned:–  https://amzn.to/3TQgdso✖️✖️✖️If you or someone you know has experienced abuse, visit courage365.org/need-help✖️✖️✖️CONNECT WITH THE SHOW:preacherboyspodcast.comhttps://www.youtube.com/@PreacherBoyshttps://www.facebook.com/preacherboysdoc/https://twitter.com/preacherboysdochttps://www.instagram.com/preacherboysdoc/https://www.tiktok.com/@preacherboyspodTo connect with a community that shares the Preacher Boys Podcast's mission to expose abuse in the IFB, join the OFFICIAL Preacher Boys Facebook Group: https://www.facebook.com/groups/1403898676438188/✖️✖️✖️**DISCLAIMER: I may receive affiliate commissions through some links shared in these show notes.Support this podcast at — https://redcircle.com/preacher-boys-podcast/donationsAdvertising Inquiries: https://redcircle.com/brandsPrivacy & Opt-Out: https://redcircle.com/privacy

What would a wormhole actually look like? Neil deGrasse Tyson and comedian Chuck Nice break down a grab bag of questions about nothingness, the nature of miracles, the role of AI in scientific discovery and more!NOTE: StarTalk+ Patrons can listen to this entire episode commercial-free.Thanks to our Patrons Alan j weiner, Eric DeCarlo, Christian Sava, Joseph Eugene Renner, Nathan Neal, Chandra Cirulnick, and Craig I Hounsell for supporting us this week.

Artificial intelligence can feel abstract, so we've come to depend on certain narratives to try and make sense of it all. Some of the language we use to describe AI and our interactions with it is rooted in religious ideas. Are you bracing for the apocalypse? Have you been blessed by the algorithm or consulted with a Robo Rabbi lately? The deification of AI, whether it's done consciously or not, is something Beth Singler studies as a professor of digital religions at the University of Zurich in Switzerland. Marketplace's Lily Jamali spoke to Singler about religious tropes in the narratives we consume and share about AI.

Artificial intelligence can feel abstract, so we've come to depend on certain narratives to try and make sense of it all. Some of the language we use to describe AI and our interactions with it is rooted in religious ideas. Are you bracing for the apocalypse? Have you been blessed by the algorithm or consulted with a Robo Rabbi lately? The deification of AI, whether it's done consciously or not, is something Beth Singler studies as a professor of digital religions at the University of Zurich in Switzerland. Marketplace's Lily Jamali spoke to Singler about religious tropes in the narratives we consume and share about AI.

Get the full 2 hour interviews with THC+ Sign-Up Options: Subscribe via our website and get the Plus show on your usual podcast apps. Subscribe via Patreon, including the full Plus archive, a dedicated RSS feed, Spotify, & payment through Paypal. Subscribe via check, cash, money order, or crypto with the information at the bottom of the page. About Today's Guest:Jeffrey J. Kripal holds the J. Newton Rayzor Chair in Philosophy and Religious Thought at Rice University, where he served as the Associate Dean of the School of Humanities (2019-2023), chaired the Department of Religion for eight years, and also helped create the GEM Program, a doctoral concentration in the study of Gnosticism, Esotericism, and Mysticism that is the largest program of its kind in the world. He presently helps direct the Center for Theory and Research at the Esalen Institute in Big Sur, California, where he served as Chair of Board from 2015 to 2020. Jeff is the author or co-author of thirteen books, nine of which are with The University of Chicago Press. He has also served as the Editor in Chief of the Macmillan Handbook Series on Religion (ten volumes, 2015-2016). He specializes in the study of extreme religious states and the re-visioning of a New Comparativism, particularly as both involve putting “the impossible” back on the academic table again. He is presently working on a three-volume study of paranormal currents in the history of religions and the sciences for The University of Chicago Press, collectively entitled The Super Story. Dr. Kripal's Website: jeffreyjkripal.com Dr. Kripal's Books: jeffreyjkripal.com/body-of-work The Archives of the Impossible: impossiblearchives.rice.edu THC Links: Website Proper Watch Video Clips Twitter MeetUps Calendar THC T-shirts & Merch Store  Leave an iTunes review THC Communities:  Telegram Subreddit To get a year of THC+ by cash, check, or money order please mail the payment in the amount of $96 to: Greg Carlwood PO Box 2738 Zephyrhills, FL 33539 Cryptocurrency If you'd like to pay the $96 for a year of THC+ via popular Cryptocurrencies, transfer funds and then send an email to support@thehighersidechats.com  with transaction info and your desired username/password. Please give up to 48 hours to complete. Bitcoin: 1AdauF2Mb7rzkkoXUExq142xfwKC6pS7N1 Ethereum: 0xd6E9232b3FceBe165F39ACfA4843F49e7D3c31d5 Litecoin: LQy7GvD5Euc1efnsfQaAX2RJHgBeoDZJ95 Ripple: rnWLvhCmBWpeFv9HMbZEjsRqpasN8928w3 Solana: FvsBazMY9GAWuWqh5RH7musm9MPUw7a5uF6NVxxhNTqi Doge: D7ueXbfcKfhdAWrDqESrFjFV6UxydjsuCC Monero: 4ApmFHTgU72QybW194iJTZHZb6VmKDzqh5MDTfn9sw4xa9SYXnX5PVDREbnqLNLwJwc7ZqMrYPfaVXgpZnHNAeZmSexCDxM