Pre-Modern hunter and gatherer cultures believed that dying was a kind of trial which didn't begin until you left your physical body and entered the supernatural world, according to sociologist Allan Kellehear. In these cultures, death is not the destruction of the body, but the annihilation of the personality and its transformation into something new.
Intelligent. Optimistic. Curious.
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Karen Armstrong is the author of nearly 20 books on religion. She tells Steve Paulson that traditions from Confucianism to Judaism emerged as responses to the rampant violence of their time. And she says our own time has a lot in common with that age.
In 2003, Craig Mullaney led an infantry rifle platoon along the hostile border between Afghanistan and Pakistan.
Daniel Tammet may be the most remarkable mind on the planet.
Author Chuck Klosterman's Dangerous Idea? Laugh tracks are the most philosophically stupid thing. Ever.
We've interviewed Klosterman a number of times, here's a link to more interviews with him.
David Edmonds talks with Steve Paulson about an incident in the life of philosopher Ludwig Wittgenstein and explains why Wittgenstein’s views have been supplanted.
This is Charles. This interview was recorded near the end of the presidential race when everyone and their brother was trying to figure out what was happening in the minds of poor, white voters. I grew up in poverty under the shadows of Northeast Ohio steel mills. And it struck me that many of the insight everyone was looking for was right there in the music of where I grew up. In my opinion, the best example of that voice in 2016 was country music singer-songwriter Brandy Clark. Her album, "Big Day in a Small Town," had the answers, if anyone dared to listen.
When life gives you lemons, sometimes you make lemonade. And sometimes you write, and bake and play piano at three 3 am. That's what Dominique Browning did after she and her staff were let go when the magazine, "House and Garden" folded. She writes about getting to know herself in the book "Slow Love."
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