Pamela Smith's science history students spend a semester taking medieval alchemical recipes and re-creating them in a lab.More
Intelligent. Optimistic. Curious.
Religion and Philosophy
Alchemists believed that if they could transform matter, why not also the spirit, or the self? That last part is what’s attracting new followers today, like Sara Durn.More
Jericho Brown is an award-winning poet who has been working with religious language for a long time. His poems have titles like "1 Corinthians 13:11" and "Hebrews 13." His book "The Tradition" continues to mine Brown's childhood in the church.More
Elizabeth Krohn says she left her body, went somewhere else, met and talked to God. And then came back to dream the future. What does her experience tell us about where religion comes from?More
In a dark world, poet Ross Gay recommends "stacking delights." Share what you love, he says — not what you hate.More
It's common in literary and historical accounts of powerful women to make them out to be villains — witches, demons, succubi, changelings — or erase them entirely. Historian Kara Cooney, author Madeline Miller, Religious scholar Serenity Young, and classics scholar Emily Wilson talk about why that might be.More
David Kessler is one of the foremost experts on death and grieving. He’s written many books on the subject, and worked with Elizabeth Kubler Ross on famous five stages of grief. He recently added a sixth: finding meaning.More
Philosopher John Kaag discusses how the 19th century thinker William James might help us seek meaning and purpose in a confusing time.More
How do you know what’s real? Start with your senses — if you can see, touch, hear or taste something, it’s real — right? Not necessarily, according to cognitive scientist Donald Hoffman and neurologist Suzanne O’Sullivan.More
Tucker Malarkey has written a novel called "Resurrection" about the discovery of the Gnostic Gospels in Egypt in 1945.More
Singer/songwriter Tori Amos tells Steve Paulson that her new album, "The Beekeeper," is all about reclaiming representatives of the sacred feminine tradition who weren't afraid of their own sexuality.More
The Reduced Shakespeare Company perform an even further abridged version of their theatrical show "The Bible: The Complete Word of God" - abridged.More
Karen King tells Anne Strainchamps that there are many early Christian texts that didn't make it into the Bible.More
Kyle Bowser is the producer of "The Bible Experience" — a 19-CD audio recording of the New Testament featuring a celebrity all-black cast.More
Reverend Alex Gee tells Steve Paulson how rappers like Tupac Shakur function as prophets for the hip hop generation, and how he incorporates rap music into his liturgy.More
Historian Garry Wills tells Jim Fleming that despite his “Confessions,” Augustine was no libertine, and dealt with all the major theological problems of early Christianity.More
Garry Wills tells Jim Fleming that we know very little about the historical Jesus and that it doesn't matter because faith does not depend on historical facts.More
Garry Wills is a Pulitzer Prize-winning historian and a practicing Catholic. He tells Jim Fleming that the apostle Paul didn't say most of the things people blame him for.More