Religion and Philosophy

Our walking journey in the footsteps of Dorothy Day begins in Union Square in New York City, where the first Catholic Worker newspaper was distributed in 1933, and continues to St. Francis Xavier Church, where a tapestry of Day looks over all who walk through the doors.More

Longtime Catholic Worker volunteer and resident Jane Sammon and former Maryhouse chaplain Fr. Geoffrey Gneuhs tell Shannon about Dorothy Day's life at Maryhouse, the Lower East Side community that feeds and houses the poor.More

At Manhattan University and on the Staten Island ferry, the “Dorothy Day,” theologian Kevin Ahern and George Horton and Carolyn Zablotny, who are all working toward Day’s canonization, talk with Shannon about the future of the Catholic Church and what it means to be a saint.More

At a small think tank in Italy, scientists and philosophers debate the nature of intelligence. Dartmouth neuroscientist Peter Tse traces the evolution of human intelligence — and says our imagination is both our greatest gift and deadliest weapon. More

A group of scientists, philosophers and writers discuss and debate the many different kinds of “intelligence” — and why we’re still grappling with our understanding of sentience in plants, animals and AI. Is a robot dog actually smart?More

The silhouette of a man standing in the mouth of a cave and looking up at the stars.

Plant scientist Monica Gagliano did a series of groundbreaking experiments that suggest plants have intelligence. But she hasn’t talked—until now—about the leap of faith she took when a plant told her to go on a darkness retreat—for 39 days.More

After losing his California home to a wildfire, writer Pico Iyer went on retreat to a hermitage in Big Sur. He’s since made more than 100 retreats to the monastery. He tells us how retreats brought him out of his mind and ‘into his senses.’More

Roland Griffiths

Roland Griffiths helped pioneer the use of psychedelics to treat people with cancer who are scared of dying. Then he got his own terminal diagnosis. He talked with Steve Paulson in January 2023 about his personal LSD journey when he "talked" with his cancer.More

Anthony Bossis

Tony Bossis was one of the lead investigators on the 2016 study that found stress reduction in cancer patients after a single dose of psilocybin. He's fascinated by how the mystical experiences of the great religions map onto psychedelic experiences.More

Kenan Kitchen

Religious groups have long had rules and traditions that become part of the fabric of a lifetime. Master food preserver Christina Ward set out to find those histories in her book "Holy Food: How Cults, Communes, and Religious Movements Influenced What We Eat."More

A mysterious door.

Turns out there is an emerging science of uncertainty — a new frontier in psychology, artificial intelligence, and surgery — where things can go very wrong when people are missing a crucial skill set: being unsure. Maggie Jackson explains.More

a crumbled up piece of paper

There are two sides to giving up. The virtue of sacrifice – and the sin of despair. So how do we decide which is which? That’s the question psychoanalyst Adam Phillips asks in his newest book “On Giving Up.”More

Abstract dishes

Fasting is an ancient practice that’s experiencing something of a revival right now in health and fitness circles. But when John Oakes set out to explore the concept, he took it a lot deeper.More

Are the really big psychedelic experiences just hallucinations, or do they crack open some transpersonal dimension of consciousness? Philosopher Peter Sjöstedt-Hughes believes we need a metaphysics of psychedelics to explain these experiences.More

Charles Raison

Psychedelic therapy has shown great promise for treating depression, but it's still unclear why exactly it works. Psychiatrist Charles Raison wants to know if it's the drug or the trip that makes psychedelics so potent. Is it biology or consciousness?More

Rachel Harris

The news about psychedelics tends to focus on clinical trials and lab research. But there’s a long tradition of underground guides working with plant medicines who refer to "unseen beings" and plants as "teachers." Psychologist Rachel Harris talked with many women elders in the psychedelic underground. She calls them "spiritual warriors."More

witches

Archaeologist Chris Gosden has written a global history of magic, from the Ice Age to the internet. He told Steve Paulson he’s come to believe our own culture would be healthier and happier if we took magic more seriously.More

field hockey witch

The 1980s were a golden age for witches. Women everywhere started covens. Among them, the girls field hockey team at Danvers High School in Massachusetts. At least, that’s how Quan Barry imagines it in her recent novel, “We Ride Upon Sticks.”More

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