Jeff Kripal is a highly original, even maverick, historian of religion. In this conversation — part of a collaboration with the LA Review of Books — Kripal takes Steve to where all the weird stuff we can’t explain lives ... or hides.
Intelligent. Optimistic. Curious.
mysticism
Margery Kempe was one of the world's most famous Christian mystics — a medieval pilgrim with a penchant for uncontrollable sobbing.
"Religion always starts with mysticism," says David Steindl-Rast. Now 89, he's been a Benedictine monk since 1953.
The story of one famous mathematician’s obsession with the ancient and mystical and numerical world of the Kabbalah, from Shlomo Maital of the podcast "Israel Story."
H.P. Lovecraft's influence on pop culture has exploded in recent years. But why? Erik Davis is a cultural critic and the author of the essay, "Calling Cthulhu: H.P. Lovecraft's Magickal Realism." He fell under Lovecraft's spell as a teenager.
How does a lifelong atheist make sense of a mind-blowing mystical experience? That was Barbara Ehrenreich’s struggle as she wrote about an other-worldly experience when she was 17. She spoke to Steve Paulson about it in a 2014 interview about her book, "Living with a Wild God."
Science and the Search for Meaning: Five Questions, Part Five: Can Science be Sacred?
What if you don't believe in God, and the thought of church makes you queasy? Can you still experience the sacred? There's a growing movement of secular scientists who revel in the awe...
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