Famous for its hot tubs and its yoga and massage workshops, Esalen Institute actually began as a place to explore the underlying philosophy of spiritual experience, and then popularized America's particular brand of "spirituality without religion." Sitting on the deck of Murphy House at Esalen, Steve Paulson talks with co-founder Michael Murphy and comparative religion scholar Jeffrey Kripal, author of the definitive history of Esalen.
Intelligent. Optimistic. Curious.
Audio
There’s another place where food and death go together, but it’s a place we don’t like to talk about: the last meal. Brian Price has prepared the last meals for some 200 inmates on Death Row in Texas prisons.
Thomas Dumm tells Anne Strainchamps why he thinks a lonely society can be a dangerous one and he's worried about America. His book is "Loneliness As a Way of Life."
Steve Paulson profiles savage literary critic Dale Peck. A collection of Peck’s reviews is called “Hatchet Jobs.”
Susan Blackmore is a British psychologist who's written books on consciousness, memes and Zen Buddhism. She says her daily practice of meditation has revealed truths that have eluded the scientific study of consciousness.
You can also listen to the EXTENDED interview, and read the extended transcript.
Music critic Yuval Taylor tells Steve Paulson that authenticity in music is a complicated business.
Journalist and poet Ruben Martinez tells Steve Paulson that there are powerful economic incentives for Mexicans to cross the U.S. border to find work.
The "connectome" is one of the most audacious science projects ever conceived: a detailed map of the human brain, neuron by neuron, synapse by synapse. In this EXTENDED interview, MIT computational neuroscientist Sebastian Seung explains what we can learn.
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