With this year's Burning Man Festival about to kick off, NPR's To the Best of Our Knowledge (TTBOOK) has devoted their show this week to "following your weird." Among their guests this week are Erik Davis, author of Nomad Codes: Adventures in Modern Esoterica, Barbara Ehrenreich, author of Dancing in the Streets: A History of Collective Joy; and Hal Taussig, author of A New New Testament: A Bible for the 21st Century Combining Traditional and Newly Discovered Texts.
Interesting people and interesting discussions.
Follow Your Weird
08.25.2013
From trance music to ecstatic dance, from Burning Man to psychedelic mushrooms, Americans are awash in weird and intense experiences - and maybe even inventing a new kind of religion. Is this just a bunch of New Age thrill-seekers getting off, or is something deeper going on? We explore the edges of contemporary spiritual culture.
Interviewer(s):
Jim Fleming; Steve Paulson; Anne Strainchamps
Producer(s):
Steve Paulson
MODERN ESOTERICA - ERIK DAVIS
If traditional religion has lost its luster, where do you find sacred experiences? Anthropologist Erik Davis goes looking around the edges of contemporary culture - from Burning Man and trance music to psychedelics.
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MURDER AND MAGIC MUSHROOMS - HAMILTON MORRIS
Steven Pollock, a legendary figure in the psychedelic underground, was murdered in 1981. Journalist Hamilton Morris investigates this unsolved murder and uncovers the largely forgotten story of Pollock, a brilliant - if renegade - scientist.
Here's Pollock's article from Harpers, "Blood Spore"
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ECSTATIC DANCE - SARA NICS
Ecstatic dance can help us transcend our day-to-day lives. TTBOOK producer Sara Nics describes her own experience of ecstatic dance - grounded in her body, feeling bliss without invoking God or any larger meaning.
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COLLECTIVE JOY - BARBARA EHRENREICH
From carnivals and music festivals to Dionysian revelries, people have always engaged in ecstatic rituals. But Barbara Ehrenreich says modern Westerners have become obsessed with personal happiness, and we often neglect the pleasures of collective joy.
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NEW NEW TESTAMENT - HAL TAUSSIG
What would make Christianity more vital in the 21st century? Theologian Hal Taussig says one answer is "A New New Testament," which combines Gnostic gospels with the traditional New Testament scriptures - all within the same book.
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Related Books:
Nomad Codes: Adventures in Modern Esoterica (Erik Davis)
Dancing in the Streets: A History of Collective Joy (Barbara Ehrenreich)
A New New Testament: A Bible for the 21st Century Combining Traditional and Newly Discovered Texts (Hal Taussig)
Incidental Music:
- ariadne (Into the Labyrinth, Dead Can Dance)
- Towards the Within (Into the Labyrinth, Dead Can Dance)
- Yulunga (Into the Labyrinth, Dead Can Dance)
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