Decoding Academia: Chris on Religion & Ritual *Patreon Sample*
Decoding the Gurus
Christopher Kavanagh and Matthew Browne
4.2 • 1.1K Ratings
🗓️ 23 November 2021
⏱️ 54 minutes
🧾️ Download transcript
Summary
It had to happen eventually.
As Matt and Chris listen week in and week out to the world's greatest gurus pontificating on the mysteries of the universe, it's only natural that the siren call of Galaxy Brain takes and revolutionary theories would prove too great.
And so seeking to take advantage of the parasocial bonds they have scrupulously cultivated (and signal their value to the University of Austin) they are launching a new Patreon bonus series on 'Decoding Academia'.
The first two instalments covering Matt & Chris' work & main research interests will be freely available to all. But for the deeper arcane knowledge that only true free thinkers would dare behold, you will need to smash through our Patreon 'Strategic Economic Barrier' or SEB.
In this episode, Chris discusses the cognitive and evolutionary relevance of religion (what is it?, why is it?, and what is it good for?), rituals (what are they? why do we do them? and why are there painful ones?!?), & Gods (why do we care about them? Do we need them for religion).
So take a breather from the culture war and enjoy some light academic waffle!
We will be back on Friday this week with a full guru episode on Brene Brown!
Links
- Chris' article on 'Religion Without Belief' at Aeon
- Chris' article on Hazing Rituals at Aeon
- Preprint version of Academic Article by Chris on 'Is Japan Religious'
Transcript
Click on a timestamp to play from that location
| 0:00.0 | You're going to. Oh, Good morning math. |
| 0:26.0 | math. |
| 0:27.0 | Chris, how are you? |
| 0:28.0 | I'm alright. Today we're here, but we're not covering a guru we haven't got another more intelligent |
| 0:36.9 | person to tell us what's what it's just me and you mano, or mano? |
| 0:43.8 | Yeah, I know a mano, yeah. |
| 0:45.5 | Mano, mano, yeah. |
| 0:46.8 | And I'm gonna inform you, like, |
| 0:49.2 | Chris, what is it? |
| 0:50.0 | What, what do you gotta tell me? |
| 0:51.6 | That we get periodic requests from people to like talk a bit more about our research or academic stuff, right? |
| 1:03.2 | I think people need to be careful what they wish for. |
| 1:06.7 | Because the like asking academics to talk about research is just an invitation to hell. |
| 1:14.0 | So, but we did think that for the patrons, we could do little condensed episodes where we talk about our research, |
| 1:25.5 | research topics that we're interested in or research papers and |
| 1:30.7 | maybe things like how to assess research papers and the quality within and those kind of things. |
| 1:37.0 | But that would come out naturally conversations, but basically to talk a bit more about our research interests and backgrounds and that kind of thing. |
| 1:47.2 | And we're going to pilot test it today with a topic that you can describe. |
| 1:55.0 | Do we have a nice name for this though? |
| 1:57.0 | We don't, but like you're good at generating names. |
| 2:00.0 | Guru Bites, that's terrible. |
| 2:02.0 | That's bad |
... |
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