How to Think About Souls, UFOs, Time, Belief, and Everything
The Michael Shermer Show
Michael Shermer
4.3 • 1K Ratings
🗓️ 7 September 2024
⏱️ 86 minutes
🧾️ Download transcript
Summary
From precognitive dreams and telepathic visions to near-death experiences, UFO encounters, and beyond, so-called impossible phenomena are not supposed to happen. But they do happen—all the time. Jeffrey J. Kripal asserts that the impossible is a function not of reality but of our everchanging assumptions about what is real. How to Think Impossibly invites us to think about these fantastic (yet commonplace) experiences as an essential part of being human, expressive of a deeply shared reality that is neither mental nor material but gives rise to both. Thinking with specific individuals and their extraordinary experiences in vulnerable, open, and often humorous ways, Kripal interweaves humanistic and scientific inquiry to foster an awareness that the fantastic is real, the supernatural is super natural, and the impossible is possible.
Jeffrey J. Kripal holds the J. Newton Rayzor Chair in Philosophy and Religious Thought at Rice University. He is the author of numerous books, including The Superhumanities: Historical Precedents, Moral Objections, New Realities, The Flip: Epiphanies of Mind and the Future of Knowledge, Authors of the Impossible: The Paranormal and the Sacred, Esalen: America and the Religion of No Religion, Mutants and Mystics: Science Fiction, Superhero Comics, and the Paranormal, and just published, also by the University of Chicago Press, How to Think Impossibly: About Souls, UFOs, Time, Belief, and Everything Else.
Transcript
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| 0:00.0 | You're listening to the Michael Sherman Show. The Michael Sherber Show We are a 501c3 non-profit science education organization that also supports this |
| 0:29.8 | podcast you can do that by going to Skeptic.com |
| 0:33.0 | donate. Okay, I know there's a lot of places you can spend your money and a lot of |
| 0:37.6 | different media outlets and we are one of them. So if you appreciate this |
| 0:41.4 | what we're doing here give us a little support there. |
| 0:43.7 | Okay, my guest today is Dr. Jeffrey Cripple. |
| 0:47.7 | He is the J Newton-razar chair in philosophy and religious thought at Rice University. He's the author of numerous |
| 0:56.3 | books including The Superhumanities, Historical Precedents, Moral the flip, epiphanies of mind and the future of knowledge, |
| 1:08.6 | authors of the impossible, the paranormal, and the sacred, Essalon, America and the religion of no religion. |
| 1:15.0 | Here it is. |
| 1:16.0 | I actually have this one. |
| 1:17.0 | I read this book back in the day when it came out. |
| 1:19.0 | Look at this beast, it's a door-stop, but it's a rich history. |
| 1:22.0 | I've been there three times I was twice I put |
| 1:25.4 | on seminars there and then once I was part of a conference there on can't even remember |
| 1:30.1 | I think it was on consciousness language and and the meaning of life or something |
| 1:34.2 | like that was super interesting and then let's see but we're not done yet just |
| 1:38.4 | published also by the University of Chicago Press here it is the new book the |
| 1:42.4 | reason he's on the show today. How to |
| 1:44.5 | think impossibly. Let me give you the proper view of the cover there. About |
| 1:50.9 | souls, UFOs, time, belief, and everything else. |
| 1:55.0 | Okay, I should warn you now, the reason I wanted to give a proper introduction here |
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