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In today's episode, we're going to be discussing a couple of esoteric concepts you may not have heard of.

First up, liminality.

From the Latin, Lehman, meaning threshold, the word entered modern scholarship in the early 20th century.

French ethnographer Arnold van Gennep used it to describe the culturally consistent ways people

move from one state to another, transitioning from childhood to adulthood or single to married.

If you haven't heard of Van Gennep, you've certainly heard the title of his most famous work,

which has become an idiom, the rites of passage.

In the 1960s, British anthropologist Victor Turner focused on that in-between phase. He gave us the framework for the liminal, a state

of being between identities. It's a period of expectation and possibility, disorienting yet essential.

But the concept eventually escaped the surly bonds of academia.

...