EP 35 - Shamanism: The Timeless Religion with Manvir Singh

Shamans have held a deep appeal to humans for millennia as they fulfill a critical psychological need by taming & guiding the aspects of human life that are uncontrollable.In this episode of Books in 5, the author of "Shamanism: The Timeless Religion" joins us to highlight the development of Shamans throughout human history, their impact on modern society and the reality & fictions of their practices.Through the use of rituals and simulation, Shamans have played an important role throughout humanity's evolution and this ancient practice still continues into the present day in a myriad of interesting ways.Manvir Singh is an Assistant Professor of anthropology at the University of California, Davis. He holds a bachelor’s degree in human biology from Brown University and a Ph.D. from Harvard University. He is a regular contributor to The New Yorker, and his writings have also appeared in Wired, Vice, Aeon, and The Guardian, as well as leading academic journals, including Science, Nature Human Behaviour, and Behavioral and Brain Sciences. He has studied Indigenous psychedelics use in the Orinoco river basin of Colombia and, since 2014, has conducted ethnographic fieldwork with Mentawai communities on Siberut Island, Indonesia, focusing on shamanism and justice. He lives with his wife and baby daughter in Davis, CA.https://www.penguinrandomhouse.com/books/730339/shamanism-by-manvir-singh/https://www.manvir.org/https://x.com/mnvrsngh