PODCAST · religion
The Classical Ideas Podcast
by Gregory Soden
Simply stated, religion matters. Religion matters not only for personal reasons, but also for social, economic, political, and military purposes. Unfortunately, studies suggest that religious knowledge and cultural literacy for any religious tradition is either in decline or is non-existent in the United States, despite being one of the most religiously diverse nation on earth. Today, religion is implicated in nearly every major national and international issue. The public arena is awash in religious explanations and arguments for nearly every issue. The goal of The Classical Ideas Podcast is to empower students with the core knowledge of major world religions to improve citizenship and agency in a diverse society. Welcome to the show!
Episodes
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EP 360: Inari Origin Stories and Buddhist Public Scholarship w/Dr. Matthew Keller
Dr. Matthew Keller is Public Scholar of Buddhism within the Curatorial Department at the Detroit Institute of Arts! He completed his Ph.D. at the University of Southern California in Asian Religions. This episode supported by Sacred Writes: https://www.sacred-writes.org/ Matthew Keller at…
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EP 359: Longchengpa and Lineage Prayers w/Dr. Renée Ford
Renée Ford, Ph.D. is a Lab Coordinator at the Contemplative Sciences Center, providing support for contemplative research at the CIRCL Lab. Renée's keen interest in understanding lived experiences in various contexts is a key motivation to her engagement here. She is trained in microphenomenology...
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EP 358: Buddhist Military Chaplaincy in Korea w/Dr. Jonathan C. Feuer
Jonathan Feuer earned his Ph.D in Asian Languages and Cultures from UCLA in 2023. His current book project is entitled Buddhist Militarism, Violence, and Religious Freedom: The South Korean Buddhist Military Chaplaincy and his research interests include Buddhist modernity, South Korean history…
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EP 357: Khemethaka Nunnery, Daw Gunawati, and pāramī w/Dr. M.K. Long
MK Long is a historian and ethnographer of Buddhism and gender. Her current project highlights vernacular auto/biographical writings of Buddhist women in Myanmar, examining their rhetorical strategies of self-presentation and how they theorize Buddhist authority, temporality, and belonging.…
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EP 356: Buddhism and Experimental Music w/Dr. Julian Butterfield
Julian Butterfield is a scholar of medieval Chinese Buddhist literature with a special interest in how Mahāyāna Buddhist narratives depict and solicit feeling. His current monograph project recovers the aesthetic and affective dimensions of Lotus Sūtra devotion in fifth-to-eighth-century China,...
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EP 355: Buddhist Charities in Urban Vietnam w/Dr. Sara Swenson
Sara Swenson works as an Assistant Professor in the Department of Religion at Dartmouth College. Her current research explores how grassroots charity volunteers in Vietnam adapt Buddhist values and practices to navigate ethical struggles amid rapid urbanization and she is the author of "Near…
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EP 354: Transforming the American Sangha w/Dr. Nalika Gajaweera
Nalika Gajaweera (Research Affiliate, Walter H. Capps Center, University of California, Santa Barbara; PhD, Anthropology, University of California, Irvine, 2013) is an anthropologist of Buddhism, race, and ethics, with a focus on community well-being and resilience. Her current book manuscript,...
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EP 353: Western Esoteric Tradition and "Scientific Progress" with Dr. Tara Isabella Burton
Tara Isabella Burton (DPhil, University of Oxford; Visiting Fellow, Mercatus Center, George Mason University; Visiting Research Fellow, Institutional Flourishing Lab, Catholic University of America) is a theologian and culture critic, and the author of Self-Made: Creating Our Identities from Da...
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EP 352: A Perturbed System Religion and Climate Change from the End of a World w/ Dr. Susannah Crockford
A moving study of how religion shapes Western climate discourse. Our ecological system is disturbed, and with it, every other system we've built to inhabit it. We do not face inevitable destruction, yet many of us cannot conceive of climate change as anything but the end of the world, an…
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EP 351: Dr. Ira Helderman on Adverse Meditation Effects
Ira Helderman PhD, LPC (Adjunct Professor of Religion, Psychology, and Culture, Vanderbilt University; PhD, Religious Studies, Vanderbilt University, 2016) studies how psychotherapists' definitions of what is and is not religious shape their understandings of caregiving, health, and illness. His...
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EP 350: The Wounded Church: Tending to the Harm within Catholicism w/Dr. Annie Selak
Dr. Annie Selak (she/her/hers) is an expert in feminist ecclesiology. She studies wounds in the church, or moments where the church fails to live into its mission and causes harm. Racism, sexism, and the clergy sex abuse crisis are examples of the church failing to credibly be church. Guided by a...
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EP 349: The YouTube Prosperity Gospel w/Dr. Kaitlyn Ugoretz
Kaitlyn Ugoretz (Lecturer, Nanzan Institute for Religion and Culture, Nanzan University, Japan; PhD, East Asian Languages and Cultural Studies, University of California, Santa Barbara, in progress) is an anthropologist of religion focused on the globalization of Japanese Shinto practices through...
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EP 348: Dr. Kira Ganga Kieffer on "Unvaccinated Under God: Religion and Vaccine Hesitancy in Modern America"
Kira Ganga Kieffer is a scholar of American religions, history, culture, and politics with a PhD in Religious Studies from Boston University. She is Visiting Assistant Professor of Religious Studies at Fairfield University. Kieffer's first book, Unvaccinated Under God: Religion and Vaccine...
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EP 347: Beyond Wellness with Liz Bucar
Liz Bucar is a religious ethicist and professor of religion at Northeastern University, as well as a certified intenSati and Kripalu yoga instructor. Her popular writing has appeared in The Atlantic, the Los Angeles Times, Teen Vogue, and The Wall Street Journal, and she is the author of four...
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EP 346: Deepak Chopra-Jeffrey Epstein Connections & the Spirituality Industry Crisis w/Dr. Ann Gleig
Ann Gleig (Professor of Religion and Cultural Studies, University of Central Florida; PhD, Rice University, 2010) studies spirituality emerging from the encounter between Buddhism and American culture, particularly meditation and mindfulness. The author of American Dharma: Buddhism Beyond…
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EP 345: Relational Ethics and Indigenous Plant Medicines w/Dr. Natalie Avalos
Natalie Avalos (Assistant Professor of Native American and Indigenous Studies, University of Colorado Boulder; PhD, University of California Santa Barbara, 2015) is an ethnographer of religion whose research examines contemporary Indigenous religious life, healing historical trauma, and...
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EP 344: Altered States of Consciousness w/Dr. Michiel van Elk
Michiel van Elk (1980) is a researcher and writer in the field of psychology, philosophy and neuroscience. Having received his PhD at the Donders Institute, the Netherlands, he has worked at several international institutions including the University of California Santa Barbara the École...
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Ep 343: Moral Courage for Our Times w/Dr. Laine Walters Young
Laine Walters Young is the Assistant Director of the Cal Turner Program for Moral Leadership in the Professions at Vanderbilt University. She received her PhD from Vanderbilt in Religion, Psychology and Culture, and considers herself a feminist care ethicist working at the intersection of...
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EP 342: Puerto Rico, Bad Bunny, and the Civil Religion of the NFL
Dr. Lizardy-Hajbi is the author of Unraveling Religious Leadership: Power, Authority, and Decoloniality (Fortress Press, 2024) and co-editor of Explore: Vocational Discovery in Ministry (Rowman & Littlefield, 2022). In addition, she is the author of a number of articles and reports, including...
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EP 341: St. Brigid of Ireland w/Dr. Judish L. Bishop
Judith L. Bishop is Associate Professor of History and Women's, Gender, and Sexuality Studies and the Alice Andrews Quigley Chair in Women's Studies at Mills College at Northeastern University. She earned her BA from Baylor University, MA from Vanderbilt University, and her PhD from the Graduate...
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EP 340: Becoming Neighbors w/Amar Peterman
Amar D. Peterman is a constructive theologian working at the intersection of faith and public life. He is the founder of Scholarship for Religion and Society LLC and the former assistant director of civic networks at Interfaith America. Peterman holds an MDiv from Princeton Theological Seminary…
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EP 339: Angela of Foligno and the Lepers of Our Time w/Dr. Mac Loftin
Mac Loftin is a lecturer on theology at Harvard Divinity School. This essay was adapted from his forthcoming book, "In the Twilight of the Christian West: A Theology of Mourning and Resistance" and was produced in partnership with The Narrative Project, an initiative of The Christian Century.…
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EP 338: Resting Beside Living Waters W/LJ Williams
LJ Williams (they/she) is a queer African and Jewish ritualist and writer, pursuing an MDiv from Starr King School for The Ministry with a certificate in Entheogenic Justice Companioning. They are a longtime Black Lives of Unitarian Universalism community member, and served as a coordinator of a...
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EP 337: Mappila Muslim Matrilineal Houses: Islam, Architecture and the Indian Ocean w/Azna Parveen
Azna Parveen is a PhD scholar in Architecture at the University of Manchester, UK. Her research explores the socio-cultural translations of Islam in the built environment through the perspective of oceanic trade along the Indian Ocean littorals, focussing on Malabar Coast of Kerala, India.…
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EP 336: Deirdre Jonese Austin on Dance and Sacredness
Deirdre Jonese Austin (she/her) is a writer, womanist minister, and Black feminist anthropologist and ethnographer raised in the South and in the Protestant Church. Her work, ministry, and research develop out of her own experience and explore topics at the intersection of faith, race, gender and...
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EP 335: Philo and the Therapeuts w/Dr. Jimmy Hoke
Jimmy Hoke is a freelance scholar whose uses their research, writing, and teaching to enact genuine change. Their work engages and creates queer, trans, and feminist approaches to the New Testament and Early Christianity. They are the author of Feminism, Queerness, Affect, and Romans: Under God?,...
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EP 334: Womanist Theology w/Samantha Carwyn
Samantha Carwyn is a graduate of United Theological Seminary of the Twin Cities, where she earned a Master of Divinity with a concentration in Social Transformation and Church Leadership. Her thesis, Finding Sacred Inherent Worth Despite Adultification & Misogynoir, explores the intersections of...
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EP 333: Salvadoran-Middle Eastern Resistance and Shafiq Handal w/Dr. Amy Fallas
Dr. Amy Fallas is a PhD in History at UC Santa Barbara. She holds an MA in History from Yale and her research examines religious difference, charitable networks, and historical memory in the Middle East. Her work has been supported by the American Research Center in Egypt, the American Society…
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EP 332: Nonbinary Biblical Readings of Mordecai and Beyond w/Dr. Esther Brownsmith
Esther Brownsmith (she/her) is Assistant Professor of Hebrew Bible at the University of Dayton. Her first monograph, Gendered Violence in Biblical Narrative: The Devouring Metaphor (Routledge, 2024), was awarded the AJS Jordan Schnitzer First Book Publication Award. She is also editor-in-chief of...
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EP 331: Radical Antiquity w/Dr. Christopher Zeichmann
Christopher B. Zeichmann (he/they) is a contract lecturer at Toronto Metropolitan University, who specializes in the study of the New Testament. His research focuses on a variety of questions related to sexuality, the Roman military, and the early Jesus tradition. His books include Radical...
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EP 330: Commodification and Tibetan Buddhism w/Dr. Raj Kumar Singh
Raj Kumar Singh is a PhD researcher in Anthropology at the University of Delhi, currently studying the relationship between religion and economy in Mcleodganj, Dharamshala. He has published several articles and book chapters on Hindu nationalism, Tibetan Buddhism, and the relationship between...
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EP 329: Brahma Vidya Mandir Ashram w/Dr. Swasti Bhattacharyya
Swasti Bhattacharyya (PhD, RN) Professor Emerita of Philosophy and Religion, has been researching, writing, and teaching in religious studies and applied ethics for over two decades. She examines ethical issues from multiple philosophical and religious perspectives. Her work is rooted in her...
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EP 328: Christian Disaffiliation and Exiting w/Dr. Tess Starman
Tess Starman (she/they) is a recent PhD graduate in Sociology at Howard University and is an incoming assistant professor at Simpson College. Her research specializes on intersections of race, gender, sexuality, and power at the nexus of religion and politics. She studies progressive Christian...
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EP327: Religious Shame and Dieting w/Dr. Rebecca Wolfe
Rebecca Wolfe is a postdoctoral research fellow at Harvard University. Graduating with a PhD in Sociology from the University of California, San Francisco (UCSF) in 2024, Rebecca's research agenda focuses on the areas of gender, sexuality, the body, and mental health, particularly in the context…
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EP 326: Fertility, Abortion, Reproductive Care, and Islam w/Dr. Celene Ibrahim
Dr. Celene Ibrahim is a multidisciplinary scholar specializing in Qur'anic studies, gender studies and interreligious relations. Her award-winning monograph Women and Gender in the Qur'an (Oxford University Press, 2020) received the Association of Middle East Women's Studies book prize and is…
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EP 325: Intersectional Identities of Christian Women in the United States w/Dr. Amanda Hernandez
Amanda Hernandez is an Assistant Professor of Sociology and affiliate faculty member of the Feminist Studies and Race & Ethnicity Studies programs at Southwestern University. She is a proud graduate of San Antonio Community College. She received her B.A. in Women's & Gender Studies from the...
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EP 324: Epic Bollywood: Religion and Representation in Modern Indian Cinema w/Dr. Sohini Sarah Pillai
Dr. Sohini Sarah Pillai (she/her/hers) is Assistant Professor of Religion, Director of Film and Media Studies, and the Marlene Crandell Francis Endowed Chair in the Humanities at Kalamazoo College. Her research interests include Hindu traditions, epic narratives, Indian cinema, and women in...
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EP 323: Conversion Therapy & Shame-Sex Attraction w/Dr. Lucas Wilson
Formerly the Justice, Equity, and Transformation Postdoctoral Fellow at University of Calgary, Lucas is a SSHRC Postdoctoral Fellow at University of Toronto Mississauga. He is the author of At Home with the Holocaust: Postmemory, Domestic Space, and Second-Generation Holocaust Narratives (Rutgers...
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EP 322: Ramy, Dubai Bling, and Muslim Matchmaker w/Dr. Tazeen Ali
Tazeen M. Ali (she/her) is assistant professor of Religion and Politics at Washington University in St. Louis. Her research and teaching focus on Islam and gender, US Islam, and race and religion in America. She is the author of The Women's Mosque of America: Authority & Community in US Islam…
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EP 321: Ezekiel 24:15-27 and Divine Dissociation w/Dr. Alexiana Fry
Alexiana Fry (she/her/hers) is a postdoctoral researcher at the University of Copenhagen at the Faculty of Theology for a project entitled "Divergent Views of Diaspora in Ancient Judaism." Her first book, Trauma Talks in the Hebrew Bible: Speech Act Theory and Trauma Hermeneutics, released in...
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EP 320: Gender and the Quiet Power of Interfaith Food-Sharing w/Peach Hoyle
Peach (they/them) is a PhD student at the Faculty of Divinity, University of Cambridge and the Woolf Institute. They are conducting ethnographic research into the dynamics of resistance and compliance in women's interfaith organisations in the contemporary British public sphere. One of their key...
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EP 319: Land Is Kin w/Dr. Dana Lloyd
Dana Lloyd is assistant professor of Global Interdisciplinary Studies and affiliated faculty at the Center for Peace and Justice Education at Villanova University. She is the author of Land Is Kin: Sovereignty, Religious Freedom, and Indigenous Sacred Sites (University Press of Kansas, 2023) and...
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EP 318: Engendering a Culture and Climate of Sexual Safety w/Dr. Aisha Lovens
Aisha R. Lovens (she/her/hers) is a PhD student in African American Preaching and Sacred Rhetoric at Christian Theological Seminary. She is a dynamic same-gender-loving minister, scholar-activist, womanist, and preacher committed to transformative theological inquiry. Her research centers on sex...
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EP 317: Post-Evangelical Feminist Communities on Digital Media w/Kelsey Hanson Woodruff
Kelsey Hanson Woodruff is a PhD candidate in Religion at Harvard University. Her dissertation is a historical and ethnographic study of digital communities of post-evangelical feminists in the twenty-first century. She is also writing a biography of millennial author Rachel Held Evans. Hanson...
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EP 316: Pagan Religions w/Dr. Angela Puca
Dr Angela Puca is an academic and a university lecturer who has taught at several universities worldwide and has been based at Leeds Trinity University since 2016. She holds a Bachelor's and a Master's degree in philosophy. In 2021, The University of Leeds awarded her a PhD in Religious Studies…
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EP 315: Is the Black Church Dead? w/Dr. Shaonta' Allen
Shaonta' Allen is an Assistant Professor in the Department of Sociology at Dartmouth College. She also holds affiliations with the African and African American Studies Department and the Consortium of Studies in Race, Migration, and Sexuality. She received her B.A in Sociology from the University...
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EP 314: Liminal Spaces of Indian American Christianity and Indian Flag at the Capitol Insurrection w/Binu Varghese
Binu 'Ben' Varghese is a PhD student in religion and society at Princeton Theological Seminary. His research focuses on intersections of race, politics, and religion among Indian diasporas in transnational contexts. He draws his theoretical formulations from the colonial history of Dutch slavery…
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EP 313: Misreading Calvin, Settler Colonialism, and Theology w/Dr. Suejeanne Koh
SueJeanne Koh is the Graduate Futures Program Director of the Humanities Center at the University of California, Irvine. She develops programming for humanities doctoral students focusing on professional development and diverse career pathways. She is also the Director of Adult Education and...
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EP 312: Faith and Food Networks: Muslim women's acts of resistance and resilience in the American Diaspora with Dr. Farha Ternikar
Farha Ternikar (Ph.D., Sociology, M.A. Religious Studies) is the director of Gender, Women and Sexuality Studies at Le Moyne College, Syracuse. Her current manuscript "Faith and Food Networks: Muslim women's acts of resistance and resilience in the American Diaspora" examines how in addition to...
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EP 311: BLACK DISABLED BODIES AND ENVIRONMENTAL JUSTICE w/Robert Monson
Robert Monson is a writer, musician, and scholar that looks closely at Black and womanist theologies as well as Black disability theology. His work engages Black religious identities, Christian nationalism, disability, and more. He is currently a PhD student and is a host for two podcasts: Black...
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ABOUT THIS SHOW
Simply stated, religion matters. Religion matters not only for personal reasons, but also for social, economic, political, and military purposes. Unfortunately, studies suggest that religious knowledge and cultural literacy for any religious tradition is either in decline or is non-existent in the United States, despite being one of the most religiously diverse nation on earth. Today, religion is implicated in nearly every major national and international issue. The public arena is awash in religious explanations and arguments for nearly every issue. The goal of The Classical Ideas Podcast is to empower students with the core knowledge of major world religions to improve citizenship and agency in a diverse society. Welcome to the show!
HOSTED BY
Gregory Soden
CATEGORIES
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Frequently Asked Questions
How many episodes does The Classical Ideas Podcast have?
The Classical Ideas Podcast currently has 363 episodes available on PodParley. New episodes are automatically indexed when they're published to the podcast feed.
What is The Classical Ideas Podcast about?
Simply stated, religion matters. Religion matters not only for personal reasons, but also for social, economic, political, and military purposes. Unfortunately, studies suggest that religious knowledge and cultural literacy for any religious tradition is either in decline or is non-existent in the...
How often does The Classical Ideas Podcast release new episodes?
The Classical Ideas Podcast publishes regularly with 363 episodes available. Check the episode list for the typical release schedule.
Where can I listen to The Classical Ideas Podcast?
You can listen to The Classical Ideas Podcast on PodParley by clicking any episode. We provide an embedded audio player for direct listening, and you can also subscribe via your preferred podcast app using the RSS feed.
Who hosts The Classical Ideas Podcast?
The Classical Ideas Podcast is created and hosted by Gregory Soden.
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