Maintaining mindfulness when “literally on fire” ... Regaining a meditative practice after severe trauma ... Separating suffering from pain ... How the plane crash made Allan’s life better ... Allan’s transformation from actor to meditation teacher ... Using technology to support a meditation practice ...

The "strong AI thesis": Can a machine think? ... Debating the usefulness of the Turing test ... Could your brain be swapped with a silicon replica? ... Massimo: You'll never be able to upload your consciousness ... Digging into the famous "Chinese room" thought experiment ... Dan: Neuroscience won't solve philosophy of mind puzzles ...

Why Adam is crucial to Christian theology ... What happens when the Biblical Adam encounters modern genetics ... The “slippery slope” of critical inquiry ... What do you need to believe to be a Christian? ... Trying to reconcile God as Creator with natural selection ... Evolutionary psychology and the doctrine of original sin ...

Paul is pro-“compassion” but anti-“empathy" ... Different types of empathy: emotional vs. cognitive ... Two examples of the damage done by empathy ... The myth of pure evil ... Are humans naturally moral? ... The unconscious biases that inform our sense of justice ...

Michelle's new book, The Goddess Pose ... Is yoga more than just exercise? ... Indra Devi, the woman who helped bring yoga to the West ... The amazing story of the spiritual teacher Krishnamurti ... How yoga was cannily pitched to mid-century America ... Yoga's weird sort of non-attachment ...

A brief history of liberal theology ... Does "theologically liberal" mean "politically liberal?" ... When theologians appeared on the cover of Time ... The long lineage of identifying God with "being" ... Hegel's idealism and the Christian logos ... Challenges from neo-orthodoxy and liberation theology ...

The science behind meditation ... When meditation brings on the "dark night of the soul" ... Why meditation produces varying results ... When meditation was exported to the West ... The trouble with the "assembly line" approach to meditation ... Does meditation dull the activist spirit? ...

How understanding evolution can improve the real world ... Is human nature mismatched to the modern environment? ... Why we believe kooky things ... "Meaning systems”—religious or secular, everyone’s got one ... Can science and religion form a unified meaning system? ... David’s latest book, Does Altruism Exist? ...

Can you have religion without belief? ... Bob tries to convince Judith that she's not an atheist ... Judith: The Torah is true in the way that fairy tales are true ... Why "purpose" isn't talked about much in Judaism ... A Jew can't run away from being a Jew ... How atheists can create community traditions ...

Sheldon's roots in psychology ... Ernest Becker and the meaning of mortality ... Terror and death as motivating forces in life ... Studying death rituals around the world ... What happens when we're reminded of death ... Is there a path to eternity—or at least sanity? ...