Jay's new book on sadness, The Gate of Tears ... The most common mistake we make in dealing with sadness ... Examining the contours of your negative emotions ... Connections between Jewish and Buddhist teachings ... Jay: Pushing away the difficult is 90% of the difficult ... Spirituality and the power of negative thinking ...

Do all religions have the same “esoteric core?” ... The psychedelic origins of transpersonal psychology ... Aligning your instincts, consciousness, and heart through "participatory spirituality" ... Constructing reality through “embodied cognition” ... Why Jorge would object to making participatory spirituality a religion ... The complicated morality of "enlightened" spiritual teachers ...

What Lee means when he says "time is fundamental" ... Understanding the universe as a network ... A (very) tentative theory of consciousness ... Did the laws of physics evolve? ... Is the universe fine-tuned for the emergence of life? ... Applying Lee's theories of time to everyday life ...

David's "noodle art" metaphor for religious truth ... Would aliens have the same morality as humans? ... Why we need rituals ... What Judaism offers to non-believers ... David: Heaven doesn't sound very interesting ... Leaving the right kind of legacy ...

Distinguishing between spirituality and religion ... The bonus benefits of searching for the sacred ... Measuring one’s religiosity and spirituality ... States of mind fostered by spiritual practices ... Meaning as a predictor of well-being ... The Protestant ethic and the science of spirituality ...

What gives John's life meaning? ... Unorthodox views on evolution and natural selection ... Can art provide a spiritual experience? ... The difference between consuming art and making it ... Fear of infirmity ... but not death ... John on doing what he was meant to do ...

How the brain builds complex thoughts out of reusable parts ... More fodder for the brain-as-computer model ... Sorry, we’re not quite there with the mind-reading thing ... Possible reasons for the brain’s topographic organization ... Why Steven’s paper is controversial (and exciting) ... Cognitive neuroscience questions for the near future ...

“Virtue ethics” vs. typical modern understandings of morality ... What do you need to live a “flourishing” life? ... How to tell the difference between a Cynic and a Stoic ... When our moral intuitions and our moral systems conflict ... What Massimo finds appealing about a Stoic lifestyle ... Why you shouldn’t focus on external outcomes ...

Why Daniel wrote a biography of David Foster Wallace ... "This Is Water" and Wallace's search for meaning ... How Wallace's depression shaped his worldview ... The double-edged sword of self-consciousness ... Wallace's effort to see reality through the eyes of others ... Wallace's suicide and literary legacy ...

Glenn's born-again Christian experience ... A double life: Harvard professor and crack addict ... How the death of a close friend shattered Glenn's faith ... Is a secular life a less meaningful life? ... Glenn's communitarian understanding of moral truth ... Why hedonism isn't enough ...