Stories from History's Edges with Audelia Rinot

My question is: how do gods survive? I don’t mean in the way theologians talk about survival, with eternity and omnipotence and all the comforting abstractions, but in the messy, human way that belief actually works over time. Because once you strip religion of its poetry and its rituals, gods have a very concrete problem. They only exist as long as people believe in them, and belief is not a give...

Here’s a thought-provoking idea we rarely talk about because it feels too obvious to question once you notice it. Nobody is born believing anything. Not God, not gods, not heaven, not hell, not sin, not salvation, not karma, not enlightenment. Babies come out knowing exactly two things: how to demand food and how to panic when they do not get it fast enough. Everything else arrives later, delivere...

Welcome to my podcast: Stories from History’s Edges. This episode was recorded before today’s news broke. The fact that it lines up anyway is not intentional. It’s familiar. Sometimes history does the timing for you. Today’s episode is about the oldest trick gods still use. When violence works, it’s justified. When it doesn’t, it’s denied. If three gods all say they’re the same, someone is lying....