Through this conversation Dr. Rigoglioso and John discuss subjects ranging from the myth and history of immaculate conception, the goddess and the underworld, the autonomy of the archetype, various consciousnesses, living the archetypal journey of the gods, the literal and the symbolic, the ontological reality of the gods, the nature of divine birth, how “Mother Mary” became a lesser known character in the bible, the campaign to disempower women, The Mysteries, the sacred and the secret, lineage...
Apr 23, 2021•1 hr 41 min
65: Carl A. P. Ruck – The Road to Eleusis; The Myth of Christ Dr. Carl Ruck and I begin our conversation discussing the book The Road to Eleusis, wherein “the classist” Dr. Ruck and coauthors R. Gordon Wasson, “the mycologist,” and Dr. Albert Hoffman, “the chemist,” released a controversial theory that psychoactive entheogenic sacramental ceremonies are often discovered at the root of many religious and spiritual traditions throughout history – and especially within the Greek Eleusinian Mystery ...
Apr 13, 2021•1 hr 50 min
Join John in his interview with Mackenzie Amara - known to many as the “inked shrink” - as they explore the relationship between trauma and healing, psychedelics and psychosis, and dreams and the underworld. Mackenzie, an early initiate into both psychedelics and psychosis, endured a challenge to her worldview, which subsequently opened the next stage in her life. We discuss Jung’s struggle with psychedelics, repression of moment-to-moment authenticity and spontaneity, psychoanalysis as an acid ...
Mar 30, 2021•1 hr 46 min
This is one of the most controversial podcasts in the history of The Sacred Speaks; though controversy is familiar territory for the participant, Dr. DAC Hillman. Dr. Hillman began his doctoral research in the middle of a controversy that threatened him with a conflict between the choice of censuring his research to graduate with his doctorate or not pass. So, he did what any self-respecting doctoral student would do - remove the controversial work from his dissertation, and the write a book abo...
Mar 05, 2021•1 hr 50 min
What is a religious experience? Really. How does one define a religious event? Why do we keep reading from figures who report life-affirming, transformation-inducing, and worldview-shattering experiences that we, if we are honest, evoke the tension between both fascination and anxious avoidance? Today’s episode may provide a life raft - though the storm approaches regardless. Tune in as Dr. William Richards, a psychologist in the Psychiatry Department of the Johns Hopkins University School of Me...
Feb 25, 2021•1 hr 40 min
In this episode, John interviews Brian Muraresku, author of New York Times Bestseller, The Immortality Key: The Secret History of The Religion with No Name. On an average day back in 2007, Muraresku’s life changed after reading the Economist’s article reviewing the research underway at Johns Hopkins investigating the clinical use of psilocybin mushrooms. Thus, Brian’s twelve-year study of a controversial theory was born. The theory positions psychedelics at the root of early the Christian Euchar...
Dec 30, 2020•1 hr 48 min
One valuable question for us all to ask ourselves is: When does the performance stop? For you, really. Maybe a more specific question is: When are you not performing? Dr. Sara Schneider is interested in questions about the human body, the way it moves, how people adorn their bodies, how we express, and what is the road less traveled when it comes to expression of the body, be it acting, singing, etc. She began exploring these questions more deeply as she contemplated the window displays on 5th a...
Dec 04, 2020•2 hr 19 min
What are the milestones that you feel you need to reach before your life feels complete and ordered? How would you like to be remembered after you are gone? What would you risk if you could achieve the life you imagine that your heroes live or lived? Kate asks questions such as these, and more, so that she keeps the inevitability of death close enough to challenge and push her into a more full and aware life today. Following the death of several friends, Kate experienced grief, fear, anxiety, an...
Oct 30, 2020•1 hr 33 min
Apocalypse tends to be a vision of justice for people who are experiencing an injustice. For Dr. Erin Prophet, the chaos and uncertainty in the world with both the pandemic and the collective anger about harmful and ineffective policy, just might provide us all with hope for change. In this conversation we discuss religion, the symbol of the apocalypse, her experience living in a religious group that prepared for the apocalypse, the need for systemic change to address issues associated with race...
Jun 18, 2020•1 hr 7 min
As a science writer with The Scientific American, a primary concern for John Horgan is how science both supports the evolution of human understanding, and he is also very interested in exploring the shortcomings of science as a methodology and the limitations of the scientists whose conclusions have a direct impact on the world. In this conversation, we discuss the current pandemic and how crisis and trauma shift innovation and the scientific ideas that inform the zeitgeist. One of John’s primar...
Apr 23, 2020•1 hr 22 min
56: Sacred Stress. A conversation with George Faller. George is an outstanding person to connect with during this virus crisis because while when it comes to whether or not the virus is here, we do not have any choice in the matter. However, we can choose how to respond to the chaos and sense of disconnection that it brings. George’s role with the New York City Fire Department positioned him as a first responder to the Twin Towers on 9/11/2001. In the aftermath of this trauma, through education,...
Apr 09, 2020•1 hr 18 min
In this episode Dr. Stuart Kauffman and I discuss human population, creativity, the consequences of the exponential growth of the modern economy, consumerism and consumption: a model for overwhelming our environment, the choices “asked” of humanity within a consumerist culture, reductionism and the center of our humanity, increases of GDP and the relationship to individual identity, creating meaningful tools and goods that sustain, shifting our understanding of work and widgets, the modern notio...
Mar 26, 2020•1 hr 23 min
Like many of you, I watched Dr. Jill Bolte Taylor’s TED talk back in 2008 with astonishment and excitement – so this conversation is a long time coming. Dr. Taylor’s personality is without pretense, and her gift of switching between a scientific worldview to the view of an experiencer sets her up as both an accomplished observer of the measurable and an excitably playful experiencer of the miraculous. She holds this tension well and I only wish that we had more time to talk. Thankfully, she agre...
Mar 19, 2020•1 hr 46 min
How each of us takes in, and adapts to, the experiences of our lives create various preconceptions about the world and our place in it. Dr. Winborn, psychologist and Jungian psychoanalyst, works as a psychotherapist a vocation that he believes helps to free us from those preconceptions, or limitations to our lives. In the conversation we discuss: the nature of our psychological experience and how psychotherapy, in particular, psychoanalytic therapies aid in the integration and assimilation of as...
Mar 05, 2020•1 hr 37 min
In this conversation Dr. Erik Goodwyn and Dr. John Price discuss the foundation of Jung and his place as both a mystical thinker and an empirical thinker; the structure of the psyche; how evolution and structures of language and literature connect; the philosophy of mind – where Jung fits in the analysis of how mind and matter interact; where science and religion interact; ways brain physiology shapes and informs subjective experience, symbols, and stories; cross-cultural links between similar s...
Feb 05, 2020•1 hr 51 min
51: The Body and Soul. A conversation with Debbie Mills. How much time do you allow for awareness of how your body speaks? Probably not much. And definitely not as much as today’s participant does. In this episode of the podcast, Dr. John Price speaks with Debbie Mills, a healer who works with psycho-emotional energetic integration. Debbie’s life experience and practice place her in a unique position to connect with each person that she touches, and they change and transform. In the conversation...
Jan 22, 2020•1 hr 34 min
In this episode of The Sacred Speaks, John Price speaks with Dr. Thomas Moore. Through the conversation, they discuss Dr. Moore’s early development, James Hillman and Carl Jung’s influence upon him, and his work with soul as an author and psychotherapist for most of his life. Throughout the conversation, it becomes clear that the psychotherapeutic approach that Thomas grounds himself in is not typical of modern psychology. What he seeks is to broaden how each of us views our lived experience. Hi...
Dec 04, 2019•1 hr 42 min
What happens when people are provided a place and the space to ask questions about their lives that, up until that point, they assumed could not be explored? Maybe nothing, or perhaps life takes on new meaning. When have you been able to question the meaning systems of your life freely, that each tends to possess enormous influence, but that also may have been adopted from others close to you? As a child, Stuart moved all over the world, encountering new experiences and foreign territory, which ...
Nov 13, 2019•1 hr 37 min
Erin Prophet, MPH, Ph.D., is an author and scholar who studies religious experience and narratives of self-improvement and transcendence. She is a Visiting Assistant Professor at the University of Florida where she teaches about cults and new religious movements, nature and the environment, and spirituality and health. In this conversation, we explore the nature of belief, charismatic authority, reincarnation, religious studies and most importantly, how her unique childhood and development influ...
Oct 03, 2019•1 hr 36 min
Music offers one of the most potent spiritual metaphors that exists, and Patrick Summers, the artistic and music director of the Houston Grand Opera, has plenty to say about the subject of spirituality and music. He positions the operatic voice as the expression of a unique sonic vocal print that vibrates atoms between the singer and the listener’s ears. In his book, The Spirit of This Place: How Music Illuminates the Human Spirit, he writes, “But precisely because music is both an intellectual ...
Sep 18, 2019•1 hr 23 min
46: Culture and religious practice. A conversation with Tanya Lurhmann. Dr. Lurhmann, professor and psychological anthropologist at Stanford University, begins our conversation defining the term culture. She answers the question: What are the patterns of culture that inform how we should think and behave, and what happens when our individuality and the culture are at odds? Dr. Lurhmann is interested in the power of the mind and how certain aspects of the imagination and one’s intentions inform t...
Aug 21, 2019•1 hr 9 min
Deborah holds the honorable position as the poet laureate of Houston nominated by Mayor Sylvester Turner, and her presence is known any time she is around. This conversation explores aspects of her background that are necessary threads to the formation of her current self. Her poetry ranges from the profoundly contemplative to the deeply expressive – an evocative and challenging pairing for both herself and anyone who listens. She addresses themes of race, blackness, womanhood, black-womanhood, ...
Jul 31, 2019•1 hr 38 min
A week or so before recording this episode I asked Justin if he would lead a poetry workshop during the conversation. In a few words, what came out was raw and real. Justin is one of the better songwriters I know, not only because of his gift with language, but also because he approaches the craft with reverence and respect. He seeks to deepen his practice with each pass and he has a gift of a sharp wit that I find myself enjoying through each of our exchanges. “What better person to speak to th...
Jun 20, 2019•2 hr 13 min
Dr. Ferrari, one of the trailblazers of nanotechnology, the current President Designate of the European Research Council of the E.U., and the recently retired President and CEO of Houston Methodist Research Institute begins by explaining how he views math as a creative art. He maps theorem and proof onto the creative endeavor and posits that in the same way that the artist envisions the work, a mathematician envisions or intuits the theorem and then has to discover how to get there. He argues th...
Jun 05, 2019•1 hr 18 min
Dr. Kauffman, theoretical biologist, complex systems researcher, author of six books and numerous papers, begins the conversation recalling the ancient world and how the original split between the religions and the sciences influences the struggles and projections between the sciences and the arts/humanities today. Stuart begins this by providing scientific reasons why the possibilities of the world and our evolution are indefinite and anything that comes next in this evolution cannot be prestat...
May 22, 2019•1 hr 52 min
In this episode, Episcopal priest, Barbara Brown Taylor, and John explore the ideas that she has been working through in her books Learning to Walk in the Dark (2015) and Holy Envy (2019). She eloquently guides the listener through many of the hurdles that one encounters when grounding one’s self in a particular religious tradition. She encourages all of us to not only look on the other side of the fence over at another tradition but to experience the freedom one may acquire once we open ourselv...
May 08, 2019•1 hr 29 min
Pastor Juanita Rasmus recounts a life of service to others and then the reality that no one is free from being drawn into a fight for their life. This fight felt more like a decent which landed in a depressive episode that she describes in great detail. Juanita recounts how she was able to both emerge from the depths and work to make sense of how her mind and body could have been so completely taken over by this decent. She could not laugh, get out of bed, or take care of herself, and while she ...
Apr 10, 2019•2 hr 18 min
This podcast episode explores how one mystical experience can bring an individual to question the nature of reality enough so that they devote their life to answering questions that often time seem unanswerable: What is the nature of reality? What is a self? What is identity? Also, how do people approach their lives after they have an experience that challenges the way they see the world; yet because that same experience seems so outside of their cultural norms, they keep it to themselves? Altho...
Mar 27, 2019•1 hr 44 min
This podcast episode explores the stories that help us understand our reality, our place in that reality, and how humans both cling to and challenge these same stories. Jeffrey Kripal has been a keeper of many extraordinary stories, and as a professor of religion, he is positioned to question the stories that we believe serve us, but the reality is that we often serve the story. This conversation is anchored in Dr. Kripal’s newest book, The Flip, wherein he challenges many of the assumptions of ...
Mar 13, 2019•1 hr 39 min
The title of the John Horgan’s book, The Mind-Body Problems, with the addition of the “s”articulates the core of the mind-body problem – that it is plural. John Horgan is not content with one story that solves for the myriad problems we humans encounter when we explore reality and hunt to discover who we are and what matters most. John has been a scientific journalist for over 35 years and as someone who is paid to be curious he has commented on, written about, queried, and learned about some of...
Feb 27, 2019•1 hr 45 min
