18 June 2019

Breann Fallon, Carole Cusack and Ray Radford approach the Australian news from a Religious Studies perspective. We cover the appeal of Cardinal George Pell, the drama around Israel Folau, and the impact of Christianity on the recent Australian federal election results.

10 June 2019

Listeners to the Religious Studies Project, particularly in a European context, might be quite familiar with the sight of a former church building that has now turned derelict, or is being used for a purposes that perhaps it wasn’t intended for, or is being rejuvenated by another ‘religious’ community, another Christian community, or put to some other use. Chris is joined today by Daan Beekers to discuss spatial contestations and conversions, particularly looking at (former) church buildings in the Dutch context.

3 June 2019

In this week’s podcasts, Dr. Paola Corrente gives us insights in how the use of the philological approach can be beneficial for, not only providing a common and solid framework for comparative research but also, for providing more suitable ways of classification according to linguistic criteria. Her work on the “dying gods” –i.e. gods that die but come back to life– of Ancient Greece and Mesopotamia, which draws on the concept formulated by James George Frazer, provides a case for this exercise.

27 May 2019

Science fiction and video games are more visible than ever as their popularity reaches record numbers. From classic arcade games to modern open-world sandbox simulators that require hundreds of hours to complete fully, science fiction is one of the most common gaming genres. This podcast explores the ways religion and science fiction appear together in these cultural products, asks how gamers see the value of this play, and how we seek belief in things that are 'out of this world' as a means to escape the present by sharing our hopes about the future.

22 May 2019

In this bumper episode of AYMD, Ann Taves talks to David Robertson about how she makes time to write, explanation versus interpretation, the metaphysics of mind, 'special things' in other disciplines, and what she has changed her mind about.