Episode Details

Jeffrey J. Kripal holds the J. Newton Rayzor Chair in Philosophy and Religious Thought at Rice University, where he chaired the Department of Religion for eight years and helped create the GEM Program, a doctoral concentration in the study of Gnosticism, Esotericism, and Mysticism that is the largest program of its kind in the world. He is presently serving as Associate Dean of the Faculty and Graduate Studies in the School of Humanities. He is also the Associate Director of the Center for Theory and Research at the Esalen Institute in Big Sur, California. Jeff is the editor-in-chief of the Macmillan Handbook Series on Religion (ten volumes) and the author of eight monographs, including, most recently, The Superhumanities: Historical Precedents, Moral Objections, New Realities (Chicago, 2022). He is presently working on a three-volume study of paranormal currents in the history of science and American metaphysical literature for the University of Chicago Press collectively entitled The Super Story.