Episode Details

What happens to a mind in true isolation — and why does one Serbian woman with a shortwave radio confound everything we think we know about hermits? This episode traces the word back to the Desert Fathers of third-century Egypt, through the walled-in anchorites of the medieval church, to Christopher Knight's twenty-seven silent years in the Maine woods and the Lykov family's four decades in the Siberian taiga. Along the way: why nobody can actually count how many hermits exist, what the state does when a range trooper finds someone living where the map shows nothing, and the crucial difference between chosen solitude and solitary confinement. The answer to the puzzle, it turns out, is hiding in the distinction between isolation you pick and isolation that's imposed on you. Episode #052048 — open it directly at myweirdprompts.com/052048