Choose Your Own Religion

In the last episode of Choose Your Own Religion, my mom and dad come on the show to talk about the long, strange trip of my faith journey and what it means for me to be back in the religion I grew up in. We talk about Presbyterians, parables, and get personal.

Ryan Middledorf, founder of the Campfire Media network, comes on the second to last ever CYOR to talk about the five year journey this podcast has taken. We talk about Christianity, community, participating in broken things, and do some hardcore reminiscing.

Rick Doblin, founder and executive director of the Multidisciplinary Association for Psychedelic Studies (https://maps.org/), comes on to talk about the famous “Good Friday Experiment”, an experiment run at Boston University’s Marsh Chapel by Walter Pahnke while at Harvard Divinity School. Rick also tells the story of his follow-up study more than two decades later, sharing all the factors that went into Pahnke’s attempts to study mystical experiences afforded by psilocybin and how the study participants reflected back on their experiences later in life. Please join the https://cswr.hds.harvard.edu/ on Wednesday, October 21st at 4pm for a panel featuring two psilocybin clinical trial participants in dialogue with the historian of religions Jeffrey J. Kripal (Rice University) exploring these contemporary psychedelic trials. Links: https://maps.org/images/pdf/books/pahnke/walter_pahnke_drugs_and_mysticism.pdf https://maps.org/research-archive/cluster/psilo-lsd/goodfriday.pdf https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QCpqKUyfWYU https://maps.org/articles/5414-good-friday-drugs-mysticism

I check in with my dad, Presbyterian minister Rev. Dr. Jody Welker, to talk about this year’s surreal Easter. We work our way through Passover, Maundy Thursday, Good Friday, Holy Saturday, and Easter Sunday, talking about the kinds of messages from Holy Week that bother us and inspire us.

In the first episode of a new series called “Closing the Distance,” poet, writer, and Harvard Divinity School student Molly Silverstein (also my partner) helps talk through our emotions and feel our way through the darkness in the early days of the coronavirus. As we keep the physical distance to prevent the spread of COVID-19, we need all the help we can get from art, authenticity, and each other.