Pod Only Knows - #003 - Magic's a Messy Bitch - with Dr. Shaily Patel

#003 - Magic's a Messy Bitch - with Dr. Shaily Patel

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06/06/23 • 69 min

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Pod Only Knows

When you work in religious studies, sometimes you get to work on really cool subjects, like Dr. Shaily Patel, who works on magic.

For centuries, magic had been an integral part of religion. So much so, in fact, that it's hard to really see it as a separate category.

So when did we start removing magic from religious practice and putting into the wands of boy wizards and teenage witches, or the hands of bearded old men? Why is magic a Vegas act instead of Church liturgy?

The short answer is Christianity.

The long answer is what Kelly and John invited Shaily on to talk about this week.

Shaily Patel is an assistant professor of early Christianity at Virginia Tech. She earned her Ph.D. from The University of North Carolina in 2017 and holds master’s degrees from Vanderbilt Divinity School and The University of Chicago.

You can find her on Twitter @vox_magica

When you work in religious studies, sometimes you get to work on really cool subjects, like Dr. Shaily Patel, who works on magic.

For centuries, magic had been an integral part of religion. So much so, in fact, that it's hard to really see it as a separate category.

The short answer is Christianity.

The long answer is what Kelly and John invited Shaily on to talk about this week.

You can find her on Twitter @vox_magica

Previous Episode

Weekend Chit-Chat Episode #1 - The Middle Way

In the first weekend episode, John bring Kelly the topic of the Buddhist teaching of The Middle Way.

One of the first breakthroughs in Siddhartha's journey to become the Buddha, the Middle Way reminds us that in order to be successful in our quests, we must center ourselves in moderation. This means avoiding the pitfalls of thinking in terms of extremes - that the answer to our problems is probably not ever the opposite of whatever caused them.

As a society, and as a culture, we suck at this. And, worse, we tend to confuse the wisdom of this teaching with an endorsement of centrism, contrarianism, or moderation for moderation's sake.

And as two people who tend to take on more than they can handle and are very bad at considering their own mental well-being, your two hosts consider where they might learn from the Buddha's insights here as well!

Next Episode

Weekend Chit-Chat Episode #2 - There Are No Spoons

This week was the tenth anniversary of the release of the The Last of Us on PlayStation 3.

The critically-acclaimed HBO television adaptation aired earlier this year, and so we thought it would be a good time to take a look back at its themes and messages, especially where it concerns religion.

Visions of the apocalypse can serve as great platforms to explore ideas about human nature, but, while they tend to be interested in the philosophy of religion, they often drop the ball when it comes to the actual depiction of religious people.

How does The Last of Us stack up as far as that goes? What did we think of the "religion episode"? Is Ellie a Christ figure? And how come all the spoons and can openers seem to vanish when the world ends?

We talk about that and more in this installment of our weekend chit-chat series!

Also, read Kelly's book about this: The Zombies Are Coming!