Dec 13, 2017
Cass Midgley and Bob Pondillo interview Corinna Nicolaou, author of "A None's Story: Searching for Meaning Inside Christianity, Judaism, Buddhism, and Islam" Corinna is a writer whose work has appeared in the Washington Post, Los Angeles Times, Texas Observer, Salon, and Narrative Magazine, among other publications. Her commentaries have aired on National Public Radio's All Things Considered, and her writing can be found on her blog, One None Gets Some: Looking at Life Through the Lens of Faith."A None's Story" has been reviewed in the New York Times, Shelf-Awareness and Publishers Weekly.
We're going to flip the show upside down this week. We normally interview people who were raised deeply religious, usually Christian, and then deconstruct their childhood faith to various degrees of unbelief. Corinna is the opposite--she was raised completely secular and yet in her 40's she had something of an existential crisis and wondered if she wasn't missing out on something. The majority of the human population identify with some religion or another. She wondered why and set out to see what all the hubbub was about. Today she identifies as a None, but has gleaned a little bit, here and there, from the major world religions while discarding the bullshit. Her measuring stick is, "if it helps me love people, I'll take it; if it tells me certain people should be my enemies, I throw it out."
She joins us from Washington
state via Skype. It's a decent conversation at first but really
picks up in the end. Still it may not be for everyone; Corinna is
very graceful towards the major world religions, in a kind of a
naive way, to be honest. She was never burned by religion like many
of you. She has two masters degrees and teaches writing at
Washington State. I think there's something here for us to learn if
you're open minded. Though she remains a devout none, Nicolaou's
experiences reveal points of contact between the religious and the
unaffiliated, suggesting that nones may be radically revising the
practice of faith in the near future.
We
taped the conversation on November 18th, 2017. We interview people
you don’t know, about a subject no one wants to talk about. We hope
to encourage people in the process of deconstructing their faith
and help curb the loneliness that accompanies it. We think the
world is a better place when more people live by sight, not by
faith. Please subscribe to our podcast, and leave a review wherever
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Credits:
"Towering
Mountain of Ignorance" intro by Hank Green https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=w3v3S82TuxU
Intro bumper "Never Know" by Jack
Johnson
The segue music
on this episode was created by the Barry Orchestra found at
https://barryorchestra.bandcamp.com/