In the first episode of Sacrilegious, Gary Laderman explains some of his thinking behind starting the podcast. What is sacred? Are we religious in ways we may not be aware of or are not immediately obvious to the naked eye? From the get-go, the podcast asks listeners to begin reconsidering how they understand religion, define it, and identify it in the world around them, and to enter into a public discussion about the various ways religious forces of all kinds shape identities, communities, and societies.
Religion is more than churches, temples, and mosques, and not always concerned with bibles, dogmas, and God. This podcast explores religious and spiritual life in other terms, and seeks to turn your understanding of religion upside down. Topics include death, sexuality, drugs, science, music, and other sacred realms that are often overlooked, but are deeply powerful religious sources of meaning and ritual. This is not another podcast offering opportunities for spiritual growth, or interfaith dialogue, or religious literacy. It is, rather, a public forum to subvert common perspectives about religion; raise critical questions about conventional understandings of the sacred; and play with the conceptual boundlessness of spirituality in human cultures.