{"podcast":{"title":"Tricycle Talks","slug":"tricycle-talks-828620","podcast_index_feed_id":828620,"rss_url":"https://feeds.megaphone.fm/TPG2116740081","website_url":"http://tricycle.org/podcast","image_url":"https://megaphone.imgix.net/podcasts/cc403d78-473d-11ee-ad52-cf8b5d7696e3/image/avatars-zxFGwPk1KOmyzzuw-TyjFTQ-original.jpg?ixlib=rails-4.3.1&max-w=3000&max-h=3000&fit=crop&auto=format,compress","author":"Tricycle Talks","episode_count":203,"summary":"Tricycle Talks: Listen to Buddhist teachers, writers, and thinkers on life's big questions. Hosted by James Shaheen, editor in chief of Tricycle: The Buddhist Review, the leading Buddhist magazine in the West. Life As It Is: Join James Shaheen with co-host Sharon Salzberg and learn how to bring Buddhist practice into your everyday life. Tricycle: The Buddhist Review creates award-winning editorial, podcasts, events, and video courses. Unlock access to all this Buddhist knowledge by subscribing to the magazine at tricycle.org/join","last_synced_at":null,"page_url":"https://stenobird.com/podcast/tricycle-talks-828620"},"episode":{"title":"Revisiting the Story of the Buddha’s Life with Donald S. Lopez Jr.","slug":"revisiting-the-story-of-the-buddha-s-life-with-donald-s-lopez-jr","published_at":"2025-09-17T10:00:00+00:00","page_url":"https://stenobird.com/podcast/tricycle-talks-828620/revisiting-the-story-of-the-buddha-s-life-with-donald-s-lopez-jr","show_page_url":"https://stenobird.com/podcast/tricycle-talks-828620","url":"https://tricycle.org/podcast/donald-lopez-buddha","audio_url":"https://pdst.fm/e/tracking.swap.fm/track/tcQd6Q6C0RUUlOHq1Ytj/mgln.ai/e/51/pscrb.fm/rss/p/traffic.megaphone.fm/TPG4033274135.mp3?updated=1757970568","summary":"Donald S. Lopez Jr. is the Arthur E. Link Distinguished University Professor of Buddhist and Tibetan Studies at the University of Michigan and a longtime Tricycle contributing editor. In his new book, The Buddha: Biography of a Myth, he draws from a variety of sources to trace a single narrative of the Buddha’s life, from his birth through his enlightenment to his passage into nirvana. While a number of scholars have attempted to “demythologize” the Buddha by extracting the man from the myth, Lopez sets out instead to present a remythologized Buddha, highlighting the supernatural elements of his life. In this episode of Tricycle Talks, Tricycle’s editor-in-chief, James Shaheen, sits down with Lopez to discuss his account of the Buddha’s life, as well as the larger question of whether the Buddha actually existed—and what’s at stake in the answer.","meta_description":"Donald S. Lopez Jr. is the Arthur E. Link Distinguished University Professor of Buddhist and Tibetan Studies at the University of Michigan and a longtime…","key_points":[],"chapters":[],"topics":[],"duration_seconds":3450,"processing_state":"not_requested","actions":[{"name":"request_transcript","method":"POST","url":"https://stenobird.com/v1/public/podcasts/tricycle-talks-828620/episodes/revisiting-the-story-of-the-buddha-s-life-with-donald-s-lopez-jr/transcription-requests","description":"Idempotently request low-priority transcript generation for this episode."},{"name":"read_markdown","method":"GET","url":"https://stenobird.com/podcast/tricycle-talks-828620/revisiting-the-story-of-the-buddha-s-life-with-donald-s-lopez-jr.md","description":"Read the agent-friendly Markdown representation of this episode resource."}]}}