{"podcast":{"title":"Wonder Cabinet","slug":"wonder-cabinet-7409328","podcast_index_feed_id":7409328,"rss_url":"https://publicfeeds.net/f/120/wondercabinet","website_url":"https://www.wondercabinetproductions.com","image_url":"https://f.prxu.org/120/images/68baf269-f9b6-40c1-be6c-30911ff8037b/Show_Cover-Wonder-Cabinet.png","author":"Wonder Cabinet Productions (hello@wondercabinetproductions.com)","episode_count":19,"summary":"Wonder Cabinet is an independent podcast from Anne Strainchamps and Steve Paulson, Peabody Award-winning creators of public radio's To The Best Of Our Knowledge. For 35 years, that show brought long-form conversations to 200+ stations nationwide; its interviews are now archived in the Library of Congress . Episodes feature intimate, long-form conversations with scientists, philosophers, writers, and artists who are re-imagining our relationship with the planet. Some study black holes or quantum entanglement; others map mycelial networks or count ancient tree rings. And some explore dream worlds, myths, and fairy tales to revive ways of knowing that challenge what we think we understand about the nature of reality. The name references Enlightenment-era cabinets of curiosities—private collections of shells, fossils, astronomical instruments, and saints' relics that existed at a moment when the scientific revolution was still in conversation with older ways of knowing the world. Today, another shift is taking place, as mechanistic models give way to more holistic, relational understandings of life on a sentient planet. Wonder Cabinet lives at that threshold. About the hosts Anne Stra…","last_synced_at":"2026-08-02T10:21:12.700956+00:00","page_url":"https://stenobird.com/podcast/wonder-cabinet-7409328"},"episode":{"title":"Manvir Singh: Was Shamanism the First Religion?","slug":"manvir-singh-was-shamanism-the-first-religion","published_at":"2026-04-04T11:00:00+00:00","page_url":"https://stenobird.com/podcast/wonder-cabinet-7409328/manvir-singh-was-shamanism-the-first-religion","show_page_url":"https://stenobird.com/podcast/wonder-cabinet-7409328","url":"https://wonder-cabinet.ghost.io/manvir-singh-was-shamanism-the-first-religion/","audio_url":"https://dts.podtrac.com/redirect.mp3/mgln.ai/e/48/dovetail.prxu.org/120/d9b8a095-09b9-4a43-82ad-1262440c5031/Singh_mix_01.mp3","summary":"Shamanism may be humanity’s oldest religion – a tradition found across cultures, where healers slip into unseen realms, speak with spirits, and bring back knowledge from beyond the visible world. But in a modern, scientific age, these practices can seem like little more than superstition. But what if they reveal something deeper in human experience? Anthropologist Manvir Singh set out in search of answers. On a remote island in Indonesia, he lived with the Mentawai people, watching as their shamans — the sikerie — drummed, danced and entered trance, their tattooed bodies painted in turmeric. In these altered states, they appeared to move between worlds. How does an empirically-minded scientist make sense of such experiences? Singh combines immersive fieldwork with cross-cultural research into shamanic traditions, past and present. He calls shamanism a “timeless religion,” one that may go back to our earliest ancestors — and still lives on in the world’s major religions. Along the way, he asks a provocative question: Was Jesus a shaman? — Manvir’s book, Shamanism Manvir’s article in The Guardian on the debate over the history of psychedelics in indigenous cultures — 0:00 The Macumba Exorcism in Brazil 4:35 Meeting the Sikerei of Siberut 8:30 Inside a Shamanic Healing Ceremony 17:05 Psychedelics and Altered States 22:10 Shamanism as the First Religion 29:25 Was Jesus a Shaman? Wonder Cabinet is hosted by Anne Strainchamps and Steve Paulson. Find out more about the show at https://wondercabinetproductions.com, where you can subscribe to the podcast and our newsletter.","meta_description":"Shamanism may be humanity’s oldest religion – a tradition found across cultures, where healers slip into unseen realms, speak with spirits, and bring back…","key_points":[],"chapters":[],"topics":[],"duration_seconds":2043,"processing_state":"processed","actions":[{"name":"request_transcript","method":"POST","url":"https://stenobird.com/v1/public/podcasts/wonder-cabinet-7409328/episodes/manvir-singh-was-shamanism-the-first-religion/transcription-requests","description":"Idempotently request low-priority transcript generation for this episode."},{"name":"read_markdown","method":"GET","url":"https://stenobird.com/podcast/wonder-cabinet-7409328/manvir-singh-was-shamanism-the-first-religion.md","description":"Read the agent-friendly Markdown representation of this episode resource."}]}}