What is a soul? Lesley Hazleton, an “accidental theologist,” prodded the TEDSummit audience with this provocative question, tracing the cultural, religious and societal origins of a remarkably intangible human hallmark. The body and soul used to be considered two equal physical entities — in fact, Descartes theorized the soul was located in the brain’s pineal gland. Meanwhile, […]
A few years ago, Lesley Hazleton, self-described “accidental theologist,” found herself waking each morning with the same question: What happened to Muhammad the night he received the revelation of the Koran? An agnostic Jew, Hazleton was writing a biography of the man who stood in the desert outside of Mecca in the year 610 at […]
“It’s about discarding assumptions about the Middle East, Latin America, and the way you think the world works,” Nassim Assefi described in an interview before we all got to Edinburgh for TEDGlobal 2013. This session, which she co-curated with fellow TED Fellow Gabriella Gomez-Mont, features a host of speakers who’ll be prompting us to think […]
The core mystical moment of Islam took place in the year 610, or “half the world and almost half of history away,” as Lesley Hazleton, biographer of Muhammad, puts it. On a hot desert night, this previously ordinary man received the first revelation of the Koran on a mountain outside Mecca. “What struck me even […]