scape as he straddle that undefined border between belief and skepticism very pleased to welcome jeff sharlet to our conversations great minds jeff welcome. hi tom good to be with you thanks for joining us. we've talked before about some of your other books when they came out in particular the family but we've never talked about jeff sharlet what animates you to write about. religion spirituality culture and be coalitions and intersections the kind of joy and agony that comes out of all of that i'm curious what drew you all into the into the weeds of this range of top. yeah you know i think it's a little bit it's a little bit designer and it's a little bit substance and i mean just in journalism it goes beyond the traditional stack of facts and in fact i'm convinced that we need to do that kind of journalism really can understand what's going on in the country and you need to do sort of more than the who what where when why writing about belief unbelief in this country in between is a sort of a great way to get at that because you're suddenly talking about things that aren't tangible you're t

and here's what's coming up tonight on the big picture award winning author and journalist jeff sharlet joins me for conversations with great minds discuss his life and works explore the ways in which religion in all its different forms shapes american culture and another republican debate and another jaw dropping audience reaction discussed last night's republican who verbs in tonight's big picture rundle. with their eyes conversations and great minds and joined by award winning author jeff sharlet his career in journalism academia and publishing has distinguished him as a political voice on faith and spirituality in the united states in two thousand charlotte teamed up with novelist peter man so to create healing the buddha dot com since since become an award winning online literary magazine about religion and spirituality and led to a year long road trip across the united states or charlotte investigated the various forms religion takes in this country who look at that resulted from that trip killing the buddha has been described as the most original and insightful spiritual writing