THE WONDER: Science-Based Paganism · The Wonder Podcast

THE WONDER: SUMMER READING!

July 2, 2025·53 min·1 clip

Starhawk's Earth Path unified pagan spirituality with ecological science in transformative way

Yucca and Mark decide to spend the conversation on books. They say it is a topic they have never covered before, even though both of them have had books that changed the way they see the world. Right away, they frame books as dense with ideas and capable of being genuinely transformative. They are not trying to be exhaustive. Instead, they pick the titles that came to mind when they asked which books had actually altered them. The conversation opens in a personal, reflective register. That makes the whole thing feel less like a list and more like two people comparing the books that still sit close to the surface. Mark brings up the Red Mars series. He returns to it as the book series that matters most to him, and he connects it to land, broad social questions, and the human responsibility to life. He says those themes show up in different ways through different characters and perspectives, which is part of why the books stayed with him. The series was important enough that his first kid's name comes from it. Yucca responds to that kind of impact with curiosity rather than surprise. She notes that she had not put that title on her own list. Mark says the work is beautifully written and deeply thought-provoking, while also admitting that some people really do not like it. That keeps the praise grounded instead of turning it into a universal claim. The discussion lingers on the way fiction can carry big ideas without losing its emotional pull. The show then shifts away from fiction. Yucca brings up Good Without God, by Greg Epstein, and identifies him as the secular chaplain of Harvard Divinity School and a New York Times bestselling author. She says she has mixed feelings about the book. For her, the title itself feels defensive, as if the idea that people can be good without God were somehow startling when the burden should really be on theists to prove the opposite. That opens a wider question about the place of non-theists in society. The hosts keep the tone conversational while the topic gets sharper. Yucca points out that there have always been plenty of atheistic people who have been perfectly good. The point lands as a broader critique of how the question is framed. Rather than treating nonbelief as a moral problem, the conversation treats it as part of ordinary social reality. The episode stays warm, candid, and idea-heavy from start to finish. What comes through is a conversation about reading as a way of being changed. The books are not treated as trophies or cultural markers. They are treated as companions in a long argument with the world. The episode makes room for digression without losing the thread. That wandering shape fits the hosts' style, where one idea can lead into another if it keeps the thinking alive.

As heard by us

A loose, bookish conversation turns into a thoughtful look at ecology, ethics, and how reading shapes belief.

The episode stays with books, but the real draw is the way Yucca and Mark use them to think about change. They move from fiction with big ideas about land and human responsibility to a recent book that raises questions about what non-theists owe to society.

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Why you'd press play

You want book talk that treats reading as a worldview shift.

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