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BBC Radio 3 is a radio channel that started transmitting on the 30th September 1967. It replaced Third Programme.

BBC Radio 3

Radio 3

The Essay Podcast

The Essay

Discussion & Talk

Factual: Arts, Culture & the Media

Essays from leading writers on arts, history, philosophy, science, religion and beyond.

Leading writers on arts, history, philosophy, science, religion and beyond, themed across a week - insight, opinion and intellectual surprise.

The Essay: The Mystical Turn

The Essay: The Mystical Turn: Episode 2: William James

Religion & Ethics

William James

Episode 2

Episode 2: William James

The Mystical Turn

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Jane Shaw on the enduring influence of Wiliam James's book on personal spirituality.

Dr Jane Shaw evaluates the enduring influence of American psychologist and philosopher William James's book on personal spirituality, The Varieties of Religious Experience.

Continuing our series, The Mystical Turn, Dr Jane Shaw, Dean of Grace Cathedral in San Francisco, evaluates the enduring influence of American psychologist and philosopher William James's book on personal spirituality, The Varieties of Religious Experience. 

Harvard professor William James, elder brother of the novelist Henry James, believed that humans have a religious propensity, a natural leaning towards religion. In his Varieties of Religious Experience: A Study in Human Nature - first given as the 1902 Gifford Lectures at the University of Edinburgh - James documented numerous events which he believed illustrated his thesis. James's goal was to show the universality of religious experience, and its validity. In doing so, he unearthed the deep current of spiritual seeking that ran through America and Britain at the time and produced a book which still resonates with readers today.

Producer: Ian Willox
Executive Producer: Alan Hall

A Chrome Radio production for BBC Radio 3.

Live music and the arts: broadcasts more live music than any other radio network. Classical music is its core. Genres include world and new music, jazz, speech and drama.

Jane Shaw on a renewed interest in mysticism from the late 19th to the early 20th century.

Dr Jane Shaw, Dean of Grace Cathedral in San Francisco, explores the revival of interest in mysticism and religious experience generally - at the end of the 19th and in the early 20th century

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Episode 2: William James

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