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Philosophy Talk

Crisis and Creativity in Mayan Mythology

How do stories and ingenuity help a community in danger to survive and thrive?

The Popol Vuh, written in 1702, was based on a Mayan oral tradition encompassing creation myths, history, and cosmology. These stories were written in a time of crisis: European colonialism had decimated the Mayan population and destroyed much of their cultural knowledge. How do stories help a society survive and thrive? Can they console us in times of crisis? How much of a culture can historians save in times of devastation? Josh and Ray tell the tales with Edgar Garcia from the University of Chicago, author of Emergency: Reading the Popol Vuh in a Time of Crisis. Sunday, December 15 at 11 am.

This episode was generously sponsored by the Stanford Humanities Center.

Devon Strolovitch studied medieval Judeo-Portuguese manuscripts and earned a PhD in Linguistics from Cornell University before coming to KALW. He is the Senior Producer of Philosophy Talk, and since 2007 has hosted Fog City Blues, the weekly digest of Blues in the Bay Area and beyond.