Episode 822: Wild Thoreau with Lydia Willsky-Ciollo

Henry David Thoreau was not a traditional Christian, and yet he was a deeply, profoundly religious man. In Episode 822, Jacke talks to Lydia Willsky-Ciollo about her book Wildness: Henry David Thoreau and the Making of an American Theology, which describes how Thoreau's experiences in nature helped him imagine and develop a distinctly American theology of the wild.

As Thoreau writes of nature and being:

I went to the woods because I wished to live deliberately, to front only the essential facts of life, and see if I could not learn what it had to teach, and not, when I came to die, discover that I had not lived.

For more about Thoreau, take a listen to Episode 494 in which Jacke talks to Megan Marshall about her foreword to biographer Robert Richardson's book Three Roads Back, which examines how Ralph Waldo Emerson, Henry David Thoreau and William James dealt with personal tragedies early in their careers.

For a perspective on Thoreau and work, in Episode 580, Jacke talks to Thoreau scholar Jonathan van Belle about the new book he's co-authored, Henry at Work: Thoreau on Making a Living.