GOD: An Autobiography, As Told to a Philosopher - The Podcast
GOD: An Autobiography, As Told to a Philosopher - The Podcast is a true story of a philosopher’s conversations with God. Dr. Jerry L. Martin was a lifelong agnostic. But one day he had occasion to pray. To his vast surprise, God answered - in words. Being a philosopher, he had a lot of questions. And God had a lot to tell him. Dr. Martin served as head of the National Endowment for the Humanities and the University of Colorado philosophy department. Find out more at www.GodAnAutobiography.com
Episodes
In this year-end intimate dialogue, philosophers Jerry L. Martin and Abigail L. Rosenthal return to one of the most enduring questions in philosophy and theology: why evil persists, and what that persistence reveals about God.
Drawing on Jerry’s prayer experiences and Jon Levenson’s Creation and the Persistence of Evil, the conversation explores the idea of an evolving God—not as a denial of divinity, b...
In Episode 263 of God: An Autobiography, The Podcast, philosopher Jerry L. Martin reflects on one of the most enduring and difficult questions in philosophy and theology: the problem of evil.
In this From God to Jerry to You episode, Jerry describes a pivotal moment near the end of his spiritual journey, when what he calls the “impossible puzzle” finally came together. Drawing on John D. Levinson’s Creat...
In this episode of What’s On Our Mind, Scott Langdon and Jerry L. Martin explore truth-seeking beyond reductionism. Drawing on Radically Personal, lived experience, acting, spiritual stories, and prayer, they ask how we know what’s real—and why meaning cannot be reduced to just chemistry.
The conversation ranges from new atheism and scientific exclusivism to Stoicism, human fulfillment, empathy, and a d...
What’s Your Spiritual Story? is a continuing series from God: An Autobiography, The Podcast that invites real people to share the journeys that shaped their spiritual lives. Each episode explores how the search for meaning, identity, and connection unfolds through personal experience—and how God meets us in surprising ways.
In this week’s conversation, Amanda joins Dr. Jerry L. Martin to reflect on the p...
What if theology is not a set of inherited doctrines, but life seeking understanding?
Learn more in Jerry’s latest book, Radically Personal: God and Ourselves in the New Axial Age, and subscribe for weekly episodes that explore God, spiritual experience, and the ongoing journey of the soul.
In this second installment of Radically Personal, philosopher Dr. Jerry L. Martin explores what he calls Theology W...
In this week’s episode of Jerry & Abigail: An Intimate Dialogue, Jerry L. Martin and Abigail L. Rosenthal explore how God communicates through intuition, dreams, insights, and the quiet promptings that redirect a life.
Their conversation speaks directly to listeners who wonder why God can feel hidden and how to recognize a true divine nudge.
Jerry reflects on the moment he heard the message “Your wor...
In this week’s episode of God: An Autobiography, The Podcast, Jerry L. Martin explores one of the most practical and urgent spiritual questions we face: How do we know what we’re meant to do with our lives—and how do we tell when God is guiding us?
Drawing on the Hindu concepts of dharma and swadharma, Jerry explains the difference between our role-based responsibilities and our deeply personal calling; ...
In this deeply moving episode of God: An Autobiography, The Podcast, philosopher Richard Oxenberg—co-author of Two Philosophers Wrestle With God—shares his full spiritual story for the first time.
His journey begins with childhood tragedy: witnessing the sudden death of his seven-year-old sister. The shock shattered his early understanding of God, safety, and reality. From that moment, Richard became a l...
How do we recognize when God is gently guiding us? Is it a voice, a feeling, or a moment of connection we might almost overlook?
Scott shares a simple encounter at a bagel shop that turned into a surprising moment of synchronicity — a reminder that a radically personal God often reaches us through quiet intuition and ordinary experiences.
Jerry reflects on why these subtle encounters matter, how spiritua...
What does it feel like when God guides you from within?
For Laura Buck, that quiet voice has been there all along, leading, nudging, comforting.
In this intimate spiritual story, Laura opens up about growing up between religious worlds, learning to trust intuition over expectation, and discovering that God speaks through the feelings we often overlook.
She shares powerful moments of being held by grace du...
Radically Personal is a new series exploring how divine reality reveals itself within the lives of individual seekers. Based on Dr. Jerry L. Martin’s newest book, Radically Personal: God and Ourselves in the New Axial Age, the series invites listeners to rethink what it means to encounter the divine as intimately present and personally responsive. Each episode follows the unfolding conversation between ...
When can love—and even pain—become a form of revelation?
In this powerful dialogue, Dr. Jerry L. Martin and Dr. Abigail L. Rosenthal trace the mysterious link between romantic love, moral conscience, and divine communication. Abigail shares two defining experiences of spiritual discernment: a moral act that cost her a lifelong family bond, and the unexpected moment she realized she was falling in love. B...
What happens when a lifelong agnostic philosopher prays for the first time—and God answers? In this episode, Jerry L. Martin reflects on the experience that transformed his life and inspired God: An Autobiography, As Told to a Philosopher. Through love, gratitude, and trust, Jerry moves from intellectual doubt to an intimate conversation with the Divine.
He shares how falling deeply in love opened him to...
In this What’s On Our Mind episode, we ask: how do you know when a task has your name on it?
In a noisy world full of choices, it can be hard to discern your true path. Is it just hard work, or a sign you’re on the wrong road? We explore stories of callings, intuition, and spiritual discernment, and how energy, peace, and prayer become signposts for purpose.
Through everyday examples — from saying no wit...
Five years. 250 episodes. Countless stories of faith, struggle, and discovery.
This milestone episode of God: An Autobiography, The Podcast is a deep reflection on what it means to grow spiritually through suffering, to find joy again, and to experience divine love as a personal reality.
In this special episode, Scott, Jerry, Abigail, Laura, and Mandi come together to look back on the last five years and ...
In this wide-ranging conversation, Jerry and Abigail pick up where last week’s episode left off, turning from the idea of swadharma — one’s unique calling — to how that calling actually plays out in a real life.
Jerry reflects on the Bhagavad Gita’s teaching that it is better to follow your own duty, even imperfectly, than to live someone else’s well.
Abigail shares what it feels like when a fight “has h...
What does the ancient Hindu epic Mahabharata, often called “India’s Iliad,” have to say about your life today?
In this From God to Jerry to You, philosopher Jerry L. Martin shares what God revealed to him while praying through the pages of this vast epic and its centerpiece, the Bhagavad Gita.
God’s surprising message is clear: the purpose of life is not to escape through yoga, asceticism, or lofty philo...
In this episode of God: An Autobiography, The Podcast, host Scott Langdon and philosopher Jerry L. Martin explore the meaning of the New Axial Age: a transformative era of spiritual development that God revealed to Jerry during their dialogues.
What does it mean that “the old religions are coming apart, yet there is a renewal of religious spirit”?
Together, Scott and Jerry reflect on how history’s first...
What’s your spiritual story? In this episode of God: An Autobiography, The Podcast, philosopher Jerry L. Martin sits down with Joel Weiner to explore a journey that moves from childhood faith, through rejection, to rediscovery and renewal.
Joel grew up in a Jewish home in Philadelphia, went through Hebrew school, and walked away from synagogue life right after his bar mitzvah. Years later, he found his w...
In this episode, Jerry and Abigail return for their fourth conversation in the series Jerry & Abigail: An Intimate Dialogue, exploring the most profound theme of God: An Autobiography as Told to a Philosopher: the New Axial Age.
The term “Axial Age,” introduced by philosopher Karl Jaspers, describes the pivotal era when some of the world’s greatest spiritual figures appeared within a few centuries of...
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