{"id":1473,"date":"2011-09-22T14:32:13","date_gmt":"2011-09-22T18:32:13","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/blog.beliefnet.com\/flunkingsainthood\/?p=1473"},"modified":"2011-09-22T14:32:13","modified_gmt":"2011-09-22T18:32:13","slug":"buffy-religion-fun-with-podcasts","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/flunkingsainthood\/2011\/09\/buffy-religion-fun-with-podcasts.html","title":{"rendered":"Buffy & Religion: Fun with Podcasts!"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"\"<\/a>I’ve recently had the privilege of being interviewed for John Morehead’s TheoFantastique podcast<\/a>, which explores the intersection of sci fi\/fantasy and religion. We had a great conversation over Skype about Buffy, Buddhism, postmodern cafeteria religion, and the commodification of the soul.<\/p>\n

Check it out if you are as geeky as I am. You just might be.<\/p>\n

After a long absence, I recently got back into watching Buffy<\/a> for two reasons. The first is that I taught a university course this past spring on religion and popular culture, and I did what professors everywhere do to simultaneously oppress their students and aggrandize themselves: I put my own book<\/a> on the syllabus. (They were too cowed to complain. Joss Whedon <\/a>would approve.) So I read my book for the first time in several years and had a wonderful time introducing my students to different episodes. It was an excellent opportunity to Buffyvangelize the rising generation.<\/p>\n

The second, and more important, reason is that a dear friend had a horrid summer. At one point I took off to fly to her city and spend a few days with her, and all I could think of to bring her as a token of my love was my Buffy doll. I told my friend that she should keep Buffy as long as she needed an avatar to help her kick this problem’s ass.<\/p>\n

Sometimes we can’t kick ass ourselves. We need Buffy, and we need each other.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

I’ve recently had the privilege of being interviewed for John Morehead’s TheoFantastique podcast, which explores the intersection of sci fi\/fantasy and religion. We had a great conversation over Skype about Buffy, Buddhism, postmodern cafeteria religion, and the commodification of the soul. Check it out if you are as geeky as I am. You just might…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":226,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[9,12,7,239],"tags":[707,708,711,22,21,449,712,715,710,714,709,716,713],"class_list":["post-1473","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-christianity","category-cultural-commentary","category-interviews","category-spirituality","tag-buffy-and-religion","tag-buffy-and-spirituality","tag-buffy-the-vampire-slayer","tag-flunking-sainthood","tag-jana-riess","tag-john-morehead","tag-joss-whedon","tag-joss-whedon-is-my-master-now","tag-sci-fi-and-religion","tag-slayage-the-online-international-journal-of-whedon-studies","tag-theofantastique","tag-what-would-buffy-do","tag-whedon-studies"],"yoast_head":"\nBuffy & Religion: Fun with Podcasts! - Flunking Sainthood<\/title>\n<meta name=\"robots\" content=\"index, follow, max-snippet:-1, max-image-preview:large, max-video-preview:-1\" \/>\n<link rel=\"canonical\" href=\"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/flunkingsainthood\/2011\/09\/buffy-religion-fun-with-podcasts.html\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:locale\" content=\"en_US\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:type\" content=\"article\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:title\" content=\"Buffy & Religion: Fun with Podcasts! - Flunking Sainthood\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:description\" content=\"I’ve recently had the privilege of being interviewed for John Morehead’s TheoFantastique podcast, which explores the intersection of sci fi\/fantasy and religion. 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Her spiritual director is Buffy the Vampire Slayer.","url":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/flunkingsainthood\/author\/jriess"}]}},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/flunkingsainthood\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1473","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/flunkingsainthood\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/flunkingsainthood\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/flunkingsainthood\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/226"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/flunkingsainthood\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1473"}],"version-history":[{"count":4,"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/flunkingsainthood\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1473\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1478,"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/flunkingsainthood\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1473\/revisions\/1478"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/flunkingsainthood\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1473"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/flunkingsainthood\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1473"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/flunkingsainthood\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1473"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}