Everand Logo

Welcome to Everand!

  • Discover millions of ebooks, audiobooks, and so much more with a free trial

    Only $11.99/month after trial. Cancel anytime.

    The Worm at the Core: On the Role of Death in Life
    The Worm at the Core: On the Role of Death in Life
    The Worm at the Core: On the Role of Death in Life
    Audiobook8 hours

    The Worm at the Core: On the Role of Death in Life

    Written by Sheldon Solomon, Jeff Greenberg and Tom Pyszczynski

    Narrated by John Pruden

    4.5/5

    ()

    About this audiobook

    More than one hundred years ago, the American philosopher William James wrote that the knowledge that we must die is "the worm at the core" of the human condition-a universally shared fear that informs all our thoughts and actions, from the great art we create to the devastating wars we wage.


    Using data collected from human subjects, Sheldon Solomon, Jeff Greenberg, and Tom Pyszczynski show conclusively that the fear of death and the desire to transcend it inspire us to buy expensive cars, crave fame, put our health at risk, and disguise our animal nature. The fear of death can also prompt judges to dole out harsher punishments, make children react negatively to people different from themselves, and inflame intolerance and violence.


    But the worm at the core need not consume us. This book also reveals how human beings have come to terms with death and learned to lead lives of courage, creativity, and compassion. It infuses our lives with order, stability, significance, and purpose, and these anchors enable us to function moment to moment without becoming overwhelmed by the knowledge of our ultimate fate.
    LanguageEnglish
    PublisherTantor Media, Inc
    Release dateMay 12, 2015
    ISBN9781494578329
    The Worm at the Core: On the Role of Death in Life

    Related to The Worm at the Core

    Related audiobooks

    Psychology For You

    View More
    View More

    Related podcast episodes

    Related articles

    • Article

      Take A Walk On The Wilder Side Of Death With 'Reincarnation Blues'

      Aug 26, 2017

      Michael Poore's new novel is surprisingly goofy for a book about dying. It's the story fishing guide Milo, who's just been eaten by a shark. Oh, and he's in love with Death, who's also named Suzie.

      3 min read

    • Article

      The Self Is Other People

      Apr 3, 2018

      The Self Is Other People
      3 min read

    • Article

      What’s the Story?

      Mar 27, 2018

      OF THE MORE THAN one dozen books I have researched and written, the project that made the biggest impact on me, personally, took place over a six-year period beginning in the mid-1980s, during which I immersed myself in the world’s largest organ tran

      4 min read

    • Article

      Don’t Fear The Reaper

      Sep 12, 2021

      Is it possible to overcome the fear of death and learn to live with the knowledge that, as each day passes, we inch closer to the great inevitable? This is just one of many questions ably explored and answered by Australian psychologists Rachel and R

      2 min read

    • Article

      Don’t Fear The Reaper

      Sep 12, 2021

      Is it possible to overcome the fear of death and learn to live with the knowledge that, as each day passes, we inch closer to the great inevitable? This is just one of many questions ably explored and answered by Australian psychologists Rachel and R

      2 min read

    • Article

      What If Man Is a Killer Ape Beset by Original Sin?

      Jun 21, 2019

      TODAY, SELF-HELP BOOKS and relationship gurus invoke evolution to explain everything from marital infidelity to the paleo diet. Our early ancestors’ survival needs echo through our ideas today. But this is not the first time our hominid ancestry’s ro

      5 min read

    • Article

      We’re Naturally Supernatural

      Jan 5, 2023

      Historical Precedents, Moral Objections, New Realities Jeffrey J Kripal University of Chicago Press 2022 Hb, 256p, £28, ISBN 9780226820248 As a young Catholic, Jeffrey Kripal visited some Protestant churches in his American Mid-West town. He was baff

      11 min read

    • Article

      News From Nowhere

      Jan 23, 2018

      News From Nowhere
      4 min read

    • Article

      Who Said Science and Art Were Two Cultures?

      Nov 17, 2021

      On a May evening in 1959, C.P. Snow, a popular novelist and former research scientist, gave a lecture before a gathering of dons and students at the University of Cambridge, his alma mater. He called his talk “The Two Cultures and the Scientific Revo

      8 min read

    • Article

      Five Short Stories About the Life and Times of Ideas: A complexity theorist explores how science and culture co-evolve.

      Apr 30, 2015

      In the following five short chapters, David Krakauer, an evolutionary theorist, and president elect of the Santa Fe Institute, haven of complex systems research, examines five facets of chain reactions, each typifying how ideas spread through science

      10 min read

    • Article

      Building A Fortean Library

      Dec 3, 2020

      It wasn’t just the Beatles, you know. On Merseyside in the 1960s another group of irreverent young men coalesced around an iconoclastic idea, and with rather more intellectual heft than the admittedly slightly better-known, and better-earning, moptop

      7 min read

    • Article

      More Than ‘Just A Coincidence’

      Oct 6, 2022

      How and Why Synchronicity and Serendipity Happen Park Street Press 2022 Pb, £12.99, 224pp, ISBN 9781644115701 Two babies are born at 8.08am on 8/8/08, both weighing 8lb 8oz. A lost ring finds its way back to its owner inside a fish bought for supper.

      10 min read

    • Article

      Reviews / Books

      Aug 10, 2023

      This mammoth collection of essays with huge prize money has a lot going for it, says Charles Foster, but it would have been more meaningful if it had been better balanced Bigelow Institute for Consciousness Studies 2023 Hb, 5 vols, 2,266pp. ISBN: 979

      15 min read

    • Article

      End Times

      Oct 29, 2018

      End Times
      4 min read

    • Article

      Thomas Kuhn Threw an Ashtray at Me

      Aug 23, 2018

      Errol Morris feels that Thomas Kuhn saved him from a career he was not suited for—by having him thrown out of Princeton. In 1972, Kuhn was a professor of philosophy and the history of science at Princeton, and author of The Structure of Scientific Re

      11 min read

    • Article

      'Enlightenment Now' Says Human Progress Is Real, Remarkable, And Yet Often Unacknowledged

      Feb 27, 2018

      Steven Pinker marshals data from detailed studies that show the stirring extent of progress human beings have achieved since the 18th century.

      4 min read

    • Article

      Pinker’s progress

      Oct 8, 2021

      Pinker’s progress
      18 min read

    • Article

      If You Think You’re a Genius, You’re Crazy

      Mar 9, 2017

      When John Forbes Nash, the Nobel Prize-winning mathematician, schizophrenic, and paranoid delusional, was asked how he could believe that space aliens had recruited him to save the world, he gave a simple response. “Because the ideas I had about supe

      4 min read

    • Article

      Why Do So Many Scientists Want to be Filmmakers?

      Mar 22, 2018

      For the past five years, Nautilus has asked scientists what they would be if they weren’t a scientist. I can now report what, above all, they want to be. “Film director,” says physicist David Deutsch. “A filmmaker,” says neuroscientist Antonio Damasi

      9 min read

    Related categories

    Reviews for The Worm at the Core

    4.5/5

    20 ratings1 review

    What did you think?

    Tap to rate

    Review must be at least 10 words

    • 5/5
      This books explains why our species has had such has had and continues to have so much trouble. One of the most enlightening books I have come across.