The Recession of Religious Belief

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In the 19th century it was more commonly believed that there was a heaven, a world to come. And I think a lot of us, religious or not, hold on to that idea even if we might think rationally that it isn't going to happen. But as religious belief has receded in the West, I wonder how that affects how we live. Now I'm a religious Jew. Judaism does have an afterlife, although a lot of people think it doesn't. It does have an idea of an afterlife, but it's definitely muted relative to Christianity. In the Jewish theology, the afterlife is much less spoken of and there's an enormous focus on this world. The Catholic tradition

When he was a child, poet Dana Gioia's mother would come home from a long day of work and recite poems while she cleaned. It was a way, he realized later, for her to express the feelings she didn't want to describe directly, and to vent her sorrows without burdening her son. This, he believes, is what makes poetry so compelling: It's the secret language of emotions, a bit of magic that gets us through the day. Listen as Gioia speaks with EconTalk's Russ Roberts about poems, mortality, and loved ones who died too young. Gioia also explains the fundamental role of allusions in poems, and how--if they’re really good--they have the power to summon the dead.