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Podcast: New Books in Anthropology
Episode: Ed Simon, "Relic" (Bloomsbury. 2024)
Description: Object Lessons is a Bloomsbury series of short, beautifully designed books about the hidden lives of ordinary things. This book, Relic, by Dr. Ed Simon was published in 2024.Every culture, every religion, every era has enshrined otherwise regular objects with a significance which stretches beyond their literal importance. Whether the bone of a Catholic martyr, the tooth of a Buddhist lama, or the cloak of a Sufi saint, relics are material conduits to the immaterial world. Yet relics aren't just a feature of religion. The exact same sense of the transcendent animates objects of political, historical, and cul...