Media:
Articles, Audio & video
Articles
Beyond was chosen by America Magazine for its Catholic Book Club:
“Beautifully curated…a reassuring guide for the spiritually curious." – America Magazine
Read the full review here.
Read Catherine’s chapter “Travels Beyond” in Human Interaction with the Divine, the Sacred, and the Deceased edited by Thomas G. Plante and Gary E. Schwartz (Routledge, 2021).
Human Interaction with the Divine, the Sacred, and the Deceased brings together cutting-edge empirical and theoretical contributions from scholars in fields including psychology, theology, ethics, neuroscience, medicine, and philosophy, to examine how and why humans engage in, or even seek spiritual experiences and connection with the immaterial world. In this richly interdisciplinary volume, Plante and Schwartz recognize human interaction with the divine and departed as a cross-cultural and historical universal that continues to concern diverse disciplines.
Read an excerpt of Beyond posed by Lit Hub: "Imagining Heaven: On the Idea of Religious Quest and Prayer."
Podcasts & Radio
Book Society part 1: Catherine Wolff and I talk about Timothy Egan's book A Pilgrimage to Eternity
“I also make her answer for all of the Catholic Church's crimes.”
“I give Catherine Wolff the 3rd degree about the behavior of the Catholic church in recent decades and she defends the church pretty admirably.”
Galileo Commission Summit IV - Session 2: Theological Perspectives
Catherine takes part in a panel discussion of theological perspectives included in Human Interaction with the Divine, the Sacred, and the Deceased: Psychological, Scientific, and Theological Perspectives, edited by Thomas G. Plante and Gary E.Schwarz (Routledge, 2021)
Chats with Gigi, “What Happens When We Die? Featuring Catherine Wolff”
What happens after we die? Heaven? Hell? Something else?Gigi Diaz's guest is Catherine Wolff, author of the book BEYOND: How humankind thinks about heaven.Catherine went deep into how many different religions and cultures approach the concept of heaven and what she discovered is fascinating.
Podcast with Donna Kim Brand of Living Legacy Leadership
Catherine Wolff delves boldly yet kindly into how people and cultures have defined heaven over the centuries, describing how different faiths and religions have framed it, how the sense of heaven has evolved, and how nonreligious influences have affected it. Beyond is a mighty tome that explores ideas key to our shared human experience of life, death and pondering “what happens next?”. What will you resonate with?
Cross Word with Michele McAloon, “Life Everlasting, Life Beyond”
Where do we go after this life? Join in a fascinating discussion with author Catherine Wolff about her book Beyond: How Humankind Thinks About Heaven published by River house Books an imprint of Penguin Random House Publishing. In this wonderfully well researched and well written book Catherine explores the realms of human imagination through a survey of beliefs and faiths about the afterlife. Her work is simultaneously informative and uplifting as she tells the history of our pursuit to define heaven, humanity, divinity. and consciousness.
Think with Krys Boyd, “The Evolution of Heaven”
The question of where we go when we die is one that stretches across time and all religions. Catherine Wolff joins host Krys Boyd to discuss the concept of heaven, how it’s been framed in art, literature and religion through the ages, and how that has changed with modern beliefs.
The Liturgists Podcast, “Heaven”
Is Heaven a place? A metaphor? A state of mind? In this episode of the Liturgists Podcast, Michael Gungor and Emily Capshaw explore these questions by interviewing Catherine Wolff, author of the upcoming book “Beyond: How Humankind Thinks About Heaven.”
Interfaith Voices, "Gone to God: How We Think About Heaven”
Producer Kimberly Winston talks with Catherine Wolff, an educator, and university chaplain, about her new book, Beyond:: How Humankind Thinks About Heaven, which was published this summer. In it, Wolff explores the history of the ways the world’s religious traditions -- large and small -- have thought about where we go when we die. Much of what she reports is inspiring and hopeful, but there are hefty doses of sexism and racism in some heavens, too. Wolff discusses how the ways groups think about heaven reflect their earthly concerns.
Rosner’s Domain, “Catherine Wolff: Beyond”
Shmuel Rosner chats with Catherine Wolff about her book: “Beyond: How Humankind Thinks About Heaven.”
The Leap of Faith - RTÉ Radio 1
Join Siobhan Garrigan for The Leap of Faith. A programme for people of many faiths and none.
Videos
View livestream recording of Catherine talking about her book at The Community Library in Ketchum, Sun Valley, ID.
What do we think of when we think about heaven? What might it look like? Who or what might be there?
View livestream recording of Writing About the Life “Beyond”: A Conversation with Catherine Wolff and George Saunders.
What comes next? This question—the question of heaven, or the hereafter, or eternity, or the next life—is a setting-off point for the world’s religions. It is also the focus for a broad range of mystical literature and imaginative writing. In Beyond: How Humankind Thinks About Heaven (2021), Catherine Wolff explores five millennia of vigorous human activity “at the horizon of the known” in writing at once direct, historical, reflective, and personal. This event featured Wolff in conversation with her longtime friend the acclaimed fiction writer George Saunders.
View livestream recording of An Evening with Catherine Wolff: Beyond
The Midtown Scholar Bookstore is pleased to welcome Catherine Wolff as she presents her new work of cultural history of heaven, Beyond: How Humankind Thinks About Heaven. In the book, Wolff delves into how people and cultures have defined heaven over the centuries. She describes how different faiths and religions have framed it, how the sense of heaven has evolved, and how nonreligious influences have affected it, from the Enlightenment to the increasingly nonreligious views of heaven today.
View recording of Catherine and Tobias Wolff: Imagination, Creativity & Beyond
When our imaginations speculate about the afterlife that most of us believe in, they are probably less effective (as Sir Thomas Browne pointed out) than two infants still in the womb trying to describe our far more mundane adult human reality. But as Catherine Wolff demonstrates in Beyond, that does not stop us from trying. Over and over again. Autobiographical storytelling is a similar act of our imaginations’ desire to understand reality by editing it vigorously.
Join us to discuss how we think about the beyond with Catherine Wolff, and with her husband Tobias Wolff, a master of that autobiographical art. We will delve into the overlapping boundaries of our imaginations, our creativity, our dreams, and what comes next. If anything.
View livestream recording of Catherine’s presentation at Texas Book Festival.
Catherine examines the origins of our ideas of the afterlife, and how various cultures and faiths have sought to explain what lies ahead.