Wonderstruck® is a space for those called to the edge of knowing: where awe, mystery, and the sacred collide.
Wonderstruck is not so much about rainbows and kittens. It’s about something far more primal, visceral, deeply moving and sometimes even deeply unsettling.
The Wonderstruck Podcast is a space for exploring the full spectrum of awe: moral beauty, shivers down the spine, the uncanny, and the moments that stop us cold. Awe that expands, inspires, humbles, yes, but also overwhelms, unsettles, and reorders us. Think of Moses before the Burning Bush: undone, terrified, barely able to bear it, and his life utterly transformed. Within theology, this might be called a theophany: when something profoundly sacred breaks through.
Across cultures, awe shows up the same way: widened eyes, a softened face, and a universal exhalation of breath. Thank you to
for researching awe across cultures.We’re not exactly talking about the casual pleasure of noticing a sunset (though sunsets can certainly strike us into awe). Wonderstruck is about experiences and phenomena that bring us to the very edges and beyond what we can explain.
Here, wonder is not an escape from reality or a form of spiritual bypassing. It’s a return to what is most Real.
People who’ve had extraordinary experiences often describe them as more vivid, more real than ordinary memory. Compare that to dreams we forget upon waking.
The Wonderstruck Podcast and Striking Wonder Productions™ venture into this territory:
… from the visceral beauty of a sunset to the strangeness of UAPs
… visions and writings from ancient times that might be more than allegorical
… the weird, the wondrous, and the inexplicable that refuse to fit neatly into a world built on rational materialism
… the universal yearning to make sense of what feels ineffable
In a world that often asks us to dismiss or explain away these things, Wonderstruck asks: How do we behold in wonder?
We’re not here to unhinge people, but to guide them toward a deeper sense of wholeness, to awaken the more that already exists within our perception, just waiting to be tapped. As
says, “Once you see them, you see them.” And although he is talking about mushrooms, this can apply to anything hidden in plain view.We’re here to explore the wilder, weirder interconnections of life: the mycelial networks, Indra’s web, the hidden threads that bind us all: The Community, as William Desmond calls it: the Common Unity. It’s about helping people feel part of something larger, mysterious, and profoundly humbling.
We ask big questions. We welcome mystery.
We listen for the quiet things waiting to be revealed: truths hidden in plain sight.
This is not about proving or disproving. It’s about being fully present with the unexplainable, paying attention, and embracing not-knowing as a source of transformation.
Wonder is not the same as pondering, reflecting, or contemplating (though these have their place, and Wonderstruck moments often break through them).
To be wonderstruck is to be knocked off your feet, ego dissolved, your worldview turned upside down. It’s not particularly incremental but I suppose it could be. Wonder is expansive, visceral, and humbling and we need more of that humility in the world today.
As G.K. Chesterton wrote:
At the back of our being is a forgotten blaze… a burst of astonishment at our own existence.
The object of the artistic and spiritual life is to dig for this submerged sunrise of wonder,
so that a man sitting in a chair might suddenly understand that he is actually alive, and be happy.
And here is another quote that came to me while listening to
’s Silk Road talk on voluntary necessity and theosis (Theosis is basically a form of Enlightenment within a Christian context but is a universal experience):Give up your cleverness and become bewildered.
Open the door of your heart—and let yourself fall into God.
— Rumi
Wonderstruck explores this blaze and this bewilderment:
The awe that strengthens social bonds and transforms the body (lowering inflammation, increasing oxytocin, quieting the nervous system)
Rudolf Otto’s The Mysterium Tremendum adopted by Carl Jung to describe the uncanny and the ego-dissolving.
The terrifyingly weird (like
’s giant purple alien praying mantis in How to Think Impossibly)
This isn’t about living a busy life but, rather, a meaningful one.
Not about moving fast but about being moved. - Paul Pearsall
Importantly to note, Wonderstruck isn’t just about the terrifying and inexplicable. It’s also about the quiet, soulful beauty of ordinary life when it’s seen fully: the flock of geese alighting on a pond. The mystery in the extraordinary and the extraordinary in the everyday.
We build bridges, not fences.
We’re here for the “crack” between official narratives and personal knowing.
We invite people to see.
Join us as we look for answers, interviewing top experts and experiencers as we attempt to bring the “out there”… in here.
I am really moved by the framing of awe as unsettling and transformative, not just pleasant. That shift feels vital.
You had me at ego dissolved. I can't wait for more from this and the podcast is fab!