Dan Mangan on why he recommends The Heretics

Dan Mangan is a two-time JUNO Award-winning musician, songwriter and recording artist from Vancouver. 

Mangan is currently reading The Heretics: Adventures With The Enemies of Science and explains some of the many reasons he loves the book.

This interview originally aired on Sept. 17, 2018.

Hero of your own story

"The book does an incredible job of dissecting the sort of internal need for all of us to tell a story in which we are the protagonist and the hero of that story. This book begins with these adventures with the enemies of science, these people who are thriving against the grain." 

Brainpower 

"As it gets deeper into the book it actually becomes a neurological study where Will Storr talks with a lot of scientists who study the brain and the evolutionary process. It looks at how, as we became more civilized, it became so important for us to rely on stories. We each approach every single thing from the perspective of how we already understand the world and then we try to fit every new bit of stimulus into how we believe the world to already be." 

Self-reflection

"Reading this book left me feeling like even though everything is so complicated, it's okay to not put a period at the end of everything and just sort of say that it can just be open-ended."

Dan Mangan's comments have been edited for length and clarity.