Award-Winning Editor, Author Tom Shroder Shines A Light on "Old Souls"

All across the globe, small children spontaneously speak of previous lives, beg to be taken “home,” pine for mothers and husbands and mistresses from another life, and know things that there seems to be no normal way for them to know.

For 37 years, Dr. Ian Stevenson traveled the world from Lebanon to suburban Virginia, investigating and documenting more than two thousand of these cases of past-life memory.

Tom Shroder is the only journalist who has had the privilege of accompanying Stevenson in his fieldwork. He followed Stevenson as he talked to dozens of children and families touched by this phenomenon. What did he learn? And did the evidence convince this skeptical journalist of the existence of old souls?

You’ll learn about that, and more, in this podcast interview with journalist, author and one of the foremost editors of humor in the country.

Shroder explains:

• What it was like to accompany Dr. Stevenson to remote villages around the world.

• The most touching, telling stories he witnessed in his quest to understand the phenomenon of old souls.

• The work he’s done leading up to the publishing of the book, his second following “Seeing the Light,” a biography of Everglades photographer Clyde Butcher. It featured black-and-white images of what Kirkus Reviews called a “primeval-looking landscape,” noting that “Clyde Butcher’s unusual life as chronicled by Tom Shroder and John Barry is nearly mythic in its sweep.”

• His most recent book, “Fire on the Horizon,” which is a fascinating account of the Gulf oil disaster, co-written by veteran oil rig captain John Konrad.

• Insights into his new book, currently titled “Acid Test,” about a movement that was underground for years and has now come above ground to rehabilitate the use of psychedelic drugs for serious purposes as an aid in psychotherapy, especially for PTSD patients.

• And, on a lighter note, Shroder tells us about his work editing some of the country’s funniest humor columnists, such as Dave Barry, Gene Weingarten, Tony Kornheiser—and the comic strip, “Cul de Sac.”

Don’t miss a minute of this special 40-minute interview!

• Download our podcast with Shroder, at right.

• Read more about “Old Souls,” including the introduction from the book in our April Book of the Month review on Be Inkandescent magazine.

• Learn about Shroder’s career path from college newspaper reporter to editor of The Washington Post Magazine in our Journalist of the Month column.

• And check out Shroder’s books for yourself by clicking here.