It’s easy to dismiss the practice of sacrifice as brutal, but the fact is that sacrifice, enacted in varying degrees in both external and internal ritual, has dominated human traditions for thousands of years in cultures around the world. Today on the podcast, a look at humanity’s relationship with sacrifice — its prevalence, its permutations,  and how modern culture, without ritualized forms of sacrifice, compensates for what has been a driving force for humanity for thousands of years. Perhaps, we discover, the act of ritual sacrifice is so inherent to the human experience that our modern culture inevitably finds ways to enact this cycle over and over again, whether consciously or not.Support the show