The Worm at the Core: On the Role of Death in Life — How Mortality Shapes Meaning and Belief

Crisis in Perception · Sep 25, 2026 · 36m

What if the awareness of death influences human behavior most powerfully when we are not consciously thinking about dying?

Welcome to Crisis in Perception, where we examine the systems shaping our world.

Using The Worm at the Core: On the Role of Death in Life by Sheldon Solomon, Jeff Greenberg, and Tom Pyszczynski as our lens, this episode investigates Terror Management Theory and the psychological systems humans use to manage the knowledge of mortality.

The authors argue that self-awareness creates a distinctive human predicament: we are biologically driven to remain alive while…