Before The Matrix, before 1984, before Brave New World, there were teachings and books about the reality of the world we live in and the possibility of transcending its brutal injustices.

In this four-part course beginning June, 2025 instructor Diana Walsh Pasulka —author of American Cosmic and professor of Religious Studies at the University of North Carolina, Wilmington—will be our guide through the original awakeners, or the “red pills” (as defined in the movie The Matrix) from the Western tradition.