What does it mean to believe in something you cannot prove? What separates a saint from a madman? And is the universe actually obligated to make sense?

In The Leap and the Abyss, listeners are invited into the restless, paradoxical, and surprisingly funny world of Søren Kierkegaard—the nineteenth-century Danish philosopher who fathered existentialism before anyone had coined the term, and who spent his entire career insisting that the most important questions in life are the ones that reason alone cannot answer.

Drawing on Kierkegaard's most celebrated works—Fear and Trembling, Either/Or, and The Sickness Unto Death—this book takes listeners on a journey through the three stages of human existence, the terrifying logic of the leap of faith, and the peculiar spiritual condition Kierkegaard called despair: not the ordinary sadness of a bad day, but a fundamental misalignment between who we are and who we are capable of becoming.

Along the way, Abraham goes on trial. Hegel gets a well-deserved drubbing. Artificial intelligence is asked whether it can believe in anything. And the listeners is confronted, gently but persistently, with the question Kierkegaard never stopped asking: Are you actually living your life, or just letting it happen to you?

Written with wit, philosophical rigor, and genuine warmth, The Leap and the Abyss is for anyone who has ever stood at a crossroads and wondered whether the map they were given was really a map at all—or just a very confident guess.