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Hey For The Wild community, it's Ayana. It's been a minute. Life has been moving—fast, deep, and full. I've grown, and with that growth, a clearer sense of what I want to share with you has come into focus.After nearly a decade of digital episodes, I felt a longing—an ache to be in person, on the land, and heart to heart with our guests. That's why you may have noticed we've slowed down on weekly releases. Instead, we've been on the road, spending sacred, unhurried time with people we love—tending to conversations that are raw, intimate, funny, beautiful, edgy, and alive.We were hoping to keep it under wraps a little longer, but we're just too excited: the first season of our new walking series will be released soon, and it features the luminous Sophie Strand. This series is an in-person, land-based conversation that is intimate, weird, raw, beautiful exploration of land, grief, myth, pleasure, and more. These aren't studio-perfect interviews, they're alive.But there's more. We're also creating an anthology—a wild and tender book featuring Sophie and 20 other contributors like Tyson Yunkaporta, Sylvia Linsteadt, adrienne maree brown, Dori Midnight, and Stephen Jenkinson. It's an archive, an altar, a trail companion—a distillation of 10 years of For The Wild with essays, art, poetry, rituals, and deep questions. It asks us what it means to live in fragmentary times and still root deeply. We hope to print it later this year.To bring these projects to life, we need your support.We're looking for funding partners, sponsors, and publishers—and we're dreaming of a book tour from the West Coast to the East, and across the pond to Europe.If you're an individual, foundation, or aligned company that wants to support the Sophie Strand series, reach out.If you're a publisher or lit world comrade, I'd love to connect.If you'd like to host a live gathering for the book tour, let's talk—we'd love to share good food, real talk, and tender moments with your community.Email us at connect@forthewild.worldThank you for walking with us—whether you've been here since the beginning or just arrived. My heart is racing as I share this with you. It feels risky, but right. Vulnerable, but true. And I'm so grateful.In the meantime, you can spend some deep time with us through our Earthly Reads Series and Book Study or Bayo Akomolafe's We Will Dance with Mountains: Vunja! course—both on our website.And of course, we've got over 350 episodes waiting for you on your favorite platform.Here's to what comes next. With love,Ayana♫ The music featured in this update is “Das Nuvens (Live)” by Fabiano do Nascimento, courtesy of Leaving Records.Support the show
In this conversation, Ilia Delio speaks with biophysicist, entrepreneur, and author Gregory Stock. Known for his groundbreaking ideas about biotechnology and the future of humanity, Gregory shares the story behind his influential book Metaman and offers insights into how technology is shaping—and destabilizing—our species and planet.Ilia and Gregory discuss:What does nature teach us about the evolution of technology?Why does technological progress feel so unsettling?Can AI help protect humanity—or even guide us into life beyond Earth?This is part one of a two-part interview with Gregory Stock, Ph.D., a leading voice on the future of biotechnology, AI, and human evolution.ABOUT GREGORY STOCK“As we decipher our biology and learn to modify and adjust it, we are learning to modify ourselves—and we will do so. No laws will stop this.”Gregory Stock, Ph.D., is a scientist, writer, entrepreneur, and public communicator whose work represents a deep exploration into what it means to be human in the 21st century. During his career, he has developed the foremost paradigm for personal inquiries into values and beliefs, which has significant implications for humankind as it faces the profound shifts brought by silicon and biotech. Today, Greg serves as an expert speaker and advisor to biotech and healthcare companies and to non-profits at the cutting edge of human health. The Center for Christogenesis' annual conference, Rethinking Religion in an Age of Science: From Institution to Evolution is coming up May 2-4. We're featuring many of our podcast guests including Bayo Akomolafe, our own Ilia Delio and more. Registration is open now, with scholarship discounts available for students. Visit christogenesis.org/conference to learn more and register. We hope to see you there!Support the showA huge thank you to all of you who subscribe and support our show! Support for A Hunger for Wholeness comes from the Fetzer Institute. Fetzer supports a movement of organizations who are applying spiritual solutions to society's toughest problems. Get involved at fetzer.org. Visit the Center for Christogenesis' website at christogenesis.org/podcast to browse all Hunger for Wholeness episodes and read more from Ilia Delio. Follow us on Facebook, Instagram and Twitter for episode releases and other updates.
Thomas Hübl sits down with celebrated speaker, posthumanist thinker, poet, teacher, and author Bayo Akomolafe to explore the leading edges of spiritual thinking and human identity. Bayo is a deeply experimental thinker, informed by the African cosmologies of the Yoruba and Igbo traditions. He leads an exploration into a new paradigm of healing that de-centers the individual to focus on the village, on the communal. He and Thomas discuss how modernity, especially in Western cultures, creates a false dichotomy between spirituality and science, pathologizes behavior that should instead be integrated, and offers a reductive, motionless view of the self. Bayo offers a different perspective, one in which the self or the psyche is always moving in an interconnected dance with our lineages, with evolution, and with the mysteries of the material realm. Bayo also explores how modern spiritual models contribute to systems of oppression, stressing the importance of spaciousness, non-conformity, and relationality in spiritual thinking and practice. Click here to watch the video version of this episode on YouTube:
In Part 2 of Ilia Delio's conversation with author and biblical scholar Peter Enns, we explore deeper dimensions of scripture—and how our understanding of it must evolve alongside us.Together, Ilia and Pete examine how the Bible is often misused as a political and cultural tool, and they ask: Can scripture still offer wisdom in a world facing ecological collapse, moral polarization, and spiritual disconnection?This episode approaches:The New Testament through the lens of change and complexityWhy fundamentalist readings distort the transformative power of scriptureThe psychological and planetary costs of static belief systemsWhether scripture itself is part of a larger religious and cosmic evolutionPete also shares where he looks for hope—and how embracing uncertainty may actually deepen our spiritual lives.ABOUT PETER ENNS“I think part of what it means for God to “reveal” himself is to keep us guessing, to come to terms with the idea that knowing God is also a form of not knowing God, of knowing that we cannot fully know, but only catch God in part—which is more than enough to keep us busy.”Peter Enns (Ph.D. Harvard University) is Abram S. Clemens professor of Biblical Studies at Eastern University (St. Davids, PA). He has written several books including The Bible Tells Me So, The Sin of Certainty, How the Bible Actually Works, and his latest, Curveball: When Your Faith Takes Turns You Never Saw Coming. Pete is also cohost of the popular podcast The Bible for Normal People. The focus of his work centers on understanding the Bible as an ancient text and thinking through what it means to read that ancient text well today.The Center for Christogenesis' annual conference, Rethinking Religion in an Age of Science: From Institution to Evolution is coming up May 2-4. We're featuring many of our podcast guests including Bayo Akomolafe, our own Ilia Delio and more. Registration is open now, with scholarship discounts available for students. Visit christogenesis.org/conference to learn more and register. We hope to see you there!Support the showA huge thank you to all of you who subscribe and support our show! Support for A Hunger for Wholeness comes from the Fetzer Institute. Fetzer supports a movement of organizations who are applying spiritual solutions to society's toughest problems. Get involved at fetzer.org. Visit the Center for Christogenesis' website at christogenesis.org/podcast to browse all Hunger for Wholeness episodes and read more from Ilia Delio. Follow us on Facebook, Instagram and Twitter for episode releases and other updates.
On this episode of the Planetary Regeneration Podcast, host Gregory Landua sits down with philosopher and poet Bayo Akomolafe during a Regen Network retreat at Race Brook Lodge. Together they explore AI as trickster, the sacredness of incompleteness, and what it means to build tools for ecological governance in a world unraveling. From Yoruba cosmology to Karen Barad's agential realism, this conversation weaves themes of decoloniality, relationality, and the possibility of new rituals in the cracks of modernity. Bayo Akomolafe (PhD) is an author, speaker, and founder of the Emergence Network. Trained as a clinical psychologist and rooted in Yoruba tradition, his work invites us to meet the world differently. X: @gregory_landua LinkedIn: @bayoakomolafe
“So, post-activism is not ‘post-activism' in the sense of being after activism. It is not supposed to be a through line to results or resolutions or solutions.”Dr. Bayo Akomolafe is a philosopher, psychologist, writer, public intellectual, and the founder of the Emergence Network. His work, which he names post-activism, marks an earth-wide effort to sensitize bodies towards new response-abilities and other places of power – a project framed within a material feminist/post-humanist/post-activist ethos and inspired by Yoruba indigenous cosmologies. He is the author of These Wilds Beyond Our Fences: Letters to My Daughter on Humanity's Search for Home.“Post-activism is instead a noticing that the ways we care for ourselves and our causes and our worlds could actually be incarcerated. Another way to put that is to notice that care can often become carceral. I often suggest that we like to embrace things, but sometimes in the squeeze of embrace, it could quickly become asphyxiation, where we choke the air out of each other in trying to care for each other.”Episode Websitewww.creativeprocess.info/podInstagram:@creativeprocesspodcast
“I learn more than anything else from my children. My son, he's seven, he's autistic, and I call him my prophet for a reason. He teaches me to meet myself in ways that are usually very stunning. I can get information from other people; I can read a book here and there, but it's very rare to come across such an embodiment of grace, possibility, and futurity, all wrapped up in a tiny seven-year-old boy's body. My son has given me lots of gifts.”Dr. Bayo Akomolafe is a philosopher, psychologist, writer, public intellectual, and the founder of the Emergence Network. His work, which he names post-activism, marks an earth-wide effort to sensitize bodies towards new response-abilities and other places of power – a project framed within a material feminist/post-humanist/post-activist ethos and inspired by Yoruba indigenous cosmologies. He is the author of These Wilds Beyond Our Fences: Letters to My Daughter on Humanity's Search for Home.Episode Websitewww.creativeprocess.info/podInstagram:@creativeprocesspodcast
“I learn more than anything else from my children. My son, he's seven, he's autistic, and I call him my prophet for a reason. He teaches me to meet myself in ways that are usually very stunning. I can get information from other people; I can read a book here and there, but it's very rare to come across such an embodiment of grace, possibility, and futurity, all wrapped up in a tiny seven-year-old boy's body. My son has given me lots of gifts.”Dr. Bayo Akomolafe is a philosopher, psychologist, writer, public intellectual, and the founder of the Emergence Network. His work, which he names post-activism, marks an earth-wide effort to sensitize bodies towards new response-abilities and other places of power – a project framed within a material feminist/post-humanist/post-activist ethos and inspired by Yoruba indigenous cosmologies. He is the author of These Wilds Beyond Our Fences: Letters to My Daughter on Humanity's Search for Home.Episode Websitewww.creativeprocess.info/podInstagram:@creativeprocesspodcast
“So, post-activism is not ‘post-activism' in the sense of being after activism. It is not supposed to be a through line to results or resolutions or solutions.”Dr. Bayo Akomolafe is a philosopher, psychologist, writer, public intellectual, and the founder of the Emergence Network. His work, which he names post-activism, marks an earth-wide effort to sensitize bodies towards new response-abilities and other places of power – a project framed within a material feminist/post-humanist/post-activist ethos and inspired by Yoruba indigenous cosmologies. He is the author of These Wilds Beyond Our Fences: Letters to My Daughter on Humanity's Search for Home.“Post-activism is instead a noticing that the ways we care for ourselves and our causes and our worlds could actually be incarcerated. Another way to put that is to notice that care can often become carceral. I often suggest that we like to embrace things, but sometimes in the squeeze of embrace, it could quickly become asphyxiation, where we choke the air out of each other in trying to care for each other.”Episode Websitewww.creativeprocess.info/podInstagram:@creativeprocesspodcast
“I learn more than anything else from my children. My son, he's seven, he's autistic, and I call him my prophet for a reason. He teaches me to meet myself in ways that are usually very stunning. I can get information from other people; I can read a book here and there, but it's very rare to come across such an embodiment of grace, possibility, and futurity, all wrapped up in a tiny seven-year-old boy's body. My son has given me lots of gifts.”Dr. Bayo Akomolafe is a philosopher, psychologist, writer, public intellectual, and the founder of the Emergence Network. His work, which he names post-activism, marks an earth-wide effort to sensitize bodies towards new response-abilities and other places of power – a project framed within a material feminist/post-humanist/post-activist ethos and inspired by Yoruba indigenous cosmologies. He is the author of These Wilds Beyond Our Fences: Letters to My Daughter on Humanity's Search for Home.Episode Websitewww.creativeprocess.info/podInstagram:@creativeprocesspodcast
“So, post-activism is not ‘post-activism' in the sense of being after activism. It is not supposed to be a through line to results or resolutions or solutions.”Dr. Bayo Akomolafe is a philosopher, psychologist, writer, public intellectual, and the founder of the Emergence Network. His work, which he names post-activism, marks an earth-wide effort to sensitize bodies towards new response-abilities and other places of power – a project framed within a material feminist/post-humanist/post-activist ethos and inspired by Yoruba indigenous cosmologies. He is the author of These Wilds Beyond Our Fences: Letters to My Daughter on Humanity's Search for Home.“Post-activism is instead a noticing that the ways we care for ourselves and our causes and our worlds could actually be incarcerated. Another way to put that is to notice that care can often become carceral. I often suggest that we like to embrace things, but sometimes in the squeeze of embrace, it could quickly become asphyxiation, where we choke the air out of each other in trying to care for each other.”Episode Websitewww.creativeprocess.info/podInstagram:@creativeprocesspodcast
“I learn more than anything else from my children. My son, he's seven, he's autistic, and I call him my prophet for a reason. He teaches me to meet myself in ways that are usually very stunning. I can get information from other people; I can read a book here and there, but it's very rare to come across such an embodiment of grace, possibility, and futurity, all wrapped up in a tiny seven-year-old boy's body. My son has given me lots of gifts.”Dr. Bayo Akomolafe is a philosopher, psychologist, writer, public intellectual, and the founder of the Emergence Network. His work, which he names post-activism, marks an earth-wide effort to sensitize bodies towards new response-abilities and other places of power – a project framed within a material feminist/post-humanist/post-activist ethos and inspired by Yoruba indigenous cosmologies. He is the author of These Wilds Beyond Our Fences: Letters to My Daughter on Humanity's Search for Home.Episode Websitewww.creativeprocess.info/podInstagram:@creativeprocesspodcast
“So, post-activism is not ‘post-activism' in the sense of being after activism. It is not supposed to be a through line to results or resolutions or solutions.”Dr. Bayo Akomolafe is a philosopher, psychologist, writer, public intellectual, and the founder of the Emergence Network. His work, which he names post-activism, marks an earth-wide effort to sensitize bodies towards new response-abilities and other places of power – a project framed within a material feminist/post-humanist/post-activist ethos and inspired by Yoruba indigenous cosmologies. He is the author of These Wilds Beyond Our Fences: Letters to My Daughter on Humanity's Search for Home.“Post-activism is instead a noticing that the ways we care for ourselves and our causes and our worlds could actually be incarcerated. Another way to put that is to notice that care can often become carceral. I often suggest that we like to embrace things, but sometimes in the squeeze of embrace, it could quickly become asphyxiation, where we choke the air out of each other in trying to care for each other.”Episode Websitewww.creativeprocess.info/podInstagram:@creativeprocesspodcast
“I learn more than anything else from my children. My son, he's seven, he's autistic, and I call him my prophet for a reason. He teaches me to meet myself in ways that are usually very stunning. I can get information from other people; I can read a book here and there, but it's very rare to come across such an embodiment of grace, possibility, and futurity, all wrapped up in a tiny seven-year-old boy's body. My son has given me lots of gifts.”Dr. Bayo Akomolafe is a philosopher, psychologist, writer, public intellectual, and the founder of the Emergence Network. His work, which he names post-activism, marks an earth-wide effort to sensitize bodies towards new response-abilities and other places of power – a project framed within a material feminist/post-humanist/post-activist ethos and inspired by Yoruba indigenous cosmologies. He is the author of These Wilds Beyond Our Fences: Letters to My Daughter on Humanity's Search for Home.Episode Websitewww.creativeprocess.info/podInstagram:@creativeprocesspodcast
“So, post-activism is not ‘post-activism' in the sense of being after activism. It is not supposed to be a through line to results or resolutions or solutions.”Dr. Bayo Akomolafe is a philosopher, psychologist, writer, public intellectual, and the founder of the Emergence Network. His work, which he names post-activism, marks an earth-wide effort to sensitize bodies towards new response-abilities and other places of power – a project framed within a material feminist/post-humanist/post-activist ethos and inspired by Yoruba indigenous cosmologies. He is the author of These Wilds Beyond Our Fences: Letters to My Daughter on Humanity's Search for Home.“Post-activism is instead a noticing that the ways we care for ourselves and our causes and our worlds could actually be incarcerated. Another way to put that is to notice that care can often become carceral. I often suggest that we like to embrace things, but sometimes in the squeeze of embrace, it could quickly become asphyxiation, where we choke the air out of each other in trying to care for each other.”Episode Websitewww.creativeprocess.info/podInstagram:@creativeprocesspodcast
The Creative Process in 10 minutes or less · Arts, Culture & Society
“So, post-activism is not ‘post-activism' in the sense of being after activism. It is not supposed to be a through line to results or resolutions or solutions.”Dr. Bayo Akomolafe is a philosopher, psychologist, writer, public intellectual, and the founder of the Emergence Network. His work, which he names post-activism, marks an earth-wide effort to sensitize bodies towards new response-abilities and other places of power – a project framed within a material feminist/post-humanist/post-activist ethos and inspired by Yoruba indigenous cosmologies. He is the author of These Wilds Beyond Our Fences: Letters to My Daughter on Humanity's Search for Home.“Post-activism is instead a noticing that the ways we care for ourselves and our causes and our worlds could actually be incarcerated. Another way to put that is to notice that care can often become carceral. I often suggest that we like to embrace things, but sometimes in the squeeze of embrace, it could quickly become asphyxiation, where we choke the air out of each other in trying to care for each other.”Episode Websitewww.creativeprocess.info/podInstagram:@creativeprocesspodcast
LOVE - What is love? Relationships, Personal Stories, Love Life, Sex, Dating, The Creative Process
“So, post-activism is not ‘post-activism' in the sense of being after activism. It is not supposed to be a through line to results or resolutions or solutions.”Dr. Bayo Akomolafe is a philosopher, psychologist, writer, public intellectual, and the founder of the Emergence Network. His work, which he names post-activism, marks an earth-wide effort to sensitize bodies towards new response-abilities and other places of power – a project framed within a material feminist/post-humanist/post-activist ethos and inspired by Yoruba indigenous cosmologies. He is the author of These Wilds Beyond Our Fences: Letters to My Daughter on Humanity's Search for Home.“Post-activism is instead a noticing that the ways we care for ourselves and our causes and our worlds could actually be incarcerated. Another way to put that is to notice that care can often become carceral. I often suggest that we like to embrace things, but sometimes in the squeeze of embrace, it could quickly become asphyxiation, where we choke the air out of each other in trying to care for each other.”Episode Websitewww.creativeprocess.info/podInstagram:@creativeprocesspodcast
Today, we present a wild and flowering conversation between two poets, writers, philosophers, and theobiologians Bayo Akomalofe and Sophie Strand. This conversation is from a 2022 SAND Community Gathering. To hear the full conversation with Q&A from the live webinar you can view it here (with SAND Membership). In Greek Mythology, the Titan Kronos eats an indigestible stone and vomits up the new Olympic pantheon of gods. In our current time, people planted in stratigraphic layers of shared trauma find themselves uniquely ill – physically and mentally. We are unable to digest food and unable to digest violence. What if indigestion – practical and mythical – was a sign that a new world was threatening to be born? The very basis of our nucleated cells is an ancient botched bacterial cannibalism. What if our inability to digest certain injustices was an invitation to vomit up a new pantheon? And in an age when we are all threaded through with microplastics and blood pressure stabilizers, what does it mean to start to physically grow into new shapes around incursions we cannot properly assimilate or expel? Bayo Akomolafe (Ph.D.), rooted with the Yoruba people in a more-than-human world, is the father to Alethea and Kyah, the grateful life-partner to Ije, son and brother. A widely celebrated international speaker, posthumanist thinker, poet, teacher, public intellectual, essayist, and author of two books, These Wilds Beyond our Fences: Letters to My Daughter on Humanity's Search for Home (North Atlantic Books) and We Will Tell our Own Story: The Lions of Africa Speak, Bayo Akomolafe is the Founder of The Emergence Network and host of the online postactivist course, ‘We Will Dance with Mountains'. He currently lectures at Pacifica Graduate Institute, California and University of Vermont, Burlington, Vermont. He sits on the Board of many organizations including Science and Non-Duality (US) and Ancient Futures (Australia). In July 2022, Dr. Akomolafe was appointed the inaugural Global Senior Fellow of University of California's (Berkeley) Othering and Belonging Institute. He has also been appointed Senior Fellow for The New Institute in Hamburg, Germany. He is the recipient of the New Thought Leadership Award 2021 and the Excellence in Ethnocultural Psychotherapy Award by the African Mental Health Summit 2022. Sophie Strand is a writer based in the Hudson Valley who focuses on the intersection of spirituality, storytelling, and ecology. Yet it would probably be more authentic to call her a neo-troubadour animist with a propensity to spin yarns that inevitably turn into love stories. Give her a salamander and a stone and she'll write you a love story. Sophie was raised by house cats, puff balls, possums, raccoons, and an opinionated, crippled goose. She believes strongly that all thinking happens interstitially – between beings, ideas, differences, mythical gradients. She is the author of The Flowering Wand: Rewilding the Sacred Masculine and The Madonna Secret. She is also finishing a collection of essays about navigating an incurable genetic disease and early trauma through ecological storytelling. You can subscribe to her newsletter at sophiestrand.substack.com, and follow her work on Instagram: @cosmogyny and at www.sophiestrand.com. Topics 00:00 Introduction and Welcome 01:35 Introducing Dr. Bayo Akomolafe 04:11 Introducing Sophie Strand 06:35 Starting the Conversation: New Gods in Challenging Times 13:54 Exploring Mispronunciation and Evolution 27:27 Animist Perspectives on Trauma 28:17 Healing in Yoruba Culture 30:29 Bioelectric Signals and Embryogenesis 35:40 The Role of Trickster Gods 38:26 Invasive Species and Ecosystem Dynamics 47:25 Disability as an Invitation to Community 55:32 Concluding Thoughts on New Gods Support the mission of SAND and the production of this podcast by becoming a SAND Member
Hunger for Wholeness is back with a brand new season—and we're beginning with a deep and timely conversation about one the most timeless texts.In this season-opening episode, Ilia Delio speaks with biblical scholar and bestselling author Peter Enns. Known for his accessible, thoughtful takes on scripture, Pete invites us to rethink how we read the Bible in a world shaped by science, technology, and evolving consciousness.Together, Ilia and Pete ask:Can scripture still speak meaningfully to us in the 21st century?Is revelation a fixed moment, or an unfolding process?How do we read an ancient text with modern eyes—without losing its transformative power?This is part one of a two-part interview with Pete Enns, co-host of The Bible for Normal People podcast.ABOUT PETER ENNS“I think part of what it means for God to “reveal” himself is to keep us guessing, to come to terms with the idea that knowing God is also a form of not knowing God, of knowing that we cannot fully know, but only catch God in part—which is more than enough to keep us busy.”Peter Enns (Ph.D. Harvard University) is Abram S. Clemens professor of Biblical Studies at Eastern University (St. Davids, PA). He has written several books including The Bible Tells Me So, The Sin of Certainty, How the Bible Actually Works, and his latest, Curveball: When Your Faith Takes Turns You Never Saw Coming. Pete is also cohost of the popular podcast The Bible for Normal People. The focus of his work centers on understanding the Bible as an ancient text and thinking through what it means to read that ancient text well today.The Center for Christogenesis' annual conference, Rethinking Religion in an Age of Science: From Institution to Evolution is coming up May 2-4. We're featuring many of our podcast guests including Bayo Akomolafe, our own Ilia Delio and more. Registration is open now, with scholarship discounts available for students. Visit christogenesis.org/conference to learn more and register. We hope to see you there!Support the showA huge thank you to all of you who subscribe and support our show! Support for A Hunger for Wholeness comes from the Fetzer Institute. Fetzer supports a movement of organizations who are applying spiritual solutions to society's toughest problems. Get involved at fetzer.org. Visit the Center for Christogenesis' website at christogenesis.org/podcast to browse all Hunger for Wholeness episodes and read more from Ilia Delio. Follow us on Facebook, Instagram and Twitter for episode releases and other updates.
We are living through prophetic times—what some call the metacrisis, others name as a rupture, others see as an opening. What does it mean to navigate this moment with wisdom? And what role does wealth play in this transition? This panel brings together cosmologists, system architects, scholars, and funder-activists to explore: How do we make sense of where we are and what is being asked of us in these times? What is the role of wealth holders and funders in this time of unraveling? How might wealth be liberated from extractive systems and reoriented toward life-affirming transitions? Moderated by Lynn Murphy. Bayo Akomolafe, PhD, rooted with the Yoruba people in a more-than-human world, is the father to Alethea Aanya and Kyah Jayden Abayomi, the grateful life-partner to EJ, son and brother. A widely celebrated international speaker, posthumanist thinker, poet, teacher, self-styled ‘trans-public' intellectual, essayist, and author of two books, These Wilds Beyond our Fences: Letters to My Daughter on Humanity's Search for Home (North Atlantic Books) and We Will Tell our Own Story: The Lions of Africa Speak (along with Professors Molefi Kete Asante and Augustine Nwoye). Pat McCabe (Woman Stands Shining) is of the Diné Nation (often known incorrectly as “Navajo), and was also adopted into the Lakota Spiritual way of Life. She is a mother, grandmother, activist, artist, and international speaker. She identifies as a “radical bridger” of worlds and paradigms, with a focus on sharing from her own deep inquiry into Thriving Life Paradigm. Matthew Monahan is the founder of Ma Earth (maearth.com), an emerging initiative to bring more funding into community-led nature protection and restoration. He is also a co-founder and steward at Biome Trust (biometrust.earth), a philanthropic foundation devoted to ecological health and education, and Mangaroa Farms (mangaroa.org), a regenerative farm and forest project in Aotearoa, New Zealand. Baljeet Sandhu is a Punjabi-British knowledge weaver, community organiser, and equity designer with more than 30 years of experience in social and economic justice, innovation, and systems change work. Baljeet founded the Centre for Knowledge Equity to serve as an ecosystem space for practitioners creating life-affirming alternatives for the future. Julian Corner has been CEO of the UK-based Lankelly Chase Foundation since 2011. Lankelly Chase is a 60 year old social justice foundation that was the first in UK philanthropy to test systems change approaches. It has since been in a process of deep inquiry and evolution which culminated in 2023 with the announcement that it would end its work within 5 years and redistribute its assets. Taj James is a father, poet, practitioner, strategist, designer, and philanthropic and capital advisor. He is the Founder and former Director of the Movement Strategy Center, Curator at Full Spectrum Labs and Principal at Full Spectrum Capital Partners. Taj thrives building community around the shared questions that matter most in our lives: how can we build the relationships and express the love needed to transform our world? Moderator Lynn Murphy Lynn is the co-director of Transition Resource Circle and co-author of Post Capitalist Philanthropy, Healing Wealth in the Time of Collapse. She is an educator, strategic advisor, and organizer among funders and activists, with a focus in the geopolitical South.
Today, I am delighted to share this imperfectly perfect, perfectly imperfect conversation with Katharine Burke, an IB Educator, Author of Earthwards: Transformative Ecological Education, Founder of The Small Earth Institute, M.Ed: Nature, Ecology and Sustainability.In this episode, we discuss Katharine's journey The meaning of 'deep ecology' The importance of starting where we are Katharine's book: Earthwards: Transformational Ecological Education (TREED) What is TREED? Shifting Mindset Developing deeper belonging with young people What's the point? Talking with rather than TO young peoople Supporting at primary and secondary levels The 12 main principles shared in the bookKatharine finished by sharing the essay from Bayo Akomolafe about doors and cracks:https://www.bayoakomolafe.net/post/on-doors-and-cracksThis reminded me of Cohen's song that says "There is a crack in everything. That's how the light gets in,"To contact Katharine: dennelillejord@gmail.com Linked In: Katharine Burke To join the Earthwards Community: https://earthwards.mn.co/
As we head into times where rising temperatures, superstorms, and mega-fires dominate the headlines, what has happened to our disaster-averting solutions? In this episode, we explore 'The Carbon Conundrum' and rethink our relationship with nature. Join host Jack Eidt as he features a discussion with post-humanist philosopher Báyò Akómoláfé and environmental leader and author Paul Hawken, moderated by Alex Forrester, Board Member of the Schumacher Center for a New Economics and Co-Founder of Rising Tide capital. They delve into the failures of current climate strategies, the pitfalls of solutionism, and the importance of reconnecting with Traditional Ecological Knowledge. This enlightening conversation challenges listeners to reconsider their approaches to environmentalism and climate action. Support the Podcast via PayPal https://www.paypal.com/donate/?hosted_button_id=LBGXTRM292TFC&source=url Paul Hawken [https://paulhawken.com/] starts ecological businesses, writes about nature and commerce. He has written nine books, including six national and NYT bestsellers: ‘Growing a Business', ‘The Next Economy', ‘The Ecology of Commerce', ‘Blessed Unrest', ‘Drawdown', and ‘Regeneration'. His latest book, ‘Carbon, The Book of Life', is available from Penguin RandomHouse in February 2025. Paul is the founder of Project Drawdown and Project Regeneration (https://regeneration.org/), which is the world's largest, most complete listing and network of solutions to the climate crisis. Báyò Akómoláfé Ph.D., [https://www.bayoakomolafe.net/] rooted with the Yoruba people in a more-than-human world, is a posthumanist thinker, poet, teacher, public intellectual, essayist, and author of two books, These Wilds Beyond our Fences: Letters to My Daughter on Humanity's Search for Home (North Atlantic Books) and We Will Tell our Own Story: The Lions of Africa Speak. Bayo Akomolafe is the visionary founder of The Emergence Network, a planet-wide networking project and inquiry at the edges of the Anthropocene that seeks to convene new kinds of responsivities, sensuous solidarities, and experimental practices for a posthumanist parapolitics. He currently lectures at Pacifica Graduate Institute, California. He sits on the Board of many organizations. A frequent keynote speaker and guest lecturer, Dr. Akomolafe's critically popular expression, “the times are urgent, let us slow down,” with which he attempts to frame new concepts (such as ontofugitivity, the Afrocene, iatropolitics, curapoiesis, white syncopation, ecocognitive assemblage theory, postactivism and parapolitics) that reframe and renaturalize human action, agency, and responsibility in an immanent, agonistic worlding of possibilities for life-death. Dr. Akomolafe is a Member of the Club of Rome and an Ambassador for the Wellbeing Economy Alliance. He is currently writing his third book, ‘An Ocean of Milk: Morality, Desire, and the Monster at the Edge of the World'. Jack Eidt is an urban planner, environmental journalist, and climate organizer, as well as award-winning fiction writer. He is Co-Founder of SoCal 350 Climate Action and Executive Producer of EcoJustice Radio. He writes a column on PBS SoCal called High & Dry [https://www.pbssocal.org/people/high-dry]. He is also Founder and Publisher of WilderUtopia [https://wilderutopia.com], a website dedicated to the question of Earth sustainability, finding society-level solutions to environmental, community, economic, transportation and energy needs. Podcast Website: http://ecojusticeradio.org/ Podcast Blog: https://www.wilderutopia.com/category/ecojustice-radio/ Support the Podcast: Patreon https://www.patreon.com/ecojusticeradio PayPal https://www.paypal.com/donate/?hosted_button_id=LBGXTRM292TFC&source=url Executive Producer and Host: Jack Eidt Engineer and Original Music: Blake Quake Beats Episode 249 Photo credit: Carbon book cover
For The Wild is thrilled to share that we're launching our second Slow Study with Bayo Akomolafe and The Emergence Network. These slow studies are a unique collaboration between The Emergence Network and For The Wild focused on making the We Will Dance With Mountains course accessible in an asynchronous, self-paced manner so you can embrace slowness and integration in your study. The segments featured in this Slow Study were recorded in 2023 as part of the We Will Dance With Mountains: Vunja! live sessions attended by over 1400 people around the world. We have edited the conversations and added supplementary materials so that you are able to go about this immersive, transformative course at your own pace.The full package includes eight audio sessions with lectures, practices, music, poetry, and conversation from Bayo and his brilliant crew of co-conspirators. These are accompanied by recorded practice prompts from Jiordi Rosales and a text-based coursebook with details on each session and additional extrapolations.For The Wild is deeply grateful to Bayo and our partners at The Emergence Network for this collaboration. We hope you enjoy this experience.Welcome to the carnival, let's dive into the cracks! Presale for the course launches today! The slow study course will officially launch on December 30th, and those who order during presale will receive the digital download of the course then. To celebrate those ordering early- use code SLOWSTUDY10 to take 10% off of your purchase. Visit forthewild.world/Vunja to learn more and purchase! Support the show
In this TIMELESS episode we hear from Sophie Strand and Bayo Akomolafe. Together, we explore how the sacred is less about certainty and mastery and more about dwelling in the unknown, the disruptive, and the in-between. As we open ourselves to this journey, we consider how unlearning and openness might guide us toward a deeper, more grounded sense of the sacred—one that emerges in moments of humility, fragility, and genuine encounter. “And I was thinking that, at least in my own situated experience, my approach to the sacred would be to flip the paradigm and to ask, what if the sacred researches you?” Sophie Strand As a writer, Sophie focuses on the intersection of spirituality, storytelling, and ecology. She believes strongly that all thinking happens interstitially between beings, ideas, differences, and mythical gradients. Bayo is a poet, philosopher, psychologist, professor, and chief-curator of the Emergence Network. He curates this earth-wide project for the re-calibration of our ability to respond to civilisational crisis. We hope this TIMELESS episode invites you to pause and reflect on the sacred in new and unexpected ways. Links from this episode and more at allthatweare.org
When Wholeness Arrives with Bayo Akomolafe (Part 2)Ilia Delio and Bayo Akomolafe continue their conversation about navigating the legacy of modernity and our journey into the future as a species. Bayo shares his perspective on the legacies of ingenious thought—particularly how it's seen from the West. They ask, whether we ever arrive at wholeness? And what, if anything, does politics have to do with it?ABOUT BAYO AKOMOLAFE“The idea of slowing down is not about getting answers, it is about questioning our questions. It is about staying in the places that are haunted.”Bayo Akomolafe (Ph.D.), rooted with the Yoruba people in a more-than-human world, is the father to Alethea and Kyah, the grateful life-partner to Ije, son and brother. A widely celebrated international speaker, posthumanist thinker, poet, teacher, public intellectual, essayist, and author of two books, These Wilds Beyond our Fences: Letters to My Daughter on Humanity's Search for Home (North Atlantic Books) and We Will Tell our Own Story: The Lions of Africa Speak, Bayo Akomolafe is the Founder of The Emergence Network and host of the online postactivist course, ‘We Will Dance with Mountains'. He currently lectures at Pacifica Graduate Institute, California and University of Vermont, Burlington, Vermont. He sits on the Board of many organizations including Science and Non-Duality (US) and Local Futures (Australia). In July 2022, Dr. Akomolafe was appointed the inaugural Global Senior Fellow of University of California's (Berkeley) Othering and Belonging Institute, where he acts as the Forum's “provocateur in residence”, guiding Forum members in rethinking and reimagining our collective work towards justice in ways that reject binary thinking and easy answers. He has also been appointed Senior Fellow for The New Institute in Hamburg, Germany. Read his introduction penned for the Democracy & Belonging Forum here. To learn more about his work, visit Bayo's website at here, and view the work of the Emergence Network here.Support the showA huge thank you to all of you who subscribe and support our show! Support for A Hunger for Wholeness comes from the Fetzer Institute. Fetzer supports a movement of organizations who are applying spiritual solutions to society's toughest problems. Get involved at fetzer.org. Support 'Hunger for Wholeness' on Patreon as our team continues to develop content for listeners to dive deeper. Visit the Center for Christogenesis' website at christogenesis.org to browse all Hunger for Wholeness episodes and read more from Ilia Delio. Follow us on Facebook, Instagram and Twitter for episode releases and other updates.
How (Post-)Humans Evolve with Bayo Akomolafe (Part 1)Ilia Delio is joined by the prolific writer and activist Bayo Akomolafe. Bayo shares with us about his Christian background, growing up as the son of a diplomat in Nigeria. Ilia asks Bayo about how he has uniquely wrestled with the legacy of modernity and Western thought and his own unique approach to process and post-humanist thought.ABOUT BAYO AKOMOLAFE“The idea of slowing down is not about getting answers, it is about questioning our questions. It is about staying in the places that are haunted.”Bayo Akomolafe (Ph.D.), rooted with the Yoruba people in a more-than-human world, is the father to Alethea and Kyah, the grateful life-partner to Ije, son and brother. A widely celebrated international speaker, posthumanist thinker, poet, teacher, public intellectual, essayist, and author of two books, These Wilds Beyond our Fences: Letters to My Daughter on Humanity's Search for Home (North Atlantic Books) and We Will Tell our Own Story: The Lions of Africa Speak, Bayo Akomolafe is the Founder of The Emergence Network and host of the online postactivist course, ‘We Will Dance with Mountains'. He currently lectures at Pacifica Graduate Institute, California and University of Vermont, Burlington, Vermont. He sits on the Board of many organizations including Science and Non-Duality (US) and Local Futures (Australia). In July 2022, Dr. Akomolafe was appointed the inaugural Global Senior Fellow of University of California's (Berkeley) Othering and Belonging Institute, where he acts as the Forum's “provocateur in residence”, guiding Forum members in rethinking and reimagining our collective work towards justice in ways that reject binary thinking and easy answers. He has also been appointed Senior Fellow for The New Institute in Hamburg, Germany. Read his introduction penned for the Democracy & Belonging Forum here. To learn more about his work, visit Bayo's website at here, and view the work of the Emergence Network here.Support the showA huge thank you to all of you who subscribe and support our show! Support for A Hunger for Wholeness comes from the Fetzer Institute. Fetzer supports a movement of organizations who are applying spiritual solutions to society's toughest problems. Get involved at fetzer.org. Support 'Hunger for Wholeness' on Patreon as our team continues to develop content for listeners to dive deeper. Visit the Center for Christogenesis' website at christogenesis.org to browse all Hunger for Wholeness episodes and read more from Ilia Delio. Follow us on Facebook, Instagram and Twitter for episode releases and other updates.
Watch the full episode with Bayo Akomolafe here: https://youtu.be/WHRp53NdQbYSTAY INSPIRED & KEEP EVOLVINGYEWSupport this show http://supporter.acast.com/inspiredevolution. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.
Watch the full episode with Bayo Akomolafe here: https://youtu.be/WHRp53NdQbYSTAY INSPIRED & KEEP EVOLVINGYEWSupport this show http://supporter.acast.com/inspiredevolution. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.
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Here the many complex dimensions of home are explored including the human need to find a home in nature. Andrews says,” Once you find a home in nature, you are never lost.” She also shares insights on those caretaking family members and other loved ones to age in place including those who choose to die at home and many other aspects of home. Valerie Andrews is a writer, editor, and seminar leader specializing in Jungian psychology and the inner life of home. She's a graduate of the Guild for Spiritual Guidance and the editor of the digital magazine Reinventing Home: Culture, Creativity, Character. She's also a contributor to many journals and magazines and was the host of the PBS documentary featuring Thomas Moore, author of Care of the Soul. She is the author and editor of A Passion for This Earth (Harper Collins 1994) and Sanctuary: The Inner Life of Home (Editor) (Chiron Publications 2024)Interview Date: 7/19/2024. Tags: Valerie Andrews, Jungian psychology, Sisyphus, Kaiser ACE study, plus-one proton, Ursula Le Guin, aging at home, Peggy Fleming, In the Evening of Life, Grassland Woman, Mary Reynolds Thompson, Eckart Tolle, James Hollis, Maslow's hierarchy of needs, Gilda Frantz, storage lockers, Bayo Akomolafe, Starhawk, Community, Personal Transformation, Psychology
Some podcast apps may not display links from our show notes (see below) properly, so we have included a list of links at the end of this description. * Bayo Akomolafe is a posthumanist thinker, philosopher, poet, author and founder of the Emergence Network, a planet-wide initiative that seeks to convene communities in new ways in response to the critical, civilizational challenges we face as a species. Through Bayo's writings, speeches, and work he inspires new ways of thinking and being in the world, inviting us to ask questions that undermine everything we are told to believe. * In this episode, Bayo is joined by artist, writer, mindfulness practitioner, facilitator, and emerging filmmaker Damali Robertson as they explore postactivism and how this concept, which is so imbued with possibility and creativity, can be supportive of pathways to healing. * This episode was recorded during a live online event on March 14th, 2024. You can also watch it on the CIIS Public Programs YouTube channel. A transcript is available at ciispod.com. To find out more about CIIS and public programs like this one, visit our website ciis.edu and connect with us on social media @ciispubprograms. * We hope that each episode of our podcast provides opportunities for growth, and that our listeners will use them as a starting point for further introspection. Many of the topics discussed on our podcast have the potential to bring up feelings and emotional responses. If you or someone you know is in need of mental health care and support, here are some resources to find immediate help and future healing: * -Visit 988lifeline.org or text, call, or chat with The National Suicide Prevention Lifeline by dialing 988 from anywhere in the U.S. to be connected immediately with a trained counselor. Please note that 988 staff are required to take all action necessary to secure the safety of a caller and initiate emergency response with or without the caller's consent if they are unwilling or unable to take action on their own behalf. * -Visit thrivelifeline.org or text “THRIVE” to begin a conversation with a THRIVE Lifeline crisis responder 24/7/365, from anywhere: +1.313.662.8209. This confidential text line is available for individuals 18+ and is staffed by people in STEMM with marginalized identities. * -Visit translifeline.org or call (877) 565-8860 in the U.S. or (877) 330-6366 in Canada to learn more and contact Trans Lifeline, who provides trans peer support divested from police. * -Visit ciis.edu/ciis-in-the-world/counseling-clinics to learn more and schedule counseling sessions at one of our centers. * -Find information about additional global helplines at befrienders.org. * LINKS * Podcast Transcripts: https://www.ciispod.com/ * California Institute of Integral Studies (CIIS) Website: https://www.ciis.edu/ * CIIS Public Programs YouTube Channel: https://www.youtube.com/c/ciispublicprograms * CIIS Public Programs Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/ciispubprograms/ * Mental Health Care and Support Resources: https://988lifeline.org/ https://thrivelifeline.org/ https://translifeline.org/ https://www.ciis.edu/ciis-in-the-world/counseling-clinics https://befrienders.org/
On this episode, my guest is Craig Slee, a disabled writer, consultant and theorist dealing with mythology, folklore, magic and culture, exploring life through the lens of landscape, disability and fugitive embodiments.He has contributed essays and poetry focusing on the numinous and disability to various anthologies including The Dark Mountain Journal. Craig has also co-facilitated multiple seminar series at the Dresden Academy for Fine Arts, regarding ableism in the arts, as well as how ableism affects our relationship to space. In 2023 he was one of the speakers at the World Futures Studies Federation 50th Anniversary Conference, introducing the concept of (Dis)abling Futures. Craig resides in the northwest of England.Show NotesCornwall and the Seasons Who Gets to Decide What it Means to Know a Place?The Folding in of Identity to TourismA Question of Productive vs Generative AbilityAbleism and AttentionFinger Bending and the Freedom of MovementRedefining and Remembering Other Forms of MovementWhat is Stillness?The Dance of MountainsObeying LimitsHomeworkCold Albion (Craig's Blog)Goetic Atavisms (Hadean Press)Craig's Blue Sky Page | Facebook PageTranscriptChris: Welcome to the End of Tourism, Craig. Craig: Thank you for having me. Chris: Yes, it's great to be able to speak with you today. I've been ruminating for a couple of years now as to the themes that we might speak of. And I was introduced to you via a mutual friend and have come closer to your work via the Emergence Network's online gathering, We Will Dance With Mountains, in the last quarter of 2023.And so, to begin, I'd like to ask you first where you find yourself today and what the world looks like for you, where you are. Craig: Where I find myself today is by the canal in my flat, looking out the window, just as evenings coming in, in the northwest of England, in Lancaster, and it's chilly here which is actually a good thing, I guess, these days.Chris: Perhaps I could ask you to elaborate a little bit on what Lancaster looks like, but I know that, you know, from our conversations previous that you grew up [00:01:00] in Cornwall, a place that was previously, a town, an area devoted to fishing and mining, and from what you've told me, it's also become a massive tourist trap that you know, from the little that I've seen online, that the area receives around 5 million visitors a year, and tourism makes up about a quarter of the local economy.So I'm curious what you've seen change there and what do you think has happened to Cornwall and its people as a result and maybe there's something in there as well regarding Lancaster. Craig: Yeah, so I should emphasize this. I was born in Cornwall. My family has been lived down there for many many generations anyway and my father's side of the family actually, at various points, worked in the tourist trade as well before they went on to other things.And, [00:02:00] yeah, I mean, I left because, frankly, there was no jobs that weren't tourism. I came to Lancaster to study because one, I have a physical disability which means that Cornwall is a very rural area, so you need to drive everywhere, and that's fine, I drove at that point, but for good or ill, a more urban center was better for me later in life as I left.But the way that it shifted, even in the years when I was growing up, was that, you know, essentially was a rural area where nothing really happened socially or culturally that much until the summer seasons. So, you were very, very aware of the seasons in terms of, you'd have visitors [00:03:00] starting, and that was when the town would wake up, and then it was kind of dead for the rest of the year, so it was very much one of those things where the tourist trade has actually made me more aware of human rhythms in the natural world than perhaps I would have been, because it's so based on seasonal stuff.And just looking at the way the infrastructure because a lot of the towns and areas, they boomed a little bit well, quite a lot in certain areas with the tin mining of the 19th century. But a lot of the architecture and things like that was 19th century. So you had small villages and slightly larger towns, and they have very, well, I guess some people, if they were tourists, would call "quaint, narrow streets."And when you have that many visitors, in the summer, you can't get down the streets. [00:04:00] You can't drive it because it's full of people walking. You know, there's an interesting anecdote I'd like to recount of when my father, he was a vicar, he was a priest, moved to a new area he would go to the local pub and all the locals would greet him as the priest and be like, very polite.And then when it would come out that my dad was actually a local, that he was born down there and part of the family, everybody would relax. And there was this real sort of strange thing where people came and stayed because it was a lovely area, but there was still that whole issue with second homes and certainly keeping an eye on things from a distance here during the pandemic when people left cities during the pandemic, they went down there amongst places in Britain.And that meant that, [00:05:00] literally, there were no houses for newly starting teachers, you know, teachers who had got jobs and were moving down there, couldn't find places to live because during the 2020 and sort of 2022 period, everything was just opening up either as Airbnb because there was this influx from the cities to the more rural areas because it was supposedly safer.You know, and I feel like that's a reflex that is really interesting because most people think of it as, oh, "a tourist area," people go there for leisure, they go there to relax and get away from their lives, which is true, but under a stressful situation like a pandemic, people also flee to beautiful quotes isolated areas, so there's that real sense of pressure, I think and this idea that we weren't entirely sure, growing up, [00:06:00] whether we would have a place to live because a lot of the housing was taken up by people with second homes. And plenty of people I went to school with because it's a surfing area took the knowledge that they learned in the tourism trade, and actually left and went to Australia. And they live on the Gold Coast now. So it's this self perpetuating thing, you know? Chris: Well, that leads me to my next question, which kind of centers around belonging and being rooted and learning to root, maybe even becoming a neighbor or some might say a citizen of a place.And with tourism or a touristic worldview, we seem to be largely stunted in our ability to know a place, to become part of that place in any significant or enduring sense of the word. And so, I'm curious what your thoughts are on what it means to know a place, [00:07:00] and perhaps on the often mad rush to say I know a place for the sake of social capital, you know, given the context of the kind of relative difficulties that one might incur, or in a place like Cornwall, and the relative degree of exile that forces people out.What do you think it means to know a place in the context of all of these economic pressures denying us that possibility, or at least making it really, really difficult. Craig: I think we have a real problem in modernity with the idea of knowing as a sense of capture, right? So if I know you, I have this boundary of this shape, this outline of Chris, right, that I can hold, that I can grasp. And I think sometimes when we say, "oh, I know a place," or, "oh, I know a person" there's no concept of the [00:08:00] ongoing relationality. You know, you capture the image and then you keep it. And it's a whole construct of extractive knowledge that really, I think, comes down to the idea that the humans are the ones who get to decide what a place is, right?So. I could say in the standard sense, "Oh, I know Cornwall because I, you know, I grew up there for nearly 20 years." My family has been there since about the 1500s. You know, "I know a place, it's in my bones." Yada yada yada. All the metaphors you want to use. But the fact of the matter is, the place itself influences me more than I influence it. So there's this strange sense of belonging in which modernity [00:09:00] says "I belong" or "it belongs to me" rather than perhaps the place has extended hospitality to me and allowed me to grow and I could live/work in a place for 30 years and never know it because we're not comfortable as a culture with the idea of going, "I don't know this place."And it's a variety. It's always changing. And I think about all the times I used to watch the sea and talk to folks whose parents were fishermen or lifeboatmen, and they'd be like, "Yeah, we know the waters, but the waters can change. We know roughly what they do under certain conditions, but we don't know them completely, because they can always surprise us."And So, when somebody says, "oh, you're from Cornwall, you're a Cornishman," and all that sense of identity, [00:10:00] I'm like, "yeah, but that's, that's both really fluid for me, because, you know, there's a lot of history." Is it the tourist world of the 20th and 21st century, or is it the farming and the mining that goes back to the Neolithic?How we relate to a place purely in a modern sense isn't, to my mind anyway, the only way to conceive of belonging because, even though I'm now 300 miles away from there, I have its isotopes, its minerals from drinking the water in my teeth, you know. So, on some level, the idea that you have to be in a place also to belong to a place is something that I'm curious about because, there's this whole notion, [00:11:00] "you're only in the place and you've been in a place for this long and that means you know it and you're local." Whereas growing up, there was this sort of weird thing where it was like, "yeah, you might have been here 30 years and everybody knows you, but you're not a local." Right? You still belong, but there was this other category of " you're not local or something like that."And so it's complicated, but I really do, for my personal take, tend to look at it as a, the landscape, or wherever it is, influences my sense of belonging in a non human context, or more than human context, if that makes sense. Chris: Hmm. Yeah, there's so much there. Yeah. I mean, I'm also, in the context of identity, also wondering in what ways, not only has the tourism industry shaped one's identity of being local, which [00:12:00] is, I think, a huge issue in over touristed places in the last, you know, 10 or 20 years, as identity politics rises into the mainstream, and but then also not just the industry and the interaction with foreigners or, or guests, or tourists, but the way in which the image of that place is crafted through, often, ministries of culture or heritage, you know, so you could grow up in a place that isn't necessarily overly touristed or anything like that. But then have your identity crafted by these ideas of culture or heritage that the government's, federal and otherwise, have placed on people.Craig: And especially because where I come from, Cornwall, actually had its own language, which died out, which was on the verge of dying out in the 19th century. And slowly there are more speakers of it now. And you go back there now and you'll find, [00:13:00] even when I was growing up it wasn't so prevalent, but you'll find a lot of the signs for the street signs will have the English and the Cornish.So that's where the government has embraced this identity and enhanced it after people have been saying, you know, "this is a language we've rebuilt it. It's cousin to Welsh and Breton. We should use it. It's part of our identity and it's got folded into that." And so the infrastructure itself is now been part of that. You know, those very same streets have a name that wasn't known for like, 50, 60, maybe to 80 years, and suddenly people are now deliberately using the old names in non English languages because of that. And it's very strange because, especially in the UK, what with all [00:14:00] of Brexit and all that, there is a very weird sense wherein the rest of England, i. e. North and London and those sort of areas don't understand because Cornwall was a peripheral area and much like Wales, there's a lot of distrust of central government. Hmm. So, you've got this whole construction of a personal identity of nobody actually really understands what goes on outside. Either they're incomers, either they're emmets. You know, which "emmets" is the old English for "ants." Referring to tourists as ants in a kind of, yeah, they get everywhere. And the whole notion of who we are is always constructed. But in that case, going away and coming back to visit, I'm going, "Well that street didn't [00:15:00] have that label on it when I left. But it does now. And so in a certain sense it's the same place, but it's got this overlay of somewhere different that really enhances that sense of layers for me of "which Cornwall?" "Which of any of these places are we talking about?"Like you say, is it the one you see on a picture postcard or an Instagram or is it the ones who sat there as kids going, right, 'there's nothing to do, let's go and drink in a field?' You know and all of these things can co exist.Chris: Hmm, right. Yeah, I just interviewed a friend of mine, Christos Galanis, who did his PhD on hillwalkers, as well as homecomers in the Scottish Highlands, so people who spend their weekends climbing, summiting the Highland Mountains, and also the Canadian or Americans who travel to Scotland on heritage trips or ancestral [00:16:00] journeys. And he mentioned how in the Highlands that the governments have placed the original Gaelic place names on all of the the signs there, whether you're entering a village or perhaps on the street signs as well.And that he said that something like "only three percent of the of the people in Scotland actually speak, speak Gaelic," so they see the sign, they see the name, the vast majority of people, and they have no idea what it means. And I also remember the last time I was in Toronto, which is where I'm from originally, or where I grew up.And my family grew up in the east end of town, and the main thoroughfare in the east end of town is largely referred to as "Greek Town." You know, when I was a kid it was certainly Greek Town. The Greek letters, the Greek alphabet names as well as the English names of the street signs in that area.But it's much, much, much less Greek than it was 25 years ago, right? So again, [00:17:00] this question of like, is that to some extent trying to solidify the kind of cultural geography of a place. That people come to that street and that neighborhood because they want to experience Greekness in its diasporic kind of context.And yet, so many of those people, so many of those families have moved on or moved along or become more Canadian in their own sense of the word, so. Craig: Yeah. It's very strange as well because things like that attract... there's a loop obviously, because you'll get people coming to experience the greekness or the cornishes, and people will be like, oh, we should open a business that will enhance the greekness or the Cornish of the place, and that will draw, and it just becomes this thing and, yeah.Yeah, it's very strange. And I would totally agree with you on that one. Chris: Yeah. [00:18:00] Yeah. Until like a Greek person from Greece or a Cornish grandmother comes into town and says like, what? No, that's not Yeah. Oh, yeah. So I'd like to shift the conversation, Craig, a little bit towards ableism, and begin with this question that comes from our dear mutual friend Aerin and who admits that she's happily robbed it directly from Fiona Kumari Campbell.Yes. So, you might have heard this question before but she she felt the need to kind of pose it anew and and so the question is this. How does disability productively color our lives and Aerin wanted to ask it, to modify it slightly and ask, how does disability generatively or creatively color our lives? Craig: I can't speak to anybody's life other than my own really. But I would say that for me disability has, [00:19:00] one, given me a real sort of ability to look at the world and go, "you guys think this is how everything works and it clearly doesn't."You know, it has given me a generative gift of going, "hold on, what people think of the default really isn't the default, because I was never born as the default, and so I've had to find my own way of relating to the world" and that means that anybody goes anytime anybody goes "Oh, well, everybody knows..." or "the only way to do it is this?" I am always going "are you absolutely sure about that?" You know, "are you absolutely sure that what you're looking at or experiencing or noticing is only perceivable in one way, it's only ever [00:20:00] frameable, in one context?" But also this idea for me that disability is simply a fact.It's not good or bad. It is a thing that exists in the world and ableism is essentially the urge to measure against the vast field of disability and impairment and go, "We don't want that. That's the worst thing to be. So, we will strive to not be that." As Fiona Kumari Campbell would say, " It sets up a ranking and notification and prioritization of sentient life."So, this is why we, to a certain extent, we have such a obsession with youth culture. Young, healthy, fit folks are in some way better than the elderly. Oh god, nobody wants [00:21:00] to get old cause, if you're of white extraction, "oh, they'll probably stick you in a home."Nobody wants to conceive of the idea that actually you can have a generative and intimate relationship with somebody, not necessarily a romantic one, but a deep, deep friendship that also involves, frankly to put it crudely, perhaps wiping somebody's arse, right? There's this whole notion of messiness and failure and why Aerin reworded it from "productive" to "generative" is that whole idea of being productive, of having capitalist use, to produce, to make for purposes. And for me, disability and the field of disability in which I exist says "I exist and I don't have to be productive." it really [00:22:00] challenges the capitalist framework for me. And also, ableism, because it's set up to rank things like speed, mobility, all kinds of things like that, having a disability where you're sitting there going, but there are other ways to do this. There are other ways to exist. To notice the way our bodies move that are mostly ignored in the sense of "yeah, we don't pay attention to our posture or our muscle structure or what our guts are doing because we're all already forced along to the next thing.You know, we're already touring from, "okay, I've got up in the morning. Next thing I've got to do is have breakfast," right? And if you can easily shift between those stages, so you get up in the morning, start your breakfast, put your clothes on easily. [00:23:00] You don't think about it as much, but if it takes you 10, 20 minutes to even get out of bed and you have to do specific things, maybe exercises, maybe things like that, the whole process thickens.And in a sense, for me, it's an antithesis to escapism because there are things you cannot escape. There are things you have to deal with. And because there are things you have to deal with, you have to pay attention to them more. And that means the most ordinary mundane thing becomes or can become, if you're willing to gently sense it, a lot richer.So, this is one of those interesting things where if people want to go places to experience new things, Okay, that's a whole issue that you've obviously talked about throughout the podcast, but there is a certain sense in [00:24:00] which we don't even know where we started from. We've not explored our own bodies.I mean, I wrote a piece in 2020 when all the lockdowns hit that got shared around various bits of the internet and I think even in the newspaper at one point in, but I got a request to syndicate it, of how to exist when you're stuck in your house. You know, what do you do to "keep," in inverted commas, "sane," which, of course, is an ableist framework, but what do you do to stop yourself from losing mental health? How do you function? And I broke it down and I sort of made practical suggestions of, this is how I, as somebody that doesn't actually have a, quotes, "normal life," and spends a lot of his time unable to travel or go out much, stops myself from feeling isolated, [00:25:00] because I've ended up having to learn to explore what some might regard as a limited domain.But to me, that limited area, that limited domain has given me this sense of vastness that's, you know, I can't remember which philosopher it is, but there is a philosopher who basically says, I think it is a Camus, who says "you just need to reopen when you're in your room and the whole world will reveal itself to you."And when you don't have a choice, when you're stuck in chronic pain, or sickness, or something like that and you have to work out what to do with your limited energy, to embrace life, there becomes a sort of challenge, to go, "okay, how can I feel like things are enriching? How can I, almost metabolize the things that other people would reject.⌘ Chris Christou ⌘ is a reader-supported publication. To receive new posts and support my work, consider becoming a free or paid subscriber.You know, [00:26:00] because disability is so "Oh, it's so sad he's disabled. Or we've got the cure for this and that. And we've got to cure it." And it's not really about ameliorating suffering. Which is a good thing. It's an analoid good to ameliorate any form of suffering. But there is this sense that the only way to perceive the world is through a so called "non disabled" abled body.The only way to experience a rich world, and again, I'm not knocking people who do a lot of travelling per se, but the only way to experience the world is to go on long journeys, and backpack and explore you know, new ways of thinking. That's great. And I'm not saying you can do exactly the same at home, but you can also become radically hospitable to yourself and to the environment in which you find [00:27:00] yourself.And that opens a whole lot of doors that I think I would regard as generatively colouring life and revealing life. In a way that was possibly occluded before. Chris: Yeah, I mean, so much of what I've come to in the research around tourism and hypermobility is this question of limits.And that certainly comes up in other themes, in other contexts. But not just the limits to one's place. Like, where does your place end? But also the limits of the human body. And, when we talk about freedom generally in the West, or in, in the context of modernity, it's so often pinned or underpinned via the freedom of movement, in part, because I know you're coming from the other side of the Atlantic, but certainly in, in this part of the [00:28:00] world, in the Americas and especially North America, freedom is understood as freedom of movement because that's in part how, the states and, and the nation's existences are justified.And so, I would just ask you what you think of that in the context of freedom being, of course a synonym for liberation. And how so many of our western notions of freedom are attached to movement and have. To a large degree become glorified in the hyper mobility of our times.Craig: I would agree with you. I think it was always there because of the colonial urge, but I think North American notions of freedom have, through a certain cultural hegemony, filtered back. You get it in the media, even Star Trek, you know, the final frontier, you know. Things like that. Or wide open spaces. There's still this notion of, freedom to move, room to live. It has its own European context and [00:29:00] horrors, unfortunately.But also, I think the notion of freedom as freedom to move. There is a question there for me, because I'm not sure we know what we're doing when we move. Right? And one of the questions that always was raised for me is, if I raise my finger, as I'm doing now, and I bend it so it's 90 degrees, how did I do that?What did I do? Well, science would say, okay, you used all your tendons and so on and so forth, and I'm like, yeah, "okay, those are nice descriptors. But what did I actually do?" Where's the connection between the impulse and the urge to bend my finger? Right. I don't know what I did there. I just thought I'm gonna bend my finger and the [00:30:00] finger bent But there's a whole bunch of stuff going on.So when I'm thinking about freedom of movement First the question is, "freedom to move in what way?" Right? So the the classic example is, in perhaps North America and and English speaking countries is "to go where I want, when I want, with none to to gainsay me, none to say you can't go there," which has been problematized thanks to the history of enclosure of land and capture by state and political actors, but also this notion that if you get into a city and you can go and people go, "Oh, I'm free to go wherever I want."I always sit there and I'm going, "yes, but you can go wherever you want, but if a place has stairs and no lift..." right? I [00:31:00] can't go there. So do I have less freedom? Well, according to the traditional notions of freedom, yes. I am less free. When I grew up, as an example in the UK I went to America when I was about four or five, and I was absolutely stunned by the amount of public toilets that had a disabled toilet.Right? Because virtually nowhere where I grew up at that point had a disabled toilet. This was due to the fact that the U. S. has a disability rights movement that was slightly ahead of the U. K. 's. So I was freer to go about my holiday in the U. S. than I was technically at home. I couldn't go certain places because there weren't toilets, or there weren't ramps, because that had not been legalized. You know, there'd been no legislation. In the UK, there was [00:32:00] no disability legislation until 1995. You know, so technically, I was born in 1981. I had no specific extra legal rights that I needed for 14 years. Now some would say, "oh, that, you've got freedom there... the law has given you freedom.It's giving you the ability to move, but it's only given me the ability to move in approved ways, right? And so every single time somebody talks about room to move, my query is always, okay. "One, as I said, move in what way? And two, who taught you what method of movement is approved or disproved?" So, particularly in Europe, we have folks like the Romani, the Irish travellers, [00:33:00] even the so called New Age travellers, right, who are nomadic folks.And despite this obsession with freedom, the idea that people are nomadic, are shiftless and rootless, still exists. Yes, a degree. The degree of privilege, the degree that I could be, quote, "more confident going into public spaces." And you'll see this in American history and throughout European history as well.And when I was talking about the nomadic folks, I was saying, you know, there are only certain people who are allowed to move in certain ways, to travel in certain ways that are approved. In similar ways with disability there were only certain kinds of people who were allowed into public spaces.They might not have been legislated against in the mid twentieth century. They might have struck those off the books, but at [00:34:00] various points, at least in the US, if you look up the Chicago Ugly Laws, people who were regarded as vagrants or unsightly, were not allowed in public spaces. They could be jailed for that.It's not just loitering. It was very much anything that could give offense because they were physically disabled. Or, the idea that the physically disabled are more likely to be begging or doing things like that. That was all folded in. So, this notion of freedom as the ability to move and move in space.Despite the North American urge to be like, "well, nobody can tell me what to do." There's still a certain level of certain forms of movement are privileged or regarded as normal versus others. So, you know it's weird if you don't stay [00:35:00] in one place or perhaps, it's weird if you don't have a reason for your seasonal job, right?When I was a kid and a teenager... like I said, where I grew up was kind of known for surfing, right? And I met folks who would come from places like Australia and live in Volkswagen transporter vans and work in the seasonal hotels and then go surfing. And then sometimes in the winter they disappear off to Morocco.And you wouldn't see them for six months and they'd come back and there's all this kind of idea of Differing rhythms, which has really influenced my entire life because those folks, they were there there were hundreds of them you could see them parked on every road and I knew several of them very very well, but the fact of those seasonal rhythms, which weren't [00:36:00] approved. It wasn't approved that they didn't stay in one place and pay taxes. To some that might be, you know, "Oh, that's freedom! That's telling the government, I don't have to pay your taxes or I don't have to stay in one place and be a registered visible citizen. I can be a free spirit and go to Morocco whenever I want. But, the fact of it is, if you walked on the, on the roads, people would look at you funny, right?If you look at people who do long distance walking in areas that are drivable, I mean, especially I guess in North America, that's looked at as very, very, very strange, because you guys don't have the infrastructure. So, for me, it's this really strange notion that we're fixated on particular kinds of movement to do with agency and power, right?And we, we will say, "oh, [00:37:00] that's mobile, that's fast, that's quick, that's agile." And I'm always curious about what criteria we're using to say, "oh, that's fast, that's agile, that's nimble," when you look at the so called natural world, and you've got plants that are seemingly immobile, but they actually turn to the sun.You just don't notice it until you stick it on a stop motion camera. And then you're like, "wow, they move." But you could go past that plant every single day and be like, "yeah, it doesn't move. It's a plant. It just stays there." Right? Because our perception of what movement is and what is approved is based around one, what we're taught and two, what we see every day.But also three. What we can't notice unless we're forced to look at the same thing over and over again, right? [00:38:00] Because our tendency is to see one thing, think, "Oh, I know it. I've spotted it. I know what it is. I've identified it. It's fitted into my matrix of identity. I can move on now. It's all sorted." But the whole ethos, I guess, that I'm coming at iswhat if you don't know? What if you don't know? What if that microphone that I'm speaking into and you're speaking into it looks like a particular thing and you think you could describe a microphone to somebody but go down to say the flows of the electrons and it's a context issue. You know? And, and So, I'm interested in thinking about what are the contexts are in the room with us right now that we're not even paying any attention to, and not even in the room, in our own bodies, in our own language.Chris: Wow. Yeah, again, there's so much there. My [00:39:00] my thoughts just flew off into a million different directions. And I feel like it would probably take me a while to to gather them in.Craig: No problem. You do what you need to do. I mean, that's, that's the whole point. Chris: Yeah. So I had a queer crip travel writer named Bani Amor on the podcast in season three.And we were talking about the fallout and the consequences of the COVID 19 pandemic. And she said something like, you know, "the settler can't stay still. That the pandemic showed us that we can't stay still." In the context of that time that so many people who had been engaged in and who glorify or who simply have been taught to live a hyper mobile life, that there was this opportunity to question [00:40:00] that, to bring it into a different context.And I know a lot of people, couldn't necessarily leave their houses in the quote unquote lockdowns. But I don't think that wouldn't necessarily stop people from tending to or allowing themselves to witness the more than human world in that way. And so, my question is, assuming we have the opportunity, in some manner, in any manner, how do you think we might have our understandings of movements subverted, or at least challenged, by virtue of looking at the movement in the more than human world.Craig: Great question. I think one of the biggest notions, and I just want to return to that phrase, "the settler can't stay still." And really, agree with that, and so add to secondary things of what actually is stillness, right? We have [00:41:00] this idea of stillness as immobility, as, as, as perhaps staying in one place.Not moving, but actually, if we look at what we're doing when we're actually apparently still, there's still movement going on, right? There's still movement going on in our bodies. There's still a different kind of mobility going. And we're not the only ones, right? The more than human does this exactly as well.If you look at a rock, oh, you think a rock doesn't move? I mean, it doesn't move, but then you have erosion, right? Then you have the rain, and the way that particles are shaved off it, and it shifts. So, when we're thinking about outside, when we're thinking about... and when I say "more than [00:42:00] human," I'm not saying "better than human," I'm saying "exceeding the human," I just want to make that clear, it exceeds the boundaries of the human. Disability as mutual friend Bayo would define it is, I believe he said "it's a failure of power to contain itself." So, that's Bayo Akomolafe. And this notion that the world and the modern human flows through and beyond any sort of boundary, right? So, any outline we form is not immune in the sense of there's no boardwalk, right?A wall is not an untouchable upright edifice. It's actually touched and permeated, right? So everything in the more than human context interrelates and is, to a certain extent, degrees of [00:43:00] permeable. So, yeah, our cells keep certain things out, and let certain things in, but even the things they keep out, they're in contact with.They're relating to. Right? Because in the same way, with COVID 19 vaccine, people think, "oh, it's a vaccine. It's immunity, right? It'll stop me getting COVID. Or it'll stop me getting this, or stop me getting that." What it actually does is it has an interaction with your, the vaccine has an interaction with your immune system.There's a dialogue, there's a discussion, a call and response, which then engenders further responses in your body, right? So, there's constant relation that is ongoing. So, nothing is one and done, right? To borrow from Stefano Hani and Fred Moten No motion is ever completed, right? Nothing's [00:44:00] ever finished. It's not like we're gonna get off this and, and you'll be like, "oh, I've finished recording the podcast." Sure, you've hit the stop recording button, but the recording of the podcast is still ongoing. And there's this fundamental ongoingness, which is a product of the world.The world is worlding, right? And that means the most ordinary, mundane thing you can think of is ongoing. The mug I have right in front of me right now with tea in it. It's ceramic. It's been painted, but it's still ongoing, right? It still has the relation to the machines that shaped it. And it also has this ongoingness with the human history of pottery.Right? And people go, Oh, that's ridiculous. That's not practical. You know, "it's a mug," but I always [00:45:00] think. Isn't that just commodification? Like, is that not just saying it's a commodity, it doesn't have a story? Like, I don't want to get all Marxist here, but there's that real alienation from ongoingness and the fact that we also are ongoing attempts at relation. We're not even fixed identities. Our movements cannot be technically circumscribed because I have a disability which means I can't dance. Right? I use a wheelchair. I can't dance. I can't do the tango. Right? Okay. But everybody uses dance in a context of bopping to the music and doing all this thing and it's a bit like freedom. You know, everybody assumes that dance is a particular thing.But as Bayo and We Will Dance with Mountains, the course, the whole point of it being [00:46:00] called We Will Dance with Mountains is the fact that mountains don't dance like humans. Mountains dance like mountains. And the only way we spot how mountains dance is to actually pay attention to them and attempt to relate to them.We can't get out of our framework completely, but we can be open to say, what does our framework for a mountain miss about those massive landforms? What are we missing when we say a mountain doesn't move? And that's where you have references to indigenous and local stories that actually talk about these landforms, these places, these folklore places, as the living, moving beings that they actually are.Hmm. You know. Yeah, "okay, that stone circle over there was because a bunch of women were dancing on a [00:47:00] Sunday and in a Christian country, that's bad, so they got turned to stone," or in Scandinavia, "that rock there, it's actually a troll that got caught out in the sun." that these are living, ongoing beings and events, which it's not woo, it's actual or intellectual, I think.If you look at anything for long enough, you start to notice what's ongoing with it, even something that's solid and fixed. And that, to me, the gripping is the bending of the perception, right? That is queering, but crip-queering is that point where you have the restriction involved. People will talk about queer liberation, and yeah, we want crip liberation. That's cool. But if you think about crip liberation as, it might actually be the limits that bring us liberation.And then, if you track back [00:48:00] into mythologies long enough. You've got figures like Dionysus or then poetic gods who say, they're the ones that fetter you. They can bind you, but they can also set you free. And that is really interesting to me that a lot of these liberational figures also have a side that they can tie you up.And I don't just mean in a bondage sense. It's this notion that the two things, the two complexes are part of a whole thing, and you can't divide it into restricted and free and you can't escape. You can't pull a Harry Houdini from existence, which, to a certain extent, some people, when they go on holiday, engage in tourism, they're trying to escape for a little while, their other lives. But we all know you can't escape them. Mm-Hmm. But the inescapability of it is not bad. Right. By default, it's not [00:49:00] bad. It can be, but the assumption something is inescapable, just like, oh, something is disabling. Mm-Hmm. the assumption of good and bad. If you can hold that in abeyance and actually look at it for a second and go, Okay, what's going on here?Maybe our conceptions of this need reevaluating. Now the reason we don't do this on the regular, even in modernity, is because it takes a lot of effort and time to focus. And that's another benefit that I get as a disabled person, right? Because I can't use my time for a whole bunch of things that non disabled folks can.So I've got more time, I've got a different relationship to time and space, which means that I can sit and look at things with that differing relation to time and space, and be like "Huh, I never noticed that." And then I get to talk [00:50:00] about this stuff to folks like you, and people get surprised.And they're like, "you think about this all the day." I'm like, "no, I don't think about this. This is my life. This is how I live. This is my embrace of life, right? And this is my freedom to literally, Be like, " well, okay, my restrictions. How do they actually open me to the world?" And I'm not offering a prescription here, because everybody's different.But it strikes me that even the most nomadic person always carry stuff with them, right? And to borrow from Ursula K. Le Guin with her "Carrier Bag Story of Fiction," which Bayo talked about in We Will Dance The Mountains, the idea of what we're carrying is really interesting, but how often do we rummage in our own bags?Hmm. [00:51:00] Right? How often do we take off our backpacks and rummage just for the sake of it? Often we just look in the backpacks for something specific. Hmm. Right? Oh, I need a map. Oh, I need a chocolate bar. Oh, I need my, you know my iPad. We rarely stick our hands in and notice the way our clothing might shift around our fingers or the way, you know, the waterproofing is possibly coming off and means that the fabric has these different textures because we don't take the time and there's nothing wrong with that, but it's the fact that we don't have that relationship to time and space.And babies, kids do. It's why kids put things in their mouth. All those things where you're like, "Oh no, don't put that in your mouth, it's bad for you." They don't know that. But the whole point of putting it in their mouth and feeling it is to try and not [00:52:00] understand it, not get it.There's nothing there in a baby in its early function that says, "I must understand what that is." The understanding comes upon you through experience. But there's no bit, at least as far as I can work out, that's like, "I must understand what it is that I'm putting in my mouth."It's more like, "hmm, that tastes interesting, it has some interesting textures," and then your brain does all the work or your brain and your body mind do all the work, but the personhood isn't also doing all the work, just like the "I" of my body, right, my relationship with the "I", as in my sense of self, I have to expand that to my entire body, You know, because there's so much going on right now in this conversation that I'm not aware of, right?There's stuff going on in my room that I'm [00:53:00] not aware of, but it's going on now. And so I have to expand and that expansiveness also means I sometimes have to venture into realms of pain, right? Because I have chronic pain. And in order to fully experience that, sometimes I have to encounter that pain.I have to slow down and focus and go, "Oh, the chronic pain that I was mostly ignoring because just in the background, it suddenly leaped to the fore because I'm paying attention." Now, modernity says you shouldn't do that. You shouldn't do stuff that causes you pain. Understandable in a certain context, but If I didn't understand that the pain was also part of the experience and changes how I move, if I didn't understand that chronic pain changes how time stretches, then I wouldn't be where I am.So the more than human permeates the human in ways [00:54:00] that the human is either deliberately trained to deny or doesn't even know is going on and the pandemic basically was, in my eyes, the more than human kind of knocking on the door going you are not this completely hermetically sealed box, right? Your society is not a hermetically sealed box. Chris: Amen. Amen. I mean, could have gone in a lot of different directions, but here we are, at least being able to reflect on it in a good way, and I'm reminded, this notion of abeyance and attention and, and the expansion of the I.I'm reminded of this, this line from Simone Weil who said that "absolutely unmixed attention is prayer." And so, I think that it, something like that is worthy of the times we, we wish to live in and perhaps sometimes do. Craig: [00:55:00] Definitely.Chris: And so, you know, I wish we had more time, Craig really getting into some beautiful black holes there. But hopefully we get the opportunity to speak again sometime.Craig: I'd be, be happy to. Be happy to. Chris: And so before we depart, I'd just like to ask the kind of token question that always comes at the end of interviews, which is where can our listeners find your work?And I'm pretty sure you had a book that came out last year entitled, Goetic Atavisms, if I'm not mistaken. Craig: Yes, I did. So you can find me on my mostly moribund, but strange little blog at cold-albion.net. And you can also pick up the book, which is, to be clear, more of an occult angle on this, but it also brings in the disability angle directly from the publisher Hadean Press or you could get it from, you know, the Bezos Behemoth, if you really [00:56:00] wanted. I am also not really on social media as a project, but I'm also on you know Blue Sky, so you can search me up there, or Mastodon, which you could always search me up there, and I occasionally post things on there.Chris: Wonderful. Well, I'll make sure that all those links and connections are available for our listeners once the episode launches. And I very much look forward to reading Goetic Activisms myself. So, thank you so much, Craig.Chris: Thank you, Chris. Get full access to ⌘ Chris Christou ⌘ at chrischristou.substack.com/subscribe
Bayo Akomolafe (Ph.D.), rooted with the Yoruba people in a more-than-human world, is a widely celebrated international speaker, posthumanist thinker, poet, teacher, public intellectual, essayist, and author of two books, These Wilds Beyond our Fences: Letters to My Daughter on Humanity's Search for Home (North Atlantic Books) and We Will Tell our Own Story: The Lions of Africa Speak. Dr. Akomolafe is the Founder of The Emergence Network, a planet-wide initiative that seeks to convene communities in new ways in response to the critical, civilizational challenges we face as a species. He is host of the postactivist course/festival/event, ‘We Will Dance with Mountains' and currently lectures at Pacifica Graduate Institute, California. He sits on the Board of many organizations including Science and Non-Duality (US) and Ancient Futures (Australia).In July 2022, Dr. Akomolafe was appointed the inaugural Global Senior Fellow of University of California's (Berkeley) Othering and Belonging Institute. He is also the inaugural Special Fellow of the Schumacher Centre for New Economics, the Inaugural Scholar in Residence for the Aspen Institute, the inaugural Special Fellow for the Council of an Uncertain Human Future, as well as Visiting Scholar to Clark University, Massachusetts, USA (2024). He has been Fellow for The New Institute in Hamburg, Germany, and Visiting Critic-in-Residence for the Otis College of Art and Design, Los Angeles (2023).Finally Bayo is the father to Alethea Aanya and Kyah Jayden Abayomi, the grateful life-partner to Ije, son and brother. In This EpisodeDr. Bayo Akomolafe's WebsiteBayo's writingsSocials: FB: bayoakomolafeampersandIG: @the_emergence_networkBecome a supporter of this podcast: https://www.spreaker.com/podcast/the-trauma-therapist--5739761/support.
Subscribe, Rate, & Review on YouTube • Spotify • Apple Podcasts✨ About This EpisodeHow can we design virtuous technologies while acknowledging the complexity and unintended consequences of technological innovation?How can we foster curiosity, playfulness, and wonder in a world increasingly dominated by anxiety and technological determinism?This week on Future Fossils (as a teaser for the kind of conversations I am having for my upcoming spin-off Humans On The Loop), I meet with Stockholm-based transdisciplinary technologist, facilitator, complexity researcher, founder of The Psychedelic Society, and once upon a time the youngest-ever board member of Greenpeace UK, Stephen Reid to discuss the importance of taking a more values-driven approach to technology development. Stephen and I agree that it's crucial to consider the potential consequences of technological advancements and to promote a more thoughtful approach to innovation…but for the sake of playing with tension, he places more of an emphasis on our capacity for axiological design whereas I feel more of a need to point out that the rapid evolution of technology can outpace our ability to predict its consequences, troubling efforts to design an enduringly sustainable future. One thing we agree on, and model in this episode, is the value of deeper conversations about the role of technology in society…and how to integrate their transformative potentials.PS — I'm guest lecturing for Stephen's upcoming four-week course on Technological Metamodernism soon, along with Alexander Beiner and Hanzi Freinacht and Ellie Hain and Rufus Pollock. We'll engage critically with ideas like Daniel Schmachtenberger's axiological design and Vitalik Buterin's d/acc. As usual I'm probably the odd duck in this lineup, going hard on epistemic humility and the injunction of digital media to effect a transformation of the modern self-authoring ego into networked, permeable, transjective sub-agencies arising spontaneously and fluidly from fundamentally noncomputable interactions of rapid information flows... Anyway, the point is we'd love to have you join us and sink your teeth into these discussions! I absolutely promise to bring up voting cyborg ecotopes. Big thanks to Stephen for inviting me to play!PPS — Here is another really good, very different conversation between me and Stephen and Alistair Langer on Alistair's show Catalyzing Radical Systems Change.(Editorial Correction: It was Mike Tyson, not Muhammad Ali, who said "Everyone has a plan until they get punched in the mouth.")✨ Support This Work• Hire me as a consultant or advisor• Become a patron on Substack or Patreon• Help me find backers for Humans On The Loop• Buy the books we discuss from my Bookshop reading list• Buy original paintings and prints or commission new work• Join the conversation in the Holistic Technology & Wise Innovation and Future Fossils Discord servers• Buy the show's music on Bandcamp — intro “Olympus Mons” from the Martian Arts EP & outro “Sonnet A” from the Double-Edged Sword EP• Make one-off donations at @futurefossils on Venmo, $manfredmacx on CashApp, or @michaelgarfield on PayPal✨ Chapters(0:00:00-0:10:29) Stephen's Background and Interests in Technology and Metamodernism (0:10:29-0:18:03) Navigating the Complex Relationship Between Technology and Human Values (0:18:03-0:25:18) The Limits of Axiological Design and the Importance of Community Oversight (0:25:18-0:34:29) Defining and Defending Axiological Design (0:34:29-0:45:03) Exploring Alternative Governance Structures: Guilds and Rites of Passage (0:45:03-0:56:36) Vitalik Buterin's "Defensive Decentralized Accelerationism" (0:56:36-1:06:04) Integrating Humor and Recognizing Irony in the Technosphere(1:06:04-1:12:17) Recovering Awe, Curiosity, and Playfulness in a Tech-Saturated World (1:12:17- 1:12:56) Finding Lightness in the Face of Existential Questions (1:12:56-1:13:28) Exploring The Future and A Call to Action✨ MentionsIain McGilchrist, Daniel Schmachtenberger, Hanzi Freinacht, Josh Schrei, Ken Wilber, Vitalik Buterin, Bayo Akomolafe, Cory Doctorow, Nora Bateson, Dave Snowden, W. Brian Arthur, J. F. Martel, Stafford Beer, Rene Descartes, Bill Plotkin, Joe Edelman, Ellie Hain, Douglas Rushkoff, Robert Kegan, Aldous Huxley, Andrés Gomez Emilsson✨ Select Related Episodes (also available as a Spotify playlist)223 - Timothy Morton, 220 - Austin Wade-Smith219 - Joshua Schrei217 - Gregory Landua and Speaker John Ash214 - Megan Phipps, JF Martel, Phil Ford213 - Amber Case, Michael Zargham212 - Geoffrey West, Manfred Laubichler187 - Kevin Welch, David Hensley178 - Chris Ryan176 - Richard Doyle, Sophie Strand, Sam Gandy174 - Evan Snyder172 - Tyson Yunkaporta166 - Anna Riedl165 - Kevin Kelly163 - Toby Kiers, Brandon Quittem141 - Nora Bateson122 - Magenta Ceiba109 - Bruce Damer094 - Mark Nelson086 - Onyx Ashanti080 - George Dvorsky076 - Technology as Psychedelic Parenting066 - John Danaher060 - Sean Esbjörn-Hargens056 - Sophia Rokhlin051 - Daniel Schmachtenberger050 - Ayana Young042 - William Irwin Thompson017 - Tibet Sprague This is a public episode. If you'd like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit michaelgarfield.substack.com/subscribe
How do we come home to our bodies? Bayo Akomolafe is a philosopher writer, activist, professor of psychology and executive director of the emergence network. He's the author of 'We Will Tell Our Own Story' and 'These Wilds Beyond Our Fences: Letters To My Daughter on Humanity's Search for Home'. Bayo is an extraordinary poet artist, linguistic dancer, who seems to revel at the very edge of thought, holding up fractal mirrors with which we can see ourselves in splendid possibility and wounded reality. He has a way of speaking that invites both the past and the future to pick up the spirit of the present and remind it not to be weighed down by all that it thinks it is. In this conversation, Bayo talks about the crisis of mastery that we face today: white modernity and the edge of the moral field into which we must dance and play and revolt. He describes cracks as innovation; the pragmatic of the useless; the minor gestures which disrupt; and edge as a place of power. This is a conversation about carnival and bodies, on de-territorialising our senses, on emerging with reality, on relating, and on coming home.Planet: Critical is 100% independent and community-powered. If you value it, and have the means, become a paid subscriber today! Get full access to Planet: Critical at www.planetcritical.com/subscribe
Wenn wir die Klimakrise überstehen möchten, dann braucht es ein radikal neues Denken und Fühlen. Das meint der nigerianische Philosoph und Psychologe Bayo Akomolafe. Warum Spiritualität dabei helfen kann, die diversen Krisen ganz anders zu sehen, verrät er im Gespräch mit Yves Bossart. Menschen der Moderne sind in einer tödlichen Logik gefangen, die es zu durchbrechen gilt, meint Bayo Akomolafe. Der nigerianische Psychologe und international gefragte Redner glaubt, wir müssen einen neuen Umgang mit der Natur lernen, ihr wieder zuhören und uns berühren lassen. Dazu müssen wir die Natur und den Menschen neu denken, als vielschichtige Prozesse, die alle miteinander verbunden sind. Akomolafe bezieht sich dabei auf die westafrikanische Weisheitstradition der Yoruba, aber auch auf feministische Materialistinnen wie Donna Haraway, die starre Konzepte durchbrechen und Gegensätze überwinden möchte. Yves Bossart spricht mit dem spirituellen Denker über mögliche Auswege aus der krisenhaften Moderne und fragt, warum jeder Tod ein Neuanfang bedeutet. Wiederholung vom 10. März 2024
Wenn wir die Klimakrise überstehen möchten, dann braucht es ein radikal neues Denken und Fühlen. Das meint der nigerianische Philosoph und Psychologe Bayo Akomolafe. Warum Spiritualität dabei helfen kann, die diversen Krisen ganz anders zu sehen, verrät er im Gespräch mit Yves Bossart. Menschen der Moderne sind in einer tödlichen Logik gefangen, die es zu durchbrechen gilt, meint Bayo Akomolafe. Der nigerianische Psychologe und international gefragte Redner glaubt, wir müssen einen neuen Umgang mit der Natur lernen, ihr wieder zuhören und uns berühren lassen. Dazu müssen wir die Natur und den Menschen neu denken, als vielschichtige Prozesse, die alle miteinander verbunden sind. Akomolafe bezieht sich dabei auf die westafrikanische Weisheitstradition der Yoruba, aber auch auf feministische Materialistinnen wie Donna Haraway, die starre Konzepte durchbrechen und Gegensätze überwinden möchte. Yves Bossart spricht mit dem spirituellen Denker über mögliche Auswege aus der krisenhaften Moderne und fragt, warum jeder Tod ein Neuanfang bedeutet. Wiederholung vom 10. März 2024
In this episode, Philipa and Daniel talk about post-activism, border transgressions and making sanctuary with Dr Bayo Akomolafe and Dr Tyson Yunkaporta. Bayo Akomolafe is a widely celebrated international speaker, post-humanist thinker, philosopher, writer, activist and professor of psychology. He is the author of two books, These Wilds Beyond our Fences: Letters to My Daughter on Humanity's Search for Home and We Will Tell our Own Story: The Lions of Africa Speak. Bayo is the Founder of The Emergence Network and and a Global Senior Fellow at the University of California Berkeley. He is also the Inaugural Scholar in Residence at the Aspen Global Leadership Network. Tyson Yunkaporta is an Aboriginal scholar, educator, maker, researcher, and poet. He is the founder of the Indigenous Knowledge Systems Lab at Deakin University in Melbourne, and the author of two books, the bestselling “Sand Talk: How Indigenous Thinking Can Save the World” and the recently published “Right Story, Wrong Story: Adventures in Indigenous Thinking”. Tyson's work focuses on applying Indigenous methods of inquiry to resolve complex issues and explore global crises.Explore links and resources, and find out more at https://www.thersa.org/oceania/regeneration-rising-podcast Join the Re-generation: https://www.thersa.org/regenerative-futuresReduced Fellowship offer: In celebration of the launch of Regeneration Rising, we're offering a special promotion for listeners to join our global community of RSA Fellows. Our Fellowship is a network of over 31,000 innovators, educators, and entrepreneurs committed to finding better ways of thinking, acting, and delivering change. To receive a 25% discount off your first year of membership and waived registration fee, visit thersa.org and use the discount code RSAPOD on your application form. Note, cannot be used in conjunction with other discount offers, such as Youth Fellowship. For more information email fellowship@rsa.org.uk.
In this episode of Hawthorne Valley's Roots to Renewal podcast, we are honored to welcome Dr. Bayo Akomolafe. Post humanist thinker, poet, teacher, essayist, and author. Together, he and our host, Martin Ping share a thought provoking conversation exploring a rich tapestry of ideas, beginning with Bayo's inspiring fellowship at the Schumacher Center for New Economics. The conversation delves into the concept of drifting and its relevance in our current times, the value of embracing uncertainty, grieving as a form of politics and so much more. It's a deep and reflective dialogue you won't want to miss. Learn more about Bayo's work and explore his writings and offerings at his website, https://www.bayoakomolafe.net. To get tickets for the carnival, Vunja: A Gathering of the Seeds, with Bayo Akomalafe and Friends at the Schumacher Center in Great Barrington on August 6-8, visit https://centerforneweconomics.org/events/vunja-carnival-2024/.More About Bayo:Bayo Akomolafe (Ph.D.), rooted with the Yoruba people in a more-than-human world, is the father to Alethea Aanya and Kyah Jayden Abayomi, the grateful life-partner to Ije, son and brother. A widely celebrated international speaker, posthumanist thinker, poet, teacher, public intellectual, essayist, and author of two books, These Wilds Beyond our Fences: Letters to My Daughter on Humanity's Search for Home (North Atlantic Books) and We Will Tell our Own Story: The Lions of Africa Speak, Bayo Akomolafe is the Founder of The Emergence Network, a planet-wide initiative that seeks to convene communities in new ways in response to the critical, civilizational challenges we face as a species. He is host of the postactivist course/festival/event, ‘We Will Dance with Mountains'. He currently lectures at Pacifica Graduate Institute, California. He sits on the Board of many organizations including Science and Non-Duality (US) and Ancient Futures (Australia). In July 2022, Dr. Akomolafe was appointed the inaugural Global Senior Fellow of University of California's (Berkeley) Othering and Belonging Institute. He is also the inaugural Special Fellow of the Schumacher Centre for New Economics, the Inaugural Scholar in Residence for the Aspen Institute, the inaugural Special Fellow for the Council of an Uncertain Human Future, as well as Visiting Scholar to Clark University, Massachusetts, USA (2024). He has been Fellow for The New Institute in Hamburg, Germany, and Visiting Critic-in-Residence for the Otis College of Art and Design, Los Angeles (2023). He is the recipient of an Honorary Doctorate from the California Institute of Integral Studies (CIIS) and has been Commencement Speaker in two universities convocation events. He is also the recipient of the New Thought Leadership AThanks for listening to Hawthorne Valley's Roots to Renewal podcast. We are an association comprised of a variety of interconnected initiatives that work collectively to meet our mission. You can learn more about our work by visiting our website at hawthornevalley.org. Hawthorne Valley is a registered 501c3 nonprofit organization, and we rely on the generosity of people like you to make our work a reality. Please consider making a donation to support us today. If you'd like to help us in other ways, please help us spread the word about this podcast by sharing it with your friends, and leaving us a rating and review.If you'd like to follow the goings-on at the farm and our initiatives, follow us on Instagram!
In this special edition of “First Voices Radio,” Host Olivia Clementine interviews Tiokasin Ghosthorse for “Love & Liberation with Olivia Clementine,” a podcast about relationship and consciousness: exploring wisdom in relating with ourselves, each other and our greater world. For nearly 20 years, Olivia has been immersed in the exploration of relationships and spiritual nature. She works with individuals, couples and groups to cultivate relational capacities and self-understanding. She also has a background as a four-season farmer and herbalist. The Love & Liberation Podcast airs in depth conversations in the fields of spirituality, ecology and relationships. Recent guests have been Bayo Akomolafe, Stephen Jenkinson, Helen Norberg-Hodge, Khandro Choying and Lama Tsultrim Allione. Listen here: https://oliviaclementine.com/podcasts/Production Credits: Tiokasin Ghosthorse (Lakota), Host and Executive Producer Liz Hill (Red Lake Ojibwe), Producer Karen Martinez (Mayan), Studio Engineer, Radio Kingston Tiokasin Ghosthorse, Audio Editor Kevin Richardson, Podcast Editor Music Selections: 1. Song Title: Tahi Roots Mix (First Voices Radio Theme Song) Artist: Moana and the Moa Hunters Album: Tahi (1993) Label: Southside Records (Australia and New Zealand) 2. Song Title: Ball and Chain Artist: Xavier Rudd Album: Jan Juc Moon (2022) Label: Virgin Music Label and Adult Services Australia (P&D) 3. American Dream Artist: J.S. Ondara Album: Tales of America (The Second Coming) (2019) Label: Verve Forecast / Universal Music Canada 4. Spoken Word: There's Nothing Wrong With Us Artist: John Trudell Album: DNA: Descendant Now Ancestor (2001) Label: Effective RecordsAKANTU INTELLIGENCE Visit Akantu Intelligence, an institute that Tiokasin founded with a mission of contextualizing original wisdom for troubled times. Go to https://akantuintelligence.org to find out more and consider joining his Patreon page at https://www.patreon.com/Ghosthorse
— “In surrender, imagine how you might feel as you effortlessly slip deeper into the enveloping embrace of compassion. Perhaps we will open to the nature of life itself as the incomparable, dynamic, and bewildering ongoing play of compassion. Imagine every disappointment, every celebration, every completion or incompletion, every obstacle, every triumph or failure, every emotion, every beautiful and painful moment of this life is and has only ever been the play compassion, of love making itself known in the form of joy and sadness. We could include every loss as well. Every life is the play of compassion in the world. At the end of seeking, there are no more topics to put under a microscope of reason, no more controversies to debate, no more conclusions to be carefully wrapped and tied up in a bow. There are no further antidotes to layer upon ego or that even make sense. To continue indulging in such things is an avoidance of the truth. To surrender is to approach this quality of knowing. We were born in compassion. We live by compassion alone. And one day we will be swept away into compassion.” Valeria interviews Gary Horvitz — He is a retired medical professional. He has been a climate activist, a nomad, a travel blogger, a poet and author. He has contributed to online publications on the issues of spirituality, activism, the global energy transition and climate and has just completed facilitating a year-long course, One Year to Live. He is a grandfather, a Masters swimmer for four decades and one of Bayo Akomolafe's Mountain Dancers, which means we are zig-zagging our way into the future in a four-dimensional dance because that's the only way everything and everyone can become One. To learn more about Gary Horvitz and his work, please visit: https://substack.com/@garyhorvitz, https://spontaneouspresence.net/ and Just Passing Through
Join Eden, Meghna, and Abi today for a rich discussion with the lovely Katerina Jeng. They touch on everything from Katerina's debut poetry collection 'Gospel of a Whole Sun', to the concept of freedom dreaming (Prof. Robin Kelley) for sustainable and enjoyable resistance, to the importance of centering love, rest, and friendship in our protest, to the challenges of pursuing a career in the arts as an Asian kid. Be sure to pick up a copy of ‘Gospel of a Whole Sun' from your local bookstore. You won't regret it (we promise). Check out Katerina's website here: https://www.katerinajeng.com And follow them on Instagram at @katerinajeng Notes: In this episode, Katerina mentions Tricia Hersey's book, ‘Rest Is Resistance'. They also paraphrase Dr Bayo Akomolafe, who said 'the times are urgent, let's slow down'.
We're excited to reshare this deeply inspiring and perspective-shifting chat from 2022 with the one and only Bayo Akomolafe. Bayo grew up in Lagos, Nigeria, and is a father, son, brother, life partner, author, poet, teacher, public intellectual, international speaker, post-humanist thinker, and so much more.For full show notes, visit: https://www.lifteconomy.com/blog/bayo-akomolafeSend us a Text Message.EARLY BIRD SALE: Save 20% when you register for our fall cohort of The Next Economy MBA before July 29th. Learn more: https://lifteconomy.com/mbaSupport the Show.
Dr. Bayo Akomolafe is a widely celebrated international speaker, teacher, author, and self-described "recovering psychologist.” As a Virgo Sun, Aquarius Moon and Pisces Rising his chart is full of beautiful contradictions—dealing in the details and seeing the big picture, searching for meaning and knowing there is no singular answer, and often existing most comfortably in the liminal. Bayo joins Isa to talk about how grief has traveled alongside him since the death of his father when he was a teenager. This traveling led him away from the Christianity that his Yoruba parents raised him in, and toward other frameworks to think about healing and grief. Bayo's Pisces rising poetics refuse neat binaries of good/bad light/dark and instead speak in the tongue of the trickster, winking at modernity's logic and surfacing conversations about neurodivergence, identity and faith.
“comparison is the thief of joy” they say, a quote originally from Former US President Theodore Roosevelt (random!). but what does the idea that we just "shouldn't" compare ourselves to each other ignore, and in turn, normalize? find out in this soul session and learn: How this idea can reproduce individualism How we are made to glorify our own alienation What another way of seeing comparison could be How thinkers like Bayo Akomolafe, Gabor Maté, and Byung-Chul Han can help us make sense of all this... Time stamps: (02:46): Shame & comparison(03:49): Individualism (06:28): Crisis Response (Bayo Akomolafe) (09:08): The Myth of Normal (Gabor Mate)(14:25): Atomization & Authenticity (Byung Chul-Hun) (22:06): Collective path (25:11): Social structures (26:42): Comparison as a cultural cold(33:36): Reimagine social systems (34:40): Essay: Comparison as Symptom (Me) (34:54): Thank you for being here Sources Mentioned: Philosopher: Bayo Akomolafe Podcast: Jung and the World Podcast: One to One with Bayo Akomolafe Book: The Myth of Normal: Trauma, Illness, and Healing in a Toxic Culture by Gabor Maté YouTube: Dr. Gabor Maté: The Myth of Normal & The Power of Connection | Wholehearted Book: The Disappearance of Rituals: A Topology of the Present by Byung-Chul Han Podcast: Philosophize This: Episode #189 ... Everything that connects us is slowly disappearing. - Byung Chul Han pt. 2 Essay: Comparison as Symptom by me on my Substack ADVICE COLUMN: ☎️ seeking advice and want to PHONE IN with a question? submit a voicemail here.
Posthumanism invites us to think beyond human-centric thinking and embrace a more inclusive, interconnected worldview. By confronting cultural challenges and seizing opportunities in life's unexpected disruptions, we can transform our understanding of the world and our role within it. Dr. Bayo Akomolafe is a philosopher, psychologist, and professor from Nigeria. He is the Chief Curator of The Emergence Network and host of the online course, 'We Will Dance with Mountains'. Dr. Akomolafe's work explores themes of post-humanism, decolonization, and the deconstruction of conventional Western paradigms. He seeks to challenge and reframe dominant narratives around human supremacy, individualism, and progress. What Is Post-Humanism? Post-humanism is a philosophical perspective that seeks to de-center the human as the sole source of importance and beauty in the world. It recognizes the significance of other beings and the interconnectedness of all life, inviting us to embrace a more holistic view of the world and our place within it. Cracks Are Opportunities: “Cracks" are disturbances or disruptions in our conventional ways of thinking and being. These cracks serve as openings for new ideas, dialogues, and ways of engaging with the world to emerge. We can challenge dominant narratives and explore alternative perspectives by embracing these disruptions. Reframing Your Relationship With the World: Recognize that you are a part of the world you aim to protect, rather than separate from it. This reframing encourages us to cultivate humility and a sense of stewardship, understanding that we are in service to the Earth and all its inhabitants. Embracing Diversity and Alternative Ways of Knowing: Post-humanism invites us to value and engage with diverse perspectives. By embracing alternative ways of knowing and being, we can enrich our understanding of the world and foster more inclusive and ecologically attuned approaches to the challenges we face. Sponsors and Promotions DUER To experience the ultimate blend of style, comfort, and performance in your denim, head to shopduer.com/DIVINE and get 20% off sitewide on DUER's revolutionary stretch jeans and apparel. https://www.livemomentous.com, and use code DIVINE for 20% off your first order. Defender Ready for adventure? With a family of vehicles to choose from, you'll have the space, technology, and performance to go further than ever before. Explore the Defender lineup at https://www.LandRoverUSA.com/Defender Wild Health Visit WildHealth.com/UNBEATABLE and enter the promo code UNBEATABLE for an exclusive 20% discount on membership. Embrace this opportunity to prioritize your health. Start your journey to wellness today. SealFit ElectroGreens: Fuel your body and conquer your limits with SealFit ElectroGreens - a USDA organic superfood packed with over 25 organic fruits, vegetables, and electrolytes. Head to Amazon, search for "SealFit ElectroGreens," and use code SEALGREENS25 at checkout for 25% off your order. Links for Dr. Bayo Akomolafe Website Facebook Twitter YouTube
The story of human ritual and cultural tradition is one of depth and deep connection to land, to place, and to processes and protocols that remain steady across generations. But it's also a story of constant mutation, assimilation, and re-expression. There is a fluidity to culture and tradition that is not always acknowledged in modern discourse. Religious scholars will tell us that all traditions are — to one degree or another — syncretic, and when we lift the lid off of traditions and look deeper, we start to see that even those that seem the most anchored and fixed are deeply porous and adaptive, that traditions have always traveled and changed shape, just as the land itself changes constantly. At a time when more and more people are looking to reconnect to ritual practice, to tradition, and to the land — and yet wanting to be respectful of cultural boundaries — it can be helpful to also understand the fluid, spontaneous, artistic and adaptive aspects of cultural tradition, to hear stories of traveling gods and cross-cultural mashups and innovations that arrive with the movement of travelers. Right at the heart of this exploration of adaptation lives the Divine Mother, who continually re-invents herself to meet the needs of the ecosystems she encounters. So the Polish Black Madonna becomes assimilated into Haitian Voodoo, the Indian mother goddess finds a way to re-express as Catholic St. Sarah, and the African sea goddess Yemoja re-arises to become the most popular vision of the Divine Mother in Brazil and possesses bodies from all socio-cultural and ethnic backgrounds regularly. In many places, syncretism — the fusion and blending of traditions — is welcomed, even if the histories that led to that syncretism are painful. And in these syncretic cauldrons, new traditions are born all the time. Once we start to view the flow of culture and tradition beyond a human-centered sociocultural lens, we see a living animate process in which gods travel and the forces of 'place' are not static, in which outsider species are assimilated into new ecologies, and in which wanderers and outcasts play a key role in the adaptive movement of traditions. These stories teach us that the world is not so neatly divided into those who belong to a place and a tradition and those who don't. And that the story of 'not feeling at home' — of feeling rootless and separate from a homeland that is far away — is actually a key part of the human story and serves as a starting point to the process of reconnection. Featuring conversations with Peia Luzzi, Scout Rainer Wiley, Tyson Yunkaporta, Skye Mandozay and Bayo Akomolafe and music by Egemen Sanli, Victor Sakshin, Beya, and more, this episode is an oceanic cross-cultural ride that asks us to leave our preconceptions of what is fixed and what is fluid behind. Support the Show.
Bayo Akomolafe is an author, teacher, and modern philosopher whose work challenges the boundaries of conventional thought. Bayo was born in 1983 into a Christian home to Yoruban parents in western Nigeria. Soon after he was born, his family moved to Bonn, Germany, to accommodate his diplomat father. While in Zaire, Bayo's father passed away suddenly, leaving a teenaged Bayo to grapple with the painful loss. As a young, restless academic, Bayo studied psychology and notions of healing, eventually meeting with scores of traditional shamans as a quest to better understand the notion trauma, healing and well-being. His concerns for decolonized landscapes congealed into a life spent exploring the nuances of a “magical” world he describes as “too promiscuous to fit neatly into our fondest notions of it.” I think you'll find that Bayo's work is deeply rooted in the trickster archetype, which above all else encourages us to reconsider the solidity of things: of our understandings of reality, identity, and activism. He's an advocate for a world beyond fixed boundaries, where his only clear allegiance is to emergence, to a perpetual becoming rather than being. I had such a wonderful time talking to Bayo - and I'll mention that his ideas, so rich in density and expressed with a true poetic grace, might not unfold their meanings upon first listening. Let the buyer beware. Yet, as we navigate this conversation, the layers begin to reveal themselves, and in the end, they present a convincing argument for reconceiving reality, not as a static entity but as a dynamic unfolding of relations. https://www.bayoakomolafe.net/
This week we are thrilled to bring you a special conversation from a dear friend of the podcast, Bayo Akomolafe. Recorded while in Ghana for the Three Black Men Tour, this conversation features the voices of Bayo Akomolafe, Resmaa Menakem, Orland Bishop, Victoria Santos and Okhiogbe Omonblanks Omonhinmin, all of whom were involved with the conversation and presentation of the Three Black Men tour. In 2023, Resmaa, Bayo and Orland shared space as they visited three cities across three continents, tracing a diasporic route in reverse from Los Angeles in The United States, to Salvador in Brazil, and finally to Accra in Ghana. Through the tour, these three visionary Black men, sharing their leading edges, are inviting us into a radical re/imagination of how we respond to our time. They sense into emergent possibilities, triangulating toward a synthesis of new forms, new magic, and new directions.This conversation touches on the community of care that Bayo, Resmaa, Orland, Victoria, and Omon contributed to and experienced across the tour, the lessons they learned from this undertaking, and visions for what is to come. As each conversation partner emphasizes, “Blackness” is about far more than pigmentation. It is a call to re-story the world, to reimagine possibilities. Together they discuss the cracks, callings and visions that invite us into a paradigm shift that none of us could imagine alone.Learn more about the tour at https://www.threeblackmen.com and https://www.centerforhealingandliberation.comThe music that opens and closes this episode is by 808 X Ri. And with courtesy of the Leaving Records record label, the music breaks you heard today are by The Growth Eternal. Artwork by Jon Marro. Visit our website at forthewild.world for the full episode description, references, and action points.For an extended version of this episode join us at patreon.com/forthewild.Support the show
This week, Christiana Figueres and her guest co-host Isabel Cavelier Adarve introduce the third and final episode in their mini-series, Our Story of Nature: From Rupture to Reconnection. In this episode, Living As Nature, co-hosts and a stellar cast of guests use the pandemic as their jumping off point to unpack how a moment of physical separation, from each other and the natural world, became a strange chrysalis to stronger and deeper interconnections. Contributors from across many religious and spiritual traditions, including Bayo Akomolafe, public intellectual, and Sister True Dedication,Zen Buddhist monastic teacher join Christiana and Isabel to discuss how developing a sense of reverence and responsibility for the Earth leads to both personal and systemic transformation. They ask: how can our unprecedented ecological and social crises become an opportunity for the foundation of a new way of relating to each other and to nature? How can we move away from living from nature to living as nature, so that we can grow and flourish? This episode is part of a series that shines a new light on humanity's fundamental relationship with the rest of nature as key to responding to the climate crisis and to transitioning into a regenerative future. Please don't forget to let us know what you think here, and / or by contacting us on our social media channels or via the website. NOTES AND RESOURCES GUESTS Xiye Bastida, Co-Founder Re-Earth Initiative, Indigenous Wisdom, TIME100Next, UN HLC Ambassador, TED Speaker Website | LinkedIn | Twitter | Instagram | TED Janine Benyus, Co-Founder Biomimicry 3.8 and Biomimicry Institute Biomimicry Institute | LinkedIn | Twitter Dr. Lyla June Johnston, Indigenous musician, author, and community organizer of Diné (Navajo), Tsétsêhéstâhese (Cheyenne) and European lineages Website | YouTube | Instagram | Facebook Dr. Bayo Akomolafe, Public Intellectual, Author, Professor and Chief Curator, The Emergence Network Website | Course webpage | LinkedIn | Facebook Sister True Dedication, Zen Buddhist monastic teacher in Thich Nhat Hanh's Plum Village Community Twitter | Instagram Plum Village LinkedIn | Twitter | Instagram | Facebook Krista Tippett, award-winning journalist, author and host of On Being podcast Website | LinkedIn | Instagram | Facebook Arturo Escobar, Professor Emeritus of Anthropology Wolf Martinez, Diné, Lakota, & Spanish. Two Spirit. Speaker, Ceremonialist and practitioner of Ancient Healing Arts. Therapist. Lover. Human Being. LinkedIn | Instagram | Facebook Kate Raworth, Author of Doughnut Economics and Co-founder of Doughnut Economics Action Lab Twitter | DEAL Twitter Dr. Gunhild Anker Stordalen, Founder and Executive Chair of EAT Foundation LinkedIn | Instagram Learn more about the Paris Agreement. It's official, we're a TED Audio Collective Podcast - Proof! Check out more podcasts from The TED Audio Collective Please follow us on social media! Twitter | Instagram | LinkedIn