A Part of Something

Daniel continues his experiment in reading the internet out loud, this time following a curiosity about Carl Jung’s Red Book.

The episode traces the strange history of the book—from Jung’s break with Freud and the intense period of visions and waking fantasies that followed, to the elaborate handwritten and illustrated manuscript he worked on for years. Daniel gets especially interested in Jung’s practice of deliberately entering these inner experiences, questioning the figures he encountered, and refusing to dismiss them before he understood what they seemed to be saying.

From there, the conversation wanders into active imagination, hallucinations, spirit guides, symbolism, consciousness, prayer, meditation, and the difficulty of deciding where imagination ends and something deeper begins.

There are no firm conclusions here—just an attempt to follow the rabbit hole honestly and see what turns up.

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A Part of Something explores music, near-death experiences, creativity, and the search for meaning through conversations with musicians, experiencers, and other thoughtful guests.

If you enjoyed this episode, please follow the show and leave a rating or review—it really helps new listeners discover the podcast.

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Daniel starts this solo episode with absolutely nothing to talk about—and somehow ends up in sixteenth-century England.

A passing use of the phrase “clutching at straws” leads to its possible origin in a book Thomas More wrote while imprisoned in the Tower of London. From there, the rabbit hole widens: Henry VIII, Anne Boleyn, the break with Rome, the dissolution of the monasteries, and the very practical question of what actually happened to all the monks, nuns, and friars when their communities were shut down.

Along the way, Daniel encounters executions, exiles, pensions, convents surviving in private homes, a former abbot who kept working in the same building under a new church, and one religious community that somehow endured for centuries.

There is no grand thesis here. Mostly, it is Daniel reading the internet, learning things in real time, and discovering how far one ordinary phrase can take you.

Support the show

A Part of Something explores music, near-death experiences, creativity, and the search for meaning through conversations with musicians, experiencers, and other thoughtful guests.

If you enjoyed this episode, please follow the show and leave a rating or review—it really helps new listeners discover the podcast.

https://www.instagram.com/apartofsomethingpod/

https://www.youtube.com/@apartofsomethingpod

Daniel starts this solo episode with no particular plan and somehow winds up at radioactive waste, landfill fires, nuclear weapons, relativity, money, forgiveness, and the possibility that being kind to one person may matter more than we realize.

A detour into the West Lake and Bridgeton landfills leads to a larger question: what are we supposed to do when the world contains problems too enormous for any one of us to fix? Daniel considers the temptation to believe that only big actions matter—and the counterintuitive possibility that small acts of kindness, genuine forgiveness, and treating the person in front of us well may have consequences far beyond what we can see.

Along the way are thoughts about war, moral certainty, quantum physics, saints, getting rich, and Vinney Tolman’s reminder that this life may be “a classroom, not a courtroom.”

Support the show

A Part of Something explores music, near-death experiences, creativity, and the search for meaning through conversations with musicians, experiencers, and other thoughtful guests.

If you enjoyed this episode, please follow the show and leave a rating or review—it really helps new listeners discover the podcast.

https://www.instagram.com/apartofsomethingpod/

https://www.youtube.com/@apartofsomethingpod

Musician, writer, actor, and visual artist Sandra Lynn Sparks—who now works under the name Sana Sparks—joins Daniel for a wide-ranging conversation about creativity, consciousness, and a lifetime of unusual experiences.

Sandra reflects on the musical path that carried her from folk and classical music into Celtic performance, theater, and “free song,” her form of improvised singing without fixed words. She also discusses psychic perception, spirit guidance, reincarnation and past-life memory, dreams that appeared to anticipate later events, and several near-death experiences—including one in which she experienced multiple places and layers of reality at once.

After essential tremor made traditional performance difficult, Sandra recently returned to creating fully arranged music through AI. She shares what that process has opened up for her, along with the strange story behind “Keep Your Hands on the Wheel,” a song generated without her intentionally starting it.

The conversation moves through many subjects, but returns to a grounded idea: whatever we believe about reality, each of us is here to live our own life—and to respect that other people may experience the world very differently.

Sandra's Books: https://www.amazon.com/stores/author/B00JDF4AUO

Sandra's Music: https://sanasparks.bandcamp.com/

Sandra's Patreon: https://www.patreon.com/cw/sanasparks

Support the show

A Part of Something explores music, near-death experiences, creativity, and the search for meaning through conversations with musicians, experiencers, and other thoughtful guests.

If you enjoyed this episode, please follow the show and leave a rating or review—it really helps new listeners discover the podcast.

https://www.instagram.com/apartofsomethingpod/

https://www.youtube.com/@apartofsomethingpod

Sometimes the most extraordinary things are hiding in plain sight.

In this freewheeling solo episode of A Part of Something, I reflect on a little moment of wonder involving a ray of morning sunlight—and how easy it is to lose our sense of awe in the busyness of everyday life.

Then things get a little experimental. Inspired by composer John Cage, I attempt a performance of his famous composition 4′33″, which consists of four minutes and thirty-three seconds without intentionally played musical notes. What happens when we stop making noise and simply listen?

I also share a recent discovery: the Fuller Dome, a geodesic dome at Southern Illinois University Edwardsville that's home to a center for spirituality and sustainability.

Along the way, there are some reflections on creativity, the daily grind, and making room for wonder in a busy life—plus an update on the future schedule of the podcast.

If you make it through all four minutes and thirty-three seconds, I'd genuinely love to hear what the experience was like for you!

Support the show

A Part of Something explores music, near-death experiences, creativity, and the search for meaning through conversations with musicians, experiencers, and other thoughtful guests.

If you enjoyed this episode, please follow the show and leave a rating or review—it really helps new listeners discover the podcast.

https://www.instagram.com/apartofsomethingpod/

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Daniel talks with his cousin Noah Smith about Noah’s father, Mayne Smith, a songwriter, multi-instrumentalist, and longtime figure in the Northern California folk and roots-music community. Mayne co-founded the Redwood Canyon Ramblers in 1959, recognized as Northern California’s first bluegrass band, and his 1964 Indiana University master’s thesis is widely credited as the first scholarly study of bluegrass music.

Noah talks about Mayne as both a musician and a father: his songwriting and musicianship, his years of collaboration and mentoring, the songwriter circles at Sweets Mill, and his involvement with Berkeley’s Freight & Salvage. They also discuss the recordings Noah discovered after Mayne’s death, Mayne’s final days surrounded by family, friends, and music, and Noah’s own return to playing bass as a way of continuing some of what his father passed on.

Mayne Smith and Mitch Greenhill playing "Satisfied Mind" at the Cambridge Folk Festival: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7Fcy7IrLLcE

Support the show

A Part of Something explores music, near-death experiences, creativity, and the search for meaning through conversations with musicians, experiencers, and other thoughtful guests.

If you enjoyed this episode, please follow the show and leave a rating or review—it really helps new listeners discover the podcast.

https://www.instagram.com/apartofsomethingpod/

https://www.youtube.com/@apartofsomethingpod

Daniel hits record without knowing exactly what he wants to talk about—and eventually finds himself thinking about work, money, calling, identity, God, and what it means to be more than the thing you do for a living.

He reflects on the different pieces of his life that seem to be moving at once, his sense that they may be connected in ways he can’t yet see, and the tension between making a living and following work that feels meaningful. From there, things wander into souls, René Descartes, atheism, awe, science, mystical experience, and the simple but strange fact that any of us can say: I exist.

There is also some discussion of Ben & Jerry’s Half Baked and the possibility of a podcast in which Daniel simply Googles things.

Support the show

A Part of Something explores music, near-death experiences, creativity, and the search for meaning through conversations with musicians, experiencers, and other thoughtful guests.

If you enjoyed this episode, please follow the show and leave a rating or review—it really helps new listeners discover the podcast.

https://www.instagram.com/apartofsomethingpod/

https://www.youtube.com/@apartofsomethingpod

Steve Perron once wanted to be a priest. He also wanted to be a Beatle.

The singer-songwriter and retired broadcast journalist joins Daniel to discuss his book, What’ll We Do with All the Churches?, which traces his changing beliefs through his songs. Steve reflects on seven years in seminary, the doubts that led him to leave, and the longer journey that eventually brought him to secular humanism. They explore his objections to original sin, the problem of animal suffering, and the peace he found in stepping away from his childhood faith.

Along the way, there are Beatles detours, stories from a career in television news, and a look at the listening-room community Steve has built at the Wolf open mic. They also discuss delivering a song’s message with a feather rather than a sledgehammer—and questioning your beliefs without deciding in advance where you have to land.

Contact and links to get books: https://www.steveperron.com/

Want to visit the open mic Steve runs?: https://thewolfstl.com/calendar/

Support the show

A Part of Something explores music, near-death experiences, creativity, and the search for meaning through conversations with musicians, experiencers, and other thoughtful guests.

If you enjoyed this episode, please follow the show and leave a rating or review—it really helps new listeners discover the podcast.

https://www.instagram.com/apartofsomethingpod/

https://www.youtube.com/@apartofsomethingpod

In D. Scott Rogo’s books on otherworldly music, people describe music that seems to come out of nowhere—while sitting on a back porch, spending time in nature, or gathering at someone’s deathbed. They describe it as beyond anything the greatest human composers could create. Sometimes two people hear it together, but one describes a choir and the other an orchestra.

In this solo episode, Daniel shares what’s catching his attention as he makes his way through A Casebook of Otherworldly Music and A Psychic Study of the Music of the Spheres. He hasn’t finished either book, but the accounts are already expanding his interest beyond music heard during near-death experiences to extraordinary reports from ordinary waking life.

Closer to home, he recalls a rough day working construction when only the hardest rock on the radio would do—and how the same music can comfort him in one mood and unsettle him in another. Along the way are thoughts about healing, songwriting, and the decidedly earthly business of making a living from music.

Support the show

A Part of Something explores music, near-death experiences, creativity, and the search for meaning through conversations with musicians, experiencers, and other thoughtful guests.

If you enjoyed this episode, please follow the show and leave a rating or review—it really helps new listeners discover the podcast.

https://www.instagram.com/apartofsomethingpod/

https://www.youtube.com/@apartofsomethingpod

Storyteller, humorist, and musician Andy Offutt Irwin joins Daniel to talk about making people laugh, paying attention, and remembering what it feels like to be a kid.

Andy’s album Banana Seat was recorded in Daniel’s childhood home, and its songs helped Daniel learn to play guitar. Revisiting that music leads to stories of Disney street theater, Renaissance festivals, a fire-eating apple puppet, and a bank gig that ended early. There’s also a song about a pen whose ending may still be going.

Between the stories, they explore the connection between wit and empathy, Andy’s arrival on the storytelling circuit at 47, and the influence of Thomas Merton and St. Francis on his ideas about simplicity and faith. Andy shares his philosophy of performing: treat children with the respect you give adults, and grown-ups with the exuberance kids crave.

Show dates, albums, and more at https://andyirwin.com/

Support the show

A Part of Something explores music, near-death experiences, creativity, and the search for meaning through conversations with musicians, experiencers, and other thoughtful guests.

If you enjoyed this episode, please follow the show and leave a rating or review—it really helps new listeners discover the podcast.

https://www.instagram.com/apartofsomethingpod/

https://www.youtube.com/@apartofsomethingpod