From Yoda to Henry David Thoreau, hermits have something to teach us about loneliness. For centuries, in religious and in secular life, there are people who chose to remove themselves from society. 

It could be for long periods of time. Karen Fredette entered a monastery after high school and then to a cabin by herself for six years. Henry David Thoreau lived for two years, two months and two days in the woods. 

If you are a hermit, being alone is an option to consider when the world around you doesn’t feel quite right, when there’s something that troubles you. 

Solitude can, for some of us, be a better companion than company. Hermits have led the way and they want to share what they’ve learned.

Guests: 

Professor Michael Vargas, History Department, SUNY, New Paltz

Paul and Karen Fradette, Ravens Bread Ministries 

Jeffrey S Cramer, Curator of Collections at the Walden Woods Project's Thoreau Institute Library

If you liked this episode, please subscribe and follow us wherever you get your pods or at https://apostrophepodcasts.ca/alonetogether Be social with us at @apostrophepod

Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

One is the loneliest number that you can ever do, according to Harry Nilsson’s song One. But two can be just as bad as one.

The formula behind loneliness isn’t based on numbers but on connections. 

In this episode, hear from:

Suzza Silver, a writer who loves numbers behind Beauty of Mathematics. She failed grade four math but learned how to figure out numbers. She came up with her own solution to become a math muse by forming associations between letters and numbers. 

Cathery Yeh at Chapman University who has a doctorate in education with a focus on learning, cognition, and development and an emphasis in Chicano/Latino Studies whose research interests is in Mathematics Teaching and Learning, Equity and Social Justice Education and Teacher Education. 

Ben Orlin, a math teacher and author of the books Math with Bad Drawings (2018) and Change is the Only Constant (2019) who has taught every level of mathematics from ages 12 to 18.

Useful links: 

Cathery Yeh https://www.chapman.edu/our-faculty/cathery-yeh

Beauty of Mathematics https://beautyofmathematics.com/

Math with Bad Drawings https://mathwithbaddrawings.com/

Connect with us: Alone Together https://apostrophepodcasts.ca

We love hearing from you. Please subscribe to our channel wherever you get your pods and get caught up on previous episodes you may have missed. We’re on social: @apostrophepod

Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

We wear clothes for ourselves, but also as a statement of who we are to the outside world. 

Are we casual or formal? Loose and relaxed. Or rigid and constructed? Through our clothes, the message we are telling complete strangers who are dressed like us: we are connected. Clothes can also give another signal: that we are alone and lonely. 

Clothes are a physical reflection of our internal thoughts and our internal longings.  They are a shield against external elements and a signal of what we want to say about who we are.

They tell the world, even to someone casually walking by you on the street, that you aren’t alone because your choice might have a chance of connecting to someone else. 

Put on your comfy pants and let’s explore how clothes protect us and connect us to each other. 

Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

One of the biggest international hits from South Korea in recent years was the K-drama Crash Landing on You. The plot is about a South Korean heiress who paraglides accidentally across the border into enemy territory where she’s rescued by a North Korean soldier. Each of the two main characters are lonely in their own way and that loneliness tells us something about how the two countries separated and evolved from one united Korea against foreigners to becoming two culturally distinct nations. The nickname Hermit Kingdom was given to Korea by outsiders because of its isolationist policies in the 19th century. These days in South Korea, that self-imposed isolationism has given rise to another word: Honjok, a term for people who do activities on their own, like solo flight. But to take off, whether economically as South Korea has risen, or from the ground up to glide as an individual, is to find places to land. In this episode, we hear from experts about South Korea and North Korea and how we crash land on loneliness. 

Experts in this episode include: 

>Professor Sarah A. Son, a researcher on identity and inter-Korean relations at the School of East Asian Studies at The University of Sheffield. https://www.sheffield.ac.uk/seas/people/academic-staff/sarah-son 

>Journalist Anne Babe, long-form storytelling who has written about reclusiveness in South Korea http://www.annbabe.com/

>Journalist Crystal Tai, who has written about Honjok https://www.crystal-tai.com/ 

>Sokeel Park, South Korea Country Director for Liberty in North Korea, an organization which helps North Koreans escape the regime and resettle. https://www.libertyinnorthkorea.org/

Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Our guests in this episode know what it takes to survive on your own, alone. Woiniya Dawn Thibeault teaches people around the world how to empower, connect and inspire with ancestral and land-based living skills. Dr. Sarita Robinson, aka Dr. Survival, researches people’s reactions to disasters, focusing on trying to work out why some people are more likely to survive than others in emergency situations and how anyone can improve their chances of survival. And Les Stroud, Survivorman, has been in some of the world’s most dangerous situations from the Kalahari Desert to the snake-infested jungles of the Amazon. Surviving alone and thriving. These experts have important lessons to teach all of us about how resilience can be learned. 

Useful links and resources

Connect with Buckskin Revolution 

Website: https://www.buckskinrevolution.com/

Connect with Survivorman Les Stroud 

Website: https://apostrophepodcasts.ca/survivinglife

Connect with Dr. Survival 

Website: https://drsurvival.co.uk/

Connect with Alone Together:

Website: https://apostrophepodcasts.ca/alonetogether

Instagram: @apostrophepod

If you enjoyed this episode please subscribe to our channel so you never miss an episode.

Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

If you could pick the loneliest music genre of all, what would be some of options: would it be blues or jazz? How about shoegaze. What makes a song lonely and can music bring us closer together even if we are listening on our own. 

In this episode, we hear from experts:

Robbie Kowal, a DJ, who held the first silent disco in America.

Lisa Christiansen, a music journalist and reporter at the CBC.

Steve Wide, a radio announcer, in Melbourne, Australia and a fan of shoegaze.

Geoff Luck, CEO at Hyperlive, senior researcher of music perception, cognition and computational analysis at University of Jyväskylä 

Useful links and resources:

Connect with Alone Together at Apostrophe Podcasts:

Website: https://apostrophepodcasts.ca/alonetogether

Instagram: @apostrophepod

If you enjoy this episode, please subscribe wherever you get your pods to catch up on earlier shows and never miss an episode.

Alone Together: A Curious Exploration of Loneliness interviews experts for in-depth discussions on what we can learn about loneliness through culture, history and science.

Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Science fiction makes us bold about exploring so we can feel less alone when we imagine a future world where there are infinite diversities, infinite combinations. In the future, there’s always hope we will lead a less lonely existence and find signs of life that we aren’t alone.

In this episode, we talk to: 

Rod Faulkner, a science fiction fan who grew up in the South and became a fan after watching Nichelle Nichols (Lieutenant Uhura) on the original Star Trek. He discusses how science fiction explores race relations

Sean Redmond, professor of screen and design at Deakin University, Australia and author of Celebrity, Liquid Space: Science Fiction Film and Television in the Digital Age who 

talks about the futuristic lonely cities seen in Blade Runner and Minority Report, 

Tony Tellado, producer/host of Sci Fi Talk who explores why so many immigrants and outsiders were drawn to science fiction. 

Useful links and resources:

Connect with Alone Together at Apostrophe Podcasts:

Website: https://apostrophepodcasts.ca/alonetogether

Instagram: @apostrophepod

If you enjoy this episode, please subscribe wherever you get your pods to catch up on earlier shows and never miss an episode. 

Alone Together: A Curious Exploration of Loneliness interviews experts for in-depth discussions on what we can learn about loneliness through culture, history and science.

Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Four-year-old Eliana Pauls wrote a story during the pandemic. It was about her best friend, a fairy named Sapphire. The fairy had wings, hair of gold, and like Eliana, they both love the colour blue. While Eliana is a real little girl who can be seen by anyone, Sapphire, the fairy, cannot. She can’t be seen during regular times and never by people who don’t believe in fairies. 

But once in a blue moon, when the conditions are perfect, she appears with her suitcase. 

And if you are very lucky, like Eliana, and believe in fairies with your whole heart, you will see her. 

Another thing that Eliana and Sapphire the Fairy have in common is they both believe and they have faith in imagination. 

Imagine your way out of loneliness. 

It worked for a four year old girl name Eliana, who is a real human being, and Sapphire the Fairy, who had forgotten what it was like to believe in humans. 

Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Hunger makes us reach for the food that provides us with what we need at that moment. But there are different types of hunger and our brain and our stomach tell us that there are needs that must be filled by connections with people and not just our favourite comfort food. A new study shows that even one day of being alone makes our brain respond as if we’ve been fasting. Food feeds us and fills us up, as does connections. 

Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Imagine waking up one morning to discover you are entirely alone. Everyone else in your home has disappeared.  

You look out the window and the streets are empty. No cars on the road, no planes overhead. Shops are abandoned. Schools are deserted. Buildings completely vacant.No phone reception. No internet connection. No electricity. No television or radio. 

It is silent and eerie. Lonely. 

You are alone on an island with no one else and there’s no way out. 

Now imagine if all this was happening and you are a child. Book and movies about children abandoned and left on their own are popular in fiction. But they also happen in real life. The most powerless and the most vulnerable have at times in history figured out how to survive on their own and they have lessons to teach the rest of us. 

Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.