Apricot Jam

Artist and philosopher Michael Garfield helps people navigate our age of accelerating weirdness and cultivate the curiosity and play we'll need to thrive in it. As host and producer of both Future Fossils Podcast & The Santa Fe Institute's Complexity Podcast, Michael acts as interlocutor for a worldwide community of artists, scientists, and philosophers — a practice fed by and and feeding back into his fifteen years of synthetic and transdisciplinary "mind-jazz" performances in the form of essay, avant-guitar, and live painting. Bearing the standard for a new generation of mystic-scholars and refusing to be enslaved by a single perspective, creative medium, or intellectual community, Michael walks through the walls between academia and festival culture, theory and practice — speaking and performing everywhere from Moogfest to Burning Man, SXSW to Boom Festival, the Commonwealth Bank of Australia to Long Now's Ignite Talks to The Chapel of Sacred Mirrors.

Big thanks to our sponsor The Apricot Grove! 

Like many guests we had so much to talk about we had to have a part 2.

Tyler Phan received his Ph.D. from University College London (UCL) in 2017. Before his Ph.D., he earned his M.A. in Religions of Asia (now M.A. in Buddhist Studies) from the School of Oriental and African Studies, University of London (SOAS) in 2013. His research focus is in medical anthropology and science and technology studies (STS) with a relationship among religion, ontology, bodies, post-colonialism, and race in Asia and North America. His previous research included a cross-country ethnography of Chinese medicine in the United States, examining the historical marginalization of Asian/Asian Americans through policy and legislation, which resulted in his Ph.D. dissertation called "American Chinese Medicine" and finishing his monograph called When White People Took Our Medicine as well as the comic book series A People’s History of Acupuncture in America.

Tyler's Dissertation: American Chinese Medicine

Big thanks to our sponsor The Apricot Grove! 

Bio: Carrie Melmoth is based in Southampton (UK). She generally tries to elude definition, but the following statement are nevertheless true. She sometimes writes about Philip K. Dick (with particular empahsis on him as a neoplatonist). She spends much of her time reading and walking parks and meadows and by the sea (sometimes at the same time because audiobooks exist). She is fascinated by tarot, and by signs and symbols in general - metaphors are moreish! She is in a (very protozoan) band called Venn. Websites are a faff but she has a tumblr that performs the same function: https://carrie-the-scrivener.tumblr.com/

Big thanks to our sponsor The Apricot Grove! 

Bio: 

Sophie Strand is a poet, historical-fiction writer, and essayist based in the Hudson Valley with a focus on the intersection of spirituality and ecology. Her first book of essays The Flowering Wand: Lunar Kings, Lichenized Lovers, Transpecies Magicians, and Rhizomatic Harpists Heal the Masculine is forthcoming from Inner Traditions. She has three chapbooks: Love Song to a Blue God (Oread Press) and Those Other Flowers to Come (Dancing Girl Press) and The Approach (The Swan) Her writing has been published by The Dark Mountain Project, www.poetry.org, Unearthed, Braided Way Magazine, Creatrix Magazine, and Your Impossible Voice. And you can continue to follow her work and poetry on Facebook or Instagram: cosmogyny. 

Big thanks to our sponsor The Apricot Grove! 

Tyler Phan received his Ph.D. from University College London (UCL) in 2017. Before his Ph.D., he earned his M.A. in Religions of Asia (now M.A. in Buddhist Studies) from the School of Oriental and African Studies, University of London (SOAS) in 2013. His research focus is in medical anthropology and science and technology studies (STS) with a relationship among religion, ontology, bodies, post-colonialism, and race in Asia and North America. His previous research included a cross-country ethnography of Chinese medicine in the United States, examining the historical marginalization of Asian/Asian Americans through policy and legislation, which resulted in his Ph.D. dissertation called "American Chinese Medicine" and finishing his monograph called When White People Took Our Medicine as well as the comic book series A People’s History of Acupuncture in America.

https://www.patreon.com/bePatron?u=59079037

He has also been engaged with a postcolonial discourse on whiteness and religion in the search for “Eastern” enlightenment as well as the role of “practice” in almost a decade-long research project called "Counter Culture Orientalism." The work examines members of the 1960s and 1970s counterculture who were jaded by the mid-20th century’s model of religion and ventured “East” throughout Asia to explore heterogenous practices of what the members viewed as a homogenous “enlightenment.”

Outside of Pitt, he is the director of the Goldman Institute of Social Research where he chairs Critical Dharma, a study group examining critical theory and contemplative thought. Recently, he has helped oversee the joint partnership with over a dozen groups in Western Pennsylvania called the Braddock Food Collaborative, which focuses on creating accessible foodway systems distribution throughout Braddock and North Braddock. Additionally, he runs an underground comic book press with world renowned artist Frank Santoro called Phantoro Press (Hype Pup Jr.). He is also a coffee roaster and tea trader with beverage companies in both the East and West Coast of the United States.

Lastly, Dr. Phan is also a fifth-generation Vietnamese medical practitioner and has been practicing acupuncture and herbalism for more than the past two decades. He opened Pittsburgh’s first community acupuncture clinic in 2010 and has worked as an acupuncturist serving people throughout the world. He has taught workshops on traditional medicine, meditation, as well as anthropological research on astrology (“Western,” Vedic, Lunar, etc.), numerology, eight characters destiny charts (ba zi), and geomancy for the past fifteen years.

Big thanks to our sponsor The Apricot Grove! 

Big thanks to our sponsor The Apricot Grove! 

Bio: Wes Tasker has been practicing various martial arts since 1981 and is currently focused on Baguazhang, Xingyiquan, Qilinpai and Pekiti Tirsia Kali with some supplementary training in Boxing and Catch Wrestling. He also studies Chinese Medicine in relation to martial arts training, traumatology and orthopedics. His philosophical and spiritual areas of study include but are not limited to Buddhism, Neidan (Daoist internal alchemy), and Western Philosophy.

Big thanks to our sponsor The Apricot Grove!

Jeremy Wolf, along with being one of the host's older brother, is a lifelong learner and educator. Jeremy has been a high school teacher, pre-service teacher trainer, college professor, little league coach of nearly every sport, and has had a side-hustle in nearly every industry. As a part of a multi-generational family of educators and helpers, Jeremy's world view has been focused on community and mind/body health. His current areas of research/interest are neurobiochemistry, the connection between the brain and mind, homebrewing beer, and the universal connectivity of mythology.

https://www.patreon.com/bePatron?u=59079037

Edward Neal, MD, MSOM is trained in both Western and Chinese medicine. He has been involved in the practice, research and teaching of Chinese medicine for over 30 years. As part of this work, he has consulted with the World Health Organisation on matters of traditional East Asian Medicine and has been a visiting scholar at the University of San Diego medical school. He is currently the medical director of the Apricot Grove Project and director of the Xinglin Institute. These organisations study traditional forms of knowledge to find innovative solutions to current global challenges.

https://neijingstudies.com/

Big thanks to our sponsor The Apricot Grove!