As we are faced with multiplying crises, we often rush into trying to fix the world through words and busy action. What if an adequate response is to simply listen? What new worlds can be made, what wounds can be healed, through listening deeply? In this episode, Keri Facer returns to the podcast to explore the subtle art of listening.

Keri is Professor of Educational and Social Futures at the University of Bristol, and co-founder of the Society for Transformative conversations at the Swedish Agricultural university. 

LINKS TO THINGS WE TALKED ABOUT:

My previous conversation with Keri

Keri’s paper “Beyond voice: Listening and silence in climate change education”

Momo by Michael Ende

Lisbet Lipari

Sand Talk by Tyson Yunkaporta

Tim Ingold - the pause as the moment of thought

Ways of Council and Keri’s mentor Pip Bondy

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🎵 Our theme music is by Christian Holtsteen.

This is a public episode. If you would like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit forestofthought.substack.com

What could art making and aesthetics mean to us in these difficult times? Can we justify going off to paint or to spend time in nature when there is so much destruction going on in the world? Aesthetics is about opening up our senses to the world - but do we even want to stay sensitive when there is so much pain? How do we deal with that paradox? 

Today’s episode is with artist and educator Jan van Boeckel. Jan’s work brings together art, education and ecology. He has been Professor in Art & Sustainability at Hanze University in the Netherlands and is now a Senior Research Associate there. He is also an avid painter, and hosts wild painting courses throughout Europe. 

LINKS TO THINGS WE TALKED ABOUT

Jan’s website

Jan’s Wild painting courses

Active Facebook group on arts-based environmental education

“Call of the mountain” – a film on Arne Næss and deep ecology

Everyone is an artist - Joseph Beuys

Enabling constraints

James Hillman: Our crisis is an aesthetic crisis

Gregory Bateson writes about “the pattern that connects” in Mind and Nature

David Abram (who talks about Eros)

Robert Jay Lifton and psychic numbing

Renée Lertzman’s book Environmental Melancholia

Bayo Akomolafe: the times are urgent, let’s slow down.

F. Scott Fitzgerald : Superior intelligence is the ability to embrace two completely contrary ideas, and still retain the ability to function

Bill Wahpepah of the American Indian Movement

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🎵 Our theme music is by Christian Holtsteen.

This is a public episode. If you would like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit forestofthought.substack.com

I was born into a world where many of the things that are most important to me, like art, beauty, relationships, embodied experience, love, and the sacred, are not really considered very important to our understanding of the cosmos. They are thought of as ‘extra fluff’ rather than being at the core of our existence and reality.

One of the thinkers who has tried to create a science more attuned to these philosophical questions was mathematician turned philosopher Alfred North Whitehead. In the early 20th century, this really radical time when quantum and relativity theory had begun to undermine the old mechanistic view of physics, Whitehead developed his process philosophy, which focused on the co-creative processes of the world’s becoming, and where lived experience, creativity and a poetic God took centre stage. Matthew David Segall, PhD, is a transdisciplinary philosopher and Associate Professor at California Institute of Integral Studies in San Francisco. His scholarship challenges dualistic and mechanistic paradigms and bridges process philosophy with contemporary science and spirituality. 

LINKS

Matthew David Segall’s website and Substack

California Institute of Integral Studies

Centre for Process Studies

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This is a public episode. If you would like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit forestofthought.substack.com

Is it possible to look clear-eyed at the enormous challenges we’re facing today, and still do something practical and creative in the face of that? What happens when we engage with nature and people in an embodied way, rather than through their representations in statistics and media? And how do we stand up for what we believe in without falling into the dehumanising tribalism of us versus them?

Ashley Fitzgerald holds a PhD in environmental sociology, is the creator of the Rizoma Field School and a host of the Doomer Optimism podcast. She also organises Doomer optimism events, bringing together constellations of writers, thinkers, farmers, and practitioners, from all sides of the political spectrum. We met on a hot day in downtown Chicago, among the tall skyscrapers facing the river.

LINKS:

* Doomer Optimism Podcast

* Ashley’s Rizoma Field school

* Perception gap study

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🎵 Our theme music is by Christian Holtsteen.

This is a public episode. If you would like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit forestofthought.substack.com

Why is there so much beauty in the natural world? What can we learn from jamming with the more-than-human? Join interspecies musician David Rothenberg and myself as we explore these questions and experience some bird-bug-clarinet collaboration, perched on a hillside outside of LA.

David Rothenberg is a musician, composer and professor of philosophy and music, with a longtime interest in understanding other species by making music with them. In this conversation we follow his journey from being a young environmentalist collaborating with deep ecology founder Arne Næss to his current work as interspecies musician and philosopher, playing music with bugs, birds, whales, ponds and more.

* David’s website

* Documentary (free) Why Birds Sing:

* Pond music

* Arne Næss and deep ecology

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🎵 Our theme music is by Christian Holtsteen.

This is a public episode. If you would like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit forestofthought.substack.com

What are the underlying patterns of thought that have led our civilization into its current crises? And how might we begin to tell a different story, one that would allow both humans and the more-than-human to thrive?

In this episode, I speak to author Jeremy Lent. In his wide-ranging book The Patterning Instinct, Jeremy identifies the root metaphors that different cultures have used to construct meaning in their universe, also tracing the deep historical foundations of our modern worldview. In his latest book, The Web of Meaning, he integrates science with traditional wisdom to tell a new story, one that is both scientifically rigorous and intrinsically meaningful.

Jeremy Lent is an author exploring the patterns of thought that have led to our crisis of sustainability. He is founder of the nonprofit Liology Institute, dedicated to fostering an integrated worldview that could enable humanity to thrive sustainably on the earth.

Special thank you to the Centre for Process Studies for helping to make this interview happen in conjunction with their Ecological Civilization conference.

LINKS TO THINGS WE TALKED ABOUT:

* Jeremy’s website and books

* Freya Matthews

* Centre for Process Studies

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🎧 All episodes and more at ⁠forestofthought.com⁠.

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🎵 Our theme music is by Christian Holtsteen at ⁠stoneproduction.no⁠.

This is a public episode. If you would like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit forestofthought.substack.com

Many cultures maintain that we are not born human but that we may become fully human through cultivation and care. Could it be that our destructive tendencies are not because of our human-ness, but rather due to a lack of it? If so: where and how can we cultivate our humanity? All species play their part in the living web – what role might we humans have to play in this unfolding drama?

Mikael Kurkiala is a cultural anthropologist and author. He spent many years living and working with the Oglala Lakota people of South Dakota, and is currently a researcher at the Swedish Church Office. His most recent books are "When the Soul Goes into Exile: Modernity, Technology & the Sacred“ and “Where the Pendulum has its Base: On the Eternal in Humans”.

This conversation was recorded with a lovely audience at the Uppsala Public Library in Sweden, December 2024. 

It's one of three public conversations we hosted 2023-2024 as part of a series of events exploring the concept of ‘life-force’. You’ll find all three episodes (26, 27 & 28) at forestofthought.com or on your podcast listening platform. 

Support us on Patreon: ⁠⁠patreon.com/forestofthought⁠⁠

Share and subscribe. Find all available platforms ⁠here⁠.

Our theme music is by Christian Holtsteen at ⁠⁠stoneproduction.no⁠⁠. 

This is a public episode. If you would like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit forestofthought.substack.com

Caroline Ross has spent decades being immersed in Daoism, art, crafting and foraging (and spent 10 years touring with her rock band). Today, her practice weaves these diverse threads together into a philosophy of life centred on embodied living, exploring the Way (in the Daoist sense of the word) and making art as if the Earth mattered. 

Caroline Ross is an artist, craftswoman, writer and T’ai Chi teacher. You’ll find her sharing her passion for foraging and crafting via @foundandground on IG, and she writes weekly on themes of embodied life, art and the Way as Uncivil Savant on Substack. 

This is one of three public conversations that were recorded 2023-2024 as part of a series of events exploring the concept of ‘life-force’. The final and last episode will arrive in a few weeks’ time! 

This episode was recorded at and produced in collaboration with CEMUS at Uppsala University, and supported by the Viriditas foundation. 

LINKS TO THINGS WE TALKED ABOUT:

• Caroline’s books
• Caroline’s substack, The Uncivil Savant
• Link to Caroline’s text about the Spruce Tree Crone
• Dougald Hine's Substack
• The Dark Mountain Project

Support us on Patreon: ⁠patreon.com/forestofthought⁠

Share and subscribe. Find all available platforms here.

Our theme music is by Christian Holtsteen at ⁠stoneproduction.no⁠. 

This is a public episode. If you would like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit forestofthought.substack.com

Forest of Thought episodes are back! And over the next few weeks I’ll be sharing three public conversations that were recorded 2023-2024 as part of a series of events exploring the concept of ‘life-force’. 

We begin with philosopher Jeremy Naydler, delving into the question of how we may cultivate the human in a time of intelligent machines: 

“Advanced technologies and artificial intelligence are rapidly growing more enmeshed in our lives. How does this affect the deeper realms of consciousness, spirituality and our relation to the living world? What are the unfolding human qualities that machines cannot acquire and how might we cultivate them?”

Jeremy Naydler is a gardener and philosopher based in Oxford, England. He has written several books on the experience of the sacred in ancient cultures. In his newer work he focuses on the fraught relationship between humans and technology as it has developed from ancient times until today, and explores how we cultivate the human in an era of intelligent machines. 

We recorded this with a wonderful audience at ⁠NAV Sweden⁠, Stockholm, in September 2023 with support from the Viriditas foundation.

LINKS TO THINGS WE TALKED ABOUT:

Jeremy’s books on the sacred in ancient traditions (e.g. The Future of the Ancient World, The and Temple of the Cosmos).

Jeremy’s books on technology in relation to the human (In the Shadow of the Machine and The Struggle for a Human Future).

We would love your support! Find us on Patreon.

Share and subscribe. Find all available platforms here.

Our wonderful theme music is by Christian Holtsteen at ⁠stoneproduction.no⁠. 

This is a public episode. If you would like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit forestofthought.substack.com

In this episode I speak to writer and filmmaker Sarah Thomas. Her memoir, The Raven’s Nest, is a meditation on her time spent in Iceland, and explores how identity and language are interwoven with landscape and ecology. What does it mean to fall in love with a place, with its human and non-human inhabitants?  And how may we each do our little part in mending the world? 

Sarah Thomas is a writer, documentary filmmaker, and traveller with a PhD in Interdisciplinary Studies. She is committed to work that explores, evokes and honours our entanglements with the living world. She has lived and journeyed from the Equator to the Arctic Circle finding stories in the everyday. Her films have been screened internationally. In 2020 she was nominated for the Arts Foundation Environmental Writing Award. She was longlisted for the inaugural Nan Shepherd Prize for nature writing and shortlisted for the 2021 Fitzcarraldo Essay Prize. Her ecological memoir, The Raven’s Nest (Atlantic Books 2022), is her debut. 

ICELANDIC WORDS FROM THE EPISODE: 

• Óvissuferð – a journey where you don’t know what will happen


• Kvöldvaka – an evening gathering, traditionally to mend or do crafts while listening to someone reading aloud.


• Bergmál – echo (literally: language of the mountains)


• Tölva – computer (literally: number oracle)

LINKS: 

• Sarah’s website: ⁠https://sarahthomas.net⁠


• The Raven’s Nest: ⁠https://sarahthomas.net/the-ravens-nest/⁠


• Book by David Abram on language and ecology: Spell of the sensuous: ⁠https://www.penguinrandomhouse.com/books/319/the-spell-of-the-sensuous-by-david-abram/⁠


• Ursula LeGuin’s The carrier bag theory of fiction: ⁠https://otherfutures.nl/uploads/documents/le-guin-the-carrier-bag-theory-of-fiction.pdf⁠

MORE INFO:

• All episodes and more at ⁠⁠forestofthought.com⁠⁠


• Support us on Patreon: ⁠⁠patreon.com/forestofthought⁠⁠


• Share and subscribe. Find all available platforms here: ⁠⁠https://podcasters.spotify.com/pod/show/forestofthought⁠


• Our theme music is by Christian Holtsteen at ⁠⁠stoneproduction.no⁠⁠. 

This is a public episode. If you would like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit forestofthought.substack.com