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Why Caring Isn't Self-Sacrifice with Elissa Strauss

The episode of Love and Philosophy introduces a conversation with journalist and essayist Elissa Strauss, author of When You Care: The Unexpected Magic of Caring for Others, framed by the host’s view of care as an embodied, orienting force and “minds as actions.” Strauss distinguishes “caring,” social-status “not caring,” collective/kumbaya care, and “dependency care,” which she calls a “Hotel California” relationship you can’t easily exit; she argues dependency care is fraught, messy, and misunderstood when treated as pure altruism. She describes moving from fast-paced feminist journalism and a policy lens on U.S. caregiving failures (including lack of federal paid leave) to a deeper account of motherhood’s embodied realities, attention, and moments of union and estrangement with children. The discussion links care ethics (Gilligan, Noddings, Kittay) with Iris Murdoch and Simone Weil on unselfing and attention, critiques binary labels that assume we are all always one thing or the other related to ideas like “trad wife,” explores caring-for versus caring-about and the “glass door” separating home from public value, and connects care to economics, interdependence, faith as “wrestling,” and intergenerational “sandwich” caregiving.

Elissa's Book When You Care
Elissa's Substack: https://elissa.substack.com/

We All Care

the Navigational Approach to Mind
Heat by H.D.

Care of Things episode mentioned here

00:00 Trad Wife Label
00:48 Embodied Parenting
01:55 Estrangement Moments
02:57 Care Philosophy Intro
05:25 Care Ethics Primer
09:35 Care Economics Value
11:55 Poem Heat Reading
17:18 Defining Care Buckets
19:19 Dependency Care Explained
22:20 Writing Career Origins
25:53 Motherhood Identity Shift
30:32 Beyond Binary Labels
33:15 Embodied Early Motherhood
33:52 Embodied Early Motherhood
36:18 Attention and Listening
39:00 Touch Versus Screens
42:27 Dependency Care Awakening
46:25 Unselfing as Parenting North Star
49:54 Estrangement and Return
52:39 Faith as Wrestling
55:45 Finding Care Ethics
01:00:21 Gilligan Noddings Validation
01:05:46 Caring For Versus About
01:08:16 Shame and the Glass Door
01:09:44 Glass Door Feminism
01:10:48 Care Work Counts
01:13:00 Tradwife Backlash
01:15:12 Money Meets Meaning
01:16:19 Care Beyond Maintenance
01:20:47 Home Everywhere Politics
01:25:05 Figure Eight Care
01:27:42 Parenting as Process
01:31:51 Love Clarity and Illusion
01:35:54 Sandwich Caregiving Crunch
01:41:08 Wired to Care Together
01:43:55 Closing and Where to Find

Care Ethics

Andrea Hiott is a philosopher and cognitive scientist developing the navigational approach to mind — the view that mind is “the body’s navigational action in all spaces of life, from the geographical to the emotional to the social to the virtual.” She hosts the Love & Philosophy (Beyond Dichotomy) podcast and Substack, and her work draws on hippocampal research, 4E cognition (embodied, embedded, extended, enactive), and the ecological tradition. Her book Holding Paradox: A Navigational Approach to Mind and Consciousness is forthcoming. Her recurring interests — holding apparent contradictions open, “way-making,” the importance of care and 'mattering', constellation/kaleidoscopic thinking, and moving beyond either/or — frame her questions throughout.

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Isabella Granic on Liminal Learning, Neither Nor, and Education for Flourishing

Andrea Hiott introduces a guest podcast from Life Itself, Jacob Kishere interviews developmental psychologist Isabella Granic about “education for flourishing” ahead of the Human Transformation in a Time of Metacrisis conference at Harvard. Granic describes shifting from studying anxiety and depression as psychopathology to seeing them as adaptive responses, and focuses on prevention by designing social contexts that support resilience and thriving. She frames learning as liberation from inherited narratives and introduces the “neither nor” framework, developed with philosopher Bryan Kam, which teaches oscillation between conceptual and experiential ways of knowing. Granic explains Liminal Learning, a year-long program for 18–25-year-olds beginning with a wilderness “quest,” followed by a digital hub, practices like appreciative inquiry, and collaborative “heists” to build small real-world projects, moving participants from worry to wonder to world-building. Find info here and below to participate.

00:00 Embodied Learning Basics
02:16 Podcast Intro and Who Its For
06:18 Life Itself Guest Setup
07:03 Flourishing and Mental Health
12:40 Education as Liberation
16:42 Neither Nor Framework
21:50 Skills for Metacrisis Times
28:39 Wilderness Quest and Stirrings
32:34 Heists and World Building
37:47 Games and Digital Hub
46:52 Tech Shadows and Evidence
57:44 Conference Questions and Wrap

Liminal Learning is in ther final week of welcoming participants for the upcoming UK Quest. 

Are you or do you know a young adult (18–25) — who’s feeling a bit lost, uncertain, in search of community, a way to explore purpose, or at a crossroads in these times? If so, our yearlong program could provide the support to transform their experience from worry into wonder.

🎡 Quests and yearlong programs starting soon

🌳 Kicks off in the Forest 

🧑‍💻 Then moves to the online Hub

The weeklong wilderness Quest is the starting point of Liminal Learning — a yearlong journey supporting young people to find direction, meaning, and confidence in work, study, and life. We focus on 3 core components the Quest, the Hub (our online community and continuation) and the Heist (our hybrid project based real-world experiment)

✨ We have a small number of scholarship places still available, supported by our non-profit mission.

👉 Quest details & applications here: https://liminal-learning.com/upcoming-quests

What’s Liminal Learning?

It begins with a weeklong retreat in nature, then continues with a year of learning, mentoring, and community — both online and in person. In a supportive cohort with peers and guides, participants explore purpose, values, and how they want to meet the world.

👉 Full program overview: https://liminal-learning.com/program

Life itself (https://lifeitself.org/)
Jacob Kishere www.jacobkishere.com or www.theresonantman.com
Harvard series videos starting with IG
and the
Neither Nor paper

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Beyond Genes, Toward Meaning & Care, But Rigorously

Andrea Hiott hosts British science writer Philip Ball (former Nature editor; trained chemist and physicist) to discuss his book How Life Works and why the popular idea “it’s all in the genes” is untenable. Ball argues biology is shifting beyond mechanistic, bottom-up “blueprint” metaphors toward a view of organisms as open, adaptive informational systems with complex genotype–phenotype relations, constant interaction across levels (genes to ecosystems), and robust behavior emerging from “committee-like” molecular collectives. They discuss why biology has avoided purpose, teleology, and meaning, yet living systems make contextual value judgments and goal-directed decisions, with continuity from cells to human minds and emotions, emphasizing embodiment and symbiosis. Ball links these themes to his prostate cancer diagnosis while finishing the book, reflecting on mortality, persistence of patterns and information through art and writing, and the open-endedness of life and evolution, ending with love as a real evolved capacity.

00:00 Welcome and Guest Intro

00:35 Why Biology Is Shifting

02:09 Cancer, Meaning, and Patterns

04:37 Challenging Gene Determinism

11:03 Beyond the Machine Metaphor

17:52 Purpose and Teleology in Life

23:58 Messiness and Higher-Level Causation

31:54 Meaning Making in Cells

38:10 Embodiment and the Mind-Body Link

41:20 Embodied Minds

42:23 Nested Bodies and Meaning

43:52 Molecular Caring and Committees

45:02 Physics of Collectivity

47:19 Universality From Traffic to Cells

51:11 Leaky Layers in Living Systems

53:20 Beyond E. coli to Elephants

55:49 Caring as a New Metaphor

57:44 Symbiosis Parasites and Affordances

01:03:23 Brains Agency and Emotions

01:08:10 Mortality and Whirlpools of Meaning

01:15:42 Uniqueness Open-Ended Evolution

01:18:25 Love as Evolutionary Reality

Andrea Hiott is a philosopher and cognitive scientist developing the navigational approach to mind — the view that mind is “the body’s navigational action in all spaces of life, from the geographical to the emotional to the social to the virtual.” She hosts the Love & Philosophy (Beyond Dichotomy) podcast and Substack, and her work draws on hippocampal research, 4E cognition (embodied, embedded, extended, enactive), and the ecological tradition. Her book Holding Paradox: A Navigational Approach to Mind and Consciousness is forthcoming. Her recurring interests — holding apparent contradictions open, “way-making,” the importance of care and 'mattering', constellation/kaleidoscopic thinking, and moving beyond either/or — frame her questions throughout.

TRANSCRIPT

Andrea Hiott: Hello, everyone. Welcome to Love and Philosophy. This is Andrea Hiott, and I’m glad you’re here. Today is a really special conversation, which I had quite some months ago, back in February, with a writer who is one of my favorites, Philip Ball. He is a British science writer. He used to be the editor at Nature for over 20 years. He’s trained as both a chemist and a physicist, and he’s written a lot of really good books. Critical Mass was a prize-winning book, and there’s also H2O, The Music Instinct, and the one we’re talking about here, How Life Works.

Let me tell you a little bit about this book. It comes at a moment when I think biology is really shifting. It’s a shift that’s been going on for a while, but it’s at an important moment now where this mechanistic gene-first story we’ve been telling — the one that says you are your genes, you are your DNA, the selfish gene, that whole idea — is really changing a lot. The idea of the body as a machine assembled from the bottom up, that story is coming apart.

But it’s interesting because we don’t want to just flip to the opposite, to reject all that came before. That’s what this book is doing that’s so interesting, and also this conversation. I think you’ll hear it. We’re trying to hold a certain tension because even though that story is coming apart, it’s not that everything is wrong about it. The hope is not to flip into the opposite, but rather to hold the tension and to really open up a new space about how we actually think about what life is and what we are.

We have more ways to communicate and more ways to study this that can help us get more rigorous even as we also open up. So that’s what we’re trying to do in this conversation. It gets a little bit messy — that’s a word I’m always using, but in a good way — because we’re trying to talk about a lot of very hard things here, and we’re also trying to talk about them in a way that isn’t the usual way.

You’ll hear that Philip is very articulate about this. He’s even better in the book, so I really highly recommend it. He’s also written some very beautiful essays, and one of them, which is in Nautilus, is about how at the end of writing this book he got diagnosed with cancer. We get to that by the end of this conversation because he’s come through well. He had surgery. All is good. It’s all gone. But there was a time when it was very tense for him, and he was writing this book about life, so can you imagine? He was really having these questions pressed on him directly as he had been thinking about life and trying to understand what it was.

There’s something very moving about that. What he came to through this was that we are made of this material that’s changing all the time, but what persists are these patterns that come through us, or are in the world with us, or that we create and give to the world that then go on without us. It’s not that they’re floating around in the air. It’s that I can read this book again that he wrote, and there’s an imprint to the book that changes me, and that will continue even in 100 years when people read the book. It’s the same with music. It’s the same with everything we create and do. But it’s also the same with conversations that you just have with one another, because we change each other as we do that, and those patterns continue on in further conversations that those people have.

So we end up in a place a little bit like that, and it’s very interesting that that can come from a very scientific conversation and a very scientific book. One thing about Philip is he’s really good at holding that. In the book, he talks about meaning, which is not a word you see often in a very scholarly biological book, but he does it with real rigor and grace, and I think that is such a gift at this moment. I’m very happy to bring you this conversation and to share his work with you. I’m really grateful that he spent some time with me. Thanks for being here. I hope this conversation gives you something that helps you carry on these patterns that connect in some way that’s meaningful for you today.

• Author website: philipball.co.uk
• Wikipedia: Philip Ball
• Chemistry World biography: Philip Ball at Chemistry World

Philip Ball's Books (mentioned or relevant to this conversation)

• How Life Works: A User's Guide to the New Biology (2023) — the main book discussed 
  • University of Chicago Press
  • Author's page
• The Book of Minds: How to Understand Ourselves and Other Beings, from Animals to AI to Aliens (2022) 
  • University of Chicago Press
  • Reviews on author's site
• Critical Mass: How One Thing Leads to Another (2004) — winner of the 2005 Aventis Prize for Science Books 
  • Author's page
  • Macmillan
• H2O: A Biography of Water (1999) 
  • Author's page
• The Music Instinct: How Music Works and Why We Ca

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Andrea Hiott in conversation with investor Jenna Nicholas. 

Jenna discusses her book The Enlightened Bottom Line and how spirituality, love, and purpose can inform investing and business rather than oppose them. She traces formative experiences from ages 11–14 in a Swiss “Transformation for Peace” program and speaking at Commonwealth Day in Westminster Abbey, including meeting Desmond Tutu, to the confidence instilled by her mother and grandmother, faith, and a lifelong practice of hosting “Saturdays at Jen’s” discussion groups.

After moving from London to Stanford, she was inspired by social entrepreneurs, worked on socially responsible investing in China with mentor Wayne Silby (Calvert Funds), and later organized experiences and interviews exploring profit–purpose paradoxes. She describes practices like symbolic objects to bridge divides, dreams-based decision-making in the Amazon, and a HEAL framework (Hope, Empathy, Abundance, Legacy), emphasizing pauses, stewardship, seven-generation thinking, and money as “currency” valuable when in motion.

Find Jenna’s book The Enlightened Bottom Line here.

Parker Palmer conversation with Andrea is here

Jacob Needleman conversation with Andrea is here.

00:00 Welcome and Book Setup

00:25 Teen Years and Abbey Speech

02:25 Tutu High Five and Lasting Joy

04:01 the Women Who Raised Her

06:48 Holding Paradox in Community

08:56 From Stanford to Impact Investing

11:40 Choosing Stanford by Fate

14:43 Wayne Silby and Legacy Shift

17:18 Bhutan and Business of Happiness

19:24 Enoughness and Inner Compass

22:52 Saturdays at Jens Conversations

25:14 Fierce Love in Organizations

27:25 Creating Listening Spaces

28:03 Building Impact Experience

28:40 Coal Meets Solar Values

30:13 Redefining Money Capital

34:00 Heal Framework Questions

35:37 Hope Empathy Abundance

37:16 Playful Abundance Wand

40:04 Amazon Dream Circles

43:03 Death Joy Legacy

46:31 Stewardship Seven Generations

49:02 Reflection Questions Pauses

52:40 Grandmother Loving Kindness

55:37 Honoring Stories Love

57:15 Podcast Farewell

The Enlightened Bottom Line by Jenna Nicholas

Jenna’s Substack is here.

Jenna on LinkedIn

Baha’i Faith

Books discussed in addition to the Enlightened Bottom Line:

InnSaei: the Icelandic Art of Intuition by Hrund Gunnsteinsdottir

The Soul of Money by Lynne Twist

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What Marks our Movement through life?

Andrea Hiott interviews A.A. Kostas, a Singapore-based lawyer and writer who runs the Substack Way Markers, blending poetry, fiction, and essays. They discuss how moving through different places shaped his writing and his interest in avoiding simplistic binaries through discernment—first identifying what kind of decision is in front of you—using hiking metaphors of many paths versus a narrow ridge. Alex cites Into the Wild as a cautionary way marker about seeking truth without rejecting human connection, and describes a Cradle Mountain hike where his wife had to find her own route. They explore how technology reinforces binary thinking, why poetry and music hold meanings beneath prose, and the value of humility from engaging Western and Eastern traditions (including Merton and Suzuki). They examine care as uncomfortable attention, the importance of embodied presence, and Alex’s experience of fatherhood as immediate responsibility and obligation where love grows.

00:00 Welcome and Guest Intro
02:21 Becoming a Writer
03:51 Growing Up Everywhere
05:15 What Is Way Markers
07:12 Pilgrimage and Substack
10:29 Into the Wild Lessons
14:29 Beyond Binary Thinking
18:49 Cradle Mountain Metaphor
22:36 Discernment and Ridge Lines
25:20 Tech Shapes Our Minds
27:00 Why Braid Genres
31:04 Music and Poetry Under Language
34:12 Law as Applied Philosophy
37:41 Zen Meets Catholic Mysticism
43:00 Humility and Unknowing
46:48 Craving Oneness Safely
48:19 Mystical Moments Explained
50:20 Flow State With Meaning
51:00 Desire Points to God
52:25 You Cant Conjure Awe
56:14 Care In Writing
58:36 Audience Capture Trap
59:27 Pamphlets Off The Internet
01:02:40 Love Is Uncomfortable
01:17:58 Fellow Travelers And Faith
01:24:28 Humor Holds Paradox
01:28:34 Fatherhood And Obligation
01:32:18 Closing Reflections

See the Substack for links to the books mentioned.

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B. Scot Rousse (“B”)'s substack, "Without Why," focuses on what it means to be alive in an age of intelligent machines. He is philosopher in residence at Topos Institute and visiting scholar in Philosophy at Berkeley. He also drums in 3 punk bands.

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Andrea Hiott has a conversation with philosopher B. Scot Rousse (“B”). B is an Oakland-based, Berkeley-affiliated Heidegger and phenomenology scholar focused on AI’s effects on our capacities to care. He is also a Topos Institute affiliate and a punk drummer. Andrea and B discuss Heidegger’s care as living in “meaningful differences,” embodied affordances, moods, and existential orientation. They explore how AI risks compulsive optimization and an overly narrow picture of the role of language in human life. B argues that technologies design ways of being human, urges users and designers to ask “for the sake of what,” articulates punk’s embodied, communal, joyful “controlled chaos” as an antidote to technological nihilism, and celebrates love and care in their visceral, pluralistic, and risky uncontrollability. Along the way, B traces a path from growing up Hare Krishna in Florida, to an encounter with a philosophy teacher who encouraged his transfer to UC Berkeley where he came under the mentorship of Hubert Dreyfus, whose teaching and critiques of symbolic AI shaped B’s work. B also shares about his work with philosopher-entrepreneur Fernando Flores (thanks to an introduction by Dreyfus), who applies philosophy to organizational “networks of conversations” that coordinate commitments and care for customer concerns, drawing on his experience in Chilean political history and ontological reinterpretation of entrepreneurship. In all of these experiences, B focuses on an abiding and urgent question: How do we protect our capacity to care in an age of optimization? How can you create, in your life, your version of the worldly joy and shared meaning of being in a punk band?

B’s substack is Without Why. 

He currently drums in the bands Realistic, Vexxyl, and Wildfire.

Here is the piece on Hubert Drefyus that Andrea mentions.

Subscribe to B’s YouTube channel here. Support the Hubert Dreyfus Audio Archive Project here.

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00:00 Welcome and Care Question
00:36 Meet B Scot Rousse
04:31 Highlights and Themes
07:08 B Introduces Himself
08:14 From Krishna Roots to Philosophy
10:27 Teacher to Berkeley and Dreyfus
12:01 Ambassadors of Possibility
13:16 Dreyfus Mentorship Years
14:52 Fernando Flores and Careful Organizations
18:40 Heideggerian Care Meets AI
23:56 Care and Agency in Analytic Ethics
30:04 Mattering and Affordances
33:13 Dreyfus on Technology and Optimization
38:00 Language as Commitments Not Info
39:02 Language as Commitment
40:54 Why LLMs Aren’t Human Language
43:18 Training, Deployment, Disembodiment
45:22 Languaging vs Symbol Systems
49:44 Care and Ontological Design
52:41 Compulsive Chatbot Loops
55:30 Disorientation and No Recipes
01:02:10 Kierkegaard and Commitment
01:11:35 Practicing Conversation with AI
01:14:38 Punk as Embodied Community
01:17:46 Punk As Belonging
01:18:50 Drummer Life And Community
01:19:14 Mood Joy And Chaos
01:21:10 Entropy And AI Randomness
01:23:19 Choosing The Wild Path
01:27:01 Teaching At The Edge
01:33:01 Meaning Is Out There
45:45 Care As Human

Andrea Hiott is a philosopher and cognitive scientist developing the navigational approach to mind — the view that mind is “the body’s navigational action in all spaces of life, from the geographical to the emotional to the social to the virtual.” She hosts the Love & Philosophy (Beyond Dichotomy) podcast and Substack, and her work draws on hippocampal research, 4E cognition (embodied, embedded, extended, enactive), and the ecological tradition. Her book Holding Paradox: A Navigational Approach to Mind and Consciousness is forthcoming. Her recurring interests — holding apparent contradictions open, “way-making,” the importance of care and 'mattering', constellation/kaleidoscopic thinking, and moving beyond either/or — frame her questions throughout.

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The Great Psychology Delusion: Why the Mean Misleads and Pluralism Matters

Read the book here.

This is an academic psychology-focused episode with lecturer Marek McGann, whose work spans enactive cognitive science, embodiment, politics, feminist philosophy, and STS. Andrea and Marek discuss his co-authored book The Great Psychology Delusion with Craig Speelman. McGann explains why “delusion” fits psychology’s persistence in treating long-critiqued assumptions as valid, especially the aggregation delusion: averaging group data and applying it to individuals despite human non-interchangeability and change over time, linked to the ergodic assumption and ergodic theorem conditions rarely met in human behavior. They discuss how averaging can create misleading “laws” (e.g., power law of learning), the research–practice gap in clinical work, psychology’s history and method-driven identity, and the need for disciplined, pluralistic, scale-aware science that better integrates perspectives and practitioner expertise.

00:00 Show Intro And Guest
01:23 Book Thesis And Stakes
02:24 Aggregation Delusion Explained
03:54 Research Practice Gap
04:49 More Detailed Book Summary
07:47 Averaging Artifacts And Ergodicity
09:29 Careful Critique Not Anti Psychology
11:06 Warm Reorientation Sendoff
11:51 Conversation Begins
15:17 Why Call It Delusion
20:11 How Psychology Became Method Led
31:08 Aggregation Delusion Deep Dive
33:35 Ergodic Fallacy in Humans
35:21 Scale Slippage and Delusion
37:59 Research Practice Gap Explained
41:01 Clinician Code Switching
42:46 Many Scales of Mind
43:57 MRI Averaging Pitfalls
48:32 Method Silos and Identities
52:43 Care, Careers, and Canalization
55:27 GPS Model for Pluralism
01:00:33 Pluralism Not Relativism
01:02:58 Why Marek Cares
01:06:06 Psychology’s Moment of Change
01:06:56 Closing Thanks and Wrap

Marek McGann has been a lecturer in the Department of Psychology since 2005. His principal research is theoretical work on the enactive approach to cognitive science, which examines the mind more as something we do rather than something we have. This is also related to ecological approaches to psychology, which explore how behaviour and mental life can be examined by looking at what your head is in, rather than what is in your head. He also has a related interest in critical considerations of theory and scientific practice in psychology more broadly.

Marek co-convenes the ENSO Seminars, a series of online seminars with researchers from enactive and ecological cognitive science.

Andrea Hiott is a philosopher and cognitive scientist developing the navigational approach to mind — the view that mind is “the body’s navigational action in all spaces of life, from the geographical to the emotional to the social to the virtual.” She hosts the Love & Philosophy (Beyond Dichotomy) podcast and Substack, and her work draws on hippocampal research, 4E cognition (embodied, embedded, extended, enactive), and the ecological tradition. Her book Holding Paradox: A Navigational Approach to Mind and Consciousness is forthcoming. Her recurring interests — holding apparent contradictions open, “way-making,” the importance of care and 'mattering', constellation/kaleidoscopic thinking, and moving beyond either/or — frame her questions throughout.

The paper Andrea mentions: Facing Life

Buy Holding Paradox: The Navigational Approach to Mind and Consciousness by Andrea Hiott

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This is an impromptu bonus episode previewing the NYC premiere of Sophie Fiennes’s documentary film Acting, which follows the celebrated theatre company Cheek by Jowl through their production of Macbeth. Andrea is speaking with her this week in NYC.

Andrea introduces the ideas of director Declan Donnellan, whose book The Actor in the Space (2024) helps us get some insight into the film. 

Subjects: the philosophy of performance to spatial cognition, presence, and what it means to be truly alive on stage — or anywhere.

Perhaps this is a good moment to revisit the themes of Macbeth.

Come Saturday April 11th at 6:45pm for the film and Q &A with Sophie Fiennes (and Andrea): ️tickets at https://quadcinema.com/film/acting/

Declan Donnellan: "Human beings are actors. It is hardwired into our DNA — from toddlers playing make-believe to old-age pensioners sharing jokes in the pub. We need to perform. It’s an essential part of being human. Acting starts early. We use it to develop our relationship with our mothers. We watch her and wonder, mirror her smiling, repeat the sounds she makes. We learn things by performing for her, and she performs for us. Does that mean we are lying to each other? Of course not. Performance is woven into the fabric of our lives. It’s as natural and important to us as breathing. Performance is not merely a habit that humans keep repeating across millennia, languages and cultures. It is more fundamental than that. Performance is what it is to be human. It is the operating system for life."

The episode previews a bonus conversation with filmmaker Sophie Fiennes ahead of a screening of her film "Acting," about the London theater company Cheek by Jowl, co-founded by director Declan Donnellan and designer Nick Ormerod. Andrea introduces Donnellan’s ideas from his books "The Actor and the Target" and "The Actor in the Space," emphasizing that performance is fundamental to being human and that acting depends on creating the conditions—especially the space and context—where a character can exist and feel alive, rather than forcing meaning or emotion. The script contrasts older, space-oriented filmmaking with faster kinetic editing, highlights the importance of giving audiences room for their own cognition, and includes clips from Macbeth rehearsal discussing dread, avoidance, and the challenge of convincing the audience. It ends with details about attending the New York screening and future posting of a longer conversation. All links to books and notes are here.

00:00 Love and Dread
00:11 Macbeth in Fragments
01:00 Creative Risk and Space
02:59 Audience Cognition and Care
03:55 Art Beyond Meaning
04:58 Bonus Episode Intro
06:39 Performing Everyday Life
08:11 Who Is Declan Donnellan
10:25 Performance as Human OS
12:12 Why Acting Is Hard
14:20 Alive in Rehearsal
16:24 Space That Supports Life
18:30 Care and Plugging In
21:43 Avoidance and Reacting
24:44 Philosophy and Presence
26:34 Macbeth Actor Dialogue
27:35 Closing Macbeth Beat

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 Holding Paradox Through Serious Play: Can serious play be a portal to wisdom? 

This is an episode about puzzles and care. Andrea has a conversation with puzzle maker Jason Robillard (StumpCraft) about how puzzles cultivate new ways of being and seeing, holding paradox by repeatedly joining opposites only to realize they were never quite opposites but mirror-like pieces of a coherent whole. Robillard describes his wooden, laser-cut puzzles built from Canadian fine art, with uniquely drawn organic pieces, symbolic elements, sensory “shock,” and sometimes multiple valid placements that challenge assumptions of a single solution. He connects puzzling to embodied experience, attention, OODA loops, cognitive biases, and navigating complexity through “alternating base camps” and Goldilocks destabilization, the metamodern idea of 'serious play', relating this to career upheavals and identity change. The conversation emphasizes care as community glue and highlights values embedded in his work—curiosity, creativity, integrity, and generosity—plus a resonance with David Whyte’s poem “Start Close In.”

00:00 Paradox Through Play
02:36 Podcast Intro Puzzles Theme
07:54 Meet Jason And His Work
09:20 Puzzles Holding Paradox
11:38 Designing Artful Wooden Puzzles
14:47 Embodied Senses And Touch
16:58 Career Shift Into Puzzles
23:24 Serious Play And Homo Ludens
25:50 Moving Childhood And Safety
31:57 Base Camps And Destabilization
34:30 Polarity Recipes Beyond Flatland
38:47 Designing Paradox Puzzles
39:48 Many Solutions Mindset
42:54 Puzzles as Conversation
47:53 Liminal Times Need Puzzles
56:00 Sensemaking and OODA Loops
01:00:22 Home Gifts and Community
01:03:17 Four Values in Design
01:11:29 Start Closer In Practice
01:13:39 Care Belonging and Vulnerability
01:18:52 Where to Find Jason
01:19:57 Closing Poem Reading

StumpCraft Amazing Instagram Photos and Videos of Games

Jasen’s writings: Releasing the Muse

Jasen on LinkedIn

Metamodern influences: Serious Play

OODA loop (observe, orient, decide, act)

Homo Ludens

Jasen Robillard was always a closet creative who long denied the creative muses, focusing instead on a “secure” engineering career until it dried up in 2017. As is often the case, necessity proved to be the mother of invention… In 2016, Jasen started designing and prototyping his whimsical puzzles which were inspired by other wooden laser-cut puzzles he had enjoyed years earlier. He noted a lack of wooden puzzle availability in Canada, as well as a severe lack of deliberate focus on Canadian fine art. After a year of playful prototyping and a clear end to his engineering-focused career, Jasen decided to launch StumpCraft formally in 2017.

Since the formal launch, StumpCraft has experienced growth and praise as more and more fans share their love of puzzles with friends and family members.  StumpCraft was also the recipient of the 2021 Made in Alberta Award in Games & Leisure, exposing us to an ever more rapidly expanding fanbase. 

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Facing Reality with Clear Eyes but without Desperation: Scilla Elworthy on Listening with the Heart to Transform Conflict

 Three-time Nobel Peace Prize nominee Scilla Elworthy reflects on 70 years of work with conflict and war, beginning at age 12 after seeing tanks in Budapest and being sent to help concentration camp survivors. She describes how others’ suffering “hit” her heart and led her to action in Algeria, the Congo, and South Africa, where she worked on starvation relief, shipped milk powder, and supported education, noting the central role of women in community resilience. Elworthy emphasizes “listening with the heart” to discern what people truly need beyond narratives, and explains how turning to the heart helps release harsh self-criticism. She also shares practical self-nourishment through nature and gardening, and recounts using humanizing, vulnerable moments—like discussing children—to soften high-stakes meetings, including military dialogues in China, as a way to build connection and “power with” others.

"Triple nominated for the Nobel Peace Prize for her work with Oxford Research Group to develop effective dialogue between nuclear weapons policy-makers worldwide and their critics from 1983-2003. Founded Peace Direct in 2002, awarded the Niwano Peace Prize in 2003, the Luxembourg Peace Prize in 2020, the GOI Peace Award in 2023. Founded The Business Plan for Peace  based on her latest books - The Business Plan for Peace: Building a World Without War (2017), The Mighty Heart: how to transform conflict (2020), and The Mighty Heart in Action (2022)."

Find all Scilla's work here.

Kyla Scanlon's post mentioned here

00:00 Why We Still Kill
00:55 Action Over Apathy
01:07 Heart As Guide
01:39 Inner Critic Quieted
03:23 Podcast Introduction
07:03 Meet Scilla Elworthy
08:17 Tanks In Budapest
11:32 Early War Witnessing
14:33 Africa Conflict Journeys
17:47 Women Leading Change
19:52 Listening With Heart
22:29 Defining The Heart
25:31 Nature As Nourishment
29:35 Self Inspection To Embodiment
32:41 Taming The Inner Critic
34:04 Heart Led Self Compassion
35:54 Daring Diplomacy With Generals
36:49 Breaking The Ice With Humanness
42:48 Power With Vulnerability
47:24 Courage In The Moment
51:07 Love In The Garden
53:03 Closing Thanks And Future Fears
53:55 Listener Note And NYC Event

join the newsletter to support us ♥️

Save the World Podcast
In-depth lectures and interviews on issues affecting the continued survival of human...

Listen on: Apple Podcasts   Spotify

Support the show

Buy Holding Paradox: The Navigational Approach to Mind and Consciousness by Andrea Hiott

Sign up for Making Ways newsletter and projects.

Please rate and review with love.
YouTube, Facebook, Instagram, Substack.