The Crane Bag Podcast

An exploration of the Naqqali storytelling tradition of Iran, with Morshed Saghi and Arash Ali Farhadipour.

Four storytellers tell the Russian tale of the Firebird: a live, improvised, cross-Atlantic performance recorded in March of 2021 by Lara McClure, Walton Stanley, Catherine Heinemeyer and Jay Leeming. An exploration of the story by the storytellers follows.

An interview with healer, translator and ceremony-maker Miguel Rivera on the poetry of Humberto Ak'Abal and our relation to the dreaming earth, preceded by the Seneca story "The Storytelling Stone."

A conversation between the Irish storyteller Clare Murphy and Jay Leeming in which the big rowdy questions of story and earth and the wide sky are danced with until the music of our questions itself disappears into the whispering understory of what we forgot we knew.

Bang! The red feather of desire is right in front of you on the forest path; your talking horse tells you to steer clear, but do you pick it up all the same? Enter the world of Russian earth-wisdom through "The Firebird," an ancient but contemporary story brought to life by storyteller Jay Leeming.

"The Woman of the Sea" told by Regi Carpenter, followed by an interview in which she and host Jay Leeming explore that story as well as her own journey to storytelling.

In this episode we explore the power of dreams, first through a story from the One Thousand and One Nights and then through an interview with the poet, author and healer Peter Fortunato. The result is a wide-ranging exploration of dreamwork, poetry, and our relations to the earth.