This Plus That

By Brandi StanleySociety & Culture Religion & Spirituality Arts

This Plus That episodes

March 15, 2022Economics + Design with Deacon Rodda
Deacon Rodda is a permaculture theorist and designer who has been working with social change organizations in Denver for more than two decades. Deacon has spearheaded localization initiatives, permaculture research, education non-profits, and social benefit business ventures. Currently, Deacon is focused on establishing a truly egalitarian heirloom currency and contributing to publications on social and ecological well-being.
In this conversation, we talk about the intersections of Economics + Design, including—
Imagining economic options beyond capitalism and socialism.
Whether advancements that make society safer have actually made them better.
How we create money in society and whether money is “neutral.”
What Deacon feels isn’t working in our economy right now.
How economics and climate are as intertwined as tree roots and mycelia, and whether we’ll change the economy fast enough to survive climate collapse.
Designing an economy that’s good for humans and the environment.
The immorality of compounding interest.
The role of design questions in creating new economic systems.
And, what two values Deacon believes are foundational to building the economy he wants to see.
Listeners can find Deacon online, at sqglz.com, and on Instagram at @deaconrodda. You can also support Deacon’s work on Patreon, and check out and join the Favor Solutions Network, a non-capitalist, non-socialist, free-market system designed by Deacon.
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Music: The in-house musicians at Slip.stream
Audio Engineering: The team at Upfire Digital
1 hr 44 min
March 01, 2022Trauma + Cancel Culture with Clementine Morrigan
Clementine Morrigan (they/them; she/her) is a writer. She’s the writer behind the zine series Fucking Magic, and the zines Love Without Emergency, Fuck the Police Means We Don't Act Like Cops to Each Other, Fucking Crazy, and Fucking Girls. They also wrote the books You Can't Own the Fucking Stars and The Size of a Bird. They’ll also be releasing three new books in 2021: Trauma Magic, Sexting, and Fucking Magic. She’s been writing and publishing for more than 20 years and has many more projects on the way. They’re also a podcaster, as one half of the podcast Fucking Cancelled, and is the creator of the popular Trauma-Informed Polyamory workshop. They teach other online workshops, too, like Bisexual Girls with Baggage and Disorganized Attachment Is a Fucking Trip. She’s an ecosocialist, an anarchist, an abolitionist, an opposer of cancel culture, a trauma educator, a sex educator, a person living with complex PTSD, a sober alcoholic, a polyamorous bisexual dyke, and a proud dog mom to Clover “The Dog” Morrigan.
In this episode, Clementine and Brandi talk about the intersections of Trauma + Cancel Culture. So, a content note: This conversation includes discussion around sexual abuse, domestic violence, and trauma.
Here’s a breakdown of what we cover—
Cancel culture as another type of abuse.
The way queer and organizing communities struggle to hold contradiction.
How cancel culture operates in leftist politics.
The hyper-vigilance of always doing and saying the "right" things.
Why keeping up with all of the correct “rules” requires a certain class privilege.
How we might actually address harm if it’s not canceling everyone.
How we can improve on the sentiment “Believe survivors."
Unlinking our capacity to heal from whether abusers ever take responsibility.
Why Clementine continues to do this work and what currently brings her joy.
And so much more.
Listeners can find Clementine online, at clementinemorrigan.com, as well as on Instagram. Support their work on Patreon.
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Music: The in-house musicians at Slip.stream
Audio Engineering: The team at Upfire Digital
1 hr 22 min
February 15, 2022Tarot + Christianity with Selah Saterstrom
Brought up in a Southern-family style of card reading and divination, Selah Saterstrom (she/her) has been offering divinatory support and guidance to her communities for over thirty years. Founder of Apotheca, a social-justice-centered apothecary, she also specializes in prescriptive magic. She is the author of the novels Slab, The Meat and Spirit Plan, and The Pink Institution, all published by Coffee House Press. She is also the author of two collections of essays: Rancher, and the award-winning Ideal Suggestions: Essays in Divinatory Poetics. She teaches and lectures across the United States and abroad, and is the director of creative writing at the University of Denver.
In this episode, Selah and Brandi talk about the intersections of Tarot + Christianity, including:
Not allying with any person, belief system, or institution that would require us to diminish ourselves.
How writing helps give context to each “rupture” of our identity.
Writing as a way to be “in the question.”
Letting go of what we believed we knew and crafting a relationship with uncertainty and discomfort instead.
Being a femme-identifying queer as a form of contradiction Selah feels like she inhabits every day.
What “divining” means to Selah, along with her long family history of divination.
Southern tarot and divination not as separate from God, but as a tool to engage with God.
Where Christianity does and does not fit into Selah’s current practice.
The gnostic experience vs. the institution of Christianity.
How each of us claiming our wholeness gives others permission to do the same.
Curiosity, bibliomancy, prophecy, and aliveness all as a quality of presence and awareness you practice in the world.
Our bodies—including our teeth—and tarot as “archives.”
And much more.
Listeners can find Selah online, at selahsaterstrom.org, and on Instagram and Twitter. Four Queens Divination can be found online at fourqueens.org, as well as on Twitter.
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Music: The in-house musicians at Slip.stream
Audio Engineering: The team at Upfire Digital
1 hr 31 min
February 01, 2022Purpose + Illness with Charles Eisenstein & Lauren Buckley
Charles Eisenstein (he/him) is a writer and a speaker. His four main books are The Ascent of Humanity (2007), Sacred Economics (2011, revised 2020), The More Beautiful World our Hearts Know is Possible (2013) and Climate — A New Story (2018). All of them can be read online or purchased wherever books are sold. He lives in the part of the world that most people currently call Rhode Island, USA, in a smallish house about 20 minutes from the ocean and five minutes from the Great Swamp. He shares the house with his wife, Stella, son Cary, dog Inka, and some mice. He has three older sons, Jimi, Matthew, and Philip.
Lauren Buckley (she/her) is a seeker. Consumed with questions like “Who am I?”, “Why am I here?”, “Where did I come from?”, and “Where am I going?”, she has followed life wherever it seemed like she might find some insight. For a while, science seemed like the best path to truth, so she enrolled in a biochemistry Ph.D. program at UC-Berkeley. But, during a Luce Scholars Fellowship in Thailand, a total physical and mental health collapse blew up her plans. After exhausting her options in mainstream medicine—to no avail—a desperate search for healing eventually led her to see the limitations and dogma of mainstream science, discover holistic medicine, work with #1 New York Times Bestseller Chris Kresser, and launch a wellness company. You can now find Lauren seeking out loud on Uncertain, where she goes deep with some of her favorite people on philosophy, psychology, spirituality, wellness, and whatever else is capturing her endless curiosity. Find her full bio in this episode's show notes.
In this episode, Charles, Lauren, and Brandi talk about the intersections of Purpose + Illness, including:
A new development in Brandi’s health journey—dental cavitation surgery and selling her house to afford it.
Listening to the fears of those around you as a normal and healthy instinct to determine whether we’re on the “right” track.
How often you can feel gaslit when experiencing chronic illness.
How physical conditions sometimes mirror our internal, spiritual conditions.
When illness can be a gift that shows us when we’re out of alignment.
“Control” as a type of “illness.”
Planning as a type of living in separation from ourselves.
Letting what we truly want to do guide our decisions.
What we do or don’t “deserve” when it comes to health or living in a healthy society.
And, curiosity as a path of aliveness.
Listeners can find Charles online at his website, Substack, and his own podcast. And, they can find Lauren at @beuncertain on Instagram and in the Uncertain Mighty Network community.
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Music: The in-house musicians at Slip.stream
Audio Engineering: The team at Upfire Digital
1 hr 31 min
January 18, 2022Why I Talk About Purpose
In this second solo episode of the show, I explain why I speak and write so consistently about the idea of “purpose,” and give context that will set the stage for the next episode of the podcast—releasing on February 1, 2022—with Charles Eisenstein and Lauren Buckley, called “Purpose + Illness.”

Here’s what you'll hear me talk about in this episode—
My search for “purpose” until now.
The portions of Charles’s work that helped me begin to make real connections between work, purpose, and health.
A reading of my essay, “A Sick Society + An Individual Burden,” which gives extra context to the connections I see between work and illness, and my upcoming conversation with Charles and Lauren.
Why you might be born to heal a divide between two worlds.
A reading of my essay, “Wisdom Teeth + Chronic Illness,” tells the story of finding dental cavitations in my mouth, and much of what Charles, Lauren, and I discuss in the upcoming episode.
How doing work you don’t enjoy is a kind of “toxic load” on your body.
And, why we need to start saying “This isn’t normal.”
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Music: The in-house musicians at Slip.stream
Audio Engineering: The team at Upfire Digital
1 hr 16 min
January 04, 2022Microbes + Spirituality with Asia Dorsey
Asia Dorsey (she/her; they/them) writes Afrofutures into existence by reweaving Black bodies into relationship with the earth through the fabric of food. She studied food and sociology at New York University but extended her education to include public health nutrition in Accra Ghana, seed sovereignty in Northern India with Vandana Shiva, and biological agriculture and ancestral nutrition with Kay Baxter in New Zealand. After healing her depression with bones, bugs, and botany, Asia took the helm of Five Points Fermentation Company in 2016 in order to bring probiotics to the people. As a bioregional herbalist apprenticing with Herbal Elder, Susun Weed, an organizational ecologist with Regenerate Change, and permaculture instructor with the Denver Permaculture Guild, Asia deciphers and reintegrates the sacred instructions of microorganisms, plants, and animals to bring the patterns of ecosystems into our people systems. You can also find her curating educational programs at the Seeds of Power Unity Farm, bone-deep in soil, balancing botanical chaos long enough for her people to rise together in power and step into the wholeness that is their birthright.
In this episode, Asia and Brandi talk about the intersections of Microbes + Spirituality, including:
The wild notion of sugar as healing.
How our thoughts and beliefs affect the way we “metabolize” food, people, and everything else.
Microbes as spiritual impulses and deities.
Sanitization, inoculation, war, and allowing ourselves to be changed by the “Other.”
Becoming that which we resist.
How phases of activism follow similar ecological phases and inflammatory responses in the body.
Fermentation as a type of ancestral “inheritance” and what ancient dairy practices teach us about generational wealth.
Viruses as adaptation advantages.
Claiming both science and spirituality in all their complexity without devaluing either but also not ignoring each of their flaws.
The beauty of not belonging.
And so much more.
Listeners can find Asia online, at bonesbugsandbotany.com, and can support her and her creations on Patreon and Instagram. Listen to her on The Petty Herbalist podcast, as well.
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Music: The in-house musicians at Slip.stream
Audio Engineering: The team at Upfire Digital
1 hr 39 min
December 21, 2021Nature + Communication with Ashley Eliza Williams
Ashley Eliza Williams (she/her) is a painter, sculptor, and amateur ecologist exploring new ways of interacting with nature and with each other. She received a BA from UVA and an MFA from The University of Colorado, Boulder. She is a recent MASS MoCA North Adams Project grantee and has been a resident artist at Vermont Studio Center, Anderson Ranch, Millay Colony, Alte Schule Germany, the Shangyuan Art Museum in China, and the Sitka Center for Art and Ecology. Her work has been shown nationally and internationally at museums, galleries, and scientific institutions. She is a member of the research-focused NYC art collective Sprechgesang Institute. Williams has taught painting, sculpture, and color theory for six years. She currently lives in Massachusetts.
In this episode, Ashley and Brandi talk about the intersections of Nature + Communication, including:
Anxiety, awkwardness, and “failed” communication attempts.
The dialogue between plants, animals, and even celestial bodies.
The “mutual aid” practices of nature, like lichen and trees.
Why Ashley became an environmentalist at an early age.
What lichen communicate to us about pollution.
How our language about the natural world shapes our engagement with it.
The Western perception of time as scarce.
Ashley’s dad and his creative way of conjuring up original bedtime stories.
Her fascination with magical beings and the history of monsters.
Why we might pray to pollinator deities in the future.
The ancient memory of rocks and trees.
And much more.
Listeners can find Ashley online, at ashleyelizawilliams.com, and on Instagram @ashleyelizawilliams.
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Music: The in-house musicians at Slip.stream
Audio Engineering: The team at Upfire Digital
1 hr 14 min
December 07, 2021Infinity + Nuance with Kendra Krueger
Kendra Krueger (she/her) is an intersectional scientist, educator, creator, and woman of color on many edges—raised by artists, educated as an electrical engineer, and trained in anti-oppression facilitation, theater, mindfulness, and permaculture. Her work and research is a convergence of these many waters. Fueled by divine curiosity, she seeks to inspire deeper exploration of ourselves and our universe. Her pedagogy advocates that science can be a transformative tool for our external and internal world if analytical and intuitive skills can be combined. She founded 4LoveandScience in 2014 as a platform to teach transformative science at universities, in K12 schools, and in community spaces and gardens throughout the country. She has also curated and produced multi-media installations, exhibitions, and performances and currently works at CUNY's Advanced Science Research Center, where she founded The Community Sensor Lab as a space for DIY community science and advocacy.
In this episode, Kendra and Brandi talk about the intersections of Infinity + Nuance, including:
Applying to others the same level of nuance and subtlety we afford to ourselves.
What Kendra felt was missing in the “scientific paradigm.”
How several mathematical constructs help her hold nuance and complexity.
Following a "path of resonance” to determine our capacity to engage.
What history, the ouroboros, & the solar system say about “spirals” of change.
Learning to look at technology more generatively.
What different “zones” of love and intimacy might be.
And, Kendra’s work to bring science into the hands of more people.
Listeners can find Kendra online, at 4loveandscience.com, on YouTube, and on Instagram @4loveandscience. You can also pre-order the next Black Quantum Futurism anthology, in which Kendra has an essay titled, "The Wild Truth: Casting Spells with Entropy and Lasers."
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Music: The in-house musicians at Slip.stream
Audio Engineering: The team at Upfire Digital
1 hr 28 min
November 23, 2021Fractals + Free Will with Abrah Dresdale and Adam Brock
Abrah Dresdale is a cultural artist, visionary educator, and consultant in the fields of regenerative social design, prison food justice, and Jewish earth-based traditions. She has a new book, out within the last couple of weeks, called Regenerative Design for Change Makers: A Social Permaculture Guidebook. It’s an essential guide for organizational changemakers, consultants, higher education students, and transdisciplinary educators pursuing a regenerative future for the 21st century.
Adam Brock is a Denver-based cultural artist practicing regenerative social design. For over a decade, he’s worked to create the conditions for regenerative relationships among individuals, grassroots initiatives, and institutions throughout the country. Adam also has a book, published in 2017, called Change Here Now: Permaculture Strategies for Personal and Community Transformation, a recipe book for social change inspired by the more-than-human world.
Their extended bios can be found in the show notes for this episode.
In this discussion, Abrah, Adam, and Brandi talk about the intersections of Fractals + Free Will, including:
How Abrah and Adam practice and teach a kind of “social biomimicry.”
What Abrah calls the “principle of positive contagion”—a way we create our own weather patterns and exhibit personal agency, power, and free will, even when living inside oppressive systems.
How healing can ripple to the past, another example of fractals.
How we can create a “yes” where the world has told us there’s a “no,” like one beautiful story about a man locked in prison who nonetheless found a way to run the Boston Marathon.
How tender and exhausting it can feel to constantly have to reassert your own agency in spaces where your whole humanity isn’t seen.
The alienation we’ve all experienced in our early spiritual traditions, but how we’ve each grappled with reintegrating “ancient technologies” in ways that reflect ourselves and our values today—including the ability to critique how some of our “new” traditions, even permaculture, often include problematic practices.
And so much more.

Listeners can find Abrah and Adam’s work with Regenerate Change online, at regeneratechange.org, and on Instagram @regeneratechange.
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Music: The in-house musicians at Slip.stream
Audio Engineering: The team at Upfire Digital
1 hr 20 min
November 09, 2021Quantum Logic + Exclusive Truth with Lincoln Carr
Lincoln D. Carr (he/him) is a Professor of Quantum Physics at the Colorado School of Mines and a Jefferson Science Fellow of the National Academies of Sciences, Engineering, and Medicine. Between the songs of sperm whales hunting deep canyons under the seas and the roving eye of the lucid dreamer laying prone in his bed, poetry and physics meet. In this multiverse of possibility, he writes quantum thoughts to a reflection of himself reborn again and again through inner and outer space-time, each choice and each moment another universe. He believes that one day, the science we do now will seem like alchemy, and we will wonder how we did not fuse poetry and equations as naturally as the savants of that future age. And hopes his work presents a moment on the path to that future embrace.
In this episode, Lincoln and Brandi talk about the intersections of Quantum Logic + Exclusive Truth, including:
Different kinds of thinkers, and how they’re all necessary
Schrödinger, gender, & sexuality
The brilliance of Lincoln’s students
How I wound up auditing Lincoln’s class and details about the course itself
Connections to city planning
The frequent career changes of synthesists
Humility + Foolishness
Judaism, religion, and how science can become a religion
How poetry can play a role in the sciences
How Lincoln thought in quantum logic before he knew what it was
How and why Lincoln uses dreaming in his work
And, finding your place in the world

Note: Any opinions stated in this episode do not represent the U.S. Department of State.
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Music: The in-house musicians at Slip.stream
Audio Engineering: The team at Upfire Digital
1 hr 14 min

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Struggle to weave together all of the seemingly un-connectable parts of yourself? Tired of feeling like you can only ever be one thing? Or, sick of being told there’s only one “right” way to be, so…

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