Wonderstruck

Every night, you make images as surely as you breathe. Dream worker, author and mystic Toko-pa Turner believes those images are anything but random. She sees dreaming as the psyche’s way of healing itself, much as skin quietly knits back together after a cut. Even nightmares may be a sign that something is ready to come into consciousness.

Modern life has taught us to dismiss dreams as nonsense. Yet across cultures and throughout history, people have turned to them for insight and guidance. For Toko-pa, dreams are our mother tongue: a language we don’t so much need to learn as remember.

Born in Devon and raised in a Sufi community in Montreal, Toko-pa brings together Sufi mysticism and a Jungian approach to dreams. She founded the Dream School in 2001, has guided thousands of students, and reaches more than 100,000 readers online. Her books “Belonging” and “The Dreaming Way” explore how dreams can deepen our relationship with ourselves and the wider world.

In this episode, Toko-pa invites us to ask something different of our dreams. Not simply, “What do they mean?” but “What do they want?”

CHAPTERS

0:00 Introduction

2:04 Dreaming of the Hypogeum Before I Knew It Existed

8:42 The Symbolism of the Spider

11:58 Why Nightmares Are the Most Powerful

16:34 We Are Nature: Dreams and Self-Healing

21:21 How Rationalism Made Us Dismiss Dreams

31:18 Living With a "Second Attention"

34:31 A Precognitive Dream and Two Armed Men on the Roof

37:51 Rewriting the Past: The Moving Tattoo Dream

43:31 Dream Circles and Shared Dreams

47:00 The Imaginal Realm in Sufi Cosmology

1:02:00 Metaphor as a Bridge

1:08:12 Wonder and the Courtship of Dreams

Follow Toko-pa:

Website: https://toko-pa.com/

Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/tokopa/

Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/TokopaTurner

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Apple Podcasts: https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/wonderstruck/id1671879661

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When her mother died, Hiroko Yoda was brought to her knees. What pulled her back was something that had been there all along, the ancient spiritual traditions of her home country, Japan. What followed was a decade-long journey through shrines and temples, sacred mountains, and waterfalls, culminating in her latest book, Eight Million Ways to Happiness.

The title comes from an ancient Japanese idea: that eight million spiritual beings inhabit everything around us. Not as a precise count, but as a way of saying the sacred is everywhere, in everything.

Recorded inside an ancient Shinto shrine deep within the sacred mountains of Kumano, located at the end of a pilgrimage route walked for over a thousand years, Wonderstruck's host Elizabeth Rovere sits down with Hiroko to explore:

✦ How "kami" spirit exists in everything

✦ How the concept of "half-belief, half-disbelief" makes room for mystery without demanding certainty

✦ Why gratitude, not belief, is the core of Japanese spirituality and the seed of happiness

✦ The flexibility of Japanese spirituality and what it offers a world grown rigid in its certainties

✦ The spirituality found in your favourite anime

Through Hiroko's journey, from grief to gratitude, from loss to a world where everything has a spirit, we begin to see that happiness isn't something to be chased or achieved. It's something to be noticed, in the smallest of things, in the spaces we walk past every day without looking.

Chapters: 

00:00:00 Welcome to the Kumano Shrine

00:01:54 Kami: 8 Million Spiritual Beings

00:05:19 Rigid Society, Flexible Spirituality

00:16:32 Walking Through Grief

00:20:35 Gratitude, Not Belief

00:25:07 Half-belief, Half-disbelief

00:27:50 Mysteries of the Waterfall

00:35:52 Itadakimasu: Spirituality in Everyday Words

00:39:03 Meeting Itako, The Blind Shamaness

00:45:15 Masakado: Anger and Love

00:51:15 Anime, Yokai, and Healing

Follow Hiroko: 

Website: https://www.hirokoyoda.com/

Substack: https://blog.hirokoyoda.com/

Book: https://www.bloomsbury.com/uk/eight-million-ways-to-happiness-9781526672162/

Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/hi_yoda_1

Follow Wonderstruck:

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Apple Podcasts: https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/wonderstruck/id1671879661 

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If we understood the true complexity of the natural world, would we call it conscious? Would we begin to question the boundaries we put between ourselves and everything around us?

We explore these questions with biologist Merlin Sheldrake and science journalist Zoë Schlanger. Their bestselling books, "Entangled Life" and "The Light Eaters", required monk-like study and deep immersion in the natural world. What they discovered quietly dismantles some of our most basic assumptions about intelligence, memory, and what individuality really means. 

Recorded during Harvard Divinity School's "Thinking with Plants and Fungi" conference, this special episode brings together Merlin, Zoë, host Elizabeth Rovere, and guest co-host Rachael Peterson, the "Thinking with Plants and Fungi" Initiative Program Lead at Harvard, to explore:

✦ Whether plants have personalities and why they might be kinder to kin 

✦ How a brainless slime mold can navigate its way out of an IKEA faster than a human

✦ How flatworms put into question where memory actually lives

✦ Whether it's possible to ferment a book and drink it

When we stop centering the individual and truly reckon with the entangled nature of all living things, something shifts. The question stops being how do we include more-than-human perspectives… it starts being whether that separation even makes sense to begin with. 

Chapters:

00:00:00 Introduction

00:01:10 How to Write About the Hidden World

00:04:45 The Myth of the Individual

00:09:53 We Are Polluting Our Own Home

00:15:14 The Problem Isn't Science. It's Language.

00:18:18 The Plant That Can Copy Anything

00:24:25 As Temperatures Rise, Fungi Are Evolving

00:28:31 Do Plants Have Personalities and Prefer Their Family?

Follow Merlin Sheldrake:

Website: https://www.merlinsheldrake.com/

Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/merlin.sheldrake

YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/user/merlinsheldrake 

Entangled Life: How Fungi Make Our Worlds, Change Our Minds & Shape Our Futures: https://www.penguinrandomhouse.com/books/566795/entangled-life-by-merlin-sheldrake/ 

Follow Zoë Schlanger: 

Website: https://www.zoeschlanger.com/

Bluesky: https://bsky.app/profile/zoeschlanger.bsky.social

Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/zoeschlanger/ 

The Light Eaters: How the Unseen World of Plant Intelligence Offers a New Understanding of Life on Earth: https://www.harpercollins.com/products/the-light-eaters-zoe-schlanger?variant=41096248295458 

Follow Wonderstruck:

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Apple Podcasts: https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/wonderstruck/id1671879661 

Spotify: https://open.spotify.com/show/6fS5boWGwYTShddG7SKlVw

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Mystic poet Chelan Harkin doesn't write poems, she transmits them. At 21, after giving herself permission to write a "bad poem" every day, a creative channel cracked open and poems have flowed through her ever since. 

Her work has drawn comparisons to Rumi, Hafiz and Khalil Gibran. Poets whose words slip beneath the thinking mind to reach something deeper, older and more alive within us. 

Celebrating World Poetry Day this month, this episode features Chelan speaking with Wonderstruck's Elizabeth Rovere about:

✦ How a Hafiz poem she heard at 17 unlocked her heart and set her entire path in motion

✦ The "bad poem experiment" and how permission to fail became the key to creative flow

✦ How praying to her favourite dead poets led to a synchronicity that changed everything

✦ How our deepest fears, when met with consciousness, can transform into our strongest allies

✦ The extraordinary story behind her book The Prophetess which stands in conversation with Gibran’s The Prophet

This is a conversation for anyone who has suspected that the sacred isn’t elsewhere, but closer, more available and more alive than we ever dared to believe.

00:00:00 Introduction

00:07:06 The Poem That Changed Everything

00:13:47 The "Bad Poem Experiment"

00:19:22 Say Wow: The Poem That Went Viral

00:23:44 Praying To Her Favourite Dead Poets

00:30:50 The Meaning Of Authentic Service

00:35:55 Suffering and Our Great Cocoon

00:39:21 Writing The Prophetess

00:43:33 Meeting Hajjar Gibran

00:51:53 Fear as a Life Force

00:58:32 Closing Reflections

Follow Chelan Harkin: 

Website: https://chelanharkinpoetry.com/ 

Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/chelanharkin/ 

Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/chani.harkin 

Find all Chelan's books on Amazon: https://www.amazon.co.uk/stores/author/B08PL55XMD 

Follow Wonderstruck:

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Apple Podcasts: https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/wonderstruck/id1671879661 

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Can a mountain teach us how to live in peace? In his early twenties, George Thompson was living with intense anxiety and a deep sense of meaninglessness. His body carried constant tension, and the voice in his head told him that he was not good enough. That crisis became the catalyst for a decision that would change the direction of his life.

George travelled alone to China’s sacred Wudang Mountains, the birthplace of Tai Chi and a centre of Daoist (Taoist) practice for centuries. There, immersed in mountains, monasteries, and daily practice, he encountered Tai Chi. 

In this conversation, George and Wonderstruck’s Elizabeth Rovere explore:

✦ Tai Chi as a martial art and moving meditation: powerful, peaceful, and beautiful

✦ Balance as something dynamic that allows you to hold your centre in the midst of change

✦ The inner critic (“the Underminer”) and learning not to identify with the story it tells

✦ Why peace can’t be learned, but arises through presence and awareness

✦ The universal language of wonder and awe

This episode reminds us to look at what lies beneath the thinking mind, and to discover, as George puts it, that balance is possible.

Chapters 

00:00:00 Introduction

00:05:49 Journey to the Wudang Mountains

00:10:22 Finding Balance Through Tai Chi

00:18:14 Spirituality as a Form of Activism

00:24:45 Hope & The Vinegar Metaphor

00:29:58 Love, Connection & Fierce Compassion

00:35:29 Is Eminem Daoist?

00:42:04 Awe and Wonder Predates Language

00:46:27 Nature, AI, and the Technology Continuum

00:49:42 Why Are We Here? 

Follow George:

YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/@George-Thompson 

The Subtle Art of Losing Yourself: https://youtu.be/9KArWcMldPM?si=fHt4OPWFb8-zSuAx 

Balance is Possible: https://www.balanceispossible.com/ 

Taoist Wellness Community: https://www.taoistwellness.online/community 

Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/george.thompson._/ 

TikTok: https://www.tiktok.com/@george.thompson_

Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/georgethompson.uk 

Follow Wonderstruck:

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Substack: https://newsletter.wonderstruck.org

YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/@wonderstruckpod

Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/wonderstruckpod/ 

TikTok: https://www.tiktok.com/@wonderstruckpod 

Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/wonderstruckpod 

Apple Podcasts: https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/wonderstruck/id1671879661 

Spotify: https://open.spotify.com/show/6fS5boWGwYTShddG7SKlVw

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From a coffee farm in rural Colombia to the psychoanalytic couch, Macario Giraldo has spent his life listening for the quiet forces that shape a human life: language, loss, desire, and love.

At the age of ten, Macario left his family to join the La Salle Christian Brothers, a Catholic religious order that would become his home for the next twenty-five years. Beneath the structure of faith and vocation, an early sense of separation endured. Over time, it found expression as a desire for something he had long deferred: a family of his own. 

A Fulbright scholarship brought Macario to Washington, D.C. It was here that he received a rare dispensation from the Church to leave the brotherhood and encountered psychology and the work of Jacques Lacan, which would shape the rest of his analytic life.

In dialogue with Colette Soler, an analysand of Lacan, as well as clinicians Marianne Goldberger and Hugh Mullan, Macario developed a distinctive approach to group therapy informed by Lacanian psychoanalysis. In his work, he listens not only to what is said, but to what stirs between people: the unconscious processes that emerge in groups, including conflict, desire, identification, and shared symbolic history.

In this episode, we explore:

✦ Cause and triggers

✦ Group therapy as a modern ritual

✦ Lacanian thinking beyond the individual

✦ The fantasy of complete satisfaction

✦ Listening as a psychological practice

✦ The journey to become your own friend

Macario invites us to wonder about the desires that take shape in relation to others, the limits of certainty, and how, over a lifetime, we might learn to live more truthfully with ourselves and with one another

Chapters 

0:00:00 Introduction

0:03:21 Picasso and the Desire of Others

0:08:27 Presence, Absence, and the Fort-Da Game

0:15:18 From Coffee Farm to the Christian Brothers

0:18:53 Discovering Jacques Lacan

0:24:49 Jouissance: The Pursuit and Crisis of Desire

0:30:34 The Unexplored Gold Mine of Group Therapy

0:38:34 The Power of Listening

0:41:35 Anxiety is an Index of the Real

0:48:27 Faith after Dogma

0:55:35 The Journey to Become Your Own Friend

0:58:13 Gardens, Love, and Wonder: The Closing Note

Follow Wonderstruck:

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Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/wonderstruckpod/ 

TikTok: https://www.tiktok.com/@wonderstruckpod

Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/wonderstruckpod 

Apple Podcasts: https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/wonderstruck/id1671879661 

Spotify: https://open.spotify.com/show/6fS5boWGwYTShddG7SKlVw

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Plants are our ancient teachers, whispering and nudging… if only we’d listen. Dr. Monica Gagliano is an evolutionary ecologist who has turned the green world into something wonderfully surprising. Her research reveals plants that listen, remember, make choices and even teach one another. Some can sense eclipses before they happen. Others communicate in ways we’re only just beginning to catch up with.

In 2008, Monica did something bold: she stepped out of academia and followed her curiosity into the forest, literally. Blending scientific experimentation with Amazonian plant ceremonies and the guidance of shamans, she helped spark the field now known as plant intelligence. Since then, her work has captured imaginations around the world, appearing in The New York Times and the National Geographic. 

In this episode, we explore:

✦ Pushing back against the scientific status quo

✦ Letting nature show you what it knows

✦ Welcoming indigenous plant teachings into scientific practice

✦ Paying attention as a joyful act of devotion

Monica invites us into a playful and daring question: what do plants actually know… and what might they be trying to tell us?

Chapters

0:00 Intro: Science, wonder, and pushing boundaries

03:03 Initiation on the Great Barrier Reef

12:53 “Plants rescued the scientist in me”

20:57 Monica’s first experiments with plants

27:10 Bringing empathy into science

32:37 "More-than-human" is a place

37:33 It's the human that needs saving

42:44 Indigenous science and plant communication

50:54 The ancient tree that spoke to her

56:14 Trees synchronize during solar eclipse

01:03:51 Attention is the beginning of devotion

Follow Monica:

Website: https://www.monicagagliano.com/ 

Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/_monicagagliano_

Follow Wonderstruck:

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Apple Podcasts: https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/wonderstruck/id1671879661 

Spotify: https://open.spotify.com/show/6fS5boWGwYTShddG7SKlVw

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Mark Vernon is a former priest turned psychotherapist who has spent the last 30 years exploring one central question: how do we find meaning in a secular age?

After a crisis of faith pulled him away from the Church’s inner sanctum in his youth, Mark turned to Plato and Jung in pursuit of a deeper understanding of purpose, connection, and the soul. Today, his writing bridges ancient philosophy, religion, and modern psychology, a powerful triad he also applies to his work as a therapist.

In this episode, we discuss: 

✦  The overwhelm of conflicting meanings and remembering the sacred

✦  The spiritual thread connecting Dante, William Blake, and Jesus

✦  How wonder helps us access the divine

✦  Why psychotherapy is a path for ‘spiritual intelligence’

Mark's work invites us into the depths of wonder and spirituality as a necessity for the soul.

Chapters

0:00 Intro: The modern crisis of meaning

5:08 Psychotherapy and the vertical dimension of life

11:25 The cloud of unknowing and mystical experiences

18:19 Kairos time: Moments of spiritual significance

23:01 William Blake on joy and eternity

27:04 Death as a transcendent and transformative experience

33:08 Early Christianity's deeper mysteries and meanings

40:44 Humility as an expansive spiritual virtue

50:56 Owen Barfield and the evolution of consciousness

57:35 Ontological shocks and transformative experiences

1:02:41 Outro: The importance of sacred experiences

Follow Mark:

Website: https://www.markvernon.com/

Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/platospodcasts/?hl=en-gb 

X: https://x.com/platospodcasts 

YouTube Channel: https://www.youtube.com/@PlatosPodcasts 

Awake! William Blake and the Power of the Imagination: https://www.hurstpublishers.com/book/awake/ 

Follow Wonderstruck:

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Newsletter:  https://newsletter.wonderstruck.org  

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TikTok: https://www.tiktok.com/@wonderstruckpod

Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/wonderstruckpod

Apple Podcasts: https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/wonderstruck/id1671879661 

Spotify: https://open.spotify.com/show/6fS5boWGwYTShddG7SKlVw

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What if the cracks in our world aren't flaws, but thresholds into the unknown? In this episode of Wonderstruck, we sit with philosopher, poet, and playful trickster Bayo Akomolafe. Bayo's vision invites us to linger in mystery rather than rush to solutions. He takes us into the unfolding terrain of post-activism, where possibility, not certainty, becomes our guide.

In this conversation, we explore:

✦ How physics becomes philosophy… and poetry offers a new way of seeing

✦ How AI unsettles our ideas of consciousness and what it means to be human

✦ His vision of an “autistic politics,” shaped by those who move differently through the world

✦ The role of sanctuary and sacred spaces in times of upheaval

This is less a conversation of answers than of reimagining; an invitation to pause, to listen otherwise, and to encounter the mystery shimmering inside the fractures of our time. In these transformational times, Bayo is a rare and radical voice, urging us to reimagine how we see the world.

This episode of Wonderstruck invites you into that space. 

Chapters

0:00 Introduction

5:31 Autistic perception and expanded awareness

12:30 AI is redefining intelligence

18:58 The Ship of Theseus and posthumanism

25:50 A moment of wonder at the moon

40:00 Second sound and postactivism 

55:38 Liminality and the Cracks

1:06:50 Death, Eshu and Jesus as trickster 

1:14:51 Making sanctuary and examining life's glitches

Follow Bayo:

Website: https://www.bayoakomolafe.net/ 

LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/bayoakomolafe/

Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/bayoakomolafeampersand 

Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/bayo.akomolafe/

Emergence Network: https://www.emergencenetwork.org/ 

Follow Wonderstruck:

Website: https://wonderstruck.org

YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/@wonderstruckpod

Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/wonderstruckpod/ 

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Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/wonderstruckpod

Apple Podcasts: https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/wonderstruck/id1671879661 

Spotify: https://open.spotify.com/show/6fS5boWGwYTShddG7SKlVw

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Fungi are everywhere. Under our feet, in our food, in our medicines. Yet they remain one of the most overlooked kingdoms of life. 

In this episode of Wonderstruck, we speak to mycologist Giuliana Furci, a self-taught champion for fungi and founder of the first NGO in the world dedicated to fungal conservation, the Fungi Foundation. She reveals how mushrooms shape ecosystems, inspire culture, and hold ancient knowledge. They are alchemists of decay, transforming death and toxins into the fertile ground of new life. From sacred candlelit ceremonies to songs created with a cloud forest that has rights, Giuliana’s stories may change how you see the world forever.

We explore:

• How fungi sustain life on Earth and make our survival possible
• Documenting indigenous relationships with fungi, from birth control to healing
• The Song of the Cedars with Robert Macfarlane, Cosmo Sheldrake, César Rodríguez-Garavito 
• Sacred mushrooms, Mazatec culture and Maria Sabina
• Why protecting fungi may shape the future of our planet

Giuliana’s story is a testament to what can happen when we follow our calling and, in the words of Giuliana's mother, that something doesn't have to be done in order for us to do it! 

Chapters: 

0:00 Intro: A fateful encounter with fungi

5:56 Mycology 101: Fungi's role in life on Earth

9:37 Studying fungi with experience and intuition

15:07 Don Pfister’s invitation to Harvard

23:13 The Song of the Cedars and forest rights

30:13 Documenting indigenous relationships with fungi

37:38 Surprising fungal uses across cultures

41:27 Fungi communication and sacred ceremonies

47:49 National Geographic award and impact

Follow Giuliana: 

Website: https://giulianafurci.com/

Instagram: @giulifungi

Fungi Foundation https://www.ffungi.org/

LET THINGS ROT: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bpjWh1TXthM

Flora, Fauna, Funga Documentary National Geographic Society: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2DsnWcWeyoI

The Song of the Cedar by Cosmo Sheldrake and Robert Macfarlane: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HH_timp2S3E&list=RDHH_timp2S3E&start_radio=1

Is a River Alive? by Robert Macfarlane: https://www.penguin.co.uk/books/455147/is-a-river-alive-by-macfarlane-robert/9780241624814

Follow Wonderstruck:

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Website: https://wonderstruck.org

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Apple Podcasts: https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/wonderstruck/id1671879661

Spotify: https://open.spotify.com/show/6fS5boWGwYTShddG7SKlVw

Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.