Love & Its Discontents

Today I'm joined by Yusuf Jones. We're digging into the way Artificial Intelligence is changing the way we love. Yusuf Jones is a visionary AI Prompt Engineer/Architect and Technology Integrationist at the forefront of the AI revolution in mental health, community development, and spiritual technology. Facebook: @yusuf.journeyman.jones Instagram: @yusuf.is [http://yusuf.is].just.dust

In this episode, we explore love in the new adaptation of James Clavell's Shōgun with John Austin. John Austin is an interactive designer, independent researcher, author, filmmaker, cultural critic, and entrepreneur. For over fifteen years, he has worked in augmented reality/virtual reality. Between 2007 and 2009 he divided his time living between the US and Japan where he helped found Autism Family Network. Austin founded Fresh Pulp Magazine, dedicated to "theoretical" science fiction from marginalized communities. He leads Dark Matters, a weekly podcast discussing the latest Sci-fi series through a critical race lens. Among other things, Austin has written "How to be Black and Muslim in America” on Muslim futurism, and "Practical approaches to space travel for Muslims" Austin won the Comcast Award for short films in 2008 for the film, "The Jersey Devil." Twitter: @austinyoshino Instagram: @austinyoshino

Join me for a deep conversation on love in times and aftermath of traumatic historical events. How do our history and heritage make us and how do they shape the way we love? Focusing on the unique work of poetic theater, A Short History of Anger, about the genocide in Smyrna and the massive movements of peoples across borders of modern Turkey and Greece, we dig into things that help us live meaningful lives, overcome traumas and define love in ways that are healing. Joy Manesiotis is the author of three collections of poems, A Short History of Anger, which won The New Measure Poetry Prize, Revoke, and They Sing to Her Bones, which won the New Issues Poetry Prize. Currently, she is staging A Short History of Anger: A Hybrid Work of Poetry & Theatre at international festivals and universities in the U.S. and Europe. Poems and essays have appeared in numerous literary journals and anthologies, including The American Poetry Review, Poetry, and Poetry International, as well as in translation. Previously the Edith R. White Distinguished Chair in Creative Writing at the University of Redlands, she teaches in the MFA in Writing program at OSU/Cascades and serves on the editorial board of Airlie Press.

Join me in this unique conversation on love spells and potions with Dr. Amila Buturovic. Buturovic was born in Sarajevo. She works at the Dept of Humanities and Religious Studies at York University. Her interest lies in the cultural history of Ottoman and post-Ottoman Balkans, specifically Bosnia. Her major works are Stone Speaker: Bosnian Tombstones, Landscape and Identity in the Poetry of Mak Dizdar (2002), Carved in Stone, Etched in Memory: Tombstones and Commemoration in Bosnian Islam (2016). She is a co-editor with Irvin Schick of Women in the Ottoman Balkans (2008). Her most recent project focuses on the culture of health and healing in Ottoman Bosnia, especially in relation to esoteric teachings and occult practices. As part of this project, she has teamed up with the National Museum of BiH to research and help curate their collection of artifacts that speak to the rich and interconfessional heritage of magic and healing in Ottoman Bosnia. Follow Buturovic at https://twitter.com/amila295 [https://twitter.com/amila295]

In this episode, we delve into the amazing worlds of the African-American Nobel Laureate Toni Morrison. We go in-depth on her masterpiece Beloved but also trace the theme of love throughout her oeuvre. Alice Sundman is a postdoctoral researcher in the Department of English, at Stockholm University. Her book Toni Morrison and the Writing of Place (Routledge, 2022) explores the creation and presentation of Toni Morrison’s literary places. Her research interests include Toni Morrison, ecocriticism, place and space studies, genetic criticism, phenomenology, and the intersections between literature and philosophy.