#19 - Marie & me (a reverse interview)

#19 - Marie & me (a reverse interview)

My very dear friend Marie-Theres Strauss challenged me to trade seats for this one. I think I agreed to talking about the pod, but ended up answering questions about myself. Marie felt that anyone following these conversations is entiteld to know more about where I am coming from. So it’s a bit different and I’m not sure my bio is inherently interesting, but I’ll offer it. What is true though: I believe in live dialogue as a uniquely rich format for learning because there are two subjectivities involved. People always communicate at multiple intellectual, emotional, and embodied levels, briefly mixing their worlds with a third, shared reality. That’s what makes talking to another human being different to chatting with an LLM… Engagement goes both ways. We can be intrigued, or triggered, or bored, or actually inspired. If the conversation is any good, it isn’t controlled by either of us. This is a public episode. If you would like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit carrie802897.substack.com [https://carrie802897.substack.com?utm_medium=podcast&utm_campaign=CTA_1]

#18 - Tango: the generous performance of gender (with Soroa Lear, again)

Why do people enjoy conventional couple dances even when they eschew conventional gender roles in real life? Is there some broader virtue that is cultivated in this highly codified, chivalrous language? What’s satisfying about setting aside important aspects of identity for the duration of a dance, and instead, pracitcing a kind of whole-body-listening with a stranger? Soroa Lear is a professional dancer, though she’ll hasten to say that Tango is not her area of expertise. I’ve spoken to her about free-form dancing more generally (episode #4). This conversation is a follow-on from that, in response to popular demand :) This is a public episode. If you would like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit carrie802897.substack.com [https://carrie802897.substack.com?utm_medium=podcast&utm_campaign=CTA_1]

#17 - Non-dual reality: the experience & the science (with James Cooke)

What are the stories we tell about the boundaries of Self - and why should we interrogate them with science, contemplative practice, and psychedelics? Dr. James Cooke believes that any deep first-principles understanding of the human condition requires us to tackle the fundamental construct of separateness. He’s not denying that everyday narratives of reality are predictive, rather he’s interested in the psychological wellbeing that exists on the other side of these stories of self. James is a neuroscientist and director of a new contemplative science research programme at Oxford University. He also teaches contemplative practices that draw from non-dual traditions, as well as being an author and podcaster. This is a public episode. If you would like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit carrie802897.substack.com [https://carrie802897.substack.com?utm_medium=podcast&utm_campaign=CTA_1]

#16 - Wolfgang, death doula

Nobody isn’t going there, nobody’s parents aren’t going there—and yet so many of us show up at the threshold surprised and unprepared. Modernity seems at a loss when it comes to the dying process. Among the oldest evidence of human meaning making are artefacts to mark this passage, but today we often find ourselves without any conceptual frame that dying doesn’t break. It’s outside the event horizon. Wolfgang Schmidt Ulm Dos Santos is a trained Death Doula. He’s done many other things - men’s fashion, startups - but it is in this work that he now finds joy. We’re old friends, and it was wonderful to hear him speak about this unexpected calling. Not entirely inappropriate in the run-up to Easter perhaps. To see how an appreciation of mortality is at the root of both the contemplative and the poetic impulse, and maybe all true delight, here’s One Or Two Things by Mary Oliver. In the conversation, we touch briefly on Rilke’s Todeserfahrung. 1 Don’t bother me I’ve justbeen born. 2 The butterfly’s loping flight carries it through the country of the leaves delicately, and well enough to get it where it wants to go, wherever that is, stopping here and there to fuzzle the damp throats of flowers and the black mud; up and down it swings, frenzied and aimless; and sometimes for long delicious moments it is perfectly lazy, riding motionless in the breeze of the soft stalk of some ordinary flower 3 The god of dirt came up to me many times and said so many wise and delectable things; I lay on the grass listening to his dog voice, crow voice, frog voice; now he said, and now, and never once mentioned forever, 4 which has nevertheless always been, like a sharp iron hoof, at the center of my mind. 5 One or two things are all you need to travel over the blue pond, over the deep roughage of the trees and through the stiff flowers of lightning --- some deep memory of pleasure, some cutting knowledge of pain. 6 But to lift the hoof! For that you needan idea. 7 For years and years I struggled just to love my life. And then the butterfly rose, weightless, in the wind.“ Don’t love your life too much,” it said, and vanished into the world.” ― Mary Oliver This is a public episode. If you would like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit carrie802897.substack.com [https://carrie802897.substack.com?utm_medium=podcast&utm_campaign=CTA_1]

#15 - Archetypes (iii): Penelope’s Odyssee (with Marzia Santori)

We continue the conversation with the Odyssey myth. Marzia interprets the story of Odysseus (Ulysses) as Penelope’s dream of individuation. I enjoyed this archetypally Jungian move. Rather than the story be about the return of the hero protagonist after the Trojan war, the entire thing is dreamed up by his wife, Penelope, known as the faithful spouse who for twenty years awaits his return to Ithaca. In fact, Odysseus is a projection of her “animus” - her masculine aspect - which through encounters with various female characters eventually returns and is reunited with her. In this telling, as Marzia says, “fidelity is not fidelity to a man, it is fidelity to herself.” A thought provoking perspective. Marzia Santori is a practicing Jungian psychoanalyst in London and Rome, as well as teaching at the CG Jung institute in Zurich. An economist in her previous life, she worked in the finance industry before turning to the Unconscious. This is Part (iii) of a 3 part mini series. Archetypes Part (i) discusses the concept and its application in analysis in general, Part (iii) is Marzia’s interpretation of the Odyssey with the help of an expansive Penelope archetype. (With apologies for the suboptimal sound quality this time) This is a public episode. If you would like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit carrie802897.substack.com [https://carrie802897.substack.com?utm_medium=podcast&utm_campaign=CTA_1]