The Shapeshifting Play

Les Shapeshifters
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  • Philosophy
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In a world on the edge of collapse, where do we find radical inspiration? Welcome to The Shapeshifting Play - a risky, awe-inducing audio experience designed to reignite your spark and challenge your reality. Each episode unfolds like an act in a theatere, gathering the world's most brilliant thinkers and seekers to explore deep questions of perception, consciousness, and transformation. Through intimate conversations with artists, philosophers, scientists, musicians, and change-makers, every guest offers a vital dose of medicine for our times.

  1. Oct 2

    Artist Spotlight: Omaya on Divine Madness and The Creative Spark (Act 13)

    Before a song exists, there is a hum. Welcome to the first edition of the Artist Spotlight, a new series on The Shapeshifting Play where we spotlight artists and musicians and the worlds they build. To open the series, I sit down with my dear friend Dylan Halverson, the human behind Omaya. Dylan was born and raised in Montana. He is a genre-bending music producer, poet, mystic, songwriter, ecologist, farmer and practitioner of the healing arts. For him, music is energetic wardrobe: you wear what you listen to, and a discography is a sound garden where a human can bloom and become. We begin with the hum, the most primordial sound, and with the idea that 80% of music is listening. From there we move through Hazrat Inayat Khan's The Mysticism of Sound and Music, why everyone is intrinsically creative, songwriting as world-building, and whether there is such a thing as healthy dissociation. We also take on the charge of "woo woo" idealism, Plato's divine madness, and whimsy as a way of delighting in delight. Along the way there are sounds, cosmic giggles, and the reminder that we are, at a quantum level, excited particles. Dylan closes with a spoken word piece on narrative therapy and the stories we tell ourselves: if you listen close to the soul, you can build a throne in your own superposition. If you stay till the end you can hear a snippet of his new song, At Home (available on bandcamp) This conversation is an act in this shapeshifting to go be wild, be whimsical, and go be mad. Dylan now offers 1:1 mentorship for people bringing their own songs into the world. 🎧 Omaya on Bandcamp: https://omayaworld.bandcamp.com/🌱 Website: https://www.omayaworld.com/📷 Instagram: @omaya.music 🎙️ Are you an artist or musician who wants to hop on the mic for the Artist Spotlight? Email us at contact@shapeshifters.studio Go deeper with the accompanying essay on The Shapeshifters Assembly: https://substack.com/@lesshapeshiftersJoin the community: @les.shapeshifters

  2. Sep 18

    On Quantum Anomalies and the Strangeness of Being in The Universe with Dr Stephon Alexander (Act 12)

    Theoretical physicist and cosmologist Dr. Stephon Alexander joins Laila Saber Rodriguez for the closing act of Season One of The Shapeshifting Play. This is Act XII: The First House, Of the Self and Genesis.  Dr. Stephon Alexander is Professor of Physics at Brown University, President of the National Society of Black Physicists, and author of The Jazz of Physics and Fear of a Black Universe. He is a theoretical cosmologist, jazz saxophonist, and founder of the Sound+Science nonprofit. Together they sit at the threshold of what physics holds. From the singularity of the Big Bang to the wave function of the entire universe; from quantum anomalies as the openings through which reality reveals what our mind missed, to the state of not-knowing as the condition for genuine discovery; from panpsychism to Carl Jung to the Heart Sutra to the dream that once gave Dr. Alexander a concrete insight into a fifty-year-old problem in physics. This is a conversation about the strangeness of being here, inside a universe that is waving, becoming, and still learning its own laws. Topics include: quantum cosmology, the Big Bang singularity, entropy and creativity, anomalies and anomaly cancellation, the black swan phenomenon, dreams and physics, panpsychism, complementarity, non-local consciousness, form and emptiness, Karen Barad and matter-meaning, chirality and the handedness of space and time, mentorship and community in science, and the mystery that the universe is comprehensible at all. 📜 Read the accompanying essay on our Substack. https://substack.com/@lesshapeshifters Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/les.shapeshifters/ 🜂 Twelve houses. Twelve acts to remember our inherent shapeshifter. Season 2 up next.

  3. Sep 4

    Why Everything Alive Has a Soul with Dr. Andreas Weber (Act 11)

    Welcome back to The Shapeshifting Play. Season one moves through the twelve astrological houses, and this Act 11 sits in House 2, the house of value, of resource, of the material world and what sustains it. It's a strange house, because it asks a question that sounds simple until you try to answer it: what do you actually value, and what have you mistaken for the whole of something when it was only ever the visible edge of it? I'm sitting with Dr. Andreas Weber: biologist, philosopher, nature writer, and, for the last decade, a practitioner of the Sufi path. We talk about his new book, Butterfly Means Soul, where Andreas reads a beautiful part. We dive into the ancient Greek word psyche, which means both soul and butterfly, and, it turns out, breath as well. We follow that thread into the Sufi idea of the breath of compassion as the ground beneath everything that exists, into Ibn Arabi's isthmus, where duality holds without dissolving, and into a Rumi parable about a garden that is really an unlimited beneficence we've only agreed to call a garden because the whole of it would be too much to hold. His book, Butterfly Means Soul, is out now through Gometra Press: gometrapress.com & Amazon You can buy the book directly from the printer here (UK & US), or have it shipped from here (Germany). You can get it from Thalia.de (Europe and World), or have it sent to a German bookstore here. Andreas on Instagram https://www.instagram.com/frankandreasweber/ Go deeper with the written piece for this episode on The Shapeshifters Assembly, our Substack. And come find the community on Instagram: @les.shapeshifters

  4. Aug 21

    Deep Listening as Documentary Practice with Maria Clara Parente (Act 10)

    House 3 of The Shapeshifting Play is the house of communication, of deep listening, of local care, of storytelling that honours the land it comes from instead of extracting from it. In this episode I'm joined by Brazilian filmmaker, journalist, and poet Maria Clara Parente, founder of Simbiótica Filmes, whose work moves between documentary, activism, and radical imagination for other ways of inhabiting this planet. Maria Clara's debut feature Regenerar premiered at the Rio de Janeiro International Film Festival and went on to win Best Documentary at OffCine Doc in Spain. Her most recent ongoing film follows Nigerian philosopher Bayo Akomolafe and his School of Cracks.  In this conversation we talk about:  ❋ Donna Haraway's string figures and speculative fabulation, and what it means to play with an idea instead of asserting it ❋ Situated knowledge and staying with the trouble ❋ Why you have to name where you're speaking from before you speak ❋ Deep listening as the foundation of ethical documentary filmmaking ❋ A fishing village outside Belém where joy survived the shadow of an oil company ❋ The three-part structure of Regenerar: death, dreaming, living ❋ Mina Salami's line that to make meaning is to make freedom ❋ What it means to be born again, with the same eyes, under a different constellation of stars. Follow Maria Clara Parente: Instagram Vimeo Regenerar Project Follow The Shapeshifting Play: Instagram Substack (The Shapeshifters Assembly) YouTube Okay let's shapeshift in this grand play, shall we?

  5. Aug 7

    The Milk Line: On Belonging Beyond Blood with Eimear Burke (Act 9)

    Eimear Burke is the third Chosen Chief in the history of OBOD, the Order of Bards, Ovates and Druids - a nurse and psychologist turned storyteller who found her path through a paperback in a Dublin bookshop and never looked back. In this conversation we trace what it means to belong: milk lines versus blood lines, the mothers erased from old Irish myth and what happens when you hand them their voice back, the strange arithmetic of sacrifice and grief, and the difference between a strong ego and a loud one. A conversation about home, roots, and the feminine ways of knowing we're only just remembering how to hear. Follow The Shapeshifters Assembly for a deeper dive into the shapeshifters universe. Instagram: @les.shapeshifters

  6. Jul 24

    Why Am I So Confused? The Courage to Follow Your Blood Back to Your Body with Joshua Rivers (Act 8)

    Confusion isn't the opposite of clarity, it might just be the doorway to courage. In this episode of The Shapeshifting Play, Laila sits down with poet, magician, and Busy Being Black podcast host Joshua Rivers for a conversation that moves through House Five: the astrological house of the heart, courage, and play. Together with guest co-host Constance Mariena, they unpack why feeling lost, confused, or disconnected from your own body might be the most honest place to start - and how courage, prayer, and radical self-trust can guide you back home to yourself. Joshua shares an original prose poem, a vision of the child, warrior, and sage he carries inside him, and a closing prayer that captures what it means to live an enchanted life. Topics include: the etymology of confusion and courage, embodiment and learning your body like a new lover, prayer as a creative act, Sufi mysticism and the erotic sacred, and why Joshua is walking away from his beloved eight-year podcast to make room for what's next. Go deeper on Substack The Shapeshifters Assembly, and find our community on Instagram @les.shapeshifters.

  7. Jul 10

    Breaking Taboo: Tricksters, Eroticism & Power with Minna Salami (Act 7)

    There is no such thing as a benevolent trickster." In House 6 of The Shapeshifting Play, Laila & guest co-host Constance sits down with Minna Salami to break open everything we're taught not to say out loud: taboo, the trickster, and the erotic as power. Minna Salami is a Nigerian-Finnish-Swedish author and cultural critic based in London. She's the founder of MsAfropolitan, the award-winning blog that's drawn over a million readers connecting feminism to culture from an Africa-centered lens, and the author of Sensuous Knowledge: A Black Feminist Approach for Everyone and Can Feminism Be African? Elle Magazine named her one of twelve women changing the world, alongside Angelina Jolie and Michelle Obama. Together they trace taboo back to its real function, not protection, but conformity and ask why the trickster is never kind, why eroticism (not to be confused with the pornographic) might be the last frontier of power we haven't fully reclaimed, and why darkness itself has been rationed out unequally. Expect talk of shapeshifters, stillness, shame, tricksters, menopause, and what it means to be fully alive in the body. Follow @les.shapeshifters and subscribe to our Substack The Shapeshifters Assembly for the written companion piece to every episode.

  8. Jun 26

    Why Your Relationships are your Greatest Mirror with Virginia Vigliar (Act 6)

    What do your relationships reveal about you, and what are they asking of you? In Act 6 of The Shapeshifting Play, host Laila sits with Virginia Vigliar, writer, curator, and researcher whose words have appeared in The Guardian, The New York Times, Al Jazeera, and Atmos Magazine to move through House Seven: the house of relationships, of the mirror, of encounter. This conversation is accompanied by guest co-host of season 1, Constance Mariena. The seventh house sits opposite the first, the house of self, because who we are in relation is inseparable from who we are alone. What we haven't yet owned in ourselves has a way of showing up wearing someone else's face. In this conversation: holding paradox without collapsing it into resolution / the biology of connection and why we are wired for relation / what contemporary dating culture is doing to our capacity for genuine encounter / grief as a prerequisite for imagining new worlds / flirtation as a philosophy of aliveness / and why to shapeshift is to remain in relation with yourself through all the changes. Connect with Virginia Substack — Antidotes Website: virginiavigliar.com Instagram Les Shapeshifters Substack: The Shapeshifters Assembly Website: shapeshifters.studio Instagram

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About

In a world on the edge of collapse, where do we find radical inspiration? Welcome to The Shapeshifting Play - a risky, awe-inducing audio experience designed to reignite your spark and challenge your reality. Each episode unfolds like an act in a theatere, gathering the world's most brilliant thinkers and seekers to explore deep questions of perception, consciousness, and transformation. Through intimate conversations with artists, philosophers, scientists, musicians, and change-makers, every guest offers a vital dose of medicine for our times.

Information

  • Creator
    Les Shapeshifters
  • Episodes
    13
  • Rating
    Explicit
  • Copyright
    © Les Shapeshifters
  • Show Website
    The Shapeshifting Play