Forest of Thought Ingrid M. Rieser

In this episode I speak to writer and filmmaker Sarah Thomas. Her memoir, The Raven’s Nest, is a meditation on her time spent in Iceland, and explores how identity and language are interwoven with landscape and ecology. What does it mean to fall in love with a place, with its human and non-human inhabitants?  And how may we each do our little part in mending the world? 

Sarah Thomas is a writer, documentary filmmaker, and traveller with a PhD in Interdisciplinary Studies. She is committed to work that explores, evokes and honours our entanglements with the living world. She has lived and journeyed from the Equator to the Arctic Circle finding stories in the everyday. Her films have been screened internationally. In 2020 she was nominated for the Arts Foundation Environmental Writing Award. She was longlisted for the inaugural Nan Shepherd Prize for nature writing and shortlisted for the 2021 Fitzcarraldo Essay Prize. Her ecological memoir, The Raven’s Nest (Atlantic Books 2022), is her debut. 



ICELANDIC WORDS FROM THE EPISODE: 


Óvissuferð – a journey where you don’t know what will happen
Kvöldvaka – an evening gathering, traditionally to mend or do crafts while listening to someone reading aloud.
Bergmál – echo (literally: language of the mountains)
Tölva – computer (literally: number oracle)



LINKS: 


Sarah’s website: ⁠https://sarahthomas.net⁠
The Raven’s Nest: ⁠https://sarahthomas.net/the-ravens-nest/⁠
Book by David Abram on language and ecology: Spell of the sensuous: ⁠https://www.penguinrandomhouse.com/books/319/the-spell-of-the-sensuous-by-david-abram/⁠
Ursula LeGuin’s The carrier bag theory of fiction: ⁠https://otherfutures.nl/uploads/documents/le-guin-the-carrier-bag-theory-of-fiction.pdf⁠



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How are our modern ways of thinking and being different from those of ancient peoples? When did logic and rational thinking become ‘common sense’, instead of just one of the many ways we may contemplate life’s important questions? And how is our consciousness and presence in the world altered as we become evermore enmeshed in advanced technologies?

Ingrid speaks to philosopher-gardener Jeremy Naydler. Jeremy has written several books on the experience of the sacred in ancient cultures. In his newer work he focuses on the fraught relationship between humans and technology as it has developed from ancient times until today, and explores how the acceleration of modern technologies forces us to examine how we cultivate the human in an era of machines. 

Jeremy Naydler, Ph.D., is a philosopher who specializes in the religious life of ancient cultures. He is a Fellow of the Temenos Academy and author of Temple of the Cosmos, Shamanic Wisdom in the Pyramid Texts, The Future of the Ancient World, and Goethe on Science. He lives in Oxford, England.



LINKS TO THINGS WE TALKED ABOUT:


Jeremy’s books on the sacred in ancient traditions (e.g. The Future of the Ancient World, The and Temple of the Cosmos): https://www.innertraditions.com/author/jeremy-naydler
Jeremy’s books on technology in relation to the human (In the Shadow of the Machine and The Struggle for a Human Future): https://www.templelodge.com/viewauthor.php?auth_id=109
Egyptian Book of the Dead: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Book_of_the_Dead
Heidegger on “The question concerning technology”: https://monoskop.org/images/4/44/Heidegger_Martin_The_Question_Concerning_Technology_and_Other_Essays.pdf
The Philokalia: https://www.holybooks.com/wp-content/uploads/Philokalia.pdf

All episodes and more at ⁠forestofthought.com⁠

Support us on Patreon: ⁠patreon.com/forestofthought⁠

Share and subscribe. Find all available platforms here: ⁠https://anchor.fm/forestofthought⁠

Our theme music is by Christian Holtsteen at ⁠stoneproduction.no⁠. 

It’s been said that it’s easier to imagine the end of the world than the end of capitalism and our modern way of life. Why is it so hard for us to cultivate our imagination and to imagine that things might be different? What becomes possible if communities harness the power of imagination in building a more beautiful world? In this episode I speak to Rob Hopkins, writer and co-founder of the Transition movement. I visit him in the Buttercup Field and we discuss what might be possible if we moved from ‘What is’ to ‘What if?’

Rob Hopkins is the co-founder of Transition Network and of Transition Town Totnes, and author of several books including ‘The Transition Handbook‘ and most recently, ‘From What Is to What If: unleashing the power of imagination to create the future we want’. He is a Director of Totnes Community Development Society and of New Lion Brewery, and hosts the podcast ‘From What If to What Next‘.

LINKS: 


Rob’s website: https://www.robhopkins.net
Rob’s podcast: https://www.robhopkins.net/podcast/
Transition Towns: https://transitionnetwork.org
Joanna Macy & ‘The work that reconnects’ : https://www.joannamacy.net
Jane McGonigal on the things that can change in 10 years: https://janemcgonigal.com
Civic imagination office in Bologna: https://www.resilience.org/stories/2019-03-07/bologna-the-city-with-a-civic-imagination-office/
Antanas Mockus, ex-mayor of Bogota: https://www.nytimes.com/2015/07/17/opinion/the-art-of-changing-a-city.html
New Lion Brewery in Totnes: https://www.newlionbrewery.co.uk

All episodes and more at forestofthought.com

Support us on Patreon: patreon.com/forestofthought

Share and subscribe. Find all available platforms here: https://anchor.fm/forestofthought

Our theme music is by Christian Holtsteen at stoneproduction.no. 

How might the use of voice and song be an unexpectedly powerful way to access our deeper selves? In this episode I speak to Briony Greenhill, an incredible musician who uses collaborative improvisation as a way to connect and heal. Briony also generously shares her personal experiences and the philosophy of life that she has come to through her work.

Briony Greenhill is an artist, teacher and changemaker, with a special focus on improvisation, described as "one of the world's leading proponents of Collaborative Vocal Improvisation (CVI)" by the Guardian, and as "Marvin Gaye crossed with a funky earth mother" by Mojo.  She finds her music and lyrics through improvising, often together with others. Her lyrics focus on themes of human depth, paradigm shift, the intimacy and bigger picture of our times. As a teacher she helps people bring out their full voices, develop their musicianship, express themselves, connect and heal.

LINKS


Briony’s website – find all info and music there: https://www.brionygreenhill.com/
Call off the Thought and Sing – conversations hosted by Briony (past convos available on Youtube): https://www.facebook.com/CallofftheThoughtandSing
Pat MacCabe : https://www.patmccabe.net
Kimberley Hare – The Edge https://www.heartofthriving.com/conversations/
Happy Thank you More Please: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ls_SKFeJxEg
Robert MacFarlane’s book Mountains of the Mind: https://www.theguardian.com/books/2003/nov/13/guardianfirstbookaward2003.gurardianfirstbookaward



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Our theme music is by Christian Holtsteen at stoneproduction.no. 

In what ways might the roots of the internet actually stretch back much further than we think? Does the internet enhance or distort our humanness? How is our deepening entanglement with algorithms shaping how we think and what we pay attention to?

Justin E. H. Smith is a professor at the Department of History and Philosophy of Science at the Université Paris Cité, and is a writer of both non-fiction, fiction and poetry. His latest book is The Internet is Not What You Think It Is: A History, a Philosophy, a Warning, in which he traces the deep history of the internet and asks where these technologies may be taking us next. His previous books include Irrationality: A History of the Dark Side of Reason and Divine Machines: Leibniz and the Sciences of Life. He posts regularly on Substack at Justin E. H. Smith’s Hinternet.

LINKS:


Justin’s book The Internet is Not What You Think It Is: https://press.princeton.edu/books/hardcover/9780691212326/the-internet-is-not-what-you-think-it-is
Justin’s Substack: https://justinehsmith.substack.com
Justin’s book on Gottfried Leibniz: https://press.princeton.edu/books/hardcover/9780691141787/divine-machines
David Abram on technology and animism: https://emergencemagazine.org/essay/magic-and-the-machine/
James William’s Stand out of our light (Ted Talk based on book of same name: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MaIO2UIvJ4g
Yves Citton on the Ecology of attention: https://www.wiley.com/en-us/The+Ecology+of+Attention-p-9781509503735

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Our theme music is by Christian Holtsteen at stoneproduction.no.

How do we manifest the world we would like to see? How are art and activism connected to things like magic and ritual? How does being rooted in a place help us defend it? In this episode I visit Isa Fremeaux at the ZAD (zone à defendre) in Brittany, France, where an unlikely alliance of local residents and activists succeeded in stopping the building of a planned airport. Isa shares her experiences of working at the intersection of art and activism, and we explore what it means to create the worlds we want to inhabit.

Isa Fremeaux is a writer, activist and educator, formerly senior lecturer in Media and Cultural studies at Birckbeck College, London. Together with her partner Jay Jordan she has, among other things, created Pathways to Utopia, a film/book project exploring utopian communities in Europe, and the Laboratory of Insurrectionary Imagination, a place for experiments at the intersection of art and activism. Their book “We Are ‘Nature’ Defending Itself – Entangling Art, Activism and Autonomous Zones” explores these ideas further and takes us along on part of the journey of the ZAD.

LINKS:


Isa and Jay’s book: We are ‘Nature’ Defending Itself  – Entangling Art, Activism and Autonomous Zones: https://www.plutobooks.com/9780745345871/we-are-nature-defending-itself/
Pathways to Utopia: https://lessentiersdelutopie.wordpress.com/trailer/
Laboratory of Insurrectionary Imagination: https://labo.zone/
Links to the six points: https://zad.nadir.org/IMG/pdf/6pointszad-a3-2.pdf
The invisible committee: https://theanarchistlibrary.org/category/author/comite-invisible

Support us on Patreon: www.patreon.com/forestofthought

Find all episodes on our website: www.forestofthought.com

Share and subscribe. We're available on most podcast apps, including:

Spotify: https://open.spotify.com/show/2ue3XA6IQQLC05FQMINuy1 . Apple Podcasts: https://podcasts.apple.com/…/podcast/forest-of…/id1508610729. Links to all platforms: https://anchor.fm/forestofthought.

Our theme music is by Christian Holtsteen at stoneproduction.no.