Integration

Integration: The Journal of Big Picture Theory and Practice
  • 4.4 (7)
  • Philosophy

The Integration podcast features thinkers forging connections across domains, traditions, and levels of analysis in pursuit of deeper coherence and actionable wisdom. In particular, it unpacks and promotes the work of scholars contributing to Integration: The Journal of Big Picture Theory and Practice, a peer-reviewed, inter-, trans-, and archdisciplinary journal committed to advancing the integrative study and applied use of metatheory and systems thinking for engaging with the unprecedented complexity of the 21st century. It also features scholars whose work is making vital contributions to this broader field.

  1. Oct 26

    What Is Complex Thought? A Deeper Dive into Edgar Morin with Sean Kelly

    In this episode of the Integration podcast, Sean Kelly joins Nick Hedlund and Brendan Graham Dempsey to go deeper into the complex thought of Edgar Morin. Put simply, Kelly says, complex thought is an invitation to a practice of the heart-mind, a way to stay connected and to stay real. Reality is complex, and making sense of it often takes ideas that seem to exclude one another. Faced with that, our habit is to simplify, which is understandable, since we often need to simplify just to get by. But as societies grow more complex, simplification turns harmful. It leads to fragmentation, and fragmentation leads to violence, which Morin understood as a broken relationship. Complex thought is the way back: a way of thinking that holds together what tends to fall apart, and, in Sean Kelly’s words, an invitation to be true to what’s real and to the full potentials of being human. Timestamps: 00:00:00 – Introduction 00:01:52 – How Sean Kelly Discovered Morin 00:11:52 – What Is Complex Thought? 00:17:29 – Morin’s Method vs. Descartes’s Method 00:22:36 – Beyond Systems Theory: The Whole Is Both More and Less 00:32:24 – A Worldview Without Triumphalism: Homo Sapiens-Demens 00:44:46 – Consciousness and the Question of Realism 00:53:56 – What Complex Thought Brings to Integrative Metatheory 00:58:53 – What Complex Thought Leaves Out 01:01:57 – Why Hasn’t Morin Been Translated? 01:08:06 – Polycrisis and Metacrisis

    What Is Complex Thought? A Deeper Dive into Edgar Morin with Sean Kelly

  2. Oct 13

    What is Archdisciplinarity
Really? with Cory David Barker, Nick Hedlund & Brendan Graham Dempsey

    In this episode of the Integration podcast, Cory David Barker joins Nick Hedlund and Brendan Graham Dempsey to go deeper into archdisciplinarity, the study of what the big unifying frameworks have in common. It began with a puzzle: a universal model of structure and a universal model of process seemed to rest on the same underlying recursion, a pattern Barker traces back to Turing and Church. He explains why he writes his arches as theorems and axioms, so people can disagree with them one claim at a time, and why formal science is the field big-picture thinking has most neglected. Is comparing frameworks a way of finding what they share, or of exposing where they break? And what is it like to live inside a picture of reality that, as Barker puts it, shouldn't exist at all and yet is ridiculously organized? Timestamps: 00:00:00 – Introduction 00:02:28 – From Jung to a Survey of Human Knowledge 00:10:44 – The Genesis of an Arch: Recursion, Turing and Church 00:16:37 – What Archdisciplinarity Adds to the Field 00:25:01 – How Provisional Are the Arches? 00:33:28 – A Story of Reality, or a Grammar of Theories? 00:44:35 – Scanning for Similarities, or for Contradictions? 00:47:10 – What's Missing: Formal Science 00:48:20 – Does Any of This Change the World? 01:04:51 – Living Inside the Ruliad

    What is Archdisciplinarity
Really? with Cory David Barker, Nick Hedlund & Brendan Graham Dempsey

  3. Sep 14

    Alfred North Whitehead's Process Philosophy: A Deeper Dive with Andrew M. Davis, Nick Hedlund and Brendan Graham Dempsey

    Website: https://appliedmetatheory.org/ Support IAM: https://appliedmetatheory.org/donate/ Join IAM: https://appliedmetatheory.org/join/ The New Story of Wholeness: https://newstoryofwholeness.com/ Integrative Values Charter: https://integrativevalues.org/ Integration: The Journal Of Big Picture Theory and Practice: https://integrationjournal.org/ In this episode of the Integration podcast, Andrew M. Davis joins Nick Hedlund and Brendan Graham Dempsey for a deeper dive into process philosophy. Does interiority emerge somewhere along the evolutionary way, as emergentists hold, or does it go all the way down, as panpsychists do? And if it goes all the way down, what could feeling possibly mean at the level of an atom? Where does Whitehead land between idealism and realism, and would he count as a metamodern neorealist? What is matter, once solidity dissolves into events? And when God arrives as the chief exemplification of the metaphysics rather than an exception to it, does that survive Occam's razor? Timestamps: 00:00:00 – Introduction 00:02:32 – Does Experience Go All the Way Down? 00:03:52 – Prehension: Feeling Without Consciousness 00:08:58 – Is a Rock Feeling Anything? 00:25:09 – Idealist, Dual Aspect Monist, or Realist? 00:30:26 – What Is Matter? 00:32:37 – Whitehead as a Metamodern Neorealist? 00:43:35 – The Bifurcation of Nature 00:49:13 – Whitehead's God: Primordial and Consequent 00:59:37 – Does God Survive Occam's Razor? 01:07:29 – What Process Thought Brings to the Table

    Alfred North Whitehead's Process Philosophy: A Deeper Dive with Andrew M. Davis, Nick Hedlund and Brendan Graham Dempsey

  4. Sep 2

    Metamodernism: A Deeper Dive with Jason Ānanda Josephson Storm

    Jason Ānanda Josephson Storm joins Nick Hedlund and Brendan Graham Dempsey for a deep dive into metamodernism. Where does a worldview actually live, in an individual or in a culture, and what do we do with the fact that people are rarely as consistent as the concept assumes? Does a false belief become real the moment it makes something happen? How does a theory of language written for scholars end up shaping the way a whole country argues about facts? The answers keep turning on ontology, and on what "real" is being contrasted with in any given sentence, a question Storm thinks most of us skip. And what does any of this ask of us in the middle of a metacrisis? Timestamps: 00:00:00 – Introduction 00:01:27 – Is Metamodernism a Worldview, or a Metatheory? 00:03:32 – Where Does a Worldview Actually Live? 00:11:48 – Could Metamodernism Reach the Culture? 00:32:46 – Does Metamodernism Need a Realism? 00:36:39 – Storm's Case Against the Word 00:38:19 – Bhaskar's Demi-Real: False Beliefs With Real Effects 00:42:38 – Post-Truth, or Competing Epistemic Authorities? 00:53:37 – Existence Without Reality: Numbers and the Hole in a Donut 01:04:36 – Metamodernism and the Metacrisis Website: https://appliedmetatheory.org/ Support IAM: https://appliedmetatheory.org/donate/ Join IAM: https://appliedmetatheory.org/join/ The New Story of Wholeness: https://newstoryofwholeness.com/ Integrative Values Charter: https://integrativevalues.org/ Integration: The Journal Of Big Picture Theory and Practice: https://integrationjournal.org/

    Metamodernism: A Deeper Dive with Jason Ānanda Josephson Storm

  5. Aug 19

    What Are Big Pictures Actually For? w/ Sean Esbjörn-Hargens, Nick Hedlund, Brendan Graham Dempsey

    Sean Esbjörn-Hargens joins Nick Hedlund and Brendan Graham Dempsey for a deep dive on Complex Integral Realism, and a bigger question surfaces: what does integrative metatheory actually do in the world? The maps are enormous, and the applications so far are small and slow. Does a bigger picture hand you more leverage, or mostly a clearer view of how little leverage you have? One answer is that the payoff runs through the person doing the looking, where becoming more integratively literate changes how you read a situation long before you try to intervene in it. Another is that a big picture can be normative rather than only descriptive, as in critical realism's emancipatory strand, which names real social pathologies and asks what a better arrangement would concretely look like along with how we would get there from here. Timestamps: 00:00:00 – Introduction 00:02:02 – What Is Integrative Metatheory Actually For? 00:04:35 – Origins of Complex Integral Realism 00:07:11 – "I Haven't Seen a Good Application Yet" 00:11:06 – Managing Expectations About What Big Pictures Do 00:15:37 – Integral Life Practice and Emancipatory Social Science 00:20:32 – Concrete Utopianism: Protopia and the Theory of Transition 00:22:35 – Becoming Integratively Literate 00:27:32 – The Who, the How, and the What: Why Method Gets Ignored 00:32:09 – Can Science and Philosophy Be Kept Apart? 00:38:43 – Toward a Complex Integral Realism 2.0 00:43:21 – Where Metamodernism Stands Now 00:53:02 – What CIR Leaves Out: The Anomalous 00:59:52 – What Counts as a Metatheory? 01:04:31 – From Perspective Taking to Perspective Seeking Website: https://appliedmetatheory.org/ Support IAM: https://appliedmetatheory.org/donate/ Join IAM: https://appliedmetatheory.org/join/ The New Story of Wholeness: https://newstoryofwholeness.com/ Integrative Values Charter: https://integrativevalues.org/ Integration: The Journal Of Big Picture Theory and Practice: https://integrationjournal.org/

    What Are Big Pictures Actually For? w/ Sean Esbjörn-Hargens, Nick Hedlund, Brendan Graham Dempsey

  6. Aug 4

    A Closer Look at Visionary Realism with Nick Hedlund & Brendan Graham Dempsey

    Nick Hedlund describes Visionary Realism as an attempt to sketch a worldview adequate to the complexity and sacredness of reality, one built on reverence, humility, and listening. In this episode of the Integration podcast, he talks with Brendan Graham Dempsey about what stands in the way: the split Kant first named between what's knowable and what's real, a divide Hedlund traces forward into postmodernism and treats as the hidden engine of the metacrisis. Visionary Realism grew out of Ken Wilber's integral theory and Roy Bhaskar's critical realism, though Hedlund is clear that neither survives the encounter unchanged. His answer to the Kantian split runs through Bhaskar's distinction between the world as it is and the world as we know it, arriving at a reframing he calls "constellational containment," where mind sits nested within the world rather than sealed off from it. Along the way he makes a case for reading Piaget as a realist, and turns to what "visionary" is doing in the name, drawing on the Promethean myth and Bhaskar's reminder that the world doesn't depend on us the way we depend on it. Hedlund is also candid about what's still missing, including a fuller theory of value and Bhaskar's later, more spiritual work, an area he's only begun opening up. The episode closes on philosophy as a way of life, and on Hedlund's own question of what his essence actually is. Visionary Realism, he says, is "a philosophy I can live by." Timestamps: 00:00:00 – Introduction 00:02:22 – What Visionary Realism Is 00:07:33 – Promethean Fire and the Limits of What We Make 00:11:41 – The Split Kant Left Behind 00:18:32 – Where Does a Dog Exist? 00:30:44 – Mind Nested Within World 00:46:09 – Participatory, Process, Pluralistic 00:52:19 – What's Still Missing 01:00:19 – Spirituality Without Losing the Secular Mind 01:09:04 – A Philosophy to Live By

    A Closer Look at Visionary Realism with Nick Hedlund & Brendan Graham Dempsey

  7. Jul 22

    Roy Bhaskar's Critical Realism: A Closer Look | w/ Leigh Price, Nick Hedlund, Brendan Graham Dempsey

    In this episode of the Integration podcast, Leigh Price sits down with Nick Hedlund and Brendan Graham Dempsey to go further into critical realism than her IAM Research Forum talk had room for. She traces Roy Bhaskar's philosophy through its major phases, from transcendental realism through dialectical critical realism, where his concept of absence resolves long-standing puzzles in the Hegelian and Marxist dialectic. From there, she unpacks what's often called Bhaskar's "spiritual turn," the philosophy of metaReality: its account of non-duality and re-enchantment, and its debt to the African concept of Ubuntu. She also shares her own contribution to the field, an argument that critical realism functions as a form of systems theory, one it's rarely been credited for. Price describes the historic dialogues between critical realists and integral theorists, where real synthesis emerged alongside real tension, and recalls working alongside Bhaskar directly, including an unfinished chapter on human flourishing he asked her to write shortly before he died. The episode closes on critical realism's relevance to the metacrisis, including the case that most of us already reason like critical realists in practice, and what it would take to actually shift the root metaphors we use to make sense of the world. Timestamps: 00:00:00 – Introduction 00:02:15 – The Phases of Critical Realism: From Transcendental Realism to Dialectics 00:03:52 – Discovering Absence: Bhaskar's Breakthrough Beyond Hegel and Marx 00:15:34 – Bhaskar, Marx, and Freud: Emancipation and the Roots of Dialectic 00:22:12 – The Philosophy of metaReality 00:32:05 – Critical Realism as Unrecognized Systems Theory 00:38:24 – Critical Realism Meets Integral Theory 00:52:48 – What's Missing: The Unwritten Chapter on Flourishing 01:02:33 – Critical Realism and the Metacrisis 01:07:29 – Closing Reflections and Gratitude Website: https://appliedmetatheory.org/ Support IAM: https://appliedmetatheory.org/donate/ Join IAM: https://appliedmetatheory.org/join/ The New Story of Wholeness: https://newstoryofwholeness.com/ Integrative Values Charter: https://integrativevalues.org/ Integration: The Journal Of Big Picture Theory and Practice: https://integrationjournal.org/

    Roy Bhaskar's Critical Realism: A Closer Look | w/ Leigh Price, Nick Hedlund, Brendan Graham Dempsey

  8. Jul 14

    Going Deeper into Integral Theory | with Bruce Alderman, Nick Hedlund, & Brendan Graham Dempsey

    Website: https://appliedmetatheory.org/ Support IAM: https://appliedmetatheory.org/donate/ Join IAM: https://appliedmetatheory.org/join/ The New Story of Wholeness: https://newstoryofwholeness.com/ Integrative Values Charter: https://integrativevalues.org/ Integration: The Journal Of Big Picture Theory and Practice: https://integrationjournal.org/ In this episode of the Integration podcast, Bruce Alderman returns for a deeper look at integral theory, continuing the conversation he opened at the IAM Research Forum. Joined by Brendan Graham Dempsey and Nick Hedlund, he traces Wilber's path into integral theory from its roots in transpersonal psychology through the five moving parts of the AQAL model: quadrants, levels, lines, states, and types. Alderman then turns to where the model runs thin. He walks through its weak connection to evolutionary biology and philosopher Mark Edwards' critique that integral quietly conflates the individual and the collective, tracing how a framework built to hold everything together can end up flattening real differences. Yet Alderman argues these limits open onto something generative. He introduces his own toolkit for reading any big framework: a lightly-held approach to categories he calls the "a-categorical imperative," and "heno-ontology," a way of letting frameworks like integral theory and critical realism each hold their own ground without one swallowing the rest. The episode closes on a question left open for the whole Integrative Metatheory 2.0 project: one new synthesized map, or several frameworks working side by side? Timestamps: 00:00:00 – Introduction 00:01:41 – A Primer on Wilberian Integral Theory: From Transpersonal Roots to AQAL 00:16:05 – Where the Model Runs Thin: Science, Evolution, and Mark Edwards' Critique 00:22:05 – Mapping What Came After Wilber 00:29:24 – Inside Bruce's Grammar for Reading Big Ideas 00:44:00 – Heno-ontology: Holding Multiple Frameworks at Once 00:48:00 – Pushback: Does This Flatten Ontology and Epistemology? 00:54:47 – One Map or Many? The Open Question for Integrative Metatheory 2.0 01:17:56 – Closing Thoughts and What's Next

    Going Deeper into Integral Theory | with Bruce Alderman, Nick Hedlund, & Brendan Graham Dempsey
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Ratings & Reviews

4.4
out of 5
7 Ratings

About

The Integration podcast features thinkers forging connections across domains, traditions, and levels of analysis in pursuit of deeper coherence and actionable wisdom. In particular, it unpacks and promotes the work of scholars contributing to Integration: The Journal of Big Picture Theory and Practice, a peer-reviewed, inter-, trans-, and archdisciplinary journal committed to advancing the integrative study and applied use of metatheory and systems thinking for engaging with the unprecedented complexity of the 21st century. It also features scholars whose work is making vital contributions to this broader field.

Information

  • Creator
    Integration: The Journal of Big Picture Theory and Practice
  • Years Active
    2025 - 2026
  • Episodes
    13
  • Rating
    Clean
  • Copyright
    © The Institute of Applied Metatheory
  • Show Website
    Integration

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