This Plus That

Dr. Andreas Weber (he/him) is a Berlin-based book and magazine writer and independent scholar. He has degrees in Marine Biology and Cultural Studies, having collaborated with theoretical biologist Francisco Varela in Paris.

Andreas' work focuses on a reevaluation of our understanding of the living. He proposes to understand organisms as subjects, and hence the biosphere as a meaning-creating and poetic reality. Accordingly, Andreas holds that an economy inspired by nature should not be designed as a mechanistic optimization machine, but rather as an ecosystem that transforms mutual sharing of matter and energy in a deepened meaning.

Andreas has contributed extensively to developing the concept of enlivenment in recent years, notably through his essay Enlivenment: Towards a Fundamental Shift in the Concepts of Nature, Culture and Politics (Berlin 2013; published in expanded and rewritten form as Enlivenment: Toward a Poetics for the Anthropocene, MIT Press, 2019). He has also put forth his ideas in several books and is contributing to major German magazines and journals, such as GEO, National Geographic, Die Zeit and Greenpeace Magazine. Weber teaches at Leuphana University and at the University of Fine Arts, Berlin. He is also part of the staff of und.Institute for Art, Culture and Sustainability, Berlin, which is devoted to link the fields of art and culture with the field of sustainability, and to develop exemplary models of productive exchange; and was named the 2016 Jonathan Rowe Commons Fellow, Mesa Refuge, Point Reyes, CA, USA.

In this episode, Andreas and Brandi talk about the intersections of Love + Death, including:

• How one of his books helped Brandi fall back in love with the world a handful of years ago.
• The first time they both remember death becoming real in our lives, not just conceptually, but somatically.
• How our world is in a century-long struggle against death.
• The physical experience of aliveness.
• What biology has to say about purpose.
• How you can’t just be concerned with your own aliveness at the expense of others and your community.
• What fermentation and composting have to do with community and healthy ecosystems.
• How Andreas is trying to make himself more edible.
• How he’s leaning further into more animistic thinking.
• The challenge of institutionalizing these ideas at scale. Or, how we might “organize” aliveness.
• How Dr. Weber practices love in his life practically.
  

Listeners can find Dr. Andreas Weber at his website, https://biologyofwonder.org/ and on Twitter @biopoetics.

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Music: The in-house musicians at Slip.stream
Audio Engineering: The team at Upfire Digital

It's This Plus That, and it's finally here! In the show's official trailer, Brandi talks about who the podcast is for and what you can expect in each episode. She also gives quick insights into why this kind of "paradoxical" thinking is so important. The official show launches on Tuesday, September, 14th 2021, and will release every other week after that.

Emily McIlroy (she/her) was born and raised in Norman, Oklahoma with her twin brother Ross. She received her BA in Studio Art from the University of Arizona in 2005, and her MFA in Drawing and Painting from the University of Hawaii at Manoa in 2011. She served many years as an instructor and an art educator for the Honolulu Museum of Art School, and the Hawaii State Art Museum and currently teaches in the drawing and painting program at the University of Hawaii at Manoa.

When she's not teaching or in her studio, Emily enjoys reading, writing and walking, and swimming her way through various terrestrial and aquatic wildernesses. She lives and works in Honolulu in Pālolo Valley with her very vocal Siamese cat.

In this episode, on the intersections of Painting + Prayer, we talk about:

[11:13] How Emily and I came to know each other.
[11:45] Emily talks about her body of work, The Lilies, as prayers.
[26:28] Art as the whetstone of consciousness.
[31:59] Paradox as a feature of the human mind.
[38:35] Emily's story of losing her twin brother and how it’s shaped her life and work.
[42:36] Where the title for Emily’s “Lilies” exhibit comes from.
[45:31] Questions like “Who am I?” and “What’s my purpose” as invitations to prayer.
[56:46] Thinking of death as a dimension beyond our current perception.
[1:01:23] Life and death as part of the same continuum.
[1:18:43} The artist’s role in translating the unknown into languages others can understand.
[1:21:09] What it means to pray without ceasing.
[1:35:57] Emily shares her battle with an autoimmune disease when she was young.
[1:41:24] “Good deaths” vs. “bad deaths.”
[1:43:12] Self-respect as the path to being most fully alive.
[1:49:07] The beauty of being fully present.
[1:52:45] Your health is a reflection of the health of your community.
[1:56:38] The gift of helping other people come alive through your work.
[1:59:27] The depths of your grief can only be as deep as your love.
[2:01:55] There is no such thing as faith if there is no doubt.

Prefer to see this conversation instead? Watch the full episode on Youtube. You can also find more on our conversation and links to everything we discussed by checking out this episode’s show notes.

Listeners can follow and support Emily at her:
Website
Facebook
Instagram

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Podcast Management & Production Credits:
The Podcast Babes

David Epstein (he/him) is the author of the New York Times bestsellers Range and The Sports Gene. He was previously an investigative reporter at ProPublica, where his work spanned from drug cartels to poor practices in scientific research. Prior to that, he was a senior writer at Sports Illustrated. He has master's degrees in environmental science and journalism, and has lived aboard a ship in the Pacific Ocean, and in a tent in the Arctic. His TED Talks have been viewed more than 10 million times, and he’s formerly the host of Slate’s popular “How To!” podcast.

Like a love letter to generalists, backed by mounds of scientific data, his second book, Range, makes the case that delayed selection is actually better for development. When you “sample” many different things, taking your time to find what really suits you, you might spend years looking “lazy” or “directionless” from the outside, but there’s a good chance you’ll find greater satisfaction when you finally find “your thing.” In fact, in combining all of your varied experiences, you might also fill a unique niche in the world—one no one else has ever considered.

And while the world might see this process as very “inefficient”—a hated behavior in an industrialized world—David and Brandi talk about how inefficiency is actually quite connected to the concept of “match fit,” which is really just another way to say “joy.”

Plus:

• Vincent van Gogh, who didn’t come into painting until very late in his life, after years of trying many, many different things and often seeming a “failure.”
• The first time David realized that normalizing life as a generalist might be incredibly cathartic, and why he thinks “Range” continues to elicit such an emotional response.
• David’s own path as a generalist and how his “average” skills in one domain, when applied to something seemingly unrelated, suddenly became very unique.
• How switching so many jobs in your life can be seen as “inefficient,” but often leads you to a better “match fit.”
• Why we’ve traditionally cared so much about efficiency, but what society actually calls for now.
• How things like school debt can keep us in jobs that aren’t a good fit for us, and what the “sunk-cost fallacy” has to do with it.
• How humans are actually more suited to late-blooming than any other organism.
• How David practices inefficiency to keep himself joyful and curious.
• The people currently inspiring David when it comes to “connecting the seemingly un-connectable.”
  

Listeners can find David Epstein at his website https://davidepstein.com/ (please do sign up for his newsletter there—you’ll get instant goodies to dive into) and on Twitter @DavidEpstein.

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Music: The in-house musicians at Slip.stream
Audio Engineering: The team at Upfire Digital

Abrah Dresdale is a cultural artist, visionary educator, and consultant in the fields of regenerative social design, prison food justice, and Jewish earth-based traditions. She has a new book, out within the last couple of weeks, called Regenerative Design for Change Makers: A Social Permaculture Guidebook. It’s an essential guide for organizational changemakers, consultants, higher education students, and transdisciplinary educators pursuing a regenerative future for the 21st century.

Adam Brock is a Denver-based cultural artist practicing regenerative social design. For over a decade, he’s worked to create the conditions for regenerative relationships among individuals, grassroots initiatives, and institutions throughout the country. Adam also has a book, published in 2017, called Change Here Now: Permaculture Strategies for Personal and Community Transformation, a recipe book for social change inspired by the more-than-human world.

Their extended bios can be found in the show notes for this episode.

In this discussion, Abrah, Adam, and Brandi talk about the intersections of Fractals + Free Will, including:

• How Abrah and Adam practice and teach a kind of “social biomimicry.”
• What Abrah calls the “principle of positive contagion”—a way we create our own weather patterns and exhibit personal agency, power, and free will, even when living inside oppressive systems.
• How healing can ripple to the past, another example of fractals.
• How we can create a “yes” where the world has told us there’s a “no,” like one beautiful story about a man locked in prison who nonetheless found a way to run the Boston Marathon.
• How tender and exhausting it can feel to constantly have to reassert your own agency in spaces where your whole humanity isn’t seen.
• The alienation we’ve all experienced in our early spiritual traditions, but how we’ve each grappled with reintegrating “ancient technologies” in ways that reflect ourselves and our values today—including the ability to critique how some of our “new” traditions, even permaculture, often include problematic practices.
• And so much more.
  

Listeners can find Abrah and Adam’s work with Regenerate Change online, at regeneratechange.org, and on Instagram @regeneratechange.

Get more This Plus That:
Sign up for the newsletter. Check out this episode's show notes.
Follow along on Twitter: @thisplusthatpod
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Check out the Website: thisplusthat.com

Music: The in-house musicians at Slip.stream
Audio Engineering: The team at Upfire Digital