advaya podcast

"If words can do something, if they can sink into the heart, open up new paths of perception, lead us to the threshold of a forest, this is all to the good. Then we must leave them. They’ve done their work. They got our bodies where they needed to be. At this threshold, we must thank them for their service, and lay them down. It is time to stop speaking and listen. Come to the trees: to forget and to remember. To forget the straightjackets of manufactured time and cubicles. To remember something much older than the Gregorian calendar and the forty-plus-hour workweek. Come to the trees: to touch and be touched by something more primary, more whole.” - Dr. Gavin Van Horn, "Breathing Trees"This is the fourth and final episode of REBIRTH, a limited podcast series produced by advaya, in partnership with Stella McCartney Beauty.This episode features Dr. Gavin Van Horn: Executive Editor for Center for Humans and Nature Press, and co-editor of Kinship: Belonging in a World of Relations. As we usher in springtime and we're urged out the door by our bodies, let us give in to the urge of being outside. May we learn to treat our bodies as receptive instruments. How do we develop kinship with the more-than-human world, with sprawling creativity and multiple intelligences? How can we receive with all our senses, leaving words behind? And how can this radically different orientation begin to restore frayed or fragmented relationships with the earth? In this closing conversation, we look at how we may tend to our bodies and ecosystems, in the season of new life, and receive guidance forward.About Gavin: Gavin Van Horn is Executive Editor for Center for Humans and Nature Press, the author of The Way of Coyote, and co-editor, with Robin Wall Kimmerer and John Hausdoerffer, of the award-winning five-volume series, Kinship. His words have appeared in publications such as Emergence, Orion, The Learned Pig, Sky Island Journal, and the Plumwood Mountain Journal. Gavin has an ongoing interest in the relations between story, mythology, and care for our nonhuman kin. He currently resides in the ancestral lands of the Northern Chumash people in San Luis Obispo, California, where you can find him wandering the nearby hills and shores.The episode additionally features reflection prompts by Haile Thomas, music by Johanna Warren, "There Is a Light", provided by Spirit House Records, and the series cover art is illustrated by Jia Sung.Transcripts, further reading and resources and video footage of this podcast with subtitles can be found through the YouTube playlist of this podcast: https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLjKkmvDmI67Q4V9pMCvMn6RJhzzdq6MBUadvaya is a platform for transformative education. We create learning programmes with the leading minds of our time to shift perspectives, transform our relationships and enable thriving lives in harmony with the natural living world.Find advaya through our website: https://advaya.co/, our Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/advaya.co/, and our YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/@Advaya.Stella McCartney Beauty believes that there is another way to effectively care for our skin. Their products have been formulated to work in harmony with the skin, supporting its key functions of regeneration and protection. Housed in recyclable packaging with a refill system, the range is completely vegan and cruelty-free. Shop the collection here: https://www.stellamccartneybeauty.com/

"We are a family of cells making sense of laughter, a watery collection of tireless vitality. We are a long-tongued bee lost in legume and clover and a blanketing dayscape of small biotic collisions. We are a newt-filled dawn and a mud flat packed with clams. We are a split gill with twenty thousand sexes; a termite queen basking in adulation. Knowing this will always protect you." - Dr. Patricia Ononiwu Kaishian, "Continuation"This is the third episode of REBIRTH, a limited podcast series produced by advaya, in partnership with Stella McCartney Beauty.This episode features Dr. Patricia Ononiwu Kaishian: a mycologist and Visiting Professor of Biology at Bard College in NY, as well as faculty with the Bard Prison Initiative. Patty writes: "It is past time that humans turn to the fungi to which we are bound, step into our mutual totality, and create space and futures for our wild ways of being." In this conversation, we dive into mycology as a queer discipline: what do our fungi friends teach us about entanglement and interdependence in a more-than-human world? How can we, like fungi, reclaim land, bodies, and nutrients, and rebirth into the world through decomposition?About Patty: Dr. Patricia Ononiwu Kaishian is a mycologist and Visiting Professor of Biology at Bard College in NY, as well as faculty with the Bard Prison Initiative. Her research focuses on fungal taxonomy, diversity, evolution, symbiosis, and ecology, particularly of the less studied fungal groups, such as the insect-associated Laboulbeniales. She is a co-founder of the International Congress of Armenian Mycologists, which seeks to jointly protect Armenian sovereignty and biodiversity. Patricia also studies philosophy of science, feminist bioscience, and queer theory, exploring how mycology and other scientific disciplines are situated in and informed by our sociopolitical landscape. Her work The science underground: mycology as a queer discipline appears in Catalyst: Feminism, Theory, Technoscience. Her forthcoming book, Forest Euphoria, will be published by Spiegel & Grau.The episode additionally features reflection prompts by Haile Thomas, music by Lea Thomas, "Mirrors to the Sun", provided by Spirit House Records, and the series cover art is illustrated by Jia Sung.Transcripts, further reading and resources and video footage of this podcast with subtitles can be found through the YouTube playlist of this podcast: https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLjKkmvDmI67Q4V9pMCvMn6RJhzzdq6MBUadvaya is a platform for transformative education. We create learning programmes with the leading minds of our time to shift perspectives, transform our relationships and enable thriving lives in harmony with the natural living world.Find advaya through our website: https://advaya.co/, our Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/advaya.co/, and our YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/@Advaya.Stella McCartney Beauty believes that there is another way to effectively care for our skin. Their products have been formulated to work in harmony with the skin, supporting its key functions of regeneration and protection. Housed in recyclable packaging with a refill system, the range is completely vegan and cruelty-free. Shop the collection here: https://www.stellamccartneybeauty.com/

"My soul would sing of metamorphoses. But since, o gods, you were the source of these bodies becoming other bodies, breathe your breath into my book of changes: may the song I sing be seamless as its way weaves from the world's beginning to our day." - Ovid, “The Metamorphoses”This is the second episode of REBIRTH, a limited podcast series produced by advaya, in partnership with Stella McCartney Beauty.This episode features Willow Defebaugh: the co-founder and editor-in-chief of Atmos. As Willow says, "trans people are just embodiments of the many transformations that we all go through in life." In this conversation, we embrace the necessity of bodily and ecosystem alchemy, the naturalness of transformation. How is evolution at the centre of growth, transformation at the centre of regeneration? How do we come into the truth of our bodies, in alignment with nature, and in doing so restore the biodiversity around us?About Willow: Willow Defebaugh is the co-founder and editor-in-chief of Atmos, a nonprofit biannual magazine and digital platform curated by a global ecosystem of artists, activists, and writers devoted to ecological and social justice, creative storytelling, and re-enchantment with the natural world. She writes a weekly newsletter called The Overview which offers a holistic look at life on Earth through the lens of deep ecology. Prior to Atmos, Willow held editor titles at V Magazine, CR Fashion Book, and L’Officiel USA. She has been featured in US Vogue, Vogue China, i-D, BBC, the Guardian, them, and more.The episode additionally features reflection prompts by Haile Thomas, music by Johanna Warren, "Mine to Take", provided by Spirit House Records, and the series cover art is illustrated by Jia Sung.Transcripts, further reading and resources and video footage of this podcast with subtitles can be found through the YouTube playlist of this podcast: https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLjKkmvDmI67Q4V9pMCvMn6RJhzzdq6MBUadvaya is a platform for transformative education. We create learning programmes with the leading minds of our time to shift perspectives, transform our relationships and enable thriving lives in harmony with the natural living world.Find advaya through our website: https://advaya.co/, our Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/advaya.co/, and our YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/@Advaya.Stella McCartney Beauty believes that there is another way to effectively care for our skin. Their products have been formulated to work in harmony with the skin, supporting its key functions of regeneration and protection. Housed in recyclable packaging with a refill system, the range is completely vegan and cruelty-free. Shop the collection here: https://www.stellamccartneybeauty.com/

In this highly thought-provoking talk, Hopkins, Davidson and Burke explore the place of imagination & stories in the birth of a new world. Rob Hopkins, environmental activist and writer, discusses research on the steady and persistent decline of our imagination, linked to the loss of a culture of play, less time spent in nature and anxiety, stress and trauma. He touches on the lack of imagination in today’s politicians and explores what the imagination actually is and the ways in which we can feed it to bring about the changes we want to see in the world. He also shares with us the importance of asking what if - allowing us to imagine progress. Jane Davidson, former Labour politician and minister for the environment in Wales & Gillian Burke, natural history TV producer and presenter of the BBC’s nature series Springwatch, share their experiences and wisdom as well as their visions for the world they want to live in by 2030. They go on to share ideas about how we can bring those visions to life to create the world we want to see. 

In this poetic meditation on hope, we are joined by speaker, author and facilitator Bayo Akomolafe and facilitator, poet and mentor Toni Spencer. Together they discuss the abundance that can be found in hopelessness and the things that feel invited when darkness is all that there is. The speakers consider the costs and shape of hope, and explore the ways in which hope has been colonised - asking the question of whether endless hope is part of what the system wants us to do. Bayo suggests that perhaps the way to go isn’t always forward, but a step to the side, which invites a shifting of our positions. He discusses the importance of making space for grief in order to taste the textures of joy and encourages us to be midwives for the impossible - to birth new realms - realms that can often only be born in a time of hopelessness. 

In this episode we are joined by Sharon Blackie - writer, psychologist and mythologist with a specialisation in Celtic Studies. Sharon talks to us about a tradition of Celtic myths where divine otherworldly women were considered creators of the land. She shares with us the Celtic myths and folklore around the divine female who permeates the land, who has made it and shaped it. She talks to us about a societal epidemic of unbelonging nowadays and goes on to discuss that myth and story are the connective tissue that help us belong again to the places we inhabit. She argues that if we can capture our own imaginations by using myth and stories - then we can find a way of belonging to the land. 

Jason Hickel is an economic anthropologist and author of Less Is More: How Degrowth Will Save the World. In this eye-opening talk he debunks the belief that GDP growth is equivalent to human progress and discusses the ways in which our emphasis on GDP growth has been responsible for the overconsumption of high income nations, which has led to total ecological overshoot. He elucidates the tyranny of growth that lies at the heart of our economies and puts forward several ideas for a post-growth economy, emphasising the need for a scale down of our economic activity which does not have to be at the expense of enhancing human flourishing. 

Satish Kumar, a long-term peace and environmental activist, joins us in this talk with his characteristic humour and warmth to discuss the most urgent challenge for young people today - namely, what kind of world we are going to face in a matter of years. He discusses the role of the highly educated in environmental destruction and the ways in which our systems of higher education have failed to provide us with the values or vision that will help us protect our planet. He urges young graduates to, in fact, not look for a job and to not be lured in by the multinationals, governments, and big corporations - most of which are instrumental in causing huge environmental damage. Instead he encourages us to create our own jobs which are environmentally sustainable and will work towards protecting our planet.