Insight and inspiration in turbulent times.
This live online discussion event features Trisha Dehrone, a PhD candidate and NSF Fellow at the University of Massachusetts–Amherst. Trisha has designed and analyzed interventions that bridge group differences in divided societies and has evaluated interventions in the U.S., Rwanda, and Bosnia and Herzegovina.
Environmental journalist and podcaster Rachel Donald interviews Melissa Hoffer, the first ever Climate Chief for the state of Massachusetts. Rachel and Melissa discuss the role of government in changing the energy landscape, from relying on fossil fuels to widespread adoption of renewable sources and how to overcome the status quo championed by powerful corporations and national interests.
Journalist and podcaster Rachel Donald interviews Johanna Bozuwa, Executive Director at the Climate and Community Project, where she directs a network of researchers and experts to develop crucial and justice-based climate policy. Rachel and Johanna discuss community-based projects, policies aimed at climate adaptation and mitigation, and the political requirements of an equitable energy transition.
In this very special episode, author Daniel Quinn’s wife Rennie Mackay Quinn joins us for her first ever interview: sharing untold stories, new insights, and reflections on her life and journey with her beloved late husband Daniel Quinn.
In this climactic culmination of the Ishmael series, we ask the question: How do we transform an entire society? We’ll meet the fantastical Prince who first concocted the criminal justice system, have a final reckoning with our Taker Mythology hat, and return to the abandoned land of Ashbourne.
Is it possible to build a civilization that flies? (Metaphorically speaking of course.) How did we first learn to fly in the first place? It wasn’t by defying gravity and disobeying aerodynamics but by learning how to work with them. This is an episode of short stories, cinematic sound effects, and wacky voices. Strap in for liftoff.
The story of the Garden of Eden has been told and retold for thousands of years. Why do we keep telling it? With insight from modern biblical scholarship, we investigate the origins of this ancient story and what warning this active myth still has yet to be heeded today.
When we use the term “civilization” who do we include and exclude? Who is civilized and what does that mean? In this episode we take a step back from Ishmael to better view the context it was written in, discussing noble savage theory, romantic-primitivism, and the rise of the identity “indigenous.”
When do kids stop playing imaginary games? Ishmael the telepathic gorilla believes they never do and theorizes our culture is held captive by a story we’re all enacting. In this episode we explore the mythology that’s leading to the destruction of the world.
In this second episode of the podcast, Alex Leff invites you on an adventure through a landscape of ideas. You’ll scrape through a dystopian future where Nazi Germany won the war, attend a family reunion with our long lost furry and feathery cousins, and conduct an investigation into a planet-wide crime scene.
In this first episode of the podcast, Alex Leff takes you back in time to a fateful childhood summer when the world was a magical place to explore, yet seemed like it was ending just as he was getting to know it. It was then that Alex first read Ishmael by Daniel Quinn, the book that begins the quest of Human Nature Odyssey.
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