Winding through questions of philosophy, science, and meaning making, this week’s episode brings together vital thoughts on what it means to live an embodied life in an entangled world. Guest Merlin Sheldrake shares the motivations that drew him to study fungi and the complex ways this study has shaped his life and thought.
As Merlin shares, “an account of life that doesn't include fungi is an account of a living world that doesn’t exist.” Our relationship with fungi is non-negotiable. Merlin invites listeners to pay attention to what this relationship means and how it shapes not only our lives, but the entanglement of life across the world. With this, Merlin also shares the ways fungal life offers a diversity of expressions and possibilities – offering up the perspective that the diversity and complexity of relationship and expression is what makes life fertile.
Across the episode, Merlin and Ayana contemplate the history and meaning of science, and come to see life as a process and a relationship. The meaning we make does not come out of a vacuum, but rather out of relationship. Life itself, in its many forms, is improvisational. Understanding this, we are left with the provocation: How might we speak to the world, rather than about it?
Merlin is a biologist and author of Entangled Life: How Fungi Make Our Worlds, Change Our Minds, and Shape Our Futures, a New York Times and Sunday Times bestseller, and winner of the Royal Society Book Prize and the Wainwright Prize. Merlin is a research associate of the Vrije University Amsterdam, and works with the Society for the Protection of Underground Networks and the Fungi Foundation. A keen brewer and fermenter, he is fascinated by the relationships that arise between humans and more-than-human organisms. (merlinsheldrake.com)
Music by Matthewdavid. Visit our website at forthewild.world for the full episode description, references, and action points.
InTheField: WANDA KASHUDOHA CULP on Rooted Lifeways of the Tongass /148
LYLA JUNE on Lifting Hearts Off the Ground /147
Reshaping the Landscape of Conservation Media at JACKSON WILD /146
PAVINI MORAY on Unlocking Eros and Sacred Reciprocity ⌠PART 2⌡ /145
PAVINI MORAY on Alchemizing Trauma and Ancestral Healing ⌠PART 1⌡ /144
JADE BEGAY & JULIAN BRAVE NOISECAT on Restorying Power for a Just Transition /143
SEFRA ALEXANDRA on Seed Remembrance /142
ELSA SEBASTIAN on Loving the Last Stands of the Tongass /141
BRONTË VELEZ on the Necessity of Beauty, Part 2 /140
BRONTË VELEZ on the Pleasurable Surrender of White Supremacy, Part 1 /139
THE BUREAU of LINGUISTICAL REALITY on Seeding New Language /138
RAJ PATEL on Cheapness in the Age of Capitalism /137
COREY LESK on Warming Winters and Southern Pine Beetle Migration /136
PÁDRAIG Ó TUAMA on Finding Uncommon Ground /135
RICHIE RESEDA on Dismantling Patriarchy /134
TARA HOUSKA & RUTH BREECH on Divesting from Toxic Capitalism /133
RACHEL HEATON & ROXANNE WHITE on Funding, Fossil Fuels and Femicide /132
DONNA HARAWAY on Staying with the Trouble /131
PUA CASE on the Heart of a Mountain ⌠ENCORE⌡ /130
CINTA KAIPAT on the Militarization of Pågan and Defending Island Sovereignty /129
Create your
podcast in
minutes
It is Free
Just Dumb Enough Podcast
Voices of Misery Podcast
House of Whimsical Terror
Stuff You Should Know
Timcast IRL