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.
BETTY MARTIN on The Language of Consent /358
KURT RUSSO on a Prayer of Mourning /357
ERIN MANNING on the Choreography of Neurodiversity /356
CORRINA GOULD on Settler Responsibility and Reciprocity [ENCORE] /355
FARIHA RÓISÍN on the Courage of Listening to Our Bodies /354
PERDITA FINN on the Long Story of Our Souls /353
JACQUELINE SUSKIN on The Poetry of Seasons /352
OBI KAUFMANN on the Ecotone of Art and Science /351
JASON BALDES on Buffalo and Land Rematriation /350
The Edges in the Middle, VI: Báyò Akómoláfé, Madhulika Banerjee, and Minna Salami
STEPHEN JENKINSON on a Lucid Reckoning /349
ABDOUMALIQ SIMONE on Urban Entanglements /348
ANDREA GIBSON on The Blessings of the Wound /347
KATRINA SPADE on New Life from Death /346
KURT RUSSO on the People Under the Sea [ENCORE] / 345
KEIARA WADE on Generations of Black Cowboys /344
JAMES BRIDLE on Modes of Intelligence /343
TOKO-PA TURNER on Dreams of Belonging /342
AMY GLENN on a Life in Thresholds /341
The Edges in the Middle, V: Báyò Akómoláfé, Naomi Klein, and Yuria Celidwen
Create your
podcast in
minutes
It is Free
The Modern West
Voices of Misery Podcast
House of Whimsical Terror
Dairyland Frights
Stuff You Should Know
Timcast IRL