This Plus That

Humans + Photosynthesis with Carrie Bennett

Brandi Stanley — Wed, 02 Nov 2022 07:30:00 +0000

As a college athlete, Carrie (she/her) suffered chronic joint pain and insomnia. After her first child was born, she developed gut inflammation and adrenal fatigue. Armed with a BS in Biology, a Master’s Degree in Clinical Nutrition, and multiple certifications, Carrie sought the root cause of her failing health, ultimately finding circadian and quantum biology, which she has discovered is foundational to health and healing. Carrie currently sees clients in her private online practice. She also teaches courses in applied quantum biology as a faculty member for the Quantum Biology Collective, as an instructor at Kalamazoo College, and via her online course platform.

In this episode, on the intersections of Humans + Photosynthesis, here are a few of the major things we cover:

How the water in our bodies is structured into a liquid crystal.
How that liquid crystal gets charged like a battery by the sun.
The fact that humans do photosynthesize.
How modern technology and indoor living drain our body’s battery.
The cascade of events that happen in our bodies via sunlight.
Why our bodies are like radios, constantly picking up vibrational data.
The quantum and biological legitimacy of manifesting.
How the water in our body remembers past trauma.
Carrie’s take on cancer, including cells being “out of tune.”
And, why you should ditch your sunglasses.

Listeners can find Carrie online, at:
Her Website
Her Quantum Foundations Course
Instagram
YouTube

Those who might be interested in taking a deeper dive can also become certified in Carrie’s six-week course, which is the world’s first-ever Quantum Circadian Certification.

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Check out this episode's show notes.
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Bonus Episode — Exploring the Nature of Paradox: An Interview of Brandi on the Ground Work Podcast

Brandi Stanley — Tue, 18 Oct 2022 17:00:00 +0000

In this bonus episode of the show, hear Brandi in conversation with Kate Kavanaugh on the Ground Work Podcast. As Kate describes of the interview —

"This episode is a long-form podcast between two people that don’t know how to be bite-sized. Often discussed through the lens of paradox where paradox is the answer and not the problem, and pleasure is found in the pursuit of all the questions. In it, Brandi discusses finding purpose in her life as a generalist for whom curiosity is always burning. We talk about aliveness as a North Star for purpose in that, according to Brandi, “Whatever wakes up aliveness is your purpose.” We talk about connection—both connecting disparate ideas and also what happens when we become disconnected and it manifests as illness in our bodies, divisiveness in our culture, and breakdowns in our ecology. Brandi shares about the role of religion in her life and her exploration of the intentional split between matter and the sacred, and how she is reintegrating them. We explore the idea of ‘living in the gift’ and how we can share our gifts with the world and how we can receive the gifts of others."

We also talk about:
– The intersection of eroticism + aliveness
– Learning to stop cutting off pieces of yourself to belong
– Holding complexity
– Finding purpose in illness

Find Kate and other Ground Work things here:
Listen to the Ground Work Podcast
Kate's Instagram

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Check out the Website: thisplusthat.com

Meat + Health with Kate Kavanaugh

Brandi Stanley — Thu, 21 Jul 2022 07:32:00 +0000

Kate Kavanaugh (she/her) is trying to figure out what it means to lay the groundwork. For herself, for human health and ecosystem health alike, for farmers, for the next generation, and beyond. After many years as a vegetarian, Kate’s health began to decline precipitously. She turned to meat for answers and found an entire world of curiosity before her. She noticed that through holistic management, farmers were working to restore ecosystems and grasslands with the help of ruminants. This seemed intimately connected to her own health journey and—curious to help restore the Western grasslands she called home through regeneratively raised meat—she opened a whole-animal butcher shop, Western Daughters, with her now-husband in 2013.

Blending her knowledge of regenerative agriculture, nutrition, anthropology, health, and biology, Kate is now in the midst of yet another life change spurred on by meat. She moved to a farm where she grows almost all of her own food, lives with the rhythms of nature, and explores the question of what it means to lay the groundwork through her podcast—the Ground Work Podcast. When she’s not exploring the intersections of human and ecosystem health, you can find her playing with goats in the sunshine.

In this episode, on the intersections of Meat + Health, we talk about:

[08:02] The paradox of life and death: they can coexist together and one is required for the other.
[22:39] The brilliant thing about ecology is that we are attracted to things that are more beautiful and taste better.
[47:21] The difference between Kate’s view on agriculture and conventional agriculture.
[57:29] Why contradiction doesn’t exist in the universe.
[01:21:45] Life thrives in edge zones within an ecosystem.
[01:30:48] Is the reason why so many people have health issues that we’ve replaced fat with sugar?
[01:37:04] Kate and I both like complexity and nuance, which sometimes makes us exhausted people.
[01:50:03] Death is not bad in nature. It strengthens the soil and our bodies. It’s all part of a bigger ecosystem.
[01:55:51] Why Kate’s community and her new podcast, Ground Work, fill her up.

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 find Kate online, at:

Ground Work Podcast
Ground Work Collective
Western Daughters
Personal Instagram
Ground Work Instagram
Western Daughters Instagram

You can also find meat from a regenerative farmer near you by going here—a search engine of more than 2,000 regenerative farms with a robust set of filters in order to find exactly what you want.

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Podcast Production Credits:
The Podcast Babes

Work + Rest with Kate Kavanaugh

Brandi Stanley — Thu, 21 Jul 2022 07:30:00 +0000

In this episode, on the intersections of Rest + Work, we talk about:

[08:45] Too much healing becoming too much of a good thing.
[19:31] Spiritual and mental journeys often being a mirror for your physical journey.
[19:43] The earth is a mirror of our individual pain and vice versa.
[20:11] Allowing healing to sometimes be passive—letting it happen rather than making it happen.
[22:11] Reclaiming your self-sovereignty when you’ve been outsourcing your healing to others.
[31:00] Healing as a birthright—nature *wants* to heal, and humans are part of nature.
[38:16] Our dental journeys, include dental cavitations, airway work, and sleep issues.
and so much more.

Ground Work Podcast
Ground Work Collective
Western Daughters
Personal Instagram
Ground Work Instagram
Western Daughters Instagram

You can also find meat from a regenerative farmer near you by going here—a search engine of more than 2,000 regenerative farms with a robust set of filters in order to find exactly what you want.

Support This Plus That:
Send Brandi a One-Time Tip

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Follow along on Twitter: @thisplusthatpod
Follow along on Instagram: @thisplusthatpod
Check out the Website: thisplusthat.com

Podcast Production Credits:
The Podcast Babes

Money + Magic with Jessie Susannah Karnatz

Brandi Stanley — Tue, 07 Jun 2022 07:30:00 +0000

Jessie Susannah Karnatz (she/her) aka the Money Witch, brings capitalism-critical, shame-free education to healers, hustlers, and creatives in order to catalyze change in their financial lives. She believes healing our finances will bring blessing to our lives, our lineages, and our communities. She offers education, Money Magic products, and Intuitive Financial Coaching online and in the Bay Area (unceded Ohlone land) and does it all with impeccable business lady style.

In this episode, on the intersections of Money + Magic, we talk about:

[06:53] “Healing your finances”
[16:34] The dynamic relationship between abundance and scarcity.
[22:18] Culture tells us that it’s better to be safe doing the work you don’t like than pursuing what you really like.
[23:03] Why following the formula of each generation and compliance doesn’t necessarily give you success.
[32:29] Taking ownership and responsibility of your finances.
[36:03] Addressing intimacy in your relationship with money.
[44:16] Money is not just material, it is also spiritual.
[52:59] Be aligned with aliveness, align your relationships, and align with your spiritual truth.
[01:02:40] What money magic feels like for Jessie.

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 Jessie at her:

Website
Facebook
Instagram

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Podcast Production Credits:
The Podcast Babes

Painting + Prayer, Part 2 with Emily McIlroy

Brandi Stanley — Tue, 24 May 2022 07:30:00 +0000

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:

[06:10] Brandi and Emily’s early struggles in Christianity and religion and where they’ve come to now.
[18:51] How choosing one discipline or tradition, like a religion, doesn’t have to mean that all the others aren’t true. In fact, it might enliven all of the other traditions even more.
[25:27] The value of committing yourself to a particular tradition and sneaky ways we individually and culturally avoid intimacy.
[37:27] Emily’s “Promises” blog.
[47:24] Strengthening the “host” instead of attacking the “invader”—a different way to think of “health.”
[55:22] The visceral nature of grief and joy.
[56:32] Eve’s greatest sin wasn’t eating the apple, it was choosing the knowledge of “good” and “evil”—a dualism.
[1:05:03] Meditation as a path to finding alignment.

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

Support This Plus That:
Send Brandi a One-Time Tip
Become a Monthly Supporter

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Follow along on Twitter: @thisplusthatpod
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Check out the Website: thisplusthat.com

Podcast Production Credits:
The Podcast Babes

Painting + Prayer, Part 1 with Emily McIlroy

Brandi Stanley — Tue, 10 May 2022 07:30:00 +0000

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.

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

Support This Plus That:
Send Brandi a One-Time Tip
Become a Monthly Supporter

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Podcast Management & Production Credits:
The Podcast Babes

An Update + A Request

Brandi Stanley — Tue, 26 Apr 2022 07:30:00 +0000

Just a quick update for you all in this episode, in terms of this moment of transition and what comes next for the podcast, my writing, and building more community with you.

Here’s what I cover:

This moment of transition.
What to expect soon with the newsletter.
Getting some better production quality set up for video and beginning to create more video content.
Exciting news about hiring a new podcast production team.
Thoughts about expanding beyond the newsletter and podcast.
Asking what you’d like to see and how you’d be most excited to support this work so we can build more of a community and so that I can build toward financial sustainability.
Gratitude for your being here :)

If you’d prefer to read the entire update instead, you can do so here.

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Thanks to Joshua LaBure for mixing the audio on this episode. You’re a saint.

Freestyle (Rap) + Philosophy with Brenton Zola

Brandi Stanley — Tue, 12 Apr 2022 07:30:00 +0000

Brenton Zola (he/him) uses the power of words to cultivate humanity. He is a writer, thinker, and multi-disciplinary artist. Informed by an upbringing from Congolese immigrants and travel to over 60 nations, his writing and creative work blend narrative, philosophy, and history to examine how we build ethical societies. His work has appeared in The New York Times, Newsweek, LA Times, Inc., American Theater, Boulevard Magazine, Prism, and on NPR member-station WBUR Boston and PBS, among others. His professional journey started with living at a meditation and martial arts school in Asia, which led to work through social impact and the arts. Brenton has been an artist-in-residence at theaters and collectives worldwide and serves as a curator for the Tilt West Journal. He is a Moth story slam champion, a proud member of Playback Theatre West & Storytellers Acapella, and a TEDx speaker and organizer at one of the world’s largest events. He believes truth can be found at the intersection of disciplines and stories.

In this episode, Brenton and Brandi talk about the intersections of Freestyle (Rap) + Philosophy, including:

The tension between “intelligence” and “creativity.”
His mom’s love of Tupac, where his love of rap began.
How he defines “philosophy.”
What philosophy brings to the table that science doesn’t.
Rap as resistance and a demand for equality.
What Brenton calls “smashing atoms” and why he loves it.
A story about his time in speech and debate, a kind of freestyle performance, and his first early foray into mixing disciplines together.
How the Greek “stoa” was the ancient version of the modern rap cipher.
Freestyle and philosophy as a practice of spotting patterns and making interesting connections.
The value of a public forum for debating ideas, and how rap still practices this tradition.
Brenton’s current favorite “atom smashers,” rappers, and all-time favorite philosophers.
And, a closing freestyle rap!

Listeners can find Brenton online, at brentonzola.com, as well as on Instagram, Facebook, and Twitter.

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Check out this episode's show notes.
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Music: The in-house musicians at Slip.stream
Audio Engineering: Joshua LaBure

Slime Mold + Social Justice with Ashley Jane Lewis

Brandi Stanley — Tue, 29 Mar 2022 07:30:00 +0000

Ashley Jane Lewis (she/her) is a new media artist with a focus on Afrofuturism, bio-art, social justice, and speculative design.

Her artistic practice explores black cultures of the past, present, and future through computational and analog mediums, including coding and machine learning, data weaving, microorganisms, and live performance. Listed in the Top 100 Black Women to Watch in Canada, her award-winning work on empowered futures for marginalized groups has exhibited in both Canada and the U.S., most notably featured on the White House website during the Obama presidency. Her practice is tied to science and actively incorporates living organisms like slime mold and food cultures (kombucha and sourdough starters) to explore ways of decentralizing humans and imagining collective, multi-species survival. Ashley is currently an Artist in Residence at CultureHub NYC as well as part of the Culture Futures Track in the NEW INC year 7 cohort, an art, design, and technology incubator run within the New Museum.

In this episode, Ashley and Brandi talk about the intersections of Slime Mold + Social Justice, including:

Afro-futurism, bio-art, social justice, and speculative design.
The tensions between art and science, especially as a Black woman.
How Ashley got into sourdough, sci-fi, and slime mold.
What slime mold has to do with Black popular culture.
What it teaches us about gender, mutual aid, and immigration.
De-centering humans in imagining the future.
Using AI as a science fiction tool to predict a future imagined by BIPOC folks.
Plus, a ton of other things related to food, fermentation, our ancestors, passing information generationally through time, writing as a prophetic tool, and geeky things that Ashley and I both love.

Listeners can find Ashley online at ashleyjanelewis.com, as well as Instagram and Twitter.

Music: The in-house musicians at Slip.stream
Audio Engineering: Joshua LaBure

Economics + Design with Deacon Rodda

Brandi Stanley — Tue, 15 Mar 2022 07:30:00 +0000

Deacon Rodda is a permaculture theorist and designer who has been working with social change organizations in Denver for more than two decades. Deacon has spearheaded localization initiatives, permaculture research, education non-profits, and social benefit business ventures. Currently, Deacon is focused on establishing a truly egalitarian heirloom currency and contributing to publications on social and ecological well-being.

In this conversation, we talk about the intersections of Economics + Design, including—

Imagining economic options beyond capitalism and socialism.
Whether advancements that make society safer have actually made them better.
How we create money in society and whether money is “neutral.”
What Deacon feels isn’t working in our economy right now.
How economics and climate are as intertwined as tree roots and mycelia, and whether we’ll change the economy fast enough to survive climate collapse.
Designing an economy that’s good for humans and the environment.
The immorality of compounding interest.
The role of design questions in creating new economic systems.
And, what two values Deacon believes are foundational to building the economy he wants to see.

Listeners can find Deacon online, at sqglz.com, and on Instagram at @deaconrodda. You can also support Deacon’s work on Patreon, and check out and join the Favor Solutions Network, a non-capitalist, non-socialist, free-market system designed by Deacon.

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

Trauma + Cancel Culture with Clementine Morrigan

Brandi Stanley — Tue, 01 Mar 2022 08:30:00 +0000

Clementine Morrigan (they/them; she/her) is a writer. She’s the writer behind the zine series Fucking Magic, and the zines Love Without Emergency, Fuck the Police Means We Don't Act Like Cops to Each Other, Fucking Crazy, and Fucking Girls. They also wrote the books You Can't Own the Fucking Stars and The Size of a Bird. They’ll also be releasing three new books in 2021: Trauma Magic, Sexting, and Fucking Magic. She’s been writing and publishing for more than 20 years and has many more projects on the way. They’re also a podcaster, as one half of the podcast Fucking Cancelled, and is the creator of the popular Trauma-Informed Polyamory workshop. They teach other online workshops, too, like Bisexual Girls with Baggage and Disorganized Attachment Is a Fucking Trip. She’s an ecosocialist, an anarchist, an abolitionist, an opposer of cancel culture, a trauma educator, a sex educator, a person living with complex PTSD, a sober alcoholic, a polyamorous bisexual dyke, and a proud dog mom to Clover “The Dog” Morrigan.

In this episode, Clementine and Brandi talk about the intersections of Trauma + Cancel Culture. So, a content note: This conversation includes discussion around sexual abuse, domestic violence, and trauma.

Here’s a breakdown of what we cover—

Cancel culture as another type of abuse.
The way queer and organizing communities struggle to hold contradiction.
How cancel culture operates in leftist politics.
The hyper-vigilance of always doing and saying the "right" things.
Why keeping up with all of the correct “rules” requires a certain class privilege.
How we might actually address harm if it’s not canceling everyone.
How we can improve on the sentiment “Believe survivors."
Unlinking our capacity to heal from whether abusers ever take responsibility.
Why Clementine continues to do this work and what currently brings her joy.
And so much more.

Listeners can find Clementine online, at clementinemorrigan.com, as well as on Instagram. Support their work on Patreon.

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

Tarot + Christianity with Selah Saterstrom

Brandi Stanley — Tue, 15 Feb 2022 08:30:00 +0000

Brought up in a Southern-family style of card reading and divination, Selah Saterstrom (she/her) has been offering divinatory support and guidance to her communities for over thirty years. Founder of Apotheca, a social-justice-centered apothecary, she also specializes in prescriptive magic. She is the author of the novels Slab, The Meat and Spirit Plan, and The Pink Institution, all published by Coffee House Press. She is also the author of two collections of essays: Rancher, and the award-winning Ideal Suggestions: Essays in Divinatory Poetics. She teaches and lectures across the United States and abroad, and is the director of creative writing at the University of Denver.

In this episode, Selah and Brandi talk about the intersections of Tarot + Christianity, including:

Not allying with any person, belief system, or institution that would require us to diminish ourselves.
How writing helps give context to each “rupture” of our identity.
Writing as a way to be “in the question.”
Letting go of what we believed we knew and crafting a relationship with uncertainty and discomfort instead.
Being a femme-identifying queer as a form of contradiction Selah feels like she inhabits every day.
What “divining” means to Selah, along with her long family history of divination.
Southern tarot and divination not as separate from God, but as a tool to engage with God.
Where Christianity does and does not fit into Selah’s current practice.
The gnostic experience vs. the institution of Christianity.
How each of us claiming our wholeness gives others permission to do the same.
Curiosity, bibliomancy, prophecy, and aliveness all as a quality of presence and awareness you practice in the world.
Our bodies—including our teeth—and tarot as “archives.”
And much more.

Listeners can find Selah online, at selahsaterstrom.org, and on Instagram and Twitter. Four Queens Divination can be found online at fourqueens.org, as well as on Twitter.

Purpose + Illness with Charles Eisenstein & Lauren Buckley

Brandi Stanley — Tue, 01 Feb 2022 08:04:00 +0000

Charles Eisenstein (he/him) is a writer and a speaker. His four main books are The Ascent of Humanity (2007), Sacred Economics (2011, revised 2020), The More Beautiful World our Hearts Know is Possible (2013) and Climate — A New Story (2018). All of them can be read online or purchased wherever books are sold. He lives in the part of the world that most people currently call Rhode Island, USA, in a smallish house about 20 minutes from the ocean and five minutes from the Great Swamp. He shares the house with his wife, Stella, son Cary, dog Inka, and some mice. He has three older sons, Jimi, Matthew, and Philip.

Lauren Buckley (she/her) is a seeker. Consumed with questions like “Who am I?”, “Why am I here?”, “Where did I come from?”, and “Where am I going?”, she has followed life wherever it seemed like she might find some insight. For a while, science seemed like the best path to truth, so she enrolled in a biochemistry Ph.D. program at UC-Berkeley. But, during a Luce Scholars Fellowship in Thailand, a total physical and mental health collapse blew up her plans. After exhausting her options in mainstream medicine—to no avail—a desperate search for healing eventually led her to see the limitations and dogma of mainstream science, discover holistic medicine, work with #1 New York Times Bestseller Chris Kresser, and launch a wellness company. You can now find Lauren seeking out loud on Uncertain, where she goes deep with some of her favorite people on philosophy, psychology, spirituality, wellness, and whatever else is capturing her endless curiosity. Find her full bio in this episode's show notes.

In this episode, Charles, Lauren, and Brandi talk about the intersections of Purpose + Illness, including:

A new development in Brandi’s health journey—dental cavitation surgery and selling her house to afford it.
Listening to the fears of those around you as a normal and healthy instinct to determine whether we’re on the “right” track.
How often you can feel gaslit when experiencing chronic illness.
How physical conditions sometimes mirror our internal, spiritual conditions.
When illness can be a gift that shows us when we’re out of alignment.
“Control” as a type of “illness.”
Planning as a type of living in separation from ourselves.
Letting what we truly want to do guide our decisions.
What we do or don’t “deserve” when it comes to health or living in a healthy society.
And, curiosity as a path of aliveness.

Listeners can find Charles online at his website, Substack, and his own podcast. And, they can find Lauren at @beuncertain on Instagram and in the Uncertain Mighty Network community.

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

Why I Talk About Purpose

Brandi Stanley — Tue, 18 Jan 2022 08:02:00 +0000

In this second solo episode of the show, I explain why I speak and write so consistently about the idea of “purpose,” and give context that will set the stage for the next episode of the podcast—releasing on February 1, 2022—with Charles Eisenstein and Lauren Buckley, called “Purpose + Illness.”

Here’s what you'll hear me talk about in this episode—

My search for “purpose” until now.
The portions of Charles’s work that helped me begin to make real connections between work, purpose, and health.
A reading of my essay, “A Sick Society + An Individual Burden,” which gives extra context to the connections I see between work and illness, and my upcoming conversation with Charles and Lauren.
Why you might be born to heal a divide between two worlds.
A reading of my essay, “Wisdom Teeth + Chronic Illness,” tells the story of finding dental cavitations in my mouth, and much of what Charles, Lauren, and I discuss in the upcoming episode.
How doing work you don’t enjoy is a kind of “toxic load” on your body.
And, why we need to start saying “This isn’t normal.”

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

Microbes + Spirituality with Asia Dorsey

Brandi Stanley — Tue, 04 Jan 2022 08:04:00 +0000

Asia Dorsey (she/her; they/them) writes Afrofutures into existence by reweaving Black bodies into relationship with the earth through the fabric of food. She studied food and sociology at New York University but extended her education to include public health nutrition in Accra Ghana, seed sovereignty in Northern India with Vandana Shiva, and biological agriculture and ancestral nutrition with Kay Baxter in New Zealand. After healing her depression with bones, bugs, and botany, Asia took the helm of Five Points Fermentation Company in 2016 in order to bring probiotics to the people. As a bioregional herbalist apprenticing with Herbal Elder, Susun Weed, an organizational ecologist with Regenerate Change, and permaculture instructor with the Denver Permaculture Guild, Asia deciphers and reintegrates the sacred instructions of microorganisms, plants, and animals to bring the patterns of ecosystems into our people systems. You can also find her curating educational programs at the Seeds of Power Unity Farm, bone-deep in soil, balancing botanical chaos long enough for her people to rise together in power and step into the wholeness that is their birthright.

In this episode, Asia and Brandi talk about the intersections of Microbes + Spirituality, including:

The wild notion of sugar as healing.
How our thoughts and beliefs affect the way we “metabolize” food, people, and everything else.
Microbes as spiritual impulses and deities.
Sanitization, inoculation, war, and allowing ourselves to be changed by the “Other.”
Becoming that which we resist.
How phases of activism follow similar ecological phases and inflammatory responses in the body.
Fermentation as a type of ancestral “inheritance” and what ancient dairy practices teach us about generational wealth.
Viruses as adaptation advantages.
Claiming both science and spirituality in all their complexity without devaluing either but also not ignoring each of their flaws.
The beauty of not belonging.
And so much more.

Listeners can find Asia online, at bonesbugsandbotany.com, and can support her and her creations on Patreon and Instagram. Listen to her on The Petty Herbalist podcast, as well.

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

Nature + Communication with Ashley Eliza Williams

Brandi Stanley — Tue, 21 Dec 2021 08:34:00 +0000

Ashley Eliza Williams (she/her) is a painter, sculptor, and amateur ecologist exploring new ways of interacting with nature and with each other. She received a BA from UVA and an MFA from The University of Colorado, Boulder. She is a recent MASS MoCA North Adams Project grantee and has been a resident artist at Vermont Studio Center, Anderson Ranch, Millay Colony, Alte Schule Germany, the Shangyuan Art Museum in China, and the Sitka Center for Art and Ecology. Her work has been shown nationally and internationally at museums, galleries, and scientific institutions. She is a member of the research-focused NYC art collective Sprechgesang Institute. Williams has taught painting, sculpture, and color theory for six years. She currently lives in Massachusetts.

In this episode, Ashley and Brandi talk about the intersections of Nature + Communication, including:

Anxiety, awkwardness, and “failed” communication attempts.
The dialogue between plants, animals, and even celestial bodies.
The “mutual aid” practices of nature, like lichen and trees.
Why Ashley became an environmentalist at an early age.
What lichen communicate to us about pollution.
How our language about the natural world shapes our engagement with it.
The Western perception of time as scarce.
Ashley’s dad and his creative way of conjuring up original bedtime stories.
Her fascination with magical beings and the history of monsters.
Why we might pray to pollinator deities in the future.
The ancient memory of rocks and trees.
And much more.

Listeners can find Ashley online, at ashleyelizawilliams.com, and on Instagram @ashleyelizawilliams.

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

Infinity + Nuance with Kendra Krueger

Brandi Stanley — Tue, 07 Dec 2021 08:48:00 +0000

Kendra Krueger (she/her) is an intersectional scientist, educator, creator, and woman of color on many edges—raised by artists, educated as an electrical engineer, and trained in anti-oppression facilitation, theater, mindfulness, and permaculture. Her work and research is a convergence of these many waters. Fueled by divine curiosity, she seeks to inspire deeper exploration of ourselves and our universe. Her pedagogy advocates that science can be a transformative tool for our external and internal world if analytical and intuitive skills can be combined. She founded 4LoveandScience in 2014 as a platform to teach transformative science at universities, in K12 schools, and in community spaces and gardens throughout the country. She has also curated and produced multi-media installations, exhibitions, and performances and currently works at CUNY's Advanced Science Research Center, where she founded The Community Sensor Lab as a space for DIY community science and advocacy.

In this episode, Kendra and Brandi talk about the intersections of Infinity + Nuance, including:

Applying to others the same level of nuance and subtlety we afford to ourselves.
What Kendra felt was missing in the “scientific paradigm.”
How several mathematical constructs help her hold nuance and complexity.
Following a "path of resonance” to determine our capacity to engage.
What history, the ouroboros, & the solar system say about “spirals” of change.
Learning to look at technology more generatively.
What different “zones” of love and intimacy might be.
And, Kendra’s work to bring science into the hands of more people.

Listeners can find Kendra online, at 4loveandscience.com, on YouTube, and on Instagram @4loveandscience. You can also pre-order the next Black Quantum Futurism anthology, in which Kendra has an essay titled, "The Wild Truth: Casting Spells with Entropy and Lasers."

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

Fractals + Free Will with Abrah Dresdale and Adam Brock

Brandi Stanley — Tue, 23 Nov 2021 08:30:00 +0000

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.

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

Quantum Logic + Exclusive Truth with Lincoln Carr

Brandi Stanley — Tue, 09 Nov 2021 08:30:00 +0000

Lincoln D. Carr (he/him) is a Professor of Quantum Physics at the Colorado School of Mines and a Jefferson Science Fellow of the National Academies of Sciences, Engineering, and Medicine. Between the songs of sperm whales hunting deep canyons under the seas and the roving eye of the lucid dreamer laying prone in his bed, poetry and physics meet. In this multiverse of possibility, he writes quantum thoughts to a reflection of himself reborn again and again through inner and outer space-time, each choice and each moment another universe. He believes that one day, the science we do now will seem like alchemy, and we will wonder how we did not fuse poetry and equations as naturally as the savants of that future age. And hopes his work presents a moment on the path to that future embrace.

In this episode, Lincoln and Brandi talk about the intersections of Quantum Logic + Exclusive Truth, including:

Different kinds of thinkers, and how they’re all necessary
Schrödinger, gender, & sexuality
The brilliance of Lincoln’s students
How I wound up auditing Lincoln’s class and details about the course itself
Connections to city planning
The frequent career changes of synthesists
Humility + Foolishness
Judaism, religion, and how science can become a religion
How poetry can play a role in the sciences
How Lincoln thought in quantum logic before he knew what it was
How and why Lincoln uses dreaming in his work
And, finding your place in the world

Note: Any opinions stated in this episode do not represent the U.S. Department of State.

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

Queer Memoir + Rhizomes with Serena Chopra

Brandi Stanley — Tue, 26 Oct 2021 08:48:00 +0000

Serena Chopra (she/her) is a teacher, writer, dancer, filmmaker, and a visual and performance artist. She has a Ph.D. in Creative Writing from the University of Denver and is a MacDowell Fellow, a Kundiman Fellow, and a Fulbright Scholar. She has two books, This Human (Coconut Books 2013) and Ic (Horse Less Press 2017), as well as two films, Dogana//Chapti (Official Selection at Frameline43, Oregon Documentary Film Festival, and Seattle Queer Film Festival), and Mother Ghosting (2018). She was a featured artist in Harper's Bazaar (India) as well as in the Denver Westword’s “100 Colorado Creatives.” She has recent publications in Sink, Foglifter, Matters of Feminist Practice, and the anthology Alone Together: Love, Grief and Comfort in the Time of COVID-19 (Central Avenue Publishing). In October 2020, Serena co-directed No Place to Go, an artist-made queer haunted house with Kate Speer and Frankie Toan. Serena is Assistant Professor of Creative Writing at Seattle University.

In this episode, Serena and Brandi talk about the intersections of Queer Memoir + Rhizomes, including:

The way Serena isn’t just holding contradictions now but sees contradictions as “the situation of life.”
How queer narratives don’t have to be “legible” or easily consumable.
In what ways we’ve repressed our visionary intuitions in order to fit inside of institutions.
The difference between an “arborescent” version of intelligence, and a “rhizomatic” version of intelligence.
Tarot reading as a blueprint of our subconscious and engaging in reading and writing as a form of “bibliomancy.”
The refusal to be contained by the capitalist and colonialist economies that create binaries and margins that oppress and harm us.
The way you’re “supposed to be an academic” filters into one’s psyche.
Growing up in ballet and the struggle to let go, which led Serena to poetry and modern dance.
The best advice Serena has ever had, which came from a dance teacher.
How much extra work it takes BIPOC, queer, female-identified writers and artists to be artists.

Listeners can find Serena’s work on her website, serenachopra.com, and on Instagram @serena_rose_chopra.

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

Love + Death with Andreas Weber

Brandi Stanley — Tue, 12 Oct 2021 07:30:00 +0000

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.

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

Inefficiency + Joy with David Epstein

Brandi Stanley — Tue, 28 Sep 2021 08:54:00 +0000

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.

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

Trauma + Curiosity with Tyler Thrasher

Brandi Stanley — Tue, 14 Sep 2021 11:29:00 +0000

Tyler Thrasher (he/him) is an artist, scientist, and plant lover. With an undying love for nature and its respective curiosities, there are few things his brain isn’t obsessing over. Between his pursuits to crystallize the world, opalize everything, and hunt down some of the realm’s most unique plants, his passion to combine art and science every step of the way is his fire and fuel. Chances are, if you catch Tyler at a party, he’ll talk your ear off about exploring caves, growing minerals in his lab, playing Dungeons and Dragons, hybridizing new plants, electronic music, grappling with and overcoming trauma, and just how amazingly beautiful and mysterious this whole wide universe is. When he's not spending time crystallizing insects, you can find him in the greenhouse hybridizing plants, cultivating mutations, or screaming into the existential void.

But behind all of his online plant rants, dressing up like monster, and pretending to be a fern on social media, Tyler Thrasher has been through more than his fair share of pain. After a childhood of abuse and the sudden and shocking fire that destroyed Tyler and his wife Molly’s home a few years ago, you’d think Tyler might have given up on the inherent goodness of existence. But a wild outpouring of generosity that helped his family survive tragedy turned his perspective completely around.

In this episode, Tyler and Brandi talk about the intersections of Trauma + Curiosity, including:

How art and curiosity and sleeping in a greenhouse as a child was whimsical, but more often served as an escape from trauma Tyler was facing at home.
How going through trauma doesn’t mean you’ll never heal.
How Tyler sees his work as a dance back and forth with the universe—which is really just himself—where he gives a little and then the universe gives a little.
How systems teach us racism and all of the micro aggressions that feed into Tyler’s desire to give and support Black causes.
Not needing a degree to do science or call yourself a scientist.
Social anxiety, mental health, and how to cope.
Jealousy and scarcity in the art world.
Being exactly who you are and taking up space because there will always be people who hate what you do.

Listeners can find Tyler Thrasher at his website, https://tylerthrasher.com/ and on Instagram @tylerthrasherart.

Get more This Plus That:
Sign up for the newsletter and get MORE Tyler—a bonus 13-minute chat Tyler and Brandi had on the intersections of Plants + Capitalism.
Check out this episode's show notes.
Follow along on Twitter: @thisplusthatpod
Follow along on Instagram: @thisplusthatpod
Check out the Website: thisplusthat.com

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

Neuroscience + Dance with Devika Nair

Brandi Stanley — Tue, 14 Sep 2021 11:27:00 +0000

Devika Nair (she/her) manages a large translational brain tumor project at UCSF. Their goal is to better predict tumor transformation to higher grades and differentiate between tumor and treatment effects in primary gliomas using advanced MR imaging techniques. Outside of research, she helps direct a science podcast group called Carry the One Radio whose mission is to ignite scientific curiosity. She also takes classes in and performs Indian classical dance, which has informed her understanding of her field of study—neuroscience.

As a clinical researcher, she finds herself operating between brilliant colleagues with specialized training in high-level physics who run the MRI machines at a tumor research facility and the clinicians who make important decisions based on the lab’s findings. One day, though, an unexpected health scare took her out from behind the glass to inside of the very MRI machines she asks patients to enter every day. Suddenly, what was simply a professional passion—using story to communicate science to the general public—became a personal mission. She wasn’t sure how to explain the way MRIs work that might actually be interesting to other people, until she realized that the movement of hydrogen protons, which is how images wind up on film, look just like the movements of the Indian classical dance she learned as a child.

In this episode, Devika and Brandi talk about the intersections of Neuroscience + Dance, including:

The amazing story of how we met.
Her health scare and how she applied her research skills to lend herself a sense of control in the midst of a scary situation.
Growing up with an artistic mom that inspired her early dance training and who continues to teach today.
And, her fascination for what art and science have in common, and how they can be used to encourage curiosity and seeing different perspectives outside of your own.

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

Environment + Genre with Shannon Davies Mancus

Brandi Stanley — Tue, 14 Sep 2021 11:25:00 +0000

Shannon Davies Mancus’s (she/her) undergraduate and first degree was in musical theatre, and she has maintained a performance praxis through her second career as an academic. She is currently an Associate Teaching Professor and coordinator of the Nature and Human Values program at the Colorado School of Mines. Her work can be found in publications such as Performing Ethos, The Cambridge History of Science Fiction, and the Bloomsbury Handbook of Twenty-first Century Feminist Theory. Her work focuses on the political performativity of environmentalist media in visual and popular culture. She loves traveling, community, and sharing exciting ideas.

Her obsession with pop culture runs deep, but mostly focuses influences the narratives that tell us there’s only one “right” way to be an environmentalist, and how we can move beyond that script to reach new and better stories. Not just so we can “appear” a new way, but so that we might actually relate to one other more and begin to truly shift our environmental future.

That’s part of what she and Brandi talk about on this official first interview episode of the show, on the intersections of Environment + Genre, plus:

What scripts and genres have to do with the media we consume and how we behave in the world.
The power of stories and something called “the information deficit model,” an idea from science communication.
Shanon’s story of living through 9/11 and the film that helped her see movies as a form of artwork that can create a public sphere for difficult dialogue.
Why she loves studying popular imagination around witches and how they connect to our sense of environmental doom.
How she’s weaved together all of the seemingly disparate things in her career into where she is now, but how that only became clear in hindsight.
And, why she loves teaching unexpected things to math and engineering students.

Listeners can find Shannon Davies Mancus on Twitter @shannonmancus and on Instagram @shannonmancus.

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

Why This Matters to Me

Brandi Stanley — Tue, 14 Sep 2021 11:23:00 +0000

The description of “This Plus That” is “a show about connecting the seemingly un-connectable and why it matters.” Most episodes will center on the combination of two seemingly unrelated things, where I'll interview guests about how they've built lives at the center of all their wild interests, but I wanted to start out with why this matters to me. It’s deeply personal.

So personal that a lot of the audio for this first episode was recorded in private messages I sent to friends, never expecting to make them public to the world. The rest happened knowing I'd be "in conversation" with you. But it's all uncut, entirely unscripted, and recorded in moments of clarity and excitement.

Some of what I discuss:

A run-down of my last couple of years and how I wound up here, including wanting to become an astronaut at age 36.
My love paradox in others, but not as much in myself.
A running family story that told me I didn’t “belong in the sciences.”
What quantum physics started to teach me about holding my own complexities.
Our struggle to hold conflict in the midst of queer and organizing communities.
The way we build new “religions” after leaving the dogma of oppressive environments.
And, how contradictions are the nature of the universe.

If even a little bit of it resonates with you, I'm so glad you're here.

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

This Plus That Trailer

Brandi Stanley — Sun, 29 Aug 2021 17:58:00 +0000

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.