Future Primitive Podcasts

A heartwarming offering from author, scholar of Philosophy and Religious Studies and psychedelic explorer Christopher Bache for Joanna...and all of us.

Joanna Harcourt-Smith is invited to speak at an IndigenousWays virtual event, an indigenous women-led nonprofit based in Northern New Mexico, co-founded by Tash Terry and Elena Higgins. “IndigenousWays promotes living in balance for diverse communities through music, arts, outreach and events. Our vision is to reach Indigenous & LGBTQIA2+ communities through outreach with music, the arts, and indigenous wisdom that creates and enhances survival and sustainability. Our values are expressed in the Diné (Navajo) concept, “Hozho”, which means the Beauty Way of life.”

Glenn Aparicio Parry speaks with Joanna about: American ideals were founded upon Native American values; a medicine tale about chaos; a quick shift of collective consciousness; the revealing of the American shadow; unity and the choice before us; addressing the wound in the American psyche; we need a form of politics that includes Nature; tuning to the Spirit of the land; these times, a reappraisal of the sixties in a higher level.

Doug Tallamy speaks with Joanna about : A new approach to ecological conservation; “Homegrown National Park”; the demonization of Nature; insects, the little things that run the world; the vital role of wildlife for our health; Aldo Leopold and the land ethic; the impossibility of perpetual economic growth in a finite planet; “Native Plant Finder”, finding the plants that support your local ecosystem; any war against Nature is a war against ourselves; the monarch butterfly; things you can do to stop the insect decline; creating landscapes that sequester carbon and manage our watersheds; collaborating with the resilience of Nature; you are Nature’s best hope.

Richard Grossinger speaks with Joanna about: there are ranges of knowledge that cannot be included in science; the politicization and ideologization of science, experience and spiritual freedom; physical reality and conscious reality simultaneously create each other; the fluidity of reality; “the ecological problem is a problem of consciousness”; deeper than trauma; doing the work to match the Mystery; the magnifying glass of this crisis; the archetypal element of the DNA; the spiraling of all the dimensions together; alchemy is coming back into the language of climate change.

We are happy to come back! In this week’s episode psychiatrist and integrative physician David Kopacz speaks with Joanna about: Encouraging children to plant green living things; dancing with the trees; the dormant seed inside oneself; walking the medicine wheel; becoming a true human being; we are medicine bags; being and vibration; the cycle of rejuvenation; separation is illness, healing is coming back together; the archetypal template of spiritual democracy; the Refounding Mothers of Democracy; coming home to peace.

Errol Morris and Hamilton Morris speak with Joanna about: Quarantined in the family house and loving each other; fascinated by the Iboga plant; the different paradigms of the history of psychedelic thinking and the evolution of Timothy Leary; a story of the psychedelic era; living and working in these strange days; being a mystery to oneself; an important insight while playing the cello on ayahuasca; the tendency of psychedelic medicines to precipitate the better parts of ourselves; the mystery and science of colors in psychedelics ; the intriguing liberation of Timothy Leary.

Stephen Jenkinson speaks with Joanna about: paying attention to the crisis for an understanding of the time we are in; the skillfulness of grief; the greater achievement is lucidity, not comfort; the “Nights of Grief and Mystery” experience; the task in the second half of life; drawn in by the particulars of a piece of ground; Earth is a consequence of death; the generativity of dying; being caught after a long persistence.

John Todd speaks with Joanna about: rethinking everything with the coronavirus; inspiring a whole new generation to change the course of the planet; a profound sense of hope about our future; scale and complexity along a continuum of healing; ecology is evolution story in the present; eco-machines, the birth of a regenerative ecological technology; don’t know mind and following a few simple rules; collaborating with the intelligence of ecosystems in the eco-machines; the New Alchemy Institute, looking at big picture problems; carbon farmers and the potential to regreen the Earth; the Weather Makers and the regreening of the Sinai desert.

Pegi Eyers speaks with Joanna about: we need to return to our original indigenous knowledge; the complexity of reclaiming our pre-colonial culture in American culture; being a Celtic animist; listening to the ancestral trauma; communing with the Earth beings; reweaving the patterns of Western culture; bringing together in equality the gifts of human diversity; learning from the traditional indigenous values; the value of bravery and initiation into adulthood; from the “me” to the “we”; participating in a new world coming into being.

Joel Glanzberg speaks with Joanna about: the origin of Regenesis, regenerative planning and development; becoming conscious together of the place where we live; giving back the love and freedom of a childhood in the woods; a life-changing reading of a spiritual vision; belonging to a living and sacred landscape; “Pattern Mind”, a forthcoming book about living in alignment with the patterns of Nature; living in a world of invisible layers; overcoming our shame and remembering our original instructions; the care that unites us; the ancestral use of disruption to develop more complex ecosystems; how do we learn from a virus…?.

Max Dashu speaks with Joanna about: 50 years of questioning patriarchy and systems of domination and reclaiming the matricultures; searching the history of indigenous cultures before the European colonizations; studying the cultural patterns of what we call patriarchy; the whore labeling, a patriarchal way of discrediting women; divide and conquer, the basic principle of systemic domination; the Mosuo culture of Yunnan, one of the most egalitarian societies on the planet; the historical - not inevitable - process of patriarchalization; a massive pattern across cultures of women, primarily, making clay figurines in the image of the ancestral Mother, the primary pattern of Paleolithic and Neolithic; scriptural religions carriers for the memes of patriarchal thinking; the shared culture of the Great Mother; the fight of the Wet'suwet'en Nation for their ancestral and spiritual rights as land guardians; coming back to core spiritual principles in defense of Earth and life; Chaos and Wisdom, an ancient, sacred mystery rediscovered by the new science of chaos theory; decolonizing ourselves and reclaiming our pathways back to Mother Nature.

Francoise Bourzat speaks with Joanna about: a book born from the course “Expanded States of Consciousnes and Psychotherapy”; first experience with indigenous medicine; a resonant, mysterious and familiar connection to Nature; what she learned from Doña Julieta Casimiro, a Mazatec master healer; trusting the “Holy Children”; purified by the principle of psycho-spiritual composting; the resonance of interdependence in us; the importance of a code of ethics in the field of psychedelic therapy; surrender as a rite of passage; reclaiming our animal, organic nature; therapeutic characteristics of the main entheogens; expressing our potential as compassion in action.

Helena Norberg-Hodge speaks with Joanna about: localizing, a systemic path to nature and community; the learning dance of the ancient local and the new local; the structural shift needed to create a happier, healthier way of life; localization can do away with ideological, political divides; local food economies produce much more than monoculture; localizing allows people to engage in a meaningful and joyful way; remarkable, rapid restoration of life can happen; listening to our hunger for reconnection to nature and community; the artifical sense of competition and scarcity imposed on us; the rich sense of personal identity and ability to share and care in a traditional society; to moving in a personal and ecological direction with intimacy and vulnerability; practicing big picture activism, locally.

Louis Weinstock speaks with Joanna about: the shadow side of modern Western culture; the invisible harms of addictive technologies and social media on our children and young people; unplugging ourselves from the distraction economy to meet our uncomfortable feelings and truths; designing a new service for creating communities for young people experiencing grief; human beings are wired to meet face to face; finding ways of connecting the on-line word to the off-line word; transforming our emotional experience into compassionate action in the world; a new remembering of unconditional love; “Apart of Me”, a free app that helps young people through bereavement; “I am enough”.

John Woodcock speaks with Joanna about: the disconnect that is killing us; enduring the purification process by the Mother; the undoing of the heroic consciousness; the emergence of “living thinking” from the future; bringing the new, including the darkness; Salvador Dali and the fluidity of a new reality; the sacred speech of Nature; the new language of the poetic mind; ”deliverance will come from a storm of light”; welcoming darkness with love; human love and the grief and despair of the Goddess; birthing the future within us.

Linda Burnham speaks with Joanna about: the head center as a place of spiritual liberation; our greatest wholeness; the complexity of healing; the natural energies of your hands and heart; the divine impulse in all living things; touching in a sacred manner; “your medicine chest”, medicines in your pantry; a natural remedy for concussions and bruises; the living experience of healing.

Timothy Morton speaks with Joanna about: appreciating different time scales is part of ecological awareness; we are realizing we are part of the planet by despoiling it; acknowledging the fear of mass extinction; the convulsive power of beauty; the interdependence of ecological health and mental health; don’t grow up, grow down; living in an ambiguous, spooky and beautiful world; fakeness, truth, and the forces of oppression; the quivering quality of being alive.

adrienne maree brown speaks with Joanna about: a social justice and liberation activism that feels good; punitive justice versus transformative justice; mercy and seeing the whole of the person; giving ourselves permission to feel everything; nourishing communities allow for a new future; emergent strategy immersions; a key insight of both pleasure activism and emergent strategies; changing the world through small and consistent actions; a way to overcome our guilt; developing a future where whiteness is not at the center; the conversation between black communities and indigenous communities; being willing to work deep at a small scale and build up.

Daniel Christian Wahl speaks with Joanna about: the feeling behind creating regenerative cultures; the potential of the present moment; the paradox between humility and audacity; the key question about human survival; connecting young people with the living practices of regeneration; acting in urgent times with hope and knowledge; changing the underlying narrative of our culture; feeling the identity with the deep mycelial connection; how we see informs what we see; coming together in planetary collaboration to transform our way of being; sitting with a question in the wilderness.