DISCLAIMER: music and video belong to their respective owners and is not owned by me.

Poem By David Whyte For John O'Donohue, music Secret Garden, voice M.J. Hummingway

David Whyte - Venturing Across the Unknown

Turning towards difficulties, a guided meditation with Josephine Lynch (15 mins) 

Turning Towards Difficulty Soften  Soothe Allow 2 (1)

Poem text and context: https://www.brainpickings.org/2017/04/03/working-together-david-whyte/
Excerpted from https://soundcloud.com/onbeing/sets/david-whyte-the-conversational

Photograph by Nicol Ragland

POEM TEXT / CONTEXT

David Whyte reads "Working Together"

Poem text and context: https://www.brainpickings.org/2018/04/23/ursula-k-le-guin-hymn-to-time-janna-levin/

Astrophysicist Janna Levin reads "Hymn to Time" by Ursula K. Le Guin

Poem text and context: https://www.brainpickings.org/2020/03/15/today-another-universe-jane-hirshfield-ledger-jasmine

Kindly recorded by the poet for Brain Pickings.

Jane Hirshfield reads "Today, Another Universe"

Coleman Barks recites Rumi poem accompanied by David Darling on Cello and Arjun Brugeman on Tabla. Live at Omega Institute.

Coleman Barks, David Darling & Arjun Bruggeman: Rumi

Episode 146 - Stephen Jenkinson

Dan Sterenchuk and Tommy Estlund are honored to have as our guest, Stephen Jenkinson.

Culture activist, teacher, author ~ Stephen teaches internationally and is the creator and principal instructor of the Orphan Wisdom School, co-founded the school with Nathalie Roy in 2010, convening semi-annually in Deacon, Ontario, and in northern Europe. He has Master’s degrees from Harvard University (Theology) and the University of Toronto (Social Work). Apprenticed to a master storyteller when a young man, he has worked extensively with dying people and their families, is former programme director in a major Canadian hospital, former assistant professor in a prominent Canadian medical school. He is also a sculptor, traditional canoe builder whose house won a Governor General’s Award for architecture. Since co-founding Nights of Grief and Mystery with Gregory Hoskins in 2015, he has toured this musical/tent show revival/storytelling/ceremony of a show across North America, U.K. and Europe and Australia and New Zealand.

He is the author of Come of Age: The Case for Elderhood in a Time of Trouble (2018), the award-winning Die Wise: A Manifesto for Sanity and Soul (2015), Homecoming: The Haiku Sessions (a live teaching from 2013), How it All Could Be: A workbook for dying people and those who love them (2009), Angel and Executioner: Grief and the Love of Life – (a live teaching from 2009), and Money and The Soul’s Desires: A Meditation (2002). He is contributing author to Palliative Care – Core Skills and Clinical Competencies (2007).

Stephen Jenkinson is also the subject of the feature length documentary film Griefwalker (National Film Board of Canada, 2008, dir. Tim Wilson), a portrait of his work with dying people, and Lost Nation Road, a shorter documentary on the crafting of the Nights of Grief and Mystery tours (2019, dir. Ian Mackenzie).

His books, recordings and DVDs are available for purchase at the Orphan Wisdom Shop.

Website: orphanwisdom.com

The Curiosity Hour Podcast is hosted and produced by Dan Sterenchuk and Tommy Estlund.

Please visit our website for more information:
thecuriosityhourpodcast.com

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Disclaimers: The Curiosity Hour Podcast may contain content not suitable for all audiences. Listener discretion advised. The views and opinions expressed by the guests on this podcast are solely those of the guest(s). These views and opinions do not necessarily represent those of The Curiosity Hour Podcast. This podcast may contain explicit language.

The Curiosity Hour Podcast - Season 7

2020 April - Curiosity Hour Ep146, Dan Sterenchuk & Tommy Estlund interview Stephen Jenkinson

Recorded for Brain Pickings in the midst of a pandemic. Poem text and context: https://www.brainpickings.org/2020/10/02/the-big-picture-ellen-bass/

Photograph: Amanda's son Ash, photographed by his mom.

Amanda Palmer reads "The Big Picture" by Ellen Bass

Poem text and context: https://www.brainpickings.org/2020/11/12/walt-whitman-song-of-the-open-road

Maria Popova reads from "Song of the Open Road" by Walt Whitman

In 1968, Dr. Bernie Krause was leading a booming music career. A prodigiously talented musician and early master of the electronic synthesizer, Krause was busy working with artists like the Doors and the Beach Boys and performing iconic effects for blockbuster films. Then Warner Brothers commissioned him to create an album incorporating the sounds of wild habitats, so he headed into Muir Woods with his recording equipment. What he heard changed his life and triggered a fifty-year odyssey.

Then and there, Krause decided that he wanted spend the rest of his life recording and archiving the music of wild animals and wild places. He quit Hollywood and began traveling the world. The soundscapes he recorded were full of epiphanies about the origin of our own culture and music, about the profound connectedness of creatures, and about the unseen tolls of human activity. Previous wildlife recordings isolated the calls of individual creatures, but Krause recorded habitats as a whole. He soon proposed a new theory of ecosystem functioning: that each species produces unique acoustic signatures, partitioning and occupying sonic niches such that the singing of all of the creatures in a healthy ecosystem can be heard, organized like players in an orchestra. 

Today, Krause’s astonishing archive contains sounds made by more than 15,000 species. It is, as The New Yorker aptly put it, “an auditory Library of Alexandria for everything non-human." Fifty percent of the recorded habitats no longer exist due to habitat destruction, climate change, and human din. We spoke with Krause about the beauty of and perils facing wild music, the extraordinary science of soundscape ecology, and how sound impacts the welfare of animals. The music in this episode is from Wild Sanctuary (www.wildsanctuary.com).

Jane Hirshfield reads "Today, Another Universe"

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