2012 TNS Podcasts

Francis Weller, MFT
Entering the Healing Ground: Grief, Ritual, and the Soul of the World
Join Michael Lerner in conversation with author and soul activist Francis Weller, about his work with people living with cancer, and his studies and experience with the grief rituals and ceremonies of indigenous cultures.

Carried privately, sorrow lingers in the soul, slowly pulling us below the surface of life and into the terrain of death. Learning to hold sorrow and loss close to our hearts is a deep spiritual practice, a fierce and unflinching acknowledgement of the way of the world. This spiritual practice is a tempering of the soul, a gradual deepening that moves us closer to the earth, into an intimacy with our surroundings where we lean into those we love. In his recent book, Entering the Healing Ground, Francis reveals the hidden vitality in grief, uncovered when the heart welcomes the sorrows of our life and those of the world.

Francis Weller, MFT
Francis has been working with the emotional, creative, and spiritual life of men and women for thirty years. He is a community builder, writer, teacher, and psychotherapist in Northern California. He draws from an extensive background in depth psychology, mythology, group work, and indigenous traditions. His work embodies his love of soul, the arts, ritual and his devotion to bringing these into living and sustainable community. His writings have appeared in anthologies and magazines such as Sacred Fire. He has taught at many colleges and universities throughout the Bay Area including New College, the Sophia Center, and Sonoma State University. He is the founder/director of WisdomBridge and is currently completing his second book, A Trail on the Ground: Tracking the Ways of Our Indigenous Soul. 

Find out more about The New School at tns.commonweal.org.

New School Conversations

2012.11.29:  Francis Weller w/ Michael Lerner - Entering Healing Ground: Grief, Ritual, and Soul

Walter and Aggie Murch
The Bird that Swallowed its Cage: The Selected Writings of Curzio Malaparte
~Co-presented by KWMR and Point Reyes Books~

Join us for a reading and conversation between Walter and Aggie Murch about Walter’s recently published book, The Bird that Swallowed its Cage: The Selected Writings of Curzio Malaparte.


Walter Murch
Working within the growing Bay Area film community, Murch settled his family in West Marin in 1972. Since that time Murch has been honored by both British and American Motion Picture Academies, winning BAFTA and Oscar awards and nominations for The Conversation, Apocalypse Now, The English Patient, Julia, and Cold Mountain. 

Murch wrote In the Blink of an Eye (2001), which has been translated into ten languages. The Bird that Swallowed its Cage (2012) is Murch’s selected translation of work by the Italian poet and novelist Curzio Malaparte (1899-1956). Between films, he pursues interests in the science of human perception, cosmology and the history of science.
 
Muriel (Aggie) Murch
Aggie graduated as a nurse in England in 1964 and obtained a BSN from San Francisco State in 1991. In 1965 she married Walter Scott Murch and from 1972 raised their four children on Blackberry Farm in Bolinas. She is a founder of of KWMR(FM) radio in West Marin, and author of Journey in the Middle of the Road, One Woman’s Journey through a Mid-Life Education. Muriel continues to write stories and poetry while working as an independent radio producer for KWMR. When not traveling with Walter, Aggie runs the small organic Blackberry Farm, which remains the Murch home

Find out more about The New School at tns.commonweal.org.

2012.11.23:  Walter & Aggie Murch -The Bird that Swallowed its Cage: Writings of Curzio Malaparte

Rupert Sheldrake, PhD
Science Set Free: Ten Paths to New Discovery
Join Michael Lerner for a discussion with Dr. Rupert Sheldrake about his life, his views, and his new book: Science Set Free — Ten Paths to New Discovery.

In his book, Rupert discusses his views on the ways science is being constricted by assumptions that have, over the years, hardened into dogmas. Such dogmas are not only limiting, but dangerous for the future of humanity. According to these principles, all of reality is material or physical; the world is a machine, made up of inanimate matter; nature is purposeless; consciousness is nothing but the physical activity of the brain; free will is an illusion; God exists only as an idea in human minds, imprisoned within our skulls. In the skeptical spirit of true science, Sheldrake turns the ten fundamental dogmas of materialism into questions, and suggests how all of them open up new possibilities for discovery.

Rupert Sheldrake, PhD
Rupert is a biologist and author and a former research fellow of the Royal Society. He studied natural sciences and biochemistry at Cambridge University and philosophy and history of science at Harvard University. He is a fellow of the Institute of Noetic Sciences, near San Francisco. He has appeared in many TV programs in Britain and overseas, and was one of the participants in a TV series called A Glorious Accident, shown on PBS channels throughout the United States.

In addition to Science Set Free, his books include The Sense of Being Stared At and Other Aspects of the Extended Mind (2003), Trialogues at the Edge of the West (1992), republished as Chaos, Creativity and Cosmic Consciousness (2001, with Ralph Abraham and Terence McKenna), and The Physics of Angels: Exploring the Realm Where Science and Spirit Meet (1996, written with Matthew Fox). Find out more on his website.

Find out more about The New School at tns.commonweal.org.

2012.12.10:  Rupert Sheldrake w/ Michael Lerner - Science Set Free:  Ten Paths to New Discovery

Julie McIntyre
Wild Earth, Wild Plants, Wild Woman
Join us for a conversation with Julie McIntyre and The New School’s Kyra Epstein exploring Julie’s life as an herbalist treating Lyme disease with a successful herbal protocol, an Earth ceremonialist, and the author of a new book: Sex and the Intelligence of the Heart; Nature, Intimacy and Sexual Energy.

Julie McIntyre
Julie is an Earth ceremonialist and metis of Norwegian and Mohawk/Blackfeet decent. Julie recently directed a state ceremonial program for Native men in prison and also works with young women with ceremonial rites of transition into womanhood.

She has a private holistic health practice working with herbal medicine and chronic illness–she is the leading practicing expert using the herbal lyme protocol developed by her partner, Stephen Harrod Buhner. In her practice, she also works with sacred plant medicine, spiritual mentoring, ecological reclamation of the soul, becoming authentic, and sexuality. You can see more of her and her work on her website.


Find out more about The New School at tns.commonweal.org.

2012.11.11:  Julie McIntyre w/ Kyra Epstein - Wild Earth, Wild Plants, Wild Woman

Richard T LeGates
Chinese Cities: Their Amazing Rise and Possible Futures
Since China’s “reform and opening up” beginning in the late 1970s, China has had double-digit gross domestic product (GDP) growth almost every year, including close to a 50% increase in GDP since the global economic crisis began in 2007. From an impoverished rural country where more than 80% of the population engaged in near-subsistence farming, half of China’s population now live in cities.

What are the impacts of China’s urban transformation on the ground? What are China’s greatest urban planning accomplishments, failures, and challenges for the future? Join Michael Lerner for this discussion with Richard LeGates about China’s urbanization and China’s urban future. 

Richard T. LeGates
Richard is a professor emeritus of Urban Studies and Planning at San Francisco State University and an authority or urbanization and city and regional planning. Earlier in 2012 he was a visiting professor of urban planning at Tongji University in Shanghai and Renmin University in Beijing and a Fulbright scholar at the Technical Institute of Bandung, Indonesia.

Find out more about The New School at tns.commonweal.org.

2012.12.13:  Richard LeGates w/ Michael Lerner-Chinese Cities:Their Amazing Rise & Possible Futures

The New School presents conversations, book signings, art, and lectures with thought and action leaders of our time. We are a learning community of 4,000 people in the Bay Area and around the world dedicated to learning what matters. 

TNS focuses on the emergent, seeking out the thought and action leaders who are bringing discussion, beauty, and change to the world. We present events and podcast them in many areas: arts and sciences, health and the environment, and inner life. We follow streams of inquiry, including our End-of-Life Conversations, and series on Resilience, Archetypal Psychology, and Healing Circles.

2012.11.23: Walter & Aggie Murch -The Bird that Swallowed its Cage: Writings of Curzio Malaparte

The New School at Commonweal