Ramzi Fawaz is an award-winning queer cultural critic, public speaker, and educator. He is the author of two books, including "The New Mutants: Superheroes and the Radical Imagination of American Comics" (2016), and "Queer Forms." (2022). In 2019-2020, Fawaz was a Stanford Humanities Center fellow. He is currently a Romnes Professor of English at the University of Wisconsin, Madison. 

Please be warned: this conversation is a firehose of brilliance. We cover a frankly outrageous number of topics, including: The politics and poetics of gender/ The radical imagination of the 1960s and 70s/ What happens when college students of today read manifestos from the 1970s and discover just how fiery, and fearless those voices actually were/ How feminist and gay liberation were deeply intertwined... and yet different/ The dark seduction of wounded identity and the political dead-end of suffering as a personality/ What the Beatles, postwar masculinity, and femme androgyny have to do with trans desire and cultural anxiety/ How trans liberation actually predates gay liberation in the U.S. / Teaching as ego dissolution: what it means to use the classroom like a psychedelic space. / And the idea that pluralism — true, radical pluralism — begins by accepting that you will be changed by contact with people who are radically different from you.

Ramzi Fawaz is bold, funny, passionate about teaching, absurdly articulate, and I think you’ll find he is deeply attuned to the moment we’re living in.  

https://www.ramzifawaz.com/

Ramzi's Esalen offering: Thinking Like a Multiverse: Embracing a Diverse World

June 23–27, 2025

Register now:

https://www.esalen.org/workshops/thinking-like-a-multiverse-embracing-a-diverse-world-06232025

A quick note on AI: I use LLMs (often the multi-purposse ChatGPT, sometimes other models) to help me with various tasks associated with podcast production, including help with writing my intros, generating questions for my guests, and episode titles. Occasionally I create episode graphics, too. I almost never take the AI output as-is; I subscribe to Ethan Mollick's notion of co-intelligence, in that I edit what's been given me, add my own creativity, and aim for the best possible output in the end. My hope is that this will create a better Voices of Esalen. - SS

You Were Never Just One Thing: Ramzi Fawaz and the Queer Potential of Now

Paul Selig is considered one of the foremost mediums working today. He is the author of several rather extraordinary works of channeled literature, including I Am the Word, The Book of Love and Creation, The Book of Knowing and Worth, and The Book of Mastery. I spoke to Paul at length about the work he'd done before becoming a medium (he was a well-known playwright, as well as the director of the MFA in Creative Writing Program at Goddard College), and we discussed the creative process, wondering if there was some sort of useful comparison between that and the work of channeling. Then we turned to the content of his work, the remarkable message of his guides. This is a must-listen episode for those who are fascinated by the art of channeling, and those who find their interest piqued by the message of the Word. 
Today's music is "Slow Dissolve" and was used courtesy of www.purple-planet.com. 

Paul Selig, I am the Word: The Extraordinary Life of a Spiritual Channel

Pico Iyer is a British-born essayist and novelist, known for his outstanding travel writing. Iyer was a King's Scholar at Eton College, and was awarded a Congratulatory Double First in English Literature at Oxford University, then received his second master's in literature at Harvard. Iyer has known the 14th Dalai Lama since he was in his late teens, when he accompanied his father to Dharamshala, India, in the early 1970s. Iyer taught literature at Harvard before joining Time magazine  in 1982 as a writer on world affairs. After his home in Santa Barbara burned to the ground in 1990, Iyer was left without any possessions. In 1992 he relocated to Nara, Japan, where he has lived since, with his wife Hiroko Takeuchi. Some of his notable books include Global Soul: Jet Lag, Shopping Malls, and the Search for Home; The Open Road: the Global Journey of the 14th Dalai Lama; and most recently, The Art of Stillness: Adventures in Going Nowhere.

Pico Iyer on Esalen, Big Sur, the Dalai Lama and Global Soul

"Voices of Esalen" features provocative, in-depth interviews with the dynamic leaders, teachers, and thinkers who reflect the mission of the Esalen Institute.

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You Were Never Just One Thing: Ramzi Fawaz and the Queer Potential of Now

Voices of Esalen

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