“An account of life that doesn't include fungi is an account of life that doesn’t exist.” Our relationship with fungi is non-negotiable. Merlin invites listeners to pay attention to what this relationship means and how it shapes not only our lives, but the entanglement of life across the world.

Weaving together the ephemeral worlds of emotion and Indigenous identity with the grounding power of shared values and reciprocity, Sky reminds us that art is meant to provoke, inspire, and make the space needed for feeling to emerge.

Speaking on the theme “Turning Towards Each Other, Not Against Each Other: Bridging in Times of Crisis” the panelists address what it means to build towards co-liberation in difficult times – especially in the context of the war on Gaza.

Bayo, Cecile, and Sa’ed explore how honoring each other’s grief may allow us to reclaim each other’s humanity and perhaps shed light on a path forward to belonging in Israel-Palestine, for Muslims, Jews, and Christians, and for all people around the world.

Envisioning other ways of creating democracy,  Báyò, Madhulika, and Minna describe festival democracy, democracies of contestations and dancing, and democracies of the more-than-human.

Ayana and Stephen contemplate vital questions about the value of tradition, the importance of strangerhood, the possibility of reckoning, and the meaning of ancestry. Stephen’s questions disrupt and unsettle the status quo, and perhaps lead us to the lessons we so deeply need.

Ayana and AbdouMaliq meditate on how the design of our environments shapes us. Considering how to make marginalized places and groups more visible but not more vulnerable, AbdouMaliq offers a nuanced perspective of the “global majority.”

Speaking about climate grief and hope, Báyò, Naomi, and Yuria build together to consider the value in tapping into the depth of emotion as we feel it, not as we are told we should feel it.

Ayana and Báyò dance together through questions of crisis, identity, and rupture. As we attempt to break from the monoculture that cements us as citizen subjects of empire, Báyò suggests that we need an ontological mutiny. 

What if justice gets in the way? Báyò and Keeanga consider how our quest for justice shapes us and is simultaneously shaped by systems of power and control. They ask: how can we move justice out of the existing political paradigm and move beyond a normative sense of justice and reform? 

Indy and Báyò consider our modern crisis as one of the self – a particular version of the objective and singular self that creates space for violence and waste. If we perceive the world through dead and objective things, as Indy supposes, then that is what we become.

Báyò and V dance and reveal portals of possibility that edge us towards deep change. Discussing the Congo as both place and portal, Báyò and V focus on V’s work with City of Joy, a transformational leadership community for women survivors of violence.

john a. powell explores the frameworks of “othering and belonging” and "targeted universalism," as well as ideologies of supremacy, global dislocation, rethinking citizenship, and lastly, how we can co-create shared visions and practices of humanity that bring us back into belonging.

Articulating both the harsh realities of modern day division and the simultaneous reality of our connection to each other and to the earth, Báyò and john examine what it means to be “other” and to invite in the “monstrous” and the “strange.”

Tyson calls us to unbrand our minds and deeply interrogate where we are sourcing our thoughts from, the ramifications of becoming a trauma-obsessed society, and how to identify environments for emergence.

Malcolm offers well-rooted thought touching on the history of Stanford University, the internet, Palo Alto’s military connections, and reveals the values of understanding our material realities and the structures that support society as it stands.

Veda calls us to investigate our liquid selves – the tears and sweat that make us human, the rituals of baptism and bathing that connect us to that which lies beyond. As Veda states, water is always in search of itself. How might understanding water begin to help us in our search for ourselves?

Part two of the conversation between brontë and Tiffany spans further inquiry into shoals, the physical desire to belong to Earth, agency, eros, spiritual correction, the pleasure and potential of failure, and that which cannot be translated, but instead has to be experienced or co-witnessed to be understood.

brontë and Tiffany explore sacred laughter, Black and Indigenous feminism, sexuality, liberation, ceremony, and protocol. This simultaneously intimate and expansive dialogue allows us to rethink the stories and structures we’ve been told regarding Black and Indigenous relations.

Maya introduces listeners to the science behind forest fires and urges us to see fire as not simply “destructive,” but rather as one of the many cycles of earth. From practices of cultural burning to current studies on post fire diversity, the creative and regenerative power of the forest cannot be overlooked.