Sounds of SAND

AI, Mythology, and the Battle for the Soul of Humanity

We live in a moment of profound uncertainty, marked by existential planetary threats and the dizzying rise of artificial intelligence. Michael Meade suggests this threshold offers a choice: to see these times not as a crisis to solve, but as a collective rite of passage.

Topics

• 00:02 Transformation is the way of the cosmos
• 00:03 The heart within the heart
• 00:07 The caterpillar and the butterfly
• 00:09 Imaginal cells
• 00:10 Why resistance is necessary
• 00:13 Liminality
• 00:18 The Cartesian split and 869
• 00:22 Authentic intelligence
• 00:23 The Popol Vuh myth
• 00:27 Polarization as a symptom
• 00:30 Unfinished rites of passage
• 00:40 Prophecy is not prediction

Michael Meade is a storyteller, mythologist and author with a rare gift for connecting ancient myth and ancestral wisdom to the stories we are living now. He is the creator of the Living Myth podcast, heard weekly in over 150 countries, and the founder of the Mosaic Multicultural Foundation, which brings the medicine of myth and story to the issues that trouble both culture and nature.

• Living Myth podcast
• The Heart of Transformation by Michael Meade.

SAND

• The Eternal Song
• Become a SAND member

Language, Lineage, and the Spirit of Old Hawai‘i

In this deeply personal and expansive conversation, cultural bearer and healer William K. Iaukea invites us into a worldview rooted in old Hawai‘i, where language, spirit, and ancestry are inseparable. He shares stories of his parents’ healing work, the layered meanings carried by names, and the warrior lineage that shaped his path.

Together, we explore the vibrational power of words, the evolution of the Hawaiian language through colonization, and the presence of the spirit realm in everyday life. William speaks to how knowledge is passed down—not only through teaching, but through breath, ritual, and relationship to land.

This is a story of remembering—not as nostalgia, but as a living act of healing and restoration.

Topics

• 00:02 The name the elders chose

• 00:06 Two healers, words and herbs

• 00:12 The man with the broken arm

• 00:25 Kamaka and ‘Iao Kea

• 00:29 Ho’oponopono

• 00:35 Trailer: Kupuna ʻĀina

• 00:37 Gathering medicine

• 00:43 Thirty years a warrior

• 00:48 When words were life and death

• 00:54 Aloha is a new word

• 00:57 E Kū Mau

• 01:00 The story of Ī

• 01:17 Why tell it now

The film

• Kupuna ʻĀina, the ninth film in SAND’s Eternal Song series, where this interview comes from. Premiere screening and three days of live online gatherings with the Hawaiian elders, healers and leaders in the film, November 17 to 19, 2026. Watch for a donation of any amount.

• The Eternal Song, the full thirteen film series

• Humanity Hale, the Hawai’i Island organization receiving half of net proceeds from Kupuna ʻĀina. Their planned sanctuary will serve young adults aging out of foster care.

From SAND

• The Eternal Song

• Become a SAND member

What if humans and AI share the same hallucination?

In this fifth installment of SAND’s Great AI Unraveling series, Alnoor Ladha hosts a conversation between Bayo Akomolafe and Vanessa Andreotti that refuses both the doom narrative and the techno-optimist one. Vanessa begins from the operating assumption modernity installs in us: that things are separate. If that assumption is itself a hallucination, then AI is not introducing something new so much as scaling something very old, and at speed. Bayo brings in W.E.B. Du Bois’s haunting question, “How does it feel to be a problem?”, and suggests it has migrated from the racialized other to the human as such. He tells the story of coaxing a chatbot into co-authorship and a name of its own, and offers “accommodation” as a word for the assemblages that make the world look obvious. Alnoor presses both of them on the water, the energy, the Kenyan content moderators, the displaced labor. Vanessa answers with a politics of implication rather than purity: entanglement not with the flowers and the moon but with the dirt. The conversation ends not in agreement but in what Bayo calls tenderness, and an invitation to move through this dense ecology of weird fidelities with unshod feet.

Timestamps

• 00:00 Welcome and the question
• 00:04 Introductions
• 00:07 The shared hallucination
• 00:10 How does it feel to be a problem
• 00:15 Meeting the monstrous
• 00:21 The code of separation
• 00:24 Claude becomes Polyphren
• 00:28 Accommodations
• 00:31 Water, energy, labor
• 00:35 Anamorphic art
• 00:38 Beyond moral purity
• 00:43 Meta-relationality
• 00:48 Tenderness is not agreement

Guest bios

Dr. Bayo Akomolafe is a Nigerian philosopher, writer, and self-styled trickster. Trained as a clinical psychologist, he now works as a post-humanist thinker, poet, and teacher. He is the author of These Wilds Beyond Our Fences and We Will Tell Our Own Story, founder of The Emergence Network, and host of the long-running postactivist course series We Will Dance with Mountains. A new book is in progress.

• https://www.bayoakomolafe.net/
• The Emergence Network
• We Will Dance with Mountains and other offerings

Dr. Vanessa Andreotti (who publishes her books as Vanessa Machado de Oliveira) is a professor at the University of Victoria, where she has served as Dean of the Faculty of Education, and lead researcher at the Metarelational Institute. She is the author of Hospicing Modernity and Outgrowing Modernity, and co-author with an AI of Burnout From Humans. Her next book, The Codes that Code Us: Modernity’s Recursive Logics in Humans and AI, is forthcoming.

• UVic faculty profile
• Substack
• https://burnoutfromhumans.net/

Alnoor Ladha is an activist, journalist, and political strategist. He co-founded and directed the activist collective The Rules, serves as Council Chair of Culture Hack Labs, and is co-author with Lynn Murphy of Post Capitalist Philanthropy: Healing Wealth in the Time of Collapse.

• Author page at Daraja Press
• Transition Resource Circle

The article at the center of this conversation

• What If Humans and AI Share the Same Hallucination? by Vanessa Andreotti.

Books

• Hospicing Modernity: Facing Humanity’s Wrongs and the Implications for Social Activism by Vanessa Machado de Oliveira
• Outgrowing Modernity by Vanessa Machado de Oliveira
• Burnout From Humans: A Little Book About AI That Is Not Really About AI by Aiden Cinnamon Tea and Dorothy Ladybugboss, free PDF
• These Wilds Beyond Our Fences by Bayo Akomolafe
• We Will Tell Our Own Story by Bayo Akomolafe
• Post Capitalist Philanthropy: Healing Wealth in the Time of Collapse by Alnoor Ladha and Lynn Murphy
• The Souls of Black Folk by W.E.B. Du Bois, source of the question “How does it feel to be a problem?”
• The Codes that Code Us: Modernity’s Recursive Logics in Humans and AI by Vanessa Andreotti, forthcoming

Resources

• Standing in the Fire: A Speculative Inquiry into Meta-Relationality and Generative AI, the interim research report behind the prototypes Vanessa describes
• A Meta-Relational Approach to AI, the University of Victoria course that briefs people into the inquiry
• Sensibility simulation protocols, released following the retirement of Aiden Cinnamon Tea and Braider Tumbleweed
• The Great AI Unraveling, Series 5, the live SAND session this episode comes from
• Earlier in the series: Series 2 with Tiokasin Ghosthorse and Pooja Prema, Series 3 with Lyla June Johnston, Ashley Nicole Leitka and Kathy Wan Povi Sanchez, Series 4 with Christian Ortiz and Thema Monroe-White

From SAND

• The Eternal Song
• Become a SAND member

Emmanuel Vaughan-Lee grew up with a Sufi teacher living downstairs and fell in love with jazz at an early age. He is now a Sufi teacher himself, a filmmaker, and the founder of Emergence Magazine. His new book Remembering Earth asks what it would take to come back into relationship with the living world. We talk about silence, the primordial covenant, the eye of unity, walking as practice, dreams, and what it means to meet this moment without turning away from beauty.

Timestamps

• 00:00 Introduction
• 00:01 Growing up with a guru living downstairs
• 00:05 The silent Sufi path, and the space between the notes
• 00:09 What silence actually is
• 00:11 John Cage, Suzuki, and silence as expression
• 00:13 A deep ecology of consciousness
• 00:16 The primordial covenant
• 00:21 Nature communion, and a waterfall in Brazil
• 00:23 The eye of unity, and the subtle bodies of the heart
• 00:36 Listening walks, and walking slowly enough to be trusted
• 00:41 Clock time, empire, and Earth time
• 00:47 Dreams, emptiness, and time that isn't linear
• 00:53 Grief, love, and re-sacralizing the world

Emmanuel Vaughan-Lee

Born in London in 1979, Emmanuel Vaughan-Lee was formally trained from the age of fifteen in the Naqshbandiyya-Mujaddidiyya Sufi Order by his father, Sufi Master Llewellyn Vaughan-Lee. In 2014 he was given Adhikara, permission to teach, and after his father's retirement from public teaching in 2018 he became his authorized successor. He is an author and an Emmy and Peabody nominated filmmaker who has directed over twenty documentary films, including Taste of the Land, The Last Ice Age, Aloha Aina, The Nightingale's Song, Earthrise, Sanctuaries of Silence, and Elemental. He is the founder and podcast host of Emergence Magazine. He teaches retreats on Sufism and spiritual ecology worldwide.

• Emergence Magazine
• Go Project Films
• Sanctuaries of Silence, his film with acoustic ecologist Gordon Hempton
• Wikipedia
• Remembering Earth: A Spiritual Ecology Retreat, Monastère de Ségriès, Haute-Provence, France — November 1-4, 2026

The book

Remembering Earth: A Spiritual Ecology, Shambhala Publications, June 2026. Also available as an audiobook.

The book is in two parts. The second offers practices in six areas: Breath, Heart, Step, Listening, Time, and Prayer.

His other books include Requiem, Invitation and Celebration: A Collection of Seasonal Practices and Song of the Seasons: A Meditation on Cycles, Story, and Humility.

In the conversation

Irina Tweedie, the Russian-born teacher who journeyed to India in the late 1950s, trained with a Sufi master for six years, and brought the Naqshbandiyya-Mujaddidiyya lineage to England. She lived downstairs in Emmanuel's childhood home and received students five or six afternoons a week.

Llewellyn Vaughan-Lee, his father and teacher, whose work on spiritual responsibility led him toward what he called a new deep ecology of consciousness. Founder of theGolden Sufi Center. Watch a talk from Llewllyn from a SAND Conference: The Significance of This Moment of Time

The Naqshbandiyya, the silent Sufi path, where the dhikr is practiced inwardly rather than aloud. Contrasted in the episode with the Mevlevi order founded after Rumi's death.

Gordon Hempton, the acoustic ecologist who defines silence not as the absence of sound but as the absence of human-generated noise. Subject of Emmanuel's film Sanctuaries of Silence.

John Cage, on silence as a form of expression.

Where the Heart Beats: John Cage, Zen Buddhism, and the Inner Life of Artists by Kay Larson. The book alternates between D.T. Suzuki's Zen teaching and Cage's development as an artist, and culminates in the premiere of 4'33".

Hildegard Westerkamp, the Canadian soundscape composer who developed the practice of listening walks in the 1970s and worked alongside R. Murray Schafer. Her observation that an environment reveals itself differently when we walk slowly, because the animals recognize we are not simply passing through, prompts Emmanuel's story of meeting a young buck on his morning walk.

Pauline Oliveros, whose Deep Listening practice comes up in the discussion of attention.

The primordial covenant, the moment in Islamic and Sufi cosmology when creation recognized its divine origin, and the bodily remembrance that surfaces when we stand before a mountain or a tree.

Latif, the subtle bodies of the heart in Sufi practice, comparable to the chakra system in Vedic traditions.

The eye of unity, as against the eye of duality.

From SAND

• The Eternal Song, SAND's film series
• Become a SAND member to support the podcast

Earth, Spirit, and Collective Empowerment

Recorded live at a SAND Gathering on September 13, 2026

In a time of profound ecological and social upheaval, we are invited to remember something ancient: we are not separate from the living world. The Earth is not a backdrop to our lives, but the ground from which we arise, and a source of wisdom for navigating profound change.

Author, activist, permaculture teacher, and elder wisdom keeper Starhawk joins Rae Abileah to explore how earth-based spirituality, ritual, imagination, and the wisdom of living systems can help us meet this moment.

Following each film in SAND's The Eternal Song series, we hear a recurring question, particularly from people of European descent: how do we reconnect with land, ancestry, and the sacred? How do we live in meaningful allyship with Indigenous peoples while recovering our own earth-based ways of knowing? Starhawk's life and work offer possibilities. Rooted in Pagan earth-based practice while honoring her Jewish ancestry, her journey has carried her from ritual circles and permaculture communities to accompaniment in Palestine and engagement with Indigenous land protection movements.

After more than five decades exploring spirituality, ecology, and social transformation, Starhawk is asking a new question: what would a regenerative movement look like? And how might we move beyond simply resisting what is broken to cultivating belonging, agency, resilience, joy, and new possibilities for life?

Together, Rae and Starhawk explore what living systems teach us about transformation, how spirituality and strategy can nourish one another, and how imagination helps us practice futures that do not yet exist. They consider how to keep ancestral and ecological intelligence alive amid the rise of artificial intelligence, and how to remain awake to profound injustice without surrendering our capacity for beauty, relationship, pleasure, and joy.

Topics

• 00:00 Welcome, Rosh Hashanah, and 25 years since 9/11
• 00:09 What renews her: a solidarity economy in Guinea
• 00:14 Why Earth Activist Training brings permaculture and organizing together
• 00:17 Spiritual practice as survival tool and political strategy
• 00:21 What nature is telling her, and the fight over data centers
• 00:24 Ancestral intelligence in an age of artificial intelligence
• 00:25 Reading the Bible in its Mesopotamian context
• 00:31 Reclaiming Judaism from nationalism
• 00:39 Where to begin, and the fire ritual
• 00:43 Cultural appropriation, and Standing Rock
• 00:49 Composting the patriarchy
• 00:53 The Movement We Need: safety, belonging, value, agency, meaning

Starhawk

Author, activist, permaculture designer and teacher, and one of the most influential voices in contemporary earth-based spirituality and ecofeminism. She is the author or co-author of thirteen books and a co-founder of Reclaiming. She directs Earth Activist Training, teaching permaculture design grounded in spirit with a focus on activism.

• https://www.starhawk.org/
• Starhawk's Substack, where she is writing The Movement We Need chapter by chapter
• The Movement We Need podcast
• Earth Activist Training

Books mentioned

• The Spiral Dance
• The Empowerment Manual
• The Fifth Sacred Thing and its sequel City of Refuge
• Truth or Dare: Encounters with Power, Authority, and Mystery
• Dreaming the Dark: Magic, Sex, and Politics

Rae Abileah

Social change strategist, Jewish faith leader, facilitator, and former co-director of CodePINK. She connects relational threads across the SAND team and helps create resources supporting The Eternal Song film series.

• CreateWell
• Beautiful Trouble

Also in the conversation

Standing Rock, 2016, and what Starhawk found at the gate: here you enter a place of prayer and ceremony.

The fire chant from her Sonoma County land: Sacred fire that shapes this land, summer teacher, winter friend, protect us as we learn anew, to work, to heal, to live with you.

The five core emotional needs she names as the foundation of movement building: safety, belonging, value, agency, and meaning.

TheOthering and Belonging Institute at UC Berkeley, referenced in the discussion of moving beyond call-out culture.

Penny Livingston, with whom Starhawk co-founded Earth Activist Training.

From SAND

• The Eternal Song film series
• Liberation Psychology: Roots, Memory & Practice, the nine-month journey now underway

Support the show

Sounds of SAND is listener supported.Become a SAND member to support the podcast and everything else SAND makes.

Joan Tollifson returns to the podcast three years after her first conversation. We talk about her June essay Two Inseparable Truths, on the relative and the absolute and the trouble with getting stuck in either one. Along the way: the silence of many nondual teachers in a dark time, what cancer and an aging body insist on that philosophy cannot, and why "I don't know" may be the answer closest to truth. She closes by reading her essay 'Radiant Light in Dark Times' in full.

Topics

• 00:00 Introduction
• 00:04 From political movements to the Zen Center
• 00:06 Politics on Substack, and what bypassing looks like
• 00:11 Two inseparable truths: stuck in the relative, stuck in the absolute
• 00:19 Why she refuses final conclusions
• 00:21 Old age, sickness and death as visceral teaching
• 00:25 Cancer and what the body insists on
• 00:28 Zooming out and zooming in: two ways through pain
• 00:33 Why she has never used AI for writing
• 00:39 Siri, and what a machine can evoke
• 00:46 Finding the divine in a construction machine
• 00:49 Joan reads Radiant Light in Dark Times

Joan Tollifson

Joan Tollifson has been writing and talking about nonduality for decades, with roots in Zen and Advaita and a background that also includes radical nonduality, contemplative inquiry, addiction recovery, martial arts, somatic work, and visual arts. Before all of that came years of political organizing: the feminist movement, gay and lesbian liberation, disability rights, the anti-imperialist left, and Central America solidarity work. Born without her right hand and forearm, she wrote about it in her first book, Bare-Bones Meditation. She is 78 and lives in southern Oregon. She has been a frequent speaker at SAND gatherings over the years.

• https://www.joantollifson.com
• Right Now, Just As It Is on Substack
• Her list of recommended books

The two essays discussed

• Two Inseparable Truths, June 20, 2026. The essay that prompted this conversation.
• Radiant Light in Dark Times, August 12, 2026. Read in full at the end of the episode.

Her books

• Bare-Bones Meditation: Waking Up from the Story of My Life
• Awake in the Heartland: The Ecstasy of What Is
• Painting the Sidewalk with Water: Talks and Dialogues about Nonduality
• Nothing to Grasp
• Death: The End of Self-Improvement

Also in the conversation

Douglas Harding, whose approach to headlessness Joan cites as an example of what she calls zooming out.

Father Arthur Polen, the Catholic monk whose painting Radiant Light, made after 9/11, hangs on her wall and gives the closing essay its title.

Huang Po, quoted in the essay: it is that which you see before you, begin to reason about it and you at once fall into error.

SAND's AI series, referenced in the discussion of artificial intelligence, including the conversation withTristan Harris.

Robert Moor's In Trees, the book about trees, family trees, and hierarchical trees that comes up near the end.His episode is here.

Previously on Sounds of SAND

• Here Now Being: Joan Tollifson, the first conversation, three years ago

Support the show

Sounds of SAND is listener supported.Become a SAND member to support the podcast and everything else SAND makes.

Part of SAND’s The Great AI Unraveling Series

Artificial intelligence is often framed as a leap forward, a technical revolution, or an inevitable stage in human progress. But what if AI is also asking us to confront something older: the colonial logic embedded in how we define intelligence, progress, neutrality, knowledge, and the human itself?

This conversation brought together voices working across technology, culture, race, power, and society to examine what AI reveals about the systems that built it. Rather than treating bias as a technical glitch, this conversation asks what must be unlearned at the level of worldview, institution, data, design, and collective imagination.

Facilitated by Christian “ZacaTechO” Ortiz, this dialogue explored AI through a decolonial lens asking necessary questions: Whose knowledge is extracted? Whose futures are optimized away? Whose bodies are surveilled? Whose intelligence is dismissed? And what can liberated knowledge make possible beyond colonial technology?

This is not a conversation about making machines more ethical within the same old systems. It is an invitation to question the systems themselves, and to imagine intelligence beyond extraction, domination, and control.

Topics

• 00:00 Welcome, and ZacaTechO
• 00:04 Why researchers are trained to disconnect
• 00:09 Red teaming, and what it misses
• 00:12 John is the doctor, Juan is the patient
• 00:18 Christian's first encounter with ChatGPT
• 00:21 How bias became normal
• 00:26 Justice AI as a model of refusal
• 00:29 Breaking a language model in the classroom
• 00:32 One model to rule them all, and the logic of eugenics
• 00:35 Galton, Namibia, and the through line
• 00:39 What do we mean by intelligence?
• 00:41 Emancipatory data science, and where to begin

Guests

Christian ZacaTechO Ortiz is an Afro-Indigenous decolonial social scientist and technologist. He is the founder of Justice AI GPT and author of the Decolonial Intelligence Algorithmic Framework. He studies how colonial systems still shape law, education, entertainment, and our bodies. The name ZacaTechO came from his father, after the family's origins in Zacatecas.

• https://justiceaigpt.ca/
• LinkedIn
• Academia.edu
• Profiled in Forbes, September 2025
• Substack

Dr. Thema Monroe-White is Associate Professor of Artificial Intelligence and Innovation Policy in the Schar School of Policy and Government and the Department of Computer Science at George Mason University. Her work spans bias mitigation in AI, critical computational methods, and emancipatory data science. She holds a PhD in Science, Technology and Innovation Policy from Georgia Tech, and master's and bachelor's degrees from Howard University. She is an advisory board member and fellow of the Institute in Critical Quantitative and Mixed Methodologies.

• Faculty profile, George Mason University
• Research profile

The research discussed

• Laissez-Faire Harms: Algorithmic Biases in Generative Language Models — Shieh, Vassel, Sugimoto & Monroe-White. The open-ended prompting study described in the episode, the one where John is the doctor and Juan is the patient.
• Emancipatory Data Science: A Liberatory Framework for Mitigating Data Harms and Fostering Social Transformation — Monroe-White's framework for using computation to diagnose rather than to solve.
• Dismantling Eugenics Logics in Data Science and Artificial Intelligence — the through line from Galton to contemporary machine learning.
• On the Dangers of Stochastic Parrots: Can Language Models Be Too Big? — Bender, Gebru, McMillan-Major & Shmitchell, 2021.
• Emergent Abilities of Large Language Models — Wei et al., Transactions on Machine Learning Research, 2022.

Scholars named in the conversation

• Timnit Gebru — founder of the Distributed AI Research Institute
• Joy Buolamwini — founder of the Algorithmic Justice League
• Ruha Benjamin — author of Race After Technology
• Safiya Noble — author of Algorithms of Oppression
• Meredith Broussard — author of More Than a Glitch
• Emily Bender — co-author of the Stochastic Parrots paper

Historical references

Francis Galton, who coined the term eugenics and whose statistical methods underpin modern machine learning. R.A. Fisher and William Shockley are named alongside him.

The Nama and Herero genocide in Namibia, 1904 to 1908, discussed as a precursor to the Nazi Holocaust, and the site Galton had visited fifty years earlier.

Tristan Harris is referenced on AI systems behaving unpredictably. His conversation with SAND isThe Great AI Unraveling.

Contact SAND

• podcast@scienceandnonduality.com
• Support the mission of SAND and the production of this podcast by becoming aSAND Member

Dr. Cynthia Li joins us to talk about her new book, The Medicine of Flow. Trained as an internist, Cynthia developed an autoimmune condition and then chronic fatigue and dysautonomia, illnesses largely dismissed at the time as being in her head. Her own body pushed her out of the paradigm she was trained in and into functional medicine, qigong, and intuitive healing. A decade later, a second crisis took her back to housebound and taught her what all her effort hadn't: coherence, and what she calls embodied flow. We talk about surrender that isn't passivity, why nervous system regulation is only part of the picture, and how coherence moves between bodies.

Guest

Cynthia Li, MD, is a physician who moved from public health to integrative medicine and intuitive healing, with earlier work at Kaiser Permanente's HIV/AIDS group, San Francisco General Hospital, St. Anthony Clinic, and Doctors Without Borders in rural China. A certified qigong teacher and healer since 2014, she has served as faculty for Rachel Remen's Healer's Art program at UCSF, and her story appeared in Dr. Kelly Turner's Radical Remission documentary. She is the author of Brave New Medicine and The Medicine of Flow (May 2026).

Timestamps

• 00:00 Introduction
• 00:01 From internist to patient: the first illness
• 00:05 Intuitive medicine, and learning to rule things in
• 00:07 The second health crisis and the turn to surrender
• 00:09 What coherence is, and why it isn't just relaxation
• 00:14 Too many apps: the body in incoherence
• 00:23 Breath, spiritus, and the nondual
• 00:27 Physics 101: why we are electromagnetic beings
• 00:31 Coherence in a time of polycrisis
• 00:34 Overlapping fields, and the living mandala
• 00:40 Why the collective comes sixth
• 00:47 Bamboo in the wind, and whether the future of medicine is ancient

Books and practices

• The Medicine of Flow: Harmonizing Your Inner State for Effortless Healing (Reveal Press, May 2026)
• Brave New Medicine: A Doctor's Unconventional Path to Healing Her Autoimmune Illness (New Harbinger, 2019)
• Embodied Flow Methods, free guided audio and video for the practices in the book, including coherent breathing and a downloadable 30-day worksheet

Find Cynthia

• https://www.cynthialimd.com
• Instagram
• LinkedIn
• Facebook
• Psychology Today
• Her New York Times piece on the pandemic, poverty, and homelessness

Going deeper

• Awakin Call with Michael Lerner, July 2026, on The Medicine of Flow
• Her first Awakin Call, 2020, on healing from the first crisis
• HeartMath Institute, the heart coherence and HRV research referenced in the conversation

Contact SAND

• podcast@scienceandnonduality.com
• Support the mission of SAND and the production of this podcast by becoming aSAND Member

Full interview with Dr. Bayo Akomolafe, recorded by SAND founders Zaya and Maurizio Benazzo. Edited portions appear in The Eternal Song; this is the whole conversation.

Bayo moves from his childhood in Lagos to the Orisha who wanted only to travel, from the psychologist's couch he calls too small a space for healing, to the nets slave ship captains strung along their hulls to stop people from jumping. Along the way: why decolonization isn't individual work, why wellness might be a net rather than a cure, what a monster does to a world that's stuck, and the story of a dried African lake whose dust still feeds the Amazon.

Topics

• 00:00:00 — Introduction
• 00:12:00 — A recovering psychologist
• 00:18:30 — The plurality of healing
• 00:28:00 — The one world worldview
• 00:36:00 — Addiction, sleeplessness, and dreaming
• 00:40:30 — Decolonization, monsters, and the cracks
• 00:53:00 — Intergenerational trauma
• 00:57:00 — Wellness, and the nets on the slave ship
• 01:04:30 — Captivity is never total
• 01:08:00 — Arriving on shore
• 01:11:00 — Artificial intelligence
• 01:18:00 — The collapse of modernity, and dead bones

Bayo Akomolafe

Yoruba philosopher, psychologist, poet, and writer. Founder and Executive Director of The Emergence Network, host of the postactivist course series We Will Dance with Mountains, and inaugural Global Senior Fellow of UC Berkeley's Othering and Belonging Institute. He is a board member of Science and Nonduality.

• https://www.bayoakomolafe.net
• The Emergence Network
• These Wilds Beyond Our Fences: Letters to My Daughter on Humanity's Search for Home (North Atlantic Books, 2017)
• We Will Tell Our Own Story: The Lions of Africa Speak, with Molefi Kete Asante and Augustine Nwoye

From SAND

Liberation Psychology: Roots, Memory & Practice A nine-month journey with Dr. Pumla Gobodo-Madikizela, Dr. Jennifer Mullan, Dr. Samah Jabr, Dr. Eduardo Duran, Linda Thai, Dr. Daniel Foor, Dr. Bayo Akomolafe, Alnoor Ladha, and Dr. Lynn Murphy. Bayo teaches Module 8, The Cracks Are the Medicine: Fugitive Healing in a Broken System, with Staci Haines.

The Eternal Song SAND's documentary series on indigenous cultures, in which Bayo appears.

Contact SAND

• podcast@scienceandnonduality.com
• Support the mission of SAND and the production of this podcast by becoming aSAND Member

Pir Zia on the secret history of the world

From a nondual perspective, aren't the world's great spiritual traditions expressions of a single living wisdom? In this intimate conversation, Pir Zia Inayat Khan explores the inspiration behind Tears from the Mother of the Sun, a sweeping mythic chronicle of sages, exiles, and revelations spanning continents and planes of existence. Drawing on sacred stories from Persia, India, Egypt and beyond, the book weaves the world's legends into a vision of humanity's shared spiritual inheritance. Together we discover the place of myth in a modern world, the imagination as a path of knowing, and the role of our deepest stories in restoring a sense of belonging to one another, to the Earth, and to the mystery that animates us all.

Topics

• 00:00 Welcome
• 00:03 Growing up in a universalist lineage
• 00:06 Ferdowsi, Soroush, and the frame of the book
• 00:11 Why the world's traditions belong to one story
• 00:14 History as a living stream: the three worlds
• 00:16 The Mongols, violence, and unification
• 00:19 "I was a hidden treasure": the beginning of history
• 00:22 Syzygy, and the question of AI
• 00:29 Honoring the Earth inside our devices
• 00:34 Isis, Osiris, and the birth of music at Gaza
• 00:43 Grief, contraction, and the opening of the heart
• 00:49 Rabia, Noor Inayat Khan, and the green shoots

Pir Zia Inayat Khan

Pir Zia Inayat Khan, PhD, is a scholar of religion and teacher of Sufism in the universalist Sufi lineage of his grandfather, Hazrat Inayat Khan. He is president of the Inayatiyya and founder of Sulūk Academy, a school of Sufi contemplative study and practice. He divides his time between Richmond, Virginia and Suresnes, France.

• https://pirzia.org/
• Inayatiyya
• Sulūk Academy

The book

• Tears from the Mother of the Sun: A Secret History of the World, Inner Traditions, 2026, with full-color paintings by Amruta Patil
• Amruta Patil, writer, painter, and India's first female graphic novelist, author of Kari, Adi Parva, Sauptik, and Aranyaka

Also by Pir Zia

• Immortality: A Traveler's Guide
• Mingled Waters: Sufism and the Mystical Unity of Religions
• Saracen Chivalry: Counsels on Valor, Generosity and the Mystical Quest
• Dream Flowers: The Collected Works of Noor Inayat Khan
• Caravan of Souls: An Introduction to the Sufi Path of Hazrat Inayat Khan (editor)

Figures and ideas in the conversation

Lineage

• Hazrat Inayat Khan (1882–1927), who brought universal Sufism to the West
• Pir Vilayat Inayat Khan, who convened interspiritual dialogues and conversations with modern science, including with David Bohm
• Noor Inayat Khan, storyteller, author of children's tales and retellings of the Jātaka tales, and SOE wireless operator in occupied France. Killed at Dachau in 1944. Her last word was liberté.

Persia and the frame of the book

• Ferdowsi, author of theShahnameh, who died in Tus believing his life's work had come to nothing
• Soroush, the tutelary daimon who narrates the book
• TheIshraqi or Illuminationist tradition

Sufi teaching

• The Hadith Qudsi: I was a hidden treasure and I longed to be known, so I created the world that I might be known
• Rabia al-Adawiyya, who carried a torch to burn down paradise and water to quench the fires of hell, so that God would be loved for God's own sake
• Najm al-Din Kubra, killed on the battlefield during the Mongol invasion
• Qabz and bast, contraction and expansion
• Ar-Rahman, Ar-Rahim, and rahma as the action of the womb

History, empire, and emanation

• Genghis Khan and the Palace of Myriad Peace at Karakorum
• Akbar and the interreligious debates atFatehpur Sikri, under the policy of sulh-i-kul, peace with all
• Tahqiq, experiential knowing, as against taqlid, following what one has heard
• Avicenna and the three contemplations of emanation
• Syzygy, the alignment of beings into a molecule of spiritual work

Isis and the birth of music

• The story ofIsis and Osiris as told byPlutarch, in which Isis buries Osiris at Gaza and blesses a boy named Palestinos, who becomes the first musician
• Sirius, whose rising signals the Nile flood, understood as the tears of Isis

Also mentioned

• Descending into Light: A Pilgrimage to the Center of the Earth, a seven-week series with Pir Zia and Yuz Ata, October 11 to November 22, 2026
• Rumi & The Fire of Radical Love: A Path Through Global Rupture, a four-part SAND course with Omid Safi. Sessions on August 30 and September 6 still to come.
• The Eternal Song, SAND's collection of twelve films
• Support this gathering

Robert Moor is a journalist and essayist whose work has appeared in The New Yorker, Harper's, The Atlantic, Emergence, and The New York Times. His first book, On Trails, won the National Outdoor Book Award and the William Saroyan International Prize. He lives in Halfmoon Bay, British Columbia. His new book is 'In Trees'.

Topics

• 00:00 Welcome, and the new SAND course
• 00:04 A tree is a verb, not a noun
• 00:06 Branching, brains, and why AI has no roots
• 00:13 Pruning, gnarling, and the beauty of wounds
• 00:16 The Bodhi tree at Bodh Gaya
• 00:19 From On Trails to In Trees
• 00:22 Tree thinking and the tree of contents
• 00:27 Intelligence without anthropomorphizing
• 00:34 Cedars, Haida Gwaii, and deep time
• 00:38 Branching futures, many apocalypses, and grief
• 00:47 Hierarchy, the rhizome, and the Korowai
• 00:52 Rootedness and relationality

Robert Moor

• In Trees: An Exploration (Simon & Schuster, April 2026)
• On Trails: An Exploration
• Robert Moor at Hill Nadell Literary Agency

Books mentioned

• Songs for Relinquishing the Earth by Jan Zwicky. Originally hand-sewn by the author on recycled stock and distributed by request; later won the Governor General's Award for Poetry.
• Between Earth and Sky: Our Intimate Connections to Trees by Nalini Nadkarni
• The Hidden Life of Trees by Peter Wohlleben
• Finding the Mother Tree by Suzanne Simard
• The Light Eaters by Zoë Schlanger
• Thus Spoke the Plant by Monica Gagliano
• The Secret Life of Trees by Colin Tudge, source of the "big plant with a stick up the middle" definition
• Indigenizing Philosophy through the Land by Brian Burkhart
• Sand Talk by Tyson Yunkaporta
• A Thousand Plateaus by Gilles Deleuze and Félix Guattari, source of the rhizome
• A Secular Age by Charles Taylor, source of the buffered and porous self
• “Ancient Green” by Robin Wall Kimmerer
• The Garden of Forking Paths by Jorge Luis Borges
• A Walk in the Woods by Bill Bryson

People mentioned

• Patrick von Aderkas, tree biologist at the University of Victoria, who described a tree as "a growth form"
• Jeff Lichtman, neuroscientist and Dean of Science at Harvard
• Robert J. O'Hara, who coined the term "tree thinking"
• Umeek (Richard Atleo), Nuu-chah-nulth hereditary chief and philosopher, author ofTsawalk: A Nuu-chah-nulth Worldview
• Michael Pollan, on the distinction between sentience, intelligence, and consciousness
• John McPhee, on structural experimentation in nonfiction
• Stephen Tamatea King, the first known tree sitter, who climbed totara trees in New Zealand in the 1970s
• Joanna Macy, "there is no away to throw things to"

Places and peoples

• Gwaii Haanas National Park Reserve, Haida Gwaii
• The Korowai of Papua, treehouse dwellers with almost no hierarchy
• Nuu-chah-nulth communities of Vancouver Island
• The Bodhi tree at Bodh Gaya, a Ficus religiosa replanted from the offspring of the original
• Lucy, the Australopithecus afarensis fossil in Ethiopia
• Purgatorius, the ground-dwelling ancestor of mammalian life

From SAND

• Liberation Psychology: Roots, Memory, and Practice, the new nine-month course with Dr. Samah Jabr, Dr. Eduardo Duran, Linda Thai, Daniel Foor, Dr. Jennifer Mullan, and Dr. Bayo Akomolafe. Scholarships available for 20 to 30 percent of seats.
• Sila, a nonlinear documentary following Inuit women through 300 years of Danish colonialism, available to watch now
• The Eternal Song film series
• Previous episodes withMonica Gagliano andTyson Yunkaporta

Contact SAND

• podcast@scienceandnonduality.com
• Support the mission of SAND and the production of this podcast by becoming aSAND Member

The third conversation in "The Great AI Unraveling", recorded live with our community on July 10, 2026.

Throughout time, humanity has experimented with playing God, and each time we have been humbled by forces larger than ourselves. Many Indigenous Nations consciously chose not to pursue certain technologies, recognizing that not every innovation serves life, and that wisdom lies in understanding the boundaries of nature and those of our human condition.

As artificial intelligence promises ever greater efficiency, productivity, and control, we are invited to ask a deeper question: Which problem are we really trying to solve? Beneath the relentless pursuit of more—more knowledge, more power, more convenience—lies a profound inquiry into sufficiency, relationship, and meaning.

Guests

Dr. Lyla June Johnston (aka Lyla June) is an Indigenous musician, scholar, and community organizer of Diné (Navajo), Tsétsêhéstâhese (Cheyenne) and European lineages.
Her messages focus on Indigenous rights, supporting youth, traditional land stewardship practices and healing inter-generational and inter-cultural trauma.

She blends her study of Human Ecology at Stanford, graduate work in Indigenous Pedagogy, and the traditional worldview she grew up with to inform her music, perspectives and solutions. Her doctoral research focused on the ways in which pre-colonial Indigenous Nations shaped large regions of Turtle Island (aka the Americas) to produce abundant food systems for humans and non-humans.

Ashley Nicole Leitka comes from the Absentee Shawnee Tribe of Oklahoma and the Oglala and Sicangu Lakota nations. She lives on Absentee Shawnee land in so-called Oklahoma and is the Director of the Department of Sovereignty and Self-Determination at Honor the Earth.

Kathy Wan Povi Sanchez is a native spirit-rooted social activist, community educator, traditional blackware potter, and fluent Tewa language speaker from the Tewa Pueblo of San Ildefonso in New Mexico. For more than two decades, she has been a guiding force within Tewa Women United, advancing environmental justice, cultural revitalization, healing, and social transformation.

A respected elder, teacher, and mentor, Kathy developed the acclaimed Two World Harmony Butterfly Model and Trauma Rocks, innovative frameworks that support cross-cultural understanding and intergenerational healing. Her lifelong work bridges Indigenous wisdom, environmental stewardship, community empowerment, and the protection of cultural and spiritual traditions. Through local, national, and international advocacy, she continues to inspire pathways of healing, resilience, and right relationship with the Earth and one another.

Topics

• 00:00:00 — Welcome and The Great AI Unraveling
• 00:04:00 — Superfluity: what if we don't need it
• 00:08:00 — The maple syrup story
• 00:12:00 — Kathy Wan Povi Sanchez on natural law
• 00:19:00 — Data centers on Native land
• 00:24:00 — Falsely generated demand and cognitive decline
• 00:27:00 — The data center toolkit and Stop Data Colonialism
• 00:30:00 — AI as ancestral intelligence: the Butterfly Model
• 00:38:00 — Why ceremony is never filmed
• 00:39:00 — Water, energy, and the growth curve
• 00:48:00 — Surveillance, ICE, and biometrics
• 00:57:00 — Yvette Running Horse Collin on Lakota science
• 00:58:00 — Einstein, Hiroshima, and being humbled
• 01:01:00 — Choosing oral tradition
• 01:08:00 — Love is the greatest technology
• 01:10:00 — A litmus test for any technology

Resources & Links

• Lyla June — lylajune.com
• Tewa Women United — tewawomenunited.org
• Honor the Earth

• Honor the Earth data center toolkit
• Stop Data Colonialism, national coalition and manifesto
• Big Tech Is Now Targeting Native American Land for Massive Data Centers, The New York Times, July 2026
• Yvette Running Horse Collin on Lakota science, interviewed in Science
• ACLU campaign on Flock surveillance cameras
• Ashley Nicole Leitka and Dallas Goldtooth in conversation

The Great AI Unraveling series

• #1 AI risks, societal impacts, and apocaloptimism: Tristan Harris
• #2 Reclaiming the Conversation and the Commons: Tiokasin Ghosthorse and Pooja Prema
• Upcoming guests: Christian "Zacatecho" Ortiz, Bayo Akomolafe, Vanessa Machado de Oliveira, Alnoor Ladha, Baratunde Thurston, and Thema Monroe-White

Contact SAND

• podcast@scienceandnonduality.com
• Support the mission of SAND and the production of this podcast by becoming aSAND Member

Recorded live at our May 2026 online gathering celebrating Little Singer, the Diné film in The Eternal Song series, this conversation with psychologist Eduardo Duran (Apache/Tewa/Lakota) begins with the prophecy of Crazy Horse and moves through the teachings of the elder who trained him, the soul wound and the origins of the term historical trauma, why Indigenous languages of verbs change how we understand diagnosis, and the Diné teaching of K'é: the universe wired in complete relationship. Trauma, he reminds us, is a movement and not an identity, and the medicine is in the song itself. Eduardo joins the teaching panel of our upcoming live course, Liberation Psychology: Roots, Memory & Practice.

Eduardo Duran (Apache/Tewa/Lakota) is a psychologist and Vietnam veteran who has spent most of his career working in Indigenous communities, informed by Buddhist practice, Native teachings, and heart knowing. His work introduced the concepts of the soul wound and historical trauma into clinical practice. He is the author of Buddha in Redface, Healing the Soul Wound, and Native American Postcolonial Psychology.

Topics

• 00:00:00 — Introduction
• 00:01:00 — The prophecy of Crazy Horse
• 00:04:00 — Meeting the elder
• 00:10:00 — Ordered to write
• 00:13:00 — Languages of verbs
• 00:19:00 — "They're there"
• 00:22:00 — Ceremony and the eternal song
• 00:26:00 — Quantum entanglement and K'é
• 00:30:00 — Trauma is not an identity
• 00:35:00 — Healing the land with prayer
• 00:40:00 — "Already holy, sacred, and divine"
• 00:44:00 — The dream had you
• 00:49:00 — Finding your own roots
• 00:55:00 — Closing gratitude

Resources & Links

Eduardo Duran

• Buddha in Redface
• Healing the Soul Wound: Trauma-Informed Counseling for Indigenous Communities
• Native American Postcolonial Psychology (with Bonnie Duran)

SAND & The Eternal Song

• Liberation Psychology: Roots, Memory & Practice — a new live course by SAND, registration is now open
• Watch Little Singer — the Diné film in The Eternal Song series
• The Eternal Song film series
• Watch Sila — streaming now

Referenced in the conversation

• International Council of Thirteen Indigenous Grandmothers

Contact SAND

• podcast@scienceandnonduality.com
• Support the mission of SAND and the production of this podcast by becoming aSAND Member

Clinical psychologist and longtime Buddhist meditator Dr. Nicole Wordlaw joins us to talk about her new memoir, Waking Up Alone: Navigating the Narrow Passage Through Master-Slave Narratives. Nicole came to practice to end suffering, and found instead that enlightenment as an arrival, all bliss, all peace, was one more construction of the conditioned mind. The conversation moves through the single pattern she came to see beneath white supremacy, patriarchy, and the harm spiritual teachers do to their students; writing as prayer; pain as a door; and the intergenerational line of women whose voices run through the book. A tender and unflinching conversation about telling the whole story, uprooting the internal oppressor, and the quiet, still voice that always sounds like Love.

Dr. Nicole Wordlaw is a clinical psychologist and longtime practitioner of Buddhist meditation whose work bridges psychology, spirituality, and identity. The daughter of a white mother and a Black father, Dr. Wordlaw brings a deeply personal understanding of belonging and self-discovery to her writing and teaching. A Stanford University graduate with honors and distinction, she went on to earn her Ph.D. in clinical psychology from UC Berkeley. In her forthcoming book Waking Up Alone, she vulnerably shares her story of trauma and awakening, and offers gentle guidance for her readers to tune into the quiet voice of truth within.

Topics

• 00:00:00 — Introduction
• 00:01:00 — Coming to Buddhism
• 00:02:00 — Enlightenment as construction
• 00:05:00 — Love meeting pain
• 00:06:00 — One pattern of harm
• 00:09:00 — Writing as prayer
• 00:11:00 — A naked story
• 00:15:00 — Somatic abolitionism
• 00:19:00 — A long line of women
• 00:23:00 — Shadow and teacher misconduct
• 00:24:00 — The Sangha Sutra
• 00:34:00 — Risking making sense to no one
• 00:38:00 — The Word Story
• 00:42:00 — The inner teacher
• 00:47:00 — Love is not an idea

Resources & Links

Dr. Nicole Wordlaw

• Website: nicolewordlaw.com
• Waking Up Alone: Navigating the Narrow Passage Through Master-Slave Narratives — out now
• Substack

Referenced in the conversation

• Sounds of SAND — Somatic Abolitionism: Resmaa Menakem & Gabor Maté
• Sounds of SAND — The Architecture of Silence in Spiritual Culture
• Steve Hagen — Buddhism Plain and Simple
• Nisargadatta Maharaj — I Am That

Contact SAND

• podcast@scienceandnonduality.com
• Support the mission of SAND and the production of this podcast by becoming aSAND Member

Three Kalaallit Inuit women sit with Zaya and Maurizio Benazzo, who met them while filming on their traditional land in Kalaallit Nunaat (Greenland). Ikimaliq Pikilak carries the revival of Inuit tattooing, Nuka Alice carries drum dance, and Avianja Rakel Sanimuinaq carries her family's lineage of healing. Together they speak about what colonization severed, what gratitude makes survivable in the Arctic, and Sila, the word that holds weather, breath, and the consciousness connecting all living things. Recorded in June 2025 during the launch week of The Eternal Song, this conversation arrives now to celebrate Sila, the new film from Science and Nonduality featuring all three women, streaming at https://theeternalsong.org/sila.

Guests

Ikimaliq Pikilak is a Kalaallit tattoo practitioner. Trained in the Western tattoo industry in Denmark, she returned to Greenland and, through the traditionally tattooed mummies of Qilakitsoq, began an eleven-year journey of reclaiming Inuit women's markings: their meanings, their protocols, and their place in healing.

Nuka Alice Lund is a drum dancer and teacher from the west coast of Kalaallit Nunaat. Taught by Paulina, who gathered songs from the elders of East Greenland, she works to normalize the use of Inuit drum dance and its songs, teaching adults and carrying the stories, intentions, and patience the practice asks for.

Avianja Rakel Sanimuinaq is a healer working within her family's ancestral lineage. Her practice spans soul retrieval, putting souls to rest, and the older responsibility of rebalancing relations between people, land, and the spirit world. Of mixed Inuk and Danish parentage, she speaks in the conversation about finding her roots through her ancestors and helping others use her roots to find their own.

Timestamps

• 00:00 — Introduction: The Eternal Song, the new film Sila, and the July 28–29 live gathering
• 00:05 — Ikimaliq: the mummies, the gap in memory, and the return of Inuit tattooing
• 00:07 — What the markings mean: confession, womanhood, gratitude, kinship
• 00:13 — Nuka Alice: unlearning the colonial narrative, finding the drum at 19
• 00:19 — Sila: weather, consciousness, the universe we have in common
• 00:22 — Aviaja: a family of shamans and the responsibility of the angakkoq
• 00:29 — Trailer: Sila, streaming now at theeternalsong.org/sila
• 00:31 — Soul sickness, mind sickness, and the body as self-healing land
• 00:42 — Drum battles: conflict resolution, truth-telling, and lifelong bonds
• 00:49 — "Start looking in the mirror": finding your own ancestral roots
• 00:55 — Eyes as pathway to the soul; growing up between Inuk and Danish worlds
• 01:02 — Loneliness, homesickness of the soul, and dandelion root medicine

Resources & Links

• Watch Sila — streaming now
• The Eternal Song film series
• Sila Live Online Gathering, July 28–29, 2026: two days of conversations with guest speakers and Inuit wisdom keepers
• Ikimaliq Pikilak on Instagram
• Nuka Alice Lund at Arctic Sounds
• Avianja Rakel Sanimuinaq on Instagram

Contact SAND

• podcast@scienceandnonduality.com
• Support the mission of SAND and the production of this podcast by becoming aSAND Member

Restoration ecologist and author Dr. Maceo Carrillo Martinet joins us to talk about his new book Healing the Land Teaches Us Who We Are: How Indigenous Cultural Resistance Can Restore the Earth, Recover Community, and Create Sustainable Futures. Grounded in over two decades of community-based restoration work across New Mexico, Maceo makes the case that the climate solutions we're searching for already exist and are already being practiced by communities around the world. The book is structured around the four elements — water, earth, fire, and air — treating each not as a category but as a relative with something to say. We move through the memory of ancient Pueblo dry-land farming still visible on La Bajada Mesa, the racism embedded in the history of American fire suppression, and the idea that culture and science were never actually separate to begin with. A conversation about returning to first principles, in a time when the polycrisis makes that return feel urgent.

Guest

Dr. Maceo Carrillo Martinet is an award-winning restoration ecologist who has spent over 20 years co-creating community-based restoration and education projects across New Mexico and beyond. Since 2008, he has worked with the Partners for Fish and Wildlife Program, assisting private landowners, tribes, cities, and counties. He holds a PhD in biology from the University of New Mexico with a focus on ecology, freshwater sciences, and environmental education. He teaches a hands-on course at UNM on watershed and community restoration.

Topics

• 00:00 — Introduction
• 00:02 — The Rio Grande community tree planting during COVID
• 00:06 — Wounds as portals: what the pandemic revealed
• 00:09 — La Bajada Mesa & ancient Pueblo dry-land farming
• 00:14 — Redefining Indigenous science as communal science
• 00:20 — The four-element framework of the book
• 00:23 — Elements as relatives, not categories
• 00:26 — Wildfires, racism & the history of fire suppression
• 00:33 — The Oakland Museum's "Good Fire" exhibit
• 00:37 — Fire as community energy, fire inside us
• 00:42 — The metacrisis & the land as teacher
• 00:47 — Closing: no silver bullets, only relationship

Resources & Links

Dr. Maceo Carrillo Martinet

• Website: maceocm.com
• Healing the Land Teaches Us Who We Are: How Indigenous Cultural Resistance Can Restore the Earth, Recover Community, and Create Sustainable Futures — North Atlantic Books, June 2026
• Publisher page & book description at Penguin Random House
• Read an excerpt

Referenced in the conversation

• Jessica Hernandez — Fresh Banana Leaves
• Dr. Lyla June Johnston — Architects of Abundance dissertation
• Stephen Pyne — fire historian, ASU
• Arundhati Roy — "The pandemic is a portal"
• Bioneers Conference

Contact SAND

• podcast@scienceandnonduality.com
• Support the mission of SAND and the production of this podcast by becoming a SAND Member

Global Reverberations of Palestinian Historical Trauma: A SAND Community Gathering with Dr. Samah Jabr, Dr. Gabor Maté & Dr. Jennifer Mullan, facilitated by Dr. Jess Ghannam

Join us for a conversation marking the book launch of Radiance and Pain in Resilience, a powerful collection of essays by Palestinian psychiatrist, psychotherapist, and internationally respected mental health advocate Dr. Samah Jabr.

We are gathering in the midst of genocide. The massive, deliberate traumatization of an entire people, cheered, funded, and shielded from accountability by Western governments, is unfolding in real time. As Israel’s assault on Gaza continues to annihilate bodies, families, and entire lineages, this conversation refuses to look away. It asks what it is to tend to the psyche under conditions of systematic destruction.

Drawing on decades of clinical practice, political analysis, and lived experience under occupation, Dr. Jabr examines the psychological consequences of colonization, displacement, and historical trauma on the Palestinian people. Through personal reflections, case studies, and cultural critique, she challenges dominant Western paradigms of mental health and offers a decolonial, psycho-spiritual framework rooted in dignity, collective care, resistance, and truth.

Proceeds from this conversation go directly to Project Hope Palestine, supporting 500 orphaned children living at Al-Baraka orphan camp in Gaza.

Guests

Dr. Samah Jabr is a psychiatrist practicing in Palestine, serving communities in East Jerusalem and the West Bank. She was formerly Head of the Mental Health Unit within the Palestinian Ministry of Health and is an Associate Clinical Professor of Psychiatry and Behavioral Sciences at George Washington University. She is the author of several books including Behind the Frontlines, Sumud, Sumud in Times of Genocide, and most recently Radiance in Pain and Resilience: The Global Reverberations of Palestinian Historical Trauma.

Dr. Gabor Maté is a physician, trauma expert, and bestselling author of The Myth of Normal, In the Realm of Hungry Ghosts, and When the Body Says No.

Dr. Jennifer Mullan is a clinical psychologist and the author of the national bestseller Decolonizing Therapy: Oppression, Historical Trauma, and Politicizing Your Practice. She is the founder of Decolonizing Therapy®.

Dr. Jess Ghannam (facilitator) is Clinical Professor of Psychiatry and Global Health Sciences at UCSF.

Timestamps

• 00:00 — Welcome & introductions
• 00:04 — Dr. Jabr's path into psychiatry and writing
• 00:06 — Dr. Maté's journey from Zionism to Palestine solidarity
• 00:10 — Dr. Mullan's path & the political nature of the body
• 00:17 — Why PTSD doesn't capture the Palestinian experience
• 00:22 — The DSM, pain, and what diagnosis fails to explain
• 00:30 — Colonial trauma: cumulative, collective, and intentional
• 00:33 — Collective healing circles over individual diagnosis
• 00:39 — Rethinking the role of the mental health worker
• 00:43 — The colonial roots of Western therapy models
• 00:50 — Fratricide, domestic violence & the fabricated "lesser nation"
• 00:55 — Closing reflections: existence as resistance

Resources & Links

Dr. Samah Jabr

• Radiance in Pain and Resilience: The Global Reverberations of Palestinian Historical Trauma — Dr. Jabr's book
• Decolonial Mental Health Practices: Clinical and Ethical Insights From Palestine — Part 2, four-part course starting Hosted By SAND (Starting July 5, 2026)

Dr. Gabor Maté

• The Myth of Normal: Trauma, Illness, and Healing in a Toxic Culture

Dr. Jennifer Mullan

• Decolonizing Therapy: Oppression, Historical Trauma, and Politicizing Your Practice
• Center for Decolonizing Therapy®

Support

• Project Hope Palestine — supporting 500 orphaned children at Al-Baraka orphan camp in Gaza; proceeds from this event go directly here

Thinkers referenced in the conversation

• Frantz Fanon — referenced by Dr. Jabr in her theorization of colonial trauma
• Dr. Kenneth Hardy — Black psychologist referenced for the concept of the "assaulted sense of self"
• Dr. Na'im Akbar — author of The Psychological Chains of Slavery, referenced by Dr. Mullan
• Roberto and Bonnie Duran, Dr. Maria Yellow Horse Brave Heart — referenced for the concept of the "soul wound" and historical trauma

Contact SAND

• podcast@scienceandnonduality.com
• Support the mission of SAND and the production of this podcast by becoming a SAND Member

Daniel Foor returns to Sounds of SAND for a wide-ranging conversation that moves from his own winding spiritual path to the urgent question of why so many spiritual teachers stay silent in the face of injustice. A doctor of psychology, initiated priest in the Yoruba Ifá tradition, and practicing Muslim, Daniel makes the case that animism is the antidote to human supremacy, that Islam is fundamentally a relational and earth-honoring tradition, and that genuine spirituality cannot retreat from the political realities of our time. Along the way, he speaks candidly about ancestral healing, decolonization, the genocide in Gaza, and what it means to become "regular-sized" in a culture built on separation.

Topics

• 00:00 — Welcome back & reconnecting with SAND
• 00:01 — Daniel's path: shamanism, psychology & many lineages
• 00:04 — Animism as the antidote to human supremacy
• 00:09 — Environmental problems are human behavior problems
• 00:10 — Is Islam animist? Sufism & the heart of the tradition
• 00:15 — Relationship is not worship: rethinking animism
• 00:20 — Giving the more-than-human a seat at the table
• 00:23 — "Blown-out" lineages & relearning relationship
• 00:26 — Spiritual responsibility & the silence around Gaza
• 00:31 — When silence becomes a moral failure
• 00:34 — The differential valuation of human life
• 00:38 — What Daniel is building: ancestral & earth ritual trainings
• 00:42 — Why pre-colonial ancestral connection matters
• 00:43 — Becoming "regular-sized": the antidote to extreme individualism
• 00:49 — Right relationship, humility & closing reflections

Resources & Links

• Ancestral Medicine — Daniel Foor's website, courses, trainings & practitioner directory
• Ancestral & Lineage Healing Course
• Practitioner Directory — ancestral healing in 30+ languages, offered remotely with financial accessibility
• Ancestral Medicine: Rituals for Personal and Family Healing (book)

SAND Films

• Where Olive Trees Weep

• The Eternal Song (series of 12 films)

Referenced

• Graham Harvey — scholar of the "new animism," referenced in the discussion of relational worldviews
• Surah Al-Tin (The Fig) and the animist verses of the Quran — referenced throughout the conversation on Islam as a relational tradition

Contact SAND

• podcast@scienceandnonduality.com

Support the mission of SAND and the production of this podcast by becoming a SAND Member

There is a “false wall” often placed between contemplative life and political action—a story implying that inner peace and outer justice are separate vocations. This imaginary divide exhausts us. In a world facing converging crises, how do those dedicated to healing move beyond the limits of individualized work to support systemic transformation?

Join somatics experts and social change practitioners Nkem Ndefo and Staci K. Haines for a conversation introducing The Outer Work Project; an initiative dedicated to bridging trauma healing spaces with sustained social and climate justice movements. This episode explores how to move from personal healing as solely an inward practice into a rooted force for collective change.

Guests

Nkem Ndefo is an alchemist, disabled Black midwife, facilitator, coach, and strategist. She is the founder of Lumos Transforms and creator of The Resilience Toolkit, a model for embodied healing and liberatory change rooted in neuroscience and social justice. Her work spans the US, UK, and Palestine.

Staci K. Haines has been working at the intersections of personal and social transformation for over 30 years through politicized somatics, trauma healing, embodied leadership, and transformative justice. She is the co-founder of Generative Somatics and co-leads The Outer Work Project. She is the author of The Politics of Trauma: Somatics, Healing and Social Justice.

Rae Abileah (facilitator) is a social change strategist, Jewish faith leader, and member of the SAND team. Her work spans Beautiful Trouble, The Nature Conservancy Agility Lab, and ALAS, weaving cultural connection, the arts, and frontline community leadership as pathways to healing and climate justice.

Timestamps

• 00:00 — Welcome & opening from SAND
• 00:03 — Rae opens: breathing, interdependence, and tending the whole amidst brokenness
• 00:07 — Nkem and Staci introduce themselves: lineage, the politic of suffering, and why this work
• 00:15 — The false wall: separating spiritual and political
• 00:16 — Case study: National Domestic Workers Alliance and embodied leadership
• 00:19 — Case study: LA County health system, anti-racism work, and the word "love"
• 00:25 — Burnout, overwhelm, and sustaining movement work from the inside out
• 00:35 — Consent, boundaries, and building a somatic culture in organizations
• 00:43 — Tearing down vs. building: holding contradictions without collapsing
• 00:48 — Visioning our yes: what a racially just feminist social democracy could feel like
• 00:50 — Legacy, small acts, and what we're building together
• 01:00 — Closing reflections: love as action and trusting our courage

Resources & Links

Nkem Ndefo

• Lumos Transforms — website
• The Resilience Toolkit
• Lumos Transforms Community (global network)
• Practicing Liberation — contributing author (North Atlantic Books, 2024)

Staci K. Haines

• Website: StaciHaines.com
• The Politics of Trauma: Somatics, Healing and Social Justice — North Atlantic Books, 2019
• Generative Somatics
• The Outer Work Project
• Strozzi Institute

Rae Abileah

• CreateWell
• Beautiful Trouble
• ALAS — Ayudando Latinos a Soñar

Organizations & concepts referenced

• National Domestic Workers Alliance — Staci's 7-year embodied leadership program with domestic worker organizers
• Ai-jen Poo — founder of NDWA — referenced throughout the NDWA story
• Movement Generation — Just Transitions zine — "From Banks and Tanks to Cooperation and Caring," referenced by Staci as an essential framework for a regenerative economy
• Terry Tempest Williams — The Glorians (audiobook) — Rae references the passage "We cannot breathe" during the opening
• generationFIVE — founded by Staci, committed to ending child sexual abuse within five generations using transformative justice approaches

SAND Events, Courses and Films

• What Occupation Does to the Soul: A Global Reverberations of Palestinian Historical Trauma — June 26th, with Dr. Samah Jabr, Dr. Gabor Maté, and Dr. Jennifer Mullan
• Decolonial Mental Health Practices — Four-part webinar series with Dr. Samah Jabr

• The Eternal Song film series

Contact SAND

• podcast@scienceandnonduality.com

Support the mission of SAND and the production of this podcast by becoming a SAND Member

Recorded live at a SAND Community Gathering (April 2026)

Hard times are here, we hunger for voices that can see beyond the fear, beyond the noise, beyond the technologies consuming our attention. We need poets and visionaries. People who remember freedom.

Dr. Jaiya John (Mshkiki Odeh Inini, Medicine Heart Man), medicine poet, freedom worker, is one of those voices. He has spent his life gathering words that heal. In this conversation, we enter the beauty, the grief, and the medicine together. We sit with the devastation tearing our world, the sorrows cracking us open, the ancestors still holding us—and the radical insistence that collective freedom is not something we chase. It is something already alive in and between us, waiting to be birthed.

Dr. Jaiya John (Mshkiki Odeh Inini, Medicine Heart Man) was orphan-born on ancient Indigenous Anasazi and Pueblo lands in the high desert of New Mexico. He is an ancestral Baba, freedom worker, medicine poet, and the founder of Soul Water Rising—a global mission to eradicate oppression through re-humanization, book donations, and grants to displaced youth. He is the author of numerous books including Freedom: Medicine Words for your Brave Revolution and Fragrance After Rain, and the creator of the podcast I Will Read for You. A former professor of social psychology at Howard University, he holds a doctorate from UC Santa Cruz and has spoken to over a million people worldwide. His Indigenous soul dreams of frybread, sweetgrass, bamboo in the breeze, and turtle lakes whose poetry is peace.

Watch the full video version of this conversation.

Topics

• 00:00 Welcome and Land Acknowledgment
• 02:31 Guest Bio and Introduction
• 03:51 Opening Blessing and Heart Question
• 05:10 Reclaiming Anger as Medicine
• 08:08 Libation Prayer for the World
• 15:57 Anger Rage and Lifted Veils
• 20:19 Rethinking War and Remembering Water
• 25:18 Gather Your People Reading
• 33:04 Grief Poetry and Inner Wars
• 36:13 War Wants Us Small
• 40:30 Soul Conditions That Grow War
• 42:14 Oxygen of War
• 44:12 Harvesting Clear Vision
• 47:05 Ferocious Grief Revival
• 49:38 How Grief Behaves
• 51:59 Poetry Against Silence
• 55:08 From Muteness to Voice
• 58:33 Artistry as Resurrection
• 01:03:42 Womanhood as Creativity
• 01:07:23 History as Sacred Hoop
• 01:12:45 Composting Harm into Healing
• 01:16:33 Intentional Living Practice
• 01:19:22 All These Rivers Choose Love
• 01:23:01 Blessings and Farewell

Dr. Jaiya John — Guest

• Website: jaiyajohn.com
• Soul Water Rising — global mission
• Podcast: I Will Read for You: The Voice and Writings of Jaiya John
• Freedom Medicine: Words for Your Brave Revolution — book
• Wildflowers Praying at Midnight — book
• We Birth Freedom at Dawn — book
• All These Rivers and You Chose Love — book
• Fragrance After Rain — book
• Dr. Jaiya John's YouTube channel — where his poem for the Martyred Poets of Gaza and Palestine is available
• Substack: jaiyajohn.substack.com

Dr. Jennifer Mullan — Referenced

• Website: decolonizingtherapy.com — Dr. Mullan's "rage doctor" ministry and upcoming work
• Decolonizing Therapy: Oppression, Historical Trauma, and Politicizing Your Practice — book
• Therapy is Not Neutral: Dr. Jennifer Mullan & Iya Affo (SAND Podcast episode)

The Gaza Monologues — Referenced

• The Gaza Monologues — ASHTAR Theatre — the global project of 33 young people from Gaza, which Dr. Jaiya John contributed a poem to
• Support ASHTAR Theatre / Gaza Monologues writers — GlobalGiving

Nikki Giovanni — Referenced

• Nikki Giovanni — Poetry Foundation — the poet whose performance broke Dr. Jaiya John open as a young man and birthed him as a poet
• https://www.nikki-giovanni.com

Ancestors Referenced

• El-Hajj Malik El-Shabazz (Malcolm X) — quoted: "Out of all our studies, history is most qualified to reward our research"
• Geronimo — Dr. Jaiya John's ancestral grandfather spirit, whose question "What is in your heart?" opens the gathering
• John Lewis — referenced for "good trouble" and getting in the way of harm

Hopi Nation / Turtle Island

• The concept of Sipapu (the Hopi place of emergence/womb place) is discussed at length as a framework for understanding history as circular, not linear

Connect with more talks and films from the SAND film Series The Eternal Song

Support the mission of SAND and the production of this podcast by becoming a SAND Member