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by Wonder Cabinet Productions
Wonder Cabinet is an independent podcast from Anne Strainchamps and Steve Paulson, Peabody Award-winning creators of public radio's To The Best Of Our Knowledge. For 35 years, that show brought long-form conversations to 200+ stations nationwide; its interviews are now archived in the Library of Congress. Episodes feature intimate, long-form conversations with scientists, philosophers, writers, and artists who are re-imagining our relationship with the planet. Some study black holes or quantum entanglement; others map mycelial networks or count ancient tree rings. And some explore dream worlds, myths, and fairy tales to revive ways of knowing that challenge what we think we understand about the nature of reality. The name references Enlightenment-era cabinets of curiosities—private collections of shells, fossils, astronomical instruments, and saints' relics that existed at a moment when the scientific revolution was s
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- Jun 20, 202651 min
The Spiritual Ecology of Emmanuel Vaughan-Lee
Emmanuel Vaughan-Lee grew up in London with a Russian Sufi mystic living downstairs, seekers showing up at all hours and meditation happening constantly. Then his family moved to a coastal redwood forest in Northern California, where he learned to surf and fell in love with wilderness. Today, Emmanuel is the founder, executive editor and podcast host of Emergence Magazine – for nearly a decade, one of the most important venues for spiritually-infused ecological writing. His new book, Remembering Earth, is both a meditation on the sacred nature of the living world and a practical guide to re-entering it. In this conversation, we explore Sufism's radical vision of the divine as intimate and immanent, rather than distant and transcendent. We also talk about jazz — Emmanuel dropped out of school at age 16 to play acoustic bass — and the liminal space of creative improvisation. Other stops along the way: the epigenetic memory of birdsong, how breath and walking can become a form of prayer; what dreams are and where they come from; and the boundlessness of Earth’s love. Note: Wonder Cabinet is taking a summer break. We’ll be back in August with new episodes.— Emergence Magazine Emmanuel’s new book, “Remembering Earth” "The Nightingale’s Song," a film by Emmanuel Vaughan-Lee and Adam Loften Anne’s conversation with Sam Lee —00:00:00 The Magic We've Forgotten00:02:15 Growing Up With a Guru00:06:55 One River, Many Names00:15:55 Spiritual Ecology and Practice00:29:05 Nightingales, Jazz, and Dreams Wonder Cabinet is hosted by Anne Strainchamps and Steve Paulson. Find out more about the show at https://wondercabinetproductions.com, where you can subscribe to the podcast and our newsletter.
- Jun 13, 202647 min
An Evening of Wonder with Alan Lightman
What happens when a physicist experiences a moment of transcendence that science cannot explain?Alan Lightman has spent much of his life exploring the mysteries of the universe—from black holes and the nature of time to the fundamental laws that govern reality. A physicist, novelist and longtime professor at MIT, he's fascinated by the transformative power of awe and wonder.In this live conversation recorded at New York's Morgan Library, Lightman reflects on extraordinary encounters in nature—from a startling moment with two ospreys to a solitary night beneath the stars—that shook him to the core and left him feeling as though he had somehow "fallen into infinity." Calling himself a "spiritual materialist," he seeks to bridge the divide between science and religion, between mathematics and art.Can a scientific worldview make room for awe, transcendence, and mystical experience? Lightman says these fleeting moments reveal something essential about being human: our longing to connect with something larger than ourselves.This event at the Morgan Library was co-sponsored by the Nour Foundation as part of our series “Spirituality in the Age of Science: Conversations on God, Transcendence and Mortality.”— Video of Steve’s complete conversation with Alan Lightman at Morgan Library: MIT website Books PBS series: "Searching: Our Quest For Meaning in the Age of Science" —0:00 Introduction2:40 The Osprey Encounter9:40 Science And Religion13:30 Scientist And Novelist28:50 The Religious Impulse36:50 Evolution And Consciousness Wonder Cabinet is hosted by Anne Strainchamps and Steve Paulson. Find out more about the show at https://wondercabinetproductions.com, where you can subscribe to the podcast and our newsletter.
- May 23, 202639 min
Rewilding Attention with D. Graham Burnett
We all know our attention is being competed for — but historian of science D. Graham Burnett calls it something more alarming: a "civilizational biohack." In this episode, we talk with Burnett, a Princeton historian of science and co-founder of "The Friends of Attention," about the movement to liberate our minds from the 17-trillion-dollar attention economy. He draws on surprising sources — the German Romantics, St. Augustine, Simone Weil, Henry James — to argue that we've lost touch with older, richer forms of attention. And he makes the case that reclaiming it will require more than screentime apps or digital detox – it’ll take collective resistance. Plus: why your Pilates class, your evening needlework, or your walk with the dog might already be forms of radical attention — and how reframing everyday activities can make ordinary life feel richer, more mysterious and more full of wonder.– “Attensity: A Manifesto of the Attention Liberation Movement” The Friends of Attention The Strother School of Radical Attention D. Graham Burnett website –0:00 Introduction3:00 Human Fracking27:30 Attention as Generosity30:55 Wonder and Disenchantment Wonder Cabinet is hosted by Anne Strainchamps and Steve Paulson. Find out more about the show at https://wondercabinetproductions.com, where you can subscribe to the podcast and our newsletter.
- May 16, 202631 min
Christof Koch on the Cosmic Toad
What happens when one of the world’s leading neuroscientists has a mystical experience that upends his understanding of reality?In the 1990s, Christof Koch helped launch the modern science of consciousness, searching for the neural basis of subjective experience. A committed materialist, Koch believed brain science would explain how conscious experience is generated. Then several profound psychedelic experiences changed his metaphysical beliefs. “It was like an earthquake,” he says.In this conversation, Koch reflects on how those mind-bending experiences transformed his deepest assumptions about mind and matter, and whether the cosmos itself might have purpose. He talks about the power and the limits of science, and why he’s come to see consciousness not as a byproduct of matter, but as something far more fundamental, perhaps the fabric of reality itself.—Personal website Allen InstituteTTBOOK: "Your Brain on Shrooms" — 0:00 Introduction4:05 Pursuing Ultimate Truth9:40 Into the Psychedelic Void16:00 The Loss of Self20:55 What Science Cannot Explain Wonder Cabinet is hosted by Anne Strainchamps and Steve Paulson. Find out more about the show at https://wondercabinetproductions.com, where you can subscribe to the podcast and our newsletter.
- May 9, 202645 min
Why We Need Fairy Tales Now — with Sharon Blackie
Sharon Blackie is one of our foremost fairy tale interpreters. In her new book, “Ripening: Why Women Need Fairy Tales Now,” she reclaims the subversive fairy tale heroines of the past. Not passive, well-behaved princesses — think Tatterhood instead of Cinderella, the Fox Wife instead of Sleeping Beauty — figures from centuries-old European folk tales that were whispered over hearths and spinning wheels, and handed down from one generation of women to the next, not as children’s entertainment but a blueprint for survival, maps for soul retrieval and cultural regeneration. The brave, smart heroines and wise old women in these tales offer us an alternative, “post-heroic” model of psychological development, Blackie says. A code of ethics based on kinship with the more-than-human world of animals and plants, and a celebration of old-fashioned virtues like compassion, kindness and reciprocity. Fairy tale heroines, Blackie says, don’t slay dragons — they make them part of the team. Fairy tales are part of our collective unconscious, a storehouse of archetypes and images that predate the modern world. There's a bridge back to the enchanted landscapes and animist sensibilities of our ancestors — a gateway to wonder. In this conversation, Blackie shows us how to unlock their power and find our way back the imaginal world. – Website "The Art of Enchantment" Substack "Ripening: Why Women Need Fairy Tales Now" The Nostos Institute Sharon’s other books –0:00 Introduction2:25 Why Fairy Tales Are Survival Stories12:25 Beyond the Hero's Journey27:05 Jung, Hillman, and the Imaginal World41:45 Active Imagination and Closing Thanks Wonder Cabinet is hosted by Anne Strainchamps and Steve Paulson. Find out more about the show at https://wondercabinetproductions.com, where you can subscribe to the podcast and our newsletter.
- May 2, 202649 min
Rebecca Henderson: Can Capitalism Save the World It’s Destroying?
Can capitalism save the world it's destroying?Rebecca Henderson thinks so. An economist at Harvard Business School and author of Reimagining Capitalism in a World on Fire, she has advised some of the world's biggest corporations and argues that capitalism itself — and what drives corporations — urgently needs to change.She's clear-eyed about capitalism's failures — the inequality, the exploitation, the environmental destruction — which is precisely what drives her passion for reforming it from within. And as a climate activist, she's haunted by the consequences if we fail to act.But this conversation goes deeper than economics. Henderson opens up about hitting a personal wall in her climate work — and the unexpected turn that brought wonder back into her life.– Website Book: "Reimagining Capitalism in a World on Fire" More writing by Rebecca Henderson –0:00 Introduction3:00 Capitalism Reimagined8:30 The Norway Turnaround16:50 Hitting the Wall28:40 Reweaving Ourselves43:00 Finding the Way Through Wonder Cabinet is hosted by Anne Strainchamps and Steve Paulson. Find out more about the show at https://wondercabinetproductions.com, where you can subscribe to the podcast and our newsletter.
- Apr 25, 202636 min
Caroline Winterer: Dinosaurs, Deep Time and the American Soul
T-Rex. Brontosaurus. Diplodocus. Just the names conjure something enormous — a sense of scale that dwarfs human history. Standing before dinosaur tracks in the Utah desert, or gazing up at a towering skeleton in a natural history museum, you feel it: the vertigo of deep time. Millions of years of life and death, compressed into bone and stone.Two hundred years ago, Americans began unearthing mysterious fossils and giant bones they didn't even have names for yet. Almost overnight, something remarkable happened: the New World became old. The United States went from infant start-up nation to the blueprint for all of creation.Stanford historian Caroline Winterer traces this deep time revolution in her book How the New World Became Old — and she shows us how profoundly it shaped American identity. We still think of dinosaurs as fun, as children's toys and museum spectacles. Few of us realize how deeply they underwrote a national mythology — one that fueled American exceptionalism, manifest destiny, Christian nationalism and genocide.This is a story about wonder and awe. And it teaches us that those emotions are neither simple nor neutral.— Caroline’s website Caroline’s book "How the New World Became Old: The Deep Time Revolution in America" —00:00:00 Introduction00:03:20 Dinosaurs and the Deep Time Revolution00:10:10 Darwin and Fundamentalism00:16:10 The Shadow Side of Wonder00:29:00 Deep Time Today Wonder Cabinet is hosted by Anne Strainchamps and Steve Paulson. Find out more about the show at https://wondercabinetproductions.com, where you can subscribe to the podcast and our newsletter.
- Apr 18, 202642 min
Mary-Jane Rubenstein: Pantheism and the Godness of Nature
What if nature isn’t just alive—but divine? Pantheism, once branded heresy, is finding new adherents among those who don’t consider themselves religious but still sense something sacred and wondrous in the living world.Mary-Jane Rubenstein, a scholar of philosophy and religion, traces the long, contested history of wonder—from medieval mystics to modern seekers. She reflects on the Overview Effect, that disorienting moment when astronauts gaze back at Earth and feel both its fragility and its radiance. And she talks about the obsession that tech titans like Jeff Bezos and Elon Musk have for space exploration, which may be the new frontier of awe—even a new religion.But awe is never simple. It can be as unsettling as it is beautiful, as terrifying as it is astonishing. It breaks us open even as it draws us in—leaving us to reckon with a world that is stranger than we thought.– Faculty profile "Astrotopia: The Dangerous Religion of the Corporate Space Race" "Pantheologies" "Strange Blood" –0:00 Introduction3:50 Pantheism: History and Ethics11:15 Personal Spirituality19:55 Awe, Wonder, and the Overview Effect28:35 Space as Religion35:50 The Wonder Cabinet Wonder Cabinet is hosted by Anne Strainchamps and Steve Paulson. Find out more about the show at https://wondercabinetproductions.com, where you can subscribe to the podcast and our newsletter.
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About Wonder Cabinet
Wonder Cabinet is an independent podcast from Anne Strainchamps and Steve Paulson, Peabody Award-winning creators of public radio's To The Best Of Our Knowledge. For 35 years, that show brought long-form conversations to 200+ stations nationwide; its interviews are now archived in the Library of Congress. Episodes feature intimate, long-form conversations with scientists, philosophers, writers, and artists who are re-imagining our relationship with the planet. Some study black holes or quantum entanglement; others map mycelial networks or count ancient tree rings. And some explore dream worlds, myths, and fairy tales to revive ways of knowing that challenge what we think we understand about the nature of reality. The name references Enlightenment-era cabinets of curiosities—private collections of shells, fossils, astronomical instruments, and saints' relics that existed at a moment when the scientific revolution was s
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