#6 New Gods at the End of the World: Bayo Akomolafe and Sophie Strand
Today we’re super excited to share an organic and wild conversation between two poets, writers, philosophers and theobiologians (that’s Bayo’s term) Bayo Akomalofe and Sophie Strand.
This conversation was hosted by Science and Nonduality’s Zaya and Maurizio Benazzo. To hear the full conversation with Q&A from the live webinar you can view it here.
https://www.scienceandnonduality.com/webinar/new-gods-at-the-end-of-the-world
Also if you want to go deeper with Bayo and Sophie as well as Tyson Yunkaporta and Vanessa Andreotti and if you’re listening to this before the workshop starts on Oct 19 2022, please go to the website science and nonduality.com and consider registering for their three-day workshop.
This workshop is entitled The Wandering, Winding Way of the Wound and it's a chance to explore our shared global trauma as the modern grammar of loss.
So if you’re listening when this is released you have time to register before it starts register here:
https://www.scienceandnonduality.com/webinar/wandering-winding-way
Today’s discourse between Bayo and Sophie is a wild exploration of words, ideas, memes, biology, and ecology. Their dialog touches and weaves into so many territories.
They touch into:
- Environmental collapse
- Catholic Saints
- Joan of Arc
- Glitches in Evolution
- The power of mispronouncing
- COVID
- Ecotomes
- The diaspora of the body
- Babba Lau (who was recently featured on our SAND youtube channel)
- DSM Manual (The Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders)
- Bdelloid rotifera (Sophie's Substack has more info on this creature)
- Transatlantic slave trade
- Tardigrades as gods
- Rewilding Pigs
If this sounds like a lot, this is just a taste of what you’re in for!
Bayo Akomolafe (Ph.D.), rooted with the Yoruba people in a more-than-human world, is the father to Alethea and Kyah, the grateful life-partner to Ije, son and brother. A widely celebrated international speaker, posthumanist thinker, poet, teacher, public intellectual, essayist, and author of two books, These Wilds Beyond our Fences: Letters to My Daughter on Humanity’s Search for Home (North Atlantic Books) and We Will Tell our Own Story: The Lions of Africa Speak, Bayo Akomolafe is the Founder of The Emergence Network and host of the online postactivist course, ‘We Will Dance with Mountains’. He currently lectures at Pacifica Graduate Institute, California and University of Vermont, Burlington, Vermont. He sits on the Board of many organizations including Science and Non-Duality (US) and Ancient Futures (Australia). In July 2022, Dr. Akomolafe was appointed the inaugural Global Senior Fellow of University of California’s (Berkeley) Othering and Belonging Institute. He has also been appointed Senior Fellow for The New Institute in Hamburg, Germany. He is the recipient of the New Thought Leadership Award 2021 and the Excellence in Ethnocultural Psychotherapy Award by the African Mental Health Summit 2022. www.bayoakomolafe.net
Sophie Strand is a writer based in the Hudson Valley who focuses on the intersection of spirituality, storytelling, and ecology. Her first book of essays The Flowering Wand: Rewilding the Sacred Masculine will be published by Inner Traditions in Fall 2022 and is available for pre-order. Her eco-feminist historical fiction reimagining of the gospels The Madonna Secret will also be published by Inner Traditions in Spring 2023. Subscribe for her newsletter at sophiestrand.substack.com. And follow her work on Instagram: @cosmogyny and at www.sophiestrand.com.
Science and Nonduality is a community inspired by timeless wisdom, informed by cutting-edge science, and grounded in direct experience. We come together in an open-hearted exploration while celebrating our humanity.
