Episode 79

The fifth in a series of episodes wherein Juliet and I begin by jointly consulting the I Ching (ancient Chinese oracle), getting hexagram 4 "Youthful Folly", and then see where that goes. This time we continue to explore the extent to which entities can "experience" the world, moving on to human-animal communication, human-plant communication, the problematic dominance of the "machine" metaphor for biological entities, then veering wildly through Buddhist ideas of non-self, solipsism, and the burning of wood understood as photosynthesis in reverse, or a "releasing of trapped sunlight".

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Some relevant links:

• human-animal communication
• horse whispering
• Prince Charles
• Prince Charles on talking to plants
• P. Tompkins and C. Bird, The Secret Life of Plants (1973)
• Stevie Wonder's Journey Through The Secret Life of Plants
• Iain McGilchrist
• I. McGilchrist, The Master and His Emissary (2009)
• G.I. Gurdjieff
• toxoplasmosis
• anatta (Buddhist concept of "non-self")
• Anne Waldman
• Allen Ginsberg
• solipsism
• fire
• photosynthesis
• Richard Feynman
• Feynman "on fire" (excellent little video!)
• lesser mouse-deer (Tragulus kanchil)