Why This Matters to Me
About the Episode
The description of “This Plus That” is “a show about connecting the seemingly un-connectable and why it matters.” Most episodes will center on the combination of two seemingly unrelated things, where I'll interview guests about how they've built lives at the center of all their wild interests, but I wanted to start out with why this matters to me. It’s deeply personal.
So personal that a lot of the audio for this first episode was recorded in private messages I sent to friends, never expecting to make them public to the world. The rest happened knowing I'd be "in conversation" with you. But it's all uncut, entirely unscripted, and recorded in moments of clarity and excitement.
If even a little bit of it resonates with you, I'm so glad you're here.
Episode Details
What I Discuss
A run-down of my last couple of years and how I wound up here.
My love paradox in others, but not as much in myself.
How a curiosity about becoming an astronaut at the age of 36 led me here.
A running family story that told me I didn’t “belong in the sciences.”
What quantum physics started to teach me about holding my own complexities.
A struggle to hold conflict in the midst of queer and organizing communities.
The way we build new “religions” after leaving the dogma of oppressive environments.
How contradictions are the nature of the universe.
How I found belonging in myself in a world that kept telling me there was only one “right” way to be anything.
The healing that can happen in “middle spaces.”
How faith should be less like a “brick wall” and more like a “trampoline.”
Scientific Faith vs. Scientific Religion.
How the point of life is more life.
Fermentation as a food practice that speaks to regenerative relationships.
How I grapple with talking about religion in faith, given my past, but how difficult it is to not be able to talk about it when it has felt so central in my life.
Sources Mentioned
Here’s one thing and then another that I could find on Elizabeth Gilbert’s “Not This” essay.
Sacred Economics, by Charles Eisenstein
The Artists’ Way, by Julia Cameron
Turns out that the “People don’t buy what you do; they buy why you do it…” quote is from Simon Sinek.
Another Round, probably my favorite podcast of all time.
Here’s a link to the opening video of “Metaphysics and Mystery,” featuring my friend Lauren asking Charles Eisenstein about the purpose of life. It’s what I’m responding to in the second set of audio recordings included in this episode—audio recordings I sent to Lauren after watching the video.
Rob Bell is the human who has served as a long-time guru-type in my life, who wrote a book called Velvet Elvis, where the first chapter is called “Questions.” It’s in Velvet Elvis where he talks about the concept of faith as a “trampoline,” though I’m not sure if it was in the first chapter.
Here’s the full text of the essay I read from late-2019, about science as a “weapon” or science as a “tool.”
Arrival is the movie inspired by Stories of Your Life and Others by Ted Chiang, and the movie I will reference enough on this show that it will likely start to drive you wild.
Braiding Sweetgrass, by Robin Wall Kimmerer
Matter & Desire: An Erotic Ecology, by Andreas Weber
Father Richard Rohr, founder of the Center for Action and Contemplation.
Christopher Alexander, the creator of “pattern language” and the “aliveness” of building materials.
Art of the Commonplace, by Wendell Berry
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Credits
Audio engineering by the team at Upfire Digital.
All of my music is provided by the in-house musicians at Slip.stream.
Episode Transcript
Coming soon, hopefully! Would you be willing to help? Email me at brandi@thisplusthat.com!
