Love & Its Discontents

Today I'm joined by Yusuf Jones. We're digging into the way Artificial Intelligence is changing the way we love.

Yusuf Jones is a visionary AI Prompt Engineer/Architect and Technology Integrationist at the forefront of the AI revolution in mental health, community development, and spiritual technology.

Facebook: @yusuf.journeyman.jones Instagram: @yusuf.is.just.dust

In this episode, we explore love in the new adaptation of James Clavell's Shōgun with John Austin.

John Austin is an interactive designer, independent researcher, author, filmmaker, cultural critic, and entrepreneur.

For over fifteen years, he has worked in augmented reality/virtual reality. Between 2007 and 2009 he divided his time living between the US and Japan where he helped found Autism Family Network. Austin founded Fresh Pulp Magazine, dedicated to "theoretical" science fiction from marginalized communities.

He leads Dark Matters, a weekly podcast discussing the latest Sci-fi series through a critical race lens. Among other things, Austin has written "How to be Black and Muslim in America” on Muslim futurism, and "Practical approaches to space travel for Muslims" Austin won the Comcast Award for short films in 2008 for the film, "The Jersey Devil."

Twitter: @austinyoshino

Instagram: @austinyoshino

Join me for a deep conversation on love in times and aftermath of traumatic historical events. How do our history and heritage make us and how do they shape the way we love? Focusing on the unique work of poetic theater, A Short History of Anger, about the genocide in Smyrna and the massive movements of peoples across borders of modern Turkey and Greece, we dig into things that help us live meaningful lives, overcome traumas and define love in ways that are healing.

Joy Manesiotis is the author of three collections of poems, A Short History of Anger, which won The New Measure Poetry Prize, Revoke, and They Sing to Her Bones, which won the New Issues Poetry Prize.

Currently, she is staging A Short History of Anger: A Hybrid Work of Poetry & Theatre at international festivals and universities in the U.S. and Europe.

Poems and essays have appeared in numerous literary journals and anthologies, including The American Poetry Review, Poetry, and Poetry International, as well as in translation.

Previously the Edith R. White Distinguished Chair in Creative Writing at the University of Redlands, she teaches in the MFA in Writing program at OSU/Cascades and serves on the editorial board of Airlie Press.

Join me in this unique conversation on love spells and potions with Dr. Amila Buturovic.

Buturovic was born in Sarajevo. She works at the Dept of Humanities and Religious Studies at York University. Her interest lies in the cultural history of Ottoman and post-Ottoman Balkans, specifically Bosnia. Her major works are Stone Speaker: Bosnian Tombstones, Landscape and Identity in the Poetry of Mak Dizdar (2002), Carved in Stone, Etched in Memory: Tombstones and Commemoration in Bosnian Islam (2016). She is a co-editor with Irvin Schick of Women in the Ottoman Balkans (2008).

Her most recent project focuses on the culture of health and healing in Ottoman Bosnia, especially in relation to esoteric teachings and occult practices. As part of this project, she has teamed up with the National Museum of BiH to research and help curate their collection of artifacts that speak to the rich and interconfessional heritage of magic and healing in Ottoman Bosnia.

Follow Buturovic at https://twitter.com/amila295

In this episode, we delve into the amazing worlds of the African-American Nobel Laureate Toni Morrison. We go in-depth on her masterpiece Beloved but also trace the theme of love throughout her oeuvre.

Alice Sundman is a postdoctoral researcher in the Department of English, at Stockholm University. Her book Toni Morrison and the Writing of Place (Routledge, 2022) explores the creation and presentation of Toni Morrison’s literary places. Her research interests include Toni Morrison, ecocriticism, place and space studies, genetic criticism, phenomenology, and the intersections between literature and philosophy.

Join me for a truly unique and rewarding conversation with Professor Mieke Bal about one of the most captivating stories of all time, the story of Joseph and Potiphar's Wife. Bal is a Dutch cultural theorist, video artist, and Professor Emerita in Literary Theory at the University of Amsterdam. She is the author of more than 40 books, many films, and video installations. Her work is often course literature in a wide range of disciplines. Her "Narratology# is a must for all students of narrative.

Join me and Dr. Paul Jaussen as we dig into Mary Shelley's classic Frankenstein, one the most influential stories of all time. Let us see what it says about love.

Everyone knows the story of Frankenstein and his Creation, the Wretch, the Monster. But do they? Let's dig into it from a different angle. What if it is, ultimately, a love story?

Let's follow the Sufi path to discover what love is in Islamic mysticism and what diverse expressions it found in some of the key figures that defined it. Our guest is Filip Almansour Holm the host of the erudite and fun podcast Let's Talk Religion (https://www.youtube.com/ @LetsTalkReligion )

Islam is one of the biggest religions in the world and at its core is The Holy Qur'an. What does it say about love? In this episode, we are joined by Dr. Celine Ibrahime on a journey through the holy text of Islam to explore the multitude of ways in which it evokes, defines, and prescribes love.

What if there was no tomorrow? What would that do to love? Is love eternal? Find out in this fun episode on the classic romantic comedy "Groundhog Day."

Join me as I dig into Jean Rhys' amazing novel Wide Sargasso Sea and explore the relationship between love and madness and the harms of colonialism.

In this episode, we introduce the burning love and the debilitating madness of Bertha a.k.a. "madwoman in the attic." Jean Rhy's prequel to the classic Jane Eyre takes us all the way to the Caribbean and explores how he came to marry a creole woman who would later come to go crazy, be locked up in his attic, and eventually burn down his estate.

Join us for an in-depth conversation on love, marriage, and the constraints of the Victorian age in Charlotte Bronte's Jane Eyre with Dr. Lisa Ann Robertson.

Dr. Robertson is an Associate Professor in Nineteenth-Century British Literature with expertise in Romanticism and eighteenth-century literature and culture at the University of South Dakota.

Jane Eyre, the classical Bildungsroman, established some of the key definitions of love and marriage that still affect the way we think about modern Western love. In this episode, we lay some grounds for future interviews on rebellious love in the Victorian period.