Structured Visions

Do human beings have more or less consciousness than the rest of the living world? Is language an addiction? We’ll explore both points by examining the relationship between language and time. To participate in the world of human language, we have to reduce ourselves to little cutie pies known as ‘selves,’ who exist at a … Continue reading Episode 104 Consciousness is more than just a little cutie pie

In this episode I’ll try to convince you that using language to express the self is like a dog chasing its own tail… or a snake eating its tail, if you prefer ouroboros imagery. My perspective is that human language is the one-dimensional structure that shapes the self and thus limits access to the vast … Continue reading Episode 103 Inhabiting language

Have you ever felt like you don’t belong? My own red thread through the labyrinth of linguistics has been the theme of not belonging. We explore the grammatical shape belonging takes in everyday conversations about fitting in. We discuss how selves can grammatically ‘detach’ from bodies, and the transformative possibility of embodied selves. Join me … Continue reading Episode 102 How to belong

What’s the difference between me and you? And what’s so bad about big egos, anyway? In this episode we explore the relationship between ego and language. We move from Freud’s psychoanalytic theory to D.T. Suzuki’s explanation of the Zen Buddhist perspective. We explore Suzuki’s analysis of two poems about encounters with flowers, one by Basho … Continue reading Episode 101 You, me and big egos

What are your top three wishes? Are they selfish? As it happens, your wishes may be worse than selfish—they may be toxically self-effacing. If you participate, on whatever level, in a society in which people are continually and oppressively bullied into thinking they need to be someone other than who they are, then you may … Continue reading Episode 100 Selfish wishes for social change

What new language would you most like to know? Is astrology on your list? Does astrology count as a language? Maybe the language of the stars could be classified as a pidgin, a language without native speakers. But if, as discussed in Episode 96, ‘The Earth’s language’, languages are ways of organising information, then it … Continue reading Episode 99 Linguistics and astrology

Counting… that’s maths, right? Actually, it’s language. And as we’ll discover through a series of absurd tasks (like, ‘count everything you can see’), you can’t count anything until you know what ‘counts as’ a thing. Language draws the lines around what counts, and it shifts and changes as it does so. In this episode we … Continue reading Episode 98 Linguistic singularities

What’s the weirdest thing about human language? We explore linguistic polarity and all its bizarre implications. Embedded in every human grammar is a way of turning a positive clause (I’m listening) into a negative clause (I’m not listening). Grammatical negation is one of the ways we can do denial. (‘I’m not scared of that dog,’ … Continue reading Episode 97 The intimacy of denial

We start the episode, as always, with a couple of questions: There’s an answer to Question 2 that will be true for anyone who says it. ‘I am here.’ But if you write it on a piece of paper, and then leave the room, it stops being true. Does that make spoken language more genuine? … Continue reading Episode 96 The Earth’s language

What happens when we die? Ideas about the afterlife (or the lack of an afterlife) requires theory building based on either faith or experience. What if you don’t have faith in stories about the afterlife and you’ve never experienced anything resembling a near-death experience (NDE)? In this episode I’ll guide you through a language-based exercise … Continue reading Episode 94 Language and the afterlife