iPad Only?

18 min. read (or watch the video) It has been two years now since I ditched my laptop and desktop computers for this iPad Pro. So today, I will give you a summary of my experience — what I love, what I hate, and what my final verdict is. I know a lot of people…

Audacious with Susan Sontag

4 min. read (or watch the video) “Hey Folks, this is Alex Oehler in Regina, Saskatchewan.” I say it like this, because that’s how Alec Soth, a photographer and photo book lover in St. Paul, Minnesota, introduces his YouTube videos. I was inspired by him this week. He was reviewing “Backyard Photographs in Times of…

Eating Plants With Michael Marder

2.5 min. read (or watch the video) A couple of days ago a friend of mine posted a link to Aeon Magazine’s article entitled “The minds of plants,” by Laura Ruggles. Kudos to Ruggles, a philosophy PhD candidate at the University of Adelaide in Australia. She starts off her article with the words: “From the…

Why Study Anthropology in 2021?

3 min. read (or watch the video) Hey Folks! Today I’m going to look at some strong reasons why you should take anthropology in 2021. If you are looking for a Bachelor of Arts degree, go for a program you can apply to as many different careers as possible. You want to keep your options…

Air with Pär Lagerkvist

2 min. read (or watch the video) In 2013, a colleague and I were invited to join a PhD workshop on Forest History in northern Sweden. We had a fabulous time, learning from our forest ecologist and archaeologist colleagues over the course of ten days, often in remote woodlands of subarctic Sweden. I am not…

Projection with John Lilly

2 min. read (or watch the video) I love old books. Here’s a curious one from 1967: “The mind of the dolphin” by John Lilly. Lilly was a leading American neurophysiologist who believed a central cause of mental illness was failed communication. In the late 1950s Lilly opened the Communication Research Institute on the island…

Interiority with Merleau-Ponty

2.5 min. read (or watch the video) One of the most influential thinkers for me has been the French philosopher Maurice Merleau-Ponty (1908-1961). Known as a major contributor to the field of phenomenology, he offered insights that many of us now build on in our research of animal-human hybrid communities. In 1948 Merlau-Ponty gave a…

Animal Languages with Eva Meijer

2 min. read (or watch the video) I recently discovered Dutch philosopher and writer Eva Meijer. Besides being a very eloquent and incredibly accessible writer and thinker, she is also an artist, singer-song writer and activist. In her recent book, “Animal Languages” (MIT, 2020), she explores the state of what we know about non-human animal…