The Clearing with Katherine May - TopPodcast.com

View Top 200 Chart

Back to Rankings Page

The Clearing with Katherine May — Arts
The Clearing with Katherine May

Where would you go to rest and retreat, in good times and bad?

Katherine May, author of Wintering and Enchantment, asks her guests to share their idea of a perfect sanctuary. Drawing on memory, inspiration and imagination, she explores the things we seek out when we need to restore our joy, hope and energy.

It begins with a forest clearing. What will we find there? A log cabin or a grand hotel? What cherished object or talisman would you bring? And what single work of art, be it a book, record, film or something else, would provide you with enough sustenance to see you through the darkness and remind you of the good times?

In a series of frank, thoughtful and deeply personal conversations, The Clearing will explore the cultural, social and spiritual mindset needed to survive difficult times.

Katherine’s Links:

Visit The Clearing website https://katherine-may.co.uk/the-clearing-podcast to discover how to enjoy the episodes ad free

Katherine’s new book, Tending: How Care Binds the World is out in March and you can pre-order it here https://katherine-may.co.uk/tending

Buy Katherine’s books: Enchantment | Wintering | The Electricity of Every Living Thing: UK / US

Follow Katherine on Instagram

Visit Katherine’s Website

Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Copyright: Copyright © Katherine May

Latest Episodes:

Kaitlin Curtice on resisting with integrity Nov 17, 2023

Show notes

In the past few years, resistance has been a live issue for many of us, whether we’re wondering for the first time how to bring about social change, or realising that we need to find new ways to be activists.

For Kaitlin Curtice, this resistance is an ongoing practice, informed by her perspective as an Indigenous American, and imbued with gentleness, integrity and personal sustainability. In this episode, we talk about her book, Living Resistance, how her own perspective developed over time, and - appropriately for this podcast - how we can live in this unsettling moment.

Katherine's new book, Enchantment, is available now: US/CAN and UK

Links from the episode:

Kaitlin’s website
Kaitlin’s book, Living Resistance
Kaitlin's Instagram

Join Katherine's Substack to receive episodes ad-free, extended intros and immersive, bonus mini-episdes
Find show notes and transcripts for every episode by visiting Katherine's website.
Follow Katherine on Instagram

Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Erica Berry on the meaning of wolves Oct 20, 2023

Show notes

The wolf carries an almost unbearable amount of symbolism in western culture, encapsulating the predatory, the carnal, the supernatural and the ravenous. But in her book Wolfish, Erica Berry suggests that it’s time to understand wolves differently: as tender, as hunted, as guardians of the landscape.

What’s more, those evil qualities may be better attributed to ourselves than to wolves. Berry weaves memoir with natural history, cultural critique, folklore and conservation to show that wolves have too often been a cypher for all our fears, and that this has left them under threat of extinction.

In this fascinating and wide-ranging conversation, recorded as part of Katherine’s True Stories Book Club, Erica discusses her experiences with wolves real and imagined.

Katherine's new book, Enchantment, is available now: US/CAN and UK

Links from the episode:

Erica’s website
Erica’s book, Wolfish

Join Katherine's Substack to receive episodes ad-free, extended intros and immersive, bonus mini-episdes
Find show notes and transcripts for every episode by visiting Katherine's website.
Follow Katherine on Instagram

Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Dacher Keltner on awe, humility and purpose Aug 03, 2023

Show notes

I stumbled across Dacher Keltner’s work when I was first researching Enchantment, and now - for the final episode in this season - I’m honoured to speak to him about Awe: The New Science of Everyday Wonder and How It Can Transform Your Life.

Dacher’s research attempts to understand this very fleeting, ineffable emotion. He and his colleagues have shown that awe induces a feeling of being small within a vast universe - a radical shift into context. What’s more, by absorbing ourselves in awe, we become better people, more motivated to go out and do good. In this episode, we explore how it feels to experience awe, how we can seek it out in the everyday, and we share the personal experiences of awe that have inspired both of our books.

Dacher Keltner is a professor of psychology at UC Berkeley and the director of the Greater Good Science Center. He has over 200 scientific publications and six books, including Born to Be Good, The Compassionate Instinct, and The Power Paradox. He has written for many popular outlets, from The New York Times to Slate. He was also the scientific advisor behind Pixar’s Inside Out.

Katherine's new book, Enchantment, is available now: US/CAN and UK

Links from the episode:

Dacher’s website
Dacher’s book, Awe: The New Science of Everyday Wonder and How It Can Transform Your Life

Join Katherine's Substack to receive episodes ad-free, extended intros and immersive, bonus mini-episdes
Find show notes and transcripts for every episode by visiting Katherine's website.
Follow Katherine on Instagram

Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Marjolijn van Heemstra on the overview effect Jul 20, 2023

Show notes

Marjolijn van Heemstra believes that we can change the world by gazing into the night sky. Her book, In Light Years There’s No Hurry, explores the ‘overview effect’, a personal transformation reported by astronauts who have seen the earth from space. People who’ve experienced this rare view often report an ethical shift taking place, a new sense of mission in their lives. They come to see themselves as guardians of their planet, rather than its passive citizens.

Clearly not all of us can - or want to - leave the atmosphere to gaze over the earth from space. But in this thought-provoking conversation, Marjolijn makes a case for us learning to draw on the overview effect from where we stand, suggesting that this could lead us to become better stewards of our environment, and form closer bonds with the communities around us.

Marjolijn is a Dutch theatre-maker, journalist and poet who has recently been named Amsterdam’s Poet Laureate. Her most recent work has focused on reacquainting ourselves with darkness, and this includes her creative project The Night Watch, and the Amsterdam Dark Festival, of which she is the founder.

Katherine's new book, Enchantment, is available now: US/CAN and UK

Links from the episode:

Marjolijn’s Instagram
Marjolijn’s book, In Light Years There’s No Hurry
Amsterdam Dark Festival

Join Katherine's Substack to receive episodes ad-free, extended intros and immersive, bonus mini-episdes
Find show notes and transcripts for every episode by visiting Katherine's website.
Follow Katherine on Instagram

Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Amy Jeffs on ancient stories and new understandings Jul 06, 2023

Show notes

How can we return to a richer, more complex understanding of national identity and personal ethics - one that can only come from folklore?

Amy Jeffs is the perfect person to ask. An art historian and printmaker, she creates immersive retellings of ancient stories, beautifully illustrated with her own woodcuts and etchings. In this week’s episode of How We Live Now, we discuss the function and appeal of folklore, and roam around the wind-blasted landscapes of Medieval Britain. We get a glimpse of the British Isles through ancient eyes - a haunted place stranded on the far edge of Europe, isolated and vulnerable, but full of courageous, hardy folk. What can these tales tell us about who we are now? And how can we restore this agile way of understanding the world?

Katherine's new book, Enchantment, is available now: US/CAN and UK

Links from the episode:

Amy’s Instagram
Amy’s Twitter
Amy's book, Wild: Tales from Early Medieval Britain
Amy’s book, Storyland: A New Mythology of Britain

Join Katherine's Substack to receive episodes ad-free, extended intros and immersive, bonus mini-episdes
Find show notes and transcripts for every episode by visiting Katherine's website.
Follow Katherine on Instagram

Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Báyò Akómoláfé on fugitive ideas Jun 30, 2023

Show notes

In this week’s episode of How We Live Now, Katherine speaks to author and public intellectual Báyò Akómoláfé. We consider how we can step out of the belief that humanity is in control of a passive planet, and instead wonder how we can learn to read the intelligence of the systems and landscapes that we inhabit. We meander our way to autism, and begin to think about how we can create a new language of neurodivergent experience that resists the labels applied from disinterested - or disgusted - outside viewers. And we take a look at ‘hushes’, the shadowy, scuttling figures that disrupt Báyò’s narratives.

Born in Nigeria, Báyò is a writer, speaker, teacher and founder of The Emergence Network who finds his most sacred work in fatherhood. His book, These Wilds Beyond Our Fences, is an extraordinary meandering through the cutting edge of contemporary philosophy framed in letters to his daughter, Alethea. He is also the editor of We Will Tell Our Own Story, an anthology exploring Black African scholarship and knowledge. He now divides his time between Germany, India and the USA.

Katherine's new book, Enchantment, is available now: US/CAN and UK

Links from the episode:

Bayo’s website
Bayo's book, These Wilds Beyond Our Fences

Join Katherine's Substack to receive episodes ad-free, extended intros and immersive, bonus mini-episdes
Find show notes and transcripts for every episode by visiting Katherine's website.
Follow Katherine on Instagram

Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Kerri ní Dochartaigh on the mystical everyday Jun 08, 2023

Show notes

Kerri ní Dochartaigh’s writing rings with a sense of connection between this world and the otherworld, and nowhere is it expressed more clearly than in her latest book, Cacophony of Bone. Here are pages full of subtle signs that are legible only to those who are in the practice of seeking them. It’s a work of plain mysticism, a very personal representation of direct contact with the sacred. At its roots, it’s about perception: how we allow it, honour it, foster it. How we can allow ourselves to encounter beauty and transcendence in the everyday.

But there’s also a hidden political dimension to Kerri’s work. She’s showing us a way of life that’s largely been lost, a mode of perception that has been deliberately crushed and denied. It’s a spiritual mode that’s democratic, resistant, dangerous. These times are ripe for it.

In this interview, we talk about the practice of everyday mysticism, its connection to Kerri’s Irish heritage, and the ways that reading has been warped by contemporary life.

Katherine's new book, Enchantment, is available now: US/CAN and UK

Links from the episode:

Kerri’s instagram
Kerri's book, Cacophony of Bone

Join Katherine's Substack to receive episodes ad-free and immersive, bonus mini-episdes
Find show notes and transcripts for every episode by visiting Katherine's website.
Follow Katherine on Instagram

Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Morgan Harper Nichols on art and perception May 25, 2023

Show notes

When I spoke to Morgan Harper Nichols, she was taking a break from assignment-writing for the MFA in Interdisciplinary Media Arts she’s studying. That’s a telling detail for this exuberant soul: she has ideas and energy to spare, and she’s always learning, always reaching towards new forms. A visual artist, writer, musician, speaker and podcaster, I always see her as a communicator first and foremost. She draws on all these different modes of expression to facilitate the sheer urgency of what she has to say.

In this episode, I talk with Morgan about the ways that her work ushers us towards a kind of reenchantment with life itself - but, in all honesty, I quickly lost control of the whole interview. Like me, Morgan is autistic, and I got lost in the joy of spending an hour in her thoughtful, inquisitive company. This is a conversation about how we see our work and the world around us, and how creativity helps us to connect.

Morgan Harper Nichols is an autistic mixed media artist from the Atlanta, Georgia area who has worked with brands such as Google, Starbucks, Hallmark, COACH, KIND bar, and her work has been featured in places such as Target, Anthropologie, Kohls, Barnes & Noble, among others. She is the author of books that combine words and vibrant images, including You Are Only Just Beginning, How Far You Have Come, All Along You Were Blooming, and Peace is a Practice. She is also the creator of the Storyteller app, and her podcast, The Morgan Harper Nichols Show.

Katherine's new book, Enchantment, is available now: US/CAN and UK

Morgan's website
Morgan’s instagram
Morgan’s podcast, The Morgan Harper Nichols Show
Morgan's book, You Are Only Just Beginning: Lessons for the Journey Ahead

Join Katherine's Substack to receive episodes ad-free and immersive, bonus mini-episdes
Find show notes and transcripts for every episode by visiting Katherine's website.
Follow Katherine on Instagram

Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Pico Iyer on the wisdom of travellers May 11, 2023

Show notes

Pico Iyer’s latest book, The Half Known Life, looks at the ways in which we seek paradise on earth, sometimes in places that are fraught with risk. In this episode, he and Katherine talk about the similarities in their work, particularly the ways in which they explore secular understandings of big spiritual questions, and they touch on the differences, too. Where Katherine is drawn to the local and the known, Pico quests after the insights that come to travellers and strangers. They are two different ways of looking at the same question: that of how to live a good and peaceful life, via the practice of enchantment.

Pico can truly be called a veteran travel writer, having published his first book in 1984, and gone on to publish fourteen more, on subjects ranging from the Dalai Lama to globalism, from the Cuban Revolution to Islamic mysticism. They include such long-running sellers as Video Night in Kathmandu, The Lady and the Monk, The Global Soul, The Open Road and The Art of Stillness. His writing regularly features in Time, The New York Times, The New York Review of Books, and the Financial Times among many others, and his four talks for TED have received more than 10 million views so far.

Katherine's new book, Enchantment, is available now: US/CAN and UK

Links from the episode:

Join Katherine's Substack to receive episodes ad-free and immersive, bonus mini-episdes
Find show notes and transcripts for every episode by visiting Katherine's website.
Follow Katherine on Instagram

Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Bonus episode: Katherine May on burnout and why we all need a little more wonder in our lives Mar 15, 2023

Show notes

We're in between seasons of How We Live Now and Katherine is in the midst of talking about her new book Enchantment in radio and podcast interviews. We wanted to share one of these conversations with you in the How We Live Now podcast feed.

In this episode of The Shift with Sam Baker, Sam and Katherine talk about Katherine’s midlife autism diagnosis, why she believes we’re living through the burnout decade and how to wrest back control of our lives from our work.

Buy Katherine's new book Enchantment: US & Canada, UK
Sign up to receive Katherine's newsletter
Follow Katherine on Instagram

Find all the episodes of the The Shift with Sam Baker here: https://podfollow.com/the-shift-on-life-after-40-with-sam-baker

Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Related Podcasts