SUE Speaks Podcast: Searching for Unity in Everything

SUE Speaks Podcast: Searching for Unity in Everything


10 | RICHARD GROSSINGER – Anthropologist and Author “Bottoming Out the Universe”

March 09, 2020

Richard Grossinger, the founding publisher of North Atlantic Books, received a BA from Amherst College and a PhD in anthropology from the University of Michigan. Writing with literary sensibility, he is the author of some 40 books. His writing can be divided into three overlapping categories: general experimental prose; books on science topics viewed historically, cross-culturally, epistemologically, esoterically, and in terms of pop culture; and autobiographical memoirs. The books range from long explorations of science, culture, and spirituality (The Night Sky: Soul and Cosmos, Planet Medicine, Embryogenesis: Species, Gender, and Identity), to memoirs (New Moon, Out of Babylon), to experimental prose (Book of the Earth and Sky, Spaces Wild and Tame), and science fiction (Mars: A Science Fiction Vision). Bottoming Out the Universe: Why There Is Something Rather Than Nothing will be published by Inner Traditions in April. He and Lindy Hough are the parents of Robin Grossinger, an environmental scientist working on urban redesign under climate change, and Miranda July, a multimedia artist and Hollywood indy director.
Richard’s mission: “I think I’m here to face the shadow-self, with an opportunity to transform something outside of time and space. More and more, I believe that life is a matter of honoring the mystery, while not knowing quite what your mission is. The trick is to stay true to it amid all the paradoxes and counterintuitive paths, and to not get swept up in any of the unintegrated realms of myth and spirit.”
Richard’s one-line message to the world: “I’m not much for one-liners of any sort, especially in a sound-bite culture, but I was thinking today that when Rodney King said, ‘Why can’t we all just get along?’ it sounded naïve, sweet, and a tad disingenuous, but now, so soon after, it sounds like a voice from another universe, and that’s not good given the challenge the universe is putting before our planet and species.”
Podcast theme music: “Suzanne”
Performed by Leonard Cohen | Courtesy of Columbia Records | By arrangement with Sony Music Entertainment
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