Five and Nine: Tarot, Work and Economic Justice

Who’s the Audience of Magic? How has it evolved over the past few years? Where is it going next? 🪄 From TikTok tarot readings to “manifesting crypto gains”, we explore how audiences are engaging with magic to reassert individual agency, reinterpret identity, and regain some level of control over systems trying to define them. In this episode, Five and Nine’s Mina AX and Dorothy R. Santos, PhD, ha...

This is Five and Nine, a podcast and newsletter at the crossroads of magic, work and economic justice. We’re in the midst of Season 5, on the theme of Generation, but we wanted to take a brief look back at Season 2 with a “retro” episode originally published September 2022. Summary How can everyday magic helps us navigate change? Five and Nine talks with artist, designer, and witch Helen Shewolfe...

Season 5 returns with a conversation between the Five and Nine co-founders, long-time collaborators, and friends, Xiaowei, AX, and Dorothy. While AX was in Jordan for Season 4, Xiaowei and Dorothy were in their metaphorical caves completing their dissertations and transitioning out of one academic realm into another while balancing commitments and obligations, but we survived and have become Dr. X...

Season 5 returns with a conversation between the Five and Nine co-founders, long-time collaborators, and friends, Xiaowei, AX, and Dorothy. While AX was in Jordan for Season 4, Xiaowei and Dorothy were in their metaphorical caves completing their dissertations and transitioning out of one academic realm into another while balancing commitments and obligations, but we survived and have become Dr. X...

For the Season 4 finale, we break out a new format: Desert Residency Discs, inspired by the popular BBC show Desert Island Discs . We listen to music recorded on location in the Wadi Rum Desert, and we talk about some of the major themes from the residency, including crisis, bearing witness, why sound and music hold us through difficult moments, and how to be present, whatever the circumstances. W...

Introducing Five and Nine Live! Following up on Episode 4.07. Awakening the Healer , we present our very first live podcast recording — a special episode for Season 4 recorded live at the Center for the Enlightenment Arts in Bushwick, Brooklyn, at Gathering Future Ancestors : a meditative experience of immersive storytelling, participatory art, and sound — exploring water as an entryway to our sha...

“I was always the busy one,” says our guest Hana of her life before COVID lockdowns. In this final interview of Season 4, we talk about the power of being by oneself, how it feels to jump back into a familiar line of work, and the importance of intuition. We look at present-day Petra, the famous city of stone nestled in southern Jordan, and we close with a tarot reading that captures the essence o...

Symbolic language is at the heart of magic and also at the heart of human expression. In this minisode, Five and Nine joins Adelle Lin, an artist and technologist who explores the poetry of water and the Arabic, Chinese and Hebrew languages in the desert. We talk about time, displacement, and what it feels like to roll a 160 foot scroll down the side of a hill. Also: Ana offers a reflection on dee...

This is Five and Nine, a podcast and newsletter at the crossroads of magic, work and economic justice. We’re in the midst of Season 4, recorded online and on location in the Wadi Rum Desert in Jordan, but we wanted to take a brief look back at Season 3 with a “retro” episode with One of Many co-founder Nour Batyne. Futures thinker, artist and creative producer Nour Batyne reminds us to slow down t...

It’s the still of winter here in the northern hemisphere as the solstice arrives, and we just have a few more episodes of Season 4 left. In this bonus minisode, Season 4 co-hosts Britt Pham and Nour Batyne of One of Many Studio offer a meditation that helps us face the climate crisis by honoring our interconnectedness. “We are gathering among unceded waters,” they offer. “These waters hold the leg...

What does it feel like to awaken to a new calling? Artist, art producer, and art historian Helen Banach sits down with us to talk about embodying these multiple labels alongside her newest one — healer. We travel to March 2020, when she became a full-time caregiver just as lockdowns began, and we discuss the multihyphenate life, making mistakes and embodiment. A tarot reading takes us back generat...

Following up on Episode 4.06. The Turtles and the Stars: An Interview with AX Mina ✨🐢✨🐢 , we present a talk from Five and Nine’s AX Mina about magic and pluralistic futures, given earlier this year at re:publica in Berlin . Mina examines the use of the word “magic” in technology and rise of the technological sublime during the Industrial Revolution, and she explores a more expansive, pluralist...

In this minisode, One of Many Studio’s Britt Pham and Nour Batyne interview a familiar voice — AX Mina (Ana), your host for Season 4 and a co-founder at Five and Nine. They discuss the meaning of stars, the many jackets we wear in our professional lives, definitions of magic, and the Buddhist concept of precious birth. As night descends on the desert, we look back on the Jupiter-Saturn Conjunction...

In this minisode, Five and Nine joins Azad, an artist, healer and “forever cheerleader,” who’s working on a kite to fly in the desert winds of Wadi Rum. We tune in to the element of air in particular, an important one in tarot, which shows up in both the cards we draw and in the environment around us. We travel back in time to the quiet, haunting streets of New York City early in the pandemic, dis...

When it feels like everything is lost, how do we find guidance? In this incredibly difficult and painful week, we’ve been seeking wisdom, prayer and spiritual guidance. As we get ready to return to Season 4, we wanted to take a step back with a “retro” episode, pulling from our archives from Season 2. In this episode, Five and Nine talks with Angela Mictlanxochitl Anderson Guerrero, who runs Lider...

We’re going on vacation here at Five and Nine, and before we do, we wanted to share an offering in the form of a bonus episode. “Just notice what’s alive in your body today.” These wise words will guide you in this beautiful meditation from Britt Pham, co-founder at One of Many Studio. It’s the opening to a conversation that we’ll be publishing in September, when we continue Season 4. We hope you...

In this minisode, Five and Nine joins One of Many Studio’s Nour Batyne and Britt Pham to sit in on a Bedouin coffee ceremony. Sipping from their cups around the virtual campfire, we talk about the magic, work and economic justice of the little bean we call coffee, whose roots extend to the Rift Valley and whose impact goes as far afield as Vietnam and Brazil. And with every gulp comes a long story...

What does it mean to live through a crisis? Season 4 continues in the heat of day, when the desert falls to silence. Writer and artist Cher-Wen DeWitt talks about her many careers, the allure of other people’s problems, and the changing nature of philanthropy. Along the way, we travel back to the early days of 2020 and discuss burnout and finding the fire again with the tools of creative practice....

What waters do you come from? Why is Season 4 set in Wadi Rum? And what does it mean to be a future ancestor? In this minisode, we sit down with One of Many Studio (OoM ) co-founders Nour Batyne and Britt Pham to learn more about their ambitious vision: to create the greatest cultural shift of our generation by transforming the way people relate to themselves, each other, and our legacies through...

Season 4 starts off with a desert quest: find the Lovers Cave, a special cave in Wadi Rum fabled to heal relationship ills. We join photographer Farah Foudeh , whose photo illustrates this podcast, in her yellow Jeep for an off-road drive around the desert to find the perfect spot for a tarot reading. Our discussion looks at global tourism, how images shape and define our understanding of differen...

Happy Solstice, everyone. Five and Nine Season 4 is about crisis. It’s our first field studio season, with the majority of our episodes recorded from the beautiful Wadi Rum desert in Jordan, thanks to a special artist residency hosted by One of Many Studio (OoM). We ask our guests what’s changed since the beginning of the COVID-19 emergency, and how to think about our relationship to the world, th...

A month ago, artist and creative technologist M Eifler was laid off from their job, one of nearly 200,000 layoffs this year alone . M discusses the uncertainty and anxiety they’ve experienced since the layoff and shares how they have been using art and LinkedIn to document their journey. From ritual to song to visualizing the experience of stress, they share wisdom on navigating the ups and downs—...

Please note: This episode contains slightly more adult content than usual. Listeners should also be advised of an inordinate amount of puns, giggles, and wisdom about human relationships. As a sex worker, community organizer, and public health researcher, Danielle Blunt thinks a lot about community, consent and comfort. She discusses the ways she brings ritual into her work as a professional domin...

Futures thinker, artist and creative producer Nour Batyne reminds us to slow down to the speed of presence. The future is not just space travel and new technology but the legacy we leave as future ancestors. We'll hear from Nour how she decided to make the leap from the nine to five life into starting her own studio, and we'll learn about the influence of her teita , or grandmother, on her life an...

What lessons does the dream world hold for each of us in our waking lives? Artist and dream explorer Amira-Sade Moodie takes host Xiaowei R. Wang on a live dream exploration, teaching us along the way how to build dream circles of our own. We learn about Amira’s early career explorations, taking them from the streets of New York to an organic farm in Hawai’i, and the wisdom of listening to spirit...