The Seed Field

So many of us seek to meaningfully improve our communities and world—but it’s not always clear how we can combine that work with our careers. Seeking answers, we talked to three Antioch alumni who have grappled with this question in their own lives and work. Deb Moy is empowering transit workers in the Bay Area. Max Golding founded a tenant union in Santa Barbara. Isaias Narvaez connects you with...

It’s vital that communities support LGBTQ youth—but for clinical psychologists seeking to provide affirming care, this treatment can be a minefield. Especially in cases when there is not parental support, how do therapists and psychologists provide necessary care for their LGBTQ clients? To answer these questions, guest host Gina Pasquale sits down with Dr. Tenika Jackson, the new chair of the MA...

Living a healthy life is more than just eating the “right” foods and doing the “right” exercises, especially because these things may look different depending on your culture. Health Psychology is a way of looking at wellness in a whole new way that involves fulfilling the needs of both the mind and body. The faculty coordinator for Antioch’s BA Health Counseling and Psychology, Lynn Dhanak, joins...

Addiction is widespread in our society, yet there is still so much stigma about the disease and treatment. How can we destigmatize addiction and best treat it as individuals, mental health professionals, and as a society? What is addiction, and how are mental health professionals working to treat it? How are therapists serving their clients, and what are they hopeful about in the field of addictio...

When we experience trauma, it affects our minds and bodies in ways we may not even be aware of. Somatic therapy is a way for us to begin to understand the ways in which our bodies react to traumatic events so that we can process, heal, and move forward. This week’s guest Rachele Moskowitz specializes in this form of therapy and in this conversation she urges listeners to think about trauma and hea...

This is the first episode of Season Four of the Seed Field Podcast! To start a great season, we are bringing you a very special conversation with two leaders in higher education: Antioch University’s Chancellor Bill Groves and the President of Otterbein University, John Comerford. A little over a month ago, a plan was announced for the two universities to affiliate with each other, to build a new...

We’re getting ready to launch Season Four of the Seed Field Podcast and we’re putting together two mini-episodes that revisit interviews from Season Three and pull out the themes that consistently run through them.  If there's hope in anything, there is hope in children as educators. As our school systems focus on producing certain test scores, checking boxes, and sometimes treating students as pr...

We’re getting ready to launch Season Four of the Seed Field Podcast and to cap off a great season, we’re putting together two mini-episodes that revisit interviews from this season and pull out the themes that consistently run through them. When discussing sexuality, sex therapy, and sex education there is the only thing we can count on- variation. When we allow individuals to know that variation...

When using the “Scientific Method,” we ask questions, observe the world, and interpret what we find. Sometimes this leads us to change our initial ideas—but no matter what, we lead with curiosity. So why is it that science education today so often focuses on memorizing facts and solving tidy problems with right and wrong answers? In this interview with Dr. Gopal Krishnamurthy we ask these question...

Students learn more than reading, writing, and arithmetic in school, classrooms are also where students practice their social and emotional skills. But how can teachers support a student’s growth in these areas, and should this be treated as equally important as more test-able skills? To find out, we talked with Laura Thomas, an expert on collaborative learning communities who has served for 20 ye...

Words are how we tell our stories, form our identities, and advocate for ourselves within society. But are schools doing a good job preparing students to be confident, empowered writers? In this interview with the literacy expert Heather Cheney, she discusses how writing education and literacy education are unequally distributed across our nation’s schools, and she challenges our understanding of...

Our life experiences not only define us but they can also connect us to people in our community or even people on the other side of the world. Alum and current Antioch professor, Jocelyn Robinson joins guest host Lauren Instenes to discuss how preserving the stories of the past and those of people today can unite communities and educate the world. Jocelyn, is a radio producer, educator, and oral h...

The idea of “defamiliarization” says that we sometimes become so used to our world that we grow numb to it. It takes powerful art to remind us of how strange an experience the opera can be, or how cruel it is that our society forces people to live without shelter on the freeway on-ramps. In this episode we interview the novelist and professor Alistair McCartney about his recent seminar on the Russ...

It’s been almost ten years since the founding of the Movement for Black Lives, which kicked off a decade of activism and creativity comparable to the abolitionist movement and the Civil Rights Movement. And yet, even after the work of these powerful movements, we still see racism in this country. So the question remains: can white people learn to be less racist in action and thought? In this conve...

From spreading rumors and giving condescending feedback to undercutting decisions and meddling to try to bring down a team, toxic behaviors are all too common in the workplace. In this interview with Dr. Mitchell Kusy, author of the book, Why I Don’t Work Here Any More , we learn more about these toxic behaviors and what we can do to make sure they don’t derail our organizations. From the “Jekyll...

Fiona O'Farrell hopes for a world in which sex therapy isn’t a specialization within psychotherapy but is embraced as central to the field. Through her work as a sex therapist and as faculty at Antioch Seattle, she is actively working towards this future when every therapist will be comfortable providing guidance on how sexual practices and gender identities impact our lives. In this episode, Fion...

Sexual education is extremely important and we need more of it. In the second episode of our mini-series about human sexuality we talk with Dr. Theodore Burnes about the need for educators to go beyond the “SexEd” class, incorporating open and sex-positive discussions about sexuality, and gender also across young people’s educations. Dr. Burns, a therapist and educator specializing in sexuality an...

We’re kicking off our third season with a three-episode mini-series on sexuality and the ways that it intersects with the many subjects taught at Antioch University. For our first guest we interview Dr. Markie L.C. Twist, an acclaimed sexuality educator, sexologist, relationship therapist, and author. In this conversation we discuss expanding our ideas around relational diversity and gender identi...

It’s easy to say you want to imbue social justice into a program’s curriculum—but how do you actually do it? Across conversations from this season we heard about how different disciplines are embracing ideas of literary citizenship, decolonizing their curricula, and advocating for a more inclusive definition of leadership. All while building on Antioch’s 170-year history of social justice educatio...

Access to mental health care should be a right, not a privilege. In the second episode of our bonus series, we take a look back at conversations with mental health professionals at Antioch, and how they have used their work to address social injustices in our society. Whether it is helping us confront our unconscious biases, advocating for culturally responsive therapy practices, or creating more...

“You must praise the mutilated world,” wrote the Polish poet Adam Zagajewski. But in an age of worldwide environmental crisis and collapse, how do we cultivate this appreciation, knowledge, and love? Across three recent conversations with Antiochians engaged in the work of environmental justice and environmental education, we heard multiple creative approaches. Here we look for common themes and b...

Solving global problems requires looking at the whole picture—and sometimes that means getting your hands dirty. In this conversation with environmental studies experts Jim Jordan and Dawn Murray, we hear why their work often involves studying across disciplines—and across the globe. They are clear about the benefits they see from studying in different environments all around the world—from gainin...

Over 60 million Latinx/e individuals currently live in the US, yet this community is often underserved—and perhaps especially when it comes to mental health care. In this episode, we talk with Dr. Mariaimeé  Gonzalez about the work she is doing to make sure that counseling for Latinx communities is done by diverse and well-trained professionals who understand the specific issues this community fac...

Words are powerful tools to express emotion and experience—but they have their limits. This is a problem for therapists who engage with their clients primarily by talking, however, using art in a therapeutic context enables a different kind of exploration and communication. In this episode, two practitioners and professors of art therapy, Amy Morrison and Beth Donahue, discuss the history of this...

Do you know where your food comes from? Whether it is the food we are getting at a grocery store, farmer’s market, restaurant, or our backyard, understanding the different ways food is produced and the larger systems it is a part of can help us fight for more sustainable and equitable access to food. Scholar and dedicated food educator Jon Garfunkel talks with guest host Mair Allen about the ways...