We Don’t Know w/ Sylvia

This final episode begins in pure grid logic (LAX airport vibes) and lands somewhere closer to ocean logic (mother-nature Norway vibes). I recorded this unhinged gospel to the unknown at the last minute en route to live in Norway for two months. Part of it was recorded in Los Angeles, then Minneapolis (so hot for that accent), before finally grounding in the fjords, where I now type this at 11 p.m...

I was emotionally hungover when I recorded this yesterday. Today is better. I think. Too early to tell. I find mornings especially tender sometimes. It’s just so paradigm-shattering and grief-inducing to clearly see how much stability I once borrowed from the future (in both art and love) in order to inhabit the present. Ugh. I’m feeling a lot of grief around many things as I reconcile with differ...

This week’s episode is about discernment and the personal practice of telling subtle things apart in both the mind and body — and what that practice is in service of for me personally is coherence. Not certainty, but coherence: an internal alignment between what I feel, what I say, and what I do. For me, coherence isn’t the absence of contradiction, but the ability to remain in relationship with c...

In this week’s unhinged gospel to the unknown, we unravel the wild and wonderful paradox of knowing oneself. Identity can be a trap or liberating — or somehow both at once. Depending. As Eckhart Tolle reminds us: “You must be comfortable not knowing who you are to know who you are.” Guys, you know I love a fucking paradox and multiple truths. I love them because they create space inside us, betwee...

Episode 6 is an extra deep dive into how our fears can make us try to control people, places, and things — and how the attempt to annihilate ambiguity can erode intimacy, creativity, aliveness, and freedom. Per usual, I call myself out on the ways this rears its head for me personally. Ultimately, this is about how being devoted to living the questions can liberate us, and those we’re in relations...

The title of this one is inspired by the Charlie and the Chocolate Factory song from the creepy (and I think hilarious, depending on my mood) river scene. You know the one. But in case you forgot watch here . I often hear this melody in my head (but make up my own bad lyrics) when wading in uncertain territory. So yeah, that’s episode 5’s vibe: half-embodied, half-anxious, while continuing to wade...

Episode 4 is basically a voice memo journal entry of sorts from Paris, France — which starts on a bridge and then is recorded while walking through the Tuileries toward the metro, emotionally hungover, jet-lagged, and very much in the middle of some shit. But also a lot of beauty. I talk about death — no one is shocked I know. More on that in this essay (the secret of death: a note from paris) fro...

Swimming in the gap between knowing and feeling. I think the logo said Episode 3 last week but it lied. This is definitely Episode 3 and it’s called “Feeling Feelings is Hard + David Richo’s Five A’s.” It’s a horizontal dive into vulnerability, intimacy, and why it’s so much easier (for me personally) to armor up than to actually feel things some times. I talk about grief and how it’s not separate...

Last week I came in hot and this week I slow back down and arrive somewhere softer — because that’s where I’m at and that’s how this podcast works. I imagine more activating territory is coming this season so my hope is that this episodes offers some embodied prep. I mean, if we can’t stay with ourselves when shit hits the fan, we won’t be able to stay with others. And shit just keeps hitting the...

A zero bullshit orientation to this feral playground where we learn to embrace uncertainty, cultivate solidarity, all while challenging the status quo. Reminder: this is an adult show (18+) with swearing and taboo adult subject matter and it will surely trigger you at times — you’ve been warned. I encourage you to stay open and curious while also taking care of yourself. Only you know your edges....

Traversing the beauty and horror of this world with eyes and hearts wide open feels hard but also holy to me. I’m grateful for friends like you who are in it with me. This between-seasons episode is a reading of the essay I wrote last week about what’s happening in America right now, and why none of it is new. We all know tone and delivery change how we receive information, and because this feels...

A return to presence, paradox, and the only thing that matters: now. I believe that our presence is the most precious present we can give to ourselves, those we love, and the world. After a season of critique, alchemy, exploration, art, enchantment, politics, failure, magic, and power, this episode collapses everything back into the most inconvenient truth of all: all we have is now. Presence and...

In this episode (which doesn't have a single edit), I finally sit down with my dearest friend, and a huge inspiration to me—Professor Dr. David Tripp. Together we rest in his nest in East LA and think out loud together, moving slowly and sideways through things like (but not limited to) philosophy, queer theory, feminist killjoys, the void, hope, power dynamics, authority figures, the human ch...

Krishnamurti said it and I f*cking agree: "It is no measure of health to be well-adjusted to a profoundly sick society." In episode 10 we get into Charli xcx, Jack Halberstam’s The Queer Art of Failure, and the false binary between “high” and “low” art, theory, and intelligence. I read and briefly unpack parts of Halberstam’s introduction on low theory (yes, SpongeBob shows up) and explo...

Believing in magic is not naïve but a refusal to bow to the machine. In episode 9, I share some Santa stories and make the case that enchantment is both a survival strategy and a spiritual inheritance. Magic is what happens when we refuse to collapse into the grid and instead relate to the world as if it’s alive, responsive, and in conversation with us. Like kids naturally do with openness, curios...

An icon, example, and exploration of art as resistance. From burnout to the nourishment of Jean-Michel Basquiat, episode 8 is a dip into art as resistance. GOD HOW I’M GRATEFUL FOR ART AND ARTISTS. I’m back in Los Angeles for a hot minute, and beginning to come back online thanks to some solo time, and a watching of The Radiant Child doc by director Tamra Davis about the brilliant and beautiful Ba...

The power (and magic) of letting difficulty work on us instead of sprinting to fix, numb, name, or outrun it. In this episode, I read from Rilke’s Letters to a Young Poet and let his words drag us straight into the deep end of sadness, solitude, and the unknown— but not in a depressing way I swear. I riff (and basically just agree with him) on the power (and magic) of letting difficulty work on us...

A quick dip into corruption, karma, consciousness, and sharing power. In this episode, I speak from inside some burnout and outrage about political rot, spiritual amnesia, astrology, past lives, and the predator class that thrives on our distraction and brainwashing. I read an unedited piece I wrote before the last election, a mix of satire and rage, then reflect on what it means to keep loving, l...

Challenging the stories we tell ourselves and holding it all gently. In this episode, I unravel some of the stories I’ve told myself to feel safe—the myths of being “the good one,” “the honest one.” I talk about being present to my own contradictions, and the power that comes from holding all that with a fuck ton of gentleness. Take what lands and leave the rest. xSylvia DISCLAIMERS I swear. A lot...

See what I did there :) Day of the Dead inspired (obviously.) Also, this one has video if you fancy that kind-of-thing. Episode 4 is an underworld field trip with rattlesnakes, childhood nightmares, climate dread, and embracing shady, shadowy gifts in disguise — plus how dreamwork can prep the nervous system to meet loss. Mostly this is about how I’ve learned to relate to death not as an ending, b...

Season 2, Episode 3. Unhinged gospel meets sonic diary. Basically lots of ocean vibes with very loose grid. Part meditation, part confession, part lucid stream-of-conscious riff about a bunch of random but also not so random topics. If Episode 1 was about listening as praxis, especially in the political realm, and Episode 2 was about the practice of holding structure and fluidity at once, Episode...

This week Mother-Nature decided we’d move from theory into practice as we talk (and I get to walk) Grid Logic and Ocean Logic as dialectical, living, breathing forces: structure and flow, containment and wildness, and what happens when they start working together instead of fighting for dominance. Most of the episode revolves around a convo that happened yesterday that reminded me what a self-righ...

Welcome back to Season 2, Episode 1 of this unhinged gospel to the unknown. Season Two opens on a walk with Teddy through a Midwestern neighborhood and a thesis: grid logic, our culture’s fixation on control, binaries, and the attention economy, is choking civic and intimate life. The counter-practice is listening as praxis: a disciplined, transformative act that begins personally and scales polit...

This isn’t closure it’s ignition. Season one closer from a lake in L.A. with the sun on my back and Teddy by my side. I look back at where this experiment started (Texas → Arizona → here) and what it’s been all about: living inside paradox and letting that space make us more alive. Presence, uncertainty, contradiction, and the messy, gorgeous practice of staying here now even when it’s hard as fuc...

Season one teaser.