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I sit down with artist, photographer, and author Josie Iselin, and what begins as a conversation about kelp opens into an exploration of the intricate world in the waters just off our coast.

Josie traces her own path into that world—from artist to something closer to a naturalist of the shoreline—guided by curiosity, attention, and a willingness to look closely at what most of us walk past. Kelp, in her telling, is not just seaweed but a kind of language: a way of reading the ocean’s health, its rhythms, and its disturbances.

We talk about the fragile balance of the kelp forests—about urchin barrens and restoration efforts, including diver-led removal and the promise (and limits) of lab-grown kelp. We touch on kelp’s often overstated role as a carbon sink, I learned the meaning of the “wrack line” as a living archive of the sea, and the ongoing tensions around sea otter reintroduction.

Threaded through it all is Josie’s project Above Below: The Mysterious World of Bull Kelp, created with illustrator Ellen Litwiller—first as a digital exploration, now as a beautifully realized book available where books are sold and at the Henry Miller Library.

It’s a conversation about paying attention and what the edge of the ocean might still teach us if we take the time to walk down to the shoreline and slow down long enough to see it.

/Magnus

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This podcast is a production of the Henry Miller Memorial Library with support from The Arts Council for Monterey County!

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Alison van Diggelen – Journalist, interviewer, and author of The Love Project: A Journey of Intimate Conversations.

Photo is of Alison and her Mom.
Alison's website.
Buy "The Love Project" at your local bookstore.
May we suggest the Henry Miller Library.

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Topics in This Episode

• The origins of The Love Project
• Love across generations
• The power of listening
• Storytelling as connection
• Love as a verb (and noun)

A Quote from the Episode

Final Thought

We often speak about love as if it were a feeling that descends upon us like weather, it does, but there's more...

Perhaps love encompasses much more—
a choice, repeated in small acts, day after day.

Support the show

_________________________________________________


This podcast is a production of the Henry Miller Memorial Library with support from The Arts Council for Monterey County!

Let us know what you think!
SEND US AN EMAIL! 😊
magnus@henrymiller.org

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Shamergence

The skeptic asks, “Is it real?”
The shaman asks, “Did it help?”

COME MEET ROB SOMERS ON SATURDAY, MARCH 21

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Carlos Castaneda

Joseph Campbell

The Samples

Ozymandias

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Shaman, Skeptic, and the Voice in the Belly

Support the show

_________________________________________________


This podcast is a production of the Henry Miller Memorial Library with support from The Arts Council for Monterey County!

Let us know what you think!
SEND US AN EMAIL! 😊
magnus@henrymiller.org

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In this episode of A Big Sur Podcast, I sit down with Brita Ostrom — longtime Esalen resident and author of Steeped: A Big Sur Elixir of Sulfur and Sage.

Brita’s life bridges several revolutions at once: the islands of the Pacific Northwest, the Haight-Ashbury explosion of 1966–67, the psychedelic and political turbulence of the Summer of Love, and the early, formative years of the Esalen Institute.

We talk about Haight Street — the overwhelming beauty of it all: the posters, the music, the saturated colors. And later, how the fog began to settle in. About sidewalks so crowded you could barely move, and children who quietly went missing. About free love and jealousy, about massage tables and incense, about the uneasy dance between material success and spiritual seeking.

Brita describes arriving at Esalen for the first time — the candlelit baths, the shock of nakedness, the silkiness of sulfur water against cold skin. She reflects on figures like Fritz Perls, Storm, and Lars — and on what it meant to come of age inside a cultural experiment that promised liberation but carried its own tensions and blind spots.

This is not nostalgia. It is a reckoning.

What does it mean to “drop out”? What does it cost? What does it give?
What remains when the fog clears?

Brita’s memoir is a meditation on community, intimacy, ritual, and the long arc of a life shaped by Big Sur’s muse-like pull.

As she writes in her dedication:

I hope you’ll enjoy this thoughtful, tender, and at times unsparing conversation.

— Magnus

• Esalen Institute
• Haight-Ashbury
• Golden Gate Park
• Henry Miller Memorial Library

People Mentioned

• Fritz Perls
• Alan Watts
• Ebba Malmborg
• Carlos Castaneda
• Cesar Chavez
• Ken Kesey
• Dennis Murphy
• Selig Morgenrath

Bands of the Era (Referenced in the Conversation)

• Grateful Dead
• Jefferson Airplane
• Moby Grape
• Quicksilver Messenger Service
• The Charlatans

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_________________________________________________


This podcast is a production of the Henry Miller Memorial Library with support from The Arts Council for Monterey County!

Let us know what you think!
SEND US AN EMAIL! 😊
magnus@henrymiller.org

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Andrew Munn in conversation!

Deep Listening, Between Cage and Wagner, from Silence to Parsifal. Listening for the unheard, where sound becomes ceremony.

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Links to more on what we spoke of:

ANDREW MUNN

Short video from the HMML performance.

Peter Mattei

John Cage

Pauline Oliveros

Deep Listening

Rami Sarieddeine

Shanghai Concert Hall

Tanglewood

Parsifal

Magic Flute

Elektra

Support the show

_________________________________________________


This podcast is a production of the Henry Miller Memorial Library with support from The Arts Council for Monterey County!

Let us know what you think!
SEND US AN EMAIL! 😊
magnus@henrymiller.org

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The Ballad of Kendra and Matt (or, The Song That Never Made It to the PA)

A neighborhood celebration, a home-recorded love song, a forgotten “play” button — and a reminder that even when things go sideways, community and humor always find a way. Magnus tells the true story behind a tune that almost didn’t get heard — until now.

Support the show

_________________________________________________


This podcast is a production of the Henry Miller Memorial Library with support from The Arts Council for Monterey County!

Let us know what you think!
SEND US AN EMAIL! 😊
magnus@henrymiller.org

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Instagram

Send a text

Support the show

_________________________________________________


This podcast is a production of the Henry Miller Memorial Library with support from The Arts Council for Monterey County!

Let us know what you think!
SEND US AN EMAIL! 😊
magnus@henrymiller.org

FaceBook
Instagram

Send a text

A clown stands alone… somewhere between Henry Miller and Samuel Beckett… somewhere between laughter and the cosmic void.

Henry Miller once said, “A clown is a poet in action.” Today, that poet is Kangalee—the one-man actor and director—returning to the stage with a new mono-drama that refuses to stay in one world. Silent film. Revolutionary vaudeville. Delirious mime. Poetry. Nirvana.

This is the modern holy fool—not Keaton, but Kangalee—struggling, leaping, breaking through to offer us something sacred.

And for the first time in America, Henry Miller’s most mysterious story comes alive on stage in Smile: A Clown’s Ascension — based on The Smile at the Foot of the Ladder.

This episode is a conversation with Kangalee!

Please visit:

Kangalee Arts Ensemble

HM 21 Symposium

With support form the Arts Council of Monterey County

Support the show

_________________________________________________


This podcast is a production of the Henry Miller Memorial Library with support from The Arts Council for Monterey County!

Let us know what you think!
SEND US AN EMAIL! 😊
magnus@henrymiller.org

FaceBook
Instagram