Two Inconvenient Women

In this season's conversations, Holly and Rachel each bring something that has caught their attention during the week, and spend time exploring some of the learning, unlearning, wisdom and practices that these provocations inspire.

This week, Holly reflects on a provocative statement from Mary Beard that she hates when people say they "love reading"; whilst Rachel muses on some of the ways a quote from the 13th-century Sufi mystic and poet Rumi helps us better understand our inner lives, collective healing, and ways to become more healthy and whole.

Some of the resources mentioned in this podcast include:

Purpose-led Paradox - Helen Sieroda in APECS Reflexive Edge Journal (article)
Why I hate the phrase "I really love reading" - Mary Beard, Booker Prize Chair 2026 (video)
The benefits of reading for pleasure - University of Liverpool (PDF Report)
All About Love: New Visions - bell hooks (book)
Children and young people's reading in 2026 - National Literary Trust report (PDF)
IFS (Internal Family System) Online Community (website)
Keys to the Enneagram - A H Almaas (book)
The Forty Rules of Love - Elif Shafak (book)

Here is the Mary Beard quote in full:
I cannot bear the phrase “I really love reading” and I cannot bear when I hear on Radio 4 in the morning, “what book first sparked your love of reading?” And I think this is to undermine and underrate reading, that’s why I don’t like the phrase. I get all kinds of pleasure from reading. I have a passion, in some sense, for reading, but reading is more essential to humanity now than just saying, “oh I really love it,” you know, like I might love golf or something like that. Reading is about how to be you and how to think about the world, and if we relegate it to the wellbeing section of our lives, we’re really underestimating it. I challenge anybody to say they feel better after they have read Kafka. I don’t believe they have, right? That doesn’t mean they shouldn’t be reading Kafka, does it? And some of these books are not, I think, going to make you feel better. They’re going to make you see the world differently, and that’s not about love.

And here is the Rumi quote that Rachel brought to the conversation: Your task is not to seek for love, but merely to seek and find all the barriers within yourself that you have built against it.

If you enjoy this podcast and would like to support us to continue, why not join The Inconvenient Club for just £5 per month and be part of the movement towards a healthier way of living for people and planet. Come join us: www.thoughtboxeducation.com/the-inconvenient-club
Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

In this season's conversations, Holly and Rachel each bring a stimulus that has caught their attention during the week, and spend time exploring some of the learning, unlearning, wisdom and practices that these provocations inspire.

This week, Rachel explores the power of breath by sharing some of her own growing awareness of the impact of different ways of breathing on mind, body and emotions, whilst Holly muses on the role of ego, purpose and life's meaning; drawing on the character of Fool in Robin Hobb's fantasy series: The Assassin's Apprentice.

Some of the resources explored in this podcast include:

Robin Hobb's fantasy series (Books)
Breath: The new science of a lost art - James Nestor (Book)
Success: Ralph Waldo Emerson (quotation)
The Triple WellBeing Cards (resource)

If you enjoy this podcast and would like to support us to continue, why not join The Inconvenient Club for just £5 per month and be part of the movement towards a healthier way of living for people and planet. Come join us: www.thoughtboxeducation.com/the-inconvenient-club
Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Holly and Rachel join us this week from under a tree in Balliol College, Oxford, to share their thoughts half-way through the Transform Trauma conference 2026. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

In our last week of the summer break, Rachel finishes the summer season with a poem - sharing some of the beautiful sentiments of the late poet Wendell Berry, who passed away just a few days ago aged 92.

The Peace of Wild Things
- Wendell Berry-
When despair for the world grows in me
and I wake in the night at the least sound
in fear of what my life and my children’s lives may be,
I go and lie down where the wood drake
rests in his beauty on the water, and the great heron feeds.
I come into the peace of wild things
who do not tax their lives with forethought
of grief. I come into the presence of still water.
And I feel above me the day-blind stars
waiting with their light. For a time
I rest in the grace of the world, and am free.
Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.