The Mind of State Curriculum


 The second part of this special edition comes from the Mind of State podcast team which has produced a curriculum on the relationship between psyche and polis, or mind and state, that emerged from its second season of interviews that took place during most of 2020 and early 2021.

Near the end of the second season in February, 2021, it had become clear that so many of the issues that roiled the US Presidential election were going to be around for long after the Jan 20 inauguration.  The syndemic fevers of COVID-19, Trumpism, climate change, racism, and so much more can be imagined to have spiked and perhaps lysed in the Insurrection of January 6, 2021.  It will most likely take generations for these wounds to heal. Considering each of the podcast discussions to be focused on an essential aspect of our society in crisis, I joined my Mind of State co-producers, Betty Teng and Jonathan Kopp, in the decision to continue our project by expanding the episodes into a course based on the model of a Socratic dialogue by creating a set of questions that arose from each of the conversations.  The intention of the questions is to help focus the listener’s attention on all the complex issues bubbling beneath the surface of our current psychological, cultural and political turmoil. Again, the symbol is not always in the foreground and yet, the symbolic is everywhere in these discussions, begging for our thoughtful attention and care.  Please share this free course with teachers and students of all ages.

Click here to access the Mind of State Curriculum.