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 so important, I wanted to share it here as well.

Thank you for listening.

xSylvia

Note: This analysis draws on decades of scholarship, resistance movements, and lived experience that I’ve synthesized. If you’ve been following here, you know I regularly name queer and BIPOC thinkers and organizers I’m indebted to. The lineage here is long. I hope you’re reading their books. And if you’re not, let this be an invitation.

If you prefer reading (and haven’t yet), the essay is below. It also includes recommended episodes if you want to go deeper. https://substack.com/@wedontknowwithsylvia/p-184172166

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 bearing witness to what “is” over and over again is what I endlessly return to as my work. Not presence as a productivity hack or a spiritual bypass, but presence as the only place where suffering loosens and agency returns.

This episode is not about fixing the world or escaping it, but about learning how to stay present inside it, feel what’s true without bypassing, and let action arise from stillness instead of fear.

I hope you know by now that I’m never trying to offer concrete answers. I’m trying to help us dissolve the need for them.

Thank you for joining me for another season of this wild ride. I look forward to reconnecting with you in 2026 and for whatever Season 3 has to offer us.

Until then, I hope you stay ungovernable, present, and fiercely tender.

Love,

Your friend of shadow and shine (as my buddy Matthew calls me.)

Note:
This episode speaks about presence, but not as a cure-all. Trauma and systemic harm are real, and many forms of suffering cannot be resolved through awareness alone. This work is not a substitute for professional support; therapy, medical care, sobriety, and other forms of skilled help are often essential. Take what’s useful, leave the rest, get professional support when needed, and please trust the timing of your own unfolding.

Mentioned in Episode:

• Eckhart Tolle, The Power of Now

• Ram Dass, Be Here Now

  
  

  “What a caterpillar calls the end of the world we call a butterfly.” ― Eckhart Tolle

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 chorus, and our lived experiences. Trying to give this a proper synopsis feels impossible so I’m going to keep this brief and simply encourage you to listen. And please do message me and share your thoughts if you feel inspired.

Huge thanks again to my dude Dr. David Tripp. I cherish you.

xSylvia

Content Warning

This episode includes swearing and unsanitized conversations about power, queerness, failure, and the emotional costs of optimism under capitalism. We touch on themes of disillusionment, grief, domestication, and the unraveling of inherited life scripts, which may feel activating for listeners navigating identity, belonging, or burnout. Please listen with care and leave what doesn’t serve you.

Some of the books + thinkers referenced in the episode: (my sincere apologies if I’m missing someone)

Jack Halberstam

The Queer Art of Failure (2011), Duke University PressReframes failure as a queer strategy that resists capitalist ideas of success, productivity, and linear progress.

Jack Halberstam

In a Queer Time and Place (2005), New York University PressIntroduces queer temporality as a disruption of normative timelines around adulthood, reproduction, and achievement.

Lauren Berlant

Cruel Optimism (2011), Duke University PressNames the way we stay attached to hopes and fantasies that once promised survival but now block our flourishing.

Sara Ahmed

Willful Subjects (2014), Duke University PressExplores how refusal and noncompliance are framed as problems when they interrupt social norms and power.

Sara Ahmed

Living a Feminist Life (2017), Duke University PressIntroduces the Feminist Killjoy and examines how happiness and positivity function as tools of social control.

James C. Scott

Seeing Like a State (1998), Yale University PressReferenced in relation to legibility, domestication, and the dangers of systems that demand simplification and compliance.

Michel Foucault

Selected writings

Referenced in relation to how power operates through normalization, self-surveillance, and internalized control rather than overt force.