Jason here. When people ask me to recommend an episode of Think Again to get started, I always

recommend this one with Robert McFarlane. His book, Underland, is my absolute hands-down

favorite book that I read in the five years of making this show. I mean, comparing the books can be apples to oranges,

but without a doubt, this is the one

that made the deepest impression on me.

And listening back to it, I'm struck all over again

by the journeys that he takes into deep physical space

in the earth and into deep time.

And by something that he says early on about how paraphrasing Nietzsche, that when you look into the depths of the earth, they look back into you.

And they defy our minds attempts to make sense, meaning, order, sequence.

And while this might seem like a scary thing, and indeed there are plenty of reasons to be

afraid of the dark, it seems to me that at this time in history, especially when all our

attempts at command and control of the earth and ourselves, when so many of them are coming

back to haunt us in unexpected ways, that we can benefit. We really need this kind of disorientation, that looking into deep time

and into the roots of nature can give us.

Hi there, I'm Jason Gatz, and you're listening to Think Again, a Big Think podcast.

I'm underground as I write this one day before taping the conversation you're about to hear,

speeding through New York City subway tunnels that aren't all that ancient,

but whose darkness and rats and crumbling, esoteric infrastructure holds fear and fascination enough for anyone who

contemplates them. Waking up this morning, notice how you wake up, not down, I felt my already

barely remembered dreams sliding off of me in layers like leaves or hands, and the longing

to submit to those hands and slide back down, underground, into the caverns of sleep.

...