In Episode 7 of TN, John and Gregg welcome Brendan Graham Dempsey. Brendan is a writer, theologian, and theorist whose work focuses on the meaning crisis and the nature of spirituality in metamodernity. He is also the host of the Metamodern Spirituality podcast, and he runs the Skymeadow Retreat, which has hosted several metamodern spirituality events. In this episode, Brendan shares about his recent work, which he wrote about in Emergentism, and from his in-progress work on the meaning of meaning. He shows how his work, UTOK, and Bobby Azarian’s unified theory of reality can provide a framework to delineate the history and development of cultural meaning-making systems (i.e., large-scale systems of justification). This episode is full of powerful convergences between Brendan’s vision and the worldview for bridging science and spirituality that is emerging in TN. Resources Brendan Graham Dempsey: https://www.brendangrahamdempsey.com/ Oika: https://oika.com/ Claude E. Shannon: Founder of Information Theory - Graham P. Collins: https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/claude-e-shannon-founder/ The Levin Lab: https://drmichaellevin.org/ UTOK: https://www.unifiedtheoryofknowledge.org/ Publications: A Spirit of Trust: A Reading of Hegel's Phenomenology - Robert B. Brandom: https://ndpr.nd.edu/reviews/a-spirit-of-trust-a-reading-of-hegels-phenomenology/#:~:text=In%20Brandom's%20view%2C%20this%20is,how%20they%20appear%20to%20us. The information theory of individuality - David Krakauer: https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/32212028/ Semantic information, autonomous agency and non-equilibrium statistical physics - Artemy Kolchinsky and David H. Wolpert: https://royalsocietypublishing.org/doi/10.1098/rsfs.2018.0041 Videos The Reality of Meaning: Knowledge, Value, and Complexity | Consilience Conference '23: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ccNTFeLNkM0 Books The Romance of Reality: How the Universe Organizes Itself to Create Life, Consciousness, and Cosmic Complexity - Bobby Azarian: https://www.amazon.com/Romance-Reality-Organizes-Consciousness-Complexity/dp/1637740441 Context Changes Everything: How Constraints Create Coherence - Alicia Juarrero: https://www.amazon.com/Context-Changes-Everything-Constraints-Coherence/dp/0262545667/ref=tmm_pap_swatch_0?_encoding=UTF8&qid=&sr= Cosmic Evolution: The Rise of Complexity in Nature - Eric J. Chaisson: https://www.amazon.com/Cosmic-Evolution-Rise-Complexity-Nature/dp/0674009878/ref=tmm_pap_swatch_0?_encoding=UTF8&qid=1691937172&sr=1-1 Timecodes