This is Five and Nine, a podcast and newsletter at the crossroads of magic, work and economic justice. Welcome to Season 3, Episode 6, our season finale. We’ll be back in a couple months.
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Summary
A month ago, artist and creative technologist M Eifler was laid off from their job, one of nearly 200,000 layoffs this year alone. M discusses the uncertainty and anxiety they’ve experienced since the layoff and shares how they have been using art and LinkedIn to document their journey. From ritual to song to visualizing the experience of stress, they share wisdom on navigating the ups and downs—while also finding a new path forward.
M is the creator of Art School From Bed, an online series that explores how technology can be used to solve problems around disability. They discuss their work in disability and access, including their role as a lay leader in a Jewish community in San Francisco. The episode ends with a tarot reading using their very own deck, the Mixed Signals Deck, and we close with an offering from M on the theme of rest, which feels particularly relevant given the new moon, solar eclipse, and Mercury Retrograde cycle happening at the time of recording.
Season 3 is all about rest. In a time of extended crisis, permacrisis and polycrisis, taking time to decompress is not just a benefit but a necessity. Learning to slow down, reflect and make space for expansive thinking is part of what makes rest so sweet but also so elusive. Grab a blanket, turn down the lights, and turn up Five and Nine this season to hear new perspectives on the age old practice of reflection, rejuvenation and recovery.
As an experiment, we generated this summary using ChatGPT and then edited it heavily.
Resources
About Our Guest
Tarot Cards Discussed
Maker of Stones (aka Queen of Pentacles)
Resources
The Upside of Stress, by Kelly McGonigal
Music
Episode: Golden Dreams (Mazurka), performed by Chris Chapman, 1907.
New for Paid Supporters!
Five and Nine is pleased to roll out a new benefit for supporters: meditations. This section includes standalone meditations pulled straight from Five and Nine episodes, with contributions by Dorothy R. Santos, AX Mina, Kai Stowers, Angela Mictlanxochitl, Kim Acebo Arteche and Nour Batyne.
While the podcast is always free, Five and Nine’s Meditations are designed to support your practice with standalone recordings any time you need a moment of pause and reflection. They’re part of a larger subscriber package that includes tarotscopes we publish in partnership with Ignota Books and discounts on workshops and classes. We hope you enjoy them.
Tarotscopes
Five and Nine is pleased to partner with Ignota Books to offer a collective tarotscope and I Ching reading for our paid members. Published every 🌝 full moon.
New Workshop from Five and Nine’s AX Mina: Building Your Platform, or, How I Learned to Stop Worrying and Love the Brand
A new class series from Five and Nine’s AX Mina. Listeners can use code BUILD for a 15% discount on the full course.
As a nonfiction writer, you have great stories, ideas and perspectives to share, and the world deserves to hear them. Clearly communicating who you are and what you do is an essential part of the toolkit of building your platform.
In this four-part, interactive workshop, author AX (Ana) Mina will walk you through a series of values-oriented exercises that will help you ground the story of yourself as a writer in your authentic values and the why behind your work so that people sit up and pay attention.
We'll use your superpower — writing — to build a brand that's true to yourself and your work, while helping elevate your platform for others.
Participants in the workshop should expect to develop and refine their writer bio and come out of the class with a series of practical strategies for building an authentic platform. This course will require at least 1 hour of exercises before each class.
Join Five and Nine’s AX Mina, who’s proud to be working with The Shipman Agency, a full service literary agency for writers, to run this workshop.
Enjoying the show? You can support us in three ways:
Subscribe now for just $6 per month and get access to our paid programming. This podcast is always free, but paid subscribers will get access to special content, like discounts on our classes with The Shipman Agency, free listens of our standalone meditations, and a monthly tarotscope we produce in partnership with Ignota Books.
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Five and Nine is a podcast and newsletter at the crossroads of magic, work and economic justice. We publish “moonthly” — every new moon 🌚 and full moon 🌝 — , and we provide an ongoing critical discussion through readings, reflections and debate.
In this new world, we’re all rethinking the meaning of work and justice in our lives. Our lives and livelihoods are more essential than ever in identifying ways forward for society that can be grounded in care, compassion and sustainability.
Directors of Magic. Dorothy R. Santos and Xiaowei R. Wang
Creative Director. Xiaowei R. Wang
Lead Producer. AX Mina (Ana)
