Egregor Galore: April at Kollo Media

Hey everyone, Ben here. We published a lot again in April, with another audiobook and a podcast launch, plus more work on myths, bodies, history, and - you know it - leadership.

Amid all this new stuff, a moment for a few endings: We finished BAD COUSINS after 7 episodes in 6 months. We also wrapped up our 4-book Audiobook collaboration with oekom. Imagine starting a project in 2025.

My personal April highlights were the discussion of a revolutionary messianism in the final episode of BAD COUSINS, and the conversation around mythology and semi-autonomous egregors from Simplify.

As always, we’re excited share all our updates with you and hope to see you at our event on 15 May with Jeremy Harding at Chapters Bookshop.

Updates below…

This is Episode 6 of BAD COUSINS, the final episode of the season. Listen on Spotify, Apple Podcasts, YouTube, or online. As we’ve been promising from the very beginning, this is where we take some time to discuss more radical and even optimistic ways of reading the Abraham story.

For this purpose, we invited scholar Avi-Ram Tzoreff to join us for a conversation grounded in a very unusual text, “As For Ishmael I Have Heard You” by Rabbi Yosef Kaminer (no relation to Matan). With this ultra-orthodox Jewish author, we dare to imagine a State of Abraham open to all.

We reclaim a revolutionary, transformatory, even messianic future from the religious Zionists, whose Messiah enters town riding a tank, intent on destruction. Our Messiah - and this is a traditional position - rides the humble donkey, listens to the voices of the downtrodden, and rebuilds destroyed cities.

Central to this reading is the figure of Hagar, the Egyptian immigrant. What if instead of focusing on the conflict between Ishmael and Isaac, we set our sights on all the ways the tradition commands us to honor the stranger in the person of Hagar? What would the world look like if we lived out that holiness?

As the world gets crazier and shittier by the day, we’re looking for little points of light in the dark. Hopefully we’ve found some. Looking forward, as always, to hearing your thoughts.

And here’s another link to the sources list for BAD COUSINS, which is good fun.

Friday 15 May | 17:00

Free entry | RSVP [email protected]

In a few weeks we’ll host writer Jeremy Harding at Chapters Bookshop for an intimate early-evening conversation around his new book, Analogue Africa: Notes on the Anti-Colonial Imagination.

This is a collaboration between Chapters and our Dig Where You Stand podcast, hosted by Peter Matthews. And we’ll record it live for DWYS Season 2.

The conversation begins with a question that refuses to go away: What happens to the ancestral and human remains from colonial contexts still held in Europe’s museums? From there, Harding — contributing editor at the London Review of Books and one of the sharpest writers working on these questions — takes us into culture, memory, and the ways colonial violence continues to shape the present.

An early evening to listen closely, then stay for drinks and conversation in the shop. We’d love to see you and hang - the Kollo Media events are always a good time - so please do RSVP or respond to this email and let us know you’re coming!

With Neue Narrative, we’ve just launched Fühlungsqualitäten: A call-in show about leadership with all of the expertise and experience of one of the German-speaking world’s most popular business brands.

After just two episodes we cracked the Top 10 in the Business category!! Please listen and share it around if you like it.

Simplify published two more episodes in April. And these ones are badass and challenging:

Thank you for listening. You can keep supporting us by sharing episodes, rating and reviewing the show, and staying connected: Follow Simplify on Instagram, sign up for Caitlin’s essays in the newsletter, and subscribe to the feed wherever you listen to podcasts. We’re publishing episodes every other week.

Did someone forward this to you? Subscribe here:

Our newest audiobook is Gesundheit beginnt im Boden, by Ute Scheub, cofounder of taz (shoutout to cooperatively owned media!). She’s already written over 20 books and writes this time about the microbiome in a really entertaining way.

This book wraps up a major collaboration of books we’ve done with oekom here in Germany, a publisher focusing on giving green and alternative ideas a platform. The other titles being Toxisch Reich, Unter Hochspannung, and Greenwashing.

You can find it on all the usual places to get your audiobooks! Or click “Höre jetzt das ganze Hörbuch an” here for more links.

Forward this to someone and start a conversation…

Send us an idea you think needs more attention: