The Oxbow

Sponsored By Primal Derma

The Oxbow with Matthew Stillman

Welcome to The Oxbow. The largely improvised podcast where one-word suggestions mailed in from the audience are used as a point of departure to see how that word or phrase might inspire deeper wondering, worthy questions, and reflections on nature and culture, etymology and history, myth and place, and maybe the skill of human making… If we’re lucky. Let’s see.

I’m Matthew Stillman, and this is the Oxbow. Where the rich sediment of things that shaped this time and place slows to feed the verdant delta of culture.

3:20 and Chopsticks – The Oxbow Episode 8

In this episode, Matthew explores a replica of an Etruscan drinking cup and how it connects to a more felt sense or embodied squatting culture and some of the implications of design that is emergent...
Read More

Bees Wax – The Oxbow Episode 7

In this episode Matthew skitters widely on folklore about bees and honey, false etymologies, real mythologies, and how the bee and its six-foldedness might connect the spirit world to the living one here on earth....
Read More

Woodcarver Business Card – The Oxbow Episode 6

This episode gets a reference to a specific episode from Stephen Jenkinson’s book “Come of Age: The Case for Elderhood in a Time Of Trouble”. But that inspires some considerations on the history of business...
Read More

Rocks – The Oxbow episode 5

In this episode of The Oxbow the suggestion from a postcard was “rocks.” After a joking chastisement of the submitter for giving too specific a suggestion (The Lessons that rocks can teach us) some considerations...
Read More

Cinnamon Tea – The Oxbow episode 4

In this episode of The Oxbow a Benegal Spice cinnamon tea teabag is the mailed-in suggestion. This ends up being a springboard for sourcing good spices, reflecting on offerings to the divine in texts like...
Read More

Speed – The Oxbow episode 3

This episode’s word is speed.  Matthew reminisces about questionable childhood gifts, walking with Thoreau, the time man spends with his automobile, and traveling at “human speed”. Let’s also contemplate the flexibility and utility of language,...
Read More

Notional – The Oxbow episode 2

Casey Jones by The Grateful Dead https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_x2m6i4KFqg Before Writing: From Counting to Cuneiform by Denise Schmandt-Besserat Nature word of the day from Home Ground: Language for an American Landscape Ganderbrush: In the dense backwoods of...
Read More

Brodo – The Oxbow episode 1

In the premiere episode of his new podcast The Oxbow, Matthew Stillman sets the stage for a series of free-flow ruminations centered around a single word. This episode’s word – brodo – inspires memories of...
Read More
Mountain Line Drawing

Sign up to receive stories, culture, history, and Primal Derma updates:

This field is for validation purposes and should be left unchanged.

Sign up to receive stories, culture, history, and Primal Derma updates:

This field is for validation purposes and should be left unchanged.