Freedom of Form Foundation: Recent Episodes
Freedom of Form Foundation
Established 2018, we want to make it possible for you to be whatever you want to be. We raise funds for research and advocate for your morphological freedom and your freedom of self-actualisation; freedom of form.
Last year, a flawed, art house movie called 'Wolf' came out from a little known director by the name of Natalie Biancheri in a limited release before then being released more widely on multiple streaming services. It touched a subject matter very central to our purpose at the Freedom of Form Foundation. We wrote reviews and talked about it on social media, but ultimately, our feelings, particularly among those of us who feel species dysphoria the strongest, needed a more thorough opportunity to be explained. This episode of the FFF Podcast is dedicated to that. To really go into the details, we have brought in the long time Otherkin community leader, Alynna Trypnotk, and the equally experienced Therianthrope, Erin Wolfsune, to join our host Athamanatha, who a mere couple of years ago discovered their own otherkin side.
Impassioned feelings and strong language on occasion punctuate the conversation, and this is about a movie rated 'R' in the USA for the inclusion of abuse, nudity and sex, so there is an advisory of discretion and common sense in choosing who to view the referenced movie with. We do not use movie screenshots in this video slideshow for the podcast, for copyright reasons.
Video and audio editing by 'Tabs'
Anchor makes editing the text really difficult here and has an insufficient character limit, so for the list of links, please see our Youtube upload. 'Clean' has been selected on the assumption that a couple of swear words are not the end of the world for filtering. The movie discussed contains graphic adult content. The podcast doesn't really but it is probably hard to follow for most kids.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=A3fPGgo4AGo
In a continuation from where we left off with the topic of prosthetics in episode 10, we invited one of our friends from the Otherkin community to talk about her views on arm prosthetics, how they might improve and how they interact with her life and with her spiritual perspective as an otherkin person with a deep connection to a few non-human forms, with a nod to the healing power of art.
It's our delight to talk with the inimitable and wonderful Maki Hooves.
Athamanatha Kitsune hosts and Ondrik Birb brings some interesting perspectives and questions too.
Previous episode:
https://soundcloud.com/freedomofform/an-interview-with-temple-grandin
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8hk_6S19JP0&t=2s
Previous referenced episode (Interview with Professor Hugh Herr):
https://soundcloud.com/freedomofform/fff-podcast-episode-10-prosthetics-pioneer-professor-hugh-herr
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=elcmw_8WSuU
Links relevant to the discussion (all are for reference and do not count as endorsements):
Neuroprosthetics:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Neuroprosthetics
Prosthetics:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Prosthesis
Prof. Hugh Herr:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hugh_Herr
https://www.media.mit.edu/people/hherr/overview/
Logical fallacies:
https://yourlogicalfallacyis.com/special-pleading
HIV mRNA vaccines:
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC8341208/
https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/33562203/
https://www.healthline.com/health-news/moderna-launches-clinical-trial-of-its-mrna-based-hiv-vaccine
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/MRNA_vaccine
Prions:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Prion
Otherkin:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Otherkin
Morphological Freedom:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Morphological_freedom
Donations:
https://www.patreon.com/freedomofform
https://www.freedomofform.org/involvement/donate/ for all methods.
Our website:
https://www.freedomofform.org
Art of SpectraFox (Maki's kitsune form) by Flinters Roo https://www.furaffinity.net/user/flinters
Art of Maki Hooves getting a prosthetic limb by JenKiwi https://www.furaffinity.net/user/jenkiwi/
Art of Maki Hooves fitted with her prosthetic limb drawn by Maki Hooves (A.K.A. SpectraFox) https://www.furaffinity.net/user/spectrafox/.
Art of Athamanatha Kitsune discovering having 7 tails by Dragonfeathers https://www.deviantart.com/dragondealer.
Ferret photos by Maki Hooves.
Numerous images sourced from internet searches are used here for humorous or informative fair-use references and are not intended to infringe upon copyright. Should you or your organisation or someone you represent object to their use, please contact the Freedom of Form Foundation first via our website so that we may come to a low cost, sensible resolution with you. Where we can, we use public domain and creative commons licensed images.
Intro and outro music: Huma Huma - Eureka
Recorded 2nd January 2022
Released 30th April 2022
The autism and animal behaviour expert, Professor Temple Grandin, kindly agreed to an online video call interview with Athamanatha Kitsune. We cover several interesting aspects of her work and how they relate to genetics, animal behaviour, autistic traits and who has them, and coping with being different. The interview was heavily edited and sometimes goes blank while audio continues due to internet issues, but we preserved the order of the questions and answers, and did our best not to change the meaning.
Interesting links (none of these is a paid promotion): https://www.amazon.com/Genetics-Behavior-Domestic-Animals-Grandin/dp/0123945860 - Genetics and the Behaviour of Domestic Animals, Second Edition
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Domesticated_silver_fox - The Fox Farm Experimenthttps://link.springer.com/content/pdf/10.1007%2Fs00439-017-1865-9.pdf DOI: 10.1007/s00439-017-1865-9 - Genomic trade‑offs: are autism and schizophrenia the steep price of the human brain? - J. M. Sikela and V. B. Searles~Quick
https://www.amazon.com/Somebody-Somewhere-Breaking-World-Autism/dp/0812922875 - Somebody Somewhere by Donna Williams
https://www.amazon.com/Autism-Inside-Out-Innovative-Mechanics-Developmental/dp/1853023876 - Autism: An Inside-Out Approach by Donna Williams
https://www.amazon.com/Thinking-Pictures-Expanded-Life-Autism/dp/0307275655 - Thinking in Pictures
https://www.amazon.com/Autistic-Brain-Temple-Grandin/dp/054422773 - The Autistic Brain
https://www.amazon.com/How-Build-Hug-Grandin-Amazing/dp/153441097X/ - How To Build A Hug
https://www.amazon.com/Animals-Translation-Mysteries-Behavior-Harvest/dp/0156031442 - Animals In Translation
https://www.amazon.com/Animals-Make-Human-Temple-Grandin/dp/0547248237/ - Animals Make Us Human
https://www.amazon.com/Emergence-Labeled-Autistic-Temple-Grandin/dp/0446671827 - Emergence: Labeled Autistic
http://www.therafin.com/ - Therafin Corp
https://www.amazon.com/Elon-Musk-Ashlee-Vance-audiobook/dp/B00UVY52JO - Elon Musk by Ashlee Vance
https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/24188618/ DOI: 10.1037/a0034519- Solitary Mammals by Jared Edward Reser.
Editorial is available on request but too long for Anchor's description box.
Donations:
https://www.patreon.com/freedomofform
https://freedomofform.org/donate/ for all methods.
Our website: https://www.freedomofform.org
Twitter: https://www.twitter.com/freedomofform
FFF Podcast logo by Zennith, Ephor and Cammy.
Intro and outro music: Huma Huma - Eureka
Numerous images sourced from internet searches are used here for humorous or informative fair-use references and are not intended to infringe upon copyright. Should you or your organisation or someone you represent object to their use, please contact the Freedom of Form Foundation first via our website so that we may come to a low cost, sensible resolution with you. Where we can, we use public domain and creative commons licensed images.
Recorded 11th October 2021
Uploaded to Youtube 6th February 2022
Updated version to fix DaVinci Resolve errors uploaded to Youtube 7th February 2022
Uploaded for public enjoyment here and on Youtube 11th February 2022
It's time for another podcast episode, this is our 13th. Featuring Tyler L. Jaynes from the Humanity & Beyond podcast, along with our very own Ondrik Birb and Serathin. Continuing the 'space' theme from our 12th episode, we look at how space travel and education will fit together, and how freedom of form will help make that experience more useful. This time, our host Athamanatha Kitsune has a strange case of Unknown-Cause Microphone Echo. It's not easy to remove with our editing tools, feel free to suggest how it can be done on a minimal budget in the comments.
Interesting links (none of these is a paid promotion):
https://www.podpage.com/humanity-and-beyond/ - Humanity & Beyond podcast
https://www.kerbalspaceprogram.com/ - Kerbal Space Program
https://coderdojo.com - Coder Dojo
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0YhJxJZOWBw - The Matrix 'I Know Kung Fu' scene (may be presented with 3rd party ads) https://nexusaurora.org - Nexus Aurora
https://robogals.org - Robogals
https://inspiration4.com/ - the SpaceX Inspiration 4 rocket capsule flight
Donations:
https://www.patreon.com/freedomofform
https://freedomofform.org/donate/ for all methods.
Our website: https://www.freedomofform.org
Twitter: https://www.twitter.com/freedomofform
FFF Podcast logo by Zennith, Ephor and Cammy.
Intro and outro music: Huma Huma - Eureka
Test card music: Jingle Punks - Good Starts
Recorded 24th September 2021
Uploaded 5th January 2022
This episode of the Freedom of Form Foundation Podcast is brought to you by science fiction, which has the ability to increasingly transform into science fact over time; and by science facts, which are fiction no more.
This episode looks into the depths of space and how freedom of form might just save the very existence of intelligent Terran life...
Your crew for this voyage are the tea-drinking captain Athamanatha Kitsune, engineer Aleksia Vridos, mysterious multidimensional barkeeper/passenger Alynna Trypnotk, lieutenant Cammy and ensign Ondrik Birb.
Links for your enjoyment (not exhaustive of all topics due to character limits in the description field):
https://www.xkcd.com
https://what-if.xkcd.com/30/
https://en.wikifur.com/wiki/Sunset_of_Furmankind
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2wzD84b7WBU - Our interview with Liz Parrish
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chernobyl_Exclusion_Zone
https://www.eneuro.org/content/6/2/ENEURO.0483-18.2019 - Human Magnetoreception
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC4896949/ - Portable Magnetosphere
https://www.brighthubengineering.com/marine-engines-machinery/43712-what-is-degaussing-of-ships/
https://accelconf.web.cern.ch/p01/PAPERS/MPPH128.PDF - Lorentz Compensation
https://www.bbc.co.uk/cult/hitchhikers/guide/universe.shtml The universe is big.
https://ieeexplore.ieee.org/document/4020803 Causality cancellation
https://www.nexusaurora.org
Donations: https://www.patreon.com/freedomofform https://www.freedomofform.org/involvement for all methods.
Our website: https://www.freedomofform.org
Twitter: https://www.twitter.com/freedomofform
FFF Podcast logo by Zennith, Ephor and Cammy.
Recorded 4th July 2021 Released 26th August 2021
Our delightful volunteer Athena has offered to bring us a regular series of short science chats to complement the FFF podcasts. This one's about retaining humanity and its definitions in a world with freedom of form. We've also upped our video editing game, courtesy of Tabby!
Host: Athamanatha Kitsune
Presenter: Athena
Video editing: Tabby
Music: Huma Huma - Eureka
Jingle Punks - Good Starts
Freedom of Form Foundation logo by Zennith and Ephor. Its podcast version (superimposed on a microphone shape) is by Cammy.
Recorded 7th June 2021
Uploaded to Youtube 11th July 2021
Uplaoded to Anchor.FM 13th July 2021
This episode of the Freedom of Form Foundation Podcast is brought to you by clichés of mad scientists, the letters D, O, O and K and the number 6Σ. For your lengthy peer review consideration, we have the opinions of Biochemistry Bachelors degree educated Athamanatha Kitsune, student Ondrik Birb and Evolutionary and Developmental Biology PhD SiberDrac Terrian all discussing what science actually IS, whether it's being directed towards useful endeavours and many meandering tangents from that. There is evidence that this episode was more of a fun chin-wag, if you want something more serious, take a look at our previous episode in which we interviewed Professor Hugh Herr.
Links for your enjoyment:
XKCD on Automation:
xkcd.com/1319/
Morphological Freedom:
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Morphological_freedom
Donations:
www.patreon.com/freedomofform
www.freedomofform.org/involvement/donate/ for all methods.
Our website:
www.freedomofform.org
Twitter:
www.twitter.com/freedomofform
Guest appearances from images we found on the internet should be considered 'fair use' and are not intended to infringe anyone's rights. They are purely to illustrate who it is we are talking about.
Test card image by Splash Alien.
Recorded 6th March 2021
Uploaded for Patreon early access 17th March 2021
Released 18th March 2021
In our tenth episode, Athamanatha Kitsune teams up with Cam Cam (not to be confused with Cammy). With just an hour of his precious time, they interview the rock-climber-come-prosthetics-pioneering-professor, the one and only Hugh Herr from the MIT Media Lab. The professor provides his thoughts on pushing the envelopes of biomechatronics, the ethics of prosthetics, freedom of form and terrific tails...
Host: Athamanatha Kitsune
Guests: Cam Cam and Professor Hugh Herr
Zoom Host: Professor Hugh Herr (hence the call ended before the podcast did)
Things we learned: don't record a podcast from Zoom, the audio isn't that good. We had to fall back on the old dictaphone, so sorry for the echoing sound but it was better than what Zoom's own recording gave us.
Links relevant to the discussion (all are for reference and do not count as endorsements):
France to start research into 'Enhanced Soldiers':
https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-europe-55243014
Hugh Herr:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hugh_Herr
https://www.media.mit.edu/people/hherr/overview/
Jumping Stilts (or 'bocks')
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jumping_stilts
Olympians with prosthetics:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Oscar_Pistorius
https://apnews.com/press-release/pr-newswire/race-and-ethnicity-sports-athlete-compensation-sports-business-north-america-462632175bc5ebab4cf05d34b3ad0846
Regarding Atha's Tail:
https://youtu.be/I24KO39qr5M?t=637
Morphological Freedom:
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Morphological_freedom
Donations:
www.patreon.com/freedomofform
www.freedomofform.org/involvement/donate/ for all methods.
Our website:
www.freedomofform.org
TIMESTAMPS for our questions:
02:20 What are your personal goals for developing your prostheses? What brought you to decide on them?
05:40 What do you see your goals of self-expression requiring in the coming years?
07:22 What is your outlook on Neuroprosthetics?
12:20 Technical difficulties
12:59 What about additional limbs in new places?
16:39 Do you see there being new ways of producing sensory input or motor output that go beyond using nerves for limbs and such?
18:20 What are your hopes and thoughts on morphological freedom?
21:10 Can you give some examples of fun or useful ways of applying prosthetics?
23:45 What makes your exoskeleton design more special and capable than jumping stilts?
27:36 Is it possible to augment other sensory inputs than just touch and feel?
34:25 What if a machine learning algorithm (or AI) for optical recognition misinterprets what it is being taught?
35:45 What has having amputee Olympians around taught you about the public perceptions of enhanced individuals?
39:40 Have you seen the news about the French military talking about enhancing soldiers?
48:19 Would we expect people to be okay with the good potential coming with downsides in augmentations?
52:09 What do you think of prosthetic tails and other such non-standard additions in a charitable context?
53:17 If you could be any animal...
54:11 Call ended
54:28 Wrapping up (Atha and Cam Cam)
It's that time of year when the Earth passes through a cloud of spookiness. In our ninth episode, the host who can boast the most ghosts (and tell several tall tails), Athamanatha Kitsune, is joined by the phantoms of the cryptid cross fox Cammy, the omen-bearing crow Ondrik and the ghostly ferret of evolutionary and developmental biological knowhow, SiberDrac. Together, we hurl ourselves into the abyss of philosophical questions about mind uploading and its legal and ethical ramifications for the (synthetic or biological) body, the mind and those who have to interact with them. Choosing to replace your body with a synthetic or artificial one may not be as simple as you think...
One of the guests says 'none of us are neuroscientists' - this means none of those present in this specific podcast are. Our CEO and Founder, Zennith, actually is a neuroscientist, but he was not available for this podcast episode.
Some of what we discuss in this podcast is based on hearsay, and some of it is based on assumptions and conjectures. It's intended to set up the ideas from which one can form the questions that science then needs to try to answer.
Links relevant to the discussion (all are for reference and do not count as endorsements):
Ben Ramanauskas' paper on the law (in the UK) with regard to body modifications: https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/full/10.1111/ecaf.12394
Athamanatha Kitsune (Daniel Davies)'s paper in the Journal of Personal Cyberconsciousness (Terasem Movement Foundation Inc.) https://www.terasemjournals.org/PCJournal/PC1001/Papers/DaviesDeath.pdf
Terasem Movement Foundation: https://www.terasemcentral.org
Bina48: https://www.hansonrobotics.com/bina48-9/ https://www.lifenaut.com/bina48/ https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/BINA48
Phineas Gage: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Phineas_Gage
Limbic System: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Limbic_system
Hero Arm: https://openbionics.com/hero-arm/
Morphological Freedom: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Morphological_freedom
Ship of Theseus: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ship_of_Theseus
Mind uploading: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mind_uploading
The Right to be Forgotten: https://gdpr.eu/right-to-be-forgotten/ https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Right_to_be_forgotten https://righttobeforgotten.org/
Air gaps: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Air_gap_%28networking%29
Corporate immortality: https://xkcd.com/1493/
Example of the duration of copyright: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Happy_Birthday_to_You#Copyright_status
Donations: https://www.patreon.com/freedomofform https://www.freedomofform.org/involvement/donate/ for all methods.
Our website: https://www.freedomofform.org
With much aplomb we introduce for our 8th Podcast episode, our founder and President of the Board of Directors, Zennith Mehathvin, for a nice and rambling chinwag about what makes our charity tick, how we can do what we do and some of the ways we've learned to be efficient and effective. Somehow this manages to encompass a hypothetical taur transformation, vexing vexillology and meta-meta-podcasting. Also joining our host Athamanatha Kitsune are Cammy and a little late so probably not catching the worm, Ondrik Birb. This time we also take a look at some randomly selected science news.
Here are the links: https://journals.plos.org/plosone/article?id=10.1371/journal.pone.0223447 - Cows painted with zebra stripes repel insects
https://openreview.net/forum?id=1uOTdL2H9i - Peer review rejected paper on cat whiskers applied to humans
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0MBnFc_AYEg - Sci Show: Atavisms
https://www.quora.com/How-do-you-grow-a-tail-if-you-don%E2%80%99t-have-a-tail-for-humans - Quora page on Atavisms
Big thanks: all you folks out there on Twitter and Reddit and elsewhere who keep spreading the word and making memes about us.
Today's episode was sponsored by the letter A. Just kidding, it was not sponsored by anyone and we really could use your donations please. Donations: https://www.patreon.com/freedomofform https://freedomofform.org/involvement/donate/ for all methods.
Our website: www.freedomofform.org
We're back with a special 7th episode of the Freedom of Form Foundation Podcast, we might call it the first in Season 2 because it kind of feels like that after our 3 month gap. So many things have changed since the last time! The world's under a pandemic lockdown (listen for our thoughts on how that fits with species dysphoria), we have a new logo, we've started doing polls and talking about scientific study data on our actual podcasts, and Danfox could have sworn he didn't need this many tails last time... but now it seems he should have seven of them, and he's got himself a new old name too...
Host: Athamanatha Kitsune Guests: Cammy, Ondrik Birb
References: FurScience (data from Furry Fiesta 2013: https://furscience.com/research-findings/demographics/1-7-living/ @FreedomofForm Twitter poll: https://twitter.com/FreedomOfForm/status/1251991003160068098
Big thanks: Professor Anders Sandberg, Future of Humanity Institute, Oxford University, UK The Anthroholics Podcast @user-534967572 https://soundcloud.com/user-534967572/episode-70-live-at-anthro-new-england-2020 Anthro New England furry convention https://www.anthronewengland.com/
Donations: https://patreon.com/freedomofform
Our website: https://www.freedomofform.org
In our 6th episode, Danfox and Ondrik discuss the environmental and sustainability pros and cons around freedom of form, the technologies and research needed to make it happen, and the activities of the Freedom of Form Foundation itself. Packed with thoughts and ideas which are relevant to sustainability at home and for businesses and charities all round, this episode aims to raise a smorgasbord of research topics for further investigation and exploration by our listeners, at the nexus of morphological freedom and the future of our planet's environment and ecosystems.
In our fifth episode, Danfox invites three teenage guests from the Freedom of Form Foundation Discord server to discuss their views on how the introduction of Freedom of Form technologies will impact their lives, how the mere presence of the FFF already has, and how these things will impact people of their current age group at the time of introduction of said tech. As usual, the discussion is fairly unfiltered and the host's role is to steer, not to censor. Recorded Friday 20th December 2019.
In our 4th podcast episode, Danfox and Aeresys look forward to a future of freedom-of-form-driven innovations and how they will benefit society at large.
This one's a little shorter than our previous episodes.
In our third podcast, we discuss potential technologies for making freedom of form happen, and how they will impact society at large. Danfox Davies introduces us to SvarOS (Matthew Carbrera) to discuss prosthetics, neurological implants, AI and Bioprinting, before introducing Aleks Vridos (Jordan Eckhoff) to go into his favourite subject with much gusto, Genetic Editing.
The official policy of the Freedom of Form Foundation and the hopes and views expressed in this podcast may sometimes diverge, please remember this is a discussion of what each individual believes about these approaches based on their own research and experiences, and that the FFF develops its policies based on selectively representing a combination of some of these and other opinions balanced with what's legally and ethically sensible and allowable to do. Therefore, take what we each say with a pinch of salt. It's not a definitive guide to how the FFF will operate in future.
In our second episode, we return for Part 2 of Species Identity, because the first episode had such an impact we needed another. In this one, we start with secular versus spiritual interpretations of species identity, ensuring each is understood to be valid before heading off into the big questions of life, the universe and everything. Joining Danfox Davies (FFF co-founder) on this 2 hours and 10 minutes of verbal adventure, are Beethoven (FFF volunteer) and Alynna Trypnotk (leader of the long established Otherkin group, Kitsunet).
All views presented are from personal perspectives and are not to be taken as representative of everyone at the FFF. Everyone's unique, that's why we're here. This podcast is not the end of the discussion - that will probably continue for countless millennia. It's just meant to make you think and ask questions.
This is Episode 1 of our podcast, with Danfox and Serathin exploring the reasons behind their decisions to take part in founding and running the Freedom of Form Foundation and why morphological freedom is something very close to their hearts.
Despite a couple of minor technical interruptions, this podcast was recorded in one take and only lightly edited.