Uncivil Savant Podcast

The tchk tchk tchk of the wren in the crabapple tree supplies the sound effect for my mind as it skips across the surface of things. I pick up another thought and skim it. It flies away too fast for me to notice where it sinks. No matter, another thought lies glistening on the strand, unconsciousness lapping centimetres away. I take another and throw it out across the morning lake, carelessly. When I look down, it’s still in my hand, how can that be? I throw it again and clearly see it fly towards the far shore but I can still feel its heft in my palm. OK, then. This thought is with me for the day. I pocket it, make some tea and then sit here to write to you. Uncivil Savant is a reader-supported publication. To support my work, consider becoming a paid subscriber.UnfocusSeparate screens in everyone’s hands are the dissipation of focus, literally, ‘focus’ being the hearth fire in Latin (Hestia, in Greek). Our screens are like millions of tiny flames, no good to warm anyone, easy to burn ourselves with; like lighters compared to the home fire, or even to the modern stove. Glittering devices with a flicker rate that somehow stops me from remembering anything I read on them, whereas I have no such problem with paper. Eleanor Robins pointed this common feeling out on her visit to my summer workshop and it explained the strange vacuity I experience after consuming writing on a screen, contrasting with the satiety I feel after devouring a book.Even the television shared at least some of the hearth function when there was only one in each house which everyone had to gather around if they wanted to watch a programme. ‘With a coal fire,’ my sister said while we were camping recently, gathered around the firepit, ‘our backs were always cold so we huddled close by the fireplace.’ Since central heating arrived the dispersed heat feels subliminal and we do not know it in our bodies, it’s ambient, calorific, muzak. Proliferating screens are the death of story. Cold backs are the seeds of epics. The fear of being sent away from the warmth (physical, divine, metaphorical) developed our imaginative capacities. A good yarn to share in the hand1 or the mind2 was a sure way to a seat at the hearthside. My heart asks me to retreat from light emitting diodes and retrace my steps to the candle, the window and the hearth. Or better still, to walk out into the light. This post was first published with full transcript, images, footnotes and links here on Substack on 29th September 2026. Get full access to Uncivil Savant at carolineross.substack.com/subscribe

The sun refuses to relinquish summertime hours, the bumble bees on the marjoram flowers are not complaining. We take our breakfast bowls outside and move the metal chairs into the light beside the crab apple tree. Morning warmth feels like a blessing.Like the British weather, I am aware my tone here swings through its own distinct phases including pastoral, prophetic, practical and poetic.1 Thanks to dear Dougald Hine for last week’s conversation over a dodgy Zoom link, but a strong hearty energetic connection, today some more thoughts can coalesce into words, possibly in all four of those tones.I am advocating, as always, for real work, especially with your hands, by ordinary folk, with science, soil, soul, hospitality, home-making, even with beer. Personally I’d prefer bread to beer, but one is the solid and one the liquid of an ancient collaborative culture formed by grain, water, time and yeast. Thanks to paying subscribers I can keep Uncivil Savant going with no financial barrier to access. Thanks so much for your ongoing support. This podcast was first published with full transcript, photos, links, footnotes and more on here on Substack on September 16th 2026.I don’t use AI in any aspect of my research, writing or creative work. I am a member of Writers Against AI.Thanks for reading and listening to Uncivil Savant. Get full access to Uncivil Savant at carolineross.substack.com/subscribe

OpeningToday’s 6am lineup went like this: robin, gull, pigeon, me. The set list was lost; no matter, we improvised. A scant hour of song for the holiday weekend.For three months I’ve been away with trees and rock, gums and roses. Turns out the beauty is in the doing, the being, the singing, the making moves, turning our energies towards real life. The classes were full, we painted ourselves as much as the paper, we turned nettles to rope, strangers to friends. Eleanor Robins brought memory to the land and in glad shade we all remembered. We came to our senses. Rosie Whinray joined us out west, met the bats, brought her hat, took some photos, swum in the pond, and oh how we talked at last, in the real.Dartmoor had old news for me: take care of yourself, of others, of home and relationships. Foster trust, the granite said, attend to the heart, honour your ancestors, outreach to the horizons, be curious. The Variscan Orogeny1 was completely clear on this: Obey the Muse and know yourself, to thine own selves be true.This summer, bereft at the world and mourning beauty, I went dark, as in AWOL, also dark as in Goth, and as in The Dark Mountain Project 2. A potent mixture of French Black Gaze and trust3 somehow brought me back to my senses.Then yesterday I woke up, woke bang up, wide awake, right in the middle of my life.A small, well-proportioned house in my dawn dream, welcoming, stocked with books, jars of food and hand made things, with the sound of someone playing Northumbrian small pipes in the air.The tune is called ‘The House that Trust Built’.Thanks to paying subscribers I can keep Uncivil Savant going with no financial barrier to access. Thanks so much for your ongoing support. This podcast was first published with full transcript, photos, links, footnotes and more on here on Substack on August 31st 2026.I don’t use AI in any aspect of my research, writing or creative work. I am a member of Writers Against AI.Thanks for reading and listening to Uncivil Savant. Get full access to Uncivil Savant at carolineross.substack.com/subscribe

There was a thoughtful piece on beauty by Anja Byg this week about things I have mulled over for many years too (and which Ted Chiang wrangled meaningfully in his short story “Liking What You See: A Documentary”.)For me, the crucial pivot which supports the always-ambivalent weight of beauty is how it makes us behave. Does it enliven the spirit and make us better able to join in with life and with others? Or does it orient us towards control? I would ask, is a particular ideal of beauty putting an entire class of beings / people / art forms under a totalising gaze or controlling behaviour? For instance, the endless sharp tactics of the beauty myth for women in almost any time in so many societies, or the racialised ideas of beauty, whether about body shapes, artistic creations, or the relative position of rhythm to harmony in music.1 Many beauty standards do indeed spring like poisoned streams from colonialism and patriarchy.And yet, profligate beauty is everywhere to be found in nature and in culture. Certain species of birds and mammals have been shown to have deeply held aesthetic preferences, of course, the bower birds of Australia spring to mind. In human life, intact living cultures are known for their abundance of beautiful arts, crafts, music and dance. The first impulse of authoritarian regimes, from The Puritans in The New World to the Taliban today, is to limit and proscribe some or all of these things, to deface an old culture or to destroy it, to build anew in a prescriptive manner. This happened in the Chinese Cultural Revolution and with The Nazis’ war against so-called ‘Degenerate Art’, or the mass destruction of an entire craft culture during the iconoclasm of the Reformation in Northern Europe, especially in England and the Netherlands where churches were whitewashed and all images removed. Uncivil Savant is a reader-supported publication. To receive new posts and support my work, consider becoming a free or paid subscriber.This podcast was first published with photos, links, footnotes and more on Substack on June 19th 2026. I don’t use AI in any aspect of my research, writing or creative work. I am a member of Writers Against AI.Thanks for reading and listening to Uncivil Savant. Get full access to Uncivil Savant at carolineross.substack.com/subscribe

I set the twisted candle in the holder and lit it. Heat may have melted it S-wise but its light remains undimmed. Something so skew suddenly so dear. To burn while the Great Bear is in the south and my north star with him.A whole week in another land and yet at home. Incomparable gifts. The return of a blessing. ‘Soft cheese, blue cheese, hard cheese,’ he shouts, ‘they’re all good, they’re all here!’ The true cornucopia is in a northern market square, enchantment hidden behind cling film and a laminated ‘A’ board. We take two slightly humming discount pieces back, on the ecstatic edge of lactic activity, not for the faint of heart. The goat roulade is fine baked on a lunch of leftovers but the butter-coloured blue strides straight for harsh metallic tang, beating me back despite the oatcake.We put the radio on and Rad Mac play drum n bass. I was a raver but no dance music for me in the morning: it divides up time too finely as with an old movie film running too slowly, I can see the frames and sense breaks down. Before noon I need continuity not division. My dreams, like four year olds, have already impressed assorted cutters into my mind dough, sprinkled the shapes with hundreds and thousands and declined to bake them promptly. Not yet sure if I have the cast of Teletubbies or the Iliad in there today, or what is more likely, both.On the table, the outstretched arms of two sprigs of ivy, still green though I left then there three weeks ago. So alive even facing certain death. Uncivil Savant is a reader-supported publication. To support my work, consider becoming a free or paid subscriber.This podcast was first published here on Substack 2nd June 2026 with many images from illustrations I made of The Wake by Paul Kingsnorth , as well as full transcript, footnotes, links and more. This week, it’s worth heading over to see the full version, just click the button below. Get full access to Uncivil Savant at carolineross.substack.com/subscribe

Winged beingsRed-tailed hawk is always nearby. She swooped down from the veranda rail corner as I opened the door, the exhalatory sigh of her wings the first intentional sounds I heard from another being yesterday. We both like to spend the early morning facing west, sun behind us, meadow lit up below. She’s looking for prey, me, for glimpses of newly germinating peace.The bluebird box sits right beside the ongoing stonework foundations for the upcoming greenhouse. After fighting with its own azure reflection in the master mason’s truck window, the bluebird settles back into making its nest hospitable for growth. Perhaps it senses that’s what the masons are doing, a big nest requires a different calibre of material but the impulse to make room for growth is universal with all of us earthly creatures.Will you bear with me while I weave through the thickets of what’s growing in my heart right now? The path may meander but the walk will have interesting views. I may point at things you’d rather not see. I’ll understand if you turn back but I think this walk is better taken together. Uncivil Savant is available to all with no financial barrier to access thanks to my paid subscribers. Please subscribe to help me continue writing here.The full version of this podcast with footnotes, links, images and full transcript was first published on Substack on 22nd May 2026. Click the button below to access it.My art, music, writing, research, audio and teaching is created without the use of AI.I am part of Writers Against AI. Get full access to Uncivil Savant at carolineross.substack.com/subscribe

I am thousands of miles from home but amongst dear friends. I’ve only been here 28 hours and I have been moved to tears several times by the hospitality and love that comes from the humans, creatures and land that I meet, some deeply familiar, some new to me. I can’t write about it all now, prosaically as my phone (new to me second hand phone, new sim, new plan) yet again does not work here. Plus I am delirious from lack of sleep. I had been meaning to share a few poems with you today, as I occasionally do, so I will do that now, along with visual glimpses from today.I have been visiting with my dear friend Adam Wilson and hopefully next week I will write more about that. But for now, if you do not yet know the work of The Peasantry School Newsletter and Sand River Community Farm Newsletter , then please consider heading along there now and spending a little time in a pocket of this world where value and price have been decoupled and gravity and brevity today clasped hands.Wifi willing, I shall be with you next week. With love, Caro.The art, writing and and audio at Uncivil Savant is available to all with no financial barrier to access. Please become a paid subscriber for a while to help me keep this publication going.The full version of this podcast with footnotes, links, images and full transcript was first published on Substack on 14th May 2026. Click the button to access it.My art, music, writing, research, audio and teaching is created without the use of AI.I am part of Writers Against AI. Get full access to Uncivil Savant at carolineross.substack.com/subscribe

Years ago, when I first began this Substack, I regularly included excerpts from the many letters, emails and long-form voice messages I send to friends, and with permission, from our correspondences. It’s been a while and as it’s Easter Week and I am taking time off with my loved one, here is a piece, originally a voice-letter, to a dear friend from the middle of an ongoing conversation about the Eastern Christian saints, who when I read about them, sounded so much like the Taoist saints. Animals co-existing companionably with sages. Bears keeping hermits warm. Today it brought to mind one of my local saints, St Cuthbert of Lindisfarne, and the otters who breathed on his feet to warm them, after his long nights praying whilst stood up to his waist in the cold North Sea. Happy Easter to those of you who celebrate it. And blessed spring to all, including all the creatures, especially the worms. The art, writing and and audio at Uncivil Savant is available to all with no financial barrier to access. Please become a paid subscriber for a while to help me keep this publication goingThe full version of this podcast with footnotes, links, images and full transcript was first published on Substack on 9th April 2026. Click the button to access it. My art, music, writing, research, audio and teaching is created without the use of AI. I am part of Writers Against AI. Get full access to Uncivil Savant at carolineross.substack.com/subscribe

I have a spring basket full of good things for you this Easter week. As is appropriate to the season, some are sweet like chocolate, some are wrapped in colourful sleeves and others partake of endings and difficulty, before the beauty of transformation is apparent. I hope you enjoy them.The art, writing and and audio at Uncivil Savant is available to all with no financial barrier to access. Please become a paid subscriber for a while to help me keep this publication going.Mind-weedingA few days ago, a man from USA complained that an article I restacked was verbose, a waste of his and my readers’ time and that I should keep things streamlined and to the point. I politely suggested that we can only waste our own time and that maybe refraining from telling people off on the internet would be a good way to claw some back. He apologised for his initial brusqueness but then doubled down on his critique of the essay, (which I mostly agree with). Substack is less than intuitive, since Notes and all the doodads have been added on, so he clearly didn’t understand that the piece was not written by me but by another man from USA, whose profile link I added to the reply, to help him out. For me, none of this was a waste of ‘my time’, as learning how to disagree or differ with humour, not taking things personally, without immediately ‘blocking and deleting’, and without the grip of fear around my heart, has been the work of many years, even for low-stakes things.For some people, electronic communications are water off a duck’s back, for others, like two of my dearest friends, even a lovely text or email takes huge amounts of energy to engage with, let alone answer. I lie somewhere in the middle of this scale, thankfully moving in the direction of the ducks… This podcast was first published on Substack 2nd April 2026 with full transcript, links, footnotes, images and more. You’ll find links to all the Substacks, books, TV, film and music mentioned in the podcast at the button.My art, music, writing, research, audio and teaching is created without the use of AI. I am part of Writers Against AI. Get full access to Uncivil Savant at carolineross.substack.com/subscribe

When did your heart first leap out of itself, wanting to reside in the body of they-who-had-just-walked-past? They were surely more you than your own self, yet without ungainly stoop, spot-free, gaze level rather than downcast, half smile rather than self-conscious frown.With that leap, which can only be achieved by a kind of projection, the poetic aspect of ‘projection’ not explained by psychologists, a thread of what will pull you onward through life begins to spool out from the spinning crimson yarn cone of the heart. The leap can only occur while you do not yet know that the beloved object of your attention is likely as riddled as yourself with doubt, self-aggrandisement (or his sister self-abasement) and fears.Later, this knowledge, which must come to us all to fully become adults, will be the cap stone on the gushing spring of youth. The stone itself need not be the final word on springing forth. It forces a necessary halt to looking to others for everything that we should become and asks us to commit to our own source, however meagre or chalky, so that we might in time learn how to build a font, a basin, or even a simple hand-dug little pool, to collect our waters and be of benefit to others, rather than just an annoying source of path erosion and cold feet. Staying capped, asserting that one is ‘self-made’1, self-contained and dry, (the goal of every spiritual miser who has ever lived), is nothing to be proud of. It is the tight-lipped grimace of the hoarders of the world’s resources. You know what it looks like, you see it daily on your screens.2This podcast was first published here on Substack on March 26th 2026, with full transcript, footnotes, links, images and extras. No AI was used to research, create or edit this piece, nor any of my art, books, music, writing or crafts. Get full access to Uncivil Savant at carolineross.substack.com/subscribe