311: There But For Gratuitous Grace
KMO and the Lovely Olga K talk with Peter Bebergal about psychedelics, drug addiction, magical thinking, paranoia, fate, and spirituality. Peter’s book, Too Much to Dream: A Psychedelic American Boyhood deals with all of these issues, and Peter had a much rougher time growing up in the 80′s than did KMO, even though their interests and cultural touchstones were so similar. They both had a group of friends who fancied that they could contact the divine by altering their consciousness with psychedelics, they both endured the paranoia of living in a culture that criminalizes such exploration, but Peter’s path lead him through much darker territory.310: Gooey Ritual & Prickly Magick
Cover art painting by Arik Roper.
Both Pam Grossman and Peter Bebergal have recently appeared as guests on the Expanding Mind radio show/podcast with Erik Davis.
309: Empathy Is the Invisible Hand
KMO welcomes Eric Boyd back to the program to discuss possibilities for kicking the energy can down the road with cold fusion. Friend of the C-Realm, Joe S. joins the conversation to represent the viewpoint that free energy could be bad news, as it would allow humans to continue the project of constructing global dominance hierarchies and despoiling the biosphere. KMO plays a clip of Jeremy Rifkin talking about the ideas in his book The Empathic Civilization: The Race to Global Consciousness in a World in Crisis. Rifkin claims that advancing communications technology has allowed humans to expand the sphere of beings with whom they identify and for whom they feel empathy. With more time and energy at our disposal, might humans come to extend our empathic concern to include the entire biosphere? The conversation concludes with a discussion of the potential impact of the Fukushima Daiichi nuclear disaster. Music by Alexandre Tannous and Simon G. Powell.
284 Stocks, Flows and the MEGO Effect
KMO welcomes anti-economist Professor Steve Keen to the C-Realm to detail the limitations of neoclassical economics as well as popular misconceptions promulgated by advocates of alternative economics. Professor Keen disposes of the “moral hazard” argument against the inevitable debt jubilee and provides some advice for weathering the looming economic tumult.
Music by Fernando Tarango.
149 The Stockholm Syndrome of the Soul
Available on Patreon
Interview with Joe Bageant, the author of a book called ‘Deer Hunting with Jesus.’ Joe is also somebody with one foot in our so-called industrialized First World, and another foot in a happier, more relaxed, and more peaceful so-called Third World, or what Albert Bates calls the Two-Thirds World.