C-Realm Podcast

KMO and meditation instructor Heidi Smith of the Center for Soulful Living pick up the conversation started on Psychonautica examining the friction between proponents of pharmacologically assisted spirituality and zero-tolerance advocates of drug-free meditation. Peak-oil oriented feedback, clips from the Psychedelic Salon and admissions of chronic absent-mindedness. I mentioned a Guardian article in the program that deals with the forces behind a looming global food crisis. Global food crisis looms as climate change and fuel shortages bite Be the first kid on your block to own a C-Realm Coffee Cup! Available only from the C-Realm Podcast Cafe Press store! Our tendency to identify ourselves with our acquired skills rather than our natural gifts is one of the less desirable habits of the ego. (...) Because the ego's identity is so heavily invested in these acquired skills, it does not want to acknowledge the natural, untrained, effortless gifts over which the ego has no ownership or control. -Parker J. Palmer, author of The Active Life: A Spirituality of Work, Creativity, and Caring

In this episode, KMO talks with Chris Clugston of WakeUpAmerika.com about the coming adjustment in our material standard of living. KMO then acknowledges the possibility that business as usual for another 20 or 30 years might still be possible, if less than desirable. Be the first kid on your block to own a C-Realm Coffee Cup! Available only from the C-Realm Podcast Cafe Press store!

[edit: 15 Aug 2008] Marlene Dobkin de Rios, ten months after this episode first appeared on the web, has decided that she doesn't like it. She insisted that Melitta Tchaicovsky assert control of the copyright and instruct me to remove the interview from the internet. Obviously, this is a profoundly clueless request as I do not control the entire internet (actually she wanted me to remove "the tape" from the internet), but I have removed the interview from the official C-Realm Podcast archive, which is all that I have the power to do. You can find a discussion of this development on the C-Realm Forum at the Grow Report: http://www.thegrowreport.com/Forums/showthread.php?t=4321 In this 61st episode, KMO plays a recording of Marlene Dobkin De Rios on why she condemns the practice of ayahuasca tourism. Before that, KMO plays a conversation that he recorded back in July in the Iquitos home of Alan Shoemaker with Melitta Tchaicovsky & Pepe Ozan of ArtNetwork Productions. Be the first kid on your block to own a C-Realm Coffee Cup! Available only from the C-Realm Podcast Cafe Press store! Erowid Character Vaults: Marlene Dobkin de Rios: http://www.erowid.org/culture/characters/dobkin_derios_marlene/dobkin_derios_marlene.shtml Also, on the podcast, I mentioned Rick Kleffel's Agony Column Podcast. You can find his audio interview archive here: http://trashotron.com/agony/indexes/audio_interview_index.htm

Also available on Archive.org: http://www.archive.org/details/Episode60ThoughtsAlive In this episode we hear the conclusion of KMO's talk with Brian Trent with extra emphasis on the psychological appeal and the sociological implications of movies about the living dead. KMO also examines atheism, psychedelic shamanism, burning man, and the neo-zombie flick, 28 Weeks Later. Special guest appearance by C-Realm Listener Hanrahan. Guest: Brian Trent So PodOmatic seems to be back to it's normal self. That means slow and cantankerous, but basically predictable. I've created a Feedburner account. That's supposed to give me some extra insurance against crashes like this most recent fiasco from PodOmatic as well as some useful tools for managing the podcast.

In this episode, KMO talks with novelist Brian Trent about ideologically reflexive behavior that the echo chamber corporate media has instilled in us. Later, KMO revisits the clashing belief systems of 2012 prophets Whitley Strieber and Daniel Pinchbeck. Brian Trent is an acclaimed columnist, journalist, and the author of the historical novels Remembering Hypatia: A Novel of Ancient Egypt and the recently released Never Grow Old: The Novel of Gilgamesh. His articles have appeared on Populist America, American Chronicle, The Humanist, and numerous other venues including being featured in last year's National Debate on civil liberties. Trent writes from a nonpartisan, freethinking perspective and tackles a variety of subjects on culture, religion, technology, and politics. Website: http://www.briantrent.com/ Here's the email I sent to Brian Trent to invite him to the C-Realm Podcast: Hi Brian, My name is K@#$% M. O'*@*##*$ (podcasting as KMO), and I'm the host and creator of a weekly interview-based podcast called the C-Realm Podcast. C stands for "consciousness." I heard you recently on Mike Hagan's RadiOrbit show and enjoyed the conversation quite a bit. While the interview left me wanting to read your books, I have not yet done so. I have, however, been reading your on-line articles and essays, and I'm now listening to your appearance on the Infidel Guy podcast. I'd very much like to get you on the phone (or Skype) to record a conversation for the C-Realm Podcast. What I'm most interested in talking about is the topic of political cults and the shallow, combative, reflexive ideological postures that the echo-chamber media has trained people to adopt in our culture. I scrupulously keep the C-Realm podcast free of anything that smacks of partisan political talking points, and while it would be fair to describe me as an atheist libertarian, I find that atheists and libertarians can come across as some of the most ideologically hide-bound, strident, push-button meme-bots out there, every bit as knee-jerk in their "catagorize-and-dismiss" reactions to anything that smacks of mysticism or sentimentality as your coffee shop Political Correctness enforcer was in her reaction to your talk of native Americans and their failure to produce a technologically advanced empire along the lines of the Egyptians or Chinese. I'd be interested in getting your take on that topic. On the topic of apocalyptic thinking, the two varieties that I encounter most (not including the Christian fundamentalist variety which, living in Arkansas, I simply filter out for the sake of my own sanity) are the psychedelic community's scheduled 21 December 2012 eschaton (a la Terence McKenna) and the notion of a technological singularity (a la Ray Kurzweil and Vernor Vinge). When the topic of conversation on Mike Hagan's show turned to the emerging technologies of longevity, I got the impression that you had something to say along Singularitarian lines but chose not to voice it. I would invite you to explore that topic on the C-Realm Podcast. Finally, I've had a number of guests on the show talking about peak oil, resource depletion, and the possibility of a massive human die-back (what I've been calling a "malthusian correction"). There seems to be an apocalyptic mania at work there as well, and I must admit, it's siren song pulls at the vulnerable places of my own psychology. I started the previous paragraph with "finally," but there's one other topic I wanted to discuss with you: Zombies! Douglas Rushkoff wrote an essay recently about the sociological significance of the zombie genre which sparked a few ideas that I'd like to bounce off a thoughtful interlocutor. There was also a zombie piece in Reason magazine earlier this year. I feel a strong revulsion for contemporary horror films and avoid them all except for the zombie flicks. I generally see fewer than five

It's the First Anniversary non-special. In this episode, KMO welcomes Wendy Luckey and Philip Horvath back to the program to talk about 2012, giving up our meat bodies, the technological singularity, and the nature of catastrophe. KMO reads lots of emails from C-Realm listeners who chipped in to save Ungo, KMO's dog.

Marc Bekoff is Professor Emeritus of Ecology and Evolutionary Biology at the University of Colorado, Boulder, and is a Fellow of the Animal Behavior Society and a former Guggenheim Fellow. In 2000 he was awarded the Exemplar Award from the Animal Behavior Society for major long-term contributions to the field of animal behavior. Marc is also regional coordinator for Jane Goodall's Roots & Shoots program, in which he works with students of all ages, senior citizens and prisoners, and also is a member of the Ethics Committee of the Jane Goodall Institute. He and Jane co-founded the organization Ethologists for the Ethical Treatment of Animals: Citizens for Responsible Animal Behavior Studies in 2000. Marc is on the Board of Directors of The Fauna Sanctuary, The Cougar Fund, the Skyline Sanctuary and Education Center, and on the advisory board for Animal Defenders and for the Laboratory Primate Advocacy Group and the conservation organization SINAPU. He has been part of the international program, Science and the Spiritual Quest II and the American Association for the Advancement of Science (AAAS) program on Science, Ethics, and Religion. Marc is the author of The Emotional Lives of Animals: A Leading Scientist Explores Animal Joy, Sorrow, and Empathy - and Why They Matter.

KMO interviews Chip "Carlos" Tanner, a gringo apprenticing under a Peruvian curandero and explores the spirit realm with Wendy Luckey, with whom he participated in a San Pedro ceremony in Iquitos in July of 2007. Ever wondered why KMO bleeps out the profanity? KMO explains all and provides audio glimpses into two very different ayahuasca ceremonies. To introduce Wendy Luckey on the program, I read from the first paragraph of her Amazonian Shamanism Conference bio. You can find the rest of that bio here: http://www.soga-del-alma.org/ConferenceSite/curanderos_wendy.html and here: http://www.wendyluckey.com/ And Carlos Tanner, who also spoke at the conference, has a bio here: http://www.soga-del-alma.org/ConferenceSite/guests_carlos.html and here: http://www.ayahuayra.org/WSC/MainWSC.htm In connection with bleeping profanity, I mentioned an episode of Fresh Air with Terry Gross that I heard "a few months ago." Well, I just tracked it down, and it turns out that the show is four years old! Wow. Anyway, here it is: http://www.npr.org/templates/rundowns/rundown.php?prgId=13&prgDate=20-Nov-2003

In this episode, KMO reads more listener email than regular listeners would probably expect to hear. He then takes a short quote from Vernor Vinge and spins it out for half the show talking with Professor Cornelia Butler Flora about the difference between "standard of living" and "quality of life." Guest Cornelia Butler Flora is the Charles F. Curtiss Distinguished Professor of Agriculture and Sociology and the Director for the North Central Regional Center for Rural Development. You can find here bio and CV here: http://www.ncrcrd.iastate.edu/about/people/flora.html The clip I played from Vernor Vinge came from a podcast interview with Cameron Daley which you can find here: http://gdayworld.thepodcastnetwork.com/2007/07/31/gday-world-271-vernor-vinge-sf-author-extraordinaire/ From his Wikipedia Entry: Vernor Steffen Vinge (IPA: [ˈvɪndʒi]) (born October 2, 1944 in Waukesha, Wisconsin, U.S.) is a retired San Diego State University Professor of Mathematics, computer scientist, and science fiction author. He is best known for his Hugo Award-winning novels A Fire Upon the Deep (1992), A Deepness in the Sky (1999) and Rainbows End (2006), his Hugo Award-winning novellas Fast Times at Fairmont High (2002) and The Cookie Monster (2004), as well as for his 1993 essay The Coming Technological Singularity", in which he argues that exponential growth in technology will reach a point beyond which we cannot even speculate about the consequences. You can read Rainbows End for free here: http://vrinimi.org/rainbowsend.html Or if you prefer atoms to bits: Rainbows End Here are the pics that Cannabis King sent of his Burning Man 2007 adventure:

KMO reads Yin and Yang accounts of the 2007 Burning Man event. Author Carol Ekarius talks about toxic body burden, and author Vincent Casspriano Jr. unpacks Albert Bartlett's lecture on population.

Guests Prof. Albert Bartlett - retired physics professor and modern-day Malthusian. One way or another, argues Prof. Bartlett, we will achieve zero population growth. This is a long interview and is intended as a follow-up to his Exponential Function lecture. Carol Ekarius is a return guest. She joined me for episode #6 and we talked about living off-the-grid and about keeping animals. She is the author of many books including Hobby Farm, How to Build Animal Housing, and Small-Scale Livestock Farming: A Grass-Based Approach of Health, Sustainability, and Profit. Vincent Casspriano, Jr.: Carl Sagan meets Carlos Castaneda meets Richard Dawkins meets the Buddha … Vincent Casspriano, Jr.'s The Simplest Path to Personal and Planetary Awakening, Step One: FREE YOUR MIND: 10 Keys for Unlocking Your Personal Potential, Achieving Spiritual Awakening, ... of Humanity's Ultimate Cosmic Destiny cuts through all the Traditional Religious and New Age mystic mumbo jumbo to reveal a simple step by step path anyone can follow to the attainment of personal enlightenment and the positive transformation of our world. An amazing achievement! ~ Esra Free, author of Wicca 404: Advanced Goddess Thealogy

In this installment of the C-Realm Podcast, KMO welcomes Professor Albert Bartlett back to the program to do an advanced seminar on his basic lecture on population, energy and the exponential function. After that we hear from Mike Hagan, host of RadiOrbit. Guests: Albert Bartlett is an emeritus Professor of Physics at the University of Colorado at Boulder, USA. Professor Bartlett has lectured over 1,500 times on Arithmetic, Population, and Energy. Bartlett is a modern-day Malthusian. Professor Bartlett often explains how sustainable growth is an oxymoron. His view is based on the fact that a modest percentage growth can equate to huge escalations over short periods of time. He has famously stated that "The greatest shortcoming of the human race is our inability to understand the exponential function." He regards overpopulation as The Greatest Challenge facing humanity, and promotes sustainable living. Bartlett opposes the cornucopian school of thought (as advocated by people such as Julian Lincoln Simon), and refers to it as The New Flat Earth Society. Mike Hagan lives in the country side near Columbia, Missouri. If he has a text bio somewhere on the web, it's buried deep. If you find one, let me know. I'll put it here. I'll get Mike Hagan back for a future show in which we'll discuss the possibilities for 12/21/2012, but for the time being, here's a link to Mike Hagan's All Things 2012 page. In this episode, I mentioned books by Bill McKibben and Vincent Casspriano Jr. Bill McKibben’s website: http://www.billmckibben.com/index.html Vincent Casspriano Jr.’s website: http://www.thesimplestpath.com/ Special thanks to Queerninja for creating the cover art for this week's episode.

In this 52nd episode, KMO speaks with film-maker Michelle Espinosa about her adventures in Peru and Ecuador. Later we hear from visionary artist A. Andrew Gonzalez about his use of entheogens as tools in the creative process. After our interview, A. Andrew Gonzalez wrote to me with the following: Forgot to mention....Something you could add For your listeners heading out to Burning Man. I will have a few large reproductions of my work at the Gaia Maitreya Temple at the Entheon Village http://www.entheonvillage.com/content/view/27/40/ Guests : Michelle Espinosa is a writer/filmmaker from Los Angeles. She graduated from the American Film Institute, received the Silver Platter at the Chicago Film Festival for her film, Pinfeathers, wrote and directed a series of small films as well as a play for the New City Theater in Seattle. After graduating and optioning a few screenplays, Michelle began writing fiction. She took time out from her career to steal a younger man through the window of his family's house, flee to Las Vegas to marry at a drive through and begin an outlaw life that landed them in a motel in a border town in Mexico with the car thieves, hired killers, coke dealers among other residents. They lived there for almost a year until finally able to move to Guadalajara. That was only the beginning of her many adventures all of which are captured in her stories. She has written a novel and is currently writing a non-fiction book about her experiences in Peru and Ecuador. A. Andrew Gonzalez, of San Antonio, Texas, is an award-winning figurative artist whose work has been exhibited in several countries. Born on October 13, 1963, and raised in a creative family, Andrew's art education is largely self-taught. His artist father, Anthony A. Gonzalez, encouraged his early interest in drawing and painting but gave him no formal training. In the year 2000, Andrew Gonzalez had the distinct privilege to work closely with the well-known Fantastic Realist artist Ernst Fuchs in Monaco and Austria. Photos of the experience can be seen at L. Caruana's website. The paintings of Gonzalez are created with airbrushed acrylics on panel or canvas. Forms, values and highlighting are created by lifting pigment with an abrasive eraser, followed by the application of transparent layers of pigment. Influenced by idealism in the mystical, visionary and esoteric traditions, the artist describes his work as a contemporary Tantric or Transfigurative Art that explores the dramatic union of the sensual and spiritual. His work is akin to a revival of classical neoplatonic ideals centering on the figure as temple and vessel sublimed by transformative forces. http://www.sublimatrix.com/html/gallery.html One contributor to this week's podcast mentioned that he had just started reading Accelerondo by Charles Stross. You can download the entire novel for free here: http://www.accelerando.org/book/ I'm "stealing bandwidth" with this image. It's hosted here along with lots of other great images: http://www.arthistoryarchive.com/arthistory/contemporary/A-Andrew-Gonzalez.html

In this 51st episode, KMO speaks with Dr. Richard Grossman, Yasmeen Grant, and C-Realm listener, Earthmansurfer about their experiences surrounding the 3rd Annual International Amazonian Shamanism Conference held in July of 2007 in Iquitos, Peru. Cover art: My one remaining Plymouth Rock Barred hen now has two chicks of her own, with many more eggs in the nest waiting to hatch.

This "best of" show draws from the most memorable interviews of the first 49 episodes of the C-Realm Podcast. Featured guests include: Douglas Rushkoff, Jeremy Narby, Catherine Austin Fitts, Dmitry Orlov, and Thomas Homer Dixon. Start here for an excellent introduction to the major (non-psychedelic) themes of the show