Saturday Show #80: Conflation by Frank Marcopolos, part of the new collection INFINITE ENDING

Summary: On this episode of the podcast, we discuss how to determine if something is art or entertainment, the main philosophical points of Immanuel Kant, the differences between the literary genres of modernism and postmodernism, “Conflation” by Frank Marcopolos, and “Peter Elroy: A Documentary by Ian Casey” by Elizabeth McCracken. “Conflation” is part of the 10-story collection entitled <a href="http://amzn.to/1INCfBB" title="Infinite Ending" target="_blank">INFINITE ENDING, which can be purchased by clicking this very link.</a><br> Approximate time stamps and general topics of discussion are listed below:<br> 0:00 Frank’s intro to the podcast, including a clever pitch to entice you into buying <a href="http://amzn.to/1INCfBB" title="Infinite Ending" target="_blank">INFINITE ENDING: TEN STORIES</a><br> 2:39 General group discussion, including an experience with an Austin-loving woman, themoth.org, oral storytelling, different art forms, Spaulding Gray, spoken word, poetry being too subjective, what it means to do art, what it means when a society doesn’t know the difference between entertainment and art, review of the stories performed recently in Austin Texas, professional storytelling and art, Story Core, objective rules of art forms, Bruno Kirby’s oratory skills, Howard Stern, Wallace Shawn, Bill Hicks, stand-up comedy, Synanon, therapy, being a show-off, art vs. entertainment (again), genre writing, expectations of the performances, Austin vs. New York art scenes, story about female rights and China’s cultural attitudes toward women, Christmas cake, sentimental crap, Duchamp and the urinal in a museum, Campbell’s soup can as art, Crabby Appleton, complaining about the complainable, the craft movement, Hobby Lobby, Michael’s, academics’ ability to judge the rules of art, sentimentality vs. emotionality, melodrama, mawkishness, maudlin, marriages breaking up, more on the China lady’s story, Raymond Carver, Richard Ford, David Eggers, A Heartbreaking Work of Staggering Genius, driving on the Pacific Coast Highway, and Serial podcast.<br> 30:46 Group discussion of article on Modernism and Postmodernism, including the confidence of modernism, materialism, numenal, phenomenal, Kant, phenomenology, this bottle is apprehended phenomenologically, Kant’s argument for God, objectivism, subjectivism, Socrates, the Socratic method, killing Socrates, Lacan the French neo-Freudian, the subconscious reaction to the unknowable, Nietzsche, Western and Eastern philosophy, gnosticism, Elphius Levi, Martin Buber, Spinoza, Swindberg, Thomas Aquinas, Kierkegaard, John Stuart Mill, Einstein, Foucault, structuralism, post-structuralism, Passion of the Western Mind, Sophie’s World, Will Durant – The History of Philosophy, Swerve by Greenblatt, Terence McKenna’s podcast, getting out of the limits of our 5 senses, DMT, ayahuasca, Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas, Hunter S. Thompson, mescaline, Buddhists, transcendental meditation, science as a way to understand reality, Heisenberg Uncertainty Principle, science as a narrowing down of philosophy, The Matrix, reality as everything being an illusion, Hume, “Nothing is 100% true,” Ayn Rand, pragmatism, heart transplants, epigenetics, Jules Verne, higher consciousness, Robert Heinlein, The Moon is a Harsh Mistress, Childhood’s End, autistic children, TMI, modernism (again), making it new in art, postmodernism is a recycling of old things, postmodernism acknowledges this recycling, going to the moon, Stanley Kubrick, what art truly is, wasted genius, practice and flow, being a craftsman, flash mobs, Roland Barthe, deconstructing, social objects, Heraclitus, the relativity of time, Heigel, World War 2, technology in culture, Starbucks, making the world smaller, and impatience. <br> 1:11:21 Group discussion of <a href="http://amzn.to/1INCfBB" title="Infinite Ending" target="_blan..."></a>