C-Realm Podcast

"C" stands for consciousness 109: Women Are Medicine In this final podcast in the series of Friday shows meant to raise awareness of the 4th Annual International Amazonian Shamanism Conference, AyasminA talks with heterogeneous curandera, Wendy Luckey, about the path, about not fitting in, and about the role of women in humanity's collective healing. http://wendyluckey.com/cms/

"C" stands for consciousness 108: Methane Burps & Tele Everything KMO welcomes Dennis M. Bushnell, chief scientist of the NASA Langley Research Center, to discuss climate change and ways of combating it that don't produce Big Brother on steroids. Mr. Bushnell also discusses the existential risks that could arise from the "simultaneous IT, bio, nano, quantum, energetics, double exponential tech revolution." Dennis M. Bushnell's Lifeboat Foundation bio: http://lifeboat.com/ex/bios.dennis.m.bushnell In our conversation, Dennis Bushnell makes several references to and speaks very highly of a book by Peter D. Ward called Under a Green Sky: Global Warming, the Mass Extinctions of the Past, and What They Can Tell Us About Our Future.  

"C" stands for consciousness 107: Truth & Fear AyasminA returns with an interview with visionary artist, Roberto Venosa. In addition to delving into his personal history and development as a visionary artist, Ayasmina and Roberto explore the dark side and ask whether evil exists as a thing in and of itself. They also examine the question of the reality of the subject matter of visionary art. At present, Roberto's wife, Martina Hoffmann, has her work on display at the MicroCoSM Gallery in NYC. Roberto's work will soon be featured in a MicroCosM exhibit: http://www.microcosmgallery.com/ Raw Shock by Roberto Venosa

"C" stands for consciousness 106: A Sense of Proportion Science writer John Horgan, author of Rational Mysticism, joins KMO in the C-Realm and takes a turn in the Total Perspective Vortex. Topics include the ego-inflation that overtakes some psychonauts, the nihilistic abuses of cult leaders, the unfulfilled promises of artificial intelligence, and the glorious visions of Singularitarians. You can find John Horgan's Bloggingheads.tv interview with Eliezer Yudkowsky here: http://bloggingheads.tv/diavlogs/11693 You can find Eliezer's reflections on the encounter here: http://www.overcomingbias.com/2008/06/bloggingheads-y.html Michael Anissimov described the Horgan/Yudkowsky piece as a "trainwreck." Checkitout: http://www.acceleratingfuture.com/michael/blog/2008/06/bloggingheadstv-interview-horgan-and-yudkowsky/

KMO welcomes Bob Seidensticker, author of Future Hype, to the program to bust a few techno-myths. Later we hear from John Horgan, author of Rational Mysticism about why he prefers mystical gurus with a dash of Irish wit and a knowing wink over those who claim to have it all figured out. http://www.future-hype.com/

"C" stands for consciousness 103: Learning from Flawed Teachers Guests include David Rosdeitcher and Neil Kramer. The cover art from this and several other recent shows comes from the Flickr stream of C-Realm listener D. J. Golderg: http://flickr.com/photos/dc-bw2736/

KMO talks with Ellen Hodgson Brown, author of Web of Debt, about the dirty secrets of our financial system, its likely fate, and our prospects for steering a workable economic course in the near future. I'll try to get these notes into better shape here in the next day or two, but for now, if you'd like to follow up on the things Ellen and I talked about in this episode, you can start here: http://dandelionsalad.wordpress.com/2007/07/12/spiraling-us-federal-debt-triggers-decline-of-dollar-by-ellen-hodgson-brown/ and here's an article by Hellen Brown about increasing global food prices: http://www.webofdebt.com/articles/global-food-crisis.php Also, you can hear the Mike Hagan interview with G. Edward Griffin that I mentioned here: http://www.mikehagan.com/2012/mp3/091204_ED_GRIFFIN.mp3

C-Realm correspondent AyasminA returns with a new interview. Julian Haynes is building an ayahuasca-inspired, floating, wooden, Egyptian-style pyramid in Iquitos, Peru. AyasminA asks him how and why and then returns to the question of whether interest in ayahuasca shamanism harms the indigenous cultures that spiritual seekers think they're honoring. http://www.pyramidperu.com Covert art by David Slocum Hewson: http://www.davidhewsonart.com/

In this 100th episode of the C-Realm Podcast, KMO welcomes SF author Charles Stross (AKA autopope) to the program to discuss the convergence of massively multi-player online games, live action role-playing games, and the emerging infrastructure of the surveillance society. After that he considers listener feedback on the topic of whether human intelligence is somehow privileged or more important than that of other forms of life. Charles Stross is the author of many books including Accelerondo, The Jennifer Morgue, and Halting State. He has also written an essay entitled The Panopticon Singularity which provides much fuel for thought for anyone concerned with the future of civil liberties and privacy.

KMO gets an ayahuasca retreat update from Matt W. of the Temple of the Way of Light. After that Dennis McKenna manifests in the C-Realm to solve the riddle of consciousness and shine the light of his awareness on such topics as environmental degradation, the evolution of machine intelligence, and, of course, Amazonian ayahuasca shamanism.

First, Dmitry Orlov, author of Reinventing Collapse: The Soviet Example and American Prospects, details the Collapse Party Platform: a list of initiatives that acknowledge the danger of collapse and, if implemented, would make near-future America a more livable place than the destination that political business-as-usual will produce. After that, Ran Prieur shines a harsh but instructive light of reality on a few cherished neo-primitivist fantasies. Ran makes multiple references to 1491: New Revelations of the Americas Before Columbus by Charles C. Mann and describes it as a major influence on the ideas that he articulated in his essay, "Beyond Civilized and Primitive."

In this episode, KMO creates an audio mash-up of material taken (with permission) from the radio documentary 'In Search of the Divine Vegetal' and previous episodes of the C-Realm Podcast to address the question of whether First World spiritual seekers are stealing or corrupting the spiritual traditions of the Two Thirds World. Voices heard include: Dennis McKenna, Jeremy Narby, and A. Andrew Gonzalez. If you will be attending the 4th International Amazonian Shamanism Conference in Iquitos because you learned about it or decided to attend because of what you heard on the C-Realm Podcast, please write to Alan Shoemaker and let him know so that I will get credit for your attendance. Alan's email address is sogadelalma (at) yahoo (dot) com . Thank you.

KMO talks first with James Howard Kunstler about his new novel, World Made By Hand. Next he speaks with Dmitry Orlov about the 5 stages of collapse and about his book, Reinventing Collapse: The Soviet Example and American Prospects, which has just been released. KMO closes the podcast with a reading on the difference between "breakdown" and "collapse" from Thomas Homer-Dixon's excellent book, The Upside of Down: Catastrophe, Creativity, and the Renewal of Civilization. Dmitry Orlov mentioned two books during our conversation which figured prominently in the formation of his thoughts on collapse: The Mountain People by Colin M. Turnbull The Collapse of Complex Societies by Joseph Tainter

In this episode, former guest AyasminA turns C-Realm correspondent to interview artist David "Slocum" Hewson who makes Iquitos, Peru his base of operations and where he is contributing to the construction of the Pyramid Peru project. AyasminA and Slocum discuss the role of ayahuasca and other visionary plants in the creation of Slocum's art before moving on to an examination of the relative harms done by ayahuasca tourism versus the effects of trans-national petroleum, mining and timber corporations on the people and the ecology of the Amazon. http://www.davidhewsonart.com/ http://www.pyramidperu.com/ http://www.redambientalloretana.org/ http://www.amazonconvergence.com (Another event in Iquitos this summer that Jeremy Narby will attend. Jeremy Narby appears in episodes 25 and 26 of the C-Realm Podcast.)

KMO talks with author D.J. Solomon who reads a long passage from his novel from the future. Is the human soul amenable to improvement? If you were designing a plague that would remake humanity, what would you change? What would you leave untouched? Who would live, and who would die? How would men and women relate to one another on the morning after? http://www.xenbook.com