KMO and Olga welcome Pam Grossman of Phantasmaphile and the Observatory Gallery at Proteus Gowanus and Peter Bebergal, author of Too Much to Dream: A Psychedelic American Boyhood to the C-Realm Podcast to discuss the intersection of magickal ritual, religious tradition, psychedelic exploration, and the thirst for gnosis. KMO summarizes arguments from Advanced Magick for Beginners by Alan Chapman, and Olga, acting as proxy for the regular C-Realm listeners likely to be bewildered by this conversation, asks for clarification at key moments. This conversation continues in Psychonautica 084. Music by Not Waving But Drowning.

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.

KMO speaks with Professor Peter Moskos, author of Cop in the Hood: My Year Policing Baltimore's Eastern District and In Defense of Flogging. Peter speaks against the drug war for L.E.A.P. and he opposed the drug war before, during, and after his stint as a police officer. The conversation starts off with references to the television shows The Wire and Breaking Bad and covers the slowly-changing public perception of drugs and the drug war, the drop in the crime rate, the bloated prison system in the United States, and the role of immigrants on crime rates.

KMO talks about sigil magic with Erik Davis. After playing clips of comic book authors Grant Morrison and Alan Moore, KMO asks Erik if, maybe, the real danger of results-based magic isn't so much that it does not work but that it does. Could sigil magic work only to alter the consciousness of the magician and clear away the obstacles of unworkable attitudes and belief structures, or does it put the practitioner in contact with supernatural agents and energies which might demand a high price for their cooperation? In the second half of the program, KMO talks with Cheyenna Layne Weber of the Brooklyn Food Coalition about the upcoming Brooklyn Food Conference. The episode ends with a birthday greeting from the Dopefiend and Max Freakout. Music by Southside.

KMO welcomes composer and ethnomusicologist, Alexandre Tannous, to the C-Realm Podcast to talk about music, entheogens, shamanism, and techniques for accessing alternate states of consciousness and activating the body's innate healing capacity. KMO intercuts audio clips from the movie Jim, for which Alexandre composed the score and ends with a reading from the book, Nemu's End: History, Psychology, and Poetry of the Apocalypse. Music by Spankinhide.

KMO continues his conversation with Sally Erickson and describes how selling insurance contributed to his education as a podcaster. In the second half of the program, the Lovely Olga K., co-host of the Z-Realm Podcast, and Justin Ritchie, co-host of the Extraenvironmentalist Podcast, traverse a lot of conversational ground with discussions of gentrifying neighborhoods in Brooklyn, Corporations undergoing catabolic collapse, New York city as an environment of plentiful energy that supports a great profusion of ecological niches, and how it is easy to dismiss all potential collapse narratives. Everything seems so stable. Music by Not Waving But Drowning.

KMO, Olga, and Justin Ritchie, co-host of the Extraenvironmentalist Podcast, talk about how people are adapting to economic decline, particularly in the increasingly wide-spread realization that a college education has morphed from a entry into the middle class into the express route to debt slavery. In the second half of the podcast, Sally Erickson, the producer of the film What A Way To Go: Life at the End of Empire, asks KMO to account for his refusal to sacrifice his own happiness for the sake of a respectable seat at the grown-up's table of traditional employment. Music by Southside.

With no pre-recorded interview material, KMO fills the hour with his seat of the pants ramblings about the Adam Curtis documentary, All Watched Over by Machine of Loving Grace, the Drug War, the commune movement of the 1970s and the cynicism that springs from a naive belief in cyber-Utopias and the so-called Balance of Nature. Music by Not Waving But Drowning with background music by Takasitar.

KMO welcomes the Archdruid, John Michael Greer, back to the C-Realm to talk about the content of his new book, Mystery Teachings from the Living Earth: an introduction to spiritual ecology. JMG explains why New Age abundance belief systems like The Secret do not have their source in the teachings of ancient mystery schools and why the actual mystery teachings are best communicated using the language of ecology in our particular historical moment. KMO concludes the podcast with some thoughts on Mike Daisey's fall from grace. Music by Kimi Lundie.

KMO welcomes Duck Duck Go founder Gabriel Weinberg to the C-Realm to map out an escape from the filter bubble. Even if you're logged out, when you do a Google search, Google's algorithms go to great lengths to figure out who you are and what you want to see. YYou many wonder, "Well, what's wrong with Google finding the stuff that I will be interested in?" Gabriel has a few answers to that question worth considering. Privacy concerns also motivate Gabriel, and he details some of the less-than-obvious ways that your online activity tells corporations things about you that you might prefer to keep to yourself. At the end of this episode, KMO plays some material from Jon Rappoport on the power of the imagination. Music by ALLFLAWS

In this 300th C-Realm Podcast episode, KMO welcomes Dmitry Orlov back to the program to check in on the collapse narrative and to compare the actual unfolding of events with Dmitry's perspective of five years ago. Later Lorenzo Hagerty of the Psychedelic Salon Podcast and the Dopefiend of the Dopefiend.co.uk Podcast Network drop by to talk about the process of creating 300 podcast episodes. Finally KMO checks in with Black Beauty, the Australian with the velvety voice who provides the C-Realm Podcast with its bumpers, and Justin and Seth of the Extraenvironmentalist Podcast share a poem by Wendell Berry. Music by Yuki Tanaguchi and Inspired Flight.

KMO welcomes Jitendra Darling of Occupy Cafe to the C-Realm Podcast to talk about the tension in the Occupy movement between people who advocate direct action in resisting the status quo and those who insist on a strict non-violent approach to social transformation. Just before the musical interlude, Jitendra briefly summarizes why he thinks the Ego gets a bad rap. In the second half of the conversation, the topic turns to Foster Gamble's movie, Thrive, and Jitendra responds to criticisms of the film from Rob Hopkins, John Michael Greer, and Charles Eisenstein. Music by Kimi Lundie.

KMO welcomes visionary and solution architect, Philip Horvath, back to the C-Realm Podcast to talk about the role of the artist, value creation versus value conversion, and the possibilities for personal and cultural transformation in 2012. Philip talks about why he'd rather face uncertain times in L.A. than in the comfort of his native Germany, and KMO explains his Doomer Bodhisattva Vow. Music by Mane Rok.

KMO welcomes Joh Rappoport of No More Fake News to the C-Realm Podcast to discuss the institution of medicine as the religion of the modern age. Jon has spent 30 years as an investigative journalist, and his investigations have prompted him to ask questions which few journalists dare to ask. He challenges the methodology by which pathogens are identified as the causes of supposedly discrete diseases. The conversation turns to the slander of citizen journalists in Steven Soderberg's film Contagion, and KMO concludes with a reading to the essay "Introducing the Cultural Psychopomp" by Bodhi Paul Chefurka.

Music by Dan Bull.

KMO continues his conversation on technology, transhumanism, and the technological singularity with Nikki Olson and Nikola Danaylov of the Singularity Weblog. Does death help clear the board and relieve human civilization of the weight of outmoded ideological commitments, or is it an unmitigated evil which must be overcome? Nikola talks about hard and soft takeoff singularity scenarios, and Nikki muses over whether a hard takeoff might seem gradual to sufficiently augmented human minds. KMO voices skepticism at the idea that nanotechnology, even if it really does deliver us into an age of post-scarcity, will eliminate exploitation of the Third World by economic elites. Music by Hobo Kings and April White.

KMO welcomes Nikki Olson and Nikola Danaylov back to the C-Realm to talk about technology and rationality. Nikola responds to a C-Realm listener's comments about the diminishing returns of technology, and Nikki explains why she thinks calling a technological development like the iPhone a "mini singularity" is like calling a gentle breeze a "mini hurricane." In the second half of the program, the conversation turns to the normality bias. Nikola says that we're all lazy by nature and that in a constantly changing environment we must remain adaptable or perish. KMO ends the episode with a rant about how NPR presents vicious propaganda and pseudoscience under the genteel aegis of informed medical opinion. Music by The Transpersonals.

KMO welcomes Liz Reitzig of Raw Milk Freedom Riders back to the program to talk about the FDA's campaign against raw milk and against families who trust their own judgment more than they trust that of federal agencies in a state of regulatory capture by giant agribusiness corporations. KMO plays devil's advocate and mounts a strong challenge to his own libertarian ideals as they discuss the presidential candidacy of Ron Paul. KMO brings in the voices of Joel Salitin, Sheriff Richard Mack, and Mike Daisy to put the raw milk question into a larger context. Music by Dan Bull.

KMO welcomes Nicole Foss (AKA Stoneleigh of the Automatic Earth blog) to the C-Realm to discuss the need for re-localization, something which central authorities will work to quash lest it interfere with the conveyance of wealth from the periphery to the center. Nicole explains what she means when she describes cash as "a pile of unmade choices" and why she cannot offer her uncomplicated support for political movements like the Tea Party or Occupy Wall Street. She does voice her strong support for permaculture and for restoring soil fertility. Music by Andrew Woods.

KMO welcomes Mark Robinowitz of Oil Empire back to the C-Realm to discuss economics, protest, and the management of mainstream worlviews by the corporate media. Mark explains why he regards the presidential election as a form a theater and why he holds no enthusiasm for the candidacy of Ron Paul. Music by Kurt Liebezeit.

KMO talks with Bruce Damer and Galen Brandt about what it's like to have crossed the threshold into 2012 after so many years expectations built up listening to Terence McKenna novelty and concrescence. Other topics of discussion include upgrading our personal and societal operating systems, the complexity of our world made by nerds, and the reality of the situation on the ground in Pakistan and how it differs from the worldview propagated by the screaming media. Music by Mawwal.

KMO welcomes C-Realm Podcast regular, Eric Boyd, back to the program to talk about the protest movements of 2011, the need for, and roadblocks to, a debt jubilee, and whether there is any meaningful distinction to be drawn between extreme libertarianism and anarchism. They both stick their necks out and make predictions for 2012. Music by Garret Wayseer.

KMO welcomes Doug Lain back to the program to discuss his novella, Wave of Mutilation, a tale of bizarro fiction in the fourth-wall-shattering tradition of VALIS. The discussion, of course, turns to Occupy Wall Street, and Doug suggests that the prevailing anarchist mentality of the protest movement could learn something from Marxist Communism, even though Doug admits that he doesn't know enough about Marxism to call himself a Marxist. KMO concludes with readings from David Brin and David Graeber. Music by Tiny Machines.

What does 2012 hold in store? KMO put that question to Steve Keen, Nicole Foss and Thomas H. Greco. In the second half of the program, KMO shares recordings from this year's ASPO-USA conference and responds to questions from listeners. Music by Resist Not.

KMO welcomes KunstlerCast host, Duncan Crary, back to the C-Realm to talk about his four-year intellectual apprenticeship which has culiminated in his new book, The KunstlerCast: Conversations with James Howard Kunstler. Duncan extols the virtues of life in Troy, New York, which requires of him neither cell phone or automobile. The conversation turns to the Occupy movement, the Ecovillage Training Center, and, of course, podcasting. KMO concludes the podcast with praise for David Graeber's new book, Debt: The First 5,000 Years. Music by Deertick.

KMO welcomes filmmaker and novelist Timothy Scott Bennett back to the C-Realm to discuss vision quests and the search for a new story by which to orient the human relationship to our world. For 10,000 years, humans have lived the story that the world was made for our use, and this programming has brought us to the edge of ecological ruin. In the second half of the conversation Tim reads from his new novel, All of the Above, and Tim explains why he mixed concerns about peak oil and environmental degradation with aliens, UFOs, and other seemingly frivolous and fanciful elements. Monologist Martin Dockery describes how the police could brutalize protesters without having to live with the consequences of having their actions captured on video. Music by Kyrstyn Pixton.

This episode of the C-Realm Podcast features a conversation between KMO, Guy McPherson, Kurt Cobb, and Henry Warwick. Guy hopes for a crash of industrial civilization in the near term, Kurt warns that saying "collapse" in front of a general audience is like cursing around children, and Henry details his criticisms of ecological rhetoric; criticism that apply to the peak oil and climate changed crowds as well. Music by Tiny Machines.

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.

KMO travels to Washington DC for the annual ASPO conference and the NYC for Occupy This, a night of discussion on the topic of Occupy Wall Street. Featuring the voices of Dmitry Orlov, Aaron Wissner, Mark Robinowitz, and Dennis Meadows. Music by Tiny Machines.

KMO turns the first half of this week's C-Realm Podcast over to rational UFO researcher, Larry Lowe, who weaves together clips from the movie Network, a clip from last week's episode, and historical information about Project Mockingbird to demonstrate how the CIA and corporate propagandists manage the opinions of the many for the benefit of the few. Later in the episode, Tim Bennett, creator of the film What a Way to Go: Life ant the End of Empire, talks about the difficult process of grappling with marginalized topics and fringe ideas. Both Tim and his partner Sally Erickson will be presenters at the upcoming Local Futures conference. Jay Smooth describes how the OWS movement is outing the corporate "ringers," and KMO concludes with a reading from a recent blog post by Matt Tiabbi about the most recent Corporate Media strategy to discredit the OWS movement. Music by Deep 1 and Rhiannon Giddens.

On the scene in NYC, KMO and Olga K roam the city collecting the authentic voices raised in protest and celebration. Americans have been stewing quietly in their dissatisfaction and resentment over being robbed, exploited, abused, lied to, and, worst of all, scape-goated by the 1% and their lackeys in government and the corporate media. The first half of the program consists of on-the-street interviews, and then Justin Ritchie, of the Extraenvironmentalist Podcast, joins the conversation via Skype to connect the macro and the micro in a focused discussion of what happened on the ground in NYC and what's happening around the globe and in cyber-space. Music by Sxip Shirey.

On the road in NYC and Upstate New York, KMO welcomes James Howard Kunstler back to the C-Realm to discus the Occupy Wall Street movement, tribes of hopeless and clueless youth like the Juggalos and Juggalettes, the techno-narcissism of Ray Kurzweil and the Singularitarians, and the damage caused by the metastasized and hypertrophied financial sector of the economy. Music by Fernando Tarango.

KMO welcomes John Michael Greer back to the C-Realm to discuss maladaptive memes like the ones that drive speculative bubbles and predictions of the impending end of the world. Economists believe that abstractions, like money, can be manipulated in ways that can overcome the material limitations of the "real" world. John Michael says that to call this "magical thinking" is to do a serious disservice to operative mages and other practitioners of magical techniques. He suggests that we label the belief that we can derive something from nothing "economic thinking." Music by the Transpersonals.

KMO welcomes John Michael Greer back to the C-Realm Podcast to talk about millennialism and our human attraction to the idea of the impending end of the world, which is the topic of John Michael's newest book, Apocalypse Not: Everything You Know About 2012, Nostradamus and the Rapture Is Wrong. The wide-ranging conversation touches on UFOs, the Technological Singularity, the Mayan calendar, and the efforts of one formerly industrial town to re-invent itself and thrive in the emerging post-industrial economy. Music by Mattriks and the Book of Kin.

KMO welcomes repeat guests Richard Heinberg and Dmitry Orlov back to the C-Realm Podcast to compare notes on the state of economic transition in which we find ourselves. In his new book, The End of Growth: Adapting to Our New Economic Reality, Richard makes the case that we have reached a crucial inflection point in economic history after which human progress and well-being must be de-coupled from economic growth. Dmitry describes a near-term future in which the United States has been dismantled by its creditors, whom he describes as trans-national mafias. While there is no escape from what Richard calls the Black Hole of Debt, Dmitry insists that it's not too late to make adaptive lifestyle changes if we can avoid the temptation to tune out real experience in favor of the sorts of branded experience that we can access through our whiz-bang handheld devices. Music by Critter Jones.

KMO welcomes 1491 author Charles Mann to the program to talk about the economic, political, sociological, and perhaps most important, biological homogenization that began when Admiral Cristóbal Colón established the first European outpost in what is now the Dominican Republic. This so-called Columbian Exchange initiated a bonanza in global trade which lead to the first global economic crisis. Is that cat out of the bag, or is there still something to be gained by trying to put the breaks on this global free-for-all.

Music by Woodland5.

KMO welcomes Afghanistan war veteran, Jacob George, to the program to talk about cycling for peace, war resistance from inside the military, Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder, Military Sexual Trauma, and the misguided attempt to impose Western social norms and political structures on the tribal societies of Afghanistan.

Music by Madeline Ava.

KMO welcomes Albert K. Bates back to the program, and they sit down together for a chat with Richard Heinberg, author of Peak Everything. Albert admits that he's finding it hard to maintain his "soft lander" status in the face of mounting evidence, and Richard talks about the themes in his new book, Blackout: Coal, Climate and the Last Energy Crisis. Later KMO plays a clip of post-interview banter with yoga instructor and musician Danny Paradise.

Music by Glöd.

KMO welcomes Douglas Rushkoff back to the C-Realm to discuss the effect that corporations have on our lives, where corporations came from, and how they enjoy a playing field tilted in their favor by government regulation which insulates them from competition from more local and human-scaled alternatives. Douglas addresses these topics in his new book, Life, Inc. Later in the program, Douglas talks about how messages from Quetzalcoatl really aren't from Quetzalcoatl once they pass human lips and how the ayahuasca crowd really needs to get over 2012.

Music by Patrick Ross

KMO welcomes Joe Bageant, author of Deer Hunting with Jesus: Dispatches from America's Class War, to the program to examine the corporate media-fabricated bubble of hyper-propaganda that Americans perceive as the real world, the "Stockholm syndrome of the soul" by which we identify with the ideologies of our captors and align ourselves against our own interests, and what this snow globe of a society looks like from the outside.

Music by Neon Brown

KMO welcomes Thomas Homer-Dixon, author of The Upside of Down, back to the program to discus the potential, connectedness, and resilience of adaptive systems like ecosystems and economies. Is restoring the growth trajectory of the global economy a viable means of securing long term prosperity? What impact is technology having on employment, and is full employment a workable or even desirable goal? Later, Tad reads from his forthcoming book, Carbon Shift: How the Twin Crises of Oil Depletion and Climate Change Will Define the Future

Music by Jeff Andrews.

Show notes: http://kmo.livejournal.com/395767.html

KMO welcomes energy infrastructure analyst Jeff Vail to the program to talk about how growth-oriented hierarchies start to come unglued when they run up against the energy and resource limitations that prohibit continued growth. Listen in to hear how this idea relates to Professor Laurence J. Peter's famous principle.

Music by Float.

Show notes: http://kmo.livejournal.com/390169.html

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."

Show notes: http://kmo.livejournal.com/358068.html

In this 100th episode of the C-Realm Podcast, KMO welcomes SF author Charles Stross 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.

Show notes: http://kmo.livejournal.com/353095.html

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.

Show notes: http://kmo.livejournal.com/352051.html

Dmitry Orlov and Albert K. Bates explore visions of a
post-collapse America, and later KMO talks food, consciousness, and
the forces of darkness with Neil Kramer of the Cleaver.

Show notes: http://kmo.livejournal.com/337437.html

In this installment, KMO speaks with Colin Tudge and David Blume about the possible applications of high technology, genetic engineering, robotics and artificial intelligence in farming.

Show notes: http://kmo.livejournal.com/335289.html

http://www.permaculture.com

In this episode KMO talks with Gyrus about this crunch time in human history. Later we hear from author Colin Tudge on how to feed a global population of 9 billion and feed them well for the long haul.

Show notes: http://kmo.livejournal.com/335090.html

In this episode, KMO concludes his conversation with James H. Kunstler, author of the Long Emergency: Surviving the Converging Catastrophes of the 21st Century. Later, we hear from Kathy McMahon, founder of PeakOilBlues.com about the range of psychological reactions which commonly manifest themselves in people who come to appreciate the implications of peak oil.

Show notes: http://kmo.livejournal.com/331946.html

KMO welcomes author Dmitry Orlov back to the program for a discussion of keeping people fed in times of turmoil and for a reading from Orlov’s soon-to-be-published book, Reinventing Collapse: The Soviet Example and American Prospects. After that, James H. Kunstler, author of The Long Emergency: Surviving the Converging Catastrophes of the Twenty-First Century, drops by to talk about the fate of surburbia in the post-petroleum era.

Show notes: http://kmo.livejournal.com/331057.html

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."

Extended show notes: http://kmo.livejournal.com/315538.html

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.