C-Realm Podcast

KMO welcomes Eric Boyd and Tara Holste back to the program to discus a recent Atlantic article, 'The End of Men' by Hanna Rosen. Are women better suited than men to excel in the 21st century corporate workplace? Why would parents looking to select the sex of their children choose girls three times out of four? Even if women do make up the majority of the workforce and continue replacing men as the big kahunas in the corporate dominance hierarchy, is that necessarily good news? Music by Dan and Amanda.

KMO talks with Daniel Krotz about the paradox of people who love their small towns but tell their children that they have to leave those small towns in order to "make something of themselves." Can liberal urbanites and red state evangelicals find common ground, and have banks become the new churches in small towns? Is a hundred years a long time? Given that children born today may well be alive a hundred years from now, how much comfort should we take in claims that we have a hundred years of natural gas reserves left to fuel industrial society?

In this episode KMO plays an interview that Neil Kramer recorded with writer and philosopher Ronen about the cultural, political and metaphysical influences that shape personal and collective experiences of contemporary America. Music by Jesse Miller

KMO reads from a John Taylor Gatto-inspired graduation address and from the blog of Dale Pendell. Later KMO hooks up with an old friend for a bull session in which two jaded Gen-Xers talk about "these kids today." Hilarity ensues. Music by Sugaree, William Wardlaw, and Inspired Flight.

KMO welcomes Future Pundit Randall Parker back to the program to discuss the possible responses to a looming energy shortfall that "Doomers" think will bring down industrial civilization. Randall doubts things will get that bad, but he fears that in succeeding in our quest for replacement sources of energy, we will continue to push non-human forms of life to the periphery and over the edge into extinction.

Are fears of a peak oil-fueled, civilization-wide collapse rational, or do Doomers crave a big crash to excuse their own failures? Does the very success of our global civilization breed resentment and stress that stems from our basic psychological needs as primates shaped by evolution to obsess over our rank in the status hierarchy? KMO discusses these concerns with bloggers Mickey Foley and Randall Parker. Later, a C-Realm listener who spent a week at the Ecovillage Training Center shares his experience of unplugging from the media mainline, and Gregory Landua discusses an upcoming Financial Permaculture event to be held on the Farm in September of 2010.

KMO welcomes Neil Kramer back to the program to discuss the challenges and the possible advantages that the United States faces as the shallow myths which provided cultural cohesion in the long period of economic growth give way to the reality of economic decline. The conversation traverses the treacherous terrain of race and ethnicity before escaping into pleasant recollections of the recent Transitional Alchemy couch-surfing tour. KMO concludes with a reading from Swann's Way by Marcel Proust. Music by Inspired Flight.

If you translate "industrial accident" into Russian and then back into English, you're likely to end up with "technogenic catastrophe." Might the Gulf Oil Spill be the American Chernobyl? KMO welcomes Dmitry Orlov back to the podcast to examine these questions and to explain why collapse is still the optimistic scenario, why it isn't necessary or even helpful for his message to find a mainstream audience, and why working for reform of the current political establishment is not a credible or worthwhile activity. Music by Tibet2Timbuk2

Artist, community designer, and policy analyst, Michael E. Arth, is making a run for the Florida Governor's mansion. When he approached the Florida Democratic Party, he was told that elections are about money; not issues, and that if he didn't have millions of dollars to spend that he should get lost. He's now running as an independent. KMO and Michael talk about the prospects for reforming a corrupt electoral system while working within the system. Music by Inspired Flight.

KMO welcomes attorney and transition theorist Jeff Vail back to the program to discuss a transitional mode between top-down vertical hierarchies and flat, peer-to-peer social organization that Jeff calls the Diagonal Economy. Does a bigger total pie make for a richer society if most of its riches go to a select few, or is it better to live within a more egalitarian society where the total pie is smaller but is shared equally? And if human satisfaction is our goal, what sort of metric could we use to measure the fulfillment of humanity's genetic ontogony? Music by Inspired Flight.

What is 'nature?' Is it the beneficent giver and sustainer of all life, or is it the source of human misery from which only ingenuity and technology can deliver us and offer us a life of possibilities worthy of our noble humam spark? KMO and independent journalist Nathanael Johnson wrestle with the vagaries of the competing narratives over the value of 'nature' and the things we call 'natural.' Whatever that means. Music by the Uptones.

KMO talks a lot about the need to de-couple from sprawling, impersonal, high-centralized systems of social control and support, but really, very few people are going to stick with a project like gardening just because they know they "should" do it. Making it fun, cost effective and easy will help people discover the joys of growing their own food. Joel Karsten is helping people succeed at gardening without all of the labor and expense that usually come with it. Music by Old Soul.

KMO welcomes Tara Holste to the program to talk a bit about J.R.R. Tolkien and the so-called environment before moving into Tara's shift away from a pre-occupation with a standard bouquet of liberal ideological positions to a focus on food and farming, hearth and home. A Shannon Hayes clip from Diet Soap Podcast #59 and a reading from a recent blog post by Neil Kramer round out the episode.

Music by The Same Damn Thing

KMO welcomes Frank Aragona back to the C-Realm to talk about a possible form of bioremediation which would make use of fungal mycelia to help restore the portions of the Gulf Coast befouled by the BP Deep Horizon oil spill. Later they discuss the merits of revelations received with and without the use of entheogens. Music by Thievery Corporation.

KMO welcomes Corey Olsen, the Tolkien Professor, to the C-Realm to channel J. R. R. Tolkien's crankiness about technology. Tolkien lamented the dawning of the Robot Age when machines cease to be the tools for the expression of human skill and replace humans entirely. Professor Olsen weighs in on the regular C-Realm themes and laments how TV news degrades human intelligence like nothing that has come before it.

Music by Mawaca

KMO delves into exploitation cinema with C-Realm listeners Mike and Marty who will soon present their own movie-themed podcast, Flickers From the Cave. The conversation starts with the work of George Romero and covers a wide range of film-related topics from there. Gore, flesh, and an irrational hatred for all things Michael Bay work their way into a conversation that KMO ties to the regular C-Realm themes with a reading from Douglas Rushkoff's book, Life Inc. How the World Became a Corporation and How to Take it Back.

KMO talks with ETC site manager, Jason Deptula, about the swollen population of the earth and how it might actually help us get through the coming transition with less upset than if there were fewer people on the planet. The conversation turns to the concepts detailed in the book 'Lost Star of Myth and Time' by Walter Cruttenden including the possibility that our sun has a companion star. Music by Jesse Miller.

KMO welcomes SF author David Marusek to the program to talk about a science fiction future in which technological miracles help the affluent realize their every passing fancy while ordinary people left behind in a hyper-competitive marketplace band together to try to keep their heads above water. In a world where technology has rendered mass production and mass consumption irrelevant, where clones and AI do all the work and an affluent few derive all of the benefit, what are people good for? Music by Honeychrome.

KMO welcomes Eric Boyd back to the program to talk about the transformed role of technology in an energy descent future. Eric relates David Eagleman's 6 Easy Steps to Avert the Collapse of Civilization, all of which rely on the internet, and KMO reads from John Micheal Greer's blog for a grim view of a post-internet existence. KMO closes by reading a post from his ETC Journal blog.

Music by The Plant.

KMO welcomes Eric Boyd back to the program to discuss the themes of Jeremy Rifkin's new book, The Empathic Civilization. According to Rikfin, human consciousness expands as humans direct ever-larger energy flows into improving communication, but can we achieve an empathic singularity before we completely despoil the planet? Could our hypertrophied sense of individuality be the primary source for the anxiety and alienation that we feel in the midst of technological abundance? KMO reads opinions on the value of technology from Friends of the C-Realm. Music by Snowdrift.

In this episode KMO puts the thoughts and concerns of the C-Realm audience front and center. Feedback from the audience and kind words from Lorenzo of the Psychedelic Salon bookend a picnic table conversation between KMO, Albert Bates, and Joe of the Occult Sentinel Podcast. KMO closes by explaining why he has no intention of respecting the mainstream prejudices on the topic of "drugs" even if it means he will never cross over and find a bankable niche in the mainstream discourse. Music by Jesse Miller.

In this 200th episode of the C-Realm Podcast, KMO blends content from Corey Olsen (AKA the Tolkien Professor), James Howard Kunstler, and Doug Lain of the Diet Soap podcast to concoct a brew that mixes fantasy, politics, and personal narrative. What can the long defeat of the elves of Middle-Earth tell us about our societal psychology of previous investment? Is it noble to fight a battle that cannot be won, or does finding our direction begin with abandoning our long-held ambitions? Music by Woodland-5.

KMO welcomes Carolyn Baker, author of Sacred Demise: Walking the Spiritual Path of Industrial Civilization's Collapse to the program to discuss ways that people can prepare themselves mentally, emotionally and spiritually to pass through the initiatory experience that the collapse of industrial civilization may present to us as individuals and to our communities. Carolyn will be teaching a distance learning course called Navigating the Coming Chaos of Unprecedented Transitions which will be offered through Post Peak Living. Carolyn and KMO discussion the spiritual dimension of the collapse scenario as depicted in the movie Book of Eli, and KMO manages to work in a zombie connection. Music by Mitch.

KMO turns the interviewing duties over to Jason R. for the conclusion of an interview with Paul Gude. Topics include the way ideas seem to bubble up at multiple points in the collective imagination all at once and how Paul's comics invoke a sense of Lovecraftian comedy and nostalgic bigotry. KMO reads from a story by Jorge Luis Borges. Music by Treasures Untold.

Jason R. interviews Paul Gude. The narrative thread eats itself, and a precise summation would seem a fools errand, but topics covered include psychedelic experiences in K-Mart, video games, magick, cheat codes for reality, time travel, flying cars, video phones, and a synchronicity involving psychedelic mushrooms and the song "I Want a New Drug" by Huey Lewis in the News. Music by Zarathrustra.

KMO welcomes Albert K. Bates back to the program to talk about the
themes of his forthcoming book, The Biochar Solution. Could a form of
homebrewed carbon sequestration provide a stopgap measure that could buy us time to
implement effective atmospheric remediation? Should biochar be
considered a form of geo-engineering? How do we prevent carbon credits
from becoming the new credit default swaps? All this and music by
Zarathrutra.

KMO and Albert Bates talk across the kitchen table at the EcoVillage Training Center on the Farm in Summertown, Tennessee. The first half of the conversation centers on the on-going process by which we are exporting more of our attention and cognitive capacity into our cybernetic prostheses and the abstract spaces they allow us to inhabit. In the second half of the conversation the discussion centers on the state of the economy and the performance of President Obama.

Music by Tim's Myth

KMO welcomes James Howard Kunstler back to the C-Realm to talk about the themes of his new play, Big Slide. Topics include, paranoid conspiracy theories, the lucidity of John Michael Greer's writing, post-traumatic embitterment disorder, and the possibility for class-based antagonism, economic meltdown, religious craziness, and plentiful firearms to produce a kind of homegrown fascism that JHK likes to call "Cornpone Nazism."

Is societal collapse and a Malthusian Correction a workable path to a better future? Alex Steffen of WorldChanging.org says, "No." Moral considerations aside, a population die back and the scarcity that prompt it would spell very bad news indeed for the Earth's natural systems. What's the best path forward? Create something that works which is bigger than your house but smaller than the world.

KMO welcomes Charles Cresson Wood to the program to talk about the need for a radical transition to a new style of consciousness, how crises might prompt the shift and how the internet will prove essential in facilitating the process. Charles encourages us to embrace unity consciousness, confront our fears and challenge the reigning assumptions about the value of selling the hours of our lives to corporations.

KMO, on the day of the last stop on the West Coast leg of the
Transitional Alchemy tour with Neil Kramer, presents a conversation
recorded in Santa Cruz with Robert Forte. Topics of conversation
include 9-11, UFOs, David Icke's "No Hassle Zone," shape-shifting
reptilian overlords, and Noam Chomsky as left gate-keeper.

In this whistle stop episode, KMO talks cybernetic consciousness with Eric Boyd and Neil Kramer. Might machine minds prove more resistant than humans to being warped by warped circumstances, or might they go with the amoral flow? Later, Gordon Wardlaw, who hosted a Transitional Alchemy Tour appearance at his home in Mendocino provides some feedback on the event.

KMO welcomes Gyrus back to the program to discuss his book War & the Noble Savage. Prior to the advent of the state, a greater percentage of people died from violence than in modern industrialized Democracies, but does that mean that Hobbes was right? Rousseau never spoke of "the noble savage," but a cartoon straw man of Rousseau's position not only takes a beating from apologists for ensconced dominance hierarchies, but free marketeers also invoke it to justify unfettered competition in the capitalist arena.

KMO welcomes Noble Ape creator Tom Barbalet to the program to discuss the nature of intelligence. Is survival the best indicator of intelligence? Is there anything special about so called "general intelligence?" Tom thinks that the leading Singularitarians proceed in their thinking about simulation, technology, and intelligence based on some very naive premises. Has the technological singularity already occurred? Tom gives his reason for thinking that it took place in the 1980s.

In this final installment of the C-Realm Podcast for 2009, Doug Lain, host of the Diet Soap Podcast, joins KMO to revisit 2009 C-Realm interviews with Jeff Vail, Thomas Homer-Dixon, Joe Bageant, and Frank Rotering. Can inferences about the economy and social relationships legitimately be drawn from observations about the cyclical behavior of a forest ecosystem, or does this sort of comparison lend legitimacy to unjust power relationships? Can a recovering Libertarian and a wavering Marxist even hear one another through the ideological noise? Take heart.

KMO welcomes Sally Erickson and Tim Bennett, makers of the movie WHAT A WAY TO GO: LIFE AT THE END OF EMPIRE to the C-Realm. Covered topics include the shift in consciousness that occurs when one seriously delves into the vulnerabilities of industrial society and the fallout that it can have on one's relationships and the direction of one's life. Fast collapse vs. slow decline, living with uncertainty, and communication without craziness round out the list of topics.

KMO welcomes Charles Eisenstein back to the program to explore the metaphor of industrial civilization as an addict headed for rock bottom. In the service of a culture addicted to control, technology consumes the world, but after hitting rock bottom, might the destructive nature of technology be transformed along with human consciousness? In the second half of the conversation, Charles talks about the life and work of Weston A. Price and explores ways to reconcile the idea of doing sacred work with the demands of a money economy.

Music by Big Dave

KMO welcomes Frank Aragona and Neil Kramer back to the program to discuss sacred geometry. Neil, immersed in the experiential study of crop circles, describes stepping into one as an encounter with paradox. Other topics include the use of sacred geometry in permaculture design, the suppression of sacred symbols, the extreme polarization of forces by industrial cultures, and the possibility of communicating with non-human intelligence via the language of fractal geometry.

KMO welcomes Derrick Jensen back to the program to explain why individual lifestyle change cannot substitute for organized political resistance. What's the point of taking shorter showers when industry and agriculture account for 90% of human water usage? Derrick explains why he thinks the Malthusian Correction can't come soon enough and why the physical world must be the independent variable in all of our calculations.

Music by Tonal Oak

War has been a constant in the human experience throughout recorded history. Does that mean that it is inevitable? John Horgan suggests that it is not. Scientific findings indicate that human nature does not compel humans to go to war, but Gwynne Dyer joins John and KMO in the C-Realm to discuss how climate change and efforts to deal with it are likely to lead to armed conflict in the near future.

Music by Nine Inch Nails

KMO welcomes Tony Monchinski, author of Critical Pedagogy and the Everyday Classroom, to the program to talk about how patterning education on the corporate model and trying to run everything "by the numbers" in a massively top-down fashion contributes to the problems of modern education. The discussion ranges over some familiar C-Realm topics including psychedelics and the Drug War.

Music by Money Tree

KMO reads a passage about the feedbacks between the real economy and the speculative economy before playing a conversation with Web of Debt author Ellen H. Brown about the refusal of Citigroup, Wells Fargo, and JPMorgan Chase (which each got $25 billion in bailout money from the taxpayers) and Bank of America (which received $15 billion) to accept IOUs from the state of California to help overcome its budget shortfall. The discussion touches on the performance to date and possible motives of US President Barak Obama.

Music by Tibet2Timbuk2

What does psychedelic ego inflation have to do with the debt trap perpetrated on the Two-thirds World by parasitic oligarchs? Probably not much, but KMO strings together clips from the Psychedelic Salon, Black Light in the Attic, Shamanic Freedom Radio and the Media Squat and comes up with this unlikely metaphor. Music by Richard Grossman and Nine Inch Nails

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 looks back at the C-Realm Podcast's 2008 offerings, anticipates the challenges of the coming year, reads email from listeners and discusses the on-going C-Realm Project with guest Neil Kramer. This is a long one folks, so make yourself a hot drink, get comfortable, and settle in for 90 minutes of in-group preening and navel gazing. Music by Glöd.

Show notes: http://kmo.livejournal.com/389575.html

KMO welcomes Daniel Pinchbeck and Dmitry Orlov to the program to discuss their visions of the challenges and opportunities that present themselves in this liminal moment in human history. Might our economic system be on the verge of collapse? Would that necessarily be a bad thing? How might we reinvent ourselves and our society as we search for a new guiding communal myth? Later, KMO talks with Corey Call about the upcoming Coalessence Festival in Eureka Springs, Arkansas.

Show notes: http://kmo.livejournal.com/375721.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

KMO welcomes Matthew J. Pallamary, author of Land Without Evil, back to the program to talk about the preparations one can make prior to departure in order to get the most from one's ayahuasca experiences.

Show notes: http://kmo.livejournal.com/348815.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.