Episodes
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Episode 35: Lost and Found and Lost Again
Hello my dear friends. Here’s a big, challenging but loving idea I’ve been working on for awhile. It comes from asking the question – why has this century been so full of disappointment, frustration and conflict, just when the whole world seemed poised on the edge of hope, after decades of…
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Episode 34: Sky Pie and Meadow Muffins
So you say you want to change the world... Rebellion isn’t new at all, but we’ve been lying about old rebellions for so long now, that we have almost forgotten what the real thing looks sounds and feels like (and especially, which part of the heart it comes from). Timothy Leary is an especially...
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Episode 33: Memory is just about illegal
What do we need memory and free speech for? Why is it crucial that we are allowed to offend the powerful? Because they are trying to get us all killed with war and ecological collapse, and citizens are going to have to learn to cooperate again and steer ourselves responsibly, together (known as...
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Episode 32: Not Your Daddy
Hello folks - time for some full-strength politics once again! It is such a strange moment right now – I’d really like to be able to link directly to my most passionate friends on the right, middle and left and ask them to give this one a listen and a think, but I don’t want to accidentally set…
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Episode 31: The Medium and the Big Mess
We talk (and nowadays argue) quite a lot about what we use computers for, but we don't so often think about what they are, and how we are changed by using them. I think there are hopeful clues to positive possibilities, and also helpful ways to resist emotional manipluation which are perhaps more...
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Episode 30: Patriots and Revolutionaries
Hello my friends! Politics is an especially scary subject in this insanely polarized moment. Very serious stuff, the consequences of which will stay with us a whole lot longer than this fearful crisis. So far - left right and middle, we have all failed to meet the moment. Performance and…
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Episode 29: Pulling Out In Time
Hello my friends – time for a podcast once again. Afghanistan is the subject of the hour – but I haven’t heard a single word said yet, which reflects context or memory. Never in my own living memory has the professional news media industry been quite so dumb, casually racist, dishonest, immoral…
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Episode 28: Disobedience
Who is a rebel – what is the system? What is oppressive conformity, and what is heroic resistance? Where is corruption? Who and what holds real power? When is knowledge dangerous, who gets to decide? How free are we really willing to risk being? How much responsibility must we take? Most of these...
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Episode 27: Challenging Evolution
Nowadays, we talk awfully excitedly about our precise cultural moment, but hardly at all about how we got here. Most generations mythologize their contributions, and try their best to hide their faults. But I say we learn much more, show truer respect and also sometimes find surprisingly deep...
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Episode 26: Them's Fightin' Words
Hello friends - so much of what we hear is furious and righteous hard polarity nowadays, I thought this would be a good time to talk about some of the many ways we misunderstand each other and the world. Everyone is angry - but everyone is wrong, also - at least some of the time. We can do…
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Episode 25: The Snowflake-Fascist Translating Dictionary
What with shrill tribalism and a maelstrom of finger-pointing theories, the one thing that we all seem to share today is an irrational and barely controllable fury. The theories and targets vary, but the rage is everywhere. Problem is, none of us think properly when we’re angry. We look for…
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Episode 24: Apple Pie and Cyanide
Tempers are high, and meanings have never been so confused – good and bad all mixed together. But it is always important for us to ask - How big is the difference between intentions and outcomes? Turns out, it is as big as the difference between temperance and gangsterism!
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Episode 22: Give 'em what for and how
Podcast time again - and once again my title is a play on words, rather than any sort of an ornery sentiment. I come bearing practical hope of all kinds of victory, including the expansion of compassion and embracing love - not to win an argument. Hope it makes you feel less alone - and your…
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Episode 21: A Liberal Who Just Got Mugged
My friends, this one is a bit of a sh1t kicker – I apologize and you’re welcome in advance. I have a ton of friends on the left who are disillusioned, and I know others in the middle and on the conservative side of the spectrum who are no less happy about the way things are going. Spokespeople on...
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Episode 20: Anarchy and the Nuclear Option
It is kind of amazing how many lies are told nowadays, and how much harm comes from the way we so easily believe them. There are a lot of different ways to oppose this, but most of what we hear about them is also - drumroll please, wait for it - lies! ;o)
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Episode 19: The Full Package
All world-craziness aside, this is the holiday season, so for this episode I thought I would look at hope – and not in some feel-good ‘wishingist’ way. I mean the sort of sensible rigorous and rational stuff that everyone can test for themselves and believe in together, even if they might be...
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Episode 18: Nature and Nurture and Fools and Horses
Have you ever actually sat down and read Leviticus, from start to finish? The other day I was thinking hard about how to carefully describe some of the serious problems of reason and compassion in the political correctness movement, and I realized that for all the arguments I have heard referring...
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Un-Doomed
How do we create a basis for genuine hope? Magical thinking is fun – good enough for poetry and rock concerts, but vastly insufficient for the sort of sustained social transformations so many believe are required. The good news is that the practical and the heartfelt do not have to be alienated....
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Didn't Rome Deserve It, Though?
Hello my friends! I am sorry to have been silent so long. I have been trying (as I explain within) but like everyone else, I am finding many things more of a struggle than usual lately. This one came from several sources of inspiration – especially a bracing blog (which I must guiltily admit...
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All In
This is a moment of high passion and righteous calls for justice. Good time also to think about the history of advances in rights, and the outcomes of previous movements – so we can incorporate lessons about strategy – and make sure this justice energy isn’t wasted, coopted or thwarted, by evil…
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The Ultimate Adversary
Is the government our common parent? Is it a large network of people very much like us, operating under rules that can sometimes baffle? Is it our enemy? Are we its heroic opponent? Is there another approach altogether?
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Upright Wobblies and Low-Down Commies
Here’s a piece about language, conflict, political misunderstanding, and even true and false spirit. Along the way I talk about the early labour-organizing socialists, the Soviet Union, the first and second world war and the cold war which followed. It’s really hard to take apart a big and…
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You Can't Guilt a Fascist
A whole lot of us, young and old, are very tired of living in a hopeless, bleak ironic caricature of a democracy. Long past time to try the real thing – even if only so we can go down vividly, like poets, lovers and warriors – instead of pointlessly, like an overstuffed Pompeii full of infantile,...
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Certain Idiots
We may never know why this is – but thanks to a couple of cool scientists, we actually can now objectively say that the ignorant are often too ignorant to recognize their own ignorance. Idiots? Metacognition deficit? Counter-revolutionaries? Have a listen and decide for yourself.
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Disguise Are Falling
Fear is a very strange force in the world - capable of producing even stranger results - some of them foul, and some surprisingly valuable. How we see and conduct ourselves can help the odds - in either direction.
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Excellent Discrimination
Buckminster Fuller is one of my greatest personal heroes because he never stopped trying to improve the survival odds of humanity - even when humanity seemed gleefully determined to harm itself. Hard-headed optimist! Relentlessly peaceful and world-embracing! Rigorous, unstoppable and notoriously...
About this show
Challenging and compassionate talks about the state of the world, the lies we often celebrate about how we got here, and what we might try next. (Because only truth can empower the caring and intelligent)
Hosted by
Paul Snyders
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