Podcasts about Cartesian

Why do we need a nuclear family? What actually determines the difference between a boy and a girl? These feel like brand-new questions, but the ideas that make them askable were actually seeded four hundred years ago. Dr. Jordan Cooper joins us to trace them back to their source.ABOUT THE EPISODE: Lutheran theologian and pastor Dr. Cooper walks Josh through the philosophical roots of the modern progressive mind and the broader philosophy of the left: Descartes and Cartesian doubt, Kant's Copernican Revolution, Hume's empiricism and skepticism, Hobbes's social contract theory, and Thomas Paine's radical individualism, the intellectual scaffolding beneath everything from critical theory to postmodernism. It's the same scaffolding underneath the questions above. Once Hume argues that even something as basic as cause and effect is just an assumption rather than a certainty, and Kant argues that categories like space and time are imposed by the mind rather than discovered in the world, the door opens to treating categories like family and gender the same way: not given, but constructed, and open to being remade.Dr. Cooper's book Makers of the Modern Mind grew out of years doing campus ministry at Cornell, watching students absorb progressive assumptions and secular philosophy they'd never actually examined. Drawing on his background in Lutheran theology and Christian apologetics, this conversation is a guided tour through where those assumptions came from, and why the question underneath almost all of them, in philosophy, politics, and the modern culture wars alike, is simply: what is a human being?0:00 – Introduction1:14 – Dr. Jordan Cooper2:45 – Lutheran Branding Problem4:21 – Makers of the Modern Mind10:23 – Union With Christ Doctrine16:30 – Descartes' Cogito Ergo Sum26:38 – Kant's Copernican Revolution31:33 – David Hume's Skepticism42:35 – Thomas Paine & Liberalism51:21 – Right Vs Left Liberalism56:52 – Applying Philosophy TodayABOUT THE GUEST:

Transformations in 3D: How AMSI approaches new concepts in the ICE-EM textbooks Episode summary Three-dimensional coordinates and transformations are a significant addition to the Year 8 mathematics curriculum—but how do we introduce them without making 3D geometry feel unnecessarily abstract? In this episode of MathsTalk, AMSI Schools' Leanne McMahon explores the thinking behind the new Transformations in 3D chapter she authored for the fourth edition of ICE-EM Mathematics Year 8. Beginning with students' existing understanding of 2D coordinates and transformations, Leanne looks at how teachers can build towards ordered triples, coordinate planes and transformations in three-dimensional space. She discusses the value of dynamic geometry software such as GeoGebra, practical approaches for developing spatial reasoning, and real-world applications including drones, robotics, gaming, animation, architecture, 3D printing and navigation. AMSI ICE-EM Mathematics textbooks The fourth edition of ICE-EM Mathematics covers Years 5–10 and has been updated for Australian Curriculum Mathematics Version 9.0 and Victorian Curriculum Mathematics Version 2.0. The new editions include additional digital resources, video explanations, written solutions and connections with AMSI Calculate and AMSI Careers resources. Explore the ICE-EM Mathematics series https://schools.amsi.org.au/ice-em-mathematics-textbooks/ ICE-EM Mathematics Fourth Edition – Year 8 https://schools.amsi.org.au/2026/03/10/ice-em-mathematics-third-edition-year-8/ Order ICE-EM Mathematics from Cambridge University Press & Assessment https://www.cambridge.org/au/education/australia-subject/mathematics/ice-em-mathematics-5-10-4th-edition Year 8 curriculum: position and location in three dimensions The Australian and Victorian Curricula Mathematics  content description VC2M8SP03 asks students to describe the position and location of three-dimensional objects using different representations, including a three-dimensional Cartesian coordinate system and dynamic geometry software or other digital tools. Its elaborations include drones, 3D printing, virtual maps, multistorey car parks and the construction of objects in a 3D coordinate system. Victorian Curriculum Mathematics 2.0 – VC2M8SP03 https://victoriancurriculum.vcaa.vic.edu.au/Search?q=VC2M8SP03 GeoGebra and 3D geometry GeoGebra's free 3D Calculator allows students to plot points and objects in three-dimensional space, manipulate the viewing perspective, construct planes and solids, and explore mathematical transformations dynamically. Open the GeoGebra 3D Calculator https://www.geogebra.org/3d?lang=en_AU GeoGebra 3D Calculator – help and overview https://help.geogebra.org/hc/en-us/articles/8493632359069-3D-Calculator Learn GeoGebra 3D – official tutorial A guided introduction to the 3D Calculator, including solids, rotations, cross-sections and other 3D constructions. https://www.geogebra.org/m/aWhYSpvy GeoGebra apps and downloads Includes the Calculator Suite, Geometry app and 3D Calculator. https://www.geogebra.org/download?lang=en-AU GeoGebra transformation resources An interactive collection exploring translations, reflections, rotations and dilations. https://www.geogebra.org/m/TReQvk73 Upcoming: AMSI Industry Day for Teachers – Albury-Wodonga AMSI's next Industry Day for Teachers will be held on Thursday 10 September 2026 at La Trobe University's Albury-Wodonga Campus. This free professional learning event is designed for secondary mathematics and STEM teachers and careers advisers from regional Victoria and southern New South Wales. The day connects teachers with tertiary educators and industry professionals to explore where mathematics is being used in the workforce and the diverse pathways available to students. Victorian high school teachers attending the event can also apply for one of a limited number of $500 CRT/travel bursaries. Albury-Wodonga event details https://amsi.org.au/events/event/industry-day-for-teachers-la-trobe-albury-wodonga/ AMSI Industry Day for Teachers – program, speakers and registration https://amsi.org.au/amsi-industry-day-for-teachers/ Proudly supported by Texas Instruments Texas Instruments provides Australian mathematics teachers with classroom technology, curriculum-aligned activities, teaching resources and professional learning opportunities. Its Australian Teacher Resource Centre includes free classroom activities and assessment resources for Years 7–10, as well as webinars, tutorials and professional development. Texas Instruments Australia – Teacher Resource Centre https://education.ti.com/en-au/teachers Australian Curriculum Nspired – classroom activities and resources https://education.ti.com/en-au/australiancurriculumnspired/aus-nz/home Texas Instruments Australia https://education.ti.com/en-au/ More from AMSI Schools AMSI Calculate – mathematics resources for teachers and students https://calculate.org.au/ AMSI Careers – explore where mathematics can take you https://careers.amsi.org.au/ Listen to more MathsTalk episodes https://calculate.org.au/mathstalk-podcast/

In their 500th episode, Tony Arsenal and Jesse Schwamb celebrate a decade of The Reformed Brotherhood by diving into one of Scripture's most overlooked parables — the Parable of the Growing Seed in Mark 4:26–29. Exclusive to Mark's Gospel, this four-verse passage packs a theological punch that is, as Tony and Jesse argue, unmistakably Reformed in its emphasis. The man scatters seed, goes about his life, and the earth produces — by itself — without his understanding or intervention. From this, the hosts draw out rich implications for evangelism, sanctification, ecclesiology, and eschatology. They argue that the kingdom of God advances by divine power alone, hidden from human sight, moving toward a certain consummation. The episode pairs deep theological reflection with the hosts' characteristic warmth, humor, and 10 years' worth of shared history. Key Takeaways Monergism is embedded in the parable itself. The growth of the seed is entirely God's doing. The man scatters and rests; the earth produces by itself — a picture of divine sovereignty that requires no human management or comprehension. The evangelist's only obligation is to scatter. This parable relieves believers of the anxious burden of producing spiritual fruit. Faithfulness in proclamation is the call; growth belongs to God. Sanctification is gradual, hidden, and God's work. The progression — blade, ear, full grain — mirrors the believer's sanctification, which proceeds by degrees imperceptible to the individual yet certain in God's design. The Kingdom of God is not dependent on any individual. Whether it's a ministry leader, a financial contributor, or a worship musician, no single human agent is load-bearing for the advance of God's kingdom. Primary and secondary causation work together without contradiction. God uses means — the farmer still sows, the earth still functions — but the means are instrumental, not efficient causes. God's providence encompasses and exceeds them. The harvest belongs to God, not the evangelist. Just as the man did not direct the growth, he is not the agent ultimately putting in the sickle. The consummation of the kingdom occurs in God's time and by God's initiative. This parable resists reduction. It cannot be flattened into a simple evangelism lesson or a single eschatological statement. It holds together personal sanctification, corporate ecclesiology, and cosmic eschatology within four verses. Key Concepts The Earth Produces By Itself: Monergism in the Parable The theological center of this parable is the Greek word automate — the earth produces "by itself," without external compulsion or human assistance. Tony and Jesse argue this is not incidental language but the thesis of the entire passage. The farmer is genuinely active — he scatters the seed — but his agency recedes almost immediately from view. He doesn't monitor the soil, apply nutrients, or trace the growth. He simply lives his life. This picture coheres precisely with the Reformed doctrine of monergism: that in regeneration and kingdom growth alike, the decisive cause lies entirely outside human capacity. As Jesse puts it, the mechanism of growth "belongs to God alone." The farmer's ignorance is not a failure — it is the point. We are not meant to understand the how; we are meant to trust the Who. Scatter, Then Rest: A Theology of Evangelism Without Anxiety One of the episode's most practically rich applications concerns the posture believers are called to adopt in evangelism. Tony observes that this parable is rarely preached as an encouragement to evangelists, yet that is precisely what it is. The sower's only active verb is scattering. After that, he sleeps and rises — the rhythms of ordinary life — while God does the work that no human strategy, method, or persistence can accomplish. This directly addresses what Tony calls the "anxiety around trying to ensure some sort of production." The Reformed vision of evangelism is not passive indifference but liberated faithfulness: scatter the seed of the gospel without bearing the impossible weight of manufactured outcomes. As Paul writes in 1 Corinthians 3:6–7, "Neither he who plants nor he who waters is anything, but only God who gives the growth." Blade, Then Ear, Then Grain: The Patience of Providence The threefold progression Jesus describes — blade, then ear, then full grain — is not decorative agricultural detail. It is a theological statement about the character of God's work in the world and in the soul. Growth is gradual, ordered, and unhurried. Jesse draws the direct application to sanctification: the believer cannot fully trace the work of grace in his own heart, yet it is real and it is God's doing. This ought to produce, as Jesse summarizes, "patient confidence rather than human striving or anxiety." The church, too, matures through stages. Neither impatience with slowness nor despair at imperceptibility is warranted — both misread the nature of divine providence. God is not behind schedule. He is, as always, working through means, in His time, toward a consummation He has already appointed. Memorable Quotes The earth produces by itself — we might even say the kingdom of God produces by itself. It's not dependent on anything except God's sovereign will and his sovereignty to execute all that he desires. - Tony Arsenal The mechanism of growth is strangely hidden from the human agent, and it belongs to God alone. - Jesse Schwamb The kingdom of God advances by God's own hidden power toward a certain appointed consummation — and this ought to produce patient confidence rather than human striving or anxiety. - Jesse Schwamb Full Transcript Jesse Schwamb: Welcome to the 10th Pentacost episode of the [00:01:00] Reformed Brotherhood. It's number 500. I'm Jesse Tony Arsenal: and I'm Tony, and this is the podcast that's been going for 10 years. Hey, brother.  Jesse Schwamb: Hey, brother. A happy 500th episode to you.  Tony Arsenal: I know, man. It's kinda crazy. It's kinda crazy, and we're not gonna do anything special 'cause we don't do that, but it is crazy that this is the 500th episode. That's a lot of podcasting.  Jesse Schwamb: It's absolutely wild.  Podcast Memories And Mishaps Jesse Schwamb: And as with any milestone, as I was thinking about this one occurring, it did draw my mind to all the crazy things that have happened on this podcast, some known, some unknown. Of course, there is the very infamous time that I spilled a whole bottle of kombucha on the desk while we were recording, but everybody knows about that. But I was, I was also thinking about the, the lesser-known ones, like the time you and I sat in the downstairs church, like so close to each other on the same side of the table- Yeah ... to record a episode, or the time [00:02:00] that a tow truck showed up while we were recording and I had to go run out and direct the tow truck 'cause I'd called it for the car. Tony Arsenal: Yeah.  Jesse Schwamb: And you paused the episode so that we could go do that, or the time that we had our favorite Lutherans on the podcast in what I think was, like, the hottest environment, and I just remember the sweat trickling down Chad Bird's beard. Like, like, like air being- Like the oil gloss ... mixed with oil. Yeah. It was so hot. So those are the ones that come to my mind. I don't know if there are any ones that come to you. We- we've had some great episodes, and by the way, they all live out for free in the world on reformedbrotherhood.com. So don't take our word for it. You can go all the way back to the beginning if you really want to, and you can hear this incredible journey that God has had us on these some 10 years. So I'm curious, like, do any episodes, topics, conversations, weird things come to your mind after all this time?  Tony Arsenal: Uh, the one I remember is when we recorded with Dad and we were waiting for the snow, the [00:03:00]snowplow- ... and we had to, like, wrap the episode up real quick because the snowplow was there and we had to go move cars. That's right. So there's been a fair amount of episodes where it's like something has interrupted us and we need to just get it over with real quick. That's right. Um, hopefully the listener doesn't hear that too much.  Patreon Support Check In Tony Arsenal: The other thing I was thinking about, you know, just as we're kinda thinking about the back catalog, we're not great at this. Uh, we tend to do our, what, what's they call the call to action. The experts call it the call to action. We do it at the very end of our podcast episodes, which is the worst place to do it. Uh, but we're gonna try to land it in the beginning here. So we, we've been supported by a number of, of people, uh, for basically the entire podcast. I don't remember exactly how early on it was that we started doing Patreon, but it's, it's been a long time. And what I noticed the other day, I went in to, to check on a couple things and make sure everything was working the way it's supposed to. There was some, like, account merge I had to do, and I've noticed that several people who've been supporting us, um, pretty much since the beginning- have their accounts listed in a declined status. [00:04:00] And what that means is that their, probably their credit card that they use, uh, has expired, and so now they're not, no longer supporting the show even though they think they are. So if you are a person who believes you're supporting the show, particularly if you've been supporting the show for a long time, and you wanna continue to support the show, uh, we would really appreciate if you took a minute to go into your Patreon account, double-check that the, you know, that you've been, um, contributing for the last couple months. Uh, double-check that the credit card you have on file is not, uh, expired or suspended or anything like that. Um, again, if you've made a decision that it's time to stop, uh, stop the show, or if this is the point where you realize, "I don't care enough to re-support to the show," um, that's fine. We love you. We've appreciated your support. We hope you keep listening. Uh, but if you do wanna continue to contribute, please do check that. And if you've never taken a chance to think through whether or not you want to support the show, uh, Jesse and I are so thankful for all the support we have.  Jesse Schwamb: Yes.  Tony Arsenal: Uh, but things are getting more expensive, and, um, you know, that's, that's [00:05:00] just a reality for all of us, and that includes things like podcasting hosting fees. Um, the cost of our, our editing software that we use has gone up. That's a subscription. Uh, the cost of hosting space has gone up. Um, all of that, uh, all of that has gone up, and so even though we've had steady supporters, it's kinda like we have lost supporters, um, financially because the money doesn't go quite as far. So if you've ever thought, "Maybe I should, uh, maybe I should contribute to the podcast," please do think about it. Even if just, uh, half of our audience went in and contributed $1 a month, um, that would be a substantial amount. That would really help us to keep the podcast going. And there's actually a number of projects and things Jesse have I, and I have wanted to do, um, that we would love to be able to, you know, to take a step on. Uh, we just don't have funding to do it, uh- Right ... because the funding we have is enough to keep the podcast going but not enough to stretch to something else. So I don't wanna, like, preload that too much, 'cause who knows if it's gonna happen, but there's some things that we wanna do [00:06:00] that would involve a little bit of upfront capital that we would need- Right to get some contrib- contributions on. So please do consider that. We appreciate you so much if you've been a supporter. We appreciate you so much if you've even considered it. Uh, and we appreciate you so much just for listening, uh, especially- Yes ... if you've been with us, you know, this is episode 500. That's a lot of podcasting- Yeah, it is ... directly in your ear hole. So thank you so much for that.  Jesse Schwamb: Yeah, we're so grateful.  Why We Keep Doing This Jesse Schwamb: It's fun just to think how many episodes we recorded, but also how many interesting conversations and topics, all the inside jokes. It really is a community. That's in part why we started this, is to sit down together and to bring other brothers and sisters into the fray, as it were, or maybe to bring us into your fray a little bit and to encourage and edify the church, the brothers and sisters, the saints around the world. And it is an around the world kinda podcast, which is remarkable too. So- Yes ... we're just gonna keep being here. As long as the Lord tarries and He allows us to do this, we'll just keep doing it. And again, we've recorded in closets, in cars on the way to things. We've done it at [00:07:00] the beach, and we've done it in cold environs, and we've done it in hot environs. And you're right, you reminded me of that time where we were desperately waiting as we were getting snowed in for the plow to come. And then it was all hands on deck, and we just dropped the recording equipment and said, "We gotta get out of here." And more often than not, the p- joy of this podcast is it just kinda finds its way into our normal rhythm of life. But it- Yeah ... comes out of our life, and out of a life that's been transformed by Christ. And so that's really what we come back to.  Mark Only Parable Preview Jesse Schwamb: In fact, that's the whole thing that we're in right now. We're going through all these parables. And this episode, we can't stop, won't stop. We're gonna continue to hit you with the content that we love, which is talking about Jesus. And so we're in one of the few... Well, it's a Markan parable that only appears in Mark. That's why I called it Markan, I guess. So extra bonus points to you, that's both extra and bonus, if you know which one it is before I say it. But there's a lot for us to talk about- ... because we're getting into this really, really short little story, but it's really chock-full, of course, as Jesus likes to do with all [00:08:00] kinds of spiritual truth. It's about a farmer chucking a seed on the ground, and then he goes about his business. He eats, he sleeps, he binge-watches the Jane equivalent of Netflix. He sleeps again, he wakes up. And while he does this, the seed is doing entirely its own thing without his help or understanding. He didn't make it grow. He can't explain how it grows. He just shows up at the end with a sickle to collect what God has already finished. Man, if there isn't a Reformed theological parable, I don't know what one is. Yeah. So we're gonna get to all of that on this 500th episode. I mean, it's something to be saying that even the US is only 250 years old, and- we've already recorded twice as many podcasts as there are years of experience in the US. But besides all of that, it wouldn't be- It's like- ... Reformed Brotherhood-  Tony Arsenal: I don't know if you've seen this. That reminds me of those things online where it's like, like, "Elon Musk is a billi- is a trillionaire. That means he could give every person on earth $1 billion- Oh, yeah and still would be a multi-billionaire." And you're like, "That's, that's not mathematically true." 'Cause when [00:09:00]you said that, I was like, "You mean the podcast is older than the country?"  Jesse Schwamb: Oh, math. I have a feeling we're gonna come back to that. Oh, math.  Tony Arsenal: Oh, math.  Affirm Or Deny Segment Jesse Schwamb: Now, of course, if you listen for any length of time, you know it wouldn't be an episode if we didn't have a time of affirming with or denying against. Of course, that is that time where we pick something that we like, we think everybody should be a part of, that we wanna recommend, and we affirm with it. Or on the opposite, instead we say, "We deny against this thing because it's just no good." So Tony, on this 500th episode, I'm just gonna keep saying it over and over again, so lest the listeners forget, what are you affirming with or denying against? Tony Arsenal: Yeah.  Scammer Payback Recommendation Tony Arsenal: I'm affirming, um, a little YouTube channel that I found. Uh, it takes a little bit of setup to explain it, but the, the channel is called Scammer Payback. Ooh. Um, and it's, it's a... I think most people have probably seen, like, the Gene Fieith- Gene Veith, um, like, where he, he gets a, some sort of scammer on the phone, and he sorta just, like, [00:10:00] trolls them and makes, kinda makes them sound dumb and, you know, pretends to play along just to see how long he can keep them on the phone. Those are really funny. These are funny, but they're on a whole different level of seriousness, which is a weird sentence. Um, basically what this is is a group of professional hackers, um, and there's, this is a serious kinda sting operation they have going. They don't use their real names on the channel. Um, there's one, there's one, um, where they interview, like, a social, um, a social engineer whose job is to... Her- she is a person who basically, uh, does social hacking, and she helps companies who, who their security people think, like, their executives are, um, susceptible to social engineering, social hacking. She'll actually call and, like, mess around with the CEOs and socially hack them. Um, they interviewed her, and the first thing she said when she sat down was the person she was talking to's first name, and the guy was just stunned. He's like, "I- we- we've never used my first name on the channel before." So they're very serious, and what they do is they identify [00:11:00] a scam or a g- usually a group of scammers, and they'll actually hack into and infiltrate the computer systems that they're using. And so they show you everything that they're doing. Um, they're, they're explaining the scam and how it's run. Um, and a lot of times they're actually actively intervening in, uh, in a scam, trying to stop a scam that's in progress because somebody is about to lose a lot of money. I mean, I think one of the things that's important about this is our audience, you know, mostly, mostly guys probably, like, age, I don't know, late 20s, early 30s, maybe early 40s, we kind of grew up and lived, lived in a world most of our adult lives or all of our adult lives where, like, fishing schemes and other kinds of, like, um, data s- data theft, like, that was just in the air. It was just normal. So we're... It's not like we're immune to it, but we're used to it, and we're ready for it, and we're looking for it. That means that most of us have parents that are in a generation who are particularly susceptible to this. [00:12:00] So I think it would be worth, worth people's time to take a look at this, uh, just as a educational piece, and then, yes, share it with your family members who are in this era. People get taken for a ton of money. Yeah. The reason that these older generation sort of bu- builder Boomer generations are targeted is not just because they're somewhat soft targets, but they also have the money. Um, most of, most of the wealth in our country is possessed by people in that generation. It's just an economic fact in a lot of places and a lot of areas, and so that's why they're targeted. So take a little bit of time, watch the show. It's... And it's entertaining. It's really well produced. It's funny. These are non-Christians, you know, who are, are being non-Christian, so there's a fair amount of salty language, especially when they're interacting directly with the scammers that they absolutely hate. Um, but it's, it's worth watching. And, and it... I think it'll... I think it's entertaining. Most of the time it's like a 15-minute video, so it's not too much of your time. Pop that on two times [00:13:00] speed on YouTube and, and you're all set.  Jesse Schwamb: And when you say salty you're not talking about Salty the Singing Songbook, right? Tony Arsenal: Correct. Yeah. Not P-S-A-L-T-Y. S-A-L-T-Y.  Jesse Schwamb: Just in case. I wouldn't want any of the loved ones to go and just be waiting for Salty to show up, like, in the mid- Which would be kind of epic in the midst of this, like, scamming shutdown, the sting operation. Like, Salty s- pops up and starts singing about restorative justice and- Yeah what it means that God restores all things. I mean, that would have a good place in this, but I just want that just to be clear. We don't, we don't want anybody to, to at us on that.  Tony Arsenal: Yeah, for sure. Well, Jesse, what are you affirming or denying tonight?  Jesse Loves Algebra Jesse Schwamb: I'm going to return to that beautiful intro you gave about mathematics and the whole Elon Musk thing. And so my affirmation is simply, like, just do... Just enjoy all the math you can. Use all the math that you know. So my wife and I were watching some kind of program on YouTube, and it was a program in which there are a couple [00:14:00]people competing in this kind of escape room situation, and as escape rooms are want to do, there came some kind of small math problem. And it goes something like this, is the best I can remember it. It was what number between one and nine when it is tripled and five is added to it is the same as that number being doubled and having one added to it? Now, as soon as that problem was read, we were watching intently, and I turned to my wife and I said, "Why do they need to say it's between, like, one and nine?" And she goes, "Well, how else would they know what the number was?" And I was like, "Well, like, this is a beautiful little algebra thing, like se- series of equations. Like, you have two equations here." And she's like... Just gave me a blank look. So I was like, "Oh, man." So she's like, "Okay. Do it then. Do it." So I was like, "Give me a piece of paper." So I, I was just like, this is gonna be such a beautiful thing. So I was like, "All this is, is, like, it's basically 3x minus five equals 2x plus one. You're solving for whatever this missing number is, and they've given you this beautiful setup, [00:15:00] which you rarely get in real life, but this beautiful setup is a system of equations. We have two things you know are gonna turn out to be the same. They've just been said in different ways, and that allows you enough space to figure out how to solve for them using a little bit of algebra." So I realized then this is why they said between one and nine, because the contestants then proceeded just to iteratively pick numbers until they found the answer, which is not a bad way. Like, that's a way to use, like, all the math you have. Certainly, that's a way. But I showed her how it was like, this is the answer, six, and you don't even need to know where to start because you don't need to start anywhere. You can actually figure this out. Still not really impressed. And then she said something to me that just, like, kind of rocked my world. I said, like, "Well, I'm sure this is familiar to, with, to you." And she's like, "Oh, yeah. Like, I learned algebra." And she goes, "Yeah, I, I know algebra. I just don't do it anymore. I just don't use it anymore." And I was like What, what I heard was, like, basically her saying to me, "I used to brush my teeth, but I just don't do it [00:16:00] anymore." 'Cause I was like, "This is such a beautiful thing." So then I got it in my head, well, well here's the problem. It's just a matter of seeing the results. So I was like, "Well, here's the amazing thing is yes, these are abstract concepts. Yes, it's like each of those is a function. It's, it's a representation of what he just said in the problem. But," and this is my grave mistake, Tony. But I was like, "Really, Descartes showed us that we can think about these not as abstractions, but we can plot them geometrically as lines on a Cartesian plane." And so I was like, "Really we can show that these are two lines and they have a relationship together." And then I was like, "Guess where they intersect? Guess where they intersect?" And she's like, "I w- that's impossible to even know. I have no idea where they intersect." I was like, "No, no. Just, just based on what we're saying, the beauty of this is they have a relationship. They're gonna come together at some point, like you and I in life. They're gonna, they're gonna come together. Guess where that would be?" And she's like, "That would be impossible to know." And I was like, "It's not, actually." So I showed her that, you know, left and right, up and down, X and Y, however you wanna speak [00:17:00] about it, those two lines are gonna intersect, at least on the X. The X spot is gonna be the number six. It's the same thing. Still nothing. So after all of that, I just appreciate my wife is such a brilliant lady, that she just doesn't need algebra. She goes through life just, like, crushing problems without... Like, because she'd like to do it, I think, just the, the more challenging, difficult, iterative way. And, uh, she doesn't use algebra anymore. Just no need for it. So in many ways I respect that. In other ways, again, the affirmation is like, use all the math you have available to you because it's a beautiful thing. I think basically at the end of that I ended up in, like, a very supreme place of doxology, and my wife was like, "Can we just go back to watching TV now?" So but I, I have to say, like, and I, I know you, you share my appreciation for math and stuff like this. Like, it's not even just puzzles. It's just the beauty that, like, we can do this, and that there's such a created order, like a supremely created order, that these rules of ma- mathematics aren't just impounded. They're like the fabric in which God has, [00:18:00] has basically woven all of reality such that we can do this kind of thing, and that even a simple problem in escape room can lead us to appreciate how intensely ordered and beautiful the world is, that we can go after knowledge and solve for explicit things that seem abstract beyond our comprehension and reason to begin with, but have been brought to a place we might understand them. That is, like, an insanely glorious thing to me. So algebra is great, loved ones. I've recommended before, but the side affirmation is go to Khan Academy if you wanna brush up on your algebra skills. I think algebra is, like, some of the most beautiful and intensely practical math ever. I love calculus, but calculus you don't get a lot of, like, use. You can use algebra to solve all kinds of things, whether it's like tips or... Like, it's gonna save you so much time. If you're ever in escape room, I'm just telling you, do not do this iteratively. Just get the, your system of equations down, and you will be, like, tearing out of that room, and then you'll look like a hero. Tony Arsenal: Yeah. Yeah.  Math In Everyday Life Tony Arsenal: I mean, I think, like, even the f- even the, the... How do I wanna say this delicately? Uh, [00:19:00] even the idea that we, quote, "don't use algebra" means people don't actually understand that we're using algebra all the  Jesse Schwamb: time.  Tony Arsenal: Exactly. Right. Like, I could buy I don't use calculus or I don't use trigonometry- Right or even I don't use geometry. Um, but to say I don't use algebra, like just basic. I mean, I know like basic equations are, I guess, technically arithmetic, but like how many times does someone have to, have to go, "All right, the tip, the, the bill is X number of dollars. The bill is-" Right ..."$100, and I wanna give a 15% tip, so what's the outcome?" Like, that's an algebraic equation, right? That's right. Um, or a more, I think a more common one would be like, "All right, the bill is this amount. I want my, uh, my final amount that I give billed to me to be an even number."  Jesse Schwamb: Right. " Tony Arsenal: And I also want to give at least 15%, 20%, whatever percent, so what's the number I need to use in order to get to a bill that is, or a [00:20:00] tip that is both 15% or higher and results..." Like, all of those things are algebraic equations.  Jesse Schwamb: Yes.  Tony Arsenal: So I think, yeah. I mean, even like, "I need to get to work by such and such a time. What time do I need to leave?" Right. "I know it takes-" Exactly. "... a certain amount of time." Right. So I think we, we all use algebra a lot more than we, we probably realize, and I think you're right. Like, when people say, "Well, I don't use my math anymore," what they're saying is like, "I don't use, I don't use the stuff that I had to show my work on anymore." Right. "I don't use the stuff that I have to do on paper anymore." But, um, it's funny, we had a, a conversation, by the way, Reformed Tele- Reformed Brotherhood Telegram chat is a thing. Uh, we had a conversation in the Reformed Brotherhood Telegram chat a little while ago. One of our members was trying to figure out some sort of, like- And it was a problem having to do with like a, an air conditioning throttle or whatever it's called. Some sort of like programming in an air conditioner. And we went through it, we figured out that one of the like relatively complex parts of the equation that he was trying to figure out actually no matter what values you [00:21:00] put in, uh, equated to one. And then the other one was like it was ti- and then it was times one. So it was like whatever you put in ended up to that times one was the rest of the equation. It was like a huge, or like a relatively large equation that resolved down to one. So it was like you're trying to figure out all this complicated math and really like that entire, uh, that entire complicated equation was doing nothing in the rest of the equation. Nice. It was doing absolutely nothing. Um, so we were able to sort of like figure out, all right, well now all we need to do is figure out what, what this relationship does. Right. Um, and even something like in that particular situation, there were some values that the equation couldn't possibly balance. Which again, you could plot that on a graph and see like there's a spot... I don't, I'm, I'm making this up, but I think this is probably not wrong. There's a spot where it's like this is a parabolic equation, and so at some point the parable, or the par- parable, I didn't even mean to do that. There we go. At some point the [00:22:00] parabola goes back up, and so like there is no point- Right ... when it reaches this number. So values that would be in that, in that zone or in that range- Right ... they, they don't work in the equation. So yeah, I think math, uh, algebra is, uh, you know, basic arithmetic obviously is, is relatively straightforward. Algebra's probably the most simple, uh, form of math that your average person uses on a regular basis.  Jesse Schwamb: For sure.  Trigonometry And Design Tony Arsenal: But it's funny, I remember the first time, um, the very first time that I realized trigonometry was not just some abstract thing that we would never use. And it's so funny, 'cause it's like the nerdiest, the nerdiest example. I was playing a tabletop RPG with my friends, we were in high school, and we were, we were learning trigonometry at the time. I was playing a tabletop RPG, and we were trying to figure out- Um, it was a, it was like a futuristic tabletop RPG, so we were using like, like laser guns or something like that that have a certain range. And we were trying to figure out if the thing that was flying in the air from us was within range or not.  Jesse Schwamb: Nice.  Tony Arsenal: And what we realized [00:23:00] is that's just a quadratic equation, right? Right, it is. I just need to calculate. I know how far away it is from me in a straight line, I know how high in the air it is, so I need to just- Right now I need to... Or not, not the quadratic. That's Pythagoras' theorem, right? Yep. I need to calculate the Pythag- or the, um, the hypotenuse.  Jesse Schwamb: I'm with you. I  Tony Arsenal: knew where you were going. Yeah. So, like, I remember distinctly, I, I mean, I remember where I was sitting in my friend's basement going, "Oh, my goodness, trigonometry actually has a practical application here." Um, you know, whether that's figuring out how much rope I need to be able to, to attach to a tree and still be able... Like, all of these different things ultimately are math, and, or as the, the Brits say, are maths. And, uh, the, it, it's just a beautiful thing. And I think you're right, like, this is evidence that the universe has a structure- And a designer because- Right you can describe the universe using this- Nice ... sort of universal numerical language that, um, in, for the most part, describes everything we can [00:24:00] see. I mean, obviously, like, they're still learning things. They're still figuring things out. But what we can see with our senses, we can also describe with math on some level. Even something like the colors that we see can be reduced to a, a number, a frequency, a wavelength. So yeah, I'm with you. Use your algebra. Find ways to use it.  Jesse Schwamb: Use it. It's the... I like what you said, that we're using it. We just don't realize it. There's a spiritual lesson in there, I think, as well, that it's, it's present all around us, and it's... I like what you said. It's, like, the, the most, like, grabbable. It's the thing that's pretty easy to grasp, yet has, like, some beautiful outworkings that are super complex. All the time I love to, like, mess with people, even people who are, like, say, like, "Oh, I'm not into math." I'm like, "That's okay." Like, it's... You're, you're living in a mathematical world, and you're certainly using it, but that, that's okay.  Imaginary Numbers Wonder Jesse Schwamb: But like, sometimes I'll just say to somebody, like, "How do you know, like actually know that, like a negative number times a negative number is a positive number?" Like, who came up with that, and how do you know? And why are we just trusting him? Why can't somebody just say, "You know what? For me, it's not. I'm gonna make that a [00:25:00] negative number"? And w- the reason is because algebra provides... There's a lot of proofs, but algebra provides the most simple, beautiful proof. And then once you, once you basically contravene that law, like, everything falls apart. I- it's... And the question we should be asking is why does everything fall apart if we contravene one simple law, wh- which is two negative numbers multiplied, the product of them has to be, must be, is always a positive number. And that's, like, not even getting into, like, the more crazy things. Like, everybody should go look up, like, what imaginary numbers are. That will kind of mess with your mind, but then we found ways to use imaginary numbers, which are exactly what they sound like- Yeah ... to solve, like, incredible problems. Where does that come from? It comes from the Lord. It comes from God's, like, creative ability that He's placed in mankind to go after and to take a dominion over the knowledge and the creative order in such a complex and creative way. It mimics and mirrors the creativity of our Heavenly Father, and it is altogether beautiful. So on this- Yeah ... 500 episode that has a lot of numbers associated with it, I [00:26:00] say go love the numbers. Go enjoy them. Wherever you are in life, whatever your enjoyment of math is, big or small, go try to find some way to enjoy it today. Tony Arsenal: Can I, can I throw in a, a weird relevant sub-affirmation to your affirmation? I  Jesse Schwamb: mean, please.  Tony Arsenal: This is our show, so I'll do what I want to. You can do what you want. First, when you say we live in a mathematical world, all I could think of was some Perry song of Material Girl. Material  Jesse Schwamb: World?  Tony Arsenal: Yeah.  Odd Squad Math Tony Arsenal: I am a mathematical boy, and I live in a ma- Anyway, um, there is a show that I watch with August, my son, who is almost five. Uh, he'll be five in March. And, um, it's called Odd Squad. And what Odd Squad is, is it's a sort of a s- like a spy-themed kids show with a touch of like, uh, almost like Twilight Zone. Like, there's so- It's they manage odd. Like, they're the Odd Squad because they, they respond to odd emergencies, so it's a lot of like weird monsters and aliens and like time travel paradoxes and strange stuff. But the answer [00:27:00] to the problem is always related somehow to a math principle. So they will talk about how like multiplication is just addition like many times over.  Jesse Schwamb: Sure.  Tony Arsenal: And that's actually why multiplying a negative number times a negative number is a positive number or, you know, like, or multiplying by a negative number is a negative number, right? And that's because like really what you're doing if you multiply two, uh, two times negative three is you're subjecting, you're subtracting two from two from two, which gives you, you know- Right ... a negative number. So it's, it's not, uh, it, it's for kids, but I actually have realized that I understand math better- because of watching the show.  Jesse Schwamb: I  Tony Arsenal: love it. And it's because they break it down in, you know, the, the audience- Yes ... the target audience is a little bit older than August. I think the target audience is probably like six to seven, maybe eight years old. Um, and so they're talking about math principles geared towards those groups. But they'll talk about things like [00:28:00] using a number line to be able to understand math, and so like visualizing it. Or they'll talk about how multiplication is really just groups of things. So yeah, check it out.  Why Math Matters Tony Arsenal: And again- Algebra is probably the most, uh, easy to grab of the disciplines, but that's because that's the one we are using every day all the time. Tony Arsenal: And we don't realize it. But again, like, calculus is a beautiful, a beautiful thing. Um, and there are some amazing things that exist in the world that can really only be understood and described in a certain sense by something like calculus or trigonometry. Um, my favorite, I, I wish I had, like, kept it up, but one of my favorites is geometry 'cause I think a lot of it is, that's, like, the closest to puzzles. Yes. Um, uh, so, like, I, I used to love doing proofs and axioms and stuff. So, and then of course logic is technically related to math. It's a related discipline to math- It is ... in that it, it's, it's actually, like, the language that underlies a lot of the mathematics is [00:29:00] logical formulas. So it's all relevant. It's all beautiful. It all describes God's creation, and it all redounds to His glory.  Jesse Schwamb: You got that right.  Mark Growing Seed Jesse Schwamb: And speaking of both His creation and His glory, and Jesus teaching of both of those things, we are, as we promised, hanging out in the Book of Mark, and we've got just four sentences. And what I love about this parable that we're about to read is it fits in so perfectly with something I think you and I have been saying from the very beginning, which is it's tempting when we think about the parables to consider, like, a single element or to distill them down to, like, a single word and say, "We hear the kingdom of God is this thing, this noun, this object, this person." But instead, the case we've been making is it's actually generally a series of verbs, or in this case, it's the whole four verses that Jesus is gonna give to us here. So let me just read Mark 4:26-29. That's all it is, loved ones. And it's a good thing because we're already knee-deep into this 500th episode. So this goes by various names. I've heard it called, [00:30:00] like, the Parable of the Growing Seed, or sometimes people call it, like, the Parable of the, The Secret Seed. I'm not sure that's really secret, but I suppose the increase is secret in a way, and that's really what Jesus is communicating to us in these verses. So Mark 4:26: "And Jesus was saying, 'The kingdom of God is like a man who casts seed upon the soil, and he sleeps and he rises night and day, and the seed sprouts and grows, how he himself does not know. The soil produces crops by itself, first the blade, then the head, then the mature grain in the head. But when the grain is ripe, he immediately puts in the sickle because the harvest has come.'" Tony Arsenal: Yeah. Yeah, this is, um, an interesting parable, and I'll be the first to admit, like, when you said, "Well, why don't we do the king- the parable of the growth next?" I was like, "I don't actually know what Jesse's talking about." So if you're in the same boat as I am and [00:31:00] you, uh, you are like, "Wait, there's the... This is a parable? Like, this exists in the Bible?" Um, you're not alone, and I think part of the reason is that, one, it's so short, but it also sort of, like, connects into the next parable thematically. I don't know necessarily- Hmm ... about the content and the meaning, but thematically it sort of blends into the next parable, which is the parab- Mark's version of, um, of the parable of the mustard seed. So it's, it's hard to delineate unless you're really thinking about it, but I'm glad that we're talking about it because I think this is probably one of those parables that doesn't get a lot of attention because it's so short and because it is, um, it is sort of thematically in a spot where I think it does sort of, I don't know, like seep into the next- Right parable.  Jesse Schwamb: Yeah, there's a tendency because you're right, it's sandwiched between the Parable of the Sower and the Parable of the Mustard Seed, both of which we've talked about from Matthew's perspective, that it seems like maybe the theme is redundant, but [00:32:00] it is altogether different with the emphasis. Uh, there, it's true I guess that all three of these parables are addressing that same underlying question the disciples in the early church were asking, which is, if Jesus truly inaugurates the Kingdom of God, then why does it seem so impressive? Why is it so slow or hidden in contrast to all the expectations that the Jews had for what they thought would be this dramatic, immediately visible rain? And so I like that there is a lot said within four verses. And again, from our perspective, this thing seems so distinctly reformed in its under- Yeah of course the whole Bible is that way, but maybe nothing more so than this, especially because we'll get to it, but the center of this parable being, and there's various translations, that this guy doesn't even know. He doesn't understand. He's totally ignorant to what is going on, and isn't that... I, I mean, I can only speak for my own test- that's the story of my life, uh, spiritually and otherwise. That again, if you wanna talk about God doing all the verbs, I guess Mark had it first. I thought maybe I coined that, but [00:33:00] turns out that Mark, well, actually Jesus, the Son of God himself, says it best here. So let, let's get into this because the beautiful thing is you and I can handle theoretically in the time allotted here, like three or four verses. That, that's theoretically possible for us to do, but we, we're only gonna h- see how far it goes. Um-  Tony Arsenal: Yeah ...  Hidden Kingdom Growth Jesse Schwamb: I think the first thing to say here is that we get that beautiful characteristic, like formula, like the controlling paradigm. It's that Kingdom of God again. And a- as I kinda set up, it's the Kingdom of God, though, launched into a bunch of, uh, verbs. Uh, this idea of like him casting, and then him sleeping, and then him waiting, and then him getting up, and then the growth happens, and then he comes again at the end, this character, this farmer, into kind of the consummation of that kingdom. And I think there's a lot here that's maybe to explain that tension. The kingdom is real and active. It's irresistibly moving towards some kind of fixed end, but it does not appear in its final glory, and that is something you kind of get with the other two parables. [00:34:00] But here it's just like so lovely. It's right in front of you. That, that's like the whole emphasis and thrust of what Jesus seems to be saying in this. Tony Arsenal: Yeah, and I think this one's interesting because, you know, generally in the parables, at least in, in... I, I would have to do a little bit more study to know if this is, like, distinctly Markan or whatnot. But in the, the, um, Matthew's parables, um, or Christ's parables reported in Matthew, um, primarily the main figure of the parable is, uh, is generally is God or, or more specifically is often Jesus himself. Jesse Schwamb: Right.  Tony Arsenal: Right? But in this parable, it wouldn't make sense for us to say that somehow g- you know, God or Jesus scatters seed, and then He doesn't know that it sprouts. Right. Right? So, so the, the parable implies that the one scattering seed, and again, we don't wanna over-interpret parables. Generally speaking, parables are teaching kind of a principle of some sort, a comparison of some sort, not, it's not an allegory. [00:35:00] In, in most cases it's not an allegory where each element has a direct representation of some sort. But it wouldn't make sense for this to be talking about God's perspective on scattering or Christ's perspective on scattering, 'cause obviously God and Jesus, even, even if we're talking about Jesus according to His humanity, um, has some sort of awareness of the workings of the Kingdom of God that is not the ignorance that the parable here seems- Right to present of the one scattering.  Scatter Then Rest Tony Arsenal: So I, I really do think this parable has more to say to us about- Our own perspectives on evangelism and on how the Kingdom of God will propagate. And I think, um, both in terms of, like, evangelism, there's an element here, an encouraging element of, you know, all your s- your job... And what's really funny is I, I don't recall this parable being used in my experience to sort of [00:36:00] encourage people that all, your own, your job is just to scatter. You don't need to worry about the growth. Mm-hmm. There's a, there's a passage in Paul about one person scatters, one person waters, and God brings the growth that is often used to sort of say, like, it's not your responsibility to make sure that the, the, the, um, the bud is, you know, c- comes to flowering and to fruiting. It's just your job to be faithful to scatter or to water or whatever step it's on. This, I think, has even more encouragement for us in that the one who scatters, um, i- is obviously God, but there's also this element that, like, we're scattering. The one scattering is not omniscient. But the one scattering, uh, he doesn't even know how or why or even that, I think, that the, um, that the f- the growth is occurring, and that's the most- Right remarkable part of this. Like, we're not talking about a normal farmer who is aware of how growth [00:37:00] occurs, is aware of the timing. He's constantly checking. He's making sure that he's checking the soil, that he's applying manure, that he's watering the crops. This is literally like some dude who just throws seed out, and then, then just goes back to his daily business of sleeping and rising and going about his day. And then all of the sudden, the earth, quote, "by itself produces." And I think that's the real key here is- There's something about the Kingdom of God and the seed that the Kingdom of God scatters. It's almost like the Kingdom of God itself is the one scattering here.  Jesse Schwamb: Right.  Tony Arsenal: Yep. The Kingdom of God and the seed that is scattered in and as a result of the Kingdom of God, it produces the outcome autonomously. It doesn't require us to input into it, at least in the context of this parable. Now, again, the Parable of the Talents would be very clear to us that we can't just rest on our loyals- laurels. God expects us to work and to be fruitful for the kingdom. [00:38:00] But there is this element here of, like, you are not the one responsible for the production of the seed and the fruiting and flowering of the seed. In fact, you're not even responsible for being aware that it occurs or how it occurs. Your only responsibility, the only active verb in this whole thing is... Well, there's a couple. The, the, the main active verb is the scattering. The other active verb is the sleeping. So, like- Right ... we, we scatter, and then we, we rest and we trust that God is going to do His work. Jesse Schwamb: Right. Even on the face, there's so much in this that does seem mysterious. Like, if you just take this parable and think about the act of agriculture, and I sometimes think about this because I do love plants, and we have a bunch of plants in our house, and I'm horrible at trying to get them to grow. And I think about what still a mystery it is. With all we know about science, just that you can still plant something, a seed, and water it, and the sugars will break down, and the seed will take root, and that something will grow and flower, and you think, "Oh, who is doing that?" And, and w- [00:39:00] I think we'll get into this, the first and second principles, first and second causes here, which are, I think, certainly something that Christ intends for us to consider here. But there is this idea that the man's action is simple and passive relative to what follows. He, like you said, just scatters the seed. And he's a real agent, but as the parable unfolds, it's almost like his entire agency recedes entirely from view. And that's what kind of sets for me, like this whole trajectory of the parable. It's that the mechanism of growth is strangely hidden from the human agent, and it belongs to God alone. And so you already stole it from me, but I'm gonna read 1 Corinthians 3:6-7, which is, coheres directly with what's happening, I think, in this parable. And this reads, or Paul writes, "I planted, Apollos watered, but God gave the growth. Neither he who plants nor he who waters is anything, but only God who gives the growth." And so there is like an extension, I think, of that application inward though as well. Kind of like when you were speaking about that, what occurred to me is that we see in the [00:40:00] farmer's like day and night unawareness, this picture, I think, of this often gradual, imperceptible work of grace in our own hearts, in every believer's heart. Like that, that sanctification process, it proceeds by these degrees, and the Christian cannot fully trace even in himself, yet it is definitely real, and it's definitely God's doing. And then I think as well we might pull out a thread of this, you know, ecclesiological truth. You know, the church's growth is God's work, not the fruit of human strategy. And then by application even further into that, it's based upon a soteriological one, which is like the ordo salutis, which is maybe half of every episode we've recorded talks about the ordo salutis in some ways. That too is unfolding by this divine power, and it's hidden from the creature's full comprehension, and that's consistent in this parable and in all of Scripture, that this regeneration precedes and produces faith rather than the reverse. Tony Arsenal: Yeah. Yeah, and I, I think too there's also an element in this passage, you know, when you think about... Uh, [00:41:00] I'm not a farmer, uh, and I, I don't know that many farmers, but when you think about how f- how modern farming works, it's very different than, uh, ancient farming, right? Historically, ancient farming was, uh, I think probably a lot of just trusting the world to do what the world does and, and trusting God to do what, what God does. A- and I think that's probably why a lot of like- When you look at, um, pagan religion, the, the fertility cults and the sort of goddesses and gods of the harvest were all related because there was this mystery to it. And so the reason that there's so much, uh, cultic worship around fertility and harvest is because it is so mysterious, and you just kinda have to, like, trust that it's gonna happen. Jesse Schwamb: Right.  Tony Arsenal: Right? You sow your seed in, you sow the seed of your field in, you know, the fall, uh, and, or in the, the, you know, the summer, and then you wait several [00:42:00] months and just hope that the crop comes in. And our modern agricultural world is not all that different. We have better tools and we can measure things that, like the soil, the nutrients in the soil. We can, you know, we can do all sorts of different imaging to see of what's happening underground. But at the end of the day, even with all of the advances we have, the farmer still can't make the crop come in.  Jesse Schwamb: That's right.  Tony Arsenal: Either the crop comes in or it doesn't. And I, I think there's this element of trust here that I think is really useful for us. And again, I think you're right. This is like, uh, it feels almost wrong to say it this way, but it's like this is a super distinctively Reformed parable. Like, of all, all of the parables in the, the Gospels, this one is like, on the face of it, a Calvinist parable. Yeah. Exactly. Like, it's like God just grows the kingdom- Yes and nobody does anything about it.  Jesse Schwamb: Amen.  Tony Arsenal: And I don't need to go into more details than that. But there is this element for us, I think, as, uh, as those [00:43:00] who want to share the gospel, there can be an anxiety around trying to ensure some sort of production, some sort of produce, uh, and productivity from that, that is just not healthy. And I think, you know, we, we have a responsibility as Christians, um, to be faithful and diligent in doing what God has called us to do. But if, if we read this parable as the one who scatters is sort of like the evangelist, then the only responsibility we have as evangelists, and all of us are evangelists, right, lowercase E evangelists, um, all of us, the only responsibility we have is to scatter the seed of the gospel. Jesse Schwamb: That's  Tony Arsenal: right. And we're not responsible for the growth. We're not responsible for even really understanding how growth happens, uh, or even, even doing much about it until it's time to harvest that growth. And I think that's, we need to talk about what that means too, because again, like [00:44:00] this is a parable that I think is maybe not as, as clean and clear as some of the, uh, Methanian parables where it really does seem like there's a pretty clear symbolic representation on some things. This one feels like it's maybe a little muddier in that, um, the main character and the role of the s- the one who's scattering seems to sort of almost shift throughout the parable, which is crazy to say because it's only like four verses long.  Tony Arsenal: But it, it does seem like at some points the scatterer is God, at other points it can't be God, and then it seems like, well, who's harvesting? It's not really us, so it's gotta be God. So I think it's, it's important for us to hold this parable as more of a general principle about the Kingdom of God than it is about any sort of like really direct one-to-one teaching on the, on the Kingdom of God.  Jesse Schwamb: Yeah. That's a interesting distinction.  Providence And Causes Jesse Schwamb: Here's what I would say about that, I think, is let's equate this to, like, coffee. You like a good cup of coffee. I do. I like a good cup of coffee. I think if we were to take, let's [00:45:00] say, the Parable of the Prodigal, that would be for me like a big Dunkin' Donuts coffee. Like, it's delicious, mild-bodied, maybe a little bit light. This parable is like two shots of espresso- Yeah ... 'cause there's a lot in there, and we could probably take a lot of time even t- speaking about, like you're saying, the more shadowy eschatological truths that appear in verse 29 because those, this idea of, like, a sickle in the harvest, I mean, that's imagery drawn from Old Testament eschatological judgment texts. So that could be pretty heavy in its own right. I think what's critical, before we get to that, is to, like, tease out something you said, which is there is a lot in here about this doctrine of providence, like, this spontaneous self-originating action apart from external human causation. And we've talked a lot, like, we distinguish between primary and second causation. You know, the Earth is genuinely or generally has second- secondary causes, like an ordinary means through which God's ordinary providence operates, but the ultimate primary [00:46:00] cause of growth is God himself. And so here we see that. Like, there's no exclusion of the farmer's agency as an explanatory cause. The soil does what it does because God has ordained the natural order to function in this way. That is his prerogative. And so that threefold progression then, blade, ear, full grain, which by the way I had to look up because my understanding of, like, all kinds of different types of grains is very thin and I'm out of my depth here. But- ... I'm led to believe That that development is gradual, and of course it's ordered, but it's not instantaneous. And so the application here, I think, has traditionally been applied in this corporate individual spiritual growth we're talking about. Like, the church advances through stages of maturity, and so does the individual believer's sanctification, without warranting either impatience or despair at the process's slowness. This is how God works. He does it in His gracious and kind way. And again, He's using this, all of this agriculture to illustrate that purpose. So there's, like, this buildup, I think, [00:47:00] in verse 28 about the incredible providence of God, both like corporatively, personally, in His world, how He is the primary cause, but also uses secondary causes, not in a disjointed or divorced way, but in a way that encapsulates and magnifies His glory. And that is then what leads to or will lead to the reemergence in verse 29 of this whole deal of, like, well, if farmer comes back in, and now he returns, but only at the point of consummation, not at the point of growth.  Tony Arsenal: Yeah.  Harvest And Timing Tony Arsenal: Yeah, and, you know, we won't go into all of the ways that this ties into the other parables, but it's worth, uh, it's worth mentioning that in, in both, uh, the parable of the mustard seed, which follows this, and then also the parable of the sort of sower or the seeds, um, there is this element of this, the one who is sowing seeds is not fully cognizant or aware or, and, and absolutely not in [00:48:00] control of the outcome, right? In the parable of the sower, um, he scatters the seed promiscuously, right? And the- Right ... the outcome depends on what kind of ground the seed falls on. And in the parable of the mustard seed, it, it's more of a, like, idea that the, uh, the sower sows a seed that seems so small, but it, the growth of the seed is explosive and expansive because of the nature of the seed, not because of the skill of the sower. Jesse Schwamb: That's  Tony Arsenal: right. Right? In this instance, um- The only thing, again, the only thing that initially the sower is responsible for is the sowing of the seed, the scattering of the seed. But what I also think is interesting is then there is a point where the one who scatters the seed is now responsible to act once he's observed the seed coming to fruition, right? Now, now what exactly that means and how exactly that applies, I think there's a lot of different things we could talk about. Um, but again, [00:49:00] this is a parable that we have to be careful not to, uh, not to restrict just sort of crassly to, like, evangelism. Right. Exactly. Or, or even just to sort of, like, the eschatological harvest. Right. That's what's tricky about this parable, I think, that bears ... And I don't think we'll do it, we'll do it necessarily on the show. It'd be worth having more conversations about. But for our own personal study, it bears deeper reflection because this parable cannot be simply reduced to an eschatology parable about what God does in the end. Jesse Schwamb: Right.  Tony Arsenal: And it can't be simply reduced to a parable about evangelism because strictly speaking, like, we're not really the ones that harvest when the harvest comes in, right? I've, I have heard this parable, um, preached, you know, like I said, although I acknowledge that I, um, like forgot that it existed. I have heard this parable preached as though, like, "Well, our responsibility is to scatter seed. We're not responsible for [00:50:00] making it grow or making it take root. But when we see that it's taking root, we're responsible for jumping in and harvesting at the right time." I don't think we should draw that conclusion here. Although the, the harvester does see that the ear is ripe, that the grain is ripe, and he harvests it, it would be a weird sort of like shift in the parable to go from the person who scattered seed isn't responsible for its growth, doesn't even know that the growth is happening, but is actually responsible for knowing exactly when to harvest the grain. Right. So we have to think about this again in gen- in terms of general principles of how the Kingdom of God functions. And w- how it functions is it's mysterious, it is, uh, consistent, it happens on a, a scale and on a predictable outcome that we as individuals don't understand and don't have visibility to, and the harvest will occur in its [00:51:00] time, and it will h- occur consistently and reliably. So again, like this is... I hope that maybe like the one or two non-Reformed people that listen to the show aren't terribly offended at this, but like this just is Reformed theology, right? There, there is a seed that is sown, God is responsible for the growth, and the harvest necessarily will help it happen when it's supposed to happen, right? When the r- when the fruit is ripe, it will be harvested. That doesn't mean I'm responsible as the one who sows seed or scatters or m- witnesses to people from making sure that the, quote, "sickle is put in at the right time," or anything like that.  Jesse Schwamb: Right.  Tony Arsenal: The fact is that the sickle will always come in at the right time. The person who has the final kinda piece of the puzzle in evangelism, I think that's how it often happens. Someone hears the gospel repeatedly from multiple places. They have contacts and relationships that tie into how they [00:52:00]ultimately come to accept the gospel and trust Christ. But ultimately it's the Holy Spirit who brings all that into some sort of coherent, um, execution and application of redemption That will happen in God's time. So I wanna be careful not to, like, put too much responsibility on us. Right. And again, this is just a parable that I think bears a lot more reflection, that I think because, um, I think Mark in general, because it's so short, uh, gets, it gets overlooked by Christians. I think we would all do well to spend a little bit more time in Mark. But especially some of these really short pericopes. I think we just read through it, and it's like we read a chapter of Mark, like Mark 4 comes up in our Bible reading plan. Right. And if we're reading the Bible in a year, like, Mark 4 is one of three or four chapters that we read, and this is four verses of that. Right. We just read over it quick and we c- we just, we don't appropriate any of it.  Jesse Schwamb: Right. It sounds like he's just reiterating a point or he's recapitulating something that he's already said or is about to say, and you're like, "Okay, get on with it." But I'm with [00:53:00] you. This parable, like all of them, is for us. It's for our joy. It's for our satisfaction and our comfort. And I think from this, there is, like, a single controlling point that's emerging from our conversation, which is the Kingdom of God advances by God's own hidden power toward a certain appointed consummation. And this ought to produce, like, patient confidence rather than human striving or a- anxiety. In order to give us a sense of calm, a reminder that God's providence is real in all areas of life. Remarkably, we've gotten this far in the conversation, and neither of us has just, has used the M word, which just came to me, and I think we're contractually obligated to say it as a Reformed podcast, and that is this is a prime example of monergism and the sovereignty of grace. And as in regeneration, the decisive cause of kingdom growth lies outside human capacity and comprehension. I think sometimes the latter part of that seems wrong to us. It makes us fearful because we don't understand it. But the former part should make us feel very happy and [00:54:00] relieved, that the capacity belongs to God and God alone. That doesn't depend on me or you or anybody else that we know. And this parable, I think, is often been paired with John's image of the wind blowing where it wishes as this picture of the Holy

Jamie Smith is a Reformed philosopher — one of the first to put a Catholic mystic in the title of a book and then proceed to argue that it was the contemplative tradition that brought him back to a flourishing form of faith on the far side of a series of nerdy dead ends. Make Your Home in the Luminous Dark is his most personal and, I would argue, most beautiful book. It began the day, more than a decade ago, when Jamie was in the depths of a severe depression his analytical philosophical training could not think its way out of, and his wife came home from a garage sale with a battered used copy of The Dark Night of the Soul and told him he should read it. What that began — St. John of the Cross, Teresa of Avila, Meister Eckhart, Merton — is what this book bears witness to. It is a book about the mystics saving Jamie's faith. It is also a Reformed philosopher's argument that the cultural liturgies project he is best known for needs a prior undoing before its formative work can do anything at all. As I told Jamie in the hour, this is a book that made me feel uncomfortable about how much I enjoyed it. We covered the apophatic/cataphatic distinction with the twist Jamie puts on it, the way certainty is still Cartesian even when it calls itself pious, the trad-wife/manosphere as snorting modernity while claiming to have escaped it, Charles Taylor's Cosmic Connections as the real sequel to A Secular Age, and what to do when Distraction Inc. has fully occupied the inner room. The platform is the plantation. Come sit with this one and check out the book. You can WATCH the conversation on YouTube About our guest Dr. James K.A. Smith is Professor of Philosophy at Calvin University in Grand Rapids, Michigan, where he holds the Gary and Henrietta Byker Chair in Applied Reformed Theology and Worldview. He earned his PhD at Villanova University under John D. Caputo. He served as editor of Comment magazine (2013–2018) and as editor-in-chief of Imagejournal (2019–2024). His new book is Make Your Home in the Luminous Dark. His previous books include the Cultural Liturgies trilogy — Desiring the Kingdom, Imagining the Kingdom, and Awaiting the King — as well as You Are What You Love: The Spiritual Power of Habit, How (Not) to Be Secular: Reading Charles Taylor, On the Road with Saint Augustine, How to Inhabit Time, and his early philosophical work Speech and Theology. He writes at Quid Amo on Substack. ⁠JOIN OUR OPEN ONLINE CLASS: The Empire Christ Couldn't Keep⁠⁠ Ever notice how Christian nationalism gets talked about like it's some bizarre new glitch in the faith? It isn't — it's a 2,000-year-old arrangement wearing new clothes, and once you see how the pattern works, you can also spot the Christ who keeps slipping free of it. Join theologian Joerg Rieger and Tripp Fuller for The Christ Empire Couldn't Keep, a free six-week online class tracing the holy alliances, imperial creeds, and stubborn resistance that have shaped Christianity from Paul to the present. You'll get six lectures from Joerg, six live Q&As, weekly readings from his book Christ and Empire, and a community of fellow troublemakers thinking it through together. It's free to join, every session is recorded, and it kicks off Thursday, August 27. Grab your spot at ⁠⁠HomebrewedClasses.com.⁠⁠ This podcast is a ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠Homebrewed Christianity ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠production. Follow ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠the Homebrewed Christianity⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠, ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠Theology Nerd Throwdown⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠, & ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠The Rise of Bonhoeffer⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠ podcasts for more theological goodness for your earbuds. Join over 75,000 other people by joining our ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠Substack - Process This!⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠ Get instant access to over 50 classes at ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠www.TheologyClass.com⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠ ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠Follow the podcast, drop a review⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠, send ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠feedback/questions⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠ or become a ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠member of the HBC Community⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

On this episode, my guest is Lewis Winks, a researcher, writer and campaigner who specialises in nature connection, cultural and behavioural change, and has a background working in the environmental and outdoor education sector. He joins us on behalf of the Right to Roam campaign as well as the Stars Are For Everyone campaign, the latter which he helped spearhed to defend wild camping rights on Dartmoor.Since 2021, Right to Roam has been organising peaceful trespasses into some of the vast areas of countryside from which the public are currently excluded. They follow the tried and tested access code which governs Scotland's right of responsible access, respecting privacy, crops and nature – all while seeking to leave a positive trace and practising deep care for the natural world: a concept they call Wild Service. Their vision is of a future countryside in which people not only enjoy the physical, mental and spiritual benefits of nature but serve as its guardians too.Show Notes* Right to Roam's origins (Guy Shrubsole & Nick Hayes)* The Stars Are For Everyone (Dartmoor National Park)* The right to wild camp in England* The commons and the enclosures* Taking back trespass* The shadow places of fortress conservation* Wild service* Levellers and landlordism* Deifying dispossession* The community right to buy* International solidarityHomework* Right to Roam UK - Website - Instagram - Twitter - BlueSky* Wild Service (Book)* The Book of Trespass* Who Owns England?* Val Plumwood* Survival International* S3 #2 | Decolonizing Conservation in Africa & Beyond | Fiore Longo (Survival International)* S5 #5 | Fortress Conservation in the Congo w/ Martin Lena & Linda Poppe (Survival International)* International Land CoalitionTranscriptChris: [00:00:00] Welcome, Lewis, to the End of Tourism Podcast.Lewis: Good to be here. Hello, Chris.Chris: Yeah. I'd like to thank you for your willingness to join me today on behalf of your comrades and colleagues at Right to Roam, as well as those of The Stars Are For Everyone. And I'd like to begin by asking you where you're tuning in from today and what the world looks like there for you.Lewis: Well, I'm currently in South Devon, where I live in the southwest of England. And I live in a town called Totnes, which is just on the edge of Dartmoor National Park. But the town that I live in has grown up around a river - the River Dart. And so that's a short walk from where I live.And, yeah, obviously, the river's shaped this place, from its headwaters up on Dartmoor, all the way down to the kind of rugged coast. So, I feel very lucky that, not far from where I live, there's a whole range of [00:01:00] landscapes, but not without their challenges.Chris: Yeah, certainly. I remember, not just a few years ago, I was there in Totnes, visiting for the first time, and I had the great honour of getting to explore Dartmoor as well, in a place not too far from where some of my old ones are from, in Devon, in Exeter.Lewis: It's a great place. I mean, Dartmoor is, on global standards, a very tiny national park, really, but I think for people like myself that live near it, to have this kind of expansive space to be able to walk for days sometimes in this sort of landscape, seemingly without boundaries, without walls, without fences, is amazing, in what feels like quite a contained landscape, a kind of patchwork of fields and enclosures. And so, a lot of people are drawn to Dartmoor because of its openness. But that also is an issue, I think. A lot of us here that live in this area are very much working on ecological [00:02:00] issues and challenges, and lots of those are found up in the national park.Chris: Well, would we all be so lucky to have such spaces to walk and roam. On that point, I'd like to ask you if you'd be willing to offer our listeners a little bit about what your organisation, The Right to Roam (in the UK), does there and your role in the organisation.Lewis: Sure, yeah. Well, the Right to Roam campaign, I mean, we've been established only for a few years in our current format, really. We were born out of the pandemic. We were formed principally by two of the co-founders of the campaign, Guy Shrubsole and Nick Hayes, who had both written books at the time and sat together around a kitchen table in 2020.Nick had written a book called The Book of Trespass, which kind of brought into public conversation this kind [00:03:00] of idea that there are places we are not supposed to be and not allowed to go, and challenging the kind of “why,” asking that question of, “Why is this? What's the historical context for our exclusion from landscapes? And through a series of adventures and walks into landscapes, he challenged that in his book. And it's an amazing primer, really, I think, for something that a lot of us take as a given, which is that we live in the corridors, really, between these vast estates here in England and in Wales, and we're excluded from much of the land. And so, it was quite a game-changing book, really, to sort of start to question that kind of assumption, that if you step off those narrow corridors, you are trespassing.And then in the meantime, Guy had written a book called Who Owns England?, asking questions of, “ Who does the land belong to? Who owns the title deeds? And really, most of us don't know. I mean, the government doesn't even really know who owns lots of land. And so, Guy embarks on this project, which he's been working on now [00:04:00] for the last decade or so, to try to find out and try to get more transparency, and really to bring about more democracy in how land is managed and how decisions are made, and really who has a stake in the land in England.And so these were kind of natural collaborators, really. And they sat around this table, and they formed this campaign called Right to Roam, which was really just to ask a simple question, which is, “Why do we not have a right of access to land in England?” And to call for new legislation for greater rights of access so that people can feel they have a greater stake in the landscapes around us.So we're a small team. We're a very much a grassroots campaign. We're not backed by big funders. We don't have any office space. We're just distributed across England, Wales and Scotland. And then, there are just six of us in the kind of core team. But we also have a network of almost [00:05:00] 20 local groups of people who are doing just amazing active work on the ground within communities to push for access reform.And we're funded by about 650 of those supporters who just give a small amount every month. So we're really just beholden to the people that are pushing for these kinds of changes. And we think we're getting somewhere. The conversation is shifting, socially and politically. We've still got somewhere to go, but we're hoping to bring about that change in law before too long.Chris: Hmm. Thank you, Lewis. And what drew you personally to the organisation?Lewis: Well, I live, as I said, down in Devon, and one of the things that happened back in 2022, was that one of the larger landowners in Dartmore National Park decided that he was gonna challenge this historic right that we have here, which is very unusual in England - the right to sleep out under the [00:06:00] stars, the right to wild camp, out in this kind of amazing landscape of Dartmoor.So, this landowner, Alexander Darwall, took the national park to court, and I was one of a few people who got together in the early days of that court case and said, “Right, we need to campaign on this. We need to stand up for these historic customary rights that have existed here and that have given so many people, these beautiful life-shaping experiences over generations.” And he was trying to snub them out. And so we thought, “let's campaign on this.”We set up a campaign called “The Stars Are for Everyone,” to protect those rights, but also to kind of say, “ Well, isn't it just mad that these rights only exist in this tiny corner of England? Shouldn't they exist also elsewhere?”Our intention right from the beginning of that campaign was to transform a court case that was about defending a set of rights into something which was really about taking a giant leap forward and putting in place something much [00:07:00] better for people in the future. And over the course of three years, that campaign was really dynamic, creative, and brought together loads of people.We actually lost the right to wild camp in early 2023. The landowner was successful in overturning that right in the High Court. And just one week after that court decision, we got together with three and a half thousand people up on quite a remote part of Dartmoor, probably one of the biggest land rights protests that we've seen since the 1930s in England. And, the voices of those people were really just... I mean, the ripples went out far and wide. I mean, we were sort of met with international support and interest. And, politically, overnight, it changed the conversation on access in England.And, really to fast forward to the present day after two more court cases, including it being escalated to the Supreme [00:08:00] Court, unanimously in the Supreme Court, the judges agreed that the case should never have been brought. And actually, then, we were able to reassert those rights as they had already existed.And so, not only have we got those rights back, we are now in a much better position, we think, to call for those rights elsewhere. And so my campaigning with the Right to Roam campaign really was kind of came out of this campaign for wild camping, to sleep under the stars.Chris: Mm-hmm. Wow. Wow, I remember, I think that was probably the thing that really drew me, for the first time, to the organisation and the work that you and your team are doing there in England, was through the social media awareness that the storyteller Martin Shaw was bringing to that campaign. Really amazing. And so, I wish nothing but blessings upon your feet and your work. It's incredibly important, and perhaps, a kind of [00:09:00] pioneering way of bringing this kind of organising and this kind of awareness to other places in the world where such access is also needed.But before we dig deeply into that work, I'd like to perhaps offer a little bit of context for our listeners in terms of the history of access in the UK to what is often referred to as “the commons.” And so, I'm wondering if you would be willing to offer a bit of historical background about what we mean when we talk about “the commons” in the English language and the history of the enclosures of the commons, that, for English people, is a kind of history that is all too well known, but for the rest of the world might be obscure.Lewis: Hmm. Well, sure. I mean, the commons, I think it's fair to say that a lot of people in England, really, this is not part of our lexicon, and our understanding [00:10:00] of the land.And, I think that demonstrates really just how effective the loss of commons has been here, is that there's not a broad understanding of what they were or what they are. But the commons really are... I mean, we're talking about a form of governance, a form of collective stewardship and governance for a place that transcends ownership. Commons are about how we relate to a place, and the rights that go with that place. And so, if we look at kind of property rights today, often those property rights exclude anybody who doesn't have their name on the title deed of the property.But yet, that's not always been the case. And certainly, we can still see today in England, and elsewhere globally, systems that acknowledge rights of others, and not just humans, but also kind of more-than-human rights. So in England, if you've gone back to the 1500s, [00:11:00] half of England or thereabouts, (it's difficult to be precise with this) would've had some form of common property understanding, or a kind of tapestry of rights that went with it. And that might have been rights to take firewood and fuel from land to dig peat, to graze animals, to put your pigs out to pannage for acorns. And these rites would've been particular to the landscapes that they were in. So, commoning rights were not the same everywhere. They were responsive to the wider kind of contexts, and today that figure is more like 3% of England. So, a diminishment of the commons in England has been part of our history here, and also part of the history which has affected almost the entire globe as well through colonial activities. But in England, really, this kind of experiment in sort of uprooting and unearthing cultures [00:12:00] that are deeply tied to the land was almost entirely effective at removing people's stake in land and in shoring up the rights of property owners.So, our commons, as they did exist, were fundamental to communities, were fundamental to how people sought to make a living, but also there were other things within that because commoning was about being on land that you didn't own. So with that came other things, which perhaps were taken for granted, which today we might call “recreation,” “being idle under a tree, watching the sunset”, and having those kinds of experiences. Now, we've kind of partitioned them off and put them into national parks and kind of put them in our holiday time, and things we might do when we're on vacation as tourists. But actually, for commoners, presumably, people were spending their time with the pigs out to pannage, thinking about other things, in conversation, meeting their neighbours under trees, doing things which were convivial.And so, [00:13:00] the erasure of the commons in England, and the enclosure acts, which sort of set about to diminish the commons and put them more firmly into private ownership, was also about a loss of community and people's stake in landscapes and also their ability to kind of relate to one another.But I should say as well that this obviously was very intentional. This was about looking at landscape through a kind of lens, a particular form of extraction, to take money from the land. It was also about control. It was about taking people, who, through that particular lens of industrialisation, seemed to be kind of labourers, their worth was kind of in the factories, it was not out on the land. And through mechanisation, as well, obviously, this was accelerated.In the early days of the enclosures, there were anti-enclosure acts in England that sought to try to prevent some of the steamrolling over of what felt like a kind of a deep-rooted culture. But by the [00:14:00] 1600s, those anti-enclosure acts were pretty much repealed, and with them, any kind of opportunity to get back those commons was lost.Loads and loads of rebellions took place to try to prevent that. And it's really interesting to look back in English history at the richness of rebellion and how it was kind of linked to how people relate to land. Looking at this today, it's sort of fairly plain to see that there's a disconnection between people and place. And I think that that kind of keenness to reconnect is a really vital ingredient for how we can kind of push back against some of the more damaging systems that we see around us.But people were rioting against the loss of rights to be able to put pigs out amongst woods that were being enclosed for the private laws, hunting rights. And there were many, many rebellions which took place by poachers, by people that were kind of deemed to be [00:15:00] poachers, who were kind of subject to some of the most harsh laws against them. And actually, a lot of the way in which criminality is portrayed now in England comes directly from the fact that they were trying to clamp down on how property was being challenged by people that have been dispossessed from something that was seen as a common good.Chris: Wow. There's so much there in the way that traditional peoples in England previously would've stewarded the lands that they lived on, even though they didn't own them, per se, and how the enclosure of those lands also led to this degree of, I would say anyways, historically, tourism wherein, the longing to gather as a community or as a group of people, in a place in order to, as you said, even just sit idle under a tree, to learn about the place that one lives in, or other places. That tourism largely took up that mantle [00:16:00] as an industry, as a way of commodifying that human longing toward being together in a place, largely outside of strict work hours. But even during them as well. And of course, the history of tourism is such that, through the enclosures, there was a schism, as you said, that brought people into the towns and cities to work as workers, essentially, rather than stewards of land.And then their “leisure time” was also separated in order to find ways in which that longing could be fulfilled, but through the industrial means of bringing people in mass to the beach or to forests, to other lands.And we'll get to that in a moment, that notion of the kind of colonial and neo-colonial enclosures that today show up as national parks or reserves. But you did mention this rich [00:17:00] history of trespass in England. And on The Right to Roam website, it says that, “it's fair to say that none of the limited access rights established in recent generations has been won without the willingness of ordinary people to cross the lines of property.”And so, it seems to me that the work that Right to Roam is doing is picking up those anti-enclosure movements of previous centuries and bringing them into the contemporary milieu. And so, I'm curious how you imagine or how you think notions of trespass might be understood and utilised as forms of resistance to the enclosures or privatisation of common lands.Lewis: Well, trespass in England is part of civil law, so if you trespass, it's not criminal. It's not a criminal act. So the police can't be called, as long as you're not causing damage. So, in fact, it's just between you and the landowner.And I think one of the first things that we try [00:18:00] to do as a campaign when we're speaking to whether it's new groups, or people that are kind of joining us, is to say, well, actually in custom and in history, we have this right. We have this right to be on land, and that it's only really through a kind of spell that we've been put under this kind of narrative that we've been told that we don't have a right to land. That we don't go there. And so, one of the main forms of action that we take as a campaign is to trespass, is to cross those lines which feel like they're kind of physical lines when you look at a map or where you see a barbed wire fence. But actually, as soon as you cross them, they become quite arbitrary, but also political.And we try to politicise it as much as we can, because if we take it for a given that we're excluded, then we will just remain excluded. So, it's both empowering and also quite an undertaking really to trespass and to do that together is one of the most empowering things you can do as a group or as a community, to go to the places that we're told we don't [00:19:00] have a right to be, but yet when you go there, it suddenly doesn't really make sense that you are excluded.And actually, quite often, as a campaign, we're able to go to places and to learn more about them and to learn more about our landscapes just outside of the towns and cities that we live in, to feel more connected to them. And, in a lot of cases actually do work for the betterment of places as well.I mean, often we're kind of reporting illegal rubbish dumps or seeing where damaging, invasive ecological species have taken hold and or reporting pollution in rivers. And I think it is part of the work of our campaign to help people feel that they can be a part of these places.And as you've mentioned, this idea that tourism is this kind of leisure time activity that we do that feels quite extractive, actually. There's something that we can do, which is about giving back as well, and giving back to our communities. And, [00:20:00] so yeah, it's about crossing lines, and it's about kind of challenging the politics that play there, but it's also just simply about reclaiming something that has historically been a cement that's held communities together.And what we find, I think, is that across the political spectrum, in various sectors and quarters, people just see that as common sense. I mean, it's interesting being part of a campaign that is at once radical as well as being, actually, just people get it, and they want to support it. And that has really helped us, I think, make headway and make progress, because we think we make quite a good argument for why we need better access to land and why we need laws to support that. And we are receiving a good amount of support from many quarters.Chris: Thank you for illustrating that. I remember as a child in Toronto going into the valleys there and the [00:21:00] creeks, and there's, thankfully, a large system of public lands, but of course, there was some areas where you would see signs, and it says “no trespassing,” and you would see this quite a bit, more so as you left the city. And there was this kind of subtle, imposed, instilled sense in me as a child that, like, “okay, obviously I can't go here. But secondly, if I do, then I am not just a guest or a visitor, I'm a trespasser, I'm a criminal. Right?And so to return to this question of the way that governments in the last centuries have taken common lands from people and kind of converted them into what we imagined to be better, pristine environments by virtue of there being no humans.I'd like to broach this question with you because in our correspondence, you referred to, “the hidden damage done to landscapes, the displacement of damage [00:22:00] elsewhere in the name of conservation, creating pristine landscapes and how this plays out as a way to restrict land access as a rationale for exclusion, while we turn a blind eye to damage and exploitation.”You write, “we can see this on a smaller scale with regard to estate and large farms or intensive agriculture in the UK, as well as on a global scale through supply chains and trace both back to a colonial mindset.”And so, previously on the podcast, I've spoken with authors and activists in regard to conservation as a kind of neocolonization of land, both in Africa and in Asia, and we also see it in Scotland.And so, I'm curious how this shows up in the UK and in the Right to Roam's work. This notion that no humans means that somehow the ecologies of place are better off and that there seems to be hiding in these considerations, in these concepts, a kind of misanthropy, a kind of hatred [00:23:00] toward humans.Lewis: Yeah, I mean, conservation I think has been doing amazing work, has also been doing some quite troubling work, I think, over the years. There's no simple kind of response to this. Conservation by its very nature is about working in relationship with place, with people, and with the more-than-human world.And I think like any relationships, those can be difficult and also fulfilling and beneficial and sometimes both. I think conservation as a movement, if you take a historical lens on this and obviously know, looking at it through a cultural perspective, taking in place, people, and history, and thinking about it as well, not just as a kind of a single place-based concern, but also kind of more broadly on a global scale, how conservation has evolved.And it's both evolved out of a kind of a controlling mindset, but also out of a kind of almost a palliative desire to sort of ease [00:24:00] the suffering of the natural world. And I think that that, when we look at it like that, there's a kind of a deep trauma which conservation has been born from, which is that we've done such huge amounts of damage to other places, to other peoples, to our own homes, and our own landscapes here in England that our kind of desire to kind of remedy that is kind of caught up in a kind of traumatic relationship with place. And I think we've learned a lot and obviously come a long way from a kind of fortress conservation mindset, but I think that the kind of misanthropy, which has been present in conservation, still comes through sometimes.I mean, we work as a campaign with so many amazing people working on the forefront of conservation, who are working very hard to try to transform and challenge the sector that they are working within. [00:25:00] But it's kind of understandable that this history of exploitation and damage is kind of wrapped up with a desire to press the emergency button and say, “actually, we need to kind of take drastic measures here.” And for some people, that's led them down the path of wanting a very exclusionary take on how we manage these places and these landscapes.And I think that the other thing is that, what I was talking about in the correspondence that I sent to you, really, particularly inspired by the work of Val Plumwood, the amazing philosopher who took this kind of incredible view of conservation, linked it to what she called “shadow places.” The idea that actually, for every time that we create one of these kinds of islands of pristine habitat, whether it's through exclusion or whether it's through management, planning and whatever else, actually, there's a whole world of things that we displace, and we neglect to see.And we see that with our national [00:26:00] parks here in England. I think it's interesting that Dartmoor, my nearest national park, is actually, historically, it is a very managed and very industrial landscape, yet it's kind of like held up and revered as a place of ecological tranquillity.I mean, it's actually in quite a damaged state. But we see it more broadly, as well. We can see it through our supply chains in England and through food security, or what we might call food security, by basically exploiting other places, the minerals we use, the resources that we use.So many of them come from landscapes that don't have the same protections that we're sort of overlaying onto landscapes here in England. So I think that it is a complex question. I think the fact that we are dealing with the kind of fallout of empire and the colonialization of other places and our exploitation of them leads us back to this sort of issue of actually “ how do we repair our relationship with land, with people? [00:27:00] How do we come to this through a lens of collaboration between people and place that's not about, ‘this is for nature, this is for people'?”And I think, one of the most concerning things I've seen happening in recent years, is this sort of resurgence of a neocapitalist economy in the countryside that's sort of operating under the guise of wanting to protect, but actually is about excluding communities and excluding people. And some of the most amazing work that's happening in England and Wales on Rewilding is about including people and ensuring that there is a joined-up approach between people, place, and ecology.Chris: Thank you, Louis. Your professional background prior to working with Right to Roam was in outdoor and environmental education. And so I imagine that such work kind of flows fairly easily into raising awareness for public access to the commons. But it also seems to me that the [00:28:00] contemporary and commonplace relationships between people in the commons run through the government in the form of laws and regulations. And you write, “there are things you can do on public lands, and there are things you will get fined or arrested for.”And so, a system based on allowances and punishment, a system of rights. But rights do not necessarily breed responsibility. And it can be argued that rights can undermine responsibility both on personal and collective levels. A central question that arises in the debate as to whether to repeal these prohibitions on access is that a people growing up in a culture of enclosure and hypermobility, such as most urban people do these days, tend to have no personal or peripheral example of what worthy stewardship looks like.And so I'm curious, how does the Right to Roam team and perhaps other authors and activists you've come across contend with this notion? There's a mention [00:29:00] on your website of the ability of people to offer “wild service,” and I'm curious what this means in the context of rights and responsibilities.Lewis: Well, I don't think that rights necessarily undermine responsibilities. I think badly designed rights can, but I think that, in a meaningful way, rights can give people a stake. They can really say to people, actually, “ this is something which belongs to you, and that's worth defending.”If people are only experiencing the countryside through prohibition, then clearly that's gonna lead to a form of feelings of unwelcome. And I think that that kind of relationship with the countryside is damaging, and particularly, I think it damages the ideas of trust and our sense that we can actually learn to care for these places. And that's deep set [00:30:00] within the culture, I think, that we're part of. And one of the things, as you've highlighted, this challenge, which is also an opportunity, is for education. And not only do we have these very exclusionary laws, which prohibit us from accessing so much land. I mean, we're talking about we only have access to 8% of England, and about 3% of our rivers. These places also only exist in particular parts of England and Wales. So there are vast parts of the country where the countryside might as well just be wallpaper.And so, for so many people, access is a kind of an academic exercise. It's this idea that you might be able to access it, or if you have a car, you can drive to a place. So I think there's a lot of work to be done to give people the experiences that really build up that kind of culture of care, which I think... or “stewardship” is the word that you used.Getting those laws in place, getting the right to roam legislation that we're after, is the first step on the ladder. [00:31:00] And then the next step is maybe something like, “how do we put in place those systems of infrastructure and support, which we need to actually see more people in the countryside?” And some of those things might be about, “how do we get more school kids out?” I mean, even here near Dartmoor, the only place in England where you can sleep out under the stars, most of the kids in this area won't have had that experience and probably will never have that experience. So how do we remedy things like that? How do we support schools to do more of that? How do we get more of our education systems, both formal and informal education systems, to embrace a culture of access?In England, we can look north of the border to Scotland to see where such a system's been in place since 2003, where the Scottish Land Reform Act was put in place, which gave people a default right of access to land and water in the country, which [with] sensible exceptions for things like privacy, wildlife, land with crops growing on it [00:32:00] and public safety, backed up by a code of responsibility. But that in itself is only just over 20 years old, as an act. So, culturally it's still quite young, but it's been a real success.And then, we can look elsewhere. We can maybe look elsewhere in Europe, to Norway and to Sweden, for examples where, culturally, this is sort of something which is more deeply accepted. And there are many other examples, obviously from across Europe and globally, where there are different sets of rights that give people different sets of access and mobility within landscapes.So I think all we're trying to do really here in England is point to a way of being, which is about the structures of how we do that, but it's also about our kind of mindset and how we relate to places.And we can see that it's entirely possible and preferable to the system that we have here today. So I think [00:33:00] that yes, rights in themselves are not the answer, but they are the kind of the bedrock on which we could build a whole world of possibility.Chris: Hmm. Hmm. Yeah. Thank you, Lewis. I guess the question that I was trying to drive towards is this notion that's come up quite a bit in the podcast, which is that tourism doesn't necessarily begin once you get off a plane or a boat or a train. That tourism is a kind of lifestyle that seems to exist in the bedrock of the modern condition. And so how do we bring people into the possibility of something like “wild service” or stewardship when the vast kind of understanding of how we proceed towards quote “nature” or other communities is touristic in nature.And so I'm curious, in the organising that you've done, when people have the opportunity to dig deeper into the histories of their lands, and the access to lands, and the [00:34:00] enclosure that access and the enclosure of the common lands in the UK, and when they start to see perhaps what's possible by virtue of other people showing up, interested in the same research, in the possibility, the real possibility of things being otherwise, once people gathered together toward these possibilities, I'm curious what shows up for you among people who perhaps come from this more touristic sensibility.Lewis: Yeah. Well, a couple of years ago, the campaign wrote a book, a collection of essays called “Wild Service,” which is sort of acts as a bit of a compass towards this kind of new narrative of beyond extractive tourism, beyond recreation even, towards something which we sort of playfully called “re-creation” sometimes, this sort of sense that, actually, there's another way of doing this stuff. There's another way of [00:35:00] being in new places and of experiencing nature places near to and beyond our home. And Wild Service really is about... the kind of the subtitle of the book is “Why Nature Needs You.” So it's really kind of flipping this thing we were talking about earlier, which is that kind of a lot of conservation tends to focus in on, “ we desperately need nature, so we need to protect nature, and the way we do that is by excluding people.” And that's not all of conservation, but that is a kind of prevailing mindset which has existed and is entrenched now.So, wild service is trying to chart a different way, which is that we need to find this kind of peace, really. We are feeling that we can be active agents of benefit for the world around us. And there are some great examples. I mean, Paul Powlesland's an amazing barrister activist, who lives in northeast London and is [00:36:00] guardian of the River Roding up there who kind of lives on the river in his boat, and is out on the river every day, normally waist-deep in the river, acting in service to clean that river up.And it is in a mess. This river's been a historic dumping ground for industry, and neglected by government and local authority over the years, and just trashed. And Paul is with a team of volunteers, working so hard to shine a light on that, but also just basically to clean it up, and to demonstrate how illegal rubbish dumps and illegal sewers are overflowing into it. And it's become this flashpoint really for a wider conversation of concern.And there are many other examples where, you know, on the River Wye, for example, on the border between Wales and England, which is one of the first rivers really to have its kind of legal rights asserted in England through the action of communities.And we're talking about wild swimmers and anglers and [00:37:00] kayakers and people who are kind of out on the river. And I think it's no coincidence that the River Wye is also one of the only rivers in England where there is a legal right of access to swim and to connect with the river. And that people have seen it as a gift really, to then act on behalf of the river. And of course, then that's playing out now.The rights of nature are playing out globally. I mean Ecuador, being one of the kind of trailblazing, the constitution, embedding this. And I think acting as an inspiration for so many more communities to really take on board the rights of nature. And to see a kind of community activists stepping forward in wild service to do some of this work. And in cases like Paul, they often trespass whilst they're doing it.Chris: Yeah, I think there's definitely this question of animism that comes into play, perhaps peripherally as well in these conversations, which is that, so many of our ancestors, at least at some point, [00:38:00] understood the more-than-human beings and worlds within their places as just as alive and deserving of a good life and dignity as humans are.And that over the course of the last 500 years, at least, a degree of deanimation has occurred as a result of the enclosures. Certainly, you could get into the Cartesian philosophical questions, regarding who has a soul and who doesn't. But I think there's something deeply embedded there as well about the questions of, when we find ways to ensure that rivers, for example, or other aspects of the more-than-human world have rights, that we are trying to find a way back towards respecting the dignity that exists, and is [00:39:00] more or less, demanded, if not, seen or experienced a priori, within an animistic perspective.Lewis: Yeah, I mean, absolutely the same logic that tore people from the Commons was also at play, of course, in the kind of instrumentalising and essentializing nature, and creating this sort of division between people and the rest of nature. And it is certainly there in the history of the British Isles.You just don't have to look even back that far to see that people had a much kind of closer relationship. And I think this isn't about going back to anything. This is about finding a new path where, actually, this kind of experiment in driving a wedge between humans and the rest of nature has been wildly unsuccessful, and has caused great harm, and has precipitated, also, the harms done to people elsewhere.And, part of our kind of job now, I think, is to look to other [00:40:00] ways of doing things. And I see really in the kind of richness of the work being done by communities and individuals, and increasingly, with work being done within governance, that actually rights of nature is not a panacea, but it does give us this sort of direction towards something, which is perhaps more unifying, and can be part of that future.Chris: Hmm. Yeah. I'm reminded of a fairly famous quote, at least within the psychedelic culture, of a man named Terrence McKenna, who said that this work is not a return to the archaic. It's a return of the archaic.Lewis: Hmm.Chris: And so perhaps there's something in there that can give us pause to consider and reconsider how we are with more-than-human worlds.Well, I'd like to take a, just a slight detour if we can, because there's this question of [00:41:00] what the enclosures of the commons did, to people both in England and then abroad, later. And a lot of it has to do with the human relationship to nature, to more-than-human worlds. But I'm also curious about this relationship to home, and to housing even, and to what the enclosures kind of precipitated in the behaviour of human beings, what displacement and expulsion and enclosure do to human beings.And so, I have a little quote here from a great book, called The War Against the Commons. And in that book, the author writes,“The largest number of migrants left England entirely, mostly for North America or the Caribbean. [This is as a result of the enclosures.] Net emigration in the century before 1640 was close to [00:42:00] 600,000, and another 400,000 left by the end of that century, extraordinarily large numbers from a country whose mid-1600s population was barely 5 million people.What's more, those are net figures. More people left, but their numbers were partially offset by immigrants arriving in England from Scotland, Wales, Ireland, and continental Europe. Most of the emigrants were young men, and about half paid for the dangerous ocean crossing by agreeing to be indentured servants for four or more years there, in the ‘New World.' That was a high price, but hundreds of thousands of landless peasants were willing to pay it.For some, it was not a choice. English courts frequently sentenced vagrants and other criminals to indentured servitude in the New World.”And so, I don't think it's such a huge [00:43:00] stretch of the imagination to say that the chain reaction that began with the enclosures in England and later spread to most parts of the world had direct consequences for how the Americas, among other places, were colonised. I think it's quite curious and telling that the sometimes brutal dispossession and dislocation that was unleashed on commoners in the UK was then later unleashed by those same commoners turned migrants or their descendants on the other side of the Atlantic. And so, given that one of the major issues of our time revolves around migration and borders, I'm curious if this history or this unauthorised history has come up at all in the conversations around migration in your part of the world.Lewis: Yeah. Well, I think the harm that has been done to the landscapes here, clearly, the mindset and the exploitative mindset have been at play [00:44:00] elsewhere as we've discussed. You talked about how vagrants were treated. People are told they have no place on land that they don't own. And then when they find themselves, suddenly without work and dispossessed and subject to new laws that were criminalising that kind of vagrancy, I think that's such a strong kind of signal within a society that there's this kind of way of being successful or a way of undertaking a life, and of doing business, whatever you wanna call it. And so as soon as people are given an opportunity to go off and set off for new shores... we were effectively training a whole population on how to other, and how to exploit. I mean, this was the kind of place in which that mindset was cultivated.Chris: Mm-hmm.Lewis: And people, I think what I always come [00:45:00] back to in, whenever I'm reading about the enclosures and the commons, is that people were resisting, as well. And I think, the Levellers, the amazing campaigning done by the Levellers who took up arms and really knew resisted the kind of modern enclosures and the idea of landlordism, that only land landowners should have a broad set of rights, including the right to vote. The people were resisting this at every step of the way.And I think that we see that obviously internationally, as well. Colonisation by Britain and by other colonising powers has always been resisted, and there are movements globally that are working to protect the rights of people and land against these kinds of damaging and exploitative practises.But I think it comes back really, as somebody who lives here in England, that it might feel small to be a part of a campaign, which is about “I want [00:46:00] rights to be able to walk outta my door and walk into the nearby countryside, whilst there are these sort of incredibly awful, colonial practises going on in the name of progress, globally, in my name.”This is also about how we cultivate that kind of awareness and resistance. Because what I see and what I've learned through being part of this campaign is that, something which is kind of meaningful for us here today, by learning our histories and how this has kind of evolved, really, and grown out of the land where I live, part of that journey is also about educating ourselves and taking action on things which are an injustice for us in our lives, and joining those injustices to others, which are taking place in the name of the same systems that exploited the world, the more direct world around us.So, these are joined up. And, I think the other thing I wanna say is that like so many times in our campaigning we've come across the role of power and privilege and money in the countryside, [00:47:00] and how the larger states and the names that go with them that persist in the countryside today...I mean, about a third of England is still in aristocratic hands. We're unsure of the exact figure because so much of the land in England is not registered, but around about a third of England is still in the hands of... many of those people can trace their lineage right back to the Norman Conquest, to 1066, when William the Conqueror came over and handed out the land of his newly acquired domain to all of his mates. We're still living with that legacy today.And so, we see those power structures in the countryside. We see the money that's behind them. And all of the new money, the corporate money as well, that's being poured into the countryside around us. And there's a direct link there to democracy, as well, to what we're told about who belongs and who gets a say and who actually should feel welcome here. And when we look at the rise of the far-right here [00:48:00] in England, and I think, elsewhere, globally, the perpetuation of the narratives that go behind the rise of the far-right comes from that kind of land-owning, embedded power structure, the same power which has actually disconnected and dispossessed the majority of the population, the 99% of us, who don't own half of England.And that's really shocking. And I think, when we see figures like Nigel Farage here in England, pointing to migrants as the problem, it doesn't take much delving back into our history to see that this is a defence strategy, a way of deflecting blame from those who have acquired through exploitation, through murder and destruction, massive amounts of wealth and privilege and power.And so, this is the latest iteration of blaming people. We blamed the vagabonds and the [00:49:00] poor for causing problems in the countryside by criminalising activities, and exporting them off. And today we're blaming migrants, and I think, to be able to know our history and to look at how the enclosure acts and the loss of a sense of common belonging is connected to how we are having our dispossession thrown back at us through a sense of blame for others who have absolutely no stake in the uprooting of our connection.Chris: Hmm. Brilliant. Yeah. Thank you so much, Louis, for bringing this up. I mean, I've had my friend and mentor Steven Jenkinson on the pod a few times. And one of the things that he's written that describes the dynamics in a lot of the modern condition. But I think in this question, particularly around migration and colonial history,[00:50:00] he writes that, “ they deify what dispossessed their ancestors.” They turn into a God, the trauma that dispossessed their ancestors. And then, of course, in this particular context, they project it onto the people who are now being dispossessed.Lewis: Hmm.I mean, we see this logic also play out in other, smaller ways, I think, in the countryside in England. Like, for example, massive running battles and riots to protect Fenland, the fenlands of the east of England, from being drained and improved. Massive protests to prevent woodlands from being enclosed. But today, we'll see the everyday public who don't have any ownership of those lands, protecting this kind of sense of industrial improvement. And I think that there's a lot of unpicking to be done, to look back [00:51:00] and to say, actually, this is something that was done to us. And with that, we lost our rights, and also now, one of the biggest kinds of parlour tricks really of that whole system has been for us to blame each other.Chris: Yeah. I mean, I see it on a smaller scale as well in terms of landlordism and rent. I mean, we, I had an interview a few months ago, and we brought up the question of rent, which surely existed before the enclosure of the commons, but has become a staple, a normalised aspect of modern life. And it's become that rent has become so normalised that no one questions the kind of wage and rent slavery that we're born into in this late capitalist context. And therefore there's no need to imagine our relationships with home or [00:52:00] house or housing or land being any different.And as you mentioned, how the enclosures created this kind of notion perhaps among people in England in the previous hundred years, and then of course exported elsewhere, that the roots of enclosures and the different forms that they take or can take in the world, are the recipe for a ‘better life', right?And so I see that as well as a kind of historical extension of the enclosures, this notion that, like, “well, it's just the way it is and you just have to pay your rent, and there's no questioning the dynamics of private property. And if you don't like it, just submit or become a landlord yourself.Lewis: Hmm. Well, one of the interesting things I think that happened again in Scotland was that in 2003, the Land Reform Act, which came in and which [00:53:00] I've mentioned as being the acts which brought about the Scottish right to roam as we know it today, actually, that was almost a kind of footnote to the wider act. And one of the main things that it brought about was for people to have a right to buy, for communities to have a right to buy. And one of the big transformations in Scotland in recent years has been communities being able to buy up parts of whole estates and even sometimes whole islands.And so, the Isle of Eigg was one of the first examples, but now there are many, many more across Scotland where communities are starting to take literal ownership of places, and with that obviously comes things like rent controls and responsibility and accountability, between each other, within communities.And so, looking at it through that lens, where people have a greater stake in landscapes that they literally own or have a stake in, there are many, many outcomes in terms of nature conservation and public [00:54:00] access, and a wider sense of responsibility, which can kind of spill over. And it is not without problems. I mean, of course, there are still issues in Scotland with estates, and large, faceless landlords extracting massive amounts of extortionate rent from people. That's, of course, still happening.One of the things that we see in England, and I think is maybe a bit of a kind of telling contrast to that, is that in the last year we've seen two large estates, and there's probably been many more, but two that have come up on our radar, really, that have held-in properties.So one of them down in Dorset, a kind of neighbouring county to where I live, had 32 houses, ostensibly, affordable dwellings for people to live in the countryside, which is hard to come by, actually. In some parts of rural England, it's really hard to live affordably in the countryside. So, people who have been there for generations saw an estate that had been held by the same family for seven generations, suddenly bought by a [00:55:00] faceless corporation on behalf of an anonymous absentee landowner.And suddenly, overnight, the community was hit with kind of massive amounts of uncertainty. People worried about evictions or rents going up. And the same things happened just down the road from us, with an estate owned by the royal family suddenly put up for sale, and suddenly, tenant farmers, people who had had this kind of certainty that actually this has been owned by the royal family since the 1300s, are now being put up for sale.And from that point of view, the person selling it just looks at it like a set of assets that could be sold off. And I think what I would love is for, in England, for us to have a community right to buy. So when things like that happen, then actually communities get this kind of first refusal.So, landlordism and ownership patterns that are linked to the extortions going on are deeply connected to rights of access, because the golden thread that links all of those is a right to belong. And without that kind of certainty that you can call a place home [00:56:00] without being evicted, or without being told that you can get to your kind of favourite river swimming spot, for me, those two things are deeply related, and they point to the need for something much more robust for people who so desperately need it, who don't have the means to buy land themselves.Chris: Mm-hmm. Yeah. Thank you, Lewis. I'm grateful for this work that you do with the right to roam, and hopefully, as the movement grows, there'll be an opportunity for, perhaps, seemingly disparate movements or campaigns to join in this way and to recognise their mutual goals.And so I'm curious, I'd love to ask you about how this shows up on a broader spectrum, in a global spectrum, in terms of the Right To Roam, in terms of access to land and the campaigns and movements that are happening, not just in England, but elsewhere, beyond the Isles and perhaps beyond [00:57:00] Europe.And so I'm curious what kind of similar movements or campaigns might be happening in other countries or continents, for which there might be solidarity between the fight for the commons in the UK and the fight for the commons elsewhere?Lewis: Hmm. Well, land. It literally underpins everything, really.I mean, we see so many campaigns and injustices, which obviously are linked to land and the right to belong and the right to be. And land justice, globally, there's so much international solidarity. Our work today is very much about drawing those threads and remaining kind of focused on what we need to do, but we can see sort of the parallels elsewhere.And, people that we campaign with are also involved in international campaigning with Survival International, for example, doing amazing work to support the rights of indigenous peoples and rights to land globally. And the International Land Coalition, the work that they're [00:58:00] doing, a lot of which is in South America.We talked already about the rights of nature movement, and seeing lots of that kind of showing up and the rights of nature in the constitution of Ecuador, has, as I've already said, been a massive inspiration for that movement now in the UK.And, obviously, in the majority of Latin American countries, this is a real present challenge, and it's highly contested. I was speaking with a group from Dalhousie University in Canada as well recently about the kind of the rights to the coastline up there, and how, even in North American countries, there are like these challenges because of the development of coastlines, and not just coastlines, but also, the private property rights which excludes people to perhaps a more extreme extent than we have here in England.I was always struck by how, in the United States, the [00:59:00] right to roam campaign is sort of... I think people are just bewildered by it. Like, “What is this kind of campaign?” Because the rights of property are so sacrosanct, and the rights of property and the right to exclude, with the exception of the national park.So, we see these interesting challenges coming up, and international solidarity with people, in all sorts of different contexts.I was really interested in the conversation that you were having with Devon Taylor on this podcast about the rights to the coast, for example, in Jamaica, as well, and how that is absolutely linked to the exploitation of Jamaica and of people, and that land is still subject to the same kind of sets of exclusions there. And I was really interested to hear about the campaigning that's being done to just give people a simple right to get to the beach, which just seems so [01:00:00] basic and simple, but actually is fundamental. And so, I'm really gladdened and also shocked by what's happening there. And particularly if you contrast it with a place like Barbados, where there's a right to the coast, to see just what's possible with campaigning. And with political will, actually, you can see that these things are winnable and that they're winnable because of people like Devon doing that kind of work.So yeah, our work's very much focused on England, and what we can achieve within this parliament. We basically want to finish what we're doing, and then carry on with the wider work that we're all also interested in doing, and getting this law changed is our kind of like tiny puzzle piece in the wider tapestry of land justice, globally.Chris: Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm. May it be that the people who listen to this and who find their way towards the Right to Roam's work, join up and remember the [01:01:00] histories that have led us to this point and to people like yourself who are working to reconcile, as you said, what's been done historically in your name, or in your names.And, it's been a blessing to have you on the pod Lewis, to be able to both historically and contemporaneously, bring together a lot of the threads that a lot of other podcast guests in the past have spoken to, threads that bring us to a degree of source or historical origin in terms of how these enclosures came to be and of course, how people like yourself in the place that they began are working for their proper subversion.And so, on behalf of our listeners, Lewis, I'd like to thank you for joining me today for being willing to speak to these issues, these very complex issues. And I'm of course grateful that you're digging into the complexities in the way that you do.It's a great honour. And finally, [01:02:00] I'd like to ask you, how might our listeners find out more about the Right to Roam and its campaigns? How might they get involved and support, or begin this good work, in the places that they live?Lewis: Thanks, Chris. It is great to be on here and speaking with you, as well.And yeah, I mean, we're a small campaign. We do what we can with the small amount of resources that we have available. But I think, if people want to support our work, you can head over to our website. We've got our website at righttorome.org.uk. So check that out. We've got a mailing list, as well, and we try to send out fairly infrequent, but we hope, worthwhile emails, which give you a bit of insight.They tend to be focused on the work we are doing here for England and Wales. But I think for international listeners, this is potentially of interest as well, because, obviously, this speaks to the wider context. We've got social media as well, so you can see us on Instagram and on Blue Sky. And we're just in the process of setting [01:03:00] up a blog, as well. So, stay tuned for that. But get in touch and listen out for any updates.Chris: Thank you, Lewis. I'll make sure that those links are on the End of Tourism website in the homework section. And, for those who are outside of England who are wondering about this, perhaps the Right to Roam and their work is something not only of an inspiration, but a foundation for the ways in which you and your people might come to gather together and organise for access to land in your places.Thank you so much, Louis.Lewis: Thanks, Chris. Get full access to Chris Christou at chrischristou.substack.com/subscribe

Medaya Ocher and Kate Wolf speak to historian Erin Maglaque about Presence: A Hidden History of the Female Body, which interrogates contemporary notions of how women's bodies work. The book is both a personal account as well as an excavation of the rituals, beliefs, and experiences of women from pre-modernity. It covers everything from pregnancy and child-birth to abortion, sexual desire, work, and sleep. Maglaque contrasts the idea of our bodies as separate from our minds—both optimizable and containable—with a pre-Cartesian conception of them as porous, vulnerable, and infinitely complex, inviting a consideration of some of the freedom of the deeper past and its starkly different ways of being embodied.

SYNOPSIS:What if intelligence is far bigger than IQ, rational thought, or what we've been taught to measure? In this fascinating conversation, Ali sits down with coach and researcher Rachel Fell to explore neurodiversity as an expression of human biodiversity, challenging our assumptions about what it means to think, feel, perceive, and truly know. Together they venture beyond the limits of our culturally conditioned understanding of intelligence, revealing a far broader way of knowing through our lived experience as sensing bodies.Whether you identify as neurodivergent or simply long to feel more fully alive, this episode offers a refreshing invitation to rethink intelligence itself. From trauma, sensitivity, and nervous system regulation to movement, emotion, and the remarkable adaptability of the human body, Ali and Rachel explore how reclaiming our full-bodied intelligence may be one of the most important - and hopeful - frontiers of our time.To subscribe now, click hereTo be an angel to the podcast, click here To read more about the podcast, click here FOR MORE ALI MEZEY:Website: https://www.alimezey.comPersonal Geometry® and the Magic of Mat Work Course information:FREE Guided Body Mapping Taster: Heart/Sexuality SplitFive-films series (made by Ali Mezey) on Stephan Hausner's work with transgenerational influences on illnessFOR MORE RACHEL FELL:BIO: Rachel Fell is a coach, consultant and collaborator working at the intersections of neurodiversity, living intelligence, perception, and embodied awareness. For over six years she has worked with gifted, neurocomplex, sensitive and intense adults around the globe, co-exploring in the service of full-body intelligence and their unique paths to realization and fulfillment. A published author, speaker, and teacher, she also consults and collaborates with organizations on intelligence and its development, leadership, and brand/identity and business projects. RACHEL – WebsiteRACHEL – InstagramRELEVANT THE BRILLIANT BODY PODCAST EPISODES:First Rachel Fell: Bridging Divides with Rachel Fell: Neurodivergence, Conscious Body Awareness & Inclusive IntelligenceLive conversation with Rachel Fell: Neurodiversity, The Body & Inclusive Intelligence: LIVE AUDIENCE Q&A RECORDING with Rachel Fell & Ali MezeyPanel Discussion: The Democratic Body with Ali, Sarah Peyton, Amber Gray & Rachel FellPhilip Shepherd, Embodiment Leader & Author: Coming Home to the Body with PHILIP SHEPHERD...ReprisedOTHER LINKS:Dr Svetlana Masgutova: https://masgutovamethod.com/Svetlana Masgutova Educational InstituteThe Masgutova Neurosensorimotor Reflex Integration - MNRI® MethodRemarkably Bright Creatures on Netflix with Sally Field. Delightful. An Immense World by Ed YongOriginal Wisdom by Robert WolffEXPLANATIONS:"I think, therefore I am" / Cartesian Divide – René Descartes' famous philosophical statement that placed thinking at the center of human identity. It also contributed to the enduring Western separation of mind and body, often referred to as the Cartesian mind-body split.Family Constellation Work – A therapeutic and experiential approach developed by Bert Hellinger that explores how unconscious family dynamics and inherited patterns can influence our lives, relationships, health, and sense of self.Dr. Spock & "Crying It Out" – Mid-20th-century parenting advice, influenced in part by pediatrician Dr. Benjamin Spock and later behavioral approaches, often encouraged allowing babies to cry rather than responding immediately. More recent attachment and developmental research emphasizes the importance of consistent, responsive caregiving for healthy nervous system development.DEFINITIONS:Human exceptionalism – The belief that humans are fundamentally superior to, or separate from, the rest of nature and other living beings.Afferent and efferent – Afferent signals carry information to the brain from the body and senses; efferent signals carry commands from the brain back to the body.Phenomenology – The study of direct, lived experience—exploring what it feels like to perceive, sense, and exist from the inside.ARFID (Avoidant/Restrictive Food Intake Disorder) – An eating disorder characterized by extreme restriction or avoidance of certain foods, often due to sensory sensitivities, textures, smells, or fear of negative experiences with eating. It...

Matt and Michael wrestle with a question that has been hanging over both of them. Why have they stopped paying attention to the news? Is that a good thing or a bad thing? They land on the idea of a Cartesian crisis. Nobody trusts anything anymore. Every headline is met with an actually from someone who thinks they have the real truth. They explore how skepticism can lead to nihilism or to wisdom, and why character assassination has replaced actual argument. Then things get interesting. The conversation turns to what it means to truly love someone versus simply labeling them, why we have lost the definition of racism, and how dress codes and tattoos are really just signals we send to the world about who we want to be. They contrast David Bowie and Bob Dylan as two models of subversion, one grounded and one spinning off into the void. They talk about Jung, individuation, and why growing up means learning to reincorporate what you once rebelled against. And they end with a story about a fake recruiter that captures just how deep the trust crisis really goes. Cheers y'all

I am good. I protest. I save people. I must save the world - now.  If this even slightly feels like something you've told yourself, then this episode is for you. Author and campaigner Anthea Lawson's brilliant new book is called How Not To Save The World. It's about the 'script' that activists - including her - tell ourselves, often without realising it. From this script, which can come from deep cultural and psychological places, comes many things that aren't much help - like burnout, the excusing of bad behaviour, and pushing people away rather than persuading them.  Instead Anthea's got a new recipe for change-making which is better for the activists, and better for the world. I loved Anthea's book and, as will become abundantly clear, it spoke to me good and proper. If you've ever wrestled with how to be a good activist, I commend it, and this chat, to you in the highest terms. Let me know your thoughts on the show - hello@yourbrainonclimate.com. Please rate, review and subscribe, and share the show on socials. And do consider chucking this humble indie podcaster a few quid at www.patreon.com/yourbrainonclimate. Owl noises = references below.01:19: the episode of Sustainababble in which I talked about why I quit.  16:47: here's Wikipedia explaining (using too many long words in my opinion) the Cartesian divide.20:44: a great article about Jung's idea of the shadow.  24:46: What's the amygdala? 39:03: More in Common's deep dive into Progressive Activists.40:00: My interview with Deborah Prentice about pluralistic ignorance.  Your Brain on Climate is a show about human brains vs the climate crisis. It's  hosted and produced by me, Dave Powell. You can follow the show on instagram @yourbrainonclimate, and I occasionally put up a Substack. YBOC theme music and iterations thereof, by me. Thanks as always to Ruth Everett for the voices. Show logo by Arthur Stovell at https://mondial-studio.com/.   

Coming at you from the scene of one of America's greatest political scandals, Jonah Goldberg and Sarah Isgur are geared up to spill the tea and answer listeners' most pressing questions: Was Sarah Ted Cruz's mistress? Has Jonah's second wife been born yet? How long could a homeless Jonah sleep on Sarah's couch? Also find out about finding a mentor, manicuring résumés, the most improbable part of Air Force One, how to be a pundit, first dates, finding a wife, making connections at events, staying positive, the Cartesian self, and being the person your dog thinks you are.  Show Notes: —Advisory Opinions Podcast —Essay by Ben Sasse's daughter —Sarah's book: Last Branch Standing The Remnant is a production of ⁠The Dispatch⁠, a digital media company covering politics, policy, and culture from a nonpartisan perspective. To access all of The Dispatch's offerings—including the Saturday Ruminant, audio versions of all our articles and newsletters, and Jonah's twice-weekly G-File—⁠click here⁠. Instructions on how to set up your members-only feed can be found here, and if you'd like to remove all ads from your podcast experience, consider becoming a premium Dispatch member ⁠by clicking here⁠. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Jim talks with Peter Wang—chief AI officer, cofounder and CEO of Anaconda, board member of the Center for Humane Technology, and founder of the Austin STEM Center—about Robert Pirsig's metaphysics of quality, how modernity encourages defection, and a secular conception of the sacred. They discuss: Peter's self-description as "the music in a violin that can kind of hear itself" The "Peter Wang-shaped hole in the universe" thought experiment Subject-object Cartesian dualism as a false alienation Minimum viable metaphysics & atheistic agnosticism Religion as an evolutionary emergent coherence mechanism for human collectives Figure and ground as a metaphysical lens—the anonymous soil that allows religion to sprout The Unix fortune "Man was invented by water to carry itself uphill" & Peter's teleology origin story Process metaphysics & presentism—"we're not going anywhere, we're becoming someone" Pirsig's metaphysics of quality & the four strata of static patterns of value The intellectual plane vs. the social plane & Ken Wilber's pre-trans fallacy Defection within collaborative groups as the dynamic all human social systems try to constrain "Death from a Distance"—throwing, beta coalitions & the emergence of a middle class of power Modernity's shrinking locus of care & the collapse of embedded social context The agglomeration of defectors & how fluid capital enables sociopathic hoarding Money-on-money return as today's dominant pruning rule Joint attention as a scarce collective resource & social media's perforation of shared intersubjective infrastructure Human agency & "micro-abdications" as the aggregate source of Moloch / Game A The augmented currency thought experiment—metering human thriving alongside financial returns Broken collective sense-making & the search for dynamic, adaptable values Peter's secular conception of the sacred—the "eternal golden braid of humanity" "Ofness"—holding both distinctness and belonging to the world ... and much more. Links: Episode Transcript JRS EP 278 Peter Wang on AI, Copyright, and the Future of Intelligence JRS Currents 092: Peter Wang on The Meaning Crisis and Consequentiality JRS EP 16 Anaconda CTO Peter Wang on The Distributed Internet "The Silent Sky and the Test Ahead," by Jim Rutt "A Minimum Viable Metaphysics," by Jim Rutt Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance, by Robert M. Pirsig Lila: An Inquiry into Morals, by Robert M. Pirsig Chaos: Making a New Science, by James Gleick Death from a Distance and the Birth of a Humane Universe, by Paul M. Bingham and Joanne Souza The Selfish Gene, by Richard Dawkins Center for Humane Technology Peter Wang is the Chief AI and Innovation Officer and Co-founder of Anaconda. Peter leads Anaconda's AI Incubator, which focuses on advancing core Python technologies and developing new frontiers in open-source AI and machine learning, especially in the areas of edge computing, data privacy, and decentralized computing.

How the French formal garden embodied both Cartesian philosophy and the political ideology of the French monarchy.

This week I'm sharing the fourth and final installment from the day-long conference convened by the Institute for America, China, and the Future of Global Affairs (ACF) at Johns Hopkins SAIS on April 3rd in Washington — “The China Debate We're Not Having: Politics, Technology, and the Road Ahead.” The first three episodes featured Jessica Chen Weiss's opening remarks and the panels on what China wants, what the United States wants, and tech rivalry and competing visions of the future. This final installment is a fireside conversation between Henry Farrell and Alondra Nelson, followed by Jessica's closing remarks.Once again, my deep thanks to Jessica Chen Weiss, ACF's inaugural faculty director, for organizing this terrific conference and for so generously letting me share this audio with Sinica listeners.Henry Farrell, the Stavros Niarchos Foundation Agora Institute Professor of International Affairs at SAIS, sits down with Alondra Nelson — Harold F. Linder Professor of Social Science at the Institute for Advanced Study and former Director of the White House Office of Science and Technology Policy — for what turns out to be the day's most generative reframing of the AI race. Henry begins by asking how it is that ideas once confined to 1980s science fiction — the singularity, AGI, brains-in-vats — have come to anchor mainstream American AI policy discourse. Alondra traces the genealogy back to the “Californian ideology” and the long history of outré thinking in Silicon Valley, but her real point is that something has shifted: U.S. negative sentiment around AI has been climbing and plateauing high since 2022, even as adoption has spread — the opposite of the usual technology-acceptance curve, and the opposite of what's happening in China, Nigeria, or Brazil.From there the conversation opens up into what I found to be its richest vein: the contrast between a Cartesian, disembodied American conception of AI — “we're working on the brains,” as Sam Altman put it when OpenAI shut down its robotics team in 2022 — and a more embodied approach that integrates the cognitive and the physical, which is part of what's powered China's advances in advanced manufacturing and robotics. Alondra is sharp on the costs of the brain-in-a-vat framing: it treats AI as a state of exception in which existing laws and institutions somehow don't apply, and it lets us float aspirational claims (”AI will cure cancer”) that elide all the clunky institutional stewardship actually required to get from aspiration to outcome.She also offers an incisive reading of the Trump administration's AI policy — which, she argues, is misleadingly described as “deregulatory.” Between export controls, the golden share in Intel, immigration restrictions on STEM talent, and the administration's tight stewardship of who wins and who loses in the AI ecosystem, this is industrial policy by another name — and a narrowing of democratic input over decisions of enormous infrastructural consequence.The conversation closes with Henry asking what a small-d democratic successor administration ought to do, and Alondra's answer is bracingly practical: get rid of the state of exception, take the material supply chain of AI seriously (data centers, electricity, critical minerals, communities), let state-level policy generate evidence about what works, and aim for high-watermark aspirations — North Stars, in the spirit of the AI Bill of Rights — rather than pretending the technology itself will deliver our values.Jessica then offers her closing remarks, thanking the panelists, previewing the ACF Insights Series, and putting out the call for new junior fellows at the Institute.Participants:Alondra Nelson, Harold F. Linder Professor of Social Science, Institute for Advanced Study; former Director, White House Office of Science and Technology PolicyHenry Farrell, Stavros Niarchos Foundation Agora Institute Professor of International Affairs, Johns Hopkins SAISClosing remarks: Jessica Chen Weiss, David M. Lampton Professor of China Studies and Inaugural Faculty Director, ACFSee Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.

I'll be teaching yoga & meditation this September 20-26 at Ballymaloe House in Ireland with Erin Doerwald. It's a profoundly beautiful, nurturing setting for retreat. Join us for rhythms of daily practice, exquisite farm-to-table meals, and cultural exploration. Plus cedar saunas and a cold sea plunge! We welcome you to join us for this extraordinary retreat—more info at shawnparell.com/irelandI was puttering around on my desktop last week—doing anything to avoid beginning this draft—when an email arrived from Satya Doyle Byock, Director of the Salomé Institute of Jungian Studies, psychotherapist, and author of Quarterlife: The Search for Self in Early Adulthood. I'm connected to Satya's work through a yearlong course in Jungian psychology, so it felt synchronous that her voice should reach me in the midst of a procrastination I had entered but not yet named.In her newsletter, Satya reflected on how AI-generated content has begun to drain her motivation to write, or at least to write in the digital landscape:“The existential (or is it creative?) concern is not only that I don't know that I can keep up; it's that I'm not sure I want to.I don't want to feel frenzied for any reason, let alone in order to keep pace with robots.”I felt an immediate resonance. A similar resistance has been gathering at the edges of my awareness in recent months. As ever, I am drawn to the practice of writing; I feel reluctant, though, to keep step with machines, and wary of the subtle infiltration of AI's manufactured voice into the written word. Its outputs are refining by the day, but its velocity, seamlessness, and casual superiority register as categorically inhuman. Even the term content betrays the shift: it names a product, not a process. Writing still implies the grist of a mind at work.Momentarily, I consider abandoning the whole imperfect enterprise of these essays. Why compete with the speed of light? Human attention—my attention—has already been profoundly shaped, even warped, by life in the digital age. Like Satya, I am unwilling to have my nervous system further conscripted into that race.But then I pause. Because keeping pace is not, and never was, the aim of this work.In 1884, William James insisted, in his early challenge to Cartesian dualism, that “a purely disembodied human emotion is a nonentity.” Emotion, for James, arises from embodied sensation—from the interplay of pulse and breath, fascia and nerve synapse. What, then, are we encountering in AI's frictionless outputs, if not language severed from the very conditions that allow for feeling?Beyond its basic communicative function, writing is one of the ways humanity has revealed itself to itself across generations. Its deeper value—like all art—is metabolic. The artist's task is to sustain attention—to lower a bucket into the shadowed recesses of the psyche and draw up something true. Something we can hold up to the light and marvel: this has been here all along.Silene stenophylla—the narrow-leafed campion—offers a botanical echo of this process through millennia. Revived from 32,000-year-old tissue preserved in the frozen burrows of Arctic ground squirrels, its cells were coaxed back into bloom. Its resurrection gestures toward the truth that creation unfolds according to its own tempos, on timescales that exceed human urgencies. No algorithm can hasten such an emergence. It belongs to the potential of living systems. Silene stenophylla stands for all that has yet to be brought to light.My family is moving through a health circumstance that has re-angled the light on everything. I find myself asking, with unusual clarity, what it means to be human. What is this brief and improbable flare of existence, this particular arrangement of spirit and days—and what, in fact, matters within it? I am learning that no intelligence outside nature's intelligence—the one that moves through this body, shaped by my relationships, my encounters, my losses and blessings—can do this work for me. Integration is not transferable. It is slow chemistry, the metabolism of meaning, made possible by contact and time.In this unprecedented modern experiment—this “rough initiation,” to borrow Francis Weller's phrase from In the Absence of the Ordinary—we are tasked not only with preserving our shared existence, but with tending the intricate ecology by which we make sense of being human at all.To that end, I was struck by Ezra Klein's remarks to David Perell about how he prepares for interviews. He described the option of relying on a production team to generate questions—augmented, no doubt, by AI—and his commitment instead to the slower labor of reading and thinking his own way into his subject matter. It is through this integrative process that he becomes acclimated to the terrain of his guest's inner life.Klein's learning process is unmistakably estuarine. Like a river meeting the sea, he begins at the edge of his own knowing and encounters the salinity of another's perspective, allowing it to permeate and reshape his understanding. We may learn to live alongside artificial intelligence, and make good use of it, but this kind of convergence, this gradual and reciprocal deepening of awareness, still belongs to the meeting of living minds.As writers, readers, and human kin, we are now asking questions at the threshold between what can be offloaded and what cannot. We recognize ourselves in one another's fitful impasses and revelations. I find myself wanting, more clearly than ever, a human-paced, human-proportioned life—one in which instinct and intuition remain intact, in which I can not only hear another's words, but discern the place from which they have arisen. And so I must remain faithful to slow, estuarine processes that bend the psyche toward dignity and insight. We feel our way, and grow, and ache, and fall away, and arrive again. This is how we are human.If these offerings speak to you, consider becoming a paid subscriber. The Guest House is a 100% reader-supported publication, and your subscription makes it possible for us to create & connect. This is a public episode. If you'd like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit shawnparell.substack.com/subscribe

How does recognizing our deep physical and social connections change the way we understand human nature?University of Cincinnati philosophy and psychology professor Dr. Anthony Chemero joins host PJ Weary to challenge traditional Western philosophy and explore the embodied nature of cognition.Dr. Chemero unpacks his book Intertwined Creatures: The Embodied Cognitive Science of Self and Other. Together they discuss the intersection of cognitive science and feminist theory to show how deeply our environments and social circles shape who we are.In this conversation they explore: How feminist critiques of traditional philosophy reveal that our earliest experiences as infants are shared rather than isolated. The flaws of the Cartesian worldview that treats the self as a hidden mind sparsely connected to a mechanical body. Using the pub crawl from the movie The World's End to explain why viewing other people as unthinking blanks is a fundamental failure of understanding humanity. What flushing toilets and far-from-equilibrium thermodynamics teach us about the self-organizing nature of human behavior. The physical and social constraints that effortlessly coordinate our actions when we move a sofa or dance with another person. The concept of shared public moods and how our emotions are often collective rather than purely internal.This is a conversation for anyone interested in psychology and philosophy who wants to break free from the illusion of isolation and embrace a deeply connected human experience.Make sure to check out Dr. Chemero's book: Intertwined Creatures: The Embodied Cognitive Science of Self and Other

In this episode of Psyche Podcast, I continue my series on the philosophical foundations of solution-focused therapy by doing a close reading of Nick Drury's essay “Wittgenstein and the Tikanga of Psychotherapy.” Drawing on Wittgenstein's later philosophy, Drury challenges the Cartesian and medicalized picture of the person that has shaped so much of modern mental health discourse, and instead invites us into a vision of therapy rooted in language, relationship, ethical responsiveness, and forms of life. He also explicitly connects Wittgenstein's idea of “disappearing” problems through a changed way of living to solution-focused therapy's way of working.  I use the episode to explore why solution-focused therapy is so often misunderstood as simplistic when, in fact, it rests on a deeply serious philosophical vision of human life. Along the way, I unpack Drury's distinction between “know that” and “know how,” his critique of diagnosis-heavy and decontextualized models of care, and his account of therapy as a space where new language-games, new forms of relation, and new possibilities for living can emerge.  I also bring these ideas down to the level of practice with vivid clinical examples, showing how a Wittgensteinian and solution-focused sensibility can shift the way we listen, the way we ask questions, and the way we understand change itself. This is an episode about clarity, humility, and the ethical depth of therapy when it becomes less a laboratory of explanation and more a living conversation in which people can begin to speak and live differently together.

Romanticism gets treated like a synonym for nostalgia, and German Idealism gets shrunk to a few brand-name thinkers. We push back on both habits by talking with Christopher Satoor, a York University doctoral candidate and founder of the Young Idealist series, about what really happens when philosophy, poetry, art, and science collide in Jena.Schelling sits at the center of that collision. We dig into why his Naturphilosophie is neither “woo” nor a quaint premodern science lesson, but a serious attempt to rebuild our concept of nature after Cartesian mechanism. That means thinking in terms of living processes, hidden forces, and organic organization, and then asking what it does to our view of mind, creativity, and embodiment when “nature is visible spirit and spirit is invisible nature.” Along the way, we unpack the rift with Fichte, the shadow cast by Hegel, and how later caricatures and missing translations shaped Schelling's reputation in English-language philosophy.We also take the political and ethical questions seriously: what the Freedom Essay contributes to debates about evil, freedom, and the limits of purely dialectical stories of progress, and why Schelling's later “positive philosophy” focuses on existence, facticity, and the question of why there is something rather than nothing. Finally, we connect the stakes to the present, where climate change and environmental catastrophe demand a less mechanized picture of the world and a more holistic way of thinking across disciplines.If you enjoy deep dives into German Romanticism, German Idealism, Schelling, Kant, Fichte, Hegel, philosophy of nature, and freedom, subscribe, share this with a friend who argues about materialism, and leave a review with the biggest idea you're still wrestling with.Send us Fan Mail Musis by Bitterlake, Used with Permission, all rights to BitterlakeSupport the showCrew:Host: C. Derick VarnIntro and Outro Music by Bitter Lake.Intro Video Design: Jason MylesArt Design: Corn and C. Derick VarnLinks and Social Media:twitter: @varnvlogblue sky: @varnvlog.bsky.socialYou can find the additional streams on YoutubeCurrent Patreon at the Sponsor Tier: Jordan Sheldon, Mark J. Matthews, Lindsay Kimbrough, RedWolf, DRV, Kenneth McKee, JY Chan, Matthew Monahan, Parzival, Adriel Mixon, Buddy Roark, Daniel Petrovic,Julian

Pier Paolo Alberghini has spent 30 years designing and harmonizing spaces using an ancient science that most architects have never encountered. Every building you walk into is either working for your health or quietly working against it and the difference comes down to principles the ancient Romans, Renaissance masters, and Egyptian pyramid builders all understood. Modern architecture forgot all of it in 1700. And we've been paying for it ever since.Pier Paolo is Vice President of Biogeometry for Europe and a direct student of Dr. Ibrahim Karim, the founder of biogeometry. He has designed and harmonized buildings across Toronto, Geneva, and Florence, and has presented to thousands of practitioners across seven countries. One of his most documented cases: a client diagnosed with Parkinson's disease and given 2-3 years to live survived 13 more years inside a home he and Ibrahim harmonized — a case published in a 2013 Montreal architectural magazine. He is now the lead biogeometry architect on the Casitas at Kokomo Botanical Resort in Turks and Caicos, 16 buildings designed from the ground up to emanate healing energy to everyone inside and within a 5-kilometer radius.He explains:◼️ Why every cathedral, pyramid, and ancient temple you've ever felt at peace in was built on a "power spot" — and why modern architects have no idea what that means or how to replicate it ◼️ The Parkinson's patient given 2-3 years to live who survived 13 more years inside a biogeometry-harmonized home in Toronto — and what that tells us about the spaces we're living in right now ◼️ Why 16 buildings at the golden ratio (1.618) create an energy field that heals everyone within a 5-kilometer radius — and how every single design decision at the Casitas flows from this number ◼️ The EMF truth your phone company doesn't want you thinking about: why using your phone or computer without a biosignature attachment is linked directly to long-term neurological damage ◼️ 13 things you can change in your home or office right now — starting with moving your bed and desk 40 centimeters from the walls to escape the EMF field running through them ◼️ Why sleeping under a cathedral ceiling "desiccates" you the same way a pyramid desiccates a mummy — and the one small fix that eliminates the effect entirely ◼️ How humanity lost its right-brain intuition in 1700 due to the Cartesian shift — and why Ibrahim Karim believes we are finally in the process of reclaiming it ◼️ How to find power spots anywhere in the world using pendulums available on Amazon right now — and exactly what to do once you've found oneTIMESTAMPS: 00:00 – Intro 05:14 – What Is Biogeometry? Breaking Down BG3 Energy and Why It Matters 10:00 – Why Ancient Cathedrals Made You Feel Something (and Modern Buildings Don't) 15:40 – The Casitas at Kokomo: Designing 16 Buildings to Heal Their Inhabitants 20:33 – The Parkinson's Patient Who Lived 13 Extra Years in a Harmonized Home 25:00 – Power Spots: The Earth's Gift That Most People Walk Past Every Day 30:07 – 13 Ways to Make Your Home and Office Biogeometry-Friendly Right Now 35:00 – Cathedral Ceilings, EMF, and the Sleep Destroyers Hidden in Your Bedroom 40:00 – Ancient Builders Always Chose Their Sites Deliberately (Here's How They Found Them) 43:00 – The 1700 Cartesian Shift: How Humanity Stopped Trusting Its IntuitionSUPPORT AND CONNECT: LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/socialmediaspeaker/ Website: https://jayhunt.social

On this, our 322nd Evolutionary Lens livestream, we discuss the Cartesian crisis, whether going to the moon is valuable, and college in the age of AI. Before the ads, we discuss the nature of knowledge, and whether paying attention all the time, to all the things, can backfire and make a personal less capable of comprehension. Later: why go to the moon? An op-ed writer at The Guardian says there's no point—there's nothing to see, no one to talk to. We discuss the value of science—not just in terms of what we become capable of doing, but also for the human values of awe and wonder, openness and curiosity. As humans, we must encourage discovery, innovation, and exploration; we cannot cave to the fearful, provincial, and bland. Finally: professors and students are in an arms race over AI. A better move would be to seek two wildly different educational modes: one in which no outside sources of knowledge are available at all (e.g. a remote site with no cell service), and classroom-based work that encourages engagement and learning from and with the AI.*****Our sponsors:Branch Basics: Get 15% off Branch Basics with the code DARKHORSE at https://branchbasics.com/darkhorse #branchbasicspodPuori: Amazingly clean and safe supplements and protein powders, lab tested and guaranteed. Go to http://Puori.com/DarkHorse for 32% off grass-fed whey protein with a subscription. DarkHorse code works on all products!MUDWTR: Start your new morning ritual & get up to 43% off your @MUDWTR with code DARKHORSE at http://mudwtr.com/darkhorse #mudwtrpod*****Join us on Locals! Get access to our Discord server, exclusive live streams, live chats for all streams, and early access to many podcasts: https://darkhorse.locals.com/Heather's newsletter, Natural Selections (subscribe to get free weekly essays in your inbox): https://naturalselections.substack.comOur book, A Hunter-Gatherer's Guide to the 21st Century, is available everywhere books are sold, including from Amazon: https://amzn.to/3AGANGg (commission earned)Check out our store! Epic tabby, digital book burning, saddle up the dire wolves, and more: https://darkhorsestore.org*****Mentioned in this episode:Guardian op-ed: https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2026/apr/07/artemis-ii-space-travel-moonNASA's take: https://www.nasa.gov/missions/nasa-answers-your-most-pressing-artemis-ii-questions/TikTok video: https://x.com/LaNativePatriot/status/2042882244034076747Support the show

Send us Fan MailMay 15, 2021A comparison of my parents' science interests and their hopes to make me a scientist.  A comparison of parental religious philosophies.  How can science and religion coexist in one person when science negates religion?Late 19th and early 20th centuries--when Cartesian thought no longer applied and mystery caused a significant rapprochement of science and religion.  Role of Darwin in creating more mystery.  The Big Bang Theory:  how can we be living inside an explosion?  It seems the more we know the more mystery there is.What does religion provide?  Anti-hubris.  We will never reach the level os gods, no matter how many apples we eat.  Science requires hubris;  religion demands anti-hubris.PHF:  Announcement of our fundraiser in September.  I hope to raise enough money to buy a second melangeur for David.Support the showWrite to me at  twneuhaus@gmail.comTo learn more, visit  http://www.projecthopeandfairness.org

What does it actually mean to be a witch in 2026? Not green skin, not a broomstick — but something far more ancient, powerful, and relevant. In this episode, Harmony Slater and Russell Case sit down with Eileen March: certified life coach, trained energy healer, former midwife, and proud self-identified witch based in Calgary, Alberta. Eileen shares how she went from atheist to awakened — and what that opening has looked like in her daily life, her rituals, and her thriving community of women who gather around moon cycles, the Wheel of the Year, and the wisdom of the natural world. In This Episode: The root meaning of the word "witch" — and why it's actually a reclamation, not a rebellion How the burning times of the 15th–16th centuries turned healers and wise women into figures of fear The difference between witchcraft and Wicca (this surprises most people) What the "witch wound" is and how it shows up in modern women's lives Why identifying as a witch is a rejection of Cartesian dualism: "I am not separate from nature. I am nature." The Wheel of the Year — the ancient pagan calendar that anchors Eileen's seasonal living practice New moon versus full moon energy: what ceremonies look like for each Eclipse energy: why Eileen recommends hunkering down rather than casting spells during eclipses The neuroscience of manifestation — and why ritual and action must go hand in hand Money bowls, moon water, candle magic — what they actually are and what they're for Eileen's 12-week program "Unleash Your Inner Witch" and her year-long "Wise Wild Woman Mentorship" The books that cracked Eileen open: If Women Rose Rooted by Sharon Blackie and The Spirited Kitchen by Carmen Spinola   Connect with Eileen March: Instagram: @iameileenmarch Website & Free Witch Wound Masterclass: myluminouslife.ca Podcast: The Woo Curious Programs: Unleash Your Inner Witch (12-week) | The Wise Wild Woman Mentorship (year-long) New Moon in-person ceremonies in Calgary at Sola Strength   Mentioned in This Episode: Sharon Blackie — If Women Rose Rooted Carmen Spinola — The Spirited Kitchen The Radiant Energy Method with Harmony Slater & Angelica — beginning March 28th (find link in show notes)   Key Takeaways: Magic is not supernatural — it's the radical act of paying attention to what's already alive in and around you Ritual without action is wishful thinking. Action without ritual is exhausting. You need both. The Wheel of the Year gives you eight anchor points through the year to tune in, reflect, and renew intention Moon water, money bowls, and candle magic are tools for priming your brain to notice opportunity — not passive wishing The witch wound is real, it's collective, and healing it starts with claiming your own gifts The Inner Rejuvenation Codes: https://harmonyslater.kit.com/inner-rejuvenation-codes-mc FIND Harmony online: https://harmonyslater.com/ Harmony on IG: https://www.instagram.com/harmonyslaterofficial/ Finding Harmony Podcast on IG: https://www.instagram.com/findingharmonypodcast/ FREE Manifestation Activation: https://harmonyslater.kit.com/manifestation-activation

How do you know the blue you see is the same blue I see? We use the same word, but do we share the same experience? This ancient philosophical puzzle has become the defining crisis of our time. We're living through a moment where people use identical words and mean completely different things—where the same sentence can be a factual claim, a tribal signal, a joke, and a weapon simultaneously. In this episode of The Mirror World series, clinical director and psychotherapist Joel Blackstock, LICSW-S, explores the "collide-a-scope"—the moment when parallel realities can no longer stay separate through reflection and begin grinding against each other like gears that don't mesh. Read the Article THE FUSED BRAIN What happens when you surgically connect multiple living brains? They synchronize. They reorganize. They form a collective organism. This thought experiment from qEEG brain mapping provides the perfect metaphor for what's happening to us now. The internet has wired us together into a vast neural network—and just like an individual brain can develop neuroses, this collective brain is experiencing profound cognitive dissonance. THE DUAL LANGUAGE OF THE INTERNET Media theorist Walter Ong predicted that electronic media would thrust us into "secondary orality"—combining the permanence of print with the participatory rhythms of oral culture. The internet meme is the ultimate artifact of this fusion: mythic archetypes paired with hyper-literal text, operating on two frequencies simultaneously. We have never before spoken different languages using the same words. THOUGHT AS A SYSTEM Quantum physicist David Bohm warned in 1994 that thought is not something we do—it's something that happens to us. Collective thought has become so automatic that our individual thoughts are increasingly controlled by the collective without our noticing. And that was before social media, before smartphones, before algorithmic amplification. The system has been turbocharged. THE SOCIETY OF THE SPECTACLE Guy Debord saw it coming: all that was directly lived has become mere representation. The spectacle isn't just entertainment—it's a social relationship between people mediated by images. It colonizes everyday life, structures our thought, captures even our resistance. You can know social media is manipulating you and still be manipulated, because the knowing happens within the spectacle. THE COLLECTIVE PATIENT Here's the radical claim: collective psychology now functions like individual psychology. Pathology, personality disorders, grandiosity, delusions, splitting from reality—they're happening at the collective level, in near real-time. Groups of humanity can now be analyzed almost the same way you'd analyze a patient in therapy. You can identify the defenses, trace the trauma, watch the collective do exactly what an individual does when confronted with something they can't face. DIGITAL COLONIZATION The Steve Bannon, Trump, 4chan, alt-right phenomenon wasn't just politics—it was networks of the collective brain expanding, sussing out weaker regions, finding wounds and grievances, colonizing them at the speed of thought. Traditional colonialism needed ships and armies and decades. Digital colonization happens before resistance can organize. The neural pathway is laid before anyone notices. THE STAGES OF DEFLECTION Watch humanity move through the same defense mechanisms as a therapy patient avoiding change: It didn't happen Okay it happened, but it's not real Okay it's real, but it doesn't matter Okay it matters, but we can't do anything about it Okay maybe something could be done, but someone else will do it Okay it's not getting solved, but it's someone else's fault Okay it's going to take us all out, but we deserve it Watch climate discourse. Watch inequality discourse. You'll see these exact stages playing out collectively in real time. THE MIRROR WORLD The parallel objectivities aren't just tribal disagreements—they're self-contained systems of representation that are coherent and reproducible but not valid. They don't point back to anything real. When official metrics say the economy is doing well while patients can't afford a $30 copay, those metrics are reliable but not valid. We feel this disconnect—but we've been convinced the solution lies inside the metrics. This is gaslighting at civilizational scale. THE 1960s PARALLEL "Turn on, tune in, drop out" recognized the system was sick. And they weren't wrong—the institutions were corrupt, the Vietnam War was built on lies, consumer society was producing alienation. But the counterculture won the cultural war and lost everything else. By 1980, rebellion had become a marketing strategy. Symbolic victory was captured and neutralized while material defeat was total. We're at risk of making the same mistake. THE COLLISION Peter Sloterdijk described modern life as "foam"—countless bubbles providing micro-environments, each its own immunological container. The bubbles worked for a while. But material crises don't care which reality you inhabit. Climate change crosses all boundaries. Pandemics don't check your epistemological commitments. The bubbles are colliding now. Not reflecting—colliding. Grinding like gears that don't mesh. In a kaleidoscope, mirrors create beautiful patterns. In a collide-a-scope, the mirrors themselves are moving, crashing, shattering. THE WAY THROUGH The biggest step is recognizing that trauma treatment is self-evidently necessary—not as luxury, as foundation. Trauma fuels the blind spots. The parallel realities are trauma responses at collective scale. Therapy itself has to change. We have to learn to actually live together—not manage or avoid each other. Western history is largely the story of managing avoidance: tolerance as sophisticated avoidance, transactions as connection without vulnerability, rights as protection from rather than relationship with. Connection without internal avoidance. That's the task. The parts of yourself you can't face become the parts of others you can't tolerate. We need to see ourselves as multiplicities—communities of parts—and stop splitting thought from emotion. The Cartesian divide is part of what broke us. The mirrors are shattering. The gears are grinding. The collision is here. What we build from the fragments depends on whether we can finally stop avoiding—ourselves, each other, reality itself. ABOUT THE SHOW: www.GetTherapyBirmingham.com   TAGS: metamodernism, collective psychology, trauma therapy, David Bohm, Guy Debord, Society of the Spectacle, Walter Ong, secondary orality, meme culture, digital colonization, parallel realities, post-truth, Peter Sloterdijk, collective trauma, IFS therapy, parts work, Internal Family Systems, depth psychology, cultural criticism, media theory, political psychology, social media psychology, consciousness, cognitive dissonance, polarization, tribalism, epistemology, philosophy of mind, psychotherapy, mental health, collective healing, systems theory, Jungian psychology, trauma-informed, neoliberalism critique, Frankfurt School, critical theory, internet culture, 4chan, alt-right, counterculture, 1960s, Timothy Leary, collective unconscious, mass psychology, social psychology, complexity theory, emergence, neural networks, brain science, qEEG, Birmingham therapy, Alabama therapist, complex trauma, PTSD, dissociation, emotional regulation, somatic therapy, body-based therapy, Brainspotting, ETT, integrative therapy, holistic psychology, transpersonal psychology, spiritual psychology, meaning crisis, nihilism, existential psychology, phenomenology, hermeneutics, postmodernism, sincerity and irony, authenticity, alienation, anomie, social fragmentation, culture war, political polarization, fake news, misinformation, disinformation, information warfare, attention economy, surveillance capitalism, algorithmic amplification, filter bubbles, echo chambers, radicalization, deradicalization, healing polarization, bridging divides, difficult conversations, conflict resolution, relational therapy, attachment theory, developmental trauma, adverse childhood experiences, ACEs, intergenerational trauma, collective memory, historical trauma, cultural trauma, social healing, community healing, collective resilience, post-traumatic growth, meaning-making, narrative therapy, constructivism, social constructionism, embodied cognition, 4E cognition, extended mind, distributed cognition, enactivism, phenomenological psychology KEYWORDS metamodernism explained, collective trauma therapy, why society feels broken, David Bohm thought as a system, Guy Debord society of the spectacle explained, understanding political polarization, trauma and politics, why we can't agree on facts, parallel realities psychology, meme culture analysis, internet psychology, collective psychology theory, therapy for our times, parts work IFS, internal family systems explained, depth psychology modern, cultural criticism podcast, media theory podcast, understanding the culture war, healing political division, trauma-informed society, systems thinking psychology, consciousness and society, meaning crisis solutions, why communication is impossible, post-truth psychology, collective healing trauma, Birmingham Alabama therapist, complex trauma treatment, Brainspotting therapy, somatic experiencing therapy, integrative psychotherapy, holistic mental health, transpersonal therapy, spiritual psychology podcast, existential therapy, phenomenological therapy, social psychology podcast, mass psychology explained, collective unconscious modern, Jung and politics, critical theory psychology, neoliberalism and mental health, capitalism and trauma, social media mental health, algorithm psychology, attention economy effects, filter bubble psychology, radicalization psychology, bridging political divides, healing polarization therapy, difficult conversations psychology, relational psychotherapy, attachment and society, developmental trauma society, intergenerational trauma healing, collective resilience building, post-traumatic growth society, narrative therapy culture, embodied cognition society, extended mind theory

We begin to explore Malebranche's controversial development of Cartesian philosophy by looking at his theodicy.

On this, our 316th Evolutionary Lens livestream, we discuss health, science, and the Cartesian crisis as it relates to global events. First: a new paper finds that infection tends to lead to greater frailty in older people. This reverses the causality of Terrain Theory of Disease (frailty of the body leads to greater susceptibility of infection), and also provides support for a prediction made by Bret and his co-author Debbie Ciszek in the unpublished, longer version of their reserve capacity paper from 2002. Then: what we are seeing on our personal media feeds does not make us eye-witnesses to anything—not necessarily. Plato's Cave of Mirrors means that we are all fed different media diets, and skills such as observation, discernment, and hypothesis generation, inherently fail when nobody can establish what is actually true. Recommendation: start comparing notes with other people as to what they are seeing, rather than what they think it means.*****Our sponsors:NOBS: NOBS is doing a nationwide rollout into 917 Target stores. The full list can be found on http://nobsroutines.com.  Caraway: Non-toxic, highly functional & beautiful cookware and bakeware. Save with Caraway's cookware set, and visit http://Carawayhome.com/DH10 to for an additional 10% off your next purchase.Xlear: Xylitol nasal spray that acts as prophylaxis against respiratory illnesses by reducing the stickiness of bacteria and viruses. Find Xlear online, or at your local pharmacy, grocery store, or natural products store.*****Join us on Locals! Get access to our Discord server, exclusive live streams, live chats for all streams, and early access to many podcasts: https://darkhorse.locals.comHeather's newsletter, Natural Selections (subscribe to get free weekly essays in your inbox): https://naturalselections.substack.comOur book, A Hunter-Gatherer's Guide to the 21st Century, is available everywhere books are sold, including from Amazon: https://amzn.to/3AGANGg (commission earned)Check out our store! Epic tabby, digital book burning, saddle up the dire wolves, and more: https://darkhorsestore.org*****Mentioned in this episode:Ragusa et al 2026: https://academic.oup.com/biomedgerontology/advance-article-abstract/doi/10.1093/gerona/glag043/8497853Gavazzi & Krause 2002: https://www.thelancet.com/journals/laninf/article/PIIS1473-3099(02)00437-1/fulltextNew York Magazine article on Casey Means: https://nymag.com/intelligencer/article/casey-means-and-the-myth-of-the-root-cause.htmlWeinstein & Ciszek 2002: https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/11909679/Journalist Mizrahi on X (maybe): https://x.com/eliseevanews/status/2029700361297051829Support the show

Antoine Arnauld combines Cartesian philosophy with Jansenism, one of the most controversial religious movements of the 17th century.

In this episode of The Open Door, panelists Thomas Storck, Andrew Sorokowski, and Christopher Zehnder talk with Fr. Jacek Norkowski and Stephen Blendell on Homeopathy.Some questions asked:What is homeopathy? What is its history?How does it differ from allopathic medicine? What are the philosophical bases of both systems? Why might a Catholic prefer homeopathy because of the Thomistic philosophical and theological traditions? How do both homeopathy and allopathy presuppose a certain understanding of human nature? Is homeopathy more congruent with a Thomistic understanding than with a Cartesian understanding of how a living organism functions?Do we know how homeopathy works? What do we say to critics who claim it is merely a placebo or that it has never been validated by proper scientific testing?Why are some Catholics suspicious of homeopathy?In Europe, what is the situation with homeopathy? Is it accepted in most of the national health plans of EU nations? What do you see as its future? What are the barriers to its increased acceptance? In particular, how do allopathic practitioners view homeopathy? In the U.S. I've noticed a slight increase in allopaths who are willing to take it seriously.

Hello Interactors,It's winter. So, as the sun tilts toward the sun (up north) my writing tilts toward the brain. It's when I put on my behavioral geography glasses and try to see the world as a set of loops between bodies and places, perception and movement, constraint and choice. It's hard to do that right now without running into AI. And one thing that keeps nagging at me is how AI is usually described as this super-brain perched in the cloud, or in a machine nearby, thinking on our behalf.That framing inherits an old habit of mind. Since Descartes, we've been tempted by the idea that the “real” mind sits apart from the messy body, steering it from some inner control room. Computer metaphors reinforced the same split by calling the CPU the “brain” of the machine. And now we're extending the metaphor again with AI as the brain of the internet, hovering overhead, crunching data, issuing guidance. An intelligence box directing action at a distance is a tidy picture but it risks making us miss what's actually doing the work. Let's dig into how the brain leverages the loops of people, places, and interfaces we all move through to extend it's richness and reach.GRADIENTS GUIDE WHILE BODIES BALANCEHave you ever hiked or skied in snow or fog and seen the middle distance just in front of you disappear? It takes the world you thought you knew, like ridge lines, tree lines, and the comforting predictable geometry of “just ahead” and reduces it to panic stricken near-field fragments. I've sensed once familiar ski runs become suddenly unfamiliar not because it changed, but because it was no longer accessible to my brain.In these moments, we're all forced to reckon, recalibrate, and (usually) slow down as our senses sharpen. We take note of the slope under our feet and the way the ground shifts. We listen for clues our eyes can't see and notice which direction the wind is blowing, how the light is changing, and how our own heartbeat and breath changes with each calculated risk. We know where we are, but the picture is fuzzy. Our memory only gets us so far. Everything around us becomes this multi-faceted relationship between our body making sense of it all while our brain updates its status moment by moment. The last thing a brain wants is to have its co-dependent limbs fail and risk falling.That experience demonstrates how the world is coupled with us. In world-involving coupling a living system survives through ongoing coordination with the affordances and constraints of its surroundings. In behavioral geography this frames spatial behavior as dynamic, reciprocal coordination between individuals and their environments, rather than just isolated internal cognition.Places actively shape decisions through the physics of the world and all its constraints. Actions, in turn, then reshape those surroundings in ongoing loops. This approach to cognition shifts focus from isolated mental maps to lived, constitutive engagements. It treats the world as a partner in our own competence.Before brains, gradients existed. Living systems navigated heat, cold, salt, sugar, thirst, dark, and light to persist. The first cognitive problems were biophysical. Surviving in a world that constantly disrupted viability relied on basic mechanisms like membrane flows, chemical reactions, and feedback. These primordial loops coupled an organism to a given environment directly. There were not yet any neural intermediaries. These were protozoa drifting toward nutrients or recoiling from toxins. It is in this raw attunement that world-involving coupling emerges.In 1932, physiologist Walter Cannon coined the term “homeostasis” to describe the body's active pursuit of stability amidst environmental pressures. Living systems, whether single-celled or more complex, maintain survival variables within narrow bands. Cells detect changes in these variables, which affect molecular states. Temperature, acidity, pressure, osmosis, and metabolic concentrations all influence reaction rates. Feedback loops alter cell-environment interactions through heat transfer, ion flux, water movement, and gas exchange, ultimately restoring the system to a viable band. Organisms are not passive vessels but actively engage with these detection loops, triggering adjustments like a wilting plant drawing water. Sensing and action are fused operations for persistence.About 600 million years ago, cells in an ancient sea sensed electrical fields or chemical plumes on microbial mats. These pioneering cells formed diffuse nerve nets, evolving into jellyfish and anemones. Simple meshes firing to contract thin membranes in bell-shaped forms, they lacked a brain but coordinated propulsive pulses to keep the organism in bounds or sting prey. Within 10s of millions of years, bilateral animals evolved. Flatworms like planaria emerged with nerve cords laddered along their undersides, thickening toward their tips. These proto-brains sped signal spread across their elongated forms.As vertebrates appear, control becomes more layered. Circuits in the brainstem evolve to coordinate breathing, heart rate, posture, and basic orienting reflexes. The cerebellum emerges to sharpen timing and coordination. Competing actions, drives, and habits become sorted with the help of the basal ganglia. With mammals — and especially primates — the cortex expands. Perception and action become more flexible across situational contexts and with it comes longer-horizon learning, social inference, and planning.But at every milestone, bodies are still constrained and governed by gradients and fields related to gravity, friction, heat, oxygen, hydration, predators, prey, and terrain. The cortex sits on top of these older loops, stretching them in time and recombining them in new ways. Even the most “abstract” human cognition still rides on the same foundation of reflexes and sensorimotor sampling. This is what keeps an organism in operable biochemical ranges while it propels itself through an environment that perpetually pushes and pulls.BOXED BRAINS BEGET BIG BELIEFSThe field of physiology deepened this bio-chemical inquiry through the early 20th century. Physiologist and neurologist Ivan Pavlov revealed how sensory cues could chain to responses through neural rerouting creating conditioned ‘Pavlovian' reflexes. Neurophysiologist Charles Sherrington coined the term “synapse” as he dissected and described them as switches in these loops coupled to the world. Through this inquiry, the autonomic nervous system emerged as a kind of homeostatic controller. Sympathetic surges in the system were found to create fight or flight reactions as our parasympathetic system kicks in to dial us back. This can be seen as a more complex version of the same push-pull of Cannon's original homeostasis.By the mid-20th century, mathematician and philosopher Norbert Wiener, working closely with physiologists and engineers, compared the nervous system to a servomechanism — a self-correcting governor found in engines. He coined the term cybernetics in his 1948 book Cybernetics: Or Control and Communication in the Animal and the Machine where he treated animals and machines as systems that regulate themselves through feedback. He and his collaborators argued this was a form of “purposeful behavior” or goal-directed action — a kind of negative feedback loop that reduces the difference between a current state and a target state. These ideas hardened in engineering fields during wartime as they were used in weapon systems for prediction and control of trajectories by compensating for delay and uncertainty. Cybernetics helped make the physiological regulation of Cannon's biological homeostasis structurally analogous to engineering.This mechanical metaphor sparked a long-standing debate, dating back to Descartes' 17th-century mind-body split. Dualism posited an immaterial mind as a rule-following pilot controlling mechanical flesh. Alan Turing's 1936 paper had already formalized this possibility, presenting a “machine” capable of computing any algorithm. Two decades later, the Dartmouth summer workshop coined “artificial intelligence” and encouraged the idea of engineering minds as programs. Around the same time, Herbert Simon and Allen Newell built early “logic theorist” programs that proved theorems, making intelligence seem like a boxed process involving symbols and reasoning. That lineage hasn't disappeared. This is largely the default engineering posture of AI. Even when the machinery shifts from hand-coded rules to learned statistical patterns, we still talk as if intelligence lives inside a system. AI models claim to “form representations,” “build a world model,” “store knowledge,” “plan,” and “reason.” Contemporary training methods reward this language because they really do produce rich internal states that can be probed, steered, and reused across tasks.Less discussed is the metaphysical shift from “the system has internal structure supporting performance” to “the system contains an inner arena where meaning emerges and is inspected before action.” Daniel Dennett, a philosopher who dismantled this intuition in theories of mind and consciousness, called this picture the “Cartesian theater.” He noticed that scientific explanations often subtly reintroduce the central place where “it all comes together” for an internal witness. Dennett believes this inner stage is a comforting fiction derived from Descartes' split between observer and world. Brain imaging reveals coordinated network activity, but not a literal inner ‘screen' presenting a unified world-model. Many neuroscientists describe cognition as emerging from distributed, parallel, and recurrent processes, sometimes with large-scale integration. Dennett's point is not that internal processing is unreal, but that our language tempts us toward a surreal Cartesian picture in a central place we can't empirically reveal.RESAMPLE, RESTABILIZE, AND RESHAPENeuroscience reveals that perception differs from a camera feeding a private theater. Our eyes rapidly sample information based on our actions, and the brain stabilizes perception during movement. Much visual processing is organized in the service of action, with partially distinct but interacting pathways supporting perceptual report and real-time visuomotor control. This suggests that the brain resembles a system for maintaining a relationship with the world through continuous sampling, correction, and skilled engagement, rather than a world-reconstruction engine.James J. Gibson, the founder of ecological psychology, arrived at a similar conclusion earlier from behavioral and perceptual evidence. He argues that the world provides lawful patterns, regularities constrained by physics and geometry, that guide behavior because they remain stable across changing viewpoints. These patterns are not complete. Organisms make them available by moving, shifting gaze, turning the head, walking, or touching. Perception is an active process of sampling the world.If perception is about staying attuned to lawful structures in the environment, the evolutionary consequence is organisms don't just read the world, they also write it. As organisms became more complex and mobile, they gained the power to reshape the very patterns they depend on. They start cutting paths (pathways worn into grass, game trails beaten into forests), building shelters (bird nests, termite mounds, human dwellings), altering flows of water and heat (beaver dams, termite mounds), and laying chemical trails (ants depositing pheromones).Evolutionary biologists call this niche construction. Organisms modify their environments, which then feed back into selection pressures and development, creating a dynamic cycle where the environment becomes a product of life and a force that shapes it further. As the world guides behavior, behavior reshapes the world, and the remade world trains bodies and brains into new skills and expectations. Over time, these modifications become external organs of coordination, storing information, reducing uncertainty, and channeling action.A worn trail is navigational memory made durable, a nest or mound is a climate-control device that stabilizes temperature and airflow, and a pheromone path is a distributed signal that recruits other ants into collective action and direction. Complexity scientist David Krakauer calls this broader idea of “mind outsourced into engineered matter” exbodiment — where artifacts actively constrain and channel cogntion. In this view, cognitive work is no longer confined to nervous tissue but accomplished through bodies working with worlds they've built.Humans take this to an extreme. Clothing and shelter externalize thermoregulation, fire externalizes digestion and protection, tools externalize force and precision, drugs alter chemistry, writing and calendars externalize memory and timing, and institutions externalize norms and coordination. Much of what we call “human intelligence” is not only in our brains but also distributed across artifacts and practices that have accumulated over generations.Cognitive anthropologist Edwin Hutchins made the point vivid by studying navigation. On a ship, “knowing where you are” is not privately derived nor sealed in a captain's skull. It is a collective achievement through a system of charts, maps, instruments, procedures, language, coordinated roles — an entire ecology of cognition comprised of tools and social organization. Here geography and cognition merge. Orientation is not just mental but enacted in relation to representations that are anchored and socially maintained in our material reality.When I was at Microsoft, I followed the work of sociologist Lucy Suchman who studied human-machine interaction. She arrived at a similar conclusion criticizing the fantasy that action is simply “execution of an internal plan.” Real action, she argues, is situated. It's responsive to unfolding circumstances — often improvisational — and is shaped by context in ways that cannot be fully specified in advance. In other words, if we look for intelligence as a prewritten script inside the head, we will miss how intelligence is often produced when enacted in a world that refuses to hold still.Large language models, at first glance, seem to embody the “internal plan” fantasy. They're sealed systems containing competence in weights and parameters, ready for queries. However, they're closer to Suchman's warning. Trained on vast archives of human writing, LLMs learn statistical regularities in vast continuations of text. When used, they produce a new continuation conditioned on prompts and context. Prompts aren't mere inputs. They're situated actions in human-computer interactions. They set frames, narrow affordances, cue roles, establish constraints, and often iterate in a back-and-forth that resembles Suchman's improvisation with a powerful partner who is also techy and textual.Philosophers Andy Clark and David Chalmers, in their extended mind thesis, claim under certain conditions, external tools can become constitutive parts of cognition when they are reliably integrated into the organism's routines. As we've learned, the boundary of cognition is not always the boundary of skin or skull, it's the boundary of a stable loop.When the fog rolls in and visibility gets low, the boundary of this loop becomes quickly apparent. “The mind's eye” is not that helpful…practically or metaphorically. If anything, the brain wants nothing more than for the body to widen contact with the world. It slows us down, sharpens listening, and increases tactile attention. It calculates different gradient thresholds to measure risk…it might even glance at an external sensing device that is prompting some intervention or improvisation! We are not watching a movie in our head to get through the fog. We are trying to stay oriented in a world that refuses to be fully represented.This is the reframing of intelligence — artificial and otherwise — I wish for. I'd like to see more talk of intelligence being less a coveted individualistic thing hidden inside us and more an achievement of coordinated biophysical, social, infrastructural loops across time. When we mistake a metaphor (“there's a theater in there”) for an ontology (“that's where cognition lives”), we get misled about minds and we get misled about AI. The alternative is not anti-technology. It's conceptual hygiene. Let's start asking where cognition actually happens, what it is made of, and how places — natural and built — participate in making it possible. You know, Interplace — the interaction of people and place. This is a public episode. If you would like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit interplace.io

Episode 2.74 (This time for real.)Can Descartes Escape Solipsism?In this episode, Michael and Zach tackle one of the most common—and serious—objections to Descartes' project: the Thomist charge that radical doubt collapses into solipsism. If all that survives the doubt is “I am a thinking thing,” how do we ever get back to the real world, other minds, or trustworthy knowledge?Rather than stopping at the cogito, this conversation traces Descartes' actual escape strategy, step by step. From the certainty of the thinking self, to contingency, to the necessity of a self-existent God, the discussion focuses on the critical move: God's moral perfection as the foundation for epistemic trust. Without a non-deceptive God, solipsism wins. With one, Descartes claims a narrow—but real—bridge back to reality.Along the way, the episode weighs:-Why Thomists argue Descartes starts in the wrong place-Whether the “Cartesian Circle” is fatal or misunderstood-If moral perfection can legitimately follow from necessity-Why radical doubt is a method, not a lifestyle-Where the real fault line lies between Thomist and Cartesian epistemologyThe conclusion is deliberately careful: Cartesian doubt does not entail solipsism—but it risks it unless its theistic rescue succeeds. The road out is narrow, but it is not imaginary.Find our videocast here: https://youtu.be/khbWIDw2VcAMerch here: https://take-2-podcast.printify.me/Music from #Uppbeat (free for Creators!):⁠https://uppbeat.io/t/reakt-music/deep-stone⁠License code: 2QZOZ2YHZ5UTE7C8Find more Take 2 Theology content at http://www.take2theology.com

Episode 2.74Can Descartes Escape Solipsism?In this episode, Michael and Zach tackle one of the most common—and serious—objections to Descartes' project: the Thomist charge that radical doubt collapses into solipsism. If all that survives the doubt is “I am a thinking thing,” how do we ever get back to the real world, other minds, or trustworthy knowledge?Rather than stopping at the cogito, this conversation traces Descartes' actual escape strategy, step by step. From the certainty of the thinking self, to contingency, to the necessity of a self-existent God, the discussion focuses on the critical move: God's moral perfection as the foundation for epistemic trust. Without a non-deceptive God, solipsism wins. With one, Descartes claims a narrow—but real—bridge back to reality.Along the way, the episode weighs:-Why Thomists argue Descartes starts in the wrong place-Whether the “Cartesian Circle” is fatal or misunderstood-If moral perfection can legitimately follow from necessity-Why radical doubt is a method, not a lifestyle-Where the real fault line lies between Thomist and Cartesian epistemologyThe conclusion is deliberately careful: Cartesian doubt does not entail solipsism—but it risks it unless its theistic rescue succeeds. The road out is narrow, but it is not imaginary.Find our videocast here: https://youtu.be/khbWIDw2VcAMerch here: https://take-2-podcast.printify.me/Music from #Uppbeat (free for Creators!):⁠https://uppbeat.io/t/reakt-music/deep-stone⁠License code: 2QZOZ2YHZ5UTE7C8Find more Take 2 Theology content at http://www.take2theology.com

An interview exploring Descartes' interest in medicine, how his medical ideas relate to his dualism, and his influence on medical science.

In this episode of The New Warehouse Podcast, Kevin chats with Veena Radhakrishna, Head of Software and Co-Founder at Cartesian Kinetics. The company is carving a unique niche of bringing automation solutions to brownfield warehouse sites. Veena shares the founding story of Cartesian Kinetics, their flagship Carte+ system, and how the company's design-first approach is helping warehouses overcome the typical barriers to automation. With insights on industry dynamics, adoption challenges, and practical deployment strategies, Veena explains why brownfield operations are a massive yet underserved market for automation.Learn more about The Brecham Group here. Get better visibility with Surgere. Follow us on LinkedIn and YouTube.Support the show

Boaventura de Sousa ​Santos, Emeritus Professor of Sociology at the University of Coimbra, discusses his professional training from law, to the philosophy of law and then to sociology, covering his time studying in Cold War Berlin, then Yale in the late 1960s and early 1970s, and his eventual involvement with the World Social Forum and his efforts to densify class struggle. Bouncing off his recent article on cancel culture, de Sousa Santos analyses the “narcissism of belongingness” and how identity politics is sabotaging the left, where the connection to the political economy is lost to the language of inclusion. Analysing the weaponisation of victimhood and lies that are used to create narratives that uniquely rely upon the perverse assumption of female innocence and male guilt, de Sousa Santos observes the current social discourse and protofascistic regimes of our times, where the Inquisition of the Dark Ages has returned. Noting the rise of social fascism, which he believes may potentially slide into political fascism, de Sousa Santos argues that the proliferation of victimhood narratives creates the subject as a type of inert res extensa, in Cartesian terms, that simultaneously negates the Spinozean notion of human potentia, something he believes will ultimately kill the feminist movement. Get full access to Savage Minds at savageminds.substack.com/subscribe

From comets to blood transfusions, embryology, and the debate over the pineal gland: Descartes' impact on science, especially medicine.

Dr. Michael Timothy Bennett is a computer scientist who's deeply interested in understanding artificial intelligence, consciousness, and what it means to be alive. He's known for his provocative paper "What the F*** is Artificial Intelligence" which challenges conventional thinking about AI and intelligence.**SPONSOR MESSAGES***Prolific: Quality data. From real people. For faster breakthroughs.https://prolific.com/mlst?utm_campaign=98404559-MLST&utm_source=youtube&utm_medium=podcast&utm_content=mb***Michael takes us on a journey through some of the biggest questions in AI and consciousness. He starts by exploring what intelligence actually is - settling on the idea that it's about "adaptation with limited resources" (a definition from researcher Pei Wang that he particularly likes).The discussion ranges from technical AI concepts to philosophical questions about consciousness, with Michael offering fresh perspectives that challenge Silicon Valley's "just scale it up" approach to AI. He argues that true intelligence isn't just about having more parameters or data - it's about being able to adapt efficiently, like biological systems do.TOC:1. Introduction & Paper Overview [00:01:34]2. Definitions of Intelligence [00:02:54]3. Formal Models (AIXI, Active Inference) [00:07:06]4. Causality, Abstraction & Embodiment [00:10:45]5. Computational Dualism & Mortal Computation [00:25:51]6. Modern AI, AGI Progress & Benchmarks [00:31:30]7. Hybrid AI Approaches [00:35:00]8. Consciousness & The Hard Problem [00:39:35]9. The Diverse Intelligences Summer Institute (DISI) [00:53:20]10. Living Systems & Self-Organization [00:54:17]11. Closing Thoughts [01:04:24]Michaels socials:https://michaeltimothybennett.com/https://x.com/MiTiBennettTranscript:https://app.rescript.info/public/share/4jSKbcM77Sf6Zn-Ms4hda7C4krRrMcQt0qwYqiqPTPIReferences:Bennett, M.T. "What the F*** is Artificial Intelligence"https://arxiv.org/abs/2503.23923Bennett, M.T. "Are Biological Systems More Intelligent Than Artificial Intelligence?" https://arxiv.org/abs/2405.02325Bennett, M.T. PhD Thesis "How To Build Conscious Machines"https://osf.io/preprints/thesiscommons/wehmg_v1Legg, S. & Hutter, M. (2007). "Universal Intelligence: A Definition of Machine Intelligence"Wang, P. "Defining Artificial Intelligence" - on non-axiomatic reasoning systems (NARS)Chollet, F. (2019). "On the Measure of Intelligence" - introduces the ARC benchmark and developer-aware generalizationHutter, M. (2005). "Universal Artificial Intelligence: Sequential Decisions Based on Algorithmic Probability"Chalmers, D. "The Hard Problem of Consciousness"Descartes, R. - Cartesian dualism and the pineal gland theory (historical context)Friston, K. - Free Energy Principle and Active Inference frameworkLevin, M. - Work on collective intelligence, cancer as information isolation, and "mind blindness"Hinton, G. (2022). "The Forward-Forward Algorithm" - introduces mortal computation conceptAlexander Ororbia & Friston - Formal treatment of mortal computationSutton, R. "The Bitter Lesson" - on search and learning in AIPearl, J. "The Book of Why" - causal inference and reasoningAlternative AGI ApproachesWang, P. - NARS (Non-Axiomatic Reasoning System)Goertzel, B. - Hyperon system and modular AGI architecturesBenchmarks & EvaluationHendrycks, D. - Humanities Last Exam benchmark (mentioned re: saturation)Filmed at:Diverse Intelligences Summer Institute (DISI) https://disi.org/

In his weekly clinical update, Dr. Griffin with Vincent Racaniello discusses outbreaks of Vibrio vulnificus and Legionnaire's disease in Harlem, the role of the American Association of Pediatrics defining immunization practices, before Dr. Griffin deep dives into recent statistics on RSV, influenza and SARS-CoV-2 infections, the Wasterwater Scan dashboard, effective of the high and low does influenza vaccines, association Gullian-Barre syndrome with RSV vaccination, guidelines for using RSV vaccines, whether or not the NB.1.8.1 should be included in the fall 2025 vaccines, where to find PEMGARDA, long COVID treatment center, where to go for answers to your long COVID questions, vascular aging after COVID-19 and contacting your federal government representative to stop the assault on science and biomedical research. Subscribe (free): Apple Podcasts, RSS, email Become a patron of TWiV! Links for this episode Department of Public Health alerts public to rare Vibrio vulnificus bacteria in coastal waters (Mass.gov) Legionnaires' Disease: In Harlem (NYC Health) Ivermectin to Control Malaria (NEJM) AAP has been leading voice on childhood vaccine recommendations since 1930s (American Academy of Pediatrics) The American Academy of Pediatrics Releases Its Own Evidence-Based Immunization Schedule (American Academy of Pediatrics) Wastewater for measles (WasterWater Scan) Measles cases and outbreaks (CDC Rubeola) Weekly measles and rubella monitoring (Government of Canada) Health Ministry says unvaccinated 18-month-old dies of measles (Times of Israel) Ten countries in the Americas report measles outbreaks in 2025 (PAHO: Pan American Health Organization) Measles (WHO) Get the FACTS about measles (NY State Department of Health) Measles vaccine recommendations from NYP (jpg) Measles (CDC Measles (Rubeola)) Measles vaccine (CDC Measles (Rubeola)) Presumptive evidence of measles immunity (CDC) Contraindications and precautions to measles vaccination (CDC) Measles (CDC Measles (Rubeola)) Adverse events associated with childhood vaccines: evidence bearing on causality (NLM) Measles Vaccination: Know the Facts (ISDA: Infectious Diseases Society of America) Deaths following vaccination: what does the evidence show (Vaccine) Influenza: Waste water scan for 11 pathogens (WastewaterSCan) US respiratory virus activity (CDC Respiratory Illnesses) Respiratory virus activity levels (CDC Respiratory Illnesses) Weekly surveillance report: clift notes (CDC FluView) Relative effectiveness of high-dose versus standard-dose influenza vaccine against hospitalizations and mortality according to frailty score (JID) FDA-CDC-DOD: 2025-2046 influenza vaccine composition (FDA) RSV: Waste water scan for 11 pathogens (WastewaterSCan) US respiratory virus activity (CDC Respiratory Illnesses) ENFLONSIA: novel drug approvals 2025 (FDA) RSV-Network (CDC Respiratory Syncytial virus Infection) Vaccines for Adults (CDC: Respiratory Syncytial Virus Infection (RSV)) Evaluation of Guillain-Barré Syndrome (GBS) following Respiratory Syncytial Virus (RSV) Vaccination Among Adults 65 Years and Older (FDA) Economic Analysis of Protein Subunit and mRNA RSV Vaccination in Adults aged 50-59 Years (CDC: ACIP) Evidence to Recommendations Framework (EtR): RSV Vaccination in Adults Aged 50–59 years (CDC: National Center for Immunization and Respiratory Diseases) Waste water scan for 11 pathogens (WastewaterSCan) COVID-19 deaths (CDC) Respiratory Illnesses Data Channel (CDC: Respiratory Illnesses) COVID-19 national and regional trends (CDC) COVID-19 variant tracker (CDC) SARS-CoV-2 genomes galore (Nextstrain) Antigenic and Virological Characteristics of SARS-CoV-2 Variant BA.3.2, XFG, and NB.1.8.1 (biRxiV) Where to get pemgarda (Pemgarda) EUA for the pre-exposure prophylaxis of COVID-19 (INVIYD) Infusion center (Prime Fusions) CDC Quarantine guidelines (CDC) NIH COVID-19 treatment guidelines (NIH) Drug interaction checker (University of Liverpool) Paxlovid (Pfizer) Infectious Disease Society guidelines for treatment and management (ID Society) Molnupiravir safety and efficacy (JMV) Convalescent plasma recommendation for immunocompromised (ID Society) What to do when sick with a respiratory virus (CDC) Managing healthcare staffing shortages (CDC) Steroids,dexamethasone at the right time (OFID) Anticoagulation guidelines (hematology.org) Daniel Griffin's evidence based medical practices for long COVID (OFID) Long COVID hotline (Columbia : Columbia University Irving Medical Center) The answers: Long COVID Accelerated vascular ageing after COVID-19 infection: the CARTESIAN study (European Heart Journal) Reaching out to US house representative Letters read on TWiV 1246 Dr. Griffin's COVID treatment summary (pdf) Timestamps by Jolene Ramsey. Thanks! Intro music is by Ronald Jenkees Send your questions for Dr. Griffin to daniel@microbe.tv Content in this podcast should not be construed as medical advice.

Today we'll focus on a major shift in the treatment of myasthenia gravis -- as a wave of new therapies is changing how we treat this disease. Who should be considered for these new treatments? And what else is in the pipeline?   Our guest today is Dr.  Gil Wolfe, a neuromuscular neurologist at the University of Buffalo State University of New York, Jacob School of Medicine and Biomedical Sciences. Dr. Wolfe was interviewed by Dr. Ioannis Karakis, adjunct professor of neurology at Emory University School of Medicine.   References: https://www.nature.com/articles/s41598-024-79918-7   Disclosures: Dr. Wolfe discloses: Consultant for: Alexion, Argenx, BPL, Cartesian, Canopy, Grifols, Johnson & Johnson, Takeda, UCB; Speaker Bureau for: Grifols, Alexion, UCB; Grant/Research support from: ArgenX, Ra/UCB, Immunovant, Roche, Alexion, Sanofi

In this third installment of my "DharmaByte" column and "UnMind" podcast, exploring the general subject of Zen in our Times, we turn to the last of three suggested topics from Hokai Jeff Harper, Halifax-based publisher of the STO newsletter: • To everything there is a season• The wax and wane of householder zazen practice• What we are feeling right now IS impermanence manifesting itself Hokai somehow managed, perhaps unintentionally, to progressively home in on the central experience of Zen on three levels. Starting with the most universal sphere of our experience on Earth, the seasonality that is an effect of orbiting the sun for approximately 365 rotations of the planet; then down to the social sphere of our practice as householders; and finally into the realm of the intimate, up-close-and-personal sphere of consciousness itself. What I call the "singularity of Zen." As I mentioned in the last segment, we often seem to labor under a misconception that because we follow the lifestyle of householders, we cannot hope to penetrate to the fundamental meaning of the teachings of Buddhism. But Hokai's assertion puts the lie to this assumption. If the Dharma is simply pointing at the present reality that we are experiencing, lifestyle choices cannot possibly have a determinative or dispositive, causal relationship in terms of coming to realization of our buddha mind. What we are feeling now is impermanence manifesting itself, to quote the above quote. Not only what we are feeling now, but what we are seeing and hearing, smelling and tasting, as well as what we are thinking. Or reading, if you are reading this rather than listening to the podcast version. You might quibble with Hokai's construction - "impermanence manifesting itself" - as it suggests that "impermanence" is some sort of independent force capable of manifesting itself, rather than an attribute of the changing nature of the universe. But let's not let mere semantics distract from the message. We are witnessing the "endless, unremitting, unnamable, unthinkable buddha-dharma," as Master Dogen expressed it; and we bear witness to IT mainly through the dynamic of change, or impermanence. Otherwise, we would not register seeing, hearing, smelling, tasting, touching, or even thinking, at all. If nothing were changing, there could be no awareness of it. As I mentioned in the segment on householder practice, renunciation in Zen is a matter of seeing through the delusional aspect of living, not a matter of lifestyle. Discernment in Zen is like Sri Ramakrishna's analogy that, like a swan, we need to be able to drink milk mixed with water, and drink only the milk. Or as Master Tozan analogized: A silver bowl filled with snow A heron hidden in the moonTaken as similar, they are not the sameNot distinguished, their places are known So this refined awareness of the nondual nature of reality, termed "emptiness," as opposed to "form" or appearance, is so close to ordinary reality, or perceptual duality, that it is nearly indistinguishable — like white snow in a silver bowl, or a white heron and the full moon — white on white. Buddha taught that the discriminating mind imposes a "false stillness" on reality, tamping down the uninhibited flow of sensory data to a dull roar. This enables us to maintain our balance and negotiate a dynamic, 4-dimensional spacetime environment.This is part of the natural process of "individuation" that sets in once we are born, and culminates in the conception of the independent self, which is a fundamental category error, according to Buddhism. The original alienation that is our fall from grace. It is not that Buddhism claims there is no self whatever. There is a constructed self, and there is a true self, according to this model. The prevalent perception of separation as an incarnated being is not entirely delusional. But it is incomplete — reification of a separate self ignores the rest of the story, the fact that all beings are interconnected, co-arisen and co-dependent. The Twelvefold Chain of Interdependent Arising, attributed to Shakyamuni, parses this coming-of-age story, slicing and dicing stages of development finely, like an Italian chef shaving garlic with a razorblade. This is similar to Master Dogen's fine discernment of reality — from a perspective uniting space, or existence, and time — as articulated in Uji—Being-Time, explored in some detail in a prior podcast. What he referred to as the "fine mind of Nirvana," or the "subtle mind of Nirvana." Master Sengcan, third Chinese patriarch after Bodhidharma and his successor Huike, points to something similar in Hsinhsinming—Trust in Mind: In this world of Suchness there is neither self nor other-than-selfTo come into harmony with this realityJust simply say when doubt arises: "not two"In this "not two" nothing is separate nothing is excludedNo matter when or where Enlightenment means entering this truthAnd this truth is beyond extension or diminution in time or spaceIn it a single thought is ten thousand years Believing in the fundamental bifurcation of consciousness into self-and-other, body versus mind — the "Cartesian error" — is resolved in realizing that "you can't have one without the other," or as the more contemporary trope would have it, "both things can be true at the same time." "Neither-self-nor-other-than-self" indicates the True Self of Buddhism, undivided from the very beginning. "Not-two" is the mantra we conjure whenever any doubt about this arises. At the risk of repeating myself — with the caveat that these teachings bear repetition, especially in changing contexts — the last stanza returns us to the singularity of Zen: No matter when or whereEnlightenment means entering this truthAnd this truth is beyond extension or diminution in time or spaceIn it a single thought is ten thousand years The last line of which Matsuoka-roshi would encapsulate as "The eternal moment." So it all comes down to this. Like a fish-trap, reality ensnares us in its wide reach, and as we pursue our own realization — which, after all, is, or should be, our birthright — we find the trap narrowing again and again, until there is no escape, no turning back; like the exhausted swimmer at the halfway point, it is just as far, and equally risky, to try to make it back safely to shore as it is to continue swimming to the island. If we persevere, finally finding ourselves on the "other shore," we can see clearly that we have been seeing things all wrong, all along. There never has been a separate self to embody, let alone to defend against all comers, let alone any existential annihilation. In the not-two nonduality of Zen's reality, it was all like a bad dream, one that we essentially made up — with a little help from our friends and family, of course, not to mention the entire world of benighted people who fear death and, consequently, life. This is not to insist that everyone else is wrong about everything, and that only I and my like-minded friends from the enchanted land of Zen have the inside track. In one sense, it must be true that everyone has a hunch about this — an inkling that something is missing — and that that something is worth knowing. Otherwise we would probably all commit mass suicide, in despair. Which is exactly what it looks like we are doing, with an assist from the stewards, elected or not, of our commonweal. Can anyone say "lemmings"? But Buddhism never seemed to show much concern about the survival of the species. Celibacy is the quickest way to bring down the curtain on humanity - simply not giving birth to the next generation. Of course, the coterie of those who abjure bearing children is not likely to ever encompass a majority of the population, so that kind of extinction is not going to happen. No, it is more likely that Mother Nature's balancing act will bring about the demise of humanity owing to our disruption of her sphere of influence, so carefully nurtured to bring the miracle of life to the planet in the first place, as the goddess Gaia: In Greek mythology, Gaia is the personification of the Earth and a primordial goddess, one of the first deities to emerge from Chaos. She is often referred to as Mother Earth and is considered the mother of all life. And life itself is "fleeting as an arrow" according to Buddha. What we are feeling in the present is this fleeting moment, our life passing before our very eyes, ears, nose, tongue, body and mind in a vast network of frequencies in polyrhythmic synchrony. Our heartbeat is our metronome, the rise and fall of the breathing our connection to the thin atmospheric blanket embracing the earth. On a personal basis, there is no time to waste in foolish pursuits, as the sage Jianzhi Sengcan reminds us in Hsinhsinming: Waste no time in doubts and arguments that have nothing to do with this A century later, Master Sekito Kisen says it another way, in Sandokai: I respectfully urge you who study the Mysterydo not pass your days and nights in vain So Hokai does us a great service to remind us of the evanescence of spacetime in the personal realm, embedded in our social context as householders, surrounded by the world of Nature both nurturing and threatening us, finally floating in the constancy of the universal. Let Tozan Ryokai have the last word on it, after yet another century, from his Hokyo Zammai: Within causes and conditions time and season it is serene and illuminating
So minute it enters where there is no gap so vast it transcends dimensionA hairsbreadth deviation and you are out of tune It seems that all three of the great Ch'an masters are speaking with one voice, urging us to pay attention. There is not so much to their Buddhism after all, as one sage commented upon the occasion of his insight. So Hokai's assertion that what we are feeling right now IS impermanence manifesting itself is subject to Master Dogen's repeat comment: "All things are like this." Not only what we are feeling right now — but what we are seeing and hearing, smelling and tasting and yes, even what we are thinking right now — is, in one sense, impermanence. It is not only in front of your face, it is also behind your face, penetrating your hearing with no boundary, in and out through your nose and mouth (and other orifices), and enveloping your body outside and inside, clean and clear through your original mind. Tozan says, with stunning nonchalance, earlier in the poem: You are not IT — but in truth IT is you Buddha is attributed with saying something like — that there is impermanence means that there is permanence. And his followers were overjoyed to hear that. What made them so happy? Again recalling Hsinhsinming—Trust in Mind: Change appearing to occur in the empty world we call real —only because of our ignorance So the nondual version of this insight is that IT is both changing and staying the same at the same time. This should bring about a great sigh of relief in all who realize it.

The Crisis of Being   James Filler is a philosopher, theologian, and leading voice in metaphysics and post-Cartesian thought, specializing in substance ontology, the meaning crisis, and relational models of reason. With a PhD in philosophy and expertise in ancient and contemporary ontology, Filler is the author of Heidegger, Neoplatonism, and the History of Being Relation as Ontological Ground and Substance Ontology and the Crisis of Reason. His work traces the genealogical roots of modern nihilism and skepticism while advancing a powerful case for relationality, participation, and non-discursive forms of knowing. As a teacher and scholar, he brings clarity and compassion to some of the most pressing philosophical and spiritual questions of our time. James Filler: Academia.edu | Substance Ontology (Book)   Each quarter, John engages in thought-provoking extended conversations with a leading expert in psychology, philosophy, and spirituality. Each season offers a unique exploration, bringing together their diverse fields of knowledge to create fresh insights and understanding. These in-depth discussions, chaptered for your convenience, offer nuanced perspectives and integrative approaches to navigating our complex world.   The first episode is free and publicly available. To follow the rest of the season as well as gain access to previous discussions, you can sign up at the Beta Tier (and above) on The Lectern at the Lectern Lounge.   If you would like to donate purely out of goodwill to support John's work, please consider joining our Patreon. The Vervaeke Foundation is committed to advancing the scientific pursuit of wisdom and creating a significant impact on the world. Learn more about our work.    If you would like to learn and engage regularly in practices that are informed, developed and endorsed by John and his work, visit Awaken to Meaning's calendar to explore practices that enhance your virtues and foster deeper connections with reality and relationships. Join Practice.   John Vervaeke: Website | Twitter | YouTube | Patreon   John Vervaeke is joined by philosopher and theologian James Filler to expose the hidden roots of the modern meaning crisis. Together, they trace a powerful philosophical arc from ancient substance ontology to today's widespread nihilism, skepticism, and isolation. James reveals how centuries of prioritizing “being” over “relation” have led to an inward collapse of reason, relationality, and the self. John and James unpack how non-discursive knowing, theosis, and participatory truth can restore wholeness beyond representational models of mind. They explore the role of liturgy, love, and vertical epistemology as practices that reawaken our connection to what is most real. This Lectern is a profound inquiry into what it means to become truly human—and how we might recover the sacred not through belief, but through transformation. Notes:  (00:00) Welcome to The Lectern (00:30) James Filler's Work (02:30) Impact of Substance Ontology (07:00) Cartesian Dualism and Its Consequences (10:30) Critique of Modern Rationality (13:30) Relationality and Knowledge (16:00) The Role of Non-Discursive Reasoning (24:00) Ethics and Becoming Truly Human (40:30) Participatory Knowing and Liturgy (42:00) Secularism and Substance Ontology (44:30) The Buffered Self and Modernity (48:00) Self-Transcendence and Theosis (51:00) Critique of Substance Ontology (01:00:00) The Role of Liturgy in Modern Churches

You can now text us anonymously to leave feedback, suggest future content or simply hurl abuse at us. We'll read out any texts we receive on the show. Click here to try it out!Welcome back to Bad Dads Film Review! This week, we're descending into the mind-bending, minimalist sci-fi thriller that is Cube (1997). A cult favourite from Canadian director Vincenzo Natali, this low-budget psychological puzzle box is as disorienting and claustrophobic as it is thought-provoking.Cube begins in medias res: a group of strangers wakes up in a strange, sterile room with hatches on all six sides. Each door leads to another nearly identical room—some are safe, others are lethal traps. No one knows how or why they're there. The group includes a cop, a doctor, an escape artist, a math whiz, a paranoid conspiracy theorist, and an autistic man with extraordinary numerical abilities.What unfolds is part escape room, part social experiment, as they try to survive—and escape—the Cube.Cube is rich in metaphor and minimal in exposition. It avoids explaining who built the structure or why, focusing instead on how ordinary people behave under extreme pressure. As the group's dynamic shifts, alliances form and collapse, revealing how quickly fear and distrust take hold.The traps are inventive (acid spray, wire slicing, sound-activated death rooms), but the real tension comes from the breakdown of civility and the slow unravelling of each character's psyche. The cube itself becomes a symbol of bureaucracy, control, and the meaningless complexity of modern systems.And the maths—there's a lot of maths. Prime numbers, Cartesian coordinates, permutations. It's as if Saw, Waiting for Godot, and a high school algebra textbook all collided.

Mi entrevistado en este episodio es Carlos A. Scolari, Catedrático del Departamento de Comunicación de la Universitat Pompeu Fabra – Barcelona. Ha sido Investigador Principal de diversos proyectos de investigación internacionales y estatales, desde el proyecto H2020 TRANSLITERACY (entre 2015 y 2018) hasta el proyecto LITERAC_IA, que comenzó en 2024 y dirige junto a María del Mar Guerrero. Sus últimos libros son Cultura Snack (2020), La guerra de las plataformas (2022) y Sobre la evolución de los medios (2024). Ahora está trabajando en un libro sobre los fósiles mediáticos.Notas del Episodio* Historia de ecologia de los medios* Historia de Carlos* Diferencias entre el anglosfero y el hispanosfero* La coevolucion entre tecnologia y humanos* La democratizacion de los medios* Evolucion de los medios* Alienacion y addiccion* Como usar los medios conscientementeTareaCarlos A. Scolari - Pagina Personal - Facebook - Instagram - Twitter - Escolar GoogleSobre la evolución de los mediosHipermediaciones (Libros)Transcrito en espanol (English Below)Chris: [00:00:00] Bienvenido al podcast el fin de turismo Carlos. Gracias por poder hablar conmigo hoy. Es un gran gusto tener tu presencia aquí conmigo hoy. Carlos: No gracias a ti, Chris, por la invitación. Es un enorme placer honor charlar contigo, gran viajero y bueno, yo nunca investigué directamente el tema del turismo.Pero bueno, entiendo que vamos a hablar de ecología de los medios y temas colaterales que nos pueden servir para entender mejor, darle un sentido a todo esto que está pasando en el mundo del turismo. Bueno, yo trabajo en Barcelona. No vivo exactamente en la ciudad, pero trabajo, en la universidad en Barcelona, en la zona céntrica.Y bueno, cada vez que voy a la ciudad cada día se incrementa la cantidad de turistas y se incrementa el debate sobre el turismo, en todas sus dimensiones. Así que es un tema que está la orden del día, no? Chris: Sí, pues me imagino que aunque si no te gusta pensar o si no quieres pensar en el turismo allá, es inevitable tener como una enseñanza [00:01:00] personal de esa industria.Carlos: Sí, hasta que se está convirtiendo casi en un criterio taxonómico, no? ...de clasificación o ciudades con mucho turista ciudades o lugares sin turistas que son los más buscados hasta que se llenan de turistas. Entonces estamos en un círculo vicioso prácticamente. Chris: Ya pues, que en algún memento se que se cambia, se rompe el ciclo, al menos para dar cuenta de lo que estamos haciendo con el comportamiento.Y, yo entiendo que eso también tiene mucho que ver con la ecología de los medios, la falta de capacidad de entender nuestros comportamientos, actitudes, pensamientos, sentimientos, etcétera. Entonces, antes de seguir por tu trabajo y obras, este me gustaría preguntarte de tu camino y de tu vida.Primero me pregunto si podrías definir para nuestros oyentes qué es la ecología de los medios y cómo te [00:02:00] interesó en este campo? Cómo llegaste a dedicar a tu vida a este estudio?Carlos: Sí. A ver un poco. Hay una, esta la historia oficial. Diríamos de la ecología de los medios o en inglés "media ecology," es una campo de investigación, digamos, eh, que nace en los años 60. Hay que tener en cuenta sobre todos los trabajos de Marshall McLuhan, investigador canadiense muy famoso a nivel mundial. Era quizá el filósofo investigador de los medios más famosos en los años 60 y 70.Y un colega de el, Neil Postman, que estaba en la universidad de New York en New York University un poco, digamos entre la gente que rodeaba estos dos referentes, no, en los años 60, de ahí se fue cocinando, diríamos, lo que después se llamó la media ecology. Se dice que el primero que habló de media ecology que aplicó esta metáfora a los medios, fue el mismo Marshall McLuhan en algunas, conversaciones privadas, [00:03:00] cartas que se enviaban finales dos años 50, a principios de los 60, se enviaban los investigadores investigadora de estos temas?Digamos la primera aparición pública del concepto de media ecology fue una conferencia en el año 1968 de Neil Postman. Era una intervención pública que la hablaba de un poco como los medios nos transforman y transforman los medios formar un entorno de nosotros crecemos, nos desarrollamos, no. Y nosotros no somos muy conscientes a veces de ese medio que nos rodea y nos modela.El utilizó por primera vez el concepto de media ecology en una conferencia pública. Y ya, si vamos a principio de los años 70, el mismo Postman crea en NYU, en New York University crea el primer programa en media ecology. O sea que ya en el 73, 74 y 75, empieza a salir lo que yo llamo la segunda generación, de gente [00:04:00] formada algunos en estos cursos de New York.Por ejemplo Christine Nystrom fue la primera tesis doctoral sobre mi ecology; gente como, Paul Levinson que en el año 1979 defiende una tesis doctoral dirigida por Postman sobre evolución de los medios, no? Y lo mismo pasaba en Toronto en los años 70. El Marshall McLuhan falleció en el diciembre del 80.Digamos que los años 70 fueron su última década de producción intelectual. Y hay una serie de colaboradores en ese memento, gente muy joven como Robert Logan, Derrick De Kerchove, que después un poco siguieron trabajando un poco todo esta línea, este enfoque. Y ahí hablamos del frente canadiense, eh?Toda esta segunda generación fue desarrollando, fue ampliando aplicando. No nos olvidemos de Eric McLuhan, el hijo de Marshall, que también fue parte de toda esta movida. [00:05:00] Y si no recuerdo mal en el año 2000, se crea la asociación la Media Ecology Association, que es la Asociación de Ecología de los Medios, que es una organización académica, científica, que nuclea a la gente que se ocupa de media ecology. Si pensamos a nivel más científico epistemológico, podemos pensar esta metáfora de la ecología de los medios desde dos o tres perspectivas. Por un lado, esta idea de que los medios crean ambientes. Esta es una idea muy fuerte de Marsha McLuhan, de Postman y de todo este grupo, no? Los medios - "medio" entendido en sentido muy amplio, no, cualquier tecnología podría ser un medio para ellos.Para Marsha McLuhan, la rueda es un medio. Un un telescopio es un medio. Una radio es un medio y la televisión es un medio, no? O sea, cualquier tecnología puede considerarse un medio. Digamos que estos medios, estas tecnologías, generan un [00:06:00] ambiente que a nosotros nos transforma. Transforma nuestra forma, a veces de pensar nuestra forma de percibir el mundo, nuestra concepción del tiempo del espacio.Y nosotros no somos conscientes de ese cambio. Pensemos que, no sé, antes de 1800, si alguien tenía que hacer un viaje de mil kilómetros (y acá nos acercamos al turismo) kilómetros era un viaje que había que programarlo muchos meses antes. Con la llegada del tren, ya estamos en 1800, esos kilómetros se acortaron. Digamos no? Ahí vemos como si a nosotros hoy nos dicen 1000 kilómetros.Bueno, si, tomamos un avión. Es una hora, una hora y cuarto de viaje. Hoy 1000 kilómetro es mucho menos que hace 200 años y incluso a nivel temporal, se a checo el tiempo. No? Todo eso es consecuencia, digamos este cambio, nuestra percepción es consecuencia de una serie de medios y tecnologías.El ferrocarril. Obviamente, hoy tenemos los aviones. Las mismas redes digitales que, un poco nos han llevado esta idea de "tiempo [00:07:00] real," esta ansiedad de querer todo rápido, no? También esa es consecuencia de estos cambios ambientales generados por los medios y las tecnologías, eh? Esto es un idea muy fuerte, cuando McLuhan y Postman hablaban de esto en los años 60, eran fuertes intuiciones que ellos tenían a partir de una observación muy inteligente de la realidad. Hoy, las ciencias cognitivas, mejor las neurociencia han confirmado estas hipótesis. O sea, hoy existen una serie de eh metodología para estudiar el cerebro y ya se ve como las tecnologías.Los medios afectan incluso la estructura física del cerebro. No? Otro tema que esto es histórico, que los medios afectan nuestra memoria. Esto viene de Platón de hace 2500 años, que él decía que la escritura iba a matar la memoria de los hombres. Bueno, podemos pensar nosotros mismos, no, eh?O por lo menos esta generación, que [00:08:00] vivimos el mundo antes y después de las aplicaciones móviles. Yo hace 30 años, 25 años, tenía mi memoria 30-40 números telefónicos. Hoy no tengo ninguno. Y en esa pensemos también el GPS, no? En una época, los taxistas de Londres, que es una ciudad latica se conocían a memoria la ciudad. Y hoy eso, ya no hace falta porque tienen GPS.Y cuando han ido a estudiar el cerebro de los taxistas de Londres, han visto que ciertas áreas del cerebro se han reducido, digamos, así, que son las áreas que gestionaban la parte espacial. Esto ya McLuhan, lo hablaba en los años 60. Decía como que los cambios narcotizan ciertas áreas de la mente decía él.Pero bueno, vemos que mucha investigación empírica, bien de vanguardia científica de neurociencia está confirmando todas estos pensamientos, todas estas cosas que se decían a los años 60 en adelante, por la media ecology. Otra posibilidad es entender [00:09:00] esto como un ecosistema de medios, Marshall McLuhan siempre decía no le podemos dar significado,no podemos entender un medio aislado de los otros medios. Como que los medios adquieren sentido sólo en relación con otros medios. También Neil Postman y mucha otra gente de la escuela de la media ecology, defiende esta posición, de que, bueno, los medios no podemos entender la historia del cine si no la vinculamos a los videojuegos, si no lo vinculamos a la aparición de la televisión.Y así con todos los medios, no? Eh? Hay trabajos muy interesantes. Por ejemplo, de como en el siglo 19, diferentes medios, podríamos decir, que coevolucionaron entre sí. La prensa, el telégrafo. El tren, que transportaba los diarios también, aparecen las agencias de noticias. O sea, vemos cómo es muy difícil entender el desarrollo de la prensa en el siglo XIX y no lo vinculamos al teléfono, si no lo vinculamos a la fotografía, si no lo vinculamos a la radio fotografía, [00:10:00] también más adelante.O sea, esta idea es muy fuerte. No también es otro de los principios para mí fundamentales de esta visión, que sería que los medios no están solos, forman parte de un ecosistema y si nosotros queremos entender lo que está pasando y cómo funciona todo esto, no podemos, eh, analizar los medios aislados del resto.Hay una tercera interpretación. Ya no sé si es muy metafórica. No? Sobre todo, gente en Italia como el investigador Fausto Colombo de Milán o Michele Cometa, es un investigador de Sicilia, Michele Cometa que él habla de l giro, el giro ecomedial. Estos investigadores están moviéndose en toda una concepción según la cual, estamos en único ecosistema mediático que está contaminado.Está contaminado de "fake news" está contaminado de noticias falsas, está contaminado de discursos de odio, etcétera, etc. Entonces ellos, digamos, retoman esta metáfora ecológica para decir [00:11:00] precisamente tenemos que limpiar este ecosistema así como el ecosistema natural está contaminado, necesita una intervención de limpieza, digamos así de purificación, eh? También el ecosistema mediático corre el mismo peligro, no? Y esta gente también llama la atención, y yo estoy muy cerca de esta línea de trabajo sobre la dimensión material de la comunicación. Y esto también tiene que ver con el turismo, queriendo, no? El impacto ambiental que tiene la comunicación hoy.Entrenar una inteligencia artificial implica un consumo eléctrico brutal; mantener funcionando las redes sociales, eh, tiktok, youtube, lo que sea, implica millones de servidores funcionando que chupan energía eléctrica y hay que enfriarlos además, consumiendo aún más energía eléctrica. Y eso tiene un impacto climático no indiferente.Así que, bueno, digamos, vemos que está metáfora de lo ecológico, aplicado los medios da para dos o tres interpretaciones. Chris: Mmm. [00:12:00] Wow. Siento que cuando yo empecé tomando ese curso de de Andrew McLuhan, el nieto de Marshall, como te mencioné, cambio mi perspectiva totalmente - en el mundo, en la manera como entiendo y como no entiendo también las nuestras tecnologías, mis movimientos, etcétera, pero ya, por una persona que tiene décadas de estudiando eso, me gustaría saber de de como empezaste. O sea, Andrew, por ejemplo tiene la excusa de su linaje, no de su papá y su abuelo.Pero entonces, como un argentino joven empezó aprendiendo de ecología de medios. Carlos: Bueno, yo te comento. Yo estudié comunicación en argentina en Rosario. Terminé la facultad. El último examen el 24 de junio del 86, que fue el día que nacía el Lionel Messi en Rosario, en Argentina el mismo día. Y [00:13:00] yo trabajaba, colaboraba en una asignatura en una materia que era teorías de la comunicación.E incluso llegué a enseñar hasta el año 90, fueron tres años, porque ya después me fui vivir Italia. En esa época, nosotros leíamos a Marshall McLuhan, pero era una lectura muy sesgada ideológicamente. En América latina, tú lo habrás visto en México. Hay toda una historia, una tradición de críticas de los medios, sobre todo, a todo lo que viene de estados unidos y Canadá está muy cerca de Estados Unidos. Entonces, digamos que en los años 70 y 80 y y hasta hoy te diría muchas veces a Marshall McLuhan se lo criticó mucho porque no criticaba los medios. O sea el te tenía una visión. Él decía, Neil Postman, si tenía una visión muy crítica. Pero en ese caso, este era una de las grandes diferencias entre Postman y McLuhan, que Marshall McLuhan, al menos en [00:14:00] público, él no criticaba los medios. Decía bueno, yo soy un investigador, yo envío sondas. Estoy explorando lo que pasa. Y él nunca se sumó... Y yo creo que eso fue muy inteligente por parte de él... nunca se sumó a este coro mundial de crítica a los medios de comunicación. En esa época, la televisión para mucha gente era un monstruo.Los niños no tenían que ver televisión. Un poco lo que pasa hoy con los móviles y lo que pasa hoy con tiktok. En esa época en la televisión, el monstruo. Entonces, había mucha investigación en Estados Unidos, que ya partía de la base que la televisión y los medios son malos para la gente. Vemos que es una historia que se repite. Yo creo que en ese sentido, Marshall McLuhan, de manera muy inteligente, no se sumó ese coro crítico y él se dedico realmente a pensar los medios desde una perspectiva mucho más libre, no anclada por esta visión yo creo demasiado ideologizada, que en América Latina es muy fuerte. Es muy fuerte. Esto no implica [00:15:00] bajar la guardia, no ser crítico. Al contrario.Pero yo creo que el el verdadero pensamiento crítico parte de no decir tanto ideológica, decimos "esto ya es malo. Vamos a ver esto." Habrá cosas buenas. Habrá cosas mala. Habrá cosa, lo que es innegable, que los medios mas ya que digamos son buenos son va, nos transforman. Y yo creo que eso fue lo importante de la idea McLuhaniana. Entonces mi primer acercamiento a McLuhan fue una perspectiva de los autores críticos que, bueno, sí, viene de Estados Unidos, no critica los medios. Vamos a criticarlo a nosotros a él, no? Y ese fue mi primer acercamiento a Marshall McLuhan. Yo me fui a Italia en la decada de 90. Estuve casi ocho años fuera de la universidad, trabajando en medios digitales, desarrollo de páginas, webs, productos multimédia y pretexto. Y a finales de los 90, dije quiero volver a la universidad. Quiero ser un doctorado. Y dije, "quiero hacer un doctorado. Bueno. Estando en Italia, el doctorado iba a ser de semiótica." Entonces hizo un [00:16:00] doctorado. Mi tesis fue sobre semiótica de las interfaces.Ahi tuve una visión de las interfaces digitales que consideran que, por ejemplo, los instrumentos como el mouse o joystick son extensiones de nuestro cuerpo, no? El mouse prolonga la mano y la mete dentro de la pantalla, no? O el joystick o cualquier otro elemento de la interfaz digital? Claro. Si hablamos de que el mouse es una extensión de la mano, eso es una idea McLuhaniana.Los medios como extensiones del ser humano de sujeto. Entonces, claro ahi yo releo McLuhan en italiano a finales de los años 90, y me reconcilio con McLuhan porque encuentro muchas cosas interesantes para entender precisamente la interacción con las máquinas digitales. En el a 2002, me mudo con mi familia a España. Me reintegro la vida universitaria. [00:17:00] Y ahí me pongo a estudiar la relación entre los viejos y los nuevos medios. Entonces recupero la idea de ecosistema. Recupero toda la nueva, la idea de ecología de mi ecology. Y me pongo a investigar y releer a McLuhan por tercera vez. Y a leerlo en profundidad a él y a toda la escuela de mi ecology para poder entender las dinámicas del actual ecosistema mediático y entender la emergencia de lo nuevo y cómo lo viejo lucha por adaptarse. En el 2009, estuve tres meses trabajando con Bob Logan en the University of Toronto. El año pasado, estuve en el congreso ahí y tuvimos dos pre conferencias con gente con Paolo Granata y todo el grupo de Toronto.O sea que, tengo una relación muy fuerte con todo lo que se producía y se produce en Toronto. Y bueno, yo creo que, a mí hoy, la media ecology, me sirve muchísimo junto a otras disciplina como la semiótica para poder entender el ecosistema [00:18:00] mediático actual y el gran tema de investigación mío hoy, que es la evolución del la ecosistema mediático.Mm, digamos que dentro de la media ecology, empezando de esa tesis doctoral del 79 de Paul Levinson, hay toda una serie de contribuciones, que un poco son los que han ido derivando en mi último libro que salió el año pasado en inglés en Routledge, que se llama The Evolution of Media y acaba de salir en castellano.Qué se llama Sobre La Evolución De los Medios. En la teoría evolutiva de los medios, hay mucha ecología de los medios metidos. Chris: Claro, claro. Pues felicidad es Carlos. Y vamos a volver en un ratito de ese tema de la evolución de medios, porque yo creo que es muy importante y obviamente es muy importante a ti. Ha sido como algo muy importante en tu trabajo. Pero antes de de salir de esa esquina de pensamiento, hubo una pregunta que me mandó Andrew McLuhan para ti, que ya ella contestaste un poco, pero este tiene que ver entre las diferencias en los [00:19:00] mundos de ecología de medios anglofonos y hispánicos. Y ya mencionaste un poco de eso, pero desde los tiempos en los 80 y noventas, entonces me gustaría saber si esas diferencias siguen entre los mundos intelectuales, en el mundo anglofono o hispánico.Y pues, para extender su pregunta un poco, qué piensas sería como un punto o tema o aspecto más importante de lo que uno de esos mundos tiene que aprender el otro en el significa de lo que falta, quizás. Carlos: Si nos focalizamos en el trabajo de Marshall McLuhan, no es que se lo criticó sólo de América Latina.En Europa no caía simpático Marshall McLuhan en los 60, 70. Justamente por lo mismo, porque no criticaba el sistema capitalista de medios. La tradición europea, la tradición de la Escuela de Frankfurt, la escuela de una visión anti [00:20:00] capitalista que denuncia la ideología dominante en los medio de comunicación.Eso es lo que entra en América Latina y ahí rebota con mucha fuerza. Quizá la figura principal que habla desde América Latina, que habló mucho tiempo de América latina es Armand Mattelart. Matterlart es un teórico en la comunicación, investigador de Bélgica. Y él lo encontramos ya a mediados de los años 60 finales de los 60 en Chile en un memento muy particular de la historia de Chile donde había mucha politización y mucha investigación crítica, obviamente con el con con con con el capitalismo y con el imperialismo estadounidense. Quizá la la obra clásica de ese memento es el famoso libro de Mattelart y Dorfman, eh, eh? Para Leer El Pato Donald, que donde ellos desmontan toda la estructura ideológica capitalista, imperialista, que había en los cics en las historietas del pato Donald.Ellos dicen esto se publicó a [00:21:00] principio los 70. Es quizá el libro más vendido de la comic latinoamericana hasta el día de hoy, eh? Ellos dicen hay ideología en la literatura infantil. Con el pato Donald, le están llenando la cabeza a nuestros niños de toda una visión del mundo muy particular.Si uno le el pato Donald de esa época, por lo menos, la mayor parte de las historia del pato Donald, que era, había que a buscar un tesoro y adónde. Eran lugares africana, peruviana, incaica o sea, eran países del tercer mundo. Y ahí el pato Donald, con sus sobrinos, eran lo suficientemente inteligentes para volverse con el oro a Patolandia.Claro. Ideológicamente. Eso no se sostiene. Entonces, la investigación hegemónica en esa época en Europa, en Francia, la semiología pero sobre todo, en América latina, era ésa. Hay que estudiar el mensaje. Hay que estudiar el contenido, porque ahí está la ideología [00:22:00] dominante del capitalismo y del imperialismo.En ese contexto, entra McLuhan. Se traduce McLuhan y que dice McLuhan: el medio es el mensaje. No importa lo que uno lee, lo que nos transforma es ver televisión, leer comics, escuchar la radio. Claro, iba contramano del mainstream de la investigación en comunicación. O sea, digamos que en América latina, la gente que sigue en esa línea que todavía existe y es fuerte, no es una visión muy crítica de todo esto, todavía hoy, a Marshal McLuhan le cae mal, pero lo mismo pasa en Europa y otros países donde la gente que busca una lectura crítica anti-capitalista y anti-sistémica de la comunicación, no la va a encontrar nunca en Marshall McLuhan, por más que sea de América latina, de de de Europa o de Asia. Entonces yo no radicaría todo esto en un ámbito anglosajón y el latinoamericano. Después, bueno, la hora de McLuhan es bastante [00:23:00] polisemica. Admite como cualquier autor así, que tiene un estilo incluso de escritura tan creativo en forma de mosaico.No era un escritor Cartesiano ordenadito y formal. No, no. McLuhan era una explosión de ideas muy bien diseñada a propósito, pero era una explosión de ideas. Por eso siempre refrescan tener a McLuhan. Entonces normal que surjan interpretaciones diferentes, no? En estados unidos en Canadá, en Inglaterra, en Europa continental o en Latinoamérica o en Japón, obviamente, no? Siendo un autor que tiene estas características. Por eso yo no en no anclaría esto en cuestiones territoriales. Cuando uno busca un enfoque que no tenga esta carga ideológica para poder entender los medios, que no se limite sólo a denunciar el contenido.McLuhan y la escuela de la ecología de los medios es fundamental y es un aporte muy, muy importante en ese sentido, no? Entonces, bueno, yo creo que McLuhan tuvo [00:24:00] detractores en Europa, tuvo detractores en América latina y cada tanto aparece alguno, pero yo creo que esto se ido suavizando. Yo quiero que, como que cada vez más se lo reivindica McLuhan.La gente que estudia, por ejemplo, en Europa y en América latina, que quizá en su época criticaron a McLuhan, todas las teorías de la mediatización, por ejemplo, terminan coincidiendo en buena parte de los planteos de la media ecology. Hoy que se habla mucho de la materialidad de la comunicación, los nuevos materialismos, yo incluyo a Marshall McLuhan en uno de los pioneros des esta visión también de los nuevos materialismos. Al descentrar el análisis del contenido, al medio, a la cosa material, podemos considerar a macl también junto a Bruno Latour y otra gente como pionero, un poco de esta visión de no quedarse atrapados en el giro lingüístico, no, en el contenido, en el giro semiótico e incorporar también la dimensión material de la comunicación y el medio en sí.[00:25:00] Chris: Muy bien. Muy bien, ya. Wow, es tanto, pero lo aprecio mucho. Gracias, Carlos. Y me gustaría seguir preguntándote un poco ahora de tu propio trabajo. Tienes un capítulo en tu libro. Las Leyes de la Interfaz titulado "Las Interfaces Co-evolucionan Con Sus Usuarios" donde escribes "estas leyes de la interfaz no desprecian a los artefactos, sus inventores ó las fuerzas sociales. Solo se limitan á insertarlos á una red socio técnica de relaciones, intercambios y transformaciones para poder analizarlos desde una perspectiva eco-evolutiva."Ahora, hay un montón ahí en este paragrafito. Pero entonces, me gustaría preguntarte, cómo vea los humanos [00:26:00] co-evolucionando con sus tecnologías? Por ejemplo, nuestra forma de performatividad en la pantalla se convierte en un hábito más allá de la pantalla.Carlos: Ya desde antes del homo sapiens, los homínidos más avanzados, digamos en su momento, creaban instrumentos de piedra. Hemos descubierto todos los neandertales tenían una cultura muy sofisticada, incluso prácticas casi y religiosas, más allá de la cuestión material de la construcción de artefactos. O sea que nuestra especie es impensable sin la tecnología, ya sea un hacha de piedra o ya sea tiktok o un smartphone. Entonces, esto tenemos que tenerlo en cuenta cuando analizamos cualquier tipo de de interacción cotidiana, estamos rodeados de tecnología y acá, obviamente, la idea McLuhaniana es fundamental. Nosotros creamos estos medios. Nosotros creamos estas tecnologías.Estas tecnologías también nos reformatean. [00:27:00] McLuhan, no me suena que haya usado el concepto de coevolución, pero está ahí. Está hablando de eso. Ahora bien. Hay una coevolución si se quiere a larguísimo plazo, que, por ejemplo, sabemos que el desarrollo de instrumentos de piedra, el desarrollo del fuego, hizo que el homo sapiens no necesitara una mandíbula tan grande para poder masticar los alimentos. Y eso produce todo un cambio, que achicó la mandíbula le dejó más espacio en el cerebro, etcétera, etcétera. Eso es una coevolución en término genético, digamos a larguísimo plazo, okey. También la posición eréctil, etcétera, etcétera. Pero, digamos que ya ahí había tecnologías humanas coevolucionando con estos cambios genéticos muy, muy lentos.Pero ahora tenemos también podemos decir esta co evolución ya a nivel de la estructura neuronal, entonces lo ha verificado la neurociencia, como dije antes. Hay cambio físico en la estructura del cerebro a lo largo de la vida de una persona debido a la interacción con ciertas tecnologías. Y por qué pasa eso?Porque [00:28:00] la producción, creación de nuevos medios, nuevas tecnologías se ido acelerando cada vez más. Ahi podemos hacer una curva exponencial hacia arriba, para algunos esto empezó hace 10,000 años. Para algunos esto se aceleró con la revolución industrial. Algunos hablan de la época el descubrimiento de América.Bueno, para alguno esto es un fenómeno de siglo xx. El hecho es que en términos casi geológicos, esto que hablamos del antropoceno es real y está vinculado al impacto del ser humano sobre nuestro ambiente y lo tecnológico es parte de ese proceso exponencial de co evolución. Nosotros hoy sentimos un agobio frente a esta aceleración de la tecnología y nuestra necesidad. Quizá de adaptarnos y coevolucionar con ella. Como esto de que todo va muy rápido. Cada semana hay un problema nuevo, una aplicación nueva. Ahora tenemos la inteligencia artificial, etc, etcétera. Pero esta sensación [00:29:00] no es nueva. Es una sensación de la modernidad. Si uno lee cosas escritas en 1,800 cuando llega el tren también la gente se quejaba que el mundo iba muy rápido. Dónde iremos a parar con este caballo de hierro que larga humo no? O sea que esta sensación de velocidad de cambio rápido ya generaciones anteriores la vivían. Pero evidentemente, el cambio hoy es mucho más rápido y denso que hace dos siglos. Y eso es real también. Así que, bueno, nuestra fe se va coevolucionando y nos vamos adaptando como podemos, yo esta pregunta se la hice hace 10 años a Kevin Kelly, el primer director de la revista Wire que lo trajimos a Barcelona y el que siempre es muy optimista. Kevin Kelly es determinista tecnológico y optimista al mismo tiempo. Él decía que "que bueno que el homo sapiens lo va llevando bastante bien. Esto de co evolucionar con la tecnología." Otra gente tiene una [00:30:00] visión radicalmente opuesta, que esto es el fin del mundo, que el homo sapiens estamos condenados a desaparecer por esta co evolución acelerada, que las nuevas generaciones son cada vez más estúpidas.Yo no creo eso. Creo, como McLuhan, que los medios nos reforman, nos cambian algunas cosas quizás para vivir otras quizá no tanto, pero no, no tengo una visión apocalíptica de esto para nada. Chris: Bien, bien. Entonces cuando mencionaste lo de la televisión, yo me acuerdo mucho de de mi niñez y no sé por qué. Quizás fue algo normal en ese tiempo para ver a tele como un monstruo, como dijiste o quizás porque mis mis papás eran migrantes pero fue mucho de su idea de esa tecnología y siempre me dijo como no, no, no quédate ahí tan cerca y eso.Entonces, aunque lo aceptaron, ellos comprendieron que el poder [00:31:00] de la tele que tenía sobre las personas. Entonces ahora todos, parece a mí, que todos tienen su propio canal, no su propio programación, o el derecho o privilegio de tener su propio canal o múltiples canales.Entonces, es una gran pregunta, pero cuáles crees que son las principales consecuencias de darle a cada uno su propio programa en el sentido de como es el efecto de hacer eso, de democratizar quizás la tecnología en ese sentido? Carlos: Cuando dices su propio canal, te refieres a la posibilidad de emitir o construir tu propia dieta mediática.Chris: Bueno primero, pero puede ser ambos, claro, no? O sea, mi capacidad de tener un perfil o cuenta mía personal. Y luego como el fin del turismo, no? Y luego otro. Carlos: Sí, a ver. Yo creo que, bueno, esto fue el gran cambio radical que empezó a darse a partir la década del 2000 o [00:32:00] sea, hace 25 años. Porque la web al principio sí era una red mundial en los años 90. Pero claro la posibilidad de compartir un contenido y que todo el mundo lo pudiera ver, estaba muy limitado a crear una página web, etcétera. Cuando aparecen las redes sociales o las Web 2.0 como se la llamaba en esa época y eso se suma los dispositivos móviles, ahí se empieza a generar esta cultura tan difundida de la creación de contenido. Hasta digamos que hasta ese momento quien generaba contenido era más o menos un profesional en la radio y en la televisión, pero incluso en la web o en la prensa o el cine. Y a partir de ahí se empieza, digamos, a abrir el juego. En su momento, esto fue muy bien saludado fue qué bueno! Esto va nos va a llevar a una sociedad más democrática. 25 años después, claro, estamos viendo el lado oscuro solamente. Yo creo que el error hace 25 años era pensar solo las posibilidades [00:33:00] buenas, optimistas, de esto. Y hoy me parece que estamos enredados en discursos solamente apocalípticos no?No vemos las cosas buenas, vemos solo las cosas malas. Yo creo que hay de las dos cosas hoy. Claro, hoy cualquier persona puede tener un canal, sí, pero no todo el mundo crea un canal. Los niveles de participación son muy extraños, o sea, la mayor parte de la población de los usuarios y usuarias entre en las redes. Mira. Mete un me gusta. Quizá un comentario. Cada tanto comparte una foto. Digamos que los "heavy users" o "heavy producers" de contenido son siempre una minoría, ya sea profesionales, ya sea influencers, streamers, no? Es siempre, yo no sé si acá estamos en un 20-80 o un 10-90 son estas curvas que siempre fue así? No? Si uno ve la Wikipedia, habrá un 5-10 por ciento de gente que genera contenido mucho menos incluso. Y un 90 por ciento que se [00:34:00] beneficia del trabajo de una minoría. Esto invierte la lógica capitalista? La mayoría vive de la minoría y esto pasaba antes también en otros, en otros sistemas. O sea que en ese sentido, es sólo una minoría de gente la que genera contenido de impacto, llamémoslo así, de alcance mayor.Pero bueno, yo creo que el hecho de que cualquier persona pueda dar ese salto para mí, está bien. Genera otra serie de problemas, no? Porque mientras que genera contenido, es un profesional o un periodista, digamos, todavía queda algo de normas éticas y que deben cumplir no? Yo veo que en el mundo de los streamers, el mundo de los Tik tokers etcétera, etcétera, lo primero que ellos dicen es, nosotros no somos periodistas. Y de esa forma, se inhiben de cualquier, control ético o de respeto a normas éticas profesionales. Por otro lado, las plataformas [00:35:00] Meta, Google, todas. Lo primero que te dicen es nosotros no somos medio de comunicación. Los contenidos los pone la gente.Nosotros no tenemos nada que ver con eso. Claro, ellos también ahí se alejan de toda la reglamentación. Por eso hubo que hacer. Europa y Estados Unidos tuvo que sacar leyes especiales porque ellos decían no, no, las leyes del periodismo a nosotros no nos alcanzan. Nosotros no somos editores de contenidos.Y es una mentira porque las plataformas sí editan contenido a través los algoritmos, porque nos están los algoritmos, nos están diciendo que podemos ver y que no está en primera página. No están filtrando información, o sea que están haciendo edición. Entonces, como que se generan estas equivocaciones.Y eso es uno de los elementos que lleva esta contaminación que mencioné antes en el en los ámbitos de la comunicación. Pero yo, si tuviera que elegir un ecosistema con pocos enunciadores pocos medios controlados por profesionales y este ecosistema [00:36:00] caótico en parte contaminado con muchos actores y muchas voces, yo prefiero el caos de hoy a la pobreza del sistema anterior.Prefiero lidiar, pelearme con y estar buscar de resolver el problema de tener mucha información, al problema de la censura y tener sólo dos, tres puntos donde se genera información. Yo he vivido en Argentina con dictadura militar con control férreo de medios, coroneles de interventores en la radio y la televisión que controlaban todo lo que se decía.Y yo prefiero el caos de hoy, aún con fake news y todo lo que quieras. Prefiero el caos de hoy a esa situación. Chris: Sí, sí, sí, sí. Es muy fuerte de pensar en eso para la gente que no han vivido en algo así, no? Osea algunos familiares extendidos han vivido en mundos comunistas, en el pasado en el este de Europa y no se hablan [00:37:00] exactamente así.Pero, se se hablan, no? Y se se dicen que lo que lo que no tenía ni lo que no tiene por control y por fuerza. Entonces, en ese como mismo sentido de lo que falta de la memoria vivida, me gustaría preguntarte sobre tu nuevo libro. Y sobre la evolución de medios. Entonces me gustaría preguntarte igual por nuestros oyentes que quizás no han estudiado mucho de la ecología de los medios Para ti qué es la evolución de los medios y por qué es importante para nuestro cambiante y comprensión del mundo. O sea, igual al lado y no solo pegado a la ecología de medios, pero la evolución de los medios,Carlos: Sí, te cuento ahí hay una disciplina, ya tradicional que es la historia y también está la historia de la comunicación y historia de los medios. [00:38:00] Hay libros muy interesantes que se titulan Historia de la Comunicación de Gutenberg a Internet o Historia de la Comunicación del Papiro a Tiktok. Entonces, qué pasa? Esos libros te dicen bueno, estaba el papiro, después vino el pergamino, el manuscrito, después en 1450 vino Gutenberg, llegó el libro. Pero eso el libro no te cuentan que pasó con el manuscrito, ni que pasó con el papiro. Y te dicen que llega la radio en 1920 y en 1950 llega la televisión y no te dicen que pasó con la radio, que pasó con el cine.Son historias lineales donde un medio parece que va sustituyendo al otro. Y después tenemos muchos libros muy buenos también. Historia de la radio, historia de la televisión, historia de internet, historia del periodismo. Como dije antes, retomando una idea, de McLuhan no podemos entender los medios aislados.Yo no puedo entender la evolución de la radio si no la vinculo a la prensa, a [00:39:00] la televisión y otro al podcast. Okey, entonces digo, necesitamos un campo de investigación, llamémoslo una disciplina en construcción, que es una teoría y también es metodología para poder entender el cambio mediático, todas estas transformaciones del ecosistema de medios a largo plazo y que no sea una sucesión de medios, sino, ver cómo esa red de medios fue evolucionando. Y eso yo lo llamo una teoría evolutiva o una "media evolution" Y es lo que estoy trabajando ahora. Claro, esta teoría, este enfoque, este campo de investigación toma muchas cosas de la ecología de los medios, empezando por Marshall McLuhan pero también gente de la tradición previa a la media ecology como Harold Innis, el gran historiador, economista de la comunicación y de la sociedad, que fue quizás el intelectual más famoso en Canadá en la primera mitad del siglo XX. Harold Innis que influenció mucho a Marshall McLuhan [00:40:00] Marshall McLuhann en la primera página de Gutenberg Galaxy, dice este libro no es otra cosa que una nota al pie de página de la obra de Harold Innis Entonces, Harold Innis que hizo una historia de los tiempos antiguos poniendo los medios al centro de esa historia. Para mí es fundamental. Incluso te diría a veces más que McLuhan, como referencia, a la hora de hacer una teoría evolutiva del cambio mediático. Y después, obviamente tomo muchas cosas de la historia de los medios.Tomo muchas cosas de la arqueología de los medios (media archeology). Tomo cosas también de la gente que investigó la historia de la tecnología, la construcción social de la tecnología. O sea, la media evolution es un campo intertextual, como cualquier disciplina que toma cosas de todos estos campos para poder construir una teoría, un enfoque, una mirada que sea más a largo plazo, que no sea una sucesión de medios, sino que vea la evolución de todo el ecosistema mediático, prestando mucha atención a las relaciones [00:41:00] entre medios, y con esta visión más compleja sistémica de cómo cambian las cosas.Yo creo que el cambio mediático es muy rápido y necesitamos una teoría para poder darle un sentido a todo este gran cambio, porque si nos quedamos analizando cosas muy micro, muy chiquititas, no vemos los grandes cambios. No nos podemos posicionar... esto un poco como el fútbol. Los mejores jugadores son los que tienen el partido en la cabeza y saben dónde está todo. No están mirando la pelota, pero saben dónde están los otros jugadores? Bueno, yo creo que la media evolution sirve para eso. Más allá de que hoy estemos todos hablando de la IA generativa. No? Tener esta visión de de conjunto de todo el ecosistema mediático y tecnológico, yo creo que es muy útil.Chris: Mm. Wow Increíble, increíble. Sí. Sí. Pienso mucho en como las nuevas generaciones o las generaciones más jóvenes en el día de hoy. O sea, [00:42:00] al menos más joven que yo, que la mayoría, como que tiene 20 años hoy, no tienen una memoria vívida de cómo fuera el mundo, sin redes sociales o sin el internet. Y así como me voy pensando en mi vida y como yo, no tengo una memoria de vida como fuera el mundo sin pantallas de cualquier tipo, o sea de tele de compus. No solo de internet o redes. Carlos: Sí, no, te decia que mi padre vivió, mi padre tiene 90 años y él se recuerda en el año 58, 59, su casa fue la primera en un barrio de Rosario que tuvo televisión y transmitían a partir de la tarde seis, siete de la tarde. Entonces venían todos los vecinos y vecinas a ver televisión a la casa de mi abuela. Entonces cada uno, cada generación tiene sus historias. No? Chris: Ajá. Ajá. Sí. Pues sí. Y también, como dijiste, para [00:43:00] entender los medios como sujetos o objetos individuales, o sea en su propio mundo, no? Este recuerdo un poco de la metáfora de Robin Wall Kimmerer que escribió un libro que se llama Braiding Sweetgrass o Trenzando Pasto Dulce supongo, en español. Y mencionó que para entender el entendimiento indígena, digamos entre comillas de tiempo, no necesitamos pensar en una línea, una flecha desde el pasado hacia el futuro. Pero, un lago, mientras el pasado, presente, y futuro existen, a la vez, en ese lago.Y también pienso como en el lugar, el pasado, presente, y el futuro, como todos esos medios existiendo a la vez, como en un lago y obviamente en una ecología de su evolución de sus cambios. Carlos: Es, muy interesante eso. Después te voy a pedir la referencia del libro porque, claro, [00:44:00] McLuhan siempre decía que el contenido de un medio es otro medio. Entonces, puede pasar que un medio del pasado deja su huella o influye en un medio del futuro. Y entonces ahí se rompe la línea temporal. Y esos son los fenómenos que a mí me interesa estudiar. Chris: Mmm, mmm, pues Carlos para terminar, tengo dos últimas preguntas para ti. Esta vez un poco alineado con el turismo, y aunque no estas enfocado tanto en en el estudio de turismo. Por mis estudios y investigaciones y por este podcast, he amplificado esa definición de turismo para ver cómo existiría más allá de una industria. Y para mí, el turismo incluye también el deseo de ver una persona, un lugar o una cultura como destino, como algo útil, temporal en su valor de uso y por tanto, desechable. Entonces, me gustaría [00:45:00] preguntarte, si para ti parece que nuestros medios populares, aunque esto es un tiempo, digamos con más libertad de otros lugares o tiempos en el pasado, más autoritarianos o totalitarianos? Si te ves la posibilidad o la evidencia de que nuestros medios digamos como mainstream más usados, están creando o promoviendo un , un sentido de alienación en la gente por efectivamente quedarles a distancia al otro o la otra.Carlos: Yo ya te dije no, no tengo una visión apocalíptica de los medios. Nunca, la tuve. Esto no quita de que los medios y como dijimos antes, tienen problemas. Generan también contaminación. Llamémoslo así si seguimos con la metáfora, ? El tema de alienación viene desde hace [00:46:00] muchísimos años. Ya cuando estudiaba en la universidad, nunca sintonicé con las teorías de la alienación.El concepto de alienación viene del siglo XIX. Toda una teoría de la conciencia, el sujeto, el proletario, llamémoslo, así que tenía que tomar conciencia de clase. Bueno, las raíces de esa visión del concepto alienación vienen de ahí. Yo, a mí nunca me convenció, justamente. Y acá si interesante.El aporte de América Latina en teorías de la comunicación siempre fue diferente. Fue reivindicar la resignificación, la resemantización el rol activo del receptor, cuando muchas veces las teorías que venían de Europa o Estados Unidos tenían esta visión del receptor de la comunicación como un ser pasivo. En ese sentido, la media ecology nunca entró en ese discurso porque se manejaba con otros parámetros, pero digamos que lo que era el mainstream de la investigación de estados unidos, pero también de Europa, siempre coincidían en esto en considerar el receptor pasivo, alienado, [00:47:00] estupidizado por los medios. Y yo realmente nunca, me convenció ese planteo, ni antes ni hoy, ni con la televisión de los 70 y 80, ni con el tiktok de hoy.Esto no quita que puede haber gente que tenga alguna adicción, etcétera, etcétera. Pero yo no creo que toda la sociedad sea adicta hoy a la pantallita. Deja de ser adicción. Okey. Esto no implica que haya que no tener una visión crítica. Esto no implica que haya que eventualmente regular los usos de ciertas tecnologías, obviamente.Pero de ahí a pensar que estamos en un escenario apocalíptico, de idiotización total del homo sapiens o de alienación. Yo no lo veo, ni creo que lo los estudios empíricos confirmen eso. Más allá que a veces hay elecciones y no nos gusten los resultados.Pero ahí es interesante, porque cuando tu propio partido político pierde, siempre se le echa la culpa a los medios porque ganó el otro. Pero cuando tu partido político gana, nadie dice nada de los medios. Ganamos porque somos mejores, [00:48:00] porque tenemos mejores ideas, porque somos más democráticos, porque somos más bonitos.Entonces, claro te das cuenta que se usan los medios como chivo expiatorio para no reconocer las propias debilidades políticas a la hora de denunciar una propuesta o de seducir al electorado.Chris: Claro, claro. Ya pues estos temas son vastos y complejos. Y por eso me gusta, y por eso estoy muy agradecido por pasar este tiempo contigo, Carlos.Pero los temas requieren un profundo disciplina para comprender, o al menos según yo, como alguien que está muy nuevo a estos temas. Entonces, a nuestra época, parece que somos, según yo, arrastrados a una velocidad sin precedentes. Nuestras tecnologías están avanzando y quizás socavando simultáneamente nuestra capacidad de comprender lo que está sucediendo en el mundo. Los usamos como protesta a veces como, como mencionaste, [00:49:00] pero sin una comprensión más profunda de cómo nos usan también. Entonces tengo la curiosidad por saber qué papel desempeña la ecología de los medios en la redención o curación de la cultura en nuestro tiempo. Cómo podría la ecología de los medios ser un aliado, quizás, en nuestros caminos? Carlos: Sí, yo creo que esta idea estaba presente, no? En los teóricos de la media ecology, digamos la primera generación.Ahora que lo pienso, estaba también en la semiótica de Umberto Eco, no? Cuando decía la semiótica más allá de analizar cómo se construye significado, también aporta a mejorar la vida significativa, o sea, la vida cultural, la vida comunicacional, nuestro funcionamiento como sujeto, digamos. Y yo creo que en ese sentido, la media ecology también.Digamos, si nosotros entendemos el ecosistema mediático, vamos a poder sacarlo mejor [00:50:00] coevolucionar mejor. Vamos a ser más responsables también a la hora de generar contenidos, a la hora de retwittear de manera a veces automática ciertas cosas. Yo creo que es todo un crecimiento de vivir una vida mediática sana, que yo creo que hoy existe esa posibilidad.Yo estoy en Twitter desde el 2008-2009 y sólo dos veces tuve así un encontronazo y bloqueé a una persona mal educada. Después el resto de mi vida en Twitter, es rica de información de contactos. Aprendo muchísimo me entero de cosas que se están investigando. O sea, también están uno elegir otras cosas.Y por ejemplo, donde veo que yo hay que hay redes que no me aportan nada, no directamente ni entro. También es eso de aprender a sacar lo mejor de este ecosistema mediático. Y lo mismo para el ecosistema natural. Así como estamos aprendiendo a preocuparnos de dónde viene la comida, [00:51:00] cuánto tiempo se va a tardar en disolver este teléfono móvil por los componentes que tiene. Bueno, también es tomar conciencia de eso. Ya sea en el mundo natural, como en el mundo de la comunicación. Y yo creo que todos estos conocimientos, en este caso, la media ecology nos sirve para captar eso, no? Y mejorar nosotros también como sujetos, que ya no somos más el centro del universo, que esta es la otra cuestión. Somos un átomo más perdido entre una complejidad muy grande. Chris: Mm. Mm, pues que estas obras y trabajos y estudios tuyos y de los demás nos da la capacidad de leer y comprender ese complejidad, no?O sea, parece más y más complejo cada vez y nos requiere como más y más discernimiento. Entonces, yo creo que pues igual, hemos metido mucho en tu voluntad y capacidad de [00:52:00] hacer eso y ponerlo en el mundo. Entonces, finalmente Carlos me gustaría a extender mi agradecimiento y la de nuestros oyentes por tu tiempo hoy, tu consideración y tu trabajo.Siento que pues, la alfabetización mediática y la ecología de los medios son extremadamente deficientes en nuestro tiempo y su voluntad de preguntar sobre estas cosas y escribir sobre ellas es una medicina para un mundo quebrantado y para mi turístico. Entonces, así que muchísimas gracias, Carlos, por venir hoy.Carlos: Gracias. Te agradezco por las preguntas. Y bueno, yo creo que el tema del turismo es un tema que está ocupa lugar central hoy. Si tú estuvieras en Barcelona, verías que todos los días se está debatiendo este tema. Así que yo creo que bueno, adelante con esa reflexión y esa investigación sobre el turismo, porque es muy pertinente y necesaria.Chris: Pues sí, gracias. [00:53:00] Igual yo siento que hay una conexión fuerte entre esas definiciones más amplias de turismo y la ecología de medios. O sea, ha abierto una apertura muy grande para mí para entender el turismo más profundamente. Igual antes de terminar Carlos, cómo podrían nuestros oyentes encontrar tus libros y tu trabajo?Sé que hemos hablado de dos libros que escribiste, pero hay mucho más. Muchísimo más. Entonces, cómo se pueden encontrarlos y encontrarte?Carlos: Lo más rápido es en en mi blog, que es hipermediaciones.com Ahí van a encontrar información sobre todos los libros que voy publicando, etcétera, etc. Y después, bueno, yo soy muy activo, como dije en Twitter X. Me encuentran la letra CEscolari y de Carlos es mi Twitter. Y bueno, también ahí trato de difundir información sobre estos [00:54:00] temas.Como dije antes, aprendo mucho de esa red y trato de también devolver lo que me dan poniendo siempre información pertinente. Buenos enlaces. Y no pelearme mucho.Chris: Muy bien, muy bien, pues voy a asegurar que esos enlaces y esas páginas estén ya en la sección de tarea el sitio web de El fin del turismo cuando sale el episodio. Igual otras entrevistas y de tus libros. No hay falta. Entonces, con mucho gusto, los voy compartiendo. Bueno, Carlos, muchísimas gracias y lo aprecio mucho.Carlos: Muchas gracias y nos vemos en México.English TranscriptionChris: [00:00:00] Welcome to the podcast The End of Tourism, Carlos. Thank you for being able to speak with me today. It's a great pleasure to have you here with me today.Carlos: No, thank you, Chris, for the invitation. It is a great pleasure and honor to chat with you, a great traveler and, well, I have never directly investigated the subject of tourism.Well, I understand that we are going to talk about media ecology and collateral issues that can help us better understand, give meaning to all that is happening in the world of tourism. Well, I work in Barcelona. I don't live in the city exactly, but I work at the university in Barcelona, in the central area.Well, every time I go to the city, the number of tourists increases every day and the debate on tourism in all its dimensions increases. So it is a topic that is on the agenda, right?Chris: Yes, well I imagine that even if you don't like to think or if you don't want to think about tourism there, it is inevitable to have a personal lesson [00:01:00] from that industry.Carlos: Yes, to the point that it is almost becoming a taxonomic criterion, right? ...of classification or cities with a lot of tourists, cities or places without tourists that are the most sought after until they are filled with tourists. So we are practically in a vicious circle.Chris: Well, at some point I know that it changes, the cycle breaks, at least to account for what we are doing with the behavior.And I understand that this also has a lot to do with the ecology of the media, the lack of ability to understand our behaviors, attitudes, thoughts, feelings, etc. So, before continuing with your work and deeds, I would like to ask you about your path and your life.First, I wonder if you could define for our listeners what media ecology is and how you [00:02:00] became interested in this field? How did you come to dedicate your life to this study?Carlos: Yes. Let's see a little bit. There is one, this is the official history. We would say media ecology, it is a field of research, let's say, that was born in the 60s. We must take into account above all the work of Marshall McLuhan, a Canadian researcher who is very famous worldwide. He was perhaps the most famous media researcher philosopher in the 60s and 70s.And a colleague of his, Neil Postman, who was at New York University, was a bit, let's say, among the people who surrounded these two references, no, in the 60s, from there it was brewing, let's say, what was later called media ecology. It is said that the first person to talk about media ecology, who applied this metaphor to the media, was Marshall McLuhan himself in some private conversations, [00:03:00] letters that were sent to each other in the late 50s, early 60s, by researchers on these topics?Let's say the first public appearance of the concept of media ecology was a lecture in 1968 by Neil Postman. It was a public speech that talked about how the media transforms us and how the media transforms us, forming an environment in which we grow, develop, and so on. And we are sometimes not very aware of this environment that surrounds us and shapes us.He first used the concept of media ecology in a public lecture. And then, if we go back to the early 70s, Postman himself created the first program in media ecology at NYU, at New York University. So, in 73, 74 and 75, what I call the second generation began to emerge, of people [00:04:00] some of whom were trained in these courses in New York.For example, Christine Nystrom was the first PhD thesis on my ecology; people like Paul Levinson who in 1979 defended a PhD thesis directed by Postman on the evolution of the media, right? And the same thing happened in Toronto in the 70s. Marshall McLuhan died in December 80.Let's say that the 70s were his last decade of intellectual production. And there are a number of collaborators at that time, very young people like Robert Logan, Derrick De Kerchove, who later continued to work a bit along these lines, along these lines. And there we talk about the Canadian front, eh?This whole second generation was developing, expanding and applying. Let's not forget Eric McLuhan, Marshall's son, who was also part of this whole movement. [00:05:00] And if I remember correctly, in 2000, the Media Ecology Association was created, which is the Media Ecology Association, which is an academic, scientific organization that brings together people who deal with media ecology.If we think at a more scientific epistemological level, we can think of this metaphor of media ecology from two or three perspectives. On the one hand, this idea that media create environments. This is a very strong idea of Marsha McLuhan, of Postman and of this whole group, isn't it? The media - "medium" understood in a very broad sense, no, any technology could be a medium for them.For Marsha McLuhan, the wheel is a medium. A telescope is a medium. A radio is a medium and television is a medium, right? I mean, any technology can be considered a medium. Let's say that these media, these technologies, generate a [00:06:00] environment that transforms us. It transforms our way, sometimes our way of thinking, our way of perceiving the world, our conception of time and space.And we are not aware of that change. Let's think that, I don't know, before 1800, if someone had to make a trip of a thousand kilometers (and here we are approaching tourism) kilometers was a trip that had to be planned many months in advance. With the arrival of the train, we are already in 1800, those kilometers were shortened. Let's say no? There we see as if today they tell us 1000 kilometers.Well, yes, we take a plane. It's an hour, an hour and a quarter of a journey. Today, 1000 kilometres is much less than 200 years ago and even in terms of time, time has changed. Right? All of that is a consequence, let's say, of this change, our perception is a consequence of a series of media and technologies.The railroad. Obviously, today we have airplanes. The same digital networks that have somewhat brought us this idea of "time [00:07:00] real," this anxiety of wanting everything fast, right? That is also a consequence of these environmental changes generated by the media and technologies, eh? This is a very strong idea, when McLuhan and Postman talked about this in the 60s, they were strong intuitions that they had from a very intelligent observation of reality. Today, cognitive sciences, or rather neuroscience, have confirmed these hypotheses. In other words, today there are a series of methodologies to study the brain and we can already see how technologies...The media even affects the physical structure of the brain. Right? Another thing that is historical is that the media affects our memory. This comes from Plato 2,500 years ago, who said that writing would kill the memory of men. Well, we can think for ourselves, right?Or at least this generation, who [00:08:00] lived in a world before and after mobile apps. 30 years ago, 25 years ago, I had 30-40 phone numbers in my memory. Today I don't have any. And let's also think about GPS, right? At one time, taxi drivers in London, which is a Latin city, knew the city by heart. And today, that's no longer necessary because they have GPS.And when they went to study the brains of London taxi drivers, they saw that certain areas of the brain had shrunk, so to speak, which are the areas that manage the spatial part. McLuhan already talked about this in the 60s. He said that changes narcotize certain areas of the mind, he said.But well, we see that a lot of empirical research, very cutting-edge neuroscience research is confirming all these thoughts, all these things that were said in the 60s onwards, by media ecology. Another possibility is to understand [00:09:00] this as a media ecosystem, Marshall McLuhan always said we cannot give it meaning,We cannot understand a medium in isolation from other media. It is as if media only acquire meaning in relation to other media. Neil Postman and many other people from the school of media ecology also defend this position, that, well, we cannot understand the history of cinema if we do not link it to video games, if we do not link it to the appearance of television.And so with all the media, right? Eh? There are some very interesting works. For example, about how in the 19th century, different media, we could say, co-evolved with each other. The press, the telegraph. The train, which also transported newspapers, news agencies appeared. I mean, we see how it is very difficult to understand the development of the press in the 19th century and we don't link it to the telephone, if we don't link it to photography, if we don't link it to radio photography, [00:10:00] also later on.I mean, this idea is very strong. It is also one of the principles that I consider fundamental to this vision, which would be that the media are not alone, they are part of an ecosystem and if we want to understand what is happening and how all this works, we cannot, uh, analyze the media in isolation from the rest.There is a third interpretation. I don't know if it's too metaphorical, right? Above all, people in Italy like the researcher Fausto Colombo from Milan or Michele Cometa, he is a researcher from Sicily, Michele Cometa who talks about the turn, the ecomedia turn. These researchers are moving in a whole conception according to which, we are in a unique media ecosystem that is contaminated.It is contaminated by "fake news" it is contaminated by false news, it is contaminated by hate speech, etc., etc. So they, let's say, take up this ecological metaphor to say [00:11:00] We have to clean this ecosystem just as the natural ecosystem is contaminated, it needs a cleaning intervention, let's say a purification, eh?The media ecosystem is also in the same danger, isn't it? And these people are also calling attention, and I am very close to this line of work on the material dimension of communication. And this also has to do with tourism, right? The environmental impact that communication has today.Training an artificial intelligence involves a huge amount of electricity; keeping social networks running, eh, TikTok, YouTube, whatever, involves millions of servers running that suck up electricity and also have to be cooled, consuming even more electricity. And that has a significant impact on the climate.So, well, let's say, we see that this metaphor of the ecological, applied to the media, gives rise to two or three interpretations.Chris: Mmm. [00:12:00] Wow. I feel like when I started taking that course from Andrew McLuhan, Marshall's grandson, as I mentioned, it changed my perspective completely - on the world, on the way I understand and how I don't understand our technologies, my movements, etc. But now, from a person who has been studying this for decades, I would like to know how you started. I mean, Andrew, for example, has the excuse of his lineage, not his father and his grandfather.But then, as a young Argentine, he began learning about media ecology.Carlos: Well, I'll tell you. I studied communication in Argentina, in Rosario. I finished college. The last exam was on June 24, 1986, which was the day that Lionel Messi was born in Rosario, Argentina, on the same day. And [00:13:00] I worked, I collaborated in a class in a subject that was communication theories.And I even taught until 1990, three years, because after that I went to live in Italy. At that time, we read Marshall McLuhan, but it was a very ideologically biased reading. In Latin America, you must have seen it in Mexico. There is a whole history, a tradition of criticism from the media, especially of everything that comes from the United States, and Canada is very close to the United States.So, let's say that in the 70s and 80s and until today I would tell you that Marshall McLuhan was often criticized because he did not criticize the media. I mean, he had a vision. He said, Neil Postman, yes, he had a very critical vision. But in that case, this was one of the big differences between Postman and McLuhan, that Marshall McLuhan, at least in [00:14:00] public, he did not criticize the media. He said, well, I am a researcher, I send out probes. I am exploring what is happening.And he never joined in... And I think that was very clever of him... he never joined in this worldwide chorus of criticism of the media. At that time, television was a monster for many people.Children were not supposed to watch television. A bit like what happens today with cell phones and what happens today with TikTok. At that time, television was the monster. At that time, there was a lot of research in the United States, which was already based on the premise that television and the media are bad for people.We see that it is a story that repeats itself. I think that in that sense, Marshall McLuhan, very intelligently, did not join that critical chorus and he really dedicated himself to thinking about the media from a much freer perspective, not anchored by this vision that I believe is too ideologized, which is very strong in Latin America. It is very strong. This does not imply [00:15:00] letting down one's guard, not being critical. On the contrary.But I think that true critical thinking starts from not saying so much ideology, we say "this is already bad. Let's look at this." There will be good things. There will be bad things. There will be things, which is undeniable, that the media, even if we say they are good, will transform us. And I think that was the important thing about the McLuhanian idea.So my first approach to McLuhan was from the perspective of critical authors who, well, yes, come from the United States, they don't criticize the media. We're going to criticize him, right? And that was my first approach to Marshall McLuhan.I went to Italy in the 90s. I was out of college for almost eight years, working in digital media, web development, multimedia products, and pretext. And in the late 90s, I said, I want to go back to college. I want to be a PhD. And I said, "I want to do a PhD. Well. Being in Italy, the PhD was going to be in semiotics." So I did a [00:16:00] PhD. My thesis was on semiotics of interfaces.There I had a vision of digital interfaces that consider, for example, instruments like the mouse or joystick as extensions of our body, right? The mouse extends the hand and puts it inside the screen, right? Or the joystick or any other element of the digital interface? Of course. If we talk about the mouse being an extension of the hand, that is a McLuhanian idea.The media as extensions of the human being as a subject. So, of course, I reread McLuhan in Italian at the end of the 90s, and I reconciled with McLuhan because I found many interesting things to understand precisely the interaction with digital machines.In 2002, I moved with my family to Spain. I returned to university life. [00:17:00] And there I began to study the relationship between old and new media. Then I recovered the idea of ecosystem. I recovered the whole new idea, the id

This trialogue continues a series of discussion exploring the latest interdisciplinary research into tantric completion stage practices such as yogas of dream, sleep, and death. Dr Tawni Tidwell is a biocultural anthropologist and doctor of traditional Tibetan medicine. Dr Michael Sheehy is the Director of Research at the Contemplative Sciences Center at the University of Virginia. Dr Julian Schott is an Indologist, Tibetologist, and assistant professor at the University of Vienna. Dr Tidwell leads a deep-dive into the mysterious death practices of tantric yoga, the post-mortem state of suspended animation called tukdam, and the history of scientific investigation into these phenomena. Dr Sheehy explores the implications of tantric death practices on current scientific models of the body, Dr Schott reflects on Buddhist vs Cartesian notions of consciousness, and Dr Tidwell explains the cultural sensitivities of working with Himalayan gurus. The panel also discuss the importance of osel - clear light awareness - in completion stage practices, the relationship between nonduality and transformation, and consider new research directions on the cutting edge of contemplative neuroscience. … Also available on Youtube, iTunes, & Spotify – search ‘Guru Viking Podcast'. … 01:37 - Recap previously discussed themes 02:30 - Research in tukdam and yogic dying 05:17 - Researching dying spiritual masters 09:27 - Recruiting Tibetan monastics 10:33 - Cultural dynamics around studying tukdam 12:32 - Early phases & baseline measures 13:23 - Collaboration with the Russian Academy of Science 14:39 - What could tukdam contribute to science? 15:52 - American mortician shocked 18:40 - Biological aspects of tukdam 20:53 - Funding and reliance on Russian equipment 22:14 - What happens to the body after death 23:25 - Tukdam documentary 25:39 - Future direction for the project 27:15 - Skepticism about the project and growing body of evidence 30:45 - Siloed scientific disciples 31:22 - Catholic saints and attained mystics from other traditions 32:16 - Fundraising 33:05 - New learnings about the body and reflections on the Self 34:17 - The death process as a series of dissolutions 37:22 - Tracking heat, oxygenation, fluid movement, and visual imagery 44:27 - Buddhist vs Cartesian notions of consciousness 46:56 - Different tukdam methods across lineages 49:18 - Evan Thompson's theories of consciousness 51:24 - We can die in different ways 54:56 - Methodologically rich ways to attain wisdom 57:41 - The soteriological essence of Buddhism 01:01:35 - Human transformation and experiences of the edge 01:04:02 - Exaltation 01:05:03 - How do tantric techniques lead to tukdam? 01:09:04 - Tummo & vajra recitation to control subtle energies 01:10:41 - Dream, orgasm, and death 01:13:26 - Tukdam is counter-rational and challenges scientific reductionism 01:17:28 - The personal impact of witnessing tukdam 01:19:38 - Tantra is radical 01:20:38 - Julian quotes the Hevajra Tantra 01:22:40 - Can tukdam candidates be studied before death? 01:25:40 - Aggregate or sudden? 01:27:25 - Understanding osel, nondual awareness, and NDE 01:30:08 - Clear light sleep 01:33:04 - Challenging reductionistic paradigms 01:35:11 - The importance of nondual awareness 01:37:53 - Sentience and yeshe 01:41:44 - Exalted form in co-creation with consciousness 01:43:31 - Steve comments on scientific reductionist materialism 01:44:19 - What measurements has the project recorded? 01:47:04 - Julian's closing remarks 01:47:31 - Tawni's closing remarks 01:48:57 - Michael's closing remarks Previous panel discussion: - https://www.guruviking.com/podcast/ep305-neuroscience-of-dream-yoga-dr-michael-sheehy-dr-tawni-tidwell-dr-julian-schott For more interviews, videos, and more visit: - https://www.guruviking.com Music ‘Deva Dasi' by Steve James

The word “Cartesian” is synonymous with a radical contrast between mind and body. What led Descartes to his dualism, and how can he explain vital activities in humans and animals having rejected the Aristotelian theory of soul?

Is AI a miracle, heralding an age of invention, or the harbinger of a dystopian civilizational collapse? The rise of short-form video on social platforms - empowering creators, or undermining society? The only certainty these days is uncertainty. But for curious minds, that's precisely what makes it exciting. In this episode of The Trending Communicator, host Dan Nestle catches up with Emanuel Rose, CEO of Strategic eMarketing and author of Authentic Marketing in the Age of AI, Authenticity: Marketing to Generation Z,  The Social Media Edge, numerous e-books, and children's books.  As a storyteller, marketer, and dubbed by Dan as a Renaissance man, Emanuel brings a unique perspective to the discussion on AI, generational differences in technology adoption, and the future of communication. The conversation touches on the challenges and opportunities presented by AI in marketing and communications, with Emanuel sharing insights on how businesses can start integrating AI into their operations. They discuss the importance of maintaining human creativity in storytelling while leveraging AI tools, and the potential for AI to free up time for more meaningful pursuits. Listen in and hear about... Embracing chaos in an era of rapid technological change Generational differences in AI adoption and digital habits Leveraging AI for content repurposing and brand storytelling Automating mundane tasks to focus on creative pursuits Balancing screen time and digital detox for mental well-being Adapting communication strategies for Gen Z audiences Exploring the future of voice-activated AI assistants   Notable Quotes On Staying Curious: "I just, I follow the rabbit holes and that's kind of what I think is the joy of being a human. And we have access to so much information now, we can learn anything we want. And the secret is to stay curious." - Emanuel Rose [3:41 - 4:05] On Human Consciousness and Technology: "Our job is not to click buttons any more than it is to swing a hoe. Right. So we have to get out of our Cartesian framework." - Emanuel Rose [9:42 - 9:50] On Generational Differences in Technology Adoption: "The Z's just. They just absorb this stuff and, you know, and then, you know, they were all. All the way down to the alphas. Now they're. You know, they're like 8, 9, 10, that range. And so it's like they're going to absorb it in the same kind of way." - Emanuel Rose [17:23 - 17:35] On the Role of Humans in AI-Generated Content: "I think the human in the loop is the critical part of this. And it's kind of like, could I have my doppelganger, my video doppelganger, do all my zoom calls for me? Well, yeah, I can. I can do that now." - Emanuel Rose [40:25 - 40:35]   Resources and Links Dan Nestle Inquisitive Communications | Website The Trending Communicator | Website Communications Trends from Trending Communicators | Dan Nestle's Substack Dan Nestle | LinkedIn Dan Nestle | Twitter/X Emanuel Rose Emanuel Rose | Website Strategic eMarketing | Website Books by Emanuel Rose | Website Emanuel Rose | LinkedIn Timestamps for your convenience (as generated by Flowsend.ai) 0:00 Intro: Embracing chaos and technological change 5:10 Rise of AI agents and retail-level automation 9:42 Philosophical approach to AI and human purpose 15:51 Generational differences in technology adoption 20:18 Managing screen time and digital detox 25:07 Lack of AI adoption in small businesses 30:39 The future of voice-activated AI assistants 35:42 Importance of effective AI prompting skills 40:25 Balancing AI capabilities with human values 45:18 Leveraging existing content with custom GPTs 49:59 Automating tasks to focus on creativity   (Notes co-created by Human Dan and a variety of AI helpers, including Fireflies.ai and Flowsend.ai)

Is AI a miracle, heralding an age of invention, or the harbinger of a dystopian civilizational collapse? The rise of short-form video on social platforms - empowering creators, or undermining society? The only certainty these days is uncertainty. But for curious minds, that's precisely what makes it exciting. In this episode of The Trending Communicator, host Dan Nestle catches up with Emanuel Rose, CEO of Strategic eMarketing and author of Authentic Marketing in the Age of AI, Authenticity: Marketing to Generation Z,  The Social Media Edge, numerous e-books, and children's books.  As a storyteller, marketer, and dubbed by Dan as a Renaissance man, Emanuel brings a unique perspective to the discussion on AI, generational differences in technology adoption, and the future of communication. The conversation touches on the challenges and opportunities presented by AI in marketing and communications, with Emanuel sharing insights on how businesses can start integrating AI into their operations. They discuss the importance of maintaining human creativity in storytelling while leveraging AI tools, and the potential for AI to free up time for more meaningful pursuits. Emanuel and Dan also examine the generational divide in AI adoption, particularly focusing on Gen X and Gen Z, and how different age groups approach new technologies. They consider the impact of screen time on younger generations and the potential long-term effects on communication skills and social interaction. Throughout the episode, Emanuel emphasizes the need for businesses to embrace change and automate processes to remain competitive. He shares practical advice on tools for automation and discusses the concept of "retail-level" AI agents that could revolutionize how we work. This episode offers valuable insights for communicators, marketers, and business leaders looking to navigate the rapidly changing technological landscape. Whether you're an AI enthusiast or skeptic, you'll find food for thought in this engaging discussion about the future of work, creativity, and human interaction in an AI-driven world.   Listen in and hear about... Embracing chaos in an era of rapid technological change Generational differences in AI adoption and digital habits Leveraging AI for content repurposing and brand storytelling Automating mundane tasks to focus on creative pursuits Balancing screen time and digital detox for mental well-being Adapting communication strategies for Gen Z audiences Exploring the future of voice-activated AI assistants   Notable Quotes On Staying Curious: "I just, I follow the rabbit holes and that's kind of what I think is the joy of being a human. And we have access to so much information now, we can learn anything we want. And the secret is to stay curious." - Emanuel Rose [3:41 - 4:05] On AI and Automation: "We're actually able to build, very simply build automations, which maybe not is really AI, but at least we're able to connect things via ZAP and via MAKE and some of these kind of activities." - Emanuel Rose [5:10 - 5:22] On Human Consciousness and Technology: "Our job is not to click buttons any more than it is to swing a hoe. Right. So we have to get out of our Cartesian framework." - Emanuel Rose [9:42 - 9:50] On Generational Differences in Technology Adoption: "The Z's just. They just absorb this stuff and, you know, and then, you know, they were all. All the way down to the alphas. Now they're. You know, they're like 8, 9, 10, that range. And so it's like they're going to absorb it in the same kind of way." - Emanuel Rose [17:23 - 17:35] On the Future of Voice Interaction: "We're very close. I'd say three months. We will have a complete voice activated operating system and be able to do probably 90% of our work by voice." - Emanuel Rose [33:15 - 33:23] On the Role of Humans in AI-Generated Content: "I think the human in the loop is the critical part of this. And it's kind of like, could I have my doppelganger, my video doppelganger, do all my zoom calls for me? Well, yeah, I can. I can do that now." - Emanuel Rose [40:25 - 40:35] On Automation and Work-Life Balance: "Well, I really am thinking about what I can automate. No matter how big of a string of activities, I want to automate all the stuff that is not creative so that I can spend more time playing my guitar and more time meditating and more time taking long walks and maintain the level of professional standards that I have." - Emanuel Rose [49:59 - 50:17] On the Chaos of Technological Change: "I'm enjoying the chaos of the moment. Now hang on. Easy does it. I'm not talking about foreign or domestic affairs or politics. I mean, we live in an age where we simply don't know what's coming. Great for curious people." - Dan Nestle [0:00 - 0:13] On the Potential of AI in Storytelling: "I think it comes down to storytelling, you know, and no, I mean, AI could tell a story. You give it a framework, right? Say, hey, I want you to follow this framework. But is there that innate capability There isn't yet to outpace humans or outdo humans in this idea of storytelling, whether it's creative storytelling or brand storytelling." - Dan Nestle [38:02 - 38:22]   Resources and Links Dan Nestle Inquisitive Communications | Website The Trending Communicator | Website Communications Trends from Trending Communicators | Dan Nestle's Substack Dan Nestle | LinkedIn Dan Nestle | Twitter/X Emanuel Rose Emanuel Rose | Website Strategic eMarketing | Website Books by Emanuel Rose | Website Emanuel Rose | LinkedIn   Timestamped key moments from this episode (as generated by Fireflies.ai)

As we are drawn more deeply into the spiritual warfare of the Desert fathers and learn from their stories of how the demons will provoke a soul and lure it into sin, we begin to see how important it is to put on the mind of Christ; that is, to embrace fully the mindset of the person of faith and the life that we are meant to embody. One of the beautiful aspects of the Evergetinos is that it does not simply present us with teachings but also with the concrete struggle of the fathers and the nature and subtlely of demonic provocation.  We begin to understand that there is no room for pride in the spiritual life. In particular with the passion of fornication, it is the coward who is the victor; that is, he who flees. Our strength is found only in the Lord and clinging to him. We must have no illusion about the strength of our virtue, no matter how long we have engaged in the spiritual life or how virtuous we may seem to be. “Pride rideth before the fall”.  We also see in these stories how the demons sing out to the soul in order to present the temptation as the most attractive and beautiful of things. They can draw even the most seasoned of ascetics into a kind of crazed frenzy or mania. Therefore, we are taught that we must turn immediately to the Lord, raising our hands to the heavens and falling on our knees, begging for his protection.  The demons will show no mercy. In fact, their goal is not simply to draw an individual into sin, but also to draw them into despair where repentance is stymied. After a fall, they become the soul's accuser and will even use scripture to mock her in such a way as to drive her into greater darkness. Their desire is to make us lose confidence in the mercy and compassion of God. --- Text of chat during the group: 00:05:21 Bob Cihak: P. 212 # 8 00:13:45 Bob Cihak: P. 212 # 8 00:20:40 Wayne: What page? 00:20:53 Nypaver Clan: 213 00:21:00 Nypaver Clan: top 00:21:05 Wayne: thanks 00:28:27 Fr Marty, AZ 480-292-3381: It's interesting to consider that we can till the soil for this temptation by giving into other passions. Just reminds me to be vigilant, especially in how I consider others. And in fleeing too. Valuable insight to help me realize that I'm not as blindsided as I thought but I'd been opening doors to weaken me in temptation. 00:32:14 Anthony: Sometimes it takes getting sick and tired of the situation to develop a contempt for it. 00:35:04 Fr Marty, AZ 480-292-3381: Did you say the mindset is called phronema? 00:35:48 Kate : The mindset you describe is like nothing I have ever heard or experienced being a Latin Rite Catholic. 00:39:49 Anthony: The West co.es by it honestly...having to know by size, weight a day number, which medieval texts extrapolate I think from Sirach.  I prefer St Ephrem's poem on the Hidden Pearl taken as a unity. 00:40:12 Anthony: Comes 00:42:19 Nina and Sparky: Phil 2:2 πληρώσατέ μου τὴν χαρὰν ἵνα τὸ αὐτὸ φρονῆτε     "fill up my cup of happiness by thinking with the same mind"  See the last greek word phronete. In modern writing, I have heard the phrase "according to the mind of the church" 00:42:25 Myles Davidson: The word “re-enchantment” is being used more amongst some Catholic circles. The need to return to a more poetic pre-Cartesian worldview 00:44:00 Anthony: Reacted to The word “re-enchant... with "

We recorded this about a year ago, for the 25th anniversary of the release of THE MATRIX. But since Elon Musk now controls the country, we're republishing an edited-down version because it's important to know how Musk thinks. Next episode, we'll be talking about a number of the other beliefs that shape Musk's worldview, among them Roko's Basilisk, so this episode is good preparation for that conversation. ************************************************************************************ In 2003, Oxford University philosophy professor Nick Bostrom published a paper titled Are You Living in a Computer Simulation, thus giving rise to the modern incarnation of Simulation Theory, which posits that our experienced reality is actually the product of an advanced (possibly future-self) civilization running a simulation experiment. But the paper on might have been written off as a useful thought experiment had it not been for the popularity of the 1999 film The Matrix, which celebrates its 25th anniversary this month, and its two sequels, which came out the same year as Bostrom's paper. In the years since, Simulation Theory has become a lot of things to a lot of people - from a fun metaphor to explain Cartesian philosophy to college freshmen to an all-out article of faith for an increasingly doctrinaire sub-culture of futurists. How useful (or even likely) is Simulation Theory? In honor of The Matrix's birthday, John and Kelly decided to take up that question. Sources https://simulation-argument.com/simulation.pdf https://builtin.com/hardware/simulation-theory https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/do-we-live-in-a-simulation-chances-are-about-50-50/ https://www.wired.com/story/living-in-a-simulation/ https://www.theatlantic.com/science/archive/2016/04/the-illusion-of-reality/479559/

In this 239th in a series of live discussions with Bret Weinstein and Heather Heying (both PhDs in Biology), we talk about the state of the world through an evolutionary lens.In this week's episode, we discuss AI, specifically how Grok responded to the prompt “image of Cartesian crisis,” whether AI is conscious, and whether it makes art. What is art, and are humans required to make it, or do search and memory suffice? Not art: the rendering of the national anthem at the Democratic National Convention. Speaking of which: what demographic is most strongly democratic? Answer: Childless, never married women ages 20 – 45. We discuss how this affects policy and society. And: the quasi-announcement that Kennedy may leave the presidential race. Finally—Zack is going off on new adventures.*****Our sponsors:Caraway: Non-toxic, beautiful, light ceramic cookware. Go to Carawayhome.com/DarkHorse for 10% off your order.ARMRA: Colostrum is our first food, and can help restore your health and resilience as an adult. Go to www.tryarmra.com/DARKHORSE to get 15% off your first order.Seed: Start a new healthy habit today with Seed probiotics. Use code 25DarkHorse at https://seed.com/darkhorse to get 25% off your first month of Seed's DS-01® Daily Synbiotic.*****Join us on Locals! Get access to our Discord server, exclusive live streams, live chats for all streams, and early access to many podcasts: https://darkhorse.locals.com/Heather's newsletter, Natural Selections (subscribe to get free weekly essays in your inbox): https://naturalselections.substack.comOur book, A Hunter-Gatherer's Guide to the 21st Century, is available everywhere books are sold, including from Amazon: https://a.co/d/dunx3atCheck out our store! Epic tabby, digital book burning, saddle up the dire wolves, and more: https://darkhorsestore.org*****Mentioned in this episode:The national anthem by the women's caucus at DNC: https://x.com/libsoftiktok/status/1825937644951650319Maternal Love and the Mama Bear: https://naturalselections.substack.com/p/maternal-love-and-the-mama-bearBrides of the State, by David Samuels in UnHerd: https://unherd.com/2024/08/the-march-of-kamalas-brides/Rescue the Republic – September 29 on the National Mall: https://jointheresistance.orgSupport the Show.

In this 230th in a series of live discussions with Bret Weinstein and Heather Heying (both PhDs in Biology), we talk about the state of the world through an evolutionary lens.In this week's episode, we discuss air quality in Los Angeles, and how California led the way in making catalytic converters standard in cars across the United States. Now, that regulatory apparatus is being used for less honorable ends, as legislators consider mandating the inclusion of folic acid in all tortilla products. We discuss pre- vs post-industrial diet, what mother's milk is for, whether adult Americans are sleeping well, and how reductionism helped get us into this mess. Collectively, we have a complicated mindset, mapped on to a complex system. Then: the Pentagon funded an anti-vax campaign in the Philippines during Covid. At the same time that Americans who were hesitant about the Covid vax were demonized and targeted, the government was creating vaccine hesitancy in other parts of the world. The Cartesian crisis continues.*****Our sponsors:Sundays: Dog food so tasty and healthy, even husbands swear by it. Go to www.sundaysfordogs.com/DARKHORSE to receive 35% off your first order.MDHearing: Small, effective hearing aids just $149.99 each when you buy a pair, plus free charging case. At www.ShopMDHearingAid.com, use code DH.American Hartford Gold: Get up to $5,000 of free silver on your first qualifying order. Call 866-828-1117 or text “DARKHORSE” to 998899.*****Join us on Locals! Get access to our Discord server, exclusive live streams, live chats for all streams, and early access to many podcasts: https://darkhorse.locals.com/Heather's newsletter, Natural Selections (subscribe to get free weekly essays in your inbox): https://naturalselections.substack.comOur book, A Hunter-Gatherer's Guide to the 21st Century, is available everywhere books are sold, including from Amazon: https://a.co/d/dunx3atCheck out our store! Epic tabby, digital book burning, saddle up the dire wolves, and more: https://darkhorsestore.org*****Mentioned in this episode:LA Times: California wants to mandate folic acid in tortillas to help babies. Why that's bad: https://www.latimes.com/california/story/2024-05-22/tortillas-folic-acid-corn-masa-californiaReuters Investigation: Pentagon ran secret anti-vax campaign to undermine China during pandemic: https://www.reuters.com/investigates/special-report/usa-covid-propaganda/Robinson et al 2022. Factors contributing to vaccine hesitancy and reduced vaccine confidence in rural underserved populations. Humanities and Social Sciences Communications, 9(1): 1-8. https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC9702767/General Dynamics IT: https://www.gdit.comSupport the Show.