Terence McKenna - Tryptamines, Hallucinogens & Conciousness

Another early Terence McKenna from 1982 that I haven't heard before. New material is always a treat for me so if anybody has any please send them and I'll be happy to upload to Youtube and share with a wider world. Terence memorably says in this recording that the search for aliens through radio telescopes such as SETI is as culturally bound as looking for a good Italian restaurant elsewhere in the galaxy. 

He was ahead of this time but then he did have a hotline to the Logos so we'll share the praise on that one with the mushroom. Once again this early work is with smaller groups of listeners when being recorded and is somewhat more cerebral if that is possible.

My Pointy Head

    

There's a bunch of stuff I'm in need of doing on this blog. The feed is borked and I don't know exactly how to fix it yet but I will. The other thing is I really want to do more podcasts. I will probably wait till Blogger deliver on their SXSW pledge to refresh everything before I do that so that I don't have to do it twice. In the mean time hang in their and look at my pretty face while I talk some nonsense in my first podcast above  ;)

Precession, Obliquity, Eccentricy & Milankovitch Cycles

The entire playlist is here if the above doesn't roll over. It's a podcast if your eyeballs are needed elsewhere.

Rak Razam interviews Dan Schreiber

I'd not heard of either of these gentlemen till yesterday but the podcast interview was for me (three times now) a delight to listen to as it's chock full of modestly articulated but  fabulously mystical dialogue. 

Gentle, considerate, unhurried. 

The kind of interview you simply never heard before the internet came along. A credit to both of them and for me the extra bonus of a couple of very nice ideas that articulated answers to questions I have about consciousness and emergence. I now aim to make the Gold Coast in Australia my first port of call. That's Melbourne and Sydney that just slipped to second and third place on a podcast.

Christian Poveda

I'm a heavy consumer of podcasts and this radio obituary for the award winning photographer Christian Poveda is a definitive reason why BBC World Service is in a class of its own.

China Internet - Podcast

The BBC World Service has been blocked on and off here in China of late, and I miss it a lot. Anyway, as ever with these things (and a bit of displacement theory) its got me sniffing around NPR which is terrific, and doing lots of interesting content that I hadn't checked out for a while. Here's one of theirs on the internet in China.

We make art not money

Once in a while a gem of a podcast comes my way, and this is fresh off the feeds from IT Conversations. It would be wrong to pigeonhole this from its title "Artistic Entrepreneurship & Technology", a University course that the interviewee Dr. Elliott McGucken, a physicist teaches. It doesn't even come close to covering the ground that is completed in this heartwarming and contemporary podcast.

If you love the story form, from The Matrix, Star Wars, The Godfather, Lord of the Rings to classics like The Odyssey or want to tap into your artistic value, however that articulates itself, listen to this. Should you feel that there is more depth to this life than just making money and instead want to see why it is so much more important than the futility of the greedy then take time out for this podcast. Personally I need to get hold of a copy of John Bogle's: Battle For The Soul Of Capitalism after listening to this ace find.

Update: Lauren reminds me that the first two or three minutes are not the best of starts. Hang in there :)

Kurt Vonnegut

'Join a gang, any gang', Kurt implores us in this one of his last interviews. I like the way he describes how the gang/group/herd is important to our well being and how the industrialised society with its scientific method spawned (my words) the atomised lifestyle and the nuclear family. He also talks about who cares if Jesus was the son of God, because what he said was beautiful and that's what matters. I've never read any of his books but hope I get a chance some time to check out his work. Somewhere that the the phone is off and Wi-Fi is out of range.

Socialist Media

Tony Benn, Durham 2004, originally uploaded by barney britton.

I only really discovered Tony Benn when I found all my understanding of power and production was completely discredited. I never expected losing my politics to ever bother me but in many ways, it cost me more both financially and emotionally than losing my religion ever could have. Tony Benn was my succour during the tail end of this period.

So, earlier today I took a look at some stats for socialist media in the United States and I was surprised to see that imeem, a small media-sharing social-networking site that I stumbled across last week to use for posting the Danwei podcast was beginning to take root. They're at number four in the table below, and means I can now share a brilliant Tony Benn Podcast, plug a new socialist media and lay the groundwork for my Marxist media post which is designed to irritate the living hell out of people who drive gas guzzling Jags like the wonderfully erudite Rory Sutherland who writes beautifully on his blog.

Update: The embedded audio no longers exists. - cfx2020

Podcast on Search Engine Marketing

wiccked

I'm currently going through a quite intense podcast (netcast) addiction. This means I get to listen to a lot of pabulum, and occasionally uncover pearls that I can now share, like this excellent podcast on search engine marketing. It is lucid, digestible and most importantly the equivalent of reading a small book on the subject in say the duration of the average Northern line commute. I'm probably fibbing there but the point is, if you're not yet comfortable with outlining the right blend of organic versus paid search for an optimal strategy in a digital communications meeting, or even how to benchmark it, then this is the podcast for you.

I originally came across it on the awesome IT Conversations which has easily another 40 or so shows that I've yet to consume to bring myself up to date. This show interviews Mike Moran who clearly knows his beans on digital search but also manages to explain in a way that someone with an interest should be able to access quite quickly. There's also a brilliant one I listened to today on doing business in China which probably wont interest many around here but I can't restrain myself from spreading the excellence that is abundant on the web. Also I haven't figured out how to put a media player in a post. I'm a bit mad on widgets at the moment so expect a few glitches till I've figured things out. Including formatting and links it's still a bit wobbly here on that stuff. I guess you've noticed.