C-Realm Podcast

KMO discusses biochar and bioremediation with ETC visitor, Carolyn Hoagland. Albert Bates responds to critics of the use of biochar. Later, Kevin Jones of Social Capital Markets talks about using appropriate technology and markets as tools for improving the human condition. Music by Scott Sullivan.

KMO welcomes Doug Lain of the Diet Soap Podcast back to the C-Realm to discuss creative destruction, the motives of financial elites, and the tradition of working class solidarity in France. The US abandoned the use of gold as money because we needed a money supply that could expact along with a rapidly growing economy. Why then is the money supply still growing now that the economy is contracting? Doug concludes the conversation by discussing how the global financial elites, the people Max Kaiser calls kleptocratic oligarchs, don't even need to believe their own self-serving ideologies when they have the market to believe it for them.

KMO talks with Erik Davis about DMT, Alex Jones, and Philip K. Dick. Music by Southside.

KMO talks with Tony Wright about the degeneration of human cognitive capacity over evolutionary time scales.

Richard Heinberg and Dmitry Orlov compare notes on the economic black hole of debt that threatens to topple the current economic paradigm.

Thomas H Greco, Jr. talks about money, interest, legal tender, and the undemocratic concentrations of power that "political money" makes possible.

KMO welcomes researcher Carleton Schade to the C-Realm Podcast to discuss UN population projections for the 21st Century and whether those claims take things like resource depletion and degradation of agricultural land into account. Carleton explains why we are unlikly to find our salvation in the form of a demographic trend toward smaller families with fewer babies but rising consumption, a technological life-preserver, or a return to the economics of perpetual growth. That leaves a shift in human consciousness, as envisioned and described by Jeremy Rifkin, as the only remaining candidate visible on the scene. Music by Critter Jones

KMO welcomes psychotherapist, Neal M. Goldsmith, to the C-Realm to talk about the themes of his new book, Psychedelic Healing: The Promise of Entheogens for Psychotherapy and Spiritual Development. The quantitative, cut-and-control mentality gives humans great power to manipulate the natural world. Neal does not suggest for an instant that we abandon this very useful mental mode, but he does think that pyschedelics and indigenous peoples can offer us an expanded psychological repertoire that does not require that we renounce the control that the scientific paradigm affords us. Music by Hobotech. Links for further exploration of the topics discussed in this episode: The Future of the Body by Michael Murphy. Ken Wilber and Integral Theory Sam Harris on atheistic spirituality. Thomas Szasz on All in the Mind. Horizons NYC Conference. MAPS website and KMO's  conversation with Rick Doblin C-Realm interview with Jacob Sullum on psychedelics and religious freedom.

KMO talks with John Michael Greer about economics

Surviving collapse and the zombie apocalypse, finding work trade arrangements on the road, and self-promotion in an age when everything is in flux and trivial garbage can garner an audience of millions overnight.

Is there any such thing as a perfect human society even in theory? Are there any objective measures by which to compare actual societies and judge some as superior to others? KMO talks with Prof. Bob Rosenthal about the idea of Utopia. The conversation ranges from Plato's Republic and Sir Thomas More's vision of the perfect society to actual, functioning subcultures like the Anabaptists and intentional communities like the Farm. Music by Sarah Jarosz.

KMO welcomes Paratopia co-host, Jeff Ritzman, to the C-Realm to discuss perspectives on the UFO phenomenon that are more subtle than the literal nuts-and-bolts extraterrestrial hypothesis (ETH). Many people have invested their identities in the ETH and reject efforts by the likes of Terence McKenna and Jacques Valee to frame it as anything other than astronauts from other star systems. Music by David Leakey.

KMO welcomes author and blogger, Dave Pollard to the program to talk about transition. Dave thinks that industrial civilization is facing likely collapse, but he remains optimistic about the prospect of making a graceful transition to something more sustainable and humane. KMO plays Doomer's advocate. Early in the program, Tara Holste describes the heavy-handed tactics that the FDA employed against a group of families that have forged an alliance with a Pennsylvania farmer to provide fresh milk and dairy products to people who prefer them to the pasteurized, homogenized products of the commodity food industry. Music by Dave Leaky courtesy of Conscious Sounds

http://c-realmpodcast.podomatic.com/entry/2011-05-04T12_07_15-07_00 KMO welcomes 1491 author Charles Mann to the program to talk about the economic, political, sociological, and perhaps most important, biological homogenization that began when Admiral Cristóbal Colón established the first European outpost in what is now the Dominican Republic. This so-called Columbian Exchange initiated a bonanza in global trade which lead to the first global economic crisis. Is that cat out of the bag, or is there still something to be gained by trying to put the breaks on this global free-for-all? Music by Woodland5. Book Links: http://www.orionmagazine.org/index.php/articles/article/6250 http://www.powells.com/biblio/62-9780307265722-0 http://astore.amazon.com/crealm/detail/0307265722 Other podcasts with KMO: ETC Voices Podcast: http://etcjournal.blogspot.com/ Z-Realm Podcast: http://zrealmpodcast.blogspot.com/2011/04/world-war-z-part-1-warnings.html  

KMO concludes his talk with Fat Head filmmaker, Tom Naughton, who answers the question, "What makes people fat?" In the second half of the program, naturopath, Scott Cousland fills in some of the details about why animal fat gets a bad rap and grains get an undeserved pass. The Lipid Hypothesis had languished for a hundred years before the US Federal Government took it up in the wake of the Green Revolution. What a coincidence that the FDA championed a grain-based diet as the key to health just when a technological revolution in farming created an unprecedented surplus of grains. Music by Amy Thiessen. Interview on The Learning Channel from Scott Cousland on Vimeo.