C-Realm Podcast

KMO welcomes Dr. Salo Stanley to the program to discuss the global transformation of consciousness in progress as it manifests in the form of psychic awakenings, spirit guides, UFOs, and crop circles. Dr. Stanley relates some simple techniques that anyone can use to induce a calm and receptive state of mind that is conducive to contact with helpful intelligences from the realms beyond the limitations of Monday Morning Reality. Music by Zarathrustra

KMO welcomes Bruce Damer back to the program to talk about the incredibly improbable development of an organic intelligence that creates virtual worlds and how the use of virtual worlds may reveal the mechanisms by which biological evolution got its start. Bruce says he feels like a character in a science fiction novel, and the conversation takes a tour through the realms of science fiction which has foreshadowed the global unraveling of industrial civilization in a world where information technology continues to proliferate and advance at an accelerating pace. Bruce explains why he thinks the mechanism of Moore’s Law is unlikely to spawn emergent machine intelligence. Music by Tim

KMO welcomes Frank Rotering to the podcast to discuss ecological overshoot, the logic and institutions of capitalism, technology, and the expression of human biological drives in the economic realm. Frank Rotering contends that ideas like socialism are “solutions of the past” and that new ways of thinking will be required to adress the historical singularity that we now face. Music by The Story Of

This is a recording of a live radio interview recorded on Tuesday, 27 October 2009. Ed Yersh, the host of the Tuesday Morning After program on CKUT in Montreal interviewed KMO, host and producer of the C-Realm Podcast.

In this Halloween episode of the podcast, KMO welcomes Erik Davis back to the program to discuss pulp horror author H. P. Lovecraft, who has achieved an astonishing level of posthumous legitimacy and is now recognized as a seminal influence on the development of horror fiction and popular culture. In the second half of the discussion, KMO and Erik use the themes explored in Lovecraft’s work as a jumping off point for a more general discussion of the role of the human faculty of imagination. Atmospheric music by Dr. Richard Grossman

KMO plays the second half of AyasminA’s interview with Dr. Stephan V. Beyer, author of Singing to the Plants: A Guide to Mestizo Shamanism in the Upper Amazon. Steve details the importance of the auditory aspect of the Ayahuasca experience, and then the conversation turns to the paternalism and condescension of First World defenders of indigenous peoples. Later in the episode, KMO plays a clip from the It’s Not Us It’s You podcast about the totalitarian aesthetic of Wal*Mart’s new generic product packaging. Music by Zarathustra.

KMO plays the first half of a conversation between AyasminA and Dr. Stephan V. Beyer. Steve is the author of Singing to the Plants: A Guide to Mestizo Shamanism in the Upper Amazon, and in the conversation Steve details his lifelong odyssey into the deep regions of consciousness and spirituality which include fifteen years spent in the upper Amazon with the Mestizo keepers of the Ayahuasca tradition. Music by Joseph A.

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

KMO reads from and responds to editorials from Michael Lynch and Charlotte Allen and then plays the conclusion of his recent conversation with James Howard Kunstler which also touches on those two editorials. Other topics include looking for villains, Y2K, and the outrageously elitist notion that some things are better than other things. Jim reminds us that life is tragic and that history does not care if we make bad choices. Stupidity will continue so long as circumstances allow it, and when circumstances change we will adopt new behaviors.

KMO welcomes James Howard Kunstler back to the program to discuss "green shoots" delusions, the diminishing returns of information technology, "favela chic," and the failure of virtual experience to provide a fulfilling substitute for authentic experience in our electronically mediated lives. Music by Ken Tucker & James Swafford.

Lorenzo Hagerty returns to the C-Realm to discuss the themes of his audio-novel, The Genesis Generation. Is there a global psychedelic Tribe (with a capital T)? To what extent can a far-flung collection of people who share a set of values and experiences be considered a "tribe?" The discussion also touches on the fractal similarity between the American and Roman empires, the writings of Ayn Rand and our tendency to focus on individual actors in our societal drama when we would do better to focus on the inherent features of the systems in which we must make a living. Music by Andre Nobels

In this year's 9/11 extravaganza KMO welcomes Doug Lain, author, editor, and fellow podcaster, to the program to help make sense of some 9/11 themed commentary from James Howard Kunstler, John Horgan, Gwynne Dyer, and (indirectly) Douglas Rushkoff. Doug & KMO then continue the conversation in episode 22 of the Diet Soap Podcast. Lorenzo Hagerty of the Psychedelic Salon adds his perspective on attitudes surrounding 9/11 to the C-Realm mix in a prelude to next week's show.

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

KMO and Michael Anissimov of the Singularity Institute for Artificial Intelligence conclude their conversation on the promise and the dangers of the emergence of AI with an eye to the implications of the military aspects of its development and implementation, and then author Derrick Jensen offers a reality check and a counterbalance to Michael's optimism and exuberance. KMO closes the program with an excerpt from Ascent of Humanity by Charles Eisenstein on the diminishing utility of the technological program. Music by Oaltitudo

KMO welcomes Michael Anissimov, media director for the Singularity Institute for Artificial Intelligence and keeper of the Accelerating Future blog to the C-Realm to dispel some wholly-headed notions about robots, artificial intelligence, and the possible consequences of their emergence from the space of possibilities into the world of our visceral experience. Topics include the uncomfortable similarity of Ray Kurzweil's Law of Accelerating Returns to Terence McKenna's Time Wave Zero, the very contingent nature of human morality, and the need to build "friendliness" into our Mind Children to prevent them from morphing into our Vile Offspring. Music by Yon