'John Anthony West (born July 9, 1932 in New York City) is an American author, lecturer, guide and a proponent of Sphinx water erosion hypothesis in geology. John Anthony West is today the leading authority and proponent of the 'Symbolist' school of Egyptology, an alternative interpretation of ancient Egyptian culture advanced by the French scholar and philosopher, R. A. Schwaller de Lubicz. In the Symbolist view, Egyptian architecture and art disclose a richer and more universal wisdom than conventional Egyptology has assumed.
'Filmed in New York, December 2016, a month before John was diagnosed with cancer. Please show your support for this great man and for his work by making a donation to his crowdfunding campaign.' (The John Anthony West Project website).
'Punk icon and lead singer for the ground-breaking Black Flag and Rollins Band, Henry Rollins is also a journalist, author, publisher, actor, and globe-trotter. This multi-disciplinary performer calls on his extensive experience and talents as a spoken word artist to deliver a sometimes biting critique of some of the most controversial aspects of American culture. A skilled wordsmith, Rollins pulls no punches in his efforts to raise public awareness to the issues that concern him. An outspoken straight talker, he promises to deliver a hard-hitting and enthralling talk.'
Douglas Rushkoff is an American media theorist, writer, columnist, lecturer and philosopher.
He has authored works such as Present Shock, Throwing Rocks At The Google Bus and his latest, Aleister And Adolf, a graphic novel exploring the occult warfare that existed between Hitler's Nazi Germany and Aleister Crowley's esoteric Britain during the Second World War.
Also joining in on the discussion is Michael Garfield - a multidisciplinary visionary artist and musician. (Third Eye Drops podcast).
Panel discussion that brings together two well informed, open-minded perspectives in the ongoing search for answers to the nature of Consciousness, mulling over the evidence supporting a fairly new perspective in science: the notion that this thing we call "Reality" may in fact be a digital simulation. Leading the discussion is physicist Tom Campbell and engineer Jim Elvidge.
'Jim Elvidge is an expert in complex computational systems, holds a Masters Degree in Electrical Engineering from Cornell University, a patent holder, and author of The Universe - Solved! With over 20 years of research in cosmology, quantum mechanics, philosophy, artificial intelligence, nanotechnology and the paranormal under his belt, Jim has kept pace with the latest theories and discoveries on the cutting edge of scientific understanding. It’s from this breadth of knowledge which he draws in order to present a theory of reality so perfect, so powerful that it explains all known scientific and cultural anomalies - presenting a body of strong evidence which he believes shows that consciousness is the source of Reality itself, rather than simply an artifact of brain function - and that the evidence points toward an apparent "programmed nature of reality" which is based on a self-evolving system.
'There is a significant overlap between the concepts presented in Jim’s writing and ideas, with those of our second panellist - nuclear physicist, author and pioneering consciousness researcher/expert, Thomas Campbell. Tom has been a serious explorer of the frontiers of reality, mind, consciousness, and psychic phenomena since the early 1970s, when he began researching altered states of consciousness with Bob Monroe, and was instrumental in getting the revered Monroe Laboratory up and running. Tom’s book, My Big TOE, represents the results and conclusions of thirty years of careful scientific exploration of the boundaries and contents of reality from both the physical and metaphysical viewpoints, and expresses a model of existence and reality that is based directly on Campbell’s scientific research and first hand experience. His "Theory of Everything" is truly a theory of everything, unifying under one seamless scientific understanding: Science and philosophy, physics and metaphysics, mind and matter, purpose and meaning, the normal and the paranormal, and even objective and subjective realities.'
With the occasional hilarious story of his time working on the Redstone, Atlas and Apollo programs, this is a highly informative and entertaining interview with rocket engineer George Knudsen.
'George Knudsen started working in 1958 on the Redstone missile and moved on to working on the Atlas ICBM. Later he worked on the Saturn 5 launch vehicle, where he was responsible for the fuel tanks. He was on the launch team at Cape Canaveral for various Apollo missions. In this episode George talks about his work in this fascinating period of science and engineering history.' (Omega Tau podcast).
'Media theorist and documentarian Douglas Rushkoff weaves a mind-bending tale of iconography and mysticism against the backdrop of a battle-torn Europe.
'In a story spanning generations and featuring some of the most notable and notorious idealists of the 20th century, legendary occultist Aleister Crowley develops a powerful and dangerous new weapon to defend the world against Adolf Hitler's own war machine spawning an unconventional new form of warfare that is fought not with steel, but with symbols and ideas.
Unfortunately, these intangible arsenals are much more insidious and perhaps much more dangerous than their creators could have ever conceived.'
'The sea ice in the Arctic and Antarctic regions of the earth is an especially sensitive indicator of the earth’s climate, and in particular, the current overall atmospheric temperature of the planet. It was recently reported to have reached a new low. Our guest, NASA’s Walt Meier explains why this is the case and which processes govern the increase or decrease of the ice. We then discuss how the ice mass is measured based on satellite and how its thickness is estimated based mostly on in-situ measurements. We cover climate modelling and its connection to sea ice and conclude with an outlook on future research.' (Omega Tau podcast).
'As we go about our daily lives, we tend to assume that our perceptions - sights, sounds, textures, tastes - are an accurate portrayal of the real world. Sure, when we stop and think about it - or when we find ourselves fooled by a perceptual illusion - we realize with a jolt that what we perceive is never the world directly, but rather our brain’s best guess at what that world is like, a kind of internal simulation of an external reality. Still, we bank on the fact that our simulation is a reasonably decent one. If it wasn’t, wouldn’t evolution have weeded us out by now? The true reality might be forever beyond our reach, but surely our senses give us at least an inkling of what it’s really like.
'Not so, says Donald D. Hoffman, a professor of cognitive science at the University of California, Irvine. Hoffman has spent the past three decades studying perception, artificial intelligence, evolutionary game theory and the brain, and his conclusion is a dramatic one: The world presented to us by our perceptions is nothing like reality. What’s more, he says, we have evolution itself to thank for this magnificent illusion, as it maximizes evolutionary fitness by driving truth to extinction.' (The Atlantic article).
Dennis McKenna is an American ethnopharmacologist, research pharmacognosist, lecturer and author. He is the brother of the late well-known psychedelics proponent Terence McKenna and is a founding board member and the director of ethnopharmacology at the Heffter Research Institute, a non-profit organization concerned with the investigation of the potential therapeutic uses of psychedelic medicines.
He was a key organizer and participant in the Hoasca Project, an international biomedical study of ayahuasca used by indigenous people and syncretic religious groups in Brasil. He recently completed a project, funded by the Stanley Medical Research Institute, to investigate Amazonian ethnomedicines for the treatment of schizophrenia and cognitive deficits. At the Heffter Research Institute, he continues his focus on the therapeutic uses of psychoactive medicines derived from nature and used in indigenous ethnomedical practices.
Sign up for free and watch this fascinating interview in full at London Real Academy. (London Real video stream).
'Christopher S. Hyatt, Ph.D., Adv. M.ED. was trained in experimental and clinical psychology and practiced as a psychotherapist for many years. As Alan Miller, he used the 18 units earned from his military GED towards his first academic career at Los Angeles City College, where he studied accounting for two years. He later changed his graduate to General Psychology, earning Masters Degrees in Experimental Psychology and Medical Education and Counselling. He was a member of a Freudian clinic in Southern California. He spent almost a year studying hypnosis at the Hypnosis Motivation Institute in Los Angeles and also studied hypnosis at the University of California, Irvine. Miller possessed Ph.D.s in both Clinical Psychology and Human Behavior and was a Postdoctoral researcher in Criminal Justice. Some of his techniques blended Reichian physiotherapy and tantric yoga. He also incorporated hypnosis alongside his body work with patients and students. According to his website: "He left academia and state sponsored psychology to become an explorer of the human mind."
'Hyatt claimed on his website that as a research scientist he had published "numerous" peer reviewed articles in professional journals and was a Research Fellow at the University of Toronto and the University of Southern California. However, his website does not provide any references or name any of the journals he claims to have published in, making verification of his academic credentials difficult.
'Christopher Hyatt died of cancer in Scottsdale, Arizona at the age of 64.'
'Abby Martin interviews Chris Hedges on American myths, war and revolt. Hedges explains the "Folly of Empire", the dangers posed by right-wing extremism and the urgent need for a new system.
'Chris Hedges is a former New York Times journalist and winner of the Pulitzer Prize. He is the author of several books including his most recent, Wages Of Rebellion: The Moral Imperative Of Revolt.'
'Smartphone users can do "very little" to stop security services getting "total control" over their devices, US whistleblower Edward Snowden has said.
'The former intelligence contractor told the BBC's Panorama that UK intelligence agency GCHQ had the power to hack into phones without their owners' knowledge.
'Mr. Snowden said GCHQ could gain access to a handset by sending it an encrypted text message and use it for such things as taking pictures and listening in. The UK government declined to comment.
'Mr. Snowden spoke to Panorama in Moscow, where he fled in 2013 after leaking to the media details of extensive internet and phone surveillance by his former employer, the US National Security Agency (NSA).
'He did not suggest that either GCHQ or the NSA were interested in mass-monitoring of citizens' private communications but said both agencies had invested heavily in technology allowing them to hack smartphones. "They want to own your phone instead of you," he said.
'Mr. Snowden talked about GCHQ's "Smurf Suite", a collection of secret intercept capabilities individually named after the little blue imps of Belgian cartoon fame.' (BBC iPlayer video stream).
VHS rip of a one hour Infinity Factory interview with Robert Sterling - editor of The Konformist.
'In the twilight world of conspiracy theory, Robert Sterling is one of the few researchers able to temper his moral outrage with the bracing sting of humour' - Disinformation.
Hosted by Richard Metzger, the interview is dated December 14th 1997.
Way ahead of its time, Infinity Factory was a talk show that streamed via Disinfo.com between 1997 and 1999. It was also broadcasted on Manhattan's public-access television cable TV and distributed inline through Pseudo.com.
VHS rip of a one hour Infinity Factory interview with David Pescovitz.
David Pescovitz is co-editor of the popular weblog BoingBoing.net and a research director with the Institute for the Future. He is also editor-at-large for Make and writer-in-residence for UC Berkeley's College of Engineering. Pescovitz co-wrote the book Reality Check, based on his long-running forecasting column in 'Wired Magazine' where he remains a correspondent. He also has contributed to Scientific American, Popular Science, The New York Times, The Washington Post, New Scientist, Business 2.0, and many other publications. In 2002, he won the Foresight Prize in Communication, recognizing excellence in educating the public and research community about nanotechnology and other emerging technologies. Pescovitz holds a Bachelor of Fine Arts in Electronic Media from the University of Cincinnati and a Master's in Journalism from UC Berkeley.
Hosted by Richard Metzger and Douglas Rushkoff, the interview is dated July 9th 1997.
Way ahead of its time, Infinity Factory was a talk show that streamed via Disinfo.com between 1997 and 1999. It was also broadcasted on Manhattan's public-access television cable TV and distributed inline through Pseudo.com.
VHS rip of a one hour Infinity Factory interview with Allen H. Greenfield - author of Secret Cipher Of The UFOnauts and Secret Rituals Of The Men In Black.
Greenfield is both a student and an authority on unusual phenomena. A past elected member of the British Society for Psychical Research, and the National Investigations Committee on Aerial Phenomena, he has twice been the recipient of the prestigious "UFOlogist of the Year Award".
Hosted by Richard Metzger, the interview is dated December 7th 1997.
Way ahead of its time, Infinity Factory was a talk show that streamed via Disinfo.com between 1997 and 1999. It was also broadcasted on Manhattan's public-access television cable TV and distributed inline through Pseudo.com.
VHS rip of a rare 1997 Infinity Factory interview with "wrecker of civilisation" Genesis Breyer P-Orridge (the interview is incomplete as I found this purely by accident at the end of one of the tapes Richard Metzger sent me).
This is a fascinating interview with Gen talking about his expulsion from Britain, his introduction to Brion Gysin and how this changed his perception of William S. Burroughs.
Way ahead of its time, Infinity Factory was a talk show that streamed via Disinfo.com between 1997 and 1999. It was also broadcasted on Manhattan's public-access television cable TV and distributed inline through Pseudo.com.
VHS rip of a two hour Infinity Factory interview with legendary author and guerrilla ontologist Robert Anton Wilson.
Dated November 7th 1997, the interview was conducted by Richard Metzger with special guest, wrecker of civilisation, Genesis P-Orridge.
Way ahead of its time, Infinity Factory was a talk show that streamed via Disinfo.com between 1997 and 1999. It was also broadcasted on Manhattan's public-access television cable TV and distributed inline through Pseudo.com.
Of course the world should not need such a book, but it does. Sam Harris interviews the book's author Peter Boghossian to get the low-down on his approach to dealing with people who are superstitious. If you have any misguided God-squad friends, perhaps this is one for their Xmas stocking?
'Peter Boghossian is a full-time faculty member in the philosophy department at Portland State University. He is also a national speaker for the Center for Inquiry, the Secular Student Alliance, and the Richard Dawkins Foundation for Reason and Science. Peter was kind enough to answer a few questions about his new book, A Manual for Creating Atheists'. (Sam Harris interview).
'David Frost travels to Los Angeles to meet the astronaut who became the second person to walk on the moon. With the death of Neil Armstrong, Buzz Aldrin is the only man alive who can tell us at first-hand about that first moon landing. His story and his reflections, as a man who has helped to change the world we live in, are fascinating and unique.'
How exactly is it that SpaceX can do everything so cheaply? Well, it would seem from this recent interview with Elon Musk that there are a couple of reasons in particular. The first being that there’s a tendency for big aerospace companies to outsource everything to subcontractors who then, bizarrely, outsource work to other subcontractors who subsequently - in what seems to be little more than an utter bureaucratic shambles by this point - outsource to other subcontractors and so on and so forth... ad nauseum. As one commenter aptly points out at the foot of this Wired article: "One reason for all that expensively administered subcontracting is that it pleases exactly those committees [who control NASA's funding]. The large projects they favor can subcontract in many different districts, whose congressmen then have a good reason to vote for NASA's budget. This means the committee members need not trade away any more of their political capital to get the projects that support contractors in their districts."
In short, SpaceX don't engage in this subcontracting farce but do it all themselves from the bottom up.
The other reason SpaceX can manufacture rockets so cheaply is to use an advanced welding technology called "stir welding" which can create as strong a structure as is currently manufactured using more conventional construction methods - but without the material wastage of machining thick aluminium plate. How can Elon tell us about this without generating competition from rival companies?
"The reason I can talk about it is that nobody else knows how to build a rocket this way," he laughs.
I have high hopes for Elon Musk and Space X despite some of his seemingly more outlandish pipe dreams like making a privately funded human trip to Mars possible. Is Elon Musk's head in the clouds? Hopefully, because that's the only sensible place to have it when talking about making humanity a multiplanetary species.
'When a man tells you about the time he planned to put a vegetable garden on Mars, you worry about his mental state. But if that same man has since launched multiple rockets that are actually capable of reaching Mars - sending them into orbit, Bond-style, from a tiny island in the Pacific - you need to find another diagnosis. That’s the thing about extreme entrepreneurialism: There’s a fine line between madness and genius, and you need a little bit of both to really change the world.
'All entrepreneurs have an aptitude for risk, but more important than that is their capacity for self-delusion. Indeed, psychological investigations have found that entrepreneurs aren’t more risk-tolerant than non-entrepreneurs. They just have an extraordinary ability to believe in their own visions, so much so that they think what they’re embarking on isn’t really that risky. They’re wrong, of course, but without the ability to be so wrong - to willfully ignore all those naysayers and all that evidence to the contrary - no one would possess the necessary audacity to start something radically new.' (Wired Science article).
'Neil Armstrong, the first man to walk on the moon, has died aged 82. The former US astronaut, who will go down on history as the most famous pioneer of space exploration, passed away as the result of heart complications following surgery.
'As commander of the Apollo 11 mission, he became the first person to set foot on the moon, on 20 July 1969, fulfilling the longheld dream of the United States to get there before the Soviet Union. His first words as he stepped on to the surface - "That's one small step for man, one giant leap for mankind" - instantly became one of the most recognisable phrases ever uttered.
'Armstrong underwent heart bypass surgery earlier this month, just two days after his birthday on 5 August, to relieve blocked arteries.
'His family released a statement on Saturday describing him as a "reluctant American hero who always believed he was just doing his job".
'It read: "We are heartbroken to share the news that Neil Armstrong has passed away following complications resulting from cardiovascular procedures. Neil was our loving husband, father, grandfather, brother and friend. Neil Armstrong was also a reluctant American hero who always believed he was just doing his job. He served his nation proudly as a Navy fighter pilot, test pilot, and astronaut.' (Guardian article and CPA Australia video interview).
'Sometimes, you meet people who simply seem to "get" life better than the rest of us, who act as a reminder that being alive is more than simply continuing to breathe.
'They negotiate it like skilful acrobats on a high wire, exhilarated yet instinctively balanced, undaunted by the inevitable wobbles, and the remarkable thing is that their innate confidence is usually its own sure-footed reward.
'They are often achievers, yet somehow achievement is only a by-product of the way they live. It's their dreams that single them out. They scale the mountain of those dreams, reaching distant pinnacles, while the rest us stand muttering in the foothills that it's all right for them but we have responsibilities and proper jobs to get on with.
'Mark Beaumont is 27. Already he has set the record for cycling round the world (knocking 81 days off the previous time) and has just returned from a nine-month cycle across the Americas, from Alaska in the north to Argentina in the south. His route took him 13,000 miles through the Rockies and the Andes, stopping off to climb the two highest mountain peaks: Mount McKinley in the north and Aconcagua in the south. He also made a BBC documentary of his journey, the camera becoming his confidante during periods of intense isolation on remote roads and among Spanish-speaking communities.' (Scotsman interview).
Ken Eakins of Right Where You Are Sitting Now has recently interviewed the editors of Paraphilia Magazine. Personally, I'd never heard of the magazine before, until I read this interview. What can I say? I've become an instant fan.
As Ken writes: "Paraphilia Magazine is one of those cool publications that you wished you’d stumble upon more often. A kind of art/avant/underground aggregator, published in a true magazine format, the mag is really coming into its own. I caught up with editors D.M. Mitchell and Dire McCain to get a bit more insight into the project." (Right Where You Are Sitting Now interview & Paraphilia Magazine website).
Note: right click and select "Save Target As" to download back issues...
Jim Elvidge - author of The Universe - Solved! - returns to Red Ice Creations Radio to discuss the evidence that we might be living in a Programmed Reality, Infomania and the theory that the Technological Singularity will not occur.
Topics include: The Fine Tuned Universe, Reality Does Not Exist, Locality & Non-Locality, Quantum Mechanics, The Singularity, Ray Kurzweil, Jaron Lanier, Artificial Intelligence, Brain Computer Interfaces, Moore's Law, Information Consumption and much, much more. (Red Ice Creations podcast).
'Raymond Wiley and Joe McFall are the former co-hosts of Out There Radio, a 50 episode podcast of interviews and discussions covering topics related to the occult, conspiracy theory and the paranormal. Raymond and Joe have been in podcasting since 2005, having started Out There Radio shortly after they met and realized their shared interest in fringe topics.
'This episode features a conversation with Stephen Fender, author of 50 Facts That Should Change The U.S.A.' (Disinformation podcast).
'Raymond Wiley and Joe McFall are the former co-hosts of Out There Radio, a 50 episode podcast of interviews and discussions covering topics related to the occult, conspiracy theory and the paranormal. Raymond and Joe have been in podcasting since 2005, having started Out There Radio shortly after they met and realized their shared interest in fringe topics.'
On this conspiracy-laden episode Raymond and Joe feature an interview with Jim Marrs, author of Above Top Secret, as well as numerous other fortean bestsellers. Jim talks about many of the subjects covered in his books, and gives his insights into the ups and downs of the conspiracy subculture. (Disinformation podcast).
This week Ken Eakins, Claire Lumière and myself speak to author, professor and media theorist Douglas Rushkoff about advertising, the state of the economy, conspiracy culture, the next renaissance and his views on the recent U.S. election.
Doug was by far the most interesting interview for me to date and I was particularly interested to hear his honest opinions on how the current financial meltdown might affect this tragic society of consumers.
Thanks go out to Ken for asking me on board as co-host to his show once again, and for including me in this fascinating interview. (Right Where You Are Sitting Now podcast).
Alan Moore is an English writer most famous for his influential work in comics, including the acclaimed graphic novels Watchmen and V For Vendetta.
As a comics writer, Moore is notable for being one of the first writers to apply literary and formalist sensibilities to the mainstream of the medium as well as including challenging subject matter and adult themes.
Moore is also a practicing magician who worships a Roman snake deity named Glycon which he acknowledges to be a "complete hoax". He describes his understanding of magick as fundamentally synonymous with art (the use of words, images, and actions to affect people and the way they think).
In this three part interview from 2007, Alex Fitch finds out Moore's opinions of magick, movies, comic books, and just what giant bald men in nappies had to do with American paranoia in 1950s movies. (Resonance FM audio stream part 1, part 2 & part 3).
Jonathan Downes is a cryptozoologist, author, film-maker, journalist and musician, with a background in radical politics and mental health care.
In 1992 Downes founded the Centre for Fortean Zoology, arguably the world's largest cryptozoological research organization. He is vocal in his opinion that cryptozoology should not be considered to be a branch of paranormal research. Although he has written a number of books on UFOS and other Fortean subjects (sometimes in collaboration with his friend and colleague Nick Redfern), he considers cryptozoology to be a branch of mainstream zoology, rather than anything more esoteric.
Thanks to Ken Eakins for asking me to be the co-host in this interview and hopefully I'll be back for many others. As you will hear I'm still a bit of a novice with this podcasting business, but I'm going to persevere since I alway enjoy getting out of my comfort zone. (Right Where You Are Sitting Now podcast).