'Kevin Fong talks to one of the last two men on the Moon, 40 years after the final Apollo 17 mission blasted off on 7 December 1972.
'As an Apollo astronaut, Harrison Schmitt was special. He was was the only geologist ever to explore the lunar surface.
'The field work Dr. Schmitt did, and the rocks he and his fellow astronauts brought back, revolutionised our understanding of the Moon and the Earth.
'Dr. Schmitt also shares the human experience of running around another planet and explains why he thinks we should go back, and beyond.
'The conversation also features archive recordings of the two Apollo 17 moon walkers, Schmitt and Commander Eugene Cernan talking from the lunar surface and Challenger module to NASA’s mission control in Houston in 1972.' (BBC World Service Discovery podcast).
Comedian Doug Stanhope was recently interviewed by KRUU-FM for a program scheduled for Wednesday. The only problem was, only Stanhope knew he was accidentally impersonating Johnny Rotten...
'I get a call at 7:45 am a few weeks ago, that I only got up for to scream at whoever dare call at that hour. Missing the call, I check the voice message and it says: "Hey John it's Mike Ragogna from KRUU & HuffPost - we have a phone interview scheduled if you can please call the studio line - it'll be real easy, just a few questions about the new release and PiL."
'I had an interview scheduled with this same guy at noon so he'd obviously put the wrong phone number to the wrong guest - and although I don't know shit about music I did catch the John and the PiL together and realized he was calling for John Lydon aka Johnny Rotten.
'So I dialed the number he'd called me from, got voicemail and left a message saying who I was and that he'd called the wrong guest. Ten minutes later I'm woken up again to the phone ringing and now I'm fucking furious: "Hey John it's Mike Ragogna from KRUU & HuffPost - we have a phone interview scheduled if you can please call the studio line..."
'This time I said fuck it, wrote down the studio number, put on the best British accent I could muster (which is absolutely fucking awful) and called in to do the interview as best as I could, being still half asleep and not knowing shit about who I am pretending to be.' (Doug Stanhope blog post).
'Episode 52 of Out There Radio features an interview with Randall Carlson.
'Randall is the founder of Sacred Geometry International, and is one of the most knowledgeable and experienced Freemasons in the Atlanta area. Randall is an experienced home-builder, and a leading expert on esotericism, archaeo-astronomy, and catastrophism.
'Co-hosts Raymond Wiley and Austin Gandy also discuss their experiences at Infusion Festivals, and their constant battle with equipment malfunctions over the past two weeks.' (Out There Radio podcast).
What if reality isn't really what you think it is?
What if our world was just a big video game?
It's actually not as far-fetched as it seems, says Jim Elvidge. Within 30 years, we will be able to create virtual environments indistinguishable from our reality. Within a few more decades, even physical realities will be manufactured. And we are marching toward an inevitable merge with machines. What's more, it is actually impossible to tell whether or not we have already reached that point.
After four long years, the Out There Radio crew has re-united, and will be producing a new season of weekly podcast episodes.
In this much anticipated episode, Austin Gandy and Raymond Wiley re-introduce themselves, reflect on their experiences during the past four years, and discuss how their views about conspiracy theories, the occult, and counterculture have evolved.
In Out There news, the team discuss the recent Aurora shooting, and how rapidly conspiracy narratives can be formed in a web 2.0 environment.
They also talk briefly about Raymond’s two recent projects, a book release (The Georgia Guidestones: America’s Most Mysterious Monument) and three upcoming weekend festivals in the woods of west Georgia. (Out There Radio podcast).
'Rappalachia fortifies both the hip-hop and bluegrass sides of the Gangstagrass equation, taking the music to a whole new level of intense Urban Twang. The sound scrambles sample heavy rhythm tracks, and the verbal legerdemain of T.O.N.E-z, the legendary Kool Keith (Ultramagnetic MCs) and newcomers like Dolio the Sleuth and R-SON, with the fancy fretwork of Rench on guitar, along with fiddler Jason Cade, Dobro champion Todd Livingston and banjo picker Ellery Marshall. Vocalist Brandi Hart from The Dixie Bee-Liners supplies her impressive vocal grit to the outing, and Jen Larson from Straight Drive offers up her pure bluegrass vocal chops as well.'
Rappalachia is available to listen to in its entirety as an audio stream here for one week only.
Gangstagrass are a group of musicians from New York City, founded and led by Brooklyn producer Rench, that combine authentic bluegrass and rap into a new genre.
Gangstagrass' music started reaching a wider audience when their song "Long Hard Times to Come" was selected to be the opening theme song of the acclaimed television show, Justified.
"Gunslinging Rambler" is the single from their forthcoming 3rd studio album, Rappalachia.
'John Alva Keel is best remembered as the author of The Mothman Prophecies, a classic work of Fortean reportage. The book painted an eery portrait of a tiny town besieged by inexplicable incidents: sightings of a moth-like creature with glowing red eyes, strange lights in the sky and midnight visits from men in black. Keel began his investigation as an outsider, but was soon drawn into the dark orbit of the mothman.
'Keel achieved some amount of public recognition when his book became the basis of a 2002 movie of the same name starring Richard Gere, but the public at large had no idea that Keel’s encounter with the mothman was only one small part of an incredibly strange, adventurous life. Keel, a veteran writer of the weird, was well-known within the ranks of forteana for his writings on UFOs, conspiracies and strange mysteries discovered in the furthest corners of the globe.
'Keel’s later years were tough ones. As he grew older, his career suffered. So did his health. Thankfully, he was not completely alone. A small circle of friends and admirers stood by his side. One of them was Fortean writer and professional composer Doug Skinner. Skinner, a close friend of Keel’s, discusses the matter on the latest episode of The DisinfoCast.' (Disinformation podcast).
'Man's effect on the environment, questioning accepted truths, challenging those in charge and reporting on progress towards improving the world. Presenters, Tom Heap and Dr. Alice Roberts, travel the UK and the world in search of solutions to the challenges facing the natural world and the people and wildlife that live in it. Broadcast at 21.00 on Mondays, Costing The Earth runs for 27 weeks of the year, split into three series. Podcast episodes are added weekly.' (BBC Radio Four podcasts).
'Aleister Crowley, born Edward Alexander Crowley, and also known as both Frater Perdurabo and The Great Beast, was an influential English occultist, mystic and ceremonial magician, responsible for founding the religious philosophy of Thelema. Through this belief he came to see himself as the prophet who was entrusted with informing humanity that it was entering the new Aeon of Horus in 1904, a time when old ethical and religious systems would be replaced. Widely seen as one of the most influential occultists of all time, he was a member of the esoteric Hermetic Order of the Golden Dawn, as well as a co-founder of the A∴A∴ and eventually a leader of Ordo Templi Orientis (O.T.O.). He is known today for his magical writings, especially The Book Of The Law, the central sacred text of Thelema, although he also wrote widely on other subjects, including a large amount of fiction and poetry.
'Crowley was also a bisexual, recreational drug experimenter and social critic. In many of these roles he "was in revolt against the moral and religious values of his time", espousing a form of libertarianism based upon the rule of "Do What Thou Wilt". Because of this, he gained widespread notoriety during his lifetime, and was denounced in the popular press of the day as "the wickedest man in the world." Alongside his esoteric activities, he was an avid chess player, mountaineer, poet and playwright, and it has also been alleged that he was a spy for the British government.
'Crowley has remained an influential figure right up till this day, and in 2002, a BBC poll described him as being the seventy-third greatest Briton of all time. References to him can be found in the works of numerous writers, musicians and filmmakers, and he has also been cited as a key influence on many later esoteric groups and individuals, including Kenneth Grant, Gerald Gardner and, to some degree, Austin Osman Spare.'
'Tom Mangold re-enters the Bermuda Triangle in search of the truth behind the legend.
'This episode he resumes his investigations by examining the work of two of the most successful authors who first wrote about the supposed mysteries of this famous piece of wet geometry. The lurid blurbs on the covers of their books often left little to the imagination, one purporting to be: "A saga of the mysterious sea where planes, ships and doomed human beings disappear for ever - an astonishing, baffling, fully documented true life mystery of the hundreds of helpless victims, sucked up by giant water spouts, sea monsters and flying saucers."
'Tom traces some of those responsible for spreading these yarns and interrogates them and their works rigorously. On the way he discovers how the myth of the triangle became entwined with that of the lost kingdom of Atlantis, how the mysterious disappearance of a plane sixty years ago turns out to be far from inexplicable, and how scientists, air traffic controllers and air sea rescue officers remain extremely sceptical that there are any anomalies in the region.' (BBC Radio Four audio stream).
'Dr. S. James Gates is a physicist, a theorist on the exotically named frontiers of superstrings and supersymmetry. These are fields where science is trying to reconcile its own most baffling contradictions. And whether you can fully comprehend string theory or not, its basic assumptions stretch our imagination about the nature of the universe we inhabit. James Gates brings this home with ideas and questions we can all chew on, and be enriched by. He lets us in to the playful, creative, even spiritual, act of naming in science. He's working to evolve the cosmic language of mathematics, much as poetry evolved alongside prose, to tell the whole story of what we're made of and where we came from. And he sees codes embedded in reality, something like the codes embedded in computer programs.' (American Public Radio mp3 download).
'The Bermuda Triangle is one of the great iconic stories of our time. Within its half million square mile borders between Bermuda, Florida and Puerto Rico some 1000 people are said to have perished in the sixty or so ships and planes that have vanished without trace since 1854.
'The stories are legend.
'From the USS Cyclops en route from Barbados to Baltimore with 300 people which vanished in 1918 and has never been found - to the most recent Triangle event in 2002 - the disappearance of a small Piper Pawnee airplane over the Bahamas - the mystery persists.
'Tom Mangold turns his journalistic skills to the myth of the Bermuda Triangle - and separates fact from fiction, speculation from recorded history, and barefaced lies from long forgotten truths. He discovers just was the genesis of the story, how it grew, and why it persists to this day.' (BBC Radio Four audio stream).
'Rocket entrepreneur Elon Musk believes he can get the cost of a round trip to Mars down to about half a million dollars.
'The SpaceX CEO says he has finally worked out how to do it, and told the BBC he would reveal further details later this year or early in 2013.
'Musk is one of NASA's new commercial partners, building systems to take cargo and crew to the space station.
'He has developed his own rocket and a capsule for the purpose.
'The Falcon 9 launcher and the Dragon vessel are expected to give the first full demonstration of their capabilities next month on an unmanned sortie to the orbiting outpost.' (BBC News article & audio stream).
'Can the heroic age of Antarctic exploration show us the way back to the Moon and onto Mars?
'One hundred years ago, Scott reached the South Pole. However, more than four decades passed before people went back there. On the Moon, Neil Armstrong took his leap for mankind in 1969 and it has been forty years since the last astronaut left the lunar surface. Presenter Kevin Fong talks to space scientists and historians to find out if Robert Scott's Antarctic exploits provide a road map for future human exploration of the Moon and the planet Mars.
'Imperial and geopolitical motivations lay behind both South Polar exploration and the effort which took humans briefly to the lunar surface. But what would get us back to the Moon and onto Mars - would it be political rivalry, science or transport that was cheap enough?
'In times of economic austerity (in the West at least), what scientific questions are important enough to justify exploration of the Moon and Mars? The six short Apollo visits to the lunar surface were enough to crack the mystery of how the Moon itself formed - namely that a Mars sized planet crashed into the early Earth. The molten rock that was blasted into orbit by that collision coalesced as our lunar neighbour.
'Sending astronauts back to explore the rocks of the Moon could solve the most important mysteries about the early Earth - when did life first evolve and under what sort of conditions? Their findings could also settle the questions about the origins of our oceans here on Earth. As for Mars, the big questions are, is there life there now or did life ever evolve there? If it did originate on Mars, how different was it from life on Earth? If we found life did not arise there, we might wonder whether we are really alone in the Universe.' (BBC Radio Four article and audio stream).
'Melvyn Bragg and his guests discuss the origins, science and mythology of the moon. Humans have been fascinated by our only known satellite since prehistory. In some cultures the Moon has been worshipped as a deity; in recent centuries there has been lively debate about its origins and physical characteristics. Although other planets in our solar system have moons ours is, relatively speaking, the largest, and is perhaps more accurately described as a 'twin planet'; the past, present and future of the Earth and the Moon are locked together. Only very recently has water been found on the Moon - a discovery which could prove to be invaluable if human colonisation of the Moon were ever to occur.
'Mankind first walked on the Moon in 1969, but it is debatable how important this huge political event was in developing our scientific knowledge. The advances of space science, including data from satellites and the moon landings, have given us some startling insights into the history of our own planet, but many intriguing questions remain unanswered.' (BBC Radio 4 audio stream).
'The unrest in the Middle East, the convulsions in Ivory Coast, the hunger sweeping across failed states such as Somalia, the freak weather patterns and the systematic unraveling of the American empire do not signal a lurch toward freedom and democracy but the catastrophic breakdown of globalization. The world as we know it is coming to an end. And what will follow will not be pleasant or easy.
'The bankrupt corporate power elite, who continue to serve the dead ideas of unfettered corporate capitalism, globalization, profligate consumption and an economy dependent on fossil fuels, as well as endless war, have proven incapable of radically shifting course or responding to our altered reality. They react to the great unraveling by pretending it is not happening. They are desperately trying to maintain a doomed system of corporate capitalism. And the worse it gets the more they embrace, and seek to make us embrace, magical thinking. Dozens of members of Congress in the United States have announced that climate change does not exist and evolution is a hoax. They chant the mantra that the marketplace should determine human behavior, even as the unfettered and unregulated marketplace threw the global economy into a seizure and evaporated some $40 trillion in worldwide wealth. The corporate media retreats as swiftly from reality into endless mini-dramas revolving around celebrities or long discussions about the inane comments of a Donald Trump or a Sarah Palin. The real world - the one imploding in our faces - is ignored.
'The deadly convergence of environmental and economic catastrophe is not coincidental. Corporations turn everything, from human beings to the natural world, into commodities they ruthlessly exploit until exhaustion or death. The race of doom is now between environmental collapse and global economic collapse. Which will get us first? Or will they get us at the same time?' (Adbusters article & audio stream).
'In Life Inc., award-winning writer, documentary filmmaker, and scholar Douglas Rushkoff traces how corporations went from being convenient legal fictions to being the dominant fact of contemporary life. Indeed, as Rushkoff shows, most Americans have so willingly adopted the values of corporations that they’re no longer even aware of it.
'This fascinating journey, from the late Middle Ages to today, reveals the roots of our debacle. From the founding of the first chartered monopoly to the branding of the self; from the invention of central currency to the privatization of banking; from the birth of the modern, self-interested individual to his exploitation through the false ideal of the single-family home; from the Victorian Great Exhibition to the solipsism of MySpace - the corporation has infiltrated all aspects of our daily lives. Life Inc. exposes why we see our homes as investments rather than places to live, our 401(k) plans as the ultimate measure of success, and the Internet as just another place to do business.
'Most of all, Life Inc. shows how the current financial crisis is actually an opportunity to reverse this six-hundred-year-old trend and to begin to create, invest, and transact directly rather than outsource all this activity to institutions that exist solely for their own sakes.
'Corporatism didn’t evolve naturally. The landscape on which we are living–the operating system on which we are now running our social software–was invented by people, sold to us as a better way of life, supported by myths, and ultimately allowed to develop into a self-sustaining reality. It is a map that has replaced the territory.
'Rushkoff illuminates both how we’ve become disconnected from our world and how we can reconnect to our towns, to the value we can create, and, mostly, to one another. As the speculative economy collapses under its own weight, Life Inc. shows us how to build a real and human-scaled society to take its place.' (Isohunt torrent download).
'The murder of the Gulf of Mexico by BP shouldn’t surprise us. It is precisely what industrial capitalism does. Years ago I wrote of the catastrophe in Bhopal: when you intentionally fabricate bulk industrial chemicals, many of which are toxic, it should not qualify as an accident when some of these chemicals kill people. Likewise, the spill in the Gulf should not be considered an accident. There are 10,000 oil spills per year. Oil has devastated the Amazon. It has devastated the Niger Delta. It has devastated the Gulf of Mexico.
'Likewise, after the catastrophe at Bhopal, it was discovered that there was no antidote for the poison. One advocate for the victims noted sensibly: “No one should be allowed to make poisons for which there is no antidote.” The same is true for the other destructive activities of this culture.
'And corporations will not voluntarily rein themselves in. Limited liability corporations exist in order to limit liability. Their function is to privatize profits and to externalize costs.' (Press Action article & WMNF audio stream).
Alright you twisted freaks! I had to jump through hoops of fire to try get hold of this stuff. Here's the low-down:
Swamptrash were a Scottish bluegrass/psychobilly band formed in 1987 in Edinburgh. They split in 1990 when several of the members went on to form the wonderful Shooglenifty.
Swamptrash only released one album and a six-track EP during their short career. Fronted by vocalist and banjo player Harry Horse (real name Richard Horne), the band came up with an innovative way to bypass all the bureaucracy of having to phone or send tapes to clubs and pubs in order to get bookings. Basically they spun a wonderful yarn about them all being brothers from Missouri, and Horse - who was really from Coventary and a successful political illustrator for many major UK broadsheets - fitted into the hillbilly role impeccably by turning up at venues under the name Billie Joe and asking them to "pass the hat round". As the routine proved to be quite successful it began to get incorporated into their performances and it wasn't long before Horse was drawling on between songs about "daddy getting his leg bitten off by a gator" or "how mamma had gotten sunk in the swamp".
After Swamptrash split, Horse continued his career as a successful political cartoonist. As well as having his work appear in books as diverse as a centenary edition of Dr. Jekyll & Mr. Hyde and children's book Magus The Lollipop Man, his illustrations would also regularly appear in The Observer, The Independent and The Sunday Herald. In 1993 he wrote a cult computer game for Time Warner called Drowned God - a graphical adventure game with a plot involving human history and the belief that "everything you know is wrong".
For Harry Horse the story ends tragically and somewhat mysteriously with the peculiar circumstances surrounding his death and that of his terminally ill wife Mandy in 2007. What was originally reported as a Romeo & Juliet style suicide pact later turned out to be something more grisly with Horse allegedly stabbing his wife over 30 times before turning the knife on himself and subsequently bleeding to death from multiple slash wounds.
Clearly distraught by his wife's rather aggressive form of multiple sclerosis, it is assumed that the incredible stress Horse was under manifested itself in bouts of deep depression and disturbing fits of rage.
Today, the recorded work of Swamptrash is exceptionally rare and difficult to come by, however, here at the Media Underground Nerve Centre I've managed to get hold of both their album and EP in mp3 format. Whilst I would love to acquire higher bitrate versions of this material, these recordings are available nowhere else on the internet. Appreciation and thanks go to Lesley Robertson for sending me this stuff and for going to the trouble of asking former Swamptrash members for their permission to do so.
Note: To download these mp3s you'll need an account with our BitTorrent tracker. If you haven't got one yet, you can sign up for free here.
Swamptrash - Bone (torrent).
Swamptrash - It Don't Make No Never Mind (torrent).
'Touted in their day as the next Stooges, Death came to an abrupt end after refusing to change their name. But renewed interest in the proto-punks is ensuring their incendiary legacy lives on.
'The once-flawless credentials of Detroit's late-60s garage-rock scene took a considerable dent recently thanks to Iggy Pop's badly timed car insurance advert. And let's not forget the readiness of MC5's surviving members to exchange their manifesto of "dope, guns and fucking in the streets" for casual denimwear a few years back. However, one power trio from the city can claim 35 years without selling out - a feat made considerably easier by the fact that Death's debut album was nixed by the Man before it even made it to the pressing plant.' (Guardian article & Isohunt torrent download).
'A major diplomatic and political scandal is erupting that could have significant import for French-American relations. It involves new research into the mysterious outbreak of “mass insanity” in a village in southern France that affected some 500 people and resulted in five deaths.
'According to reliable US sources, the US State Department Bureau of Intelligence and Research has been given a confidential inquiry from the office of Erard Corbin de Mangoux, head of the French intelligence agency DSGE (Directorate General for External Security).
'According to the report the inquiry regards a recently-published account of U.S. government complicity in a mysterious 1951 incident of mass insanity in France in the village of Pont-Saint-Esprit in southern France.
'The strange outbreak severely affected nearly five hundred people, causing the deaths of at least five, two by suicide. For nearly 60 years the Pont-St.-Esprit incident has been attributed either to ergot poisoning, meaning that villagers consumed bread infected with a psychedelic mold or to organic mercury poisoning.
'Scientists with the highly respected British Medical Journal were quickly drawn in September 1951 to what it dubbed the “outbreak of poisoning.” After initial thoughts that the cause was bread infection, they concluded that mold could not explain the event or the afflictions that struck hundreds of people in the village.
'Scientists dispatched to the scene from the Sandoz Chemical company in nearby Basle, Switzerland also stated that the mold was the cause, but many other experts disagreed with them.
'Over time the mystery of the outbreak only deepened and no answers were found to be satisfactory. A 2008 book about the history of bread published in France by Professor Steven Kaplan emphasizes that the “mystery remains unsolved” and at the time, still continued to perplex scientists.' (War And Peace article & Rule Of Law Radio podcast).
Recorded at Pacific Quay in Glasgow on February 23rd 2010, Mary Ann Kennedy presents a world music extravaganza with the original acid-crofters Shooglenifty.
Shooglenifty are an Edinburgh-based six-piece Celtic fusion band that tours internationally. The band blends Scottish traditional music with influences ranging from electronica to alternative rock. They're also fucking mindblowing live!
Fastforward the BBC iPlayer to 1:00.48 to skip all the other pretentious horseshit that is on the show and go straight to the live recording. (BBC iPlayer audio stream).
'Acid Croft is a term Shooglenifty popularised to describe the energetic blend of modern and traditional music that a new generation of musicians keep the new generation of village hall goers hot and sweaty with.
'This, by no means comprehensive guide covers my favourites, and on this page I've even listed them in the order I currently consider to offer the best night out!
'Shooglenifty are usually top of the list for a good sweaty night out, particularly if you can make the effort to go to Glenuig to see them play - although as they're popular all over the world there's a good chance they'll be playing near you.' (Lazy Pict website).
'It's that time of year again when the forces of greed and conspicuous consumption do battle with guilt and pious sentiment. So how do you have a merry and a moral Christmas? Michael Buerk and the panel settle down around the festive table to try to find out.' (Radio Four audio stream).
'Musician and artist Genesis Breyer P-Orridge talks about using magick to make the world a better place, challenging the status quo and the power of the cut-up style of art.'
'Genesis Breyer P-Orridge (born Neil Andrew Megson 22 February 1950) is an English performer, musician, writer and artist. His early confrontational performance work in COUM Transmissions in the late 1960s and early 1970s along with the industrial band Throbbing Gristle, which dealt with subjects such as prostitution, pornography, serial killers, and occultism, generated controversy. Later musical work with Psychic TV received wider exposure, including some chart-topping singles. Genesis P-Orridge is credited on over 200 releases.' (Thelema Now podcast).
Derrick Jensen joins 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.
Note: If you're like me and enjoy the interviews from the C-Realm but cannot bear to listen to any of the other airy-fairy horseshit that comprises of the show, then fast forward to 5:23 to hear the beginning of the interview. Then, when the unbearably dismal musical interlude comes on, fast forward again to 32:57 to hear the remainder of the discussion. (C-Realm 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 an interview with occult author and former bassist for Blondie, Gary Lachman. The discussion focuses on the history of the Western occult tradition and how it became a major influence on the counterculture of the '60s. Turn off your mind, this week on Disinformation: The Podcast. (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.
'Satanic rockers in Iran, Scientology's European woes, and DARPA's psychic soldiers of the future, this week on Disinformation World News.' (Disinformation podcast).