Heart Yoga Radio

BORIS JOHNSON’S PERFECT POST-TRUTH MOMENT - INTERESTING TIMES 66

In this podcast, we reflect on the resignation of Boris Johnson from the UK parliament after having been found by the Commons Privileges Committee to have lied to Parliament. We take it that Johnson's subsequent and immediate appointment on a six-figure salary as a columnist for the Daily Mail is significant as a kind of culmination of the UK's deep immersion in post-truth confusion, which has for some time been an advantageous state for global oligarchs in a time of wide-spread unrest. [Free. 26 minutes.]

AI - THREAT OR PROMISE?

In this podcast, we discuss AI and its recent emergence into the public sphere. We examine four main aspects of AI; what the term 'AI' signifies, the knowledge status of its products, the political and economic ramifications of AI, especially its role in automation, and its position in current affairs public discourse. [Free. 61 minutes.] 

CLICK BAIT, RAGE BAIT & CALM BAIT

In this podcast, we discuss rage bait and its role in the manipulation of behaviours through news and social media and what seems to be the deliberate arousal of strong emotions. We consider the application of behavioural science in conjunction with massive amounts of data collected by big tech in the persuasion business, especially as applied to nudging election results. The discussion ranges wide and includes  a comparison of psychoanalytic approaches to behaviour manipulation with those derived from behaviourism. [Free. 34 minutes.]

A UNIVERSE OF DISCOURSE?

What is a universe of discourse? In this podcast, I attempt an answer, followed by an appraisal of the uses and abuse the concept might be put to. (Click the link to buy me a coffee.) [Free. 23 minutes.]

THE DAY AFTER

In this podcast we entertain the likelihood of an impending sublime moment in which a variety of people's actions bring about some fundamental  disruption of the status quo. We think that such an event is highly likely but that it will present revolutionary and civil-disobedience movements with the problem of what to do the day after the sublime moment. This is a point often elaborated by Zizek. We offer the Occupy movement and the Arab Spring as examples. We proceed by way of allowing the ideas in two recent books, both offering some utopian speculations informed to some degree by Marx,  to collide in order to produce some analytic tools. Those books are Fully Automated Luxury Communism by Aaron Bastani and Beyond Money by Anitra Nelson. [Free. 44 minutes]

NATURAL LIBERATION

In this podcast, we jump off into the matter of spontaneous, natural liberation from a consideration of the text The Natural Liberation Through Naked Vision. We discuss the practicalities of this way of being, its resonances with Zen, the question of asceticism and Nietzsche's take on it.  Amongst other things! [Free. 26 minutes.]

LAO TZU 50

In this podcast, discuss Chapter 63 of Lao Tzu's Tao Te Ching. The main theme is how the sage negotiates life through wu wei, or non-doing. In astonishingly few words, Lao Tzu imparts a very detailed account of wu-wei. [Free. 37 minutes.]

SCHRODINGER‘S PARTY - INTERESTING TIMES 44

In this podcast we consider the infamous party which both happened and didn't happen at the same time at 10 Downing Street on December 18th 2020. If it did happen [even though it didn't], a number of government ministers are ready to reassure the public that no COVID19 lock-down rules were broken with comical results. We examine the context of this spooky event in a cabal of government-right wing press connections, in the leaking of a video of the PM's press spokeswoman rehearsing how she might spin awkward questions about the event,  in Johnson's apology to the Commons, and in the general propaganda system within which our ruling elites operate. We appraise the possibility that this shit storm may have cut through to the public consciousness. [Free. 43 minutes.]

FREUD'S INFLUENCE ON US GOVERNMENT & BUSINESS

This podcast ranges wide over the uses of Freud's insights for manipulating mass thinking and behaviour on behalf of the state and corporations. We review Adam Curtis' four part documentary  The Century of the Self (2002),  as a way in. There is particular focus on the work of Freud's nephew Bernays, the father of modern PR and advertising and author of Propaganda (1928). We also draw attention to philosophical problems with Freudianism, particularly those noted by Wittgenstein and Heidegger. Though standing alone, the podcast is also groundwork for future podcasts on the psychopathology of fascism.

The Century of the Self available on YouTube. Episode 1- https://youtu.be/DnPmg0R1M04

REASON ON REASON 4 - MADNESS

In this podcast we examine madness or the loss of reason to further our picturing of reason. We start out with the fact that madness, like reason has a history which offers us a variety of causal explanations of madness, treatments for it, and accounts of its meaning. We also give a brief account of nosological drift. Both of these preliminaries serve to cast suspicion on the notion that we can discern madness through contrast with a supposedly sane consensus reality. Accordingly, we are drawn to consider madness in terms of suffering people and to appraise crazy social and political situations through the employment of a critical awareness rather than accepting the status quo understanding as a yardstick. That critical awareness, we claim, entails acquaintance with ones own potential for irrationality. [Free. 54 minutes.]