Heart Yoga Radio

MONEY & TAX IN QUESTION - INTERESTING TIMES 40

This podcast is a response to two events of the 7th September 2021. These are the beginning of El Salvador's policy to recognise Bitcoin as legal tender and UK PM Johnson's announcement in Parliament of tax measures to ostensibly finance much needed social care provisions. In the second case, rather than getting into the weeds of the actual policy announced by Johnson, the podcast focusses on the way in which certain assumptions about the nature of tax and money are uncritically accepted by politicians, media and economists.  I draw on Stephanie Kelton's The Deficit Myth. [Free. 30 minutes.]

TAOIST DIALECTICS

In this podcast we playfully and seriously outline our eccentric take on 'Taoist Dialectics'. This entails brief encounters with Plato's The Sophist and Hegel's Logic as well as an engagement with a parable told by Taoist master, Chuang Tzu. We relate all this to personal resilience in these apocalyptic times. [Free. 32 minutes.]

LAO TZU 40

This podcast deals with Chapter 40 of Lao Tzu's Tao Te Ching. We concentrate on the amazing relevance this chapter has to our current political, economic and spiritual emergencies. In a few short lines, Lao Tzu diagnoses the condition of the working people of his time as subjection to violent and militarily oriented 'robber barons' whilst they themselves are the creators of value and the necessary goods to sustain life. This is exactly our condition too. Lao Tzu offers a meditation to counter the fragmental [non-holistic, non-systemic thinking] which is the ideological counterpart to a kleptocratic economy. [Free. 29 minutes.]

AFGHANISTAN, GEO-POLITICS, HISTORY - INTERESTING TIMES 42

This podcast gives our initial take on the recent take over of Afghanistan by the Taliban as US and NATO military withdraw after 20 years of occupation. We place the events in the systemic contexts of geo-politics and history and expose the hypocrisy of UK and US media and politicians who would cease to ally with Saudi Arabia if they really did care and women's emancipation from oppressive regimes. NB don't miss the short in-door addendum at the end. [Free.  34 minutes.]

GB NEWS & TOXIC 'FREEDOM' - INTERESTING TIMES 40

In this podcast, we discuss two recent events on GB News TV station which reveal the employment of a toxic and incoherent notion of freedom which is regularly employed by neo-liberal propaganda. These are Nigel Farage's take on the RNLI rescuing migrant in the English channel and Neil Oliver's claim that his freedom may rightly entail others' exposure to COVID infection. We contrast this with a notion of freedom which is grounded in the psychological, cultural, economic and social systems any desirable good is embedded in. [Free.  46 minutes.]

THE COSMIC RIGHT - RAW THOUGHT

Jumping off from a consideration of recent anti-vax protests in London, we consider the establishment's divide and rule strategies, the long game played and financed by the very rich 0.1%, the role of the media, oligarchs' fear of 'the mob', and the illusory nature of US and UK 'democracy. [Patrons only. 21 minutes]

DAWN BUTLER & THE POST-TRUTH PARLIAMENT - INTERESTING TIMES 39

In this podcast, we jump off from Dawn Butler's expulsion from the House of Commons for the offense of mentioning the Prime Minister's predilection for lying. This event, in combination with incompetent handling of increasing COVID infection, the breakdown in supply chains to supermarkets as a consequence of Brexit, and the steady turning of the right wing press on the Tory government add fuel to a dangerous and chaotic public mood which the far right will attempt to capture. [Free. 31 minutes.]

SAVAGE JAVID'S RANDIAN FANTASY - INTERESTING TIMES 38

In this podcast we comment on the state of the Tory Cabinet as members are 'pinged' as  a result of the Secretary of Sate for Health testing positive for COVID19 on the eve of 'free-dumb day'. We focus on contradictions within the right as authoritarian social conservatism vies with libertarian-libertinism for dominance and powerful opportunists attempt to face both ways. In this context we examine Javid's espousal of Randianism. [Free. 35 minutes.]

COVID19 & MENTAL HEALTH

In this podcast, I examine the mental health consequences of the COVID19 pandemic and their embeddedness in entwined economic, cultural/ideological and ecological systems. [Free. 26 minutes.] 

JOBS FOR SNOGS - RAW THOUGHT

Speculating on what is behind the Hancock resignation. [Patrons only. 35 minutes.]