Heart Yoga Radio

PROMISES & SLOGANS

In this podcast, we question the simplification involved in the reduction of public discourse to slogans. We single out "free-speech absolutism" in particular and test it against Austin's concept of "performative speech acts" and Nietzsche's account of the importance of the performative speech-acts of making and keeping promises as an institution central to civilised life. We conclude, amongst other things, that over-simplification is a danger and we do do well to remember the complexity of our world. (Click the link to buy me a coffee.) [Free. 25 minutes.]

INDIVIDUAL & COLLECTIVE, (& FARMING)

This podcast is a wide-ranging discussion which ends up entertaining the suspicion that the individual and collective do not make up a stark opposition, as much right-wing propaganda presupposes. The journey includes some thoughts about soil and ecological degradation and cultural shifts taking place regarding struggles over how agriculture should be best conducted. Not to mention, a stab at answering the pressing conundrum, "What is woke, exactly?"  [Free. 32 minutes.] (Click on the link to buy me a coffee.)

LOOKING BACK OVER 2022 & FORWARD TO 2023 - INTERESTING TIMES 62

In this podcast, I look back over 2022 and check how accurate our prognostications made at the beginning of the year have turned out to be accurate. I then attempt to identify big trends that might manifest in 23. (Click the link to buy me a coffee. ) [Free. 56 minutes.]

ON STRIKES - INTERESTING TIMES 61

In this podcast, I outline the general characteristics of strikes and the structural antagonism between economic classes at the core of capitalism with which they are entangled. I give examples from the current wave of strikes in the UK and the government, gutter press and social media troll responses to them. In the process I identify and analyse a handful of  propaganda methods we encounter there. [Click here to buy me a coffee.] [Free. 37 minutes.]

EDEN REVISITED

In this podcast, I examine the  Genesis story and the notion of original sin, considered as a kind of foundational myth for "the West". I entertain the suspicion that this foundation myth doesn't provide a viable answer to the question of why we humans suffer and what to do about it. Not only that, it actually inhibits our abilities to use our ingenuity to secure and enhance human life. (Click the link to  buy me a coffee.) [Free. 20 minutes.]

ECSTACY AND THE APOCALYPSE

This podcast is a meditation on the contrast between natural ecstasies which affirm the human enterprise and can emphasise our connectedness to all things and the chaos engulfing the world as ecological, economic and cultural systems increase in instability, all at the same time. I arrive at a few practical suggestions which arise directly out of the meditation. Buy me a coffee by following the link. [Free. 18 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.]

CORPORATIONS TO RUN CITIES IN THE UK SOON? [PART 1]

In this podcast, we consider the Tory Government proposal to institute eight 'Charter Cities' in the UK. Charter Cities are planned to be areas which are given over to governance by a corporation which is likely to remove workers protections, ban minimum wage laws, dismantle welfare, quash restrictions on working hours and more. All this is thought to be facilitated by Brexit and the subsequent revocation of EU regulations. For its neoliberal proponents, who are universally drawn from the big oil funded right international, this is a utopia which will end world poverty. We argue the contrary, that it will be a monstrously dystopian  anti-democratic nightmare in which workers will be treated like disposable things and which must be stopped. For background, a good shortish read is here - https://medium.com/@cormack.lawson/charter-cities-the-real-reason-for-brexit-and-the-bigger-picture-4de80dbb69fbhttps://medium.com/@cormack.lawson/charter-cities-the-real-reason-for-brexit-and-the-bigger-picture-4de80dbb69fb [Free. 58 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.]