Episodes

Friday Jun 10, 2022
APOCALYPSE REPORT JUNE 22 - INTERESTING TIMES 54
Friday Jun 10, 2022
Friday Jun 10, 2022
This wide-ranging episode of Interesting Times deals with the recent rise of inflation in the economy in the context of the reflections on inflation, money-printing and organised labour by a variety of economist, starting with the Thatcher-Reagan guru, Milton Friedman. Amongst related topics, we note a global renaissance in trade union organisation, a global crisis in food distribution, disintegration of UK farming, and the failure of the world to be make adequate provision to mitigate future pandemics. [Free. 53 minutes.]

Thursday May 05, 2022
LAO TZU 47
Thursday May 05, 2022
Thursday May 05, 2022
In this podcast, we reflect of Chapter 60 of The Tao Te Ching in which Lao Tzu recommends a light touch on the part of rulers if destructivity is to be minimised in society. A light touch is possible when rulers and / or their advisors are aligned with the Tao and the processes of existence and life as they act through human beings. We relate Lao Tzu's recommendations to our current political state and the ever present realisation that governments do bad things even whilst some collective focus is necessary for our species survival. We examine variations on this insight found in neoliberal economic thought, Marxism and the anarchism. [Free. 36 minutes.]

Thursday Feb 24, 2022
INSECURITY IN OUR TURBULENT TIMES
Thursday Feb 24, 2022
Thursday Feb 24, 2022
This podcast is a wide-ranging consideration of individual, psychological insecurity and material, collective insecurity and the relationship between them. We make our observations in the context of current events, especially the war in Ukraine, global warming, and financial meltdown, whilst drawing on inspiration from process philosophers like the Buddha, Heraclitus, Whitehead, Watts, Nietzsche, Marx and Lao Tzu. We draw on a brief discussion of the sublime and the beautiful to help us identify the emancipatory comportment to our intrinsic vulnerability and mortality. [Free. 50 minutes.]
![ECONOMIC COLLAPSE IN THE UK & BEYOND - PART 2C [THE PRESENT]](https://deow9bq0xqvbj.cloudfront.net/image-logo/771447/hyradiologobig2_300x300.png)
Wednesday Oct 27, 2021
ECONOMIC COLLAPSE IN THE UK & BEYOND - PART 2C [THE PRESENT]
Wednesday Oct 27, 2021
Wednesday Oct 27, 2021
This podcast considers the possibility of economic collapse in the UK and beyond with a focus of the current state of culture. [Free. 56 minutes.]
![ECONOMIC COLLAPSE IN THE UK & BEYOND - PART 2a [THE PRESENT]](https://deow9bq0xqvbj.cloudfront.net/image-logo/771447/hyradiologobig2_300x300.png)
Tuesday Oct 19, 2021
ECONOMIC COLLAPSE IN THE UK & BEYOND - PART 2a [THE PRESENT]
Tuesday Oct 19, 2021
Tuesday Oct 19, 2021
In this second episode of our series on economic collapse, we examine a number of current economic crises in the UK and beyond and see if they resonate with what we encountered when examining some historical examples of collapse in Part 1. We focus particularly on the economic aspects of the crises in question. [Free. 1 hour 15 minutes.]
![ECONOMIC COLLAPSE IN THE UK & BEYOND? - PART 1 [HISTORY]](https://deow9bq0xqvbj.cloudfront.net/image-logo/771447/hyradiologobig2_300x300.png)
Friday Oct 15, 2021
ECONOMIC COLLAPSE IN THE UK & BEYOND? - PART 1 [HISTORY]
Friday Oct 15, 2021
Friday Oct 15, 2021
In this podcast we look at the economic collapses of 1929 and 2008 to see if we can discern any essential features. The point of this broad-brush historical delving is the get an understanding of economic collapse per se and then, in subsequent podcasts, to see if we are in danger of a similar collapse in the present. [Free. 40 minutes.]

Sunday Sep 05, 2021
TAOIST DIALECTICS
Sunday Sep 05, 2021
Sunday Sep 05, 2021
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.]

Wednesday Aug 04, 2021
GB NEWS & TOXIC 'FREEDOM' - INTERESTING TIMES 40
Wednesday Aug 04, 2021
Wednesday Aug 04, 2021
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.]

Tuesday Apr 20, 2021
THE COLD WAR WITH CHINA - INTERESTING TIMES 31
Tuesday Apr 20, 2021
Tuesday Apr 20, 2021
This podcast deals with economic, military and propaganda aspects of the developing cold war with China. [Free. 1 hour 25 minutes.]

Saturday Mar 06, 2021
THE DRY TINDER OF RESENTMENT & OPPORTUNITIES FOR EMANCIPATION - INTERESTING TIMES 25
Saturday Mar 06, 2021
Saturday Mar 06, 2021
Borrowing a metaphor from Chris Hedges, I consider the UK body politic as rather like a bulk of dry tinder waiting for a random spark to ignite a conflagration of unrest. I suggest that both Brexit and the COV19 pandemic are intensifiers of this flammability. I treat the matter as having economic and cultural-ideological dimensions, particularly lighting on recent trade union activity in the UK. The recent UK budget receives some attention, particularly the 1% pay rise offer made to health service workers and the angry response that the health professionals made to it. I make suggestions as to how the broad left might not be caught disorientated the day after the inevitable sublime moments that are now waiting in the wings. This involves the judicious use of the utopian imagination to co-ordinate the many strands of progressive activism. [Free. 43 minutes.]