Episodes
![LOOKING BACK OVER 2022 & FORWARD TO 2023 - INTERESTING TIMES 62](https://pbcdn1.podbean.com/imglogo/image-logo/771447/hyradiologobig2_300x300.png)
Thursday Jan 05, 2023
LOOKING BACK OVER 2022 & FORWARD TO 2023 - INTERESTING TIMES 62
Thursday Jan 05, 2023
Thursday Jan 05, 2023
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](https://pbcdn1.podbean.com/imglogo/image-logo/771447/hyradiologobig2_300x300.png)
Monday Dec 19, 2022
ON STRIKES - INTERESTING TIMES 61
Monday Dec 19, 2022
Monday Dec 19, 2022
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](https://pbcdn1.podbean.com/imglogo/image-logo/771447/hyradiologobig2_300x300.png)
Tuesday Dec 13, 2022
EDEN REVISITED
Tuesday Dec 13, 2022
Tuesday Dec 13, 2022
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.]
![EIE, A GLIMMER OF HOPE - INTERESTING TIMES 59](https://pbcdn1.podbean.com/imglogo/image-logo/771447/hyradiologobig2_300x300.png)
Tuesday Oct 04, 2022
EIE, A GLIMMER OF HOPE - INTERESTING TIMES 59
Tuesday Oct 04, 2022
Tuesday Oct 04, 2022
In this podcast, we appraise the recent demonstrations in 50 UK towns and cities by the Enough is Enough movement, which has largely been instigated by a number of active trade unions to combat the cost of living crisis. We find the broad base of the movement encouraging as well as its grounding in the lived experience of the working class, economically understood. Click BUY ME A COFFEE to make a small donation. [Free. 23 minutes.]
![RIOT AND REFUSAL - INTERESTING TIMES 57](https://pbcdn1.podbean.com/imglogo/image-logo/771447/hyradiologobig2_300x300.png)
Saturday Aug 27, 2022
RIOT AND REFUSAL - INTERESTING TIMES 57
Saturday Aug 27, 2022
Saturday Aug 27, 2022
In this podcast we compare and contrast the current situation in the UK, particularly the initiative to produce a mass refusal to pay exorbitant energy bills, with the success that mass action had in getting the 1990 Tory Government to reverse its poll tax policy. The discussion is set in a wide historical/economic context. [Free. 42 minutes]
![THE DAY AFTER](https://pbcdn1.podbean.com/imglogo/image-logo/771447/hyradiologobig2_300x300.png)
Saturday Aug 27, 2022
THE DAY AFTER
Saturday Aug 27, 2022
Saturday Aug 27, 2022
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]
![RESIGNATIONS, CHAOS AND FRAGMENTATION - INTERESTING TIMES 56](https://pbcdn1.podbean.com/imglogo/image-logo/771447/hyradiologobig2_300x300.png)
Monday Jul 11, 2022
![APOCALYPSE REPORT JUNE 22 - INTERESTING TIMES 54](https://pbcdn1.podbean.com/imglogo/image-logo/771447/hyradiologobig2_300x300.png)
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.]
![LAO TZU 47](https://pbcdn1.podbean.com/imglogo/image-logo/771447/hyradiologobig2_300x300.png)
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.]
![INSECURITY IN OUR TURBULENT TIMES](https://pbcdn1.podbean.com/imglogo/image-logo/771447/hyradiologobig2_300x300.png)
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.]