Heart Yoga Radio

TRUMP STEALS GAZA - "THIS IS THE WORLD NAKED" - INTERESTING TIMES 87

In this podcast, I interpret Francesca Albanese's exclamation, on hearing Donald Trump call for the ethnic cleansing of Gaza in order that it might be reconstructed as desirable real estate, that "this is the world naked". I discuss the proposed annexation of Canada, Panama, and Greenland alongside the psychology of delusions of omnipotence and the MAGA cult. [Free. 29 minutes.]

STICKING IT TO THE MAN, UBI & DENIAL - INTERESTING TIMES 86

Join me on my constitutional. In this podcast, I examine how wide-spread and justifiable resentment at conditions of life under current power arrangements is channelled by the very agencies causing that resentment into serving their project of concentrating concentrate wealth and power in a very few hands. The result here is that a good many people believe passionately that they are sticking it to the man by cleaving to beliefs, action and politics which that same man devised and paid to propagate. I use the example of some recent debate around the viability of Universal Basic Income (UBI) and the role of the state. [Free. 27 minutes.]

THE DIN OF RATTLING SABRES - INTERESTING TIMES 76

In this podcast, I reflect on growing geo-political tensions around Iran's intent to retaliate against Israel's attack on its Damascus embassy in which several prominent members of Iran's military were assassinated. I include in my considerations some of the cultural effects of these developments in the UK, particularly the calls for conscription, Labour's intent to increase spending on the military should it gain power, and its full embrace of nukes. Throughout, I use some previous considerations developed on this channel of the several crucial features of historical fascism as a lens with which to gain purchase on these matters. [Free. 17 minutes.]

A PIVOTAL MOMENT FOR OUR FUTURE? - INTERESTING TIMES 70

In this podcast, we reflect on recent events in Gaza. We pay particular attention to huge pro-Palestine marches and demonstrations across the earth, as well as geo-political shifts that are taking place this moment. We plead for immediate ceasefire. [Free. 1 hour 6minutes.]

NAT-C OR NAZI? INTERESTING TIMES 65

In this rather long podcast, we analyse  various moments from the National Conservatism conference which was recently held in London, and some of the commentary that has ensued. We focus on the ideological substrate of the organising group, The Edmund Burke Foundation which is named after the 18th Century writer and Parliamentarian who is often hailed as the founder of both UK and US conservatism. [This despite Burke belong to the Whigs rather than Tories.] We ask, is this movement fascist and/or dangerous?" [Free. 96 minutes.]

REMARKS ON FREUD PART 2 - THE TOPOGRAPHICAL MODEL

This podcast continues with our series of Freud's thought. It focusses on Freud's lecture Dissection of the Psychical Personality (1933), outlining it and critically appraising it's main features. [Free. 55 minutes.]

REMARKS ON FREUD PART 1 - THE UNCONSCIOUS

This podcast is the first in an ongoing series on Freud and psychoanalysis which is meant to be useful to our series on fascism and reason, as well as to our many considerations of the workings of propaganda and ideology. Here, give some background to Freud's intellectual journey and elucidate the notion of 'the unconscious' and its significance for humanity's self-image. [Free. 34 minutes.]

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.]

REASON ON REASON 2 - THE ANTECEDENTS TO THE ENLIGHTENMENT

In this second episode of our series on reason, I take a broad brush to outline 

some of the main antecedents to the so-called European Enlightenment, also know as 'The Age of Reason'. I focus on the rise of experimental science in the contexts of church power and violence against those who contradict its doctrines, the rise of the bourgeoisie, and advances in mathematics. The figures of Descartes, Galileo and Newton loom large but Aristotle, Aquinas, Copernicus, Kepler and others also have parts. [Free. 44 minutes.]

WHAT IS FASCISM? 1 - HISTORICAL EXAMPLES

In this first of a series on fascism, I identify eleven prominent features of the historical forms of fascism of Hitler's Germany  and Mussolini's Italy, describe them and show how they inter-relate.  I make the point that the features can give rise to varied surface appearances and that we shouldn't expect future manifestations of the 'syndrome' to look like Nazi Germany or fascist Italy. I propose to see, in future podcasts of this series, to see if we find any of the crucial feature incipient or actually present in the contemporary situation of the USA and the UK.  [Free. 54 minutes.]