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LF38 Dean Puckett – Anarchy and Activism in an Age of Austerity

Dean Puckett discusses his latest film Grasp the Nettle, a documentary which follows the exploits of a ragtag band of land rights activists in London as they struggle against corporations, government, police – and themselves – in their efforts to create alternative communities outside the framework of consumer society.
When an eco-village pops up on a piece of disused land in West London, Dean gives up everything – his flat, job and normal life – to live among its eclectic inhabitants in an effort to understand what makes them tick. Before he knows it, he is pulled into an epic, inspiring and at times harrowing journey of discovery, as he follows the villagers from the suburbs to the heart of London outside the Palace of Westminster, where they occupy Parliament Square. Their ranks swelled by the homeless, the visionaries and eccentrics of the new-found Democracy Village clash with authority, and each other, as they grapple with how to balance their ideals of freedom with the increasing chaos around them.
Shot over three years in the aftermath of the 2008 banking collapse, Grasp the Nettle is an intimate exploration of the rise and fall of two radical social experiments, pioneered by the loved and the lost of a city reeling from the impact of economic and ecological crisis. In the process, it asks hard questions about the nature of freedom and the meaning of activism in these ‘interesting times’.
www.graspthenettlefilm.comwww.deaddeanfilms.co.uk
Related interview:Nafeez Ahmed
Bumper music: Cliff Martinez ‘Traffic OST’Peter Baumann ‘Meridian Moorland’

LF37 Jim Holt – Why Does the World Exist?

Jim Holt discusses his book Why Does the World Exist? ‘Why is there a world rather than nothing at all?’ remains the most curious and enduring of all metaphysical mysteries. Moving beyond the narrower paths of Christopher Hitchens, Roger Penrose and Stephen Hawking, celebrated essayist Holt enters this fascinating debate with a broad, lively and deeply informed narrative that traces all our efforts to grasp the origins of the universe. With sly humour and a highly original personal approach, Holt takes on the role of cosmological detective. Suggesting that we might have been too narrow in limiting our suspects to God and the Big Bang, he tracks down, among others, an eccentric Oxford philosopher, a Nobel Laureate physicist, a French Buddhist monk, and novelist John Updike just before he died, to pursue this cosmic puzzle from every angle. As he pieces together a solution – while offering useful insights into time, consciousness, and eternity – he sheds fascinating new light on the meaning of existence.
Bumper music: Cliff Martinez ‘Traffic OST’Cwtch ‘Identities, Realities, Values’

LF36 James Swagger – Astronomy, Atlantis and Apocalypse in Megalithic Europe

Author James Swagger on his book The Newgrange Sirius Mystery: Linking Passage Grave Cosmology with Dogon Symbology. Topics discussed include archaeology, astronomy, alternative history, rock art, Atlantis, Hyperborea and lost civilizations, The Deluge and sunken land masses, polar shifts, solar flares, entheogens and altered states of consciousness, and the design and purpose of megalithic sites throughout Europe.
James was first introduced to topical science writing for a historical mysteries magazine in Ireland. This whetted his appetite for researching ancient knowledge and lost science, and he initially sought out the megalithic monuments of Western Europe in his spare time. His embrace of a multidisciplinary approach to the research of megalithic sites, and the larger view of passage grave cosmology, produced his first book, The Newgrange Sirius Mystery.
Bumper music: Cliff Martinez ‘Traffic OST’Klaus Schulze ‘Stardancer II’

LF35 Tammy Strobel – The Best Things in Life Aren’t Things

Tammy Strobel on her book You Can Buy Happiness (and It’s Cheap): How One Woman Radically Simplified Her Life and How You Can Too.
While the new field of happiness research makes headlines, and the 99% face austerity at every turn, blogs like The Art of Nonconformity, Zen Habits, and Miss Minimalist attract millions looking to find more happiness, community, and fulfilment in less stuff, less debt, and less wage-chasing. Tammy Strobel and her husband are living the voluntary downsizing or smart-sizing dream and in You Can Buy Happiness, she combines research on well-being with numerous real world examples to offer practical inspiration. Her fresh take on our things, our work, and our relationships spell out micro-actions that anyone can take to step off the getting-and-spending treadmill and into a life that’s more conscious and connected, sustainable and sustaining, heartfelt and happy.
Tammy blogs regularly at www.rowdykittens.com
Bumper music: Cliff Martinez ‘Traffic OST’Steve Roach ‘Structures from Silence’

LF34 Amit Goswami – Quantum Consciousness: The Mind of God

Dr. Amit Goswami discusses some of the ideas and concepts in his book God Is Not Dead: What Quantum Physics Tells Us about Our Origins and How We Should Live.
Dr. Goswami’s hypothesis is that quantum physics holds the key to all the unsolved mysteries of biology – the nature and origin of life, fossil gaps of evolution, why evolution proceeds from simple to complex, and why biological beings have feeling and consciousness. In God Is Not Dead, Goswami moves beyond theory and shows how a God-based science puts ethics and values where they belong: at the centre of our lives and societies. He provides a scientific model that steers between scientific materialism and religious fundamentalism; a model that has implications for how we live both individually and collectively.
Dr. Goswami is a theoretical nuclear physicist and professor emeritus of physics at the University of Oregon, where he taught for 30 years. He was featured in the hit movie What the Bleep Do We Know? and in Who’s Driving the Dream Bus? He is the author of many books, including The Self-Aware Universe, and is considered the founder of the new paradigm of science called science within consciousness.
www.amitgoswami.orgwww.quantumactivist.com
Bumper music: Cliff Martinez ‘Traffic OST’Klaus Schulze ‘Schwanensee I’

LF33 Thomas Sheridan – The Anvil of the Psyche: Part Two

Author Thomas Sheridan on his latest book The Anvil of the Psyche.
This is a two part interview. Part one is here.
Ask yourself: what is popular culture? How does it come into existence? How do universally accepted ideas of art and creativity, mass media, publishing and financial constructs, and political and social doctrines arise? Are mass social and cultural movements – coupled with one’s personal and social identity – always a natural flow of social, economic, philosophical, spiritual and artistic threads of the collective human experience? Do they organically emerge from the underground to gradually become mainstream cultural and social consensus? And from these options and opinions, do we pick and choose objectively? Do we, as the consumer, the investor, the voter make our individual decisions, affiliations, allegiances and even our emotional attachments, determined exclusively by our own choices? The answer to all these questions is NO!
In The Anvil of the Psyche, Thomas Sheridan seeks to show us how controlled we really are, the often detrimental effects this has upon us, and what we can do to build a firewall for our minds. Topics discussed include politics, sport, advertising, mainstream media, personal identity and perception, magic and symbolism, conceptual and modern art, Hollywood, and popular music including The Beatles, Lady Gaga and U2.
www.thomassheridanarts.comIllustration by David Dees
Bumper music: Cliff Martinez ‘Traffic OST’

LF32 Thomas Sheridan – The Anvil of the Psyche: Part One

Author Thomas Sheridan on his latest book The Anvil of the Psyche.
This is a two part interview. Click here for part two.
Ask yourself: what is popular culture? How does it come into existence? How do universally accepted ideas of art and creativity, mass media, publishing and financial constructs, and political and social doctrines arise? Are mass social and cultural movements – coupled with one’s personal and social identity – always a natural flow of social, economic, philosophical, spiritual and artistic threads of the collective human experience? Do they organically emerge from the underground to gradually become mainstream cultural and social consensus? And from these options and opinions, do we pick and choose objectively? Do we, as the consumer, the investor, the voter make our individual decisions, affiliations, allegiances and even our emotional attachments, determined exclusively by our own choices? The answer to all these questions is NO!
In The Anvil of the Psyche, Thomas Sheridan seeks to show us how controlled we really are, the often detrimental effects this has upon us, and what we can do to build a firewall for our minds. Topics discussed include politics, sport, advertising, mainstream media, personal identity and perception, reality TV, subliminal messages and popular music including Elvis and Michael Jackson.
www.thomassheridanarts.com
Illustration by David Dees
Bumper music: Cliff Martinez ‘Traffic OST’Brian Hodgson ‘The Mind Robber’
 

LF31 Dave Gardner – Growthbusters: Hooked on Growth

Director Dave Gardner discusses his film GrowthBusters: Hooked on Growth. This ground-breaking documentary challenges our beliefs linking growth with prosperity and fulfilment. The film explores how our attitudes toward economics, consumption and population growth prevent rational responses to evidence that we’ve outgrown the planet. In this David vs. Goliath story, Dave shares his own personal story of daring to challenge our growth-worshipping system. He is rebuked by elected officials who are deacons of the church of growth everlasting, takes on millionaire real-estate developers enriched by public subsidies, and tackles economists who spin pro-growth propaganda.
GrowthBusters weaves the tale of Dave’s efforts to wean his hometown from growth addiction with an examination of the most critical global issues of our time. Interviews with leading thinkers, animation and humorous skits debunk the ‘grow or die’ myth. Cultural myths and taboos are exposed and explored. Providing a ray of hope, the film also profiles groups and individuals exploring alternatives and moving the world toward true sustainability.
Bumper music: Cliff Martinez ‘Traffic OST’Pink Floyd ‘Animals’
View the Growthbusters trailer:http://vimeo.com/30647439

LF30 Nafeez Ahmed – The Crisis of Civilization

Author and international security analyst Dr Nafeez Mosaddeq Ahmed on The Crisis of Civilization. Dr Ahmed is author of A User’s Guide to the Crisis of Civilization: And How to Save It, and co-producer of The Crisis of Civilization.
It often seems that different crises are competing to devastate civilization. The Crisis of Civilization argues that financial meltdown, environmental degradation, dwindling oil reserves, terrorism and food shortages need to be considered as part of the same ailing system.
Most accounts of our contemporary global crises focus on one area, or another, to the exclusion of others. The Crisis of Civilization suggests that the unwillingness of experts to look outside their own fields explains why there is so much disagreement and misunderstanding about the nature of the global threats we face. The Crisis of Civilization attempts to investigate all of these problem areas, not as isolated events, but as trends and processes that belong to a single global system. We are therefore not dealing with a ‘clash of civilizations’ as Samuel Huntington argued. Nor have we witnessed ‘the end of history’ that Francis Fukuyama prematurely declared. Rather, we are dealing with the end of the industrial age, a fundamental crisis of civilization itself.
Bumper music: Cliff Martinez ‘Traffic OST’Ulf Langheinrich ‘Degrees of Amnesia’

LF29 Harvey Molotch – Against Security

Sociologist Harvey Molotch on his book Against Security: How We Go Wrong at Airports, Subways, and Other Sites of Ambiguous Danger.
Remember when an unattended package was just that, an unattended package? Remember when the airport was a place that evoked magical possibilities, not the anxiety of a full-body scan? In the post-9/11 world, we have become focused on heightened security measures, but do you feel safer? Are you safer?
Against Security explains how our anxieties about public safety have translated into command-and-control procedures that annoy, intimidate, and are often counterproductive. Taking readers through varied ambiguously dangerous sites, Molotch argues that we can use our existing social relationships to make life safer and more humane. He begins by addressing the misguided strategy of eliminating public restrooms, which deprives us all of a basic resource and denies human dignity to those with no place else to go. Subway security instills fear through programs like ‘See Something, Say Something’ and intrusive searches that have yielded nothing of value. At the airport, the security gate causes crowding and confusion, exhausting the valuable focus of TSA staff. Finally, Molotch shows how defensive sentiments have translated into the vacuous Freedom Tower at the World Trade Center site and massive error in New Orleans, both before and after Hurricane Katrina. Throughout, Molotch offers thoughtful ways of maintaining security that are not only strategic but improve the quality of life for everyone.
Against Security argues that with changed policies and attitudes, redesigned equipment, and an increased reliance on our human capacity to help one another, we can be safer and maintain the pleasure and dignity of our daily lives.
Bumper music: Cliff Martinez ‘Traffic OST’John Carpenter ‘Escape From New York’ OST