Legalise Freedom Dot Com

LF209 Doug Lain - Can Human Beings Live Forever?

Douglas Lain discusses Advocate for an Indefinite Human Lifespan, a new Zero Books title exploring the life extension techniques and technologies of Aubrey de Grey and the SENS Research Foundation.
Human beings are perhaps unique among Earth's sentient beings in that, from a relatively young age, we know that we are going to die. Despite this knowledge, and the fact that life and death are but two facets of the great cycle of creation and destruction, as a species we live in dread and denial of death, which remains one of the last great taboos. Some say we need to set death aside in order to live, while others claim that only acceptance of death allows us to truly come alive. Whatever the case, most of us are consciously or subconsciously terrified by the thought of our own annihilation. The religious cling to the hope held out by the promise of an afterlife, while the secular place their faith in a life well lived, free from comforting delusions.
Medical and material advances have extended human life expectancy well beyond what it was in centuries gone by, but de Grey's radical vision is of humans living longer - much longer - and in good health. Beyond the contested limits of sometimes controversial medical interventions, de Grey's plans have already drawn many moral and ethical objections: What would we do with a thousand year life? How would it affect love, family, work, and culture? And what of population and natural resources on an already groaning planet? Technology, we are assured, offers answers to all such doubts, and if the transhumanist wing of the life extension lobby have their way, a millennium of existence may one day seem like the blink of an eye. Augmented, upgraded, downloaded - for the man machine of the future, death may be but a distant dream. But are we becoming God or merely playing God?
Previous interview with Doug Lain: The Dream of Reality
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LF210 Dmitry Orlov - Shrinking the Technosphere

Dmitry Orlov discusses his book Shrinking the Technosphere: Getting a Grip on the Technologies that Limit our Autonomy, Self-sufficiency and Freedom.
Listen to the full show on Legalise Freedom Dot Com
Over the past two centuries we have witnessed the wholesale replacement of most previous methods of conducting both business and daily life with new, technologically advanced, more efficient methods, but what exactly is progressive or efficient about this new arrangement is hardly ever examined in depth. If the new ways of doing things are so much better, then we must all be leading relaxed, stress-free, enjoyable lives with plenty of free time to devote to art and leisure activities. But a more careful look at these changes shows us that the rapidly evolving brave new world of gadgets, gizmos and constant connectivity is instead a metastasising matrix of manipulation and control in which we have become slaves to money and machines. Creeping ever closer to outright omniscience, the Technosphere is an emergent intelligence in its own right.
The harm to the environment, society, and our individual lives is plain to see, but is brushed off amid hollow mantras about productivity, progress, and the graven idol of economic growth. Shrinking the Technosphere guides readers through the process of bringing technology down to a manageable number of carefully chosen, essential, well-understood, and controllable elements. It is about regaining the freedom to use technology for our own benefit, and is critical reading for all who seek to get back to a point where technologies assist us rather than control us. The endgame of the Technosphere is total domination; the outcome will be total destruction. But can humanity take back control before digital Armageddon finally dawns?
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LF212 Mari Swingle - iMinds: Total Technology and Human Evolution

Dr. Mari Swingle discusses her book i-Minds: How Cell Phones, Computers, Gaming, and Social Media are Changing Our Brains, Our Behaviour, and the Evolution of Our Species.
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We live in a hi-tech age, an era in which almost every aspect of our daily lives is mediated by some form of technology. The worlds of work, education, leisure, food, transport, health, communication and many, many more are now not only augmented and enhanced by technology, increasingly, they are impossible without it. But while some of the unwanted side effects of technology are recognised and well-known, are we too quick to dismiss them as a temporary phase affecting a lonely minority?
The advocates of 21st Century technology themselves are quick to point to an array of benefits, many undeniable, but at what point does our second life take over our real life, social media become anti-social? In our headlong rush towards techno-utopia, are we inadvertently breeding a generation of alienated, dysfunctional loners paralysed by endless choice and lost in a fantasy world of gaming, pornography, and all manner of virtual reality? Delving into the dark side of this brave new world, we examine the dangers of technological addiction and abuse, the debilitating psychological and physical fallout, and the potential to affect even the evolutionary future of the human race itself.
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LF183 Frank Joseph - Our Dolphin Ancestors

Frank Joseph discusses his book Our Dolphin Ancestors - Keepers of Lost Knowledge and Healing Wisdom.
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Wild animals avoid contact with humans, but wild dolphins seek us out to play and socialize, even going so far as to voluntarily rescue people from drowning. What explains this remarkable natural affinity? Revealing the evolutionary basis for our special relationship with dolphins, Frank Joseph explains how we are both descendants of the same ancient branch of humanity. Building upon the aquatic ape theory, he details how we both began on land but devastating floods forced our distant ancestors into the seas, where humanity developed many of the traits that set us apart from other primates, such as our instinctive diving reflex and our newborns' ability to swim. But while some of the aquatic apes returned to land, later evolving into modern humans, some remained in the cradle of the ocean and became our dolphin cousins.
Integrating scientific research on dolphin intelligence, communication, and physiology with enduring myths from some of the world's oldest cultures, such as the Aborigines, Norse, Greeks, and Celts, the author examines our physical commonalities with dolphins, including their vestigial thumbs and legs, birth processes, and body temperature. He explores dolphins' uncanny ability to diagnose disease such as cancer in humans and how dolphin therapy has had miraculous effects on children with autism, victims of stroke, and those suffering from depression. He provides evidence for dolphins' different attitudes toward men, women, and children, their natural affinity with cats and dogs, and their telepathic communication with other species, including ours. He explores dolphins' mysterious role in the birth of early civilization and their connections with the Dog Star, Sirius, and Atlantis and Lemuria - a bond still commemorated by annual gatherings of millions of dolphins. If we can learn to fully communicate with dolphins, accessing their millennia-old oral tradition, we may learn the truth about humanity's origins and our shared future, when humankind may yet again quit the land for a final return to the sea.
http://www.ancientamerican.com/
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LF194 John Michael Greer - The Truth About Brexit

John Michael Greer discusses the origins and potential outcome of the European Union's ongoing meltdown.
Listen to the full show on Legalise Freedom Dot Com
The recent Brexit referendum in the UK was never meant to happen. The result of a miscalculated attempt by former British Prime Minister David Cameron to neutralize the right wing UK Independence Party, Brexit has plunged the nation into a constitutional crisis. While 48% of the electorate voted for the UK to remain within the European Union, 52% voted to leave. As a result, the country is now deeply divided, and the rancour of a bitterly fought campaign has merely intensified since the outcome became clear. The total lack of planning for a vote to quit the EU is also starkly evident in the chaotic in-fighting and back-stabbing that has marred the political aftermath. So just how did this unintended mayhem come about?
At the core of the crisis but unacknowledged by the political class, mainstream media, and society at large are serious systemic problems affecting the economy, the environment, and the very foundations of our industrial society. These problems existed before Brexit, and they exist now. They would have remained exactly the same whether we voted 'leave' or 'remain'. The problems are global and they are not going away. They are, in fact, getting worse. If you need any evidence for this, one need only observe the utter farce masquerading as the current US Presidential election or, closer to home, the ominous rise of the far right in most, if not all, European Union countries. Until these harsh realities are fully faced, the pundits, pollsters, and politicians will continue to get it wrong. The kaleidoscope has been shaken, the pieces are in flux, and the sky is black with birds coming home to roost. When they do, they will reorder this world.
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LF97 Marcus Allen - Mysteries of the Moon Missions

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The Apollo program, also known as Project Apollo, was the third human spaceflight program carried out by the National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA), and the program was responsible for the landing of the first humans on Earth's Moon in 1969. First conceived during the Presidency of Dwight D. Eisenhower as a three-man spacecraft to follow the one-man Project Mercury which put the first Americans in space, Apollo was later dedicated to President John F. Kennedy's national goal of '''landing a man on the Moon and returning him safely to the Earth' by the end of the 1960s. Kennedy's goal was apparently accomplished on the Apollo 11 mission when astronauts Neil Armstrong and Buzz Aldrin landed their Lunar Module on the Moon on July 20, 1969. Five subsequent Apollo missions reportedly landed astronauts on the Moon, the last in December 1972.
However, beginning just a couple of years after the final Moon landing, doubts began to emerge about certain details of these missions and even as to whether any of them had taken place at all. Skeptics expressed many concerns about the feasibility of the missions: photographs taken on and around the Moon appeared to display many anomalies; questions were raised about the technology of mission control, the spacecraft itself, and the space suits, and whether any of it was actually up to the task; there were concerns about radiation, not just on the Moon itself but within the Van Allen belt which circles the Earth, a deadly radioactive zone some say would be impossible to traverse. And, of course, there is the question as to why man has never since returned to the Moon. Surely with today's vastly superior technology, this would be much easier to achieve.
Despite being refuted in some detail by NASA and a host of other agencies and individuals over the years, the idea that the manned Moon missions were staged just will not go away. Critics argue that skeptics are simply distrustful of government in general and that the Moon landings serve as sort of poster boy for them. But there are compelling reasons as to why a government would want to pull a stunt like this, and with the debate as heated as ever, it would appear that just one thing will silence the doubters for good.
www.nexusmagazine.com
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LF431 Claire Rae Randall - Is the Universe a Thought?

Claire Rae Randall and Greg Moffitt in conversation.
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An increasingly common theme in popular science is the idea that our thoughts create reality, or that they at least interact with the physical world in some way. This trend has also been mirrored in some sections of popular culture. In fact, pop culture characterisations of mysterious mental powers long pre-date the current scientific interest in how mind might affect matter. Taken together with the theory that mind – not matter – is fundamental and that physical reality itself actually exists within some vast non-material cosmic consciousness, the entire Universe and everything in it begins to look like one infinite and unimaginably complex thought process.
Cutting edge science increasingly lends credence to this and similar ideas which apply at each level of reality, from personal to planetary to galactic and beyond. What's more the process appears creative, and imbued with meaning and purpose, even if mainstream scientific materialism continues to refute any such possibility. But if you discovered that you are a cell in the organising intelligence which underlies everything, what would change?
Previous interviews with Claire Rae Randall
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LF430 Gregory Shushan - Near-Death Experience and the Origins of the World’s Afterlife Beliefs

Gregory Shushan discusses his book Near-Death Experience in Ancient Civilizations: The Origins of the World’s Afterlife Beliefs
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Taking readers on a thought-provoking journey into our ancestors’ beliefs about death, dying, and the afterlife, Shushan reveals the powerful influence of near-death experiences (NDEs) on religious beliefs and ritual practices throughout human history. Focusing on five ancient world regions in Egypt, Mesopotamia, India, China, and Mesoamerica, the author expertly explores each civilization’s afterlife beliefs. He explains how each of these civilizations developed independently of one another, yet there is a series of similarities among afterlife beliefs too consistent and specific to be mere coincidence. This leads to the profound implication that afterlife beliefs are not entirely invented by cultures: they also stem from universal truths derived from NDEs.
Drawing on anthropology, psychology, and philosophy, the author explores how each civilization interpreted NDEs and how afterlife beliefs develop over time. He also explores the metaphysical implications of his discoveries, including what an actual afterlife would look like. Revealing that NDEs have occurred throughout human history, Shushan shows how they continue to influence our understanding of what lies beyond death to this day.
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LF432 R.E. Kretz – The Age of Aquarius: Where Are We Going?

Richard Kretz and Greg Moffitt discuss the so-called Age of Aquarius and the potential for planetary change.
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For millennia, humans have gazed at the stars, seeking meaning in their patterns. Today, a growing chorus senses a shift, an electric hum of change in the air, hard to name but impossible to ignore. For many, most of the tectonic changes now underway on Earth are profoundly negative: political, social, economic, and environmental crises coupled with growing conflict, and trends in technology and artificial intelligence, all of which threaten the very existence of the human race.
Weaving together astrology, astronomy, and mythology, Kretz proposes that although the future looks highly uncertain, a metamorphosis is currently underway, disrupting old patterns, awakening new awareness, and restructuring for what is to come. As in the past, earthly upheavals seem to be mirrored by events elsewhere in the solar system and wider cosmic rhythms. The total solar eclipse of March 2034 may be important, but it’s our choices that will shape what comes next.
Other interviews with Richard Kretz
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LF429 Anthony Peake – Philip K. Dick: The Man Who Remembered the Future

Anthony Peake discusses the life and work of Philip K. Dick. Anthony’s biography of PKD is here .
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Philip K. Dick was one of the most imaginative and original science fiction writers of his era, and since his death in 1982, his novels have continued to be discovered by each new generation of sci fi fans. His stories have been adapted for the screen many times including Total Recall, Minority Report, A Scanner Darkly, The Man in the High Castle and, most famously, Blade Runner.
PKD – as he became known – was a periodic drug user with a colourful and sometimes chaotic personal life, a life which increasingly resembled those of some of the characters he himself created. Recurring themes in his work include the nature of reality, of time, of perception and of identity, alternate realities, artificial intelligence, dystopian futures, authoritarian governments, drug use, and altered states of consciousness.
Previous interviews with Anthony Peake
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