Podcast 478

On Media. It started out as an idea for a podcast on Friday. A departure from the increasingly tedious, even terrifying and depressing world of politics. As the weekend progressed and opportunities for socializing were offered, ‘On Media’ moldered, then morphed into something more complex. After several attempts to assess what the podcast would be about, one attempt to write it and three attempts to record it, I finally just said the hell with it and decided to talk it out. Thus ‘On Media’. Some of it is a repackaging of ideas behind the podcasts I’ve done about the fact that the mass marketing most of us have gown up in is gone, replaced with a new world of mass specialization. People ask me all the time what is going on in the world. What’s wrong with the media. Or, they tell me the media is at fault. The media is bad. What is the definition of media? What is it’s role in society? What’s really going on? These days we have millions of sources of information available at any time. Any one of those sources can be the most viewed in any single day. It is not unusual for You Tube channels to have more views in a few hours than the cable news channels have all week. In the middle of this is politics. All news coverage is emotional and symbolic. There used to be a tactic called political theater. Now it’s all theater. Politics is media. We are submerged in images of persuasion everywhere we go. From the logos on the clothing we wear, to the TV’s in bars pouring their images into our minds while we eat our burgers. All these images are emotional, and emotional because emotion persuades. You think people seem angry, frustrated, confused? Wonder why? We can’t seem to get a handle on what’s wrong. Our government is the product of something called The Enlightenment. Are we enlightened? Or enslaved? Sponsored by Brush Studio in the West End, Saint Louis Park, and by Hydrus Performance.

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Podcast 476

No Trump. No Trump in this podcast because it is a Trump Free Zone. Time to tackle something fun! The End Of The World. Lately, everyone seems to wonder ‘what’s going on’? The answer is usually some form of ‘the end of the world’. Aliens, Planet X, Comets, Global Warming, Famine, Disease, and General Weirdness. You name it, someone thinks that’s causing the end of the world. There’s a definitive answer for the question, is the world ending? Yes. The world is ending. The world you grew up in, regardless of your age, is slowly ending. For some, the specter of a new time, with new demographics, new ideas, and new tools is too frightening. So, the bogeyman in the closet takes many forms. Now, these days we do face a number of challenges; Economic, social, political and personal. At the same time, some of the institutions created in this country decades ago to deal with problems current at the time, are crumbling. This is inevitable. The question is how we deal with this change. Do we run from it? Stick our fingers in our ears and demand that no one discuss it? Retreat into endless discussions of conspiracy theory, the arrival of some rogue planet, and alien bases on the dark side of the moon? Or do we get all hands on deck, trim the sales, and get ready for the storm. Yes the world has changed. Some things that were great are gone. Some things that are great have arrived. A great age is upon this country and this world. Some of the changes will be very positive. Some changes will be very negative. Either way, it is coming and it cannot be avoided. It’s time to turn off the cable news shows, let the election proceed, and start examining what we think about, how we think, and how we greet each new day, sometimes referred to as ‘the future’. You can be afraid and run from reality, or you can take it head on. Which one do you prefer? Sponsored by Brush Studio and Hydrus.

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Podcast 450

Beware The Soothsayers. So much of our media these days is caught up in predicting the future. Weather, economics, sports and especially politics, isn’t so much about fact as it is about predictions based on opinion and poorly supported ‘fatcs’. Without a real basis in science or proven facts, we’re constantly told what the ‘future will bring’. It’s a wonder news anchors and ‘commentators’ don’t wear brightly colored head dresses and look into a crystal ball. One of the reasons we are ill served by a modern media possessed of the greatest technology for informing known to man, is its executives exhort their on screen ‘actors’ and so called ‘journalists’ to use opinion and hearsay to ‘predict’ what ‘will’ happen, rather than just report the facts around an event, or ‘the news’. For instance, lower prices for gasoline was going to ‘act like a tax cut’ and we would have economic growth. The Christmas retail shopping season might be a little down, but it would still be good. Donald Trump would be a flash in the pan, and would ‘collapse’ as soon as voters ‘came to their senses’. This is the time of year astrologers make their predictions for 2016, which are about as accurate as the wild ‘predictions’ made by the cable news services, round table discussions, commentary pieces distributed on line, and most of the rest of the media conglomeration complex, especially talk radio and the cable news channels. What do you think would happen if they stopped making predictions? There’d be a lot of dead air. In fact most of what is being broadcast and written these days is little more than fortune telling, and not very good fortune telling at that. In a late night podcast by the fire, as we labor under a winter storm watch in the upper midwest (at least a foot of snow ‘predicted’ with the ‘storm’ starting Monday night), time to air some concerns about what we are being told, and talk about the antidote to it. Sponsored by Hydrus Performance, and by the Mobile Podcast Command Unit of The Bob Davis Podcasts. 

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