Podcast 426

How Media Has Changed. I’m about to go to my high school reunion, but for me, it’s a different kind of high school reunion. At over a thousand in my graduating class, it was way to big and impersonal for a full reunion. So, we’re having a reunion of graduates of the school’s ‘radio lab’ program, which included the high school radio station, where the ‘radio bug’ first bit. In a mid fall relaxed conversation on the deck with a fire, on a warm midnight, it’s time to talk about how television and radio have changed over the years giving way to social media, time shifting, video games, You Tube, cable only series and now serial dramas, really produced exclusively for viewing on line, or on specific sites. We used to have a collective experience — watching the same shows when they came on or watching events as they unfolded in real time. Those shared societal experiences don’t happen very often these days, aside from sporting events or monolithic breaking news stories. We do have collective experiences, but they happen at different times. What are you watching these days? Dramas? News? Comedy? Documentaries? Most people aren’t watching commercials anymore, taking the feed direct from the line, but they’re time shifting, watching more TV, consuming more information, but in a different way. How have opportunities to message the public changes. Besides, its fun sometimes to talk about what we’re watching. What is media? Sponsored by Ryan Plumbing and Heating of Saint Paul and Eric and Erum Lucero of Pride of Homes and Luke Team Real Estate.  

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Podcast 422

Waking Up. A fall night podcast live from the deck, with wind blowing in the trees, leaves falling, planes landing and weird noises. You hear a lot of talk these days about ‘waking up’. What does it mean? There’s an awful lot about ‘waking up’ on the Internet if you bother to do a search, from Anthony De Mello and other Theologians, to spiritualists, evangelists and regular everyday people. What do they mean by ‘waking up’? Does waking up mean moving from one dream to another? What does it mean to you? With bouncing ball ‘Schadenfreude’ news coverage the rule these days, binge viewing TV Shows (Editor’s Note: I am guilty of this one, and my list of favorite shows is in this podcast.), alcohol, weed, drugs the doctor prescribes and all kinds of other drugs from being too busy, to not being busy enough who is to say what waking up really is? Does it start with observing without action? Being actively silent? Living in the Now? Being religious? What does Yoga teach a podcaster about self awareness? Bottom line, some of us are very stubborn, but waking up is fun, even if its with just one eye open. Sponsored by X Government Trucks and Pride Of Homes. 

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Podcast 396

Summer Walk and Talk. The rules of the Walk and Talk Podcast are: No prep. No Planning. You walk. You Talk. Slash and Burn, Walk and Talk. At the peak of the summer it still doesn’t feel right to get down and dirty on the political front. There’s still a sense that the topography of the political battlefield will change at some point, and it will be back to the drawing board for the scores of presidential candidates, who are as plentiful as the corn growing in those Iowa fields. Besides, there’s Sturgis, air shows, local summer celebrations, fireworks, kids playing on the lawn, charcoal fires for steak and so…much…summer. Yet, if you look carefully, the sun has changed its angle slightly and in Minnesota at least, we’re just a month away from the State Fair. Every year, at some point during the state fair, the weather changes and we all know what that means. Fall is coming. So if you’re tweeting and face booking about one of the presidential candidates, watching the 24 hour cable channels religiously, hanging on every word of every shouting match, you’re missing real life going on. While people engaged in the business of politics are busy … the average person in the United States couldn’t care less right now about the latest spat between Mike Huckabee and Jeb Bush, or Bernie Sanders and Hillary Clinton. Big stories of the summer? The Planned Parenthood video is a doozy. The Chinese stock market collapse (which is being called their 1929) could become the black swan story if the perfumed princes in Beijing can’t get control of things. A calamity like this in Asia would have far reaching implications economically in the US and the world, and in terms of foreign policy. Commodity prices seem to be in a long term slump, and yet some media outlets are talking about inflation. Still, all these potential game-changers are just storm clouds in the west, on a warm summer night. A little lightning on the horizon, and maybe some rain and thunder by dawn. The romance of summer supersedes all that political noise, and it’s a good thing. Seriously, who doesn’t prefer the soft hum of summer twilight to some gas bagger on a podium? Sponsored by Baklund R&D. 

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