Podcast 565-Lost Desert Civilization?

Podcast 565-Lost Desert Civilization? Adventure and Travel in Arizona at Casa Grande On The Road in at the Casa Grande ruins in the Sonoran Desert, in Southeastern Arizona. From the first century AD, to the mid 1400’s a people flourished in the Sonoran Desert. In Podcast 565-Lost Desert Civilization? I toured Casa Grande. Descendants of the Huhugham (translated incorrectly as the Hohokam because Huhugham is pronounced Ho Ho KAHM) are represented in many of the Native American tribes of this region. They were hunter gatherers who mastered irrigation from the Salt and Gila rivers. Their villages extended all along those river valleys and into this desert. You often hear from Europeans that there are no ruins in America as old as those in Europe. Of course the ruins in Greece and Italy and across Europe are amazing. America, though, does have ruins dating to a different culture and different people, much older than the United States itself. Some academics believe there were hundreds of thousands of people in this desert. They lived in villages stretching from what is now Southeastern Arizona to California, down into what is today Mexico. These villages flourished for many centuries before the 1400’s producing sophisticated art and trading as far west as today’s California and as far south as today’s Mexico. Think mastering irrigation is no major feat? Today, when you drive through this part of Arizona, all kinds of crops are cultivated year round because of irrigation. What makes the story of the Hohokam so interesting is their dispersal, which archeologists believe began sometime around 1450. What caused these people to break up and leave the area? Was it an overly rainy season? Wars? Disease and perhaps famine as the result of an oscillating climate? What makes Casa Grande so important and unique? Or, did they become victims of their own success, with too many people to support for even their advanced agriculture of the time? It makes me wonder what people will say about us someday. We think we are different but how many know that once there was a people who probably believed they were pretty advanced, and in the course of half a century or so, it all came crashing down. While we argue about something as petty as who said what about whom in these final days before election 2016, the message of Casa Grande might be one we should hear. Sponsored by Ryan Plumbing and X Governmentcars.com.

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Podcast 557-Bob Davis Podcasts Radio Show #47

Podcast 557-Bob Davis Podcasts Radio Show #47. Kitty Genovese was murdered on a street in Kew Gardens, Queens New York in 1964. She is famous because the New York Times ran a story that scores of witnesses saw Kitty stabbed by an assailant, and did nothing. Fifty years later her younger brother Bill Genovese did the legwork the New York Times did not do and guess what? It turns out the idea that decent people would ignore a woman being attacked and killed on the street in a major city turns out to be a myth. New York Times editor Abe Rosenthal thought it would help people to tell the story the way his paper told it. In fact as the new documentary ‘The Witness‘ shows, the idea that people would stand by and do nothing ended up having devastating consequences for Kitty’s brother Bill. No spoilers here, but a great piece of work from a citizen journalist who decided to get to the bottom of the story; something apparently the New York Times couldn’t do for fifty years. Or 60 minutes. Or dramas like Perry Mason and Law and Order, all perpetuated the myth no one did anything while Ms. Genovese, 28 was being murdered. It’s a great illustration of the fact that while we live in a supposedly modern society, we’re constantly told lies disguised as myths because an editor or producer or reporter somewhere decided it would ‘help people’, or because they’re lazy, or because it’s clickbait. If you want to know why Election 2016 is based on lies, fairy tales and myth, why the issues are fake, the candidates and the political parties are fake, ‘The Witness’ is a good place to start. Realizing the media is complicit in creating myths no less powerful than the old oral histories passed down by shaman and story tellers around the campfire, through family, clan and tribe, one wonders what it takes to get to the facts in a case. Fact is, most of the time all it takes is some time and shoe leather to check the source material and talk to people on the front lines. Does our media do that? No, it’s much cheaper and easier to sit in an air condition studio in Times Square, with a roundtable of other people who know nothing, telling everyone else what they should be thinking and doing. What implications does this modern myth making (called story-lines) have? How can you make good decisions with bad data? Welcome to 1984. Sponsored by X Government Cars and Ryan Plumbing and Heating of Saint Paul.

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Podcast 555-The Bob Davis Radio Show-46

Podcast 555-The Bob Davis Radio Show-46. An all new podcast doubling as the radio show for this week. There’s two considerations here. First, if you’re a subscriber to The Bob Davis Podcasts, repeating content in the radio show is, well, repetitive. Second, the podcasts this week, whether Podcast 554 (State by State poll run down) or Podcast 553 (Interview with AgoraFest‘s Nik Ludwig), the content doesn’t lend itself well to be excerpted. So, for Podcast 555-The Bob Davis Radio Show-46, I did a completely new segment updating the polling data for just the so called ‘Toss-Up’ States in Election 2016 with special attention paid to the Senate races in key states. I also added a segment with a little bit more of a primer about polls, and how they are used or misused in media coverage. These two benchmarks; Podcast 554 and Podcast 555-The Bob Davis Radio Show-46 are great to listen to because then when you hear or see new information on state by state polling, you’ll understand which states are important and how the polling in that state may have changed. You’ll also understand trending polls from different pollsters isn’t necessarily providing an accurate picture of what’s going to happen when people actually vote. I use the electoral map from Real Clear Politics and you can follow along if you want. Others are available. Almost all of them are interactive. Finally, some words about Individual Sovereignty. There’s a lot of back-and-forth in this election cycle and a lot of coverage of the back-and-forth; What this one said about that one, whether this is going to effect his or her poll numbers. There’s a lot of content from shills defending one candidate or attacking another. There’s been very little actual discussion about what freedom is or how these new representatives, senators and presidents are going to insure we get to keep it. We can get distracted by the shiny things in the woods, or we can stay focused on claiming our personal sovereignty. How we personally define freedom in the coming months and years is going to become very important. The current two-party system is coming to an end. That is; The Republican and Democratic parties have lost touch with the people. Something new is coming and we need to make sure whatever that is protects and defends our individual freedom. Sponsored by X Government Cars.

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