Podcast 492

Dramatic Distractions. Had a conversation with a friend awhile back and he said, “All these people and they’re shows. They’re asleep”. Didn’t think too much about it for almost a year, and today it popped into my head. To say that I love my shows is an understatement. So for this podcast I made a partial list of some of the series shows I have watched, or am watching on Netflix, iTunes, Hulu. It was a bit of a surprise. I didn’t even make a complete list and it’s way too long! Someone will hear this and think, “This guy does nothing but watch TV Shows”. Well. Uh. No. At least I didn’t think so until I actually made a list. Then I thought, am I that unusual? A lot of us watch these shows. Add to that screen time on FB, Instagram, Twitter and especially You Tube and you have the makings of a real distraction. And this AFTER I’ve scanned and read a huge portion of the news. I talk a lot about how people are watching the political news shows, and listening to talk radio and political podcasts as entertainment. Seldom do I talk about the escapism inherent in watching hour after hour of television drama, which. Is. So. Satisfying. The Walking Dead and the new Don’t Fear the Walking Dead. Ray Donovan. The Affair, Breaking Bad, Mad Men, Boardwalk Empire, The Wire, The Sopranos, Sons Of Anarchy, Justified, House of Cards. Mister White isn’t a meth dealer, he’s a TV drama producer in Hollywood! Do this shows influence our thinking about society? Or, are they just a guilty pleasure. By the way, who has time to read East of Eden, or In Cold Blood when these shows are being pumped out. It may be time for a news cleanse, as well as a drama cleanse. Then we get to a discussion of the delights available on You Tube. Endless Illuminati Conspiracy videos, horribly done but immensely entertaining horoscopes and tarot card readers. Finally, FaceBook has become nothing but posts and shares of dogs that can’t catch videos, cute kid videos, mom’s doing yoga videos, Bernie Sanders Memes, Ted Cruz Meme’s, and other nonsense. Who has time to work? Yeah, maybe it’s time we looked at this. Sponsored by Brush Studio In The West End, Saint Louis Park and by Hydrus Performance.

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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 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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