Podcast 546

Podcast 546-What Is Next? Almost all media these days is advocacy journalism. It used to be called ‘yellow journalism’. Back in the day yellow journalism was characterized by newspaper publishers like William Randolph Hearst who, when an artist he’d sent to Cuba cabled Hearst the fact that the USS Maine had blown up because of an accident, famously replied, “You supply the pictures, I’ll supply the war!” Everywhere we turn these days we are bombarded with the surface arguments. The personalities, the propaganda, the arguing back and forth. It goes far beyond media bias. It has become media advocacy. Telling you and I who to vote for and why. Telling us what we are to believe in and what our country stands for, and why. It’s a fact of life on both sides of the fence. We end up going back and forth about nonsense, most of the time. For me to add to this noise, seems to be a waste of time. Of course I have my own point of view about politics these days, and I’ll try and save most of those observations for podcasts detailing state by state polls, or addressing specific issues when they need to be addressed. How you vote, who you vote for and why you vote the way you do is your business. The easy thing to do these days is turn on the microphone and bloviate about what happened on the campaign trail today. It is much harder to find something to discuss that goes beyond. Hence Podcast 546-What Is Next? How can we move to the next step in the country and the world. Not what happens after election day 2016, or Inauguration Day 2017. This question deals with what happens down the line. If we spent a fraction of our time actually trying to inform ourselves about issues we can know about, rather than consuming propaganda, we would be better citizens and better stewards of the future for the country. The answers to the things we can know about, aren’t in social media or even necessarily searchable. The answers are in libraries. We can’t be fully informed about an issue if we don’t even know what questions to search. So let’s get started answering the question, What’s Next? Sponsored by Ryan Plumbing and Heating of Saint Paul and Hydrus Performance.

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Podcast 544

Podcast 544-Self Definition. How would you describe yourself to someone you did not know? Are you defined by how you look, what kind of job you have, what kind of car you drive? Are you defined by material possessions? Do you define yourself according to the political spectrum as being of ‘the right’ or ‘the left’. A question that started out in Yoga class has been resonating with me all weekend. Time for Podcast 544-Self Definition. In a daily Yoga practice the question of how one defines themselves has to do with attaching yourself to how you do certain poses, how you look, how strong you are in comparison to others. Reaching a deeper practice requires the student to let go of those kinds of hard and fast definitions of themselves. In this podcast I expand on this idea to fit into society in general. Asking how we define ourselves certainly isn’t an original thought of mine, it came from my fantastic Yoga Teacher, Angela T. But expanding it to society as a whole is an interesting exercise. We’re living through a period of change, with new tools and new ways of doing things people could only imagine just twenty years ago, and thirty years ago the things we think of as everyday weren’t on anyone’s mind. All kinds of changes are taking place due to these new tools, yet many of us remain in the old world, deeply attached to outmoded perceptions and ideas about who we are. Historians like to name ‘eras’ well after they have passed. For example, historians refer to the United States just before the Civil War ‘antebellum’. Historians refer to the period between World War I and World War II as the ‘interwar’ period. People living in those times did not think of them as ‘antebellum’ or ‘interwar’, just their time. How we define ourselves has a big impact on whether we are resistant to change, which we all are to some degree or another. Big changes are underway now, and will gather momentum in the near future. Given the advances we see almost everyday, more change is on the agenda going forward. Hanging on too tightly prevents us from seeing solutions, using ideas, and being happy. How do you define yourself? In this podcast I share how I have defined myself in the past, how it effected me, and how I think about these things today. Sponsored by Karow Contracting.

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