We're trialling a new format this week, as I am in the Bay of Fires for work. A visit to a beer-drinking pig inspired some ruminations on how and why we connect as this idiotic, digital hellscape builds itself around us.

The episode discusses the manipulation and sanitization of reality through digital currencies, IDs, and the evolving media landscape, including the shift to 'private' or enclosed digital engagement opportunities like Mighty Networks and Substack, aiming for authenticity in an increasingly controlled and artificial world.

00:00 Introduction: The World Without Sin
00:21 Filming in the Bay of Fires
00:27 The Pub in the Paddock and Priscilla the Pig
01:58 Exploring the Concept of 'The World Without Sin'
05:18 Digital IDs and Global Changes
09:08 Cultural Reflections and Media Strategy
16:50 The Gap Between Public and Private Discourse
22:55 Media Evolution and Personal Adaptations
39:09 Conclusion: Navigating the World Without Sin

In lieu of show notes, here is a picture of a pub, followed by a pig. You're welcome.

This week, we welcome to the show Mexican-Bolivian-Chilean healer, Red Path shaman and teacher Julián Katari.

Fun fact about Julián: He was my translator for my recent trip up to stay with the Kallawaya in the Bolivian High Andes. So we talk about that, of course.

We also talk about his own remarkable journey of spirit:

⭐ Vision quests
⭐ Aztec dance ceremonies
⭐ Peyote
⭐ Andean shamanism

We then discuss the sacred Mayan calendar and what it teaches us about the structure of the universe.

Super cool chat. Julián is the archetypal weird kid!

NOTE: Julián will be teaching a 20-week course on the Mayan calendar that will be available to purchase for $99 on the Rune Soup Premium Member Mighty Network. This is a discount of $400 and will only be available for purchase for the duration of the Time Magic course. Afterward the course will be available on his own site at its full price.

This is one of the best deals I have ever made available to premium members and it is, just on its own, worth joining. I've been in ceremony with Julián in the High Andes. He's a great teacher. 

Show Notes

• Julián's website.
• Julián on Instagram.

00:00 Introduction and Childhood
06:00 Embarking on a Spiritual Journey
19:04 Finding the Red Path
22:43 Exploring the Maya Cosmology
30:55 Teachings from a Maya Elder
39:18 Connecting with Nature and Community
44:38 Exploring the Complexity of the Mayan Calendar
49:52 Understanding the Mayan Worldview: A Code for Time and Space
57:16 The Practice of Day Keeping in the Mayan Calendar
01:03:31 The Role of Human Perception in the Creation of Time and Space
01:24:38 Uncovering My Bolivian Roots
01:27:23 The Magic and Mystery of Bolivia
01:34:17 Journeying with the Kallawaya Healers
01:46:26 Exploring the Maya Calendar

The legendary Christopher Knowles of the Secret Sun joins us this week to explain how to be a synchromystic. We learn

✅ What is synchronicity?
✅ What role synchronicity plays in modern mysticism.
✅ The importance of symbol sets in this pursuit.
✅ How this modern practice is really an ancient one described.

Whilst it's always a pleasure to have Chris back on the show, this particular episode happens on the occasion of the release of his latest book. The Secret Sun Synchromystic Handbook!

• Get it here.
• Follow Chris here.

This week, we welcome to the show author, teacher and herbalist, Seán Pádraig O'Donoghue.

Seán joins us today to talk about his journey to animist herbalism, how he defines it, and what constitutes health in a living framework.

Really good, timely stuff. Enjoy!

• Seán's website, Otherworld Well.
• Seán's course, Holistic Pharmacology for Herbalists.

A long-overdue solo show this week, telling the story of Rune Soup from its beginnings as a blog in Bristol, through the books, through the development of the podcast, and the membership and the events and so on.

At the end, there is also some discussion of where to next.

• Subscribe to Rune Soup on Rumble.
• Subscribe to Rune Soup on Odysee.
• Check out Fortune's Fools.

Author, magician, returning guest and friend, Ivy Bromius, joins us again this week on the occasion of the publication of her completely free book, The Cancer Grimoire.

We talk about her experiences treating and overcoming cancer, blending allopathic and holistic methods, and finding meaning in our own health crises. An important discussion at the best of times. Probably more so now.

Download the episode directly here or watch along on YouTube below.

• Find everything Ivy has going on at Circle Thrice.

This week, we are joined by the hosts of one of my very favourite podcasts, Fucking Cancelled.

Clementine and Jay talk to us about their own journey to activism, through what they call the nexus -that toxic combination of social media bullying and neoliberal group thing- and out the other side to a genuine left they call 'socialism with freaky options'.

Along the way we discuss what cancellation is, how old it is, why it works and whether or not its efficacy is fading.

Super fun show with some super fun people!

• Fucking Cancelled on Patreon.
• Fucking Cancelled on Libsyn.
• Fucking Cancelled on Instagram.
• Clementine's website.
• Clementine on Instagram.
• Jay on Instagram.

This week, we welcome back to the show Dr Matthew Segall. Matt joins us to talk about his recently released book, Physics of the World Soul: Whitehead's Adventure in Cosmology.

So we chat about the shortcomings of materialism, what science could be like and how it could be done. We also discuss the concept of the Anima Mundi -or World Soul- and what the point of the universe might be.

• Get Matt's book, Physics of the World Soul.
• Matt's blog.
• Matt's YouTube channel.

This week we welcome to the show Karen Johnson.

Karen is a shaman, healer, and former judge. She was catapulted into the life of a healer when her son died suddenly of a heroin overdose at the age of twenty seven. Leaving her old life behind, Karen embarked on a multi-year spiritual quest around the world, ultimately discovering -among many modalities and sources of spiritual nourishment- shamanic energy medicine. (Karen is actually my teacher at the Four Winds Academy, which comes up a couple of times in the show.)

She joins us today to talk about her brand new book, Living Grieving: Using Energy Medicine to Alchemize Grief and Loss.

A really great chat about a really powerful topic. Enjoy.

Show Notes

• Living Grieving: Using Energy Medicine to Alchemize Grief and Loss.
• Karen's energy medicine website and blog.
• Karen's Instagram.

Christmas only comes but once a year, which makes the half-yearly astrological forecasts twice as good as it!

Big thanks to the one and only Austin Coppock -as well as the premium members and patrons who join the call. As is now tradition, we look at the previous six months, the upcoming six months and situate our discussion in the context of longer cycles.

I always look forward to these chats!

Something a bit different and exciting this week in lieu of a normal show. One of the things the premium members will be doing over the coming month is participating in calls and Q&As with thinkers who have something to share or contribute to this notion of operating at the level of the living field.

First cab off the rank is none other than Rhyd Wildermuth. Finding The Ekumen gets its name from Ursula K. Le Guin's space utopia, effectively an anarchist version of Star Trek's far more militant United Federation of Planets. So if we are going to have a series of discussions beyond traditional politics, we should begin with a discussion of what politics is, what it isn't and where it might be that you come in. I can think of no one better than Rhyd for that chat, so here it is!

Big thanks to Rhyd and the members for participating! This is obviously a video discussion if you would prefer to watch on YouTube or Odysee.

• Rhyd's Substack.
• Rhyd's essay, Here Be Monsters.
• Saul Newman's Anarchism and the Politics of Ressentiment.
• The works of Silvia Federici.
• Human Scale.
• Postmodern Anarchism in the Novels of Ursula K. Le Guin.
• Against Identity Politics.

Comedian, author, ceremonialist and healer, Nick Sun, joins us this week.

Back in January, Nick wrote a piece on Medium called Watch Your Dreams Die And Be Happy Now. It's about how childhood dreams in general and the insistence we all follow them is not always a good thing. In fact, it can even be pathological.

Obviously that sort of piece has Big New Year Energy given the world is awash with resolutions at the time. But it is also good and insistent medicine for now -particularly for younger readers. There is a lot about this in the wealth magic course in the members area, but desire is very poorly understood and even more poorly experienced in the modern world.

Given the dramatic changes to how society functions we have all been through these past sixteen months have barely begun to be felt, the work of sitting with, parsing and simply showing up to your dreams, desires, goals -as well as how they all differ- takes on a different form of urgency.

So that's what Nick came on to discuss ostensibly. We also talk about a bunch of other stuff too, I hasten to add. Encountering different plant spirits, prophecy, healing from trauma, all very good times.

Show Notes

• Nick on Medium.
• Nick's Patreon.

This week, we welcome to the show the author of Sand Talk: How Indigenous Thinking Can Save The World -genuinely one of my favourite books ever- Tyson Yunkaporta. In addition to being an author, Tyson is a poet, an artist, a wood carver, a linguist and and is senior lecturer in Indigenous Knowledges at Deakin University.

I had a fantastic time with this chat. We talk about ceremony, metaphor, the pitfalls of the new age, right relation and all that good stuff. We also talk about communicating via body odour, getting fat and 80s movies.

Enjoy!

Show Notes

• Get Sand Talk.

Gregory Shaw, Professor of Religious Studies at Stonehill College, joins the show to discuss, theurgy, the work of Iamblichus, and how we have probably got the Neoplatonists' attitude to the body quite wrong.

We discuss

• The DESCENT of rather than ASCENT TO the gods.
• The theurgic imagination and how it relates to the spirit world.
• The role of divination in the development of the soul.
• How Imablichus can teach us a better way to compare between cultures.
• The necessity for ceremony.

Professor Shaws joins us to discuss his latest book, Hellenic Tantra, which I am pretty sure is the best book I've read this year. Get it here.

Author, speaker and Scarlet Imprint co-founder, Peter Grey, returns to the show this week to talk about his latest book, The Two Antichrists.

This means we explore the Babalon Working(s), the influence of Jack Parsons on science fiction and science fiction's influence on Jack Parsons, the sophistication in Parsons's later work, L. Ron Hubbard's fascination with Aleister Crowley -as well as some of the ways he managed to out-Crowley the Beast himself.

We also talk about what witchcraft could and should do now, as well as the urgent necessity of coming into relation with the stars.

Enjoy!

• Get The Two Antichrists.
• Scarlet Imprint on Instagram.

This week, we are speaking with Danish historian and animist, Rune Hjarnø Rasmussen.

Animism is the main topic of our discussion, inevitably. We talk about what it looks like in the doing, and what academic work does and still might come from operating within an animist framework rather than a materialist-naturalist one.

We also examine both some of the opportunities and risks inherent in learning from and with indigenous ways of thinking and being.

Absolutely killer chat. Enjoy!

• Rune's website, Nordic Animism.
• Nordic Animism on YouTube.
• Nordic Animism on Patreon.

Microbiologist, teacher and ritualist, Dr Siobhan Watkins joins the show this week.

We have a really great chat about the how and why of coming into right relation with the microbial world, what all forms of biology look like from an animist perspective and the ancestral implications of being a composite being.

Awesome discussion. Enjoy!

• Microanimism website.
• Thinking Like A Plague course.
• Siv on instagram.

Ethnobotanist, ecologist, author and teacher Jonathon Miller Weisberger joins us this week.

We talk about growing up in Ecuador, living among various Amazonian nations, ecology, eco-spirituality, environmental activism and the difference between ayahuasca and yagé -among many, many other topics (including being dispatched by Terence McKenna to buy a paddleboat).

This is an amazing and lengthy chat which I have wanted to have since reading Jonathon's book, Rainforest Medicine, a few years ago. And we are having the conversation now because Jonathon is convening three upcoming series of yagé ceremonies at his amazing facility in Costa Rice known as Ocean Forest Ecolodge in April, May and June 2021. I mention it at the opening of the audio-only version of the show and then we discuss it again toward the end of the episode in both the audio and video versions.

Details and dates in the show notes!

Show Notes

• Details on Rainforest Medicine the book, as well as the yagé ceremonies.
  • April 24 – May 1 (option to add 3 days til May 4)
  • May 29 – June 5
  • June 6 – June 12
• Learn more and book your ceremony.
• Don Pablo's copal ceremony.
• Ocean Forest Ecolodge video tour.

One of our most popular returning guests joins us again this week.

Denmark's very own Queen of Swords is back to talk about the latest book in her Read Like The Devil series, which is about something near and dear to my own heart (and diamonds), fortune telling with playing cards!

So we discuss the in's and out's of the various suits, how significators work in playing card readings, which questions might be better 'suited' to playing cards and which ones to tarot, which spreads play to their various strengths and weaknesses and what can happen when, you know, you just read the damned cards.

A great chat with a great person about a great book. Enjoy!

• Get Read Like The Devil: Playing Cards.
• Camelia's website.
• Camelia's cartomancy blog.

This week, my Fortune's Fools cohost and Lenormand deck artist, Colin Alexander joins the show. Inevitably, we discuss fortune telling, and Madame Lenormand herself, as well as creativity, growing up weird in the 90s, comics and that other magical comic creator from the Glasgow area you may or may not have heard of.

And, naturally, because we are launching a live video show in a couple of days, this one is best consumed on YouTube, but you can certainly download it here instead.

One thing I keep forgetting to mention is that the Telegram group for Fortune's Fools is already up and kicking and you should definitely join us there. (Also in the Rune Soup one for main blog banter.)

• Fortune's Fools Telegram group.
• Fortune's Fools Episode 0. Hit the bell icon so you know when we're live!
• Fortune's Fools main site.
• Colin's main site.
• Colin on Instagram.

Life coach, author, teacher, athlete and host of the Inspire Nation show, Michael Sandler is our guest this week. Michael joins us to discuss his latest book, AWE: The Automatic Writing Experience.

Along the way, we also explore different forms of spirit contact, what it's like to have had two Near Death Experiences, the importance of ceremony, sweat lodges and -topic du jour for the premium members- angels and how to contact them.

Quick note if you're listening to the audio version, this was in fact recorded as a video discussion. So if you like looking at people while they talk, this is one to watch on YouTube. 

Enjoy!

Show Notes

• Get AWE: The Automatic Writing Experience, along with bonus material.
• Michael's podcast, Inspire Nation.
• Inspire Nation on YouTube.
• Michael's training programmes; Inspire Nation University.

Author, teacher, and Vedic Astrologer Freedom Cole joins us this week for a deep dive into the astrology of India and the Indian experience of what we call magic. Along the way we discuss yoga, Ayurveda, the chakras and how to save a farm from bushfires by summoning a dragon.

Super fun chat.

Show Notes

• Science of Light vol 1 and vol 2.
• Freedom's teaching site, Science of Light.
• Freedom's consultation site.
• Freedom's YouTube channel.

Artist, researcher and author Veda Austin joins us this week. She talks us through her healing journey with water, as well as some of the amazing artwork she creates from and with water.

Along the way, we discuss what water actually is, that it is far stranger than we typically realise and the implications of living in a world which responds to our thoughts and emotions.

Please note: This is a very visual episode, as Veda takes us through some of the art that informs her upcoming book, The Secret Intelligence of Water. You can certainly follow the discussion on the audio version but it is highly recommended you watch the show on YouTube.

• Get The Secret Intelligence of Water.
• Veda's website.
• Veda on Instagram.

Artist, performer, musician, magician and teacher Bint Al-Shalabiya joins us this week. We talk about growing up Muslim in America in the 9/11 years, the importance of travel as a teacher, art, astrological and image magic, shared ayahuasca jungle encounters and the world of Islamic folk magic.

Really great chat. Enjoy!

• Bint's website.
• Bint's Patreon.
• Bint on Instagram.
• Upcoming Intro to Islamic Magic course.

Let's make the most of my jet lag and jump right back into regular live streams the morning after I arrive back on the farm!

In this episode, we discuss

• How and why Wade Davis is my hero.
• The definition of adventure and why that matters for magicians.
• How adventuring creates reality.
• Sacred travel, how it is and isn't different from adventure.
• Tips and advice for your own adventures.

Then I also share some stories from the High Andes, from Lake Titicaca, from the steamy cities of Paraguay and the mountains of Southern Brazil.

Note: As this was a live stream episode, and the Q&A starts around the 92 minute mark.

And it's May, so don't forget to contribute to the Missing Witches fundraising and reparations drive!

This week, we welcome to the show Dr Paul Koudounaris, art historian, photographer, explorer and member of the order of good death. Paul is the author of multiple books including Empire of Death, Heavenly Bodies and, most recently, A Cat's Tale: A Journey Through Feline History, which he co-authored with his cat, Baba.

Paul joins us today to talk about catacomb saints, death rites, the impact of cats on the development of civilisation and people who mine jade under the instruction of UFOs.

Great stuff.

• Heavenly Bodies: Cult Treasures and Spectacular Saints from the Catacombs.
• The Empire of Death: A Cultural History of Ossuaries and Charnel Houses.
• A Cat's Tale: A Journey Through Feline History.
• Live event with Paul and Baba hosted by Glen Eira libraries.
• Smithsonian article on A Cat's Tale.
• Paul on Instagram.

This week, we welcome back to the show good friend and one of our most popular returning guests, Langston Kahn. Langston is a shaman, educator and community leader.

And now he can also add author to that list, because he joins us today on the occasion of the launch of his excellent first book, Deep Liberation: Shamanic Tools For Reclaiming Wholeness In A Culture Of Trauma.

• Deep Liberation: Get the book.
• Langston's website.
• Free online book launch party and on January 19th.
• Langston's Energy Body Mastery Course.

This week, we welcome to the show Tania de Jong. Tania is a soprano, social entrepreneur, business woman, professional speaker and member of the Order of Australia among many other things. She has also founded several highly successful charities that have brought thousands of people together to heal through music and singing. Tania's most recent charity is Mind Medicine Australia, which is helping to bring psychedelics into the fields of mental health and social well being.

A great chat for the first month of the year, and especially this first month of this specific year. Be sure to check out the show notes for a reminder that good things happen in the world, and good people live in it.

This week's outro music is Angel Song by Tania de Jong AM.

• Tania's website.
• Tania de Jong AM on Soundcloud.
• Tania's article, My Magic Medicine Journey.
• Mind Medicine Australia.
• List of webinars and events coming up from Mind Medicine Australia.
• Creativity Australia's With One Voice programme.
• Tania's TedX talk: How Singing Together Changes The Brain.
• Video highlights of the With One Voice programme.

Cometh the hour, cometh the traditional new year special guest!

Conner Habib joins us once again for a 2020 retrospective and a deep and thoughtful engagement with 2021: Politics, health, agency, meaning, desire. All that great stuff. This was a livestreamed discussion so you can download the audio version here or watch along over on the YouTube channel.

Enjoy!

Show Notes

• Patreon for Conner's podcast, Against Everyone with Conner Habib.
• Conner on Twitter.

A brief solo show this month to finish up our accidental series on time with a practical technique you can use to move forward into 2021 with greater coherence and optimism.

Have a wonderful Christmas and I will see you on January 2nd at 3pm New York time when we return with a live recording of Conner Habib and my traditional new year's episode. Click through to YouTube and hit the bell icon. (Members and patrons can join the call live.)

Cometh the hour, cometh the astrologer! This week, we welcome back Austin Coppock for a super-sized discussion of the first half of 2021, followed by a spirited Q&A session with the members and patrons who joined us.

We also kick the show off with Rev. Danny Nemu who explains this year's decolonising Christmas fundraiser, which is for a Brazilian reforestation project with at least one twist.

Enjoy!

(Note: This is a video discussion. The replay is available at YouTube or runesoup.com)

• Austin's website.
• Donate to RAIN.
• Buy amazing art from RAIN.

Another swapcast for you this week! With the amazing Kathryn Fink -coach, healer, magical practitioner and host of The Heart is a Cauldron.

We talk about mythic time, breaking time, how time tries to break you, decolonisation and a return to right relation. Great stuff.

Super fun conversation.

• The Heart is a Cauldron podcast page.
• The Heart is a Cauldron on Patreon.
• Kathryn's coaching page.
• Kathryn on Instagram.

This week we welcome to the show Ryan Edward. Ryan is an artist, designer and deck creator. In fact he is responsible for one of my favourite Lenormand decks, the Maybe Lenormand.

He joins us today to talk us through the process of deck creation, how design informs fortune telling function, the story of the Lenormand cards through time, the difference between divination and fortune telling and what it was like growing up in a funeral home.

Super fun chat.

Show Notes

• Get the Maybe Lenormand.
• Ryan's newsletter.
• Ryan on instagram.

This week, we are joined by artist and adventurer, Lucy Delics. Originally from England, Lucy has lived all over the world and currently lives in the Cusco area of the Peruvian Andes where she created The Visionary Path Tarot.

Lucy joins us today to talk about finding one's creative voice, making art with plant medicines, healing personal and ancestral traumas and living in Peru.

Great stuff!

Show Notes

• Get The Visionary Path Tarot.
• Lucy and her husband's website and blog.
• Lucy on Instagram.

This week, adding to our growing number of triple-header interviews, we welcome back to the show Mitch Horowitz and welcome to the show for the first time Richard Smoley.

Mitch, as regular listeners would be aware, is a public intellectual and occult historian with an expertise in New Thought. Richard is a writer, editor and public speaker specialising in esoteric thought. He is the author of numerous books including the classic (and one of my personal favourites) The Dice Game of Shiva.

Mitch and Richard join us in this episode to explore the antecedents to New Thought, differing theories of mind and what is and isn't genuine skepticism. 

(Note that this is a video discussion on YouTube as well.)

• Mitch's article for Boing Boing on James Randi.
• Mitch's website.
• Mitch on Twitter.
• Richard's website.

Hadean Press's Erzebet Barthold returns to the show this week, on the occasion of the release of Cyprian's Offices of the Spirits -the posthumously published final volume in Jake Stratton-Kent's Night School.

We talk about goetia, we talk about the sublunar, we talk about English Qaballa -all the Jake hits, really.

And, inevitably, we reminisce about the man himself:

• His main ideas and contributions.
• Who influenced him and who he influenced.
• What future generations will make of his work.
• Who he was as a friend and a person.

All in all, a lovely chat, and especially timely as the snappily-titled  premium member course Grimoires: Our Greek Inheritance (The Jake Edit) starts this weekend!

Show Notes

• Get the second volume of Night School, Cyprian's Offices of Spirits here.
• Join Rune Soup here.
• Gift a 3 month Rune Soup membership to someone here.

This week we are joined by philosopher, professor and speaker, Matt Segall.

We discuss Platonism vs Neoplatonism, theories of mind and the natural world, and how it is we can or might know anything at all.

A really rich and thought-provoking conversation.

• Matt's website, Footnotes to Plato.
• Matt's YouTube channel.
• Matt on Twitter.

This week, we welcome to the show Dr Bayo Akomolafe.

Bayo is a psychologist, educator and philosopher working and playing principally in the fields of decoloniality and ecology. He joins us today for a very special episode to celebrate the culmination of the premium member course on Custodianship, to talk about making sanctuary, fugitive spaces and post activism.

"What if the way we respond to crisis is part of the crisis?"

• Bayo Akomolafe's website.
• Bayo's essay, The Allegory of the Pit or The Irony of Victory.
• The Emergence Network.
• Interview with Bayo: Let Us Make Sanctuary.
• Interview with Bayo: Unlearning Mastery.

Another swapcast this week, with the lovely Joanna Farrer of Coffee and Divination.

We talk to each other about our shared love of tarot: where it began, when it began, best approaches, that sort of thing. And we also talk about homesteading and navigating right relation with both land and home spirits. Two of my very favourite things.

Oh, and if you're reading this in your podcatcher, I should tell you we did this as a video recording.

• Coffee and Divination.
• Joanna Farrer's personal and music site.
• Joanna on Twitter.

The one and only Khi Armand returns to the show this week with some medicine for our extremely challenging times. What lessons are we being invited to learn? What sort of healing might be available in this moment and no other? What kinds of Ceremony are best for now?

Really good stuff. Also some travel stories and 30 Rock. Because that totally counts as being with this moment.

• Chiron's blog and website, Impact Shamanism.
• Chiron on Twitter.
• Chiron on Instagram.
• Chiron's Amazon author page.

An unusual solo show this week. We have an introduction from me and then it's a recording of a classic Michael Parenti lecture, Conspiracy and Class Power, which you can also find in the show notes.

Speaking of show notes, they're rather extensive everywhere but YouTube, and best found at the actual post page.

Firstly, the rest of the 'series' in which this show would reside, were it a post.

1. How you play is what you win.
2. Hypostasis of the farmers.
3. The nightingale of eternal meaning.
4. Alien invasion as self care.
5. Medicine songs.
6. Talking The Invisibles.

Secondly, the Parenti lecture, its inspiring TMBS clip, and a bit from Ben Burgis on populism and liberal scolds:

Jupiter is still in Capricorn. One way of being with this is to see him as a teacher of hard truths. The other side of that is that you are or should be learning just what it takes to run the world. To administer the physical plane. To see how the sausages are made and what they are made of. The great teacher has shined a light and I worry that some of you shut your eyes. Open them, please. This is very serious now.

1. If you would like to understand who is 'behind' this in large part. Call them the Anglo-Americans, the Atlanticists, the dollar syndicate, Mr Global. Who cares? It is the interlocked shelob's web of supranational organisations and think tanks that evolved out of the Round Table model. Call them the Davos class.
2. Then you need to understand both how and why they run the world the way they do. And that's here with Miles Copeland.
3. And finally -doing triple duty as a Rune Soup recommendation by also being a limited hangout, and written by a shaman- you need to see how the syndicate uses economics to have entire countries do what they say. (This is the system Russia and China are doing their best to extricate themselves from for obvious reasons.)

Next is Charles Eisenstein, and an excerpt from his conspiracy essay.

"Conspiracy theory" has become a term of political invective, used to disparage any view that diverges from mainstream beliefs. Basically, any critique of dominant institutions can be smeared as conspiracy theory. There is actually a perverse truth in this smear. For example, if you believe that glyphosate is actually dangerous to human and ecological health, then you also must, if you are logical, believe that Bayer/Monsanto is suppressing or ignoring that information, and you must also believe that the government, media, and scientific establishment are to some extent complicit in that suppression. Otherwise, why are we not seeing NYT headlines like, "Monsanto whistleblower reveals dangers of glyphosate"?

Information suppression can happen without deliberate orchestration. Throughout history, hysterias, intellectual fads, and mass delusions have come and gone spontaneously. This is more mysterious than the easy conspiracy explanation admits. An unconscious coordination of action can look very much like a conspiracy, and the boundary between the two is blurry. Consider the weapons of mass destruction (WMD) fraud that served as a pretext for the invasion of Iraq. Maybe there were people in the Bush administration who knowingly used the phony "yellowcake" document to call for war; maybe they just wanted very much to believe the documents were genuine, or maybe they thought, "Well, this is questionable but Saddam must have WMD, and even if he doesn't, he wants them, so the document is basically true…" People easily believe what serves their interests or fits their existing worldview.

In a similar vein, the media needed little encouragement to start beating the war drums. They knew what to do already, without having to receive instructions. I don't think very many journalists actually believed the WMD lie. They pretended to believe, because subconsciously, they knew that was the establishment narrative. That was what would get them recognized as serious journalists. That's what would give them access to power. That is what would allow them to keep their jobs and advance their careers. But most of all, they pretended to believe because everyone else was pretending to believe. It is hard to go against the zeitgeist.

The British scientist Rupert Sheldrake told me about a talk he gave to a group of scientists who were working on animal behaviour at a prestigious British University. He was talking about his research on dogs that know when their owners are coming home, and other telepathic phenomena in domestic animals. The talk was received with a kind of polite silence. But in the following tea break all six of the senior scientists who were present at the seminar came to him one by one, and when they were sure that no one else was listening told him they had had experiences of this kind with their own animals, or that they were convinced that telepathy is a real phenomenon, but that they could not talk to their colleagues about this because they were all so straight. When Sheldrake realised that all six had told him much the same thing, he said to them, "Why don't you guys come out? You'd all have so much more fun!" He says that when he gives a talk at a scientific institution there are nearly always scientists who approach him afterwards telling him they've had personal experiences that convince them of the reality of psychic or spiritual phenomena but that they can't discuss them with their colleagues for fear of being thought weird.

This is not a deliberate conspiracy to suppress psychic phenomena. Those six scientists didn't convene beforehand and decide to suppress information they knew was real. They keep their opinions to themselves because of the norms of their subculture, the basic paradigms that delimit science, and the very real threat of damage to their careers. The persecution and calumny directed at Sheldrake himself demonstrates what happens to a scientist who is outspoken in his dissent from official scientific reality. So, we might still say that a conspiracy is afoot, but its perpetrator is a culture, a system, and a story.

Lastly but the opposite of leastly, is Whitney Webb talking about the next three or four months. (And if you are a premium member, this goes well with yesterday's Q&A with Alison McDowell.)

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1SU7VuX-Ip8

This week, we continue to play with some novel show formats. I am joined by three of the conveners of the upcoming Nura Learning course, Cohering the Radical Present: Integral Consciousness in Daily Life. We have two first time guests:

• Dr Barbara Karlsen, a practising somatic psychotherapist and continuum movement instructor.
• Jeremy Johnson, founder of Nura Learning, author and president of the International Jean Gebser Society.

And one returning guest:

• Brandt Stickley, practitioner and professor of Classical Chinese medicine at multiple academic institutions and senior instructor and board member of Dragon Rises seminars.

The subjects under discussion today fall entirely under staying with the trouble: how to, why to, and who best to show us. Really good, important stuff.

• Cohering the Radical Present: Integral Consciousness in Daily Life.
• Barbara Karlsen.
• Jeremy Johnson
  • Jeremy on Patreon.
  • Jeremy on Twitter.
  • Jeremy's book, Seeing Through the World: Jean Gebser and Integral Consciousness.
• Brandt Stickley
  • Brandt's website and blog.
  • Brandt on Twitter.

Keeping the swapcast train rolling this week, we are joined by author and fellow podcaster (obviously), J. David Osborne. David is the author of multiple novels and is a fellow superfan of Grant Morrison's The Invisibles.

Who better, then, to talk about the series' heightened value in These Capitalised Times, as well as the role of creativity in responding to and thriving in eras of unrest?

A super enjoyable conversation!

• Listen to The JDO Show and No Country here.
• Follow J. David Osborne on Twitter here.
• J. David Osborne's novels:
  • By The Time We Leave Here, We'll Be Friends.
  • Black Gum.
  • A Minor Storm.

Something a little different this week. I am both the guest and the host in today on today's episode. And fellow podcaster, James from Hermitix, is himself both guest and host.

We talk about and through accelerationism, the state of various discourses, what to do when doing anything makes everything worse, where (and how?) to find meaning in These Capitalised Times and whether or not an exit is even possible.

• Hermitix Podcast.
• Hermitix on Patreon.
• James on Twitter.
• James's course, taught in conjunction with Matt Colquhoun, The Philosophy and Politics of Accelerationism.

Trying something a little different with this month's solo show. We're putting a couple of 20th century American thinkers in dialogue around the topic of stories, meaning and what makes a life significant.

Show Notes

• The Myth of Redemptive Violence. Walter Wink.
• What Makes A Life Significant. William James.

Thought leader, speaker and innovator, Carol Sanford, joins the show this week. We discuss indigenous thinking, metaphor, and her latest book, The Regenerative Life: Transform Any Organization, Our Society, and Your Destiny.

A fascinating and eye-opening discussion.

Show Notes

• The Regenerative Life: Transform Any Organization, Our Society, and Your Destiny.
• Carol's website.
• Carol's articles on Medium.
• Carol's first appearance on Making Permaculture Stronger.
• Carol's second appearance on Making Permaculture Stronger.

Coming to you from the shores of Lake Titicaca! Some lessons on how to get good at magic, specifically sigil magic, learned on the road in Bolivia.

The short answer is your first hundred sigils will teach you more about magic than any book ever will. The long answer is.... this podcast.

Here I share my notes and observations from spending time in mountaintop villages with lineaged shamans descending directly from the Incas, San Pedro ceremonies in the mountains and client encounters in the Witches Market in La Paz.

We talk about:

• Desire cross-currents
• Incorporating oracle cards into your enchantments
• How to REALLY 'forget' about your spells so they actually come off.

• How To Make Magical Sigils: A COMPETE Beginners Guide.
• The Missing Witches fundraiser is back this year!

One of our most popular guests returns to the show this week. Mitch is an historian, speaker, public intellectual, editor and author. He joins us today to talk about his latest book, The Miracle Habits: The Secret of Turning Your Moments Into Miracles.

We talk about focus, vitality, how best to use money and the destructive power of gossip among many other topics. There's even a bit about Tucker Carlson.

Enjoy.

• The Miracle Habits: The Secret of Turning Your Moments Into Miracles.
• Mitch's website.
• Mitch on Twitter.
• Mitch on Instagram.

Time Magazine's Hero of the Environment and Green Book Award winner, Michael Shellenberger, joins the show this week.

Michael has been an environmental activist since his teens. He founded an Amnesty International chapter at his high school, he travelled to Nicaragua to support the Sandinistas in the 80s, he ran for governor of California, he has published multiple books and founded and runs Environmental Progress.

Michael is one of the world's leading public intellectuals when it comes to clean energy and he joins us today to talk about his latest book, Apocalypse Never: Why Environmental Alarmism Hurts Us All.

• Apocalypse Never: Why Environmental Alarmism Hurts Us All.
• Michael's open letter, On Behalf of Environmentalists, I Apologize for the Climate Scare.
• Accompanying slides for Apocalypse Never.

Talking about talking is less Seinfeldian than it might initially appear.

Everyone's favourite Canadian scamps join the show to talk about their journey with Grimerica and what's it like to be broadcasting now, versus at the outset. Obviously we get into the speculative weeds of what's going on and what we can do about it on a group but also individual level. We literally discuss discussing.

We also talk about chickens, UFOs, guns and dinosaurs being shot at with lasers from flying saucers. There's a lot going on here, put it that way. Enjoy.

• Grimerica.
• Grimerica on Twitter. (This is Darren, specifically.)