TNS#64: Memoirs of a Blind Biker

TheNextStep show #64 was taped 5/11/09 and was an interview with Russell Targ discussing his new book of memoirs: Do You See What I See?: Memoirs of a Blind Biker.
As Russell put it, the theme of the book might be best described as 'Questioning Reality', as it covers lots of material from Huxley's Perennial Philosophy, quantum physics and nonlocality, advaita non-dualism and dzogchen buddhism. Russell was a laser physicist from NY who came to CA and got involved with psi phenomena and started the Remote Viewing project with Hal Puthoff at SRI in the early 70's, which was quite successful for many years. The memoir goes into lots of detail about remote viewing but also integrates his extensive interests in philosophy and spirituality, which I especially enjoyed. Here is a selection of quotes from the book that I liked, from my notes for the show:
"Questioning reality: the essential first step in the evolution of consciousness"
"The first principle is that consciousness is the fundamental building block of the universe – which is more like great thought than great machine."
"Nothing is actually happening in our world except for the meaning we give it. We give all the meaning there is, to everything we experience."
"Our awareness is limitless in space and time – therefore WE are limitless."
"The Perennial Philosophy: the purpose or meaning of our lives is to become one with universal non-local consciousness."
"The essence of the teaching is that there IS no self – it’s all just a story."

I find Russell's work especially valuable because he's incorporating his psi phenomena research into a framework of quantum physics that offers at least the beginning of an understanding as to how psi phenomena can occur, namely non-locality. As a final comment I also really liked his metaphor that remote viewing is like the image of the moon appearing in calm water -- it was always there but the water (i.e. the mind) has to be calm for it to be visible.

TNS#63: What I Wish I Knew at 20

The Next Step show #63 was taped 4/9/09 and featured Tina Seelig, Ph.D., talking about her new book What I Wish I Knew When I Was 20: A Crash Course on Making Your Place in the World. Her book is filled with anecdotes and covers many themes, among them how to have a healthy disregard for the impossible, how to recover from failure, and how most problems are remarkable opportunities in disguise. It was a complete delight to talk with Tina for an hour! "Real life is the ultimate open book exam." ...Info on her Entrepreneurial Thought Leaders program at Stanford can be found at etl.stanford.edu.

Tina Seelig, Ph.D. is the Executive Director for the Stanford Technology Ventures Program where she is responsible for strategic planning, operations, and outreach efforts of STVP. In addition, Tina is the Director of the Stanford Entrepreneurship Network and the co-Director of the Mayfield Fellows Program. Tina's latest book, What I wish I knew when I was 20, provides insights on life, leadership, and the little things that make a big difference in an entrepreneurial setting.

TNS#62: Albert Hofmann Retrospective

The Next Step show #62 was taped 3/12/09 -- a retrospective look at the life and work of Albert Hofmann, who passed away a year ago at the age of 102 -- with Robert Forte and Paul Daley. Robert is a religious historian, psychedelic scholar and editor of Entheogens and the Future of Religion and Timothy Leary: Outside Looking In. Paul is an environmental scientist and photographer who I met at the World Psychedelic Forum in 2006, and he brought clips from a rare audio interview he'd conducted with Albert Hofmann in 1977 as well as many photos of Albert at the WPF in 2006. More recently Paul's been instrumental in helping Sasha Shulgin get his laboratory up and functional again after a dormant period. The REAL star of the show however was all the great footage from Connie Littlefield's film Hofmann's Potion, lots of great clips of Albert, Stan Grof, Ralph Metzner, Myron Stolaroff, Humphry Osmond, Aldous Huxley, Ram Dass and others. Thanks Connie! Thanks Albert... Bodhi Svaha!

From Wikipedia: Albert Hofmann (January 11, 1906 – April 29, 2008) was a Swiss scientist best known for having been the first to synthesize, ingest and learn of the psychedelic effects of lysergic acid diethylamide (LSD). Hofmann authored more than 100 scientific articles and wrote a number of books, including LSD: My Problem Child. He was the first to isolate the psychoactive substance in mushrooms, psilocybin. On January 11, 2006, Hofmann became a centenarian, and the occasion of his 100th birthday was the focus of an international symposium on LSD (The World Psychedelic Forum in Basel; psychedelic.info).

TNS#61: The Global Warming Diet

The Next Step #61 was taped 2/12/09 and featured local author Laura Stec and her colleague Dr. Samia McCully for a show looking at the intersection of nutrition, environment and health. Laura’s new book is Cool Cuisine, described below, and Dr. McCully is a naturopath – her website is www.wellnessarchitecture.com. What I especially liked about Laura's book was all the information about the carbon cycle and the carbon equivalent impact of our dietary choices.

Cool Cuisine - Taking the Bite Out of Global Warming is a new book by San Francisco Bay Area chef Laura Stec with Dr. Eugene Cordero, Ph.D, San Jose State Professor of Meteorology. It addresses why global warming could be the best thing to happen to the culinary world in a long time, and reports on innovative science, business, and savory solutions to the Global Warming Diet. Cool Cuisine tells a story of really interesting people doing really inspiring things, and how you can too.. The reader embarks on a exploration that feeds mind and mouth with art, science, pleasure, culinary tips and recipes on how to cook a globally cool cuisine. (www.globalwarmingdiet.org)

A few more notes from the book: takes about 500 gals oil/yr to produce our 'machine-cuisine' diets... we emit about as much CO2 eating as we do by driving... our fertilizer-based food system contributes almost 20% of U.S. CO2 emissions... takes 17M barrels/oil to make the 30G plastic water bottles used in the US/year... Recipe for one gal/gas: 200k lb plants (100 tons), buried 1 mile deep for 1M years(!)... nearly half of all food harvested in the US/yr goes to waste... we use 380G plastic bags/yr, which take 12G barrels/oil to produce... one cheeseburger takes about 10 lb in CO2 equiv to produce... Great book, thanks Laura!

TNS#60: What to Say to the Cops!

TNS#60 was taped on 11/26/08, a legal primer show we called What To Say To The Cops, inspired by a conversation I had with old friend Mark Malachowski last summer. Mark's a lawyer now (www.marklawdui.com) and we were joined by his friend James Barrett (jb@jamesbarrettlaw.com) for a lively discussion of various scenarios involving law enforcement that anyone might find themselves in, such as getting pulled over, or detained on the street for questioning, or having an officer asking to come into your house. In my own research for the show I was very impressed with the NORML 'freedom card' which can be found on their norml.org site as a ready-to-print .pdf file, which succinctly describes the various Constitutional rights one may be invoking in any discussion with law enforcement. However James and Mark definitely made their case that really all you need to remember is the magic seven words: "I'd like to speak to a lawyer." This was definitely not a law-enforcement-bashing show but the show guests also made their case about the many ways that people act against their own interest in trying to be cooperative with the police, and how it's usually best just to keep your mouth shut. The discussion did tend to center around DUI scenarios, for good reason this time of year! Thanks Mark and James for a very informative show!

TNS#59: BurningMan08 Travelogue

TNS#59 was taped 10/22, the 4th annual TNS Burning Man show, using the now traditional MST3K format which shows our heads in profile from behind as we watch clips and slides from the laptop. Gigi Bisson and Diana Maxwell joined me for the show and presented their slides and clips about their work helping create the Entheon Village Pantheogenesis Temple complex at Burning Man this year -- a collection of 5 temple domes that was quite amazing. We copied Diana's iMovie video clips to my macbook and previewed them, but unfortunately when I tried to launch the project during the taping, iMovie noticed that there was now a sync adapter connected and wouldn't play without going into the video settings and changing them... which I wasn't about to try while the show was in progress. Shockingly bad UI 'feature' for the program, that it couldn't just somehow play in lower res! Similarly Gigi's slideshow in iPhoto wouldn't play, because the new iPhoto 08 apparently launches into some kind of edit mode and won't play until you click a little "Done" button in the lower right corner. My iPhoto 06 has worked ok for me on many shows and didn't work that way so I was unable to get it going either... fortunately former Apple engineer Fred Bockmann was helping crew the show and came onto the set to rescue us and remind us about the 'done' button... Surprisingly bad UI decisions coming from Apple!
Anyway Diana and Gigi talked at length about helping create the Sound Healing Divine Feminine Yurt and we saw some amazing photos of the crystals that were assembled and the hundreds of small geodes that were free for the taking apparently. And I think we previewed Diana's clip of Alex with his light sabre talking about the "new technology that is waiting for us in another dimension" and how we need to use these crystals to open a portal to receive it. Hope that new technology includes something about keeping elections tamper-proof! ;-)
Also mucho thankso to Juli 'Peaceblossom' and Ralph 'Cucoman' Kline for contributing copies of their BurningMan 04-06 and 08 videos which I showed clips of. It was nice to see the footage of the Temples from previous years.

TNS#58: A Look at Homelessness

TNS#58 was taped on 7/30/08 and featured Mena Zaminsky, Ginger Martin and Eileen Richardson in a discussion about many facets of homelessness. Mena's a psychotherapist, expressive arts therapist and teacher in SF who works with many homeless persons; Ginger aka MO/PEACE is a conflict coach, spiritual advisor, trainer, educator and homeless advocate in SF -- her site is www.myspace.com/mo_peace -- also blog.myspace.com/mo_peace. Eileen Richardson is Exec.Dir. of the Palo Alto Downtown Streets Team and was featured in a Feb08 story about Local Heroes that I happened to see just days before the taping -- fortunately I was able to find her contact and she joined us on very short notice. It was gratifying to hear from her about the very pro-active efforts here in Palo Alto to get homeless persons engaged in getting back on their feet. Wikipedia says there are about 100M homeless worldwide; the US number ranges from 1-3M (.3 - 1% of pop). I hadn't known that as of 1981 a class action suit in NY established a NY state constitutional "right to shelter" -- very encouraging! The wikipedia estimate was that 1/3 of all homeless adults have some form of mental illness or disability, however the show panelists were inclined to put the number higher. I closed the show with the Gandhi Test as quoted by Larry Brilliant w/r his work heading up Google.org: "When considering the merits of a course of action, think of the poorest person and consider whether your action will help that person in some way."