I think Tom Hodgkinson, founder of the Idler magazine, and author of “How to Be Idle” and “The Freedom Manifesto” would be a great person to have on the show. He is very humorous, and also writes about medieval localized economies.

Good idea. I bet he’s easy to reach through the magazine, too.

How about stories, anyone? We’re thinking of covering the dying bats story, and interviewing some of the bat experts about what’s happening.

I want to get Danah Boyd on, too. She gave a powerful speech yesterday at Personal Democracy Forum.

I think a great guest would be anthropologist David Graeber on (1) the “anarchist” communities in Madagascar and what they tell us about our potential to construct radical political futures, and (2) his theory of power and value and its relation to “the false coin of our own dreams” (as one of his books is subtitled).

I recommend Dave Eggers and his literacy storefront that he describes here: http://www.ted.com/talks/lang/eng/dave_eggers_makes_his_ted_prize_wish_once_upon_a_school.html#

I am interested in creating a bottom-up “think tank” in a small university town in Kentucky. I would like to see this considered as a topic.

For Real People Doing Real Things, I’d like to suggest Incredible Edible Todmorden (http://www.incredible-edible-todmorden.co.uk/) These folks set a goal of growing enough vegetables locally by 2018 to feed the town. Among lots of other things, they’re building raised bed planters all over town. The vegetables, fruits and herbs are free for the taking. If you look at their website, you’ll see they have quite a vision, including orchards and eggs.

How about interviewing David Korten on the positive potential for new/local economics provided by the financial crisis?

Just passing along a link to an article from our local paper about a monthly potluck we started on our block a year ago and how it has transformed the neighborhood. It’s almost embarrassing that it seems the monthly potluck is a revolutionary concept or something, but I cannot overstate how important this has been to us, our street, our kids, and even the town. Very simple to start, and now it’s taken on a life of its own and is no work whatsoever.

http://www.dailyrecord.com/apps/pbcs.dll/article?AID=200990722047

Douglas, I’m a regular listener. Keep up the good work!

Scott

Hi Doug,

I’ve been a big fan since I saw your Disinfo Con speech and I have two topics that I would love to hear more about.

First, I’m working on developing a video game for distribution on the iPhone with some friends and we want to use a more egalitarian business model, possibly a co-op. Something that we can all own and take pride in. Unfortunately, I have had trouble finding any information about how exactly a co-op works, but I think this would be a great model to promote independent art and entertainment projects through a sustainable business. I would love to hear from some people who have started co-ops and what the experience is like running one.

Second, in my day job, I do technical support and Twitter is being forced upon me against my will. I am very upset because I feel like this is forcing PR into my job. Even worse, I feel like Twitter devalues legitimate and intelligent conversation. It also feels like a business that marketed its way into relevancy and companies like mine are just getting involved to keep up with the Joneses.

Anyway, if you could address the co-op model and/or Twitter in your broadcast, I would appreciate it. If not, well, I’ll keep listening.

Syd

Thanks everyone for your suggestions thus far. They are all going into a document that gets reviewed each week. Everyone and everything mentioned is right up our alley. It’s just a matter of what fits, etc.

Keep ‘em coming.

I’d really encourage you to check out and try to talk to Lester Brown, author of Plan B 3.0.

http://www.earth-policy.org/

Great work in your books and on the podcast–you’re an inspiration!

Another suggested topic: Waste management as a socio-economic enabler. Specifically, consumer waste–trash, sewage, etc. We simply have no idea how much we throw away–we’re utterly divorced from the consequences of our consumption, right down to the fact that our trash literally disappears every week. I think how we regard waste–especially in terms of how our society enables us to utterly divorce ourselves from it–significantly enables gross consumerism. It also obscures individual culpability for this environmental catastrophe we’re creating.

I think author Curtis White would make for a perfect guest. White authored a controversial book called “The Middle Mind” back in 2003. His new one is just out called “The Barbaric Heart: Faith, Money, and the Crisis of Nature.” White is absolutely brilliant and his ideas both dovetail with and challenge those in “Life Inc.” His new book “argues that true resolution of our climate change crisis is likely to come from an unexpected quarter: the arts, religion, and the realm of the moral imagination more generally” according to the blurb. I can’t think of a better guest!

I enjoyed the Harvey Pekar interview and have started following the “Pekar Project”. How about an interview with R. Crumb about his upcoming Illustrated, “Book of Genesis”. I’m very excited to check it out and would love to hear his take on it!

I’d love to get R Crumb. I hear he’s difficult, but maybe the Pekar connection will work…. I saw the Book of Genesis. Looks wonderful and it was done with a light touch.

The 9/28 episode had me thinking about the (ir-)relevance
of hipness as a component of progressive life and activism. Now I’m thinking, what about fun?

The show has previously touched on the intersection between real, human community and fun, in particular fun that takes the form of satire and/or pranksterism. I’d be interested in hearing fun addressed more generally. What about devoting a segment or episode to the ways in which fun can help reacquaint us to the real, and vice versa? Up the squats!

Do you have any interviews with Neil Postman in your archives?

Thank you.

RBS

What about Morris Berman? His real world solution is a little different than most (he left the country) but I think he and you (DR) would make good conversational partners.

I think you should contact Luke Burbank. He used to be on npr in various places, LA, Chicago, and NYC included. More recently his commercial radio show, Too Beautiful to Live, was canceled. The show lasted for about 2 years. However, he now has a show of the same name that he produces every weekday at 12:00 right out of his home.
As far as I know, he is not getting a paycheck to do what he is doing.

http://www.tbtl.net

I think what he is doing with podcasting is cutting edge. I recommend you have him on your show to talk about how podcasting is now the way for everyone to basically have their own radio show. He calls his listeners the tens, as a self-deprecating reference to the fact that in the beginning, his show had literally tens of listeners, rather than thousands or millions. So it is still a bit of a cult following, even though he has about 500,000 itunes downloads per month, or so.

I am afraid that his show will either cease to exist, if he doesn’t get picked up by satellite radio or another commercial radio, or it will cease to be what it was once it does go big time.

I don’t know Luke personally, but I think he has the potential to be a renaissance man in the field of pod/broadcasting.

thanks for the show and I loved Life Inc.

Hi Doug, just listened to your last show. Do you have a reference for what you said about kids not being able to hear the nuances in music today?

Christian

I’ve been working on that reference. It came up in an interview I was doing for Digital Nation with an author of books about digital kids – Todd Oppenheimer – but now he can’t find the original source. He thinks it was in a German study done by or for the Rudolf Steiner or Waldorf Schools.

I wonder what your thoughts are on learning, and information.

It seems to me that people once concealed information in order to protect the structure of a particular endeavor from people who “didn’t understand it”. These endeavorers sought to stabilize some part of their society, and the uneducated sought to break that, for some reason. (That may or may not be fully true, but it’s one of the typical arguments.)

However, one counterargument (among many) is that the people who attacked those tangible/intangible structures were trying to call attention to the fact that their most basic needs were not being met.

This seems to be a big part of the story of humanity: A strangely disorganized organization and a group of people who are supposedly enemic to that.

Whatever the story, we find ourselves alive today, and we seem to be making similar mistakes despite past experience.

It is my opinion, based upon a fair amount of study and experience, that people want to be fully, carefully informed – from the beginning – about the world around them. If we don’t know, they want to know that. If we do know, they want to know how much we know. If people are not properly informed, they will make conclusions based on whatever random, perhaps irrelevant, data/principles they have present and do the best they can with them.

In short, why don’t we live in a society full of intelligent people? (Why don’t we raise people to be truly intelligent?) We should. Frankly, we need to – we have no other choice. There’s too much work to do, and too much research to do.

Can history be trusted?

Douglas I want to report to you what I consider to be the biggest of all financial scams. It’s called “Profit and Loss Accounts” and it works like this:
Let’s suppose a company starts up and in it’s first year doing business makes £10,000. It prepares a financial statement and produces a set of figures to report this for tax purposes. Now let’s suppose in year 2 the company does a little better and makes £15,000. You might think that they should report this, but no; that would be your mistake. What is prepared is a set of accounts that show the figures for year 1 in the left column and the figures for year 2 in the right column. When the two sets of figures are compared you’ll realise that the company actually only made £5,000….when compared to the previous year; and it is this figure that is reported for tax purposes.
Now let’s suppose the company doesn’t do so well in it’s third year and only manages to make £10,000 like it did in it’s first year. The accounts will show, not a profit of £10,000; but a loss of £5,000….when compared to the previous year. Are you with me ? So when I hear on the news that a bank reports losses of £5.6bn this quarter I wait for the magic words: “When compared to the previous quarter !” and I know that all it means is that they managed to cream off a little less this quarter than they did the previous one. It’s call tax avoidence and should not be confused with tax evasion which is illegal.