Visionaries

Visionaries - The Culture Wars: Then and Now.

“The Culture Wars: Then and Now.” In 1987 Allan Bloom published "The Closing of the American Mind: How Higher Education Has Failed Democracy and Impoverished the Souls of Today's Students," and in that same year E.D. Hirsch published "Cultural Literacy: What Every American Needs to Know," and the culture wars were on. xx point was (or should have been) rather innocuous - you can't think critically (or even uncritically) unless you have something to think about. But Bloom's position was certainly controversial. He attacked Nietzschian relativism, advocating a notion of absolute truth. But is anything, even physics (or especially physics) absolutely true? And he favored Western culture over other cultures about which he know little. (And he attacked rock and roll, a position one should have gotten over decades earlier.) Today we look back and see how the culture wars still roil today.

 

Visionaries - MJDorian: Revisited.

“MJDorian: Revisited.” We talk about creativity with Milosz Jeziorski, an award winning composer who writes music for film and television. In 2016, he took on the identity of MJDorian: a faceless music producer who wears a poltergeist mask which obscures any indication of age, race, or gender. Look for his blog, Creative Codex on your blog app, where you will find, among others, discussions of Frida Kahlo and Leonardo da Vinci. Find more at www.mjdorian.com

Visionaries - Brian Francis Culkin, Part 2

Our guest is again Brian Francis Culkin, writer, cultural theorist, and film director. Today we talk with Brian about the impact of new technologies, especially social media and our lives, and on the gentrification of our cities. Find more at:  https://www.brianculkin.com

 

Visionaries - Brian Francis Culkin

Our guest is Brian Francis Culkin, writer, cultural theorist, and film director. Brian's books include:
- The Meaning of Trump
- Postscript on Boxing
- There is No Such Thing as Boston
- Conversations on Gentrification
- On Heroin, Spontaneous Reflections
- The Problem for Men
Find more at:  https://www.brianculkin.com

Visionaries - Our Fragmenting Culture

Starting with "Merchants of Truth" by Jill Abramson we look at our fragmenting culture anthem movement from feed to seed, and the antinatalism movement.

Visionaries - JOHN DAVID EBERT: Part 3, Myths and Movies

Continuing our conversations with Ebert, here we apply mythological insights to movies. Our discussion includes "2001: A Space Odyssey" and its relationship to "Solaris," "Apocalypse Now" and its origins in the Odyssey and Heart of Darkness, "The Truman Show," and "Blade Runner."

 

Visionaries - JOHN DAVID EBERT: INTELLECTUAL FOUNDATIONS: Part 2

 Ebert is a major intellectual figure, the author of over 20 books which you can find on Amazon and 600 videos you will find on YouTube. Here we talk about Ebert's intellectual foundations -- books on mythology, media studies, German Idealism, Post-Modernism, etc.

Visionaries - WHO IS JOHN DAVID EBERT? Part 1

"WHO IS JOHN DAVID EBERT? Part 1.” Ebert is a major intellectual figure, the author of over 20 books which you can find on Amazon. You can find his essays on Cultural-Discourse.com and CinemaDiscourse.com, and his lectures on YouTube and Google+. Ebert puts together Spengler’s approach to culture, McLuhan’s approach to media, and Campbell’s approach to mythology to give us insight to our world today. Here we focus on Hypermodernity. This is the first of four interviews that will survey the archetypal intellectual landscape.

 

 

Visionaries - Things I Can't Talk About.

"Things I Can't Talk About." I was going to talk about archetypes and Spiritual Feminism, and then the cover item in the New York Times Book Review was about psychedelics, and I thought I would talk about that also, and then I realized that both were dangerous topics. Psychedelics are illegal, and I have been warned off of talking about essentialism and archetypes where I teach. So here are my thoughts with some tricky navigation.

 

 

Visionaries - "Archetypes and Movies, Part 5.

“Archetypes and Movies, Part 5.” Lobell explores what "Lucy," Mummy movies, "Wolf" with Jack Nicholson, and Andre Gide's "The Immoralist" have in common.