Fifty not out!

Well who would have thunk it... we are at episode 50 of The Existential Files already! What do you mean you haven't listened? There have been laughs, tears, head-hurting discussions on why the universe exists and our place within it, and a swear word or two.  All in the name of, well... nothing really. It just seemed a good idea at the time. 

All credit to Louie who has been tirelessly recording and uploading these, as well as finding a fantastic array of guests who have joined us. We've spoken to philosophers, physicists, psychologists, and ghost-hunters (don't ask).  And we have only just begun. Go take a listen. 

Consciousness explained (!)

Louie and I are continuing at a pace with our conversations as part of The Existential Files. Available on iTunes and YouTube. Some of these conversations take place while I find myself in a room with a whiteboard, and so I make a few notes. 

Below are my notes from a podcast conversation last week (in fact, it was split across two episodes) in which we were joined by Peter Hankins who, among other things is the author of a blog called Conscious Identities. Not surprisingly, our focus of this podcast was on 'consciousness'. That old chestnut. You can get a sense of how these notes emerge by listening here and here. 

 

Lee Mack on a cloud (as though in a panto)

As part of a course we are currently running at the University, we asked the students to keep a dream diary for a week. The idea was that we, the tutors, would also keep the cream diary so that we had dream report to share at the next teaching session.

Of course, for the first three days of the week, I completely forgot. By the fourth day I endeavoured to remember that night's dream* and make a note of what I could remember in the morning. It turned out to be the only dream that week that I remembered and was simply noted in my dream diary as 'Lee Mack on a cloud (as though in a panto)". That's all that I could remember. Hardly profound, and I don't know what Freud would have made of it ("Who ze fuck ist Lee Mack...?!").

In preparation of writing this blog post, I thought I'd ask a certain Dr Savva (who is a dab hand with PaintShop), to mock up a pic of Lee Mack on a cloud (as though in a panto). He duly did. And what I love about that is when I typed the request into Whatsapp, he simply responded, "yeah, sure". No questions asked. 

 

* I'm toying with the iPad's facility for turning voice to text as a supposedly quicker way to write some of these blog posts. Of course it doesn't always hear quite what you say. For "night's dream" it changed it to "night stream". Perhaps a good analogy for a dream? A night stream? Please yourself. 

It's a love thang...

A belated happy Valentine's Day! Earlier in the week I, perhaps foolishly, spent a chunk of my Valentine's Day chatting to Dr Savva. We recorded a couple of podcasts exploring 'love'. Louie, being the efficient person that he is (and because he has bugger all else to do... joke, Louie, joke*), uploaded these quickly. You can listen on iTunes here (episodes 17 and 18).

As I found myself in a room with a whiteboard (gotta love a whiteboard!), I made a few notes:

 

*He really does have bugger all else to do.

The Existential Files on iTunes!

My partner in existential crime, Dr Louie Savva, has been busy cutting and uploading recordings of our podcast conversations and submitting to iTunes. Good man, Louie! As of today episodes 1-10 available. More on their way...! You can also listen via YouTube. 

The Existential Files

It is a little known fact that this blog, in its earlier incarnation as The Diary of a Spiritual Junkie, was at least partly inspired by the blog of my friend and colleague, Louie Savva. His blog was, and still is, the brilliantly titled Everything is Pointless (www.everythingispointless.com). 

I'm sure, as time progresses, I will say more about the ideas that Louie, now Dr Louie Savva (yay!), has shared on his blog, however for now I want to say just two things. First, after a 9 year hiatus I am pleased to note that Louie has resurrected his blog and is now blogging again (yay again!), and second, this recent acitivity has led to Louie and I joining forces, as it were, to begin work on what some are calling a 'podcast'. And so, I am proud to share here a link to an emerging playlist of said podcast that is going under the title of The Existential Files:

As will become apparent, if you choose to listen, we will use the conversations to explore a wide range of topics that might broadly fall under the heading of 'existential' in nature. These might include: the nature of existence; why we are here; how we decide what is 'worth' doing; evolution; science; philosophy; religion; and most importantly the artistic merit of if the TV sitcom Birds of a Feather. Anyway, it passes the time. :-)

I also feel the need to say please be aware that we are talking about topics that matter to us both dearly. This means at times we may find that we censor our language less than we might. I am aware that in at least some of the episodes there is swearing that, at the time of writing, we have not edited out. In fact, we do eventually record a conversation about the idea of 'offensiveness'. I'm not sure if that will become an episode in its own right or if it will simply be a conversation that has allowed Louie and I to openly explore this side of things.  Either way, please note that this is something that we are acutely aware of (or at least I am!). 

By the way, during this first episode you hear me mention I begin to jot down on a whiteboard some of the topics as we discuss them. This is what it looked like at the end of the recording: