[“Hey, Steve Shepard. What have you been up to this summer?” It turns out that Silverback Steve, our podcasting partner, as been up to a lot. Here are some recent episodes. You can listen here, but it makes more sense to subscribe. SB SM]
I know, tilting at windmills again, but as we enter this next political cycle, I have to once again take a shot at the corrosive power of labels and how we should avoid them–not just during election season, but in our lives in general. this is short, but hopefully will give you something to think about.
This Podcast is all about Curiosity and why it’s important.
I was looking through one of the local paper a few months back, and saw a photo of an interesting looking guy who was practically lying on the ground at the shore of Lake Champlain with a microphone extended over the water, and a beast of a recorder next to him. He’s Wren Kitz, and as you probably already know, he’s a curious guy. I got in touch, we chatted, and he agreed to do an interview.
Wren is a musician, field recordist, filmmaker with his partner Abby, and a bread baker. If you’d like to hear more of Wren’s work, please visit his Bandcamp site, which is at WrenKitz.Bandcamp.com. And if you happen to be in the area and want to taste some amazing bread, Seek out Tremolo. He sells it at local farmer’s markets in the summer, and a few local restaurants.
One evening in 1982, Sabine handed me a book that had come out two weeks before, saying, “Read this. It has you written all over it.” The book was called, “Blue Highways: A Journey into America,” by previously unknown (and quirkily named) author William Least Heat-Moon. If you haven’t read the book, stop whatever you’re doing right now and go buy a copy. I’ve read it 19 times, and I’ll read it a few more times, I’m sure. Today, 42 years after its release, it’s one of the most important American books of the 20th century. And today, as we enter yet another mindless political screaming match, it’s a good book to read. Listen to hear why.
There’s been a lot of chatter in the press lately about advances in interspecies communication and our soon-to-arrive ability to translate what our non-human neighbors are saying. That’s quite a breakthrough, considering how much trouble I often have understanding what other HUMANS are saying. But there’s another factor: even though AI, machine learning and large language models give us extraordinarily powerful abilities to analyze unimaginably large volumes of data, and to perhaps decode non-human communications, I’m not convinced we should. Have a listen.