Episode 1. Shelter in Place: An Audio Journal by Lee Chazen

It started off as an experiment. I was walking around a local park early one morning and started recording some notes into my phone. Sometimes I do that to remember good ideas. The further I went, the more the ideas and stories started to flow. It felt like this might just be a good routine to get into during the whole lockdown.

So, I decided to keep it going.

Then I wondered what would happen if I just didn't care if others listened in. I mean, I might stumble onto something funny... or interesting or maybe something that others were also thinking about. As Hunter S. Thompson would say, "when the going gets weird, the weird turn pro." And, I started to think that maybe this thing that we're going through -- the whole "shelter in place," might just be time for creative people -- people with ideas or "edgy" thoughts or even bizarre stories to step up... maybe entertain people or inspire some kind of action. I mean, these are unusual times, so why not?

And, that's how this started.

The first two recordings were just on my phone. I did what I could to improve the sound. Then, I switched to a professional mic... so the recordings do get better over time.

The first episode includes the following. 

1. What is HikeStorming?
2. Dealing with isolation
3. What you can do to make use of this solitary time.
4. Stranded on top of Mt. Tallac, near Lake Tahoe
5. Anxiety and getting psychosomatic while listening to the news
6. Video chatting
7. Retreating into tribalism
8. Unseen opportunities
9. A call for creativity and ideas
10. An idea for homeschooling based on game-based learning

Website
Blog
Facebook Group

Special thanks to Dune Thomas. He is a great person to bounce ideas off of, as well as a superb comedic bantering partner. Dune helped with sound engineering and gave me special privileges in the podcast booth, a.k.a. "the bathysphere."

Royalty free music from Fesliyan Studios.
Content and Artwork by Lee Chazen and GliderCell

Note to audio distributors: Please DO NOT add this audio content to the Youtube Content ID System. I have used background music which is owned by FesliyanStudios.

What are the biggest problems facing teachers during the pandemic? Can education-technology solve the problem? What are the best resources? What are the obstacles to getting this done?

Genius on a Fool's Errand: Elon Musk's Mission to Mars

Dune read this to me the other night and I thought....wow, someone needed to say this. Someone needed to point out that we are looking outward at a time when we need to be examining ourselves. Without saying any more, here is Dune's take on Elon Musk's mission to Mars. 

Genius on a Fool's Errand: Elon Musk's Mission to Mars

By Dune Thomas

Imagine, life on Mars. What would this look like? If you really peer into it, it's about as depressing as you can fathom. To escape the extreme temperatures and reduce the constant exposure to dangerous levels of radiation, you'd spend your entire life there locked indoors.

The desire to make life happen outside of earth is fine-- but it is not much different than trying to get a human heart to keep living outside the body... to what end? A lung or kidney or heart suspended in some plastic box of fluid and electrodes... as if the rest of the body were just extra parts. It's a testament to the disconnect between us and reality that we so easily think of ourselves as so separate from the Earth.

So much genius and talent directed towards a goal that, frankly, appears as an abject denial of what is most human. By all means, play with your billion dollar toys. But don't do it when your house is burning down. The world needs us to repair the damage we have done to the environment. Instead, we look to some other rock in space, as if the Earth were no more than a lifeless object we can discard in exchange for another lifeless object. This mentality is the poison. Every world we inhabit will become lifeless and dead so long as we continue this narcissistic fascination with our own cleverness.

Getting someone to Mars isn't going to solve shit. The destruction of our planet is not the result of too little technology. The problem is a psychological, social one. Taking humanity to Mars isn't going to solve anything-- you're not escaping your problems or the challenges of humanity, you're exporting them to Mars!

Please: STOP. Turn around. Your fixation to escape this world and discover another is a result of your refusal to travel to the one place that matters: inward. It is the last place most people ever look or want to go. But until we go there, we will meet this life with dissatisfaction. We will treat the Earth like a dead, disconnected, empty resource we can take from in order to distract ourselves from the dead, disconnected, empty sense of self we identify with. Please, stop. Look closer.

You're not the dead, lifeless matter that's leftover when your body sputters away its final breath. You're the animating force that made it get up and dance in the first place. And it doesn't end at your skin. It permeates everything, knows no boundaries, and sets every spinning planet and exploding star into motion. When you spend all your time looking outward, and none of it looking inward, you cannot recognize that they are the same thing. So hold still and discover yourself. Discover what is more fundamental than the endless stream of input rushing in through your 5 senses. Behind it all is the vast deep of consciousness, taking in every experience in unwavering silence. Make contact with the heart and soul of your existence.

Before you seek to colonize new worlds, inhabit the one you're already on.