2024. Ep 8. Credit Card Points & Financial Health - with Darren Aasen
The Power of Ideas
Growing up, credit cards were always a thing I feared. It was a way to get in trouble with money. And indeed, like many (I am sure), I got into some credit card debt early on in life. Recently, however, I have been introduced to the world of credit card points and financial literacy more generally. Now, its a whole new world! To woo new customers, credit card companies have to offer better and better perks like bonus points, airport lounges, upgrades to first class and business class, etc. The result of this is a system that - If you work it right - means that you can get a lot of free stuff....
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2024. Ep 7. The Astrology of Death...and Bitcoin?
The Power of Ideas
A few years ago, the woman who taught me much of what I would come to know about astrology told me about her theory on the astrology of death. The skepic in me was, well, skeptical. Yet, what she ended up theorizing made more sense than I expected. In short, she said, where past astrologers had failed, they failed to take in the context of others around the person they were trying to predict. I thought it was a very smart idea. Recently, in a bit of random insight and astrological experimentation, I took that idea and applied it to one of my newest favorite curiosities - bitcoin. What I...
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2024. Ep 6. All Saturn in Pisces Everything. With Black Girl from Eugene
The Power of Ideas
We had a plan! Then, in true pisces fashion, we threw the plan out the window. While I had come in thinking we were going to discuss racial consciousness, our pre-recorded talk went down the road of "what the f*** is going on with the astrological weather right now?!" And so we went with it. (Racial consciousness episode coming soon!) As two people who think of themselves as in some ways guided by our intuitions, Ayisha and I discuss the challenges we both have recently felt in being able to find the muse, so to speak. What happens when our intuitions fail us? How do we respond when it...
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2024. Ep. 5. Lying & Serious Religion
The Power of Ideas
Why do we lie? We all lie. So, perhaps a better question is - how do we lie? This question then leads to a different, and even more important one - WHAT IS A LIE? In this episode, I tackle these questions through considering what Saturn, the planet of seriousness, moving through Pisces, the sign of vision, means. In other words, what happens when seriousness meets vision. The possibilities are more vast than you may realize. One of the most obvious ones may be religion. But what is a religion? I delve into film and tv, family and the necessity of lying to those we love, drugs...
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2024. Ep. 4. The Biracial Agenda(?) & Tacit Racism W/ Black Girl from Eugene
The Power of Ideas
Is there such a thing as the "biracial agenda?" Shortly after my previous conversation with Ayisha, I heard a clip from Van Lathan about what he called the biracial agenda and "biracial supremacy." It was a provocative claim instigated by Michael Porter Jr's comment about jealousy. I thought this clip would be a good one to continue the conversation from last episode about the one drop rule and half black as "just black." We finish by discussing a form of racism known as tacit racism which I contextualize through the discussion of a chapter of the book called "fractured reflections." This...
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2024. Ep. 3. "If you're half black, you're just black?" w/ Black Girl from Eugene
The Power of Ideas
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2024. Ep. 2. Chat GPT with Trevor Auldridge Reveles
The Power of Ideas
Artificial intelligence is changing. More speicifcally, it is rapidly improving. And it may change the world, potentially faster than we can imagine. Over the last year, Chat GPT has made this clearer than ever and abstract conversations about it took on new urgency. In this episode, I talk with my own personal expert, and good friend, Trevor Auldridge. Trevor is a PhD candidate at UC, Santa Barbara where he studies rurality and social mobility. Yet, recently, he became fascinated with Chat GPT and has since become incredibly competent with it and has begun incorporating it into his life and...
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2024. The Greater Good?
The Power of Ideas
In this episode, I want to explore some themes that I expect to come up over the next year and beyond. Astrologically speaking, 2024 marks the beginning of a twenty year period that relates to technology, artificial intelligence and social movements. Yet, an underlying theme that I think will be embedded within conversations about these things to a far more heightened degree is morality. In our everyday speech, I imagine "the greater good" may become a far more common term. And even if it is not, the theme will be. In fact, I think I already see it emerging in places obvious and...
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The Sociological Imagination: A Framework for Listening to the Podcast
The Power of Ideas
In this episode, I return with a framework that I hope will accomplish two things. One, help people understand the overly complicated and often misunderstood question of "what is sociology?" And, second, use it as a framework to help listen to the podcast. The sociological Imagination is a concept and framework put forward by sociological C. Wright Mills in which he says that the best way to understand societies is through looking at the intersection of biography and history, or put differently, personal troubles and public issues. Here, I make the case that whatever a...
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Dan Duvall - Becoming a (sober) Comedian
The Power of Ideas
Dan is a comedian, and a fucking funny one at at that. However, his journey to sobriety and struggle in relationships makes him not just a funny dude but a deep one as well. We talk comedy, sobriety, relationships, addiction, mental health and much more. At the end, we realized we didn't even answer the question of how he became the director at "Comedy here Often," a signifcant podcast network in Canada so this is just Part 1.
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