Midwest Real
A podcast & blog with an unquenchable lust for rabbit holes, novelty and open-minded inquiry. Join us as we dig beyond the status quo! Hosted by Michael Phillip EST. 12/21/2012 in Milwaukee.

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There’s a stupid old expression that says “time is the coin of life, be careful how you spend it.” I’m not sure if there’s a soul on Earth that reads that and thinks “yes, I’m definitely spending my time in the wisest way possible.”  After all, how can we?  Life requires us to have many obligations we don’t really want to deal with- school, debt, jobs, families- they just seem to keep piling up, burying us in a stinky heap of duty (pun fully intended).   But, every now and then someone manages to dig their way out of the rubble.  Mr. Greg Carlwood would be one of them.

A couple of years ago, with nothing more than an idea, an anxious middle finger and a desire to better his life, Greg started his own show called The Higherside Chats.  The show now boasts thousands of listeners from all over the world and it’s quickly becoming one of the most popular destinations on the net for alternative media and conspiracy chatter.  Oh, and it also enabled him to quit his fulfilling, soul-sucking day job in retail. 

 If you’d like to take the plunge into Greg’s deep and murky waters (you do), check out the following-

Higherside chats

Conspiratees

Twitter

Facebook

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Direct download: HIGHERSIDECHATSII.mp3
Category:society and culture -- posted at: 6:37pm EDT

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Compared to the rest of the world, the west has reached a very cushy state, but things haven't always been all corn, beef and football.  Getting to this warm, chubby place required revolution, civil war and plenty of good old fashioned dissidence.  Indeed, many heads were bashed in the name of liberties we now take for granted. 

Thankfully, most of us don’t have to take to the streets to fight for basic rights anymore, but there's still plenty of controversial, if not totally backwards, philosophies being preached on all sides of the political spectrum. The government can still chill dissent, ban firearms, give unfair tax breaks to giant conglomerates, spy on us, tell us who we can and can’t marry, what women can and can’t do with their bodies, even mandate what substances we can and can’t use to explore our own consciousnesses. 

We all have our own opinions with respect to the ethical, ideological and political debates surrounding such subjects, yet there’s only one that regularly lands thousands of people in handcuffs each year.  Here's a hint- it's a little green plant.  Inexplicably, with very minimal digging, it becomes obvious that cannabis has cultivated a persona and a legal treatment based almost completely on falsehoods disinformation and nonsense.  Though more than half of our population (55-58% according to the latest polls) has woken up to this fact, the caricaturization, misunderstanding and demonizing never seems to end.  

Our guest, Adam Scorgie has probably done more to shed light on the truth behind cannabis than 99% of humanity.  (Which, I guess makes him a one-per-center of a different kind).  He’s is one of the main driving forces behind the critically acclaimed cult-classic documentary film, The Union, the Business Behind Getting High and its upcoming sequel, The Culture High.  Of course, there's so much more to this man, but you'll have to listen to learn more about that.

For more on Adam, check out the following-

The Culture High

The Union

Adam's Twitter

The Culture High Twitter

The Culture High Facebook

Please, support Midwest Real and join in the conversation! Follow us on Twitter and Facebook and don’t forget to subscribe and review on Itunes!

Direct download: Adamsocreg.mp3
Category:society and culture -- posted at: 9:09pm EDT

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We humans have an amazing amount of rational knowledge; painstakingly poking, prodding and measuring basically everything we can get our hands on for generations has brought us to some pretty concrete, indisputable truths about the way the world works.  The rational human mind has cured diseases, coded the human genome and begun mapping the billions of neurons in our own brains.  We have so much objective knowledge we forget that society is practically rotting under the weight of its own increasingly ill, obese, depressed mass. 

Perhaps that’s because humanity’s quantifiable victories are rivaled only by the crushing defeat our subjective, inner-selves have suffered.  We give little credence to our, unique experiences, yet it’s they that truly define and satisfy us.  Indispensable, unquantifiable phenomena like our relationships with others, ourselves, and even the meaning we find in life itself are the things we will inevitably lay thinking about as we take our last breaths, still they take a backseat to mundane accomplishments we will one day find trivial.

If, however, we consider ourselves to be both objective and subjective beings, living in a world that is both objective and subjective, we encounter an interesting paradox.  We find that each is necessary and useful for shaping a fully-realized life.  Philosopher and author Tim Freke calls this “paralogical thinking.”  If we embrace the paradoxes that surround us, he states, we’ll begin to find mystery, meaning, fulfillment and wonder.

For more on paralogical thinking, Tim’s books and other philosophies, click the magical blue words below.

http://www.themysteryexperience.com/

twitter.com/timfreke

facebook/authortimfreke

Please, support Midwest Real and join in the conversation! Follow us on Twitter and Facebook and don’t forget to subscribe and review on Itunes!

Direct download: Timfreke.mp3
Category:society and culture -- posted at: 7:26pm EDT

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