Extraordinary Discourse Podcast

Off-Ramp Talk Slow down! Exit the mainstream. In most cases of people actually talking to one another, human communication cannot be reduced to information. The message not only involves, it is, a relationship between speaker and hearer. The medium in which the message is embedded is immensely complex, infinitely more than a code: it is a language, a function of a society, a culture, in which the language, the speaker, and the hearer are all embedded. Ursula K. Le Guin Quoted by Maria Popova

Talk As The Crow Flies Ever observe how “the crow flies”?—they fly all over the place, stop and hop, check things out, saunter, perch, sing, jump sideways, make dark knight’s moves. They digress, the humorous bricoleurs.

Wisdom Glean We have to create culture - don't watch TV, don't read magazines, don't even listen to NPR. Create your own roadshow. The nexus of space and time where you are now is the most immediate sector of your universe, and if you're worrying about Michael Jackson or Bill Clinton or somebody else, then you are disempowered, you're giving it all away to icons, icons which are maintained by an electronic media so that you want to dress like X or have lips like Y. This is shit-brained, this kind of thinking. That is all cultural diversion, and what is real is you and your friends and your associations, your highs, your orgasms, your hopes, your plans, your fears. And we are told 'no', we're unimportant, we're peripheral. 'Get a degree, get a job, get a this, get a that.' And then you're a player, you don't want to even play in that game. You want to reclaim your mind and get it out of the hands of the cultural engineers who wa...

For Thinkers and Readers Only The…  and rhetorical imaginings… assembled here relate in ways that challenge generic convention, perhaps even subvert the notions of genre we used to distinguish between prose and poetry, fiction and exposition… they reflect upon one another, and occasionally borrow from one another, placing passages from one context in the entirely different light of another to tease out nuances of significance, elicit alternative responses not anticipated in the original. … I hope each part will stand on its own as a play of language and idea, appealing as intended, on emotional, intellectual, and imaginative planes to a greater or lesser degree, simultaneously. ripped from John  Moss's The Paradox Of Meaning and pared to fit

Rungs Of A Tall Talk Ladder Too many stars this summer, Sir. Too many friends struck down, too many riddles. I feel I'm growing more ignorant All the time And soon I'll end up a half-wit in the brambles. So explain yourself, elusive Master! Philippe Jaccotet

Puckish Pedagogy Candor and clarity go a long way in fertilizing the soil, but in the end there is always a degree of unpredictability in the climate of communication — even the warmest intention can be met with frost. Yet something impels us to hold these possibilities in both hands and go on surrendering to the beauty and terror of conversation, that ancient and abiding human gift. And the most magical thing, the most sacred thing, is that whichever the outcome, we end up having transformed one another in this vulnerable-making process of speaking and listening. Maria Popova

Playing Marbles With Diamonds We each need to find our way home in this little life. Not just walk someone else’s trail. Douglas Rushkoff