David Boles: Human Meme
739 episodes - English - Latest episode: about 1 month ago - ★★★★ - 7 ratingsThis Human Meme podcast is the inflection point for what it means to live a life of knowing. We are in the critical moment of human induction. David Boles is a writer, publisher, teacher, lyricist and author living and working in New York City. He has dedicated his life to founding the irrevocable aesthetic. Be a Human Meme!
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Episodes
Ballast
September 24, 2020 14:00 - 9 minutes - 13.4 MBWe take on ballast to even us out, not to make us heavier. Ballast is an important part of a divine life that requires acknowledgement, rapture, and the acceptance of a shifting landscape that worries too many lives.
Pandemic Parallettes
September 13, 2020 10:49 - 18 minutes - 25.2 MBStaying healthy without a gym in the middle of a pandemic can be deadly! So why not create your own home gym? Strength! Cardio! Resistance! Stretching! We'll take a look at how to set up your own "Parallettes Paradise" in your living room to help you make it through Covid-19 in one, stronger, body!
The Sacred Loss of Time
September 10, 2020 14:00 - 10 minutes - 13.8 MBTime is running out and we cannot stop our expiration. Time-shifting and time travel are not remedies against the hourglass. The mechanization of light has transformed us in various dark, and monstrous, ways.
Moral Corruption and Contempt
September 03, 2020 14:00 - 11 minutes - 15.5 MBContempt is the enemy of We The People. Unfortunately, contempt is also the fashionable moral moment of decay today! There is a secret to dealing with, and removing, contempt in society, and you are invited to join this conversation about avoiding the contemporary rot of us.
The Six Most Calming Words
August 27, 2020 14:00 - 11 minutes - 15.5 MBWe arrive safe from danger with these six simple words. We calm ourselves, and each other, with the direct dignity of truth. Here are those six magical words held together in a single sentence...
Not All Ideas Are Equal
August 16, 2020 11:02 - 13 minutes - 18.2 MBWe have been falsely led to believe all voices matter. They do not. Some voices are practiced liars shedding the truth to cast dismay and doubt into the warp and woof of society. We stand alone in this fight to amend the record with reality because there's too much money to be made on the side, and too much power to be had in the middle -- and the uncharted result is the propagation of an untruthful plaster.
Digital Lives Matter: The Dry Run to Decay
August 09, 2020 11:12 - 15 minutes - 20.9 MBWe live to thrive to be remembered beyond the rattling grave. The great human equalizer today is the ability to publish -- and to not be ignored or dismissed. In the arc of a single generation -- The Us of Us -- truly begins to matter anew as old ideas are reevaluated against fresh standards of thought, integration, and knowing before they naturally decay back into clay.
Not Homeless, but Never Having a Home
August 06, 2020 14:00 - 11 minutes - 15.5 MBReturning home is more difficult than the first leaving. We search for the past, and yearn to find meaning in what was as the future compresses our sacred thoughts, and reveals our lost dreams. Entire political campaigns are based on exploiting this human need of a return to the familiar. Unfortunately, that place no longer exists, and the trick is played upon those who believed history can be resurrected merely by want and, by the cold fist of force.
The Problem with Telemedicine
July 30, 2020 14:00 - 16 minutes - 23.2 MBSeeing a doctor online should be easier than visiting one in person. Unfortunately, that is not yet the case when it comes to Telemedicine. Today, you are at the mercy of a stranger who is set against you, following invisible policy, hoping for a payday, betting against the betterment of your health in the process. Yes, these are the tenets and the tar pits of today's Telemedicine.
The Playhouse
July 23, 2020 14:00 - 12 minutes - 16.9 MBCommunity theatre brings people together -- for a price. Fame and glory do not arrive cheap. Making a name in the local theatre community often involves volunteerism, sacrifice, and a need to be recognized that transcends the economic logic of the day. The local Playhouse needs your blood, and mind, and the price you pay is -- not getting paid at all. Is the risk worth the salvage?
Tired of Being the Bigger Person?
July 16, 2020 14:00 - 10 minutes - 14.4 MBHere's a manifesto against deconstruction. Are we excused from being the better person because of petty disassociations from reality? If we do not offer shade on a sunny day, or protection from the rain in the gloaming -- who will? It is up to us, not them, to provide a comforting morality that is not just debased or actually superior, but merely, equal.
Who’s Sarikaya Komzin?
July 09, 2020 14:00 - 12 minutes - 16.5 MBThe Office lives among us. The lesson that television show teaches us is to know what questions to ask, and how we should choose to answer inquiries about character, motivation, fame and reticulation. We may not be funny, but we can always choose to be better.
Ten Things to Know
July 02, 2020 14:00 - 15 minutes - 20.7 MBNow you know! Here are ten things that can help make your life better -- from shaving razors, to mineral water, to The Blues!
Reckoning with Uncle Remus, Brer Rabbit and the Tar Baby
June 21, 2020 10:45 - 13 minutes - 19.1 MBA culture is always actively seeking re-definition. Things change. We are not what we were meant to become. The same is true for our stories. Where once "Tar Baby" may have been a childhood term of endearment in a folklore story from 1881, today, "Tar Baby" means entirely something else; and it is our duty to each other to learn the why of the difference when context changes.
Virtue Signalling
June 14, 2020 10:35 - 11 minutes - 15.4 MB"I support everybody because I say so." -- Everybody on the Internet. We live in a virtual world where talk tends to have more compunction power than the act of actually doing something. Listen to this call to change to move forward and to leave blood and bones split on the street.
Salting the Souls of The Hollow Men
June 07, 2020 11:25 - 16 minutes - 22.1 MBThe Hollow Men killed George Floyd. In 1925, poet T. S. Eliot wrote to expose, and to and warn us, against the invisible intentions of -- "The Hollow Men" -- and we, the people, have yet to heed his words; and so we are left behind with hunger, and anger, and illness festering in the stillborn breech between the visible and the hollow.
Thinking by Proxy
May 31, 2020 11:15 - 14 minutes - 19.6 MBWe have given up original thought for translation by computer. Where once we used to think progressively on our own, we now relinquish our independent thought process -- out of a warrant for a misplaced convenience -- to a mechanical process we do not control. Neural networks do not become us, they merely imitate the worst of us, and amplify our faults, temptations, and digressions in full view of the Panopticon.
Deference of the Winners
May 24, 2020 10:57 - 10 minutes - 13.8 MBDemocracy demands comity from those who lead us. If, and when, that kindness falls, everyone in the community is at risk of being forsaken and forbidden from free thought. The winners in any context are required by morality and higher purpose to abide by, and support, the dreams of the losers -- if not, the entire world collapses into a distant, but purposeful, cruelty.
Blood in the Library
May 17, 2020 11:14 - 12 minutes - 17.5 MBDiscovering new worlds begins in the constructed word. We descend into darkness together, to discover the light hiding below what we know. The secret to surviving a world afire is knowing how to extinguish threats to liberty, and freedom, with reading comprehension and a sharp thought.
Violence and the Interwoven Falsehood
May 10, 2020 11:13 - 13 minutes - 19 MBAlexander Solzhenitsyn understood Art can fight violence. What happens when violence becomes an Art? What happens next when a nation is cleaved into The City and The Valley by purposeful, political, rage, and there's no way to negotiate the differences in the home? Violence then becomes the remedy in the crevasse, and not a tenterhook for reconciliation.
Boy with a Bone
May 03, 2020 10:34 - 8 minutes - 12.2 MBSome eat all evidence of the living. Hunger, hubris and wanting to be fulfilled are all notes of advocacy for those among us who are able to successfully erase a carcass -- or a corpse! -- before our disbelieving eyes. They eat to be fulfilled. They swallow to erase. They digest to rewrite history. The result of the cleansed plate is a palate of soul destroying musk.
Plucking and Withering are Inseparable
April 26, 2020 11:14 - 9 minutes - 13.5 MBWe are made to magnificently fail. In the ever going onward march from humility to humanity, we search for signposts that we are on the right path. The Artist and the Poet both share in the re-stitching of our souls, and so we look to them to divine the precious secrets to surviving a perilous life of sorrow.
Covid-19 Uncanny Valley
April 19, 2020 10:56 - 12 minutes - 16.6 MBWe are only the skin and steel of what we used to be while alive. Today, we are stuck in the Uncanny Valley, put here by a virus, kept here by a pattern of disinformation, and by the threats of low information fools who only wish to keep us down, and locked away, in the name of a democracy that no longer exists.
Coronavirus Conspiracies
April 12, 2020 10:49 - 11 minutes - 16.1 MBWe are only as good as what cannot be proven. Have you heard about the military biolab next to the Wuhan wet market? Did you know FEMA is stealing from Blue States to poison Purple States? What do you think about ER doctors being fired for telling the truth about what's really happening with ventilators? These are the not-so-evident self-truths that plague us today.
Into the Teeth of Many Sorrows
April 05, 2020 10:56 - 9 minutes - 13.3 MBNow is the time to grieve for what will be lost. As the pandemic bears down upon us, we are left to wonder not about what we have already lost, but what will forever be forgotten into the future. We want what we cannot have. We yearn for what can never be recovered. We will have to learn again how to live in the moment, and how to appreciate these shared moments in real time.
Pandemic Palisade
March 29, 2020 01:12 - 15 minutes - 20.7 MBWe are reaping the whirlwind. The pandemic is upon us and we are flying, seedless, into the horizon with no foundation to root us. Schools are closed. The Palisade is staked. Every step we take is ground zero. We meet a new friend and saw off our arm. Are we there yet? Oh, yes, we are there yet.
Scenes from a Pandemic
March 22, 2020 11:39 - 11 minutes - 15.5 MBHow do we handle a perfectly designed killing machine? The Covid-19 Coronavirus appears to be a unique delivery system intentionally constructed for killing people. How does something so intrinsically effective sustain into being beyond the natural world? How many valves are left for us to turn down? How quickly will "social distancing" become "social retribution?" These are some of the vital questions we ask today of the virus that now rules us.
About the Dark Times
March 16, 2020 11:54 - 9 minutes - 13.6 MBWill there be singing? We are now living in a time and space in which we did not predict, or choose, and do not want. We are distanced, infected, and alone. Today, we turn to Bertolt Brecht and Emily Dickinson for resolution in the conclusions of our damaged human conflict; and we find ourselves irreparably caught in the drift between the abyss of scientific truth and the sacred heart.
Global Coronavirus Pandemic
March 09, 2020 13:21 - 12 minutes - 17.6 MBWe are created to fail. With the rise of the Coronavirus to pandemic levels, we are reminded of a dramatic Public Health Crises scenario where only some of the following people were offered a magic pill to heal their bodies from the plague: a toddler, a soldier, a priest, a grave digger, and a public health worker. Who would you choose to survive the last days with you?
In the Company of Noise
March 05, 2020 15:00 - 13 minutes - 19.2 MBWe run from each other by canceling those we wish not to understand. We are surrounded by concepts, and notions, we cannot abide, and so we cancel the person -- instead of coping with fresh ideas -- by canceling the noise they create around us; but to cancel noise, is to nullify life itself.
The Caffeine Referral
February 27, 2020 15:00 - 10 minutes - 14.9 MBWe become our addictions. All our lives we race from the aftereffects of caffeine all while running headlong into belonging to that jolt of a manufactured high. Do we owe it to our children to remove the caffeine and sugar temptations before they rot from the inside out?
The Perverted Professor
February 20, 2020 15:00 - 13 minutes - 19.1 MBIt is always not done that a professor seduces a student; but it always does seem to happen. Professors must hold their morality to a higher standard than that of the whims of the body. It is never acceptable for a professor to socialize, or sexualize, the student/teacher relationship. Unfortunately, too much of that brain-to-body trickery is still in play today on college campuses, and the result is the skinning of the student.
Legally Deaf
February 13, 2020 15:00 - 22 minutes - 30.3 MBThe Deaf deserve their culture. Is there a legal definition for Deafness in the law that prevents the Deaf from interacting with a real, and not imagined, life? Are there any protections in place for infants, born Deaf, that guarantees them the right to grow into their Deaf culture, and to appreciate their Deaf language, without parental, and medical, intervention to “fix” their “broken” ears into “Hearing” without the consent of the intervened?
If I Had Google Growing Up
February 06, 2020 15:00 - 12 minutes - 16.6 MBHow do we know what we don't know? How do we know what we're missing if we've never been taught what to have? Google solves this problem of access to behavior modeling that many of us, born before the internet, have failed to acknowledge. We had to try and fail everything on our own. Today, kids can build on their successes by using only what has already been proven to work.
Signing Off
January 30, 2020 15:00 - 17 minutes - 23.6 MBWe used to say goodbye; now we're left only with hello. There was a time when the day ended. We threw away the newspaper. We said our nightly prayers before entering sleep. Our radio and TV shows signed off the air and left us with white noise and nothing to do but contemplate the results of our day. What happens to us when we no longer have the escape of turning off while trying to live an alive life?
Understanding Sadness
January 23, 2020 15:00 - 8 minutes - 11.9 MBEmbrace your sorrows, for they define you. Too often we become obsessed with happiness when sadness is the authentic and verifiable emotion that drives us and defines our daily lives. The context of sorrow is what frames our expectation against a fleeting joy.
When Chocolate Tasted Like Chocolate
January 16, 2020 15:00 - 7 minutes - 10.6 MBWhat happened to the Hershey's Chocolate Bar? What happened to the American Tootsie Roll? Tastes didn't change. The economy changed our tastes. The bottom line turned a candy delight into a chalky turd. Where once we salivated for a chocolate treat; now we only spit out its remains.
Titles Without Relationships
January 09, 2020 15:00 - 9 minutes - 13.2 MBWhere do we draw the line between relation and blood? Are we our ancestors? Or are we only our middle names? How do we adjust cognitive congruence with the reality of a missing ancestry? Are we bound by birth or by name?
Not the Best or Most Talented
January 02, 2020 15:00 - 10 minutes - 13.9 MBBeing great is no guarantee of success. All too often we have seen the mediocre rise to the top, while the best, and the most talented, languish in the dark. Take up your own spark! Light up your life, and the world of everyone else! Dedicate your service of others through yourself!
Shyness and Social Anxiety
December 26, 2019 15:00 - 11 minutes - 15.4 MBOnce we were quaintly shy, now were are merely anxious! Labeling conditions for the benefit of society has always been a human fascination. As terms grow, and conditions change, we tend to toss away the old label in order to apply a fresh one -- removing the cruel history of what once was for the kinder notion of today.
Soybean Revolution
December 19, 2019 15:00 - 12 minutes - 17.4 MBThere is glory in the bean. There is salvation in the nut! 40 years ago, some Midwestern farmers gave up growing alfalfa -- animal feed -- to instead grow soybeans to feed people. Today, dairy farms are giving up the cow to grow the almond nut. The cruelty of Animal Agriculture is dying, while the Human Feed Harvest is growing even stronger!
The Blue Pencil
December 12, 2019 15:00 - 13 minutes - 18.4 MBThe mark of the editor is blue. Everything created faces some sort of editorial change in production. Do you honor the object? Or do you celebrate the creator? You cannot admire both without the other suffering. Every Blue Pencil is a lesson in hubris and humility; but can we accept the stings of changes?
Respond. Don't React.
December 05, 2019 15:00 - 10 minutes - 14.2 MBToo often, we act in haste and not hegemony. We are instinctually programmed to react to pressure -- while the better of us choose, instead, to respond to danger instead of becoming part of the tension. The cohesion of the human soul requires a response, and never a reaction.
Education vs. Allegiance
November 28, 2019 15:00 - 10 minutes - 14.1 MBAre we our thoughts, or are we our vows? In the everlasting battle between mind and country, we struggle to define our private lives against our best public interests. Do we owe ourselves to our moral victories, or our solemn vows? We cannot cut it both ways!
The Fonda Effect
November 21, 2019 15:00 - 15 minutes - 20.7 MBHenry Fonda never stopped being where he was from. He was always an up-from-the-dirt Nebraskan, and the consequence of that fatality was an effect on his performances that was always influenced, and echoed in the dirt, sand, and gravel of the braided prairie. Nebraskans are famous for being friendly, but befriending a Nebraskan is altogether another matter!
Knowing by Mistake
November 14, 2019 15:00 - 12 minutes - 17.3 MBWe don't need to know better; we need to know differently. We must always be aware of challenging our past experiences against a future memory in amber. Do we really know everything required to live a prescient life? Or do we need to release what holds us back from learning something new? Have we yet to learn the correct, existential, pronunciation of Worcestershire sauce?
The Bookstore
November 07, 2019 15:00 - 9 minutes - 12.5 MBReading used to mean something of value was exchanged for the experience. Today, a book is but a memory of what it once meant to huddle your mind in a safe haven against a toxic sea.
The Abused Child
October 31, 2019 14:00 - 11 minutes - 15.6 MBAll children deserve our protection. Our children are abused every day by overeating, lack of sleep, and media exploitation. Let's address, and fight back against, this sort of abuse-by-proxy!
Harold Bloom and the American Aesthetic
October 24, 2019 14:00 - 12 minutes - 16.9 MBWe want our aesthetic to be universal; but it is framed by us where we stand. SuperGenius literary critic Harold Bloom urged us, before he died this week, to ask beyond "What is it for?" -- and to move our thoughtful analysis into a wider notion of wondering with understanding that breaks the context of nationalism, and severs the ties of human boundaries.
Recognizing Skeletons
October 17, 2019 14:00 - 11 minutes - 16 MBWe add definition to what we know by the skeletons we see. We recognize on the horizon the difference between a Church Steeple and an armored tank by processing a precognitive understanding of the midline of a skeleton structure based upon what we see. We apply those definitions of danger, and safety, to the rest of our lives in language and human associations.