From Alpha To Omega

This weeks guest is Ugo Bardi, Professor of Physical Chemistry at the University of Florence. He specialises in resource depletion, system dynamics modeling, climate science and renewable energy. He is also a member of the scientific committee of the Association for the Study of Peak Oil and Gas, or ASPO, is the president ASPO Italy, and a contributor to the Oil Drum, the best energy blog on the web. He is the author of several books, including "The Limits to Growth Revisited”, his upcoming book "Plundering The Planet", and even finds time to write his own excellent blog, Cassandra’s Legacy. Our discussion covers the role of volcano's, Georg Bauer, the father of mining, space aliens, and climate change.

You can find his blogging work here:

http://cassandralegacy.blogspot.co.uk/
http://theoildrum.com
http://peakoil.net

And here is where you can get a hold of his books:
http://www.amazon.com/Limits-Growth-Revisited-SpringerBriefs-Analysis/dp/1441994157/ref=sr_1_1?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1360432828&sr=1-1&keywords=limits+to+growth+revisited

Also, a few weeks ago, I was interviewed for a recent episode of Doug Lains dietsoap podcast, where we talk of Marx, Keynes, and money. You can find the show here: http://douglaslain.net/diet-soap-podcast-170-money/

Enjoy....

This week we welcome back Philip Pilkington to the show to talk about his latest writings on the life and times of Friedrich Hayek, the ideologue behind the Neoliberal project. Philip came over to my house this week and we sat about and waxed lyrical on such highfalutin topics as Classical Liberalism, Neoliberalism and Ordoliberalism. We also got around to political propoganda and the Mont Perelin society, the similarities between the far right and Leninism, and how, after Hayek's nefarious influence, our politics has never been the same again...

You can find Philip’s writing on the Naked Capitalist blog, the third most popular economics blog on the web.

www.nakedcapitalism.com

Enjoy!

Our guest week this week is Prof. Stephanie Kelton, Assistant Professor of Macroeconomics, Finance, and Money and Banking at the University of Missouri, Kansas City. We continue our exploration of Modern Monetary Theory, where we talk about full employment and the job guarantee, the fiscal cliff and the euro crisis, and the role of bond vigilantes and inflation, in times of energy crises.

Professor Kelton writes regularly for the 'New Economic Perspectives' blog, where you can find some of the best heterodox economists on the planet posting their work.

You can check it out here: http://neweconomicperspectives.org/

Enjoy!

On this Christmas episode, our theoretical physicist guest is Geoffrey West, Professor and former President of the Sante Fe Institute. We discuss his recent groundbreaking work in the world of biological and social complexity. In the last few years, the Professor has applied his high-energy atom smashing physics know-how, to the field of biology and came up with some startlingly general results, which give us deep insights into all sorts of things, from the life-expectancy of a mouse and the efficiency of cities, to the very nature of our social systems, and their limits.

Astounding stuff.... Enjoy!

PS The show is now on twitter.... the follow button is just over there on the left hand side of the web page.

PPS A very merry Christmas to all you listeners.

This week we talk with the Jazz pianist, band leader, teacher and composer, Dorian Ford. I met Dorian at a jazz gig a couple of months ago, and since we couldn't stop talking about music that night, I thought why not get him on the show. A welcome departure from all the god-damn politics and economics. Within the walls of our musical meander, we discuss the history of jazz, it’s relation to classical music, and the effects of the ‘academisation’ of the modern american classical music, that we call Jazz. We also talk about how music is a function of it’s economic and cultural conditions, and the K-Pop phenomenon that is Gangnam Style.

Dorian Ford describes himself as a piano player. He also is leader of the eponymous Dorian Ford Quartet, who I was lucky enough to catch last month playing at the newly opened St. James Theatre Studio in Victoria, London. He is also the programmer for the gigs at St. James Theatre every Friday night, where you can hear the finest in Jazz and Roots music perform in a really great setting.

If you’d like to find out more about these gigs or the man himself, you can check out his blog: http://dorianfordjazzandroots.tumblr.com/

Or his website: http://www.dorianford.co.uk/.

Enjoy...

This week we talk with journalist and author Iain Bruce about the history of the Brazilian Workers Party, their experiments with direct democracy. the political philosophy of the Venezuelan President, Hugo Chavez, and the geopolitics of South America. We also discuss the hopes for direct democracy, something I hope to cover further, in future shows.

Iain Bruce is a British journalist and filmmaker. He is the author of ‘The Porto Alegre Alternative: Direct Democracy in Action’, and ‘The Real Venezuela: Making Socialism in the 21st Century’, and has made documentaries for Channel 4 and the BBC. In the past he has worked as the BBC correspondent in Caracas, Venezuela, as an adviser to Telesur, the Latin American news channel based in Venezuela, and currently finds himself in Qatar plying his trade with Al Jazeera.

You can find him blogging over at: www.venezuelanalysis.com.

And you can buy his books here:

http://www.amazon.co.uk/The-Real-Venezuela-Socialism-Century/dp/0745327362/ref=sr_1_2?ie=UTF8&qid=1354139276&sr=8-2

http://www.amazon.co.uk/The-Porto-Alegre-Alternative-International/dp/0745320961/ref=sr_1_10?ie=UTF8&qid=1354139276&sr=8-10

Enjoy!

This week we hold a chat with Professor Mathew Forstater of the University of Missouri-Kansas City. We talk about the role of primitive accumulation in the rise of capitalism, how government taxes were a tool of primitive accumulation in the colonies, and how it continues to work it's magic in today's economic system. Marx's thoughts on fiat currency get a hearing, as does the role of America’s deficit and their government debt. For our US listeners, it explains the stupidity of the current 'Grand Bargain' Obama has under negotiation, the ideology of it all, and the likely outcomes. Enjoy!

This week we have part two of our talk with Professor Andrew Kliman of Pace University. This week we turn our thoughts to the dynamism of capitalism and the soviet experiment, the short-term asymmetric advantages of capitalism, and the revolutionary strategies of Karl Marx.

Those in New York, can go to see the Professor debate about the crisis, with a panel of very eminent Marxists, indeed! All courtesy of the Platypus Affiliated Society....

http://newyork.platypus1917.org/11-14-2012-radical-interpretations-of-the-present-crisis/

You can check out Professor Klimans books here:

http://www.amazon.com/Andrew-Kliman/e/B001JSALNS/ref=sr_ntt_srch_lnk_1?qid=1352227366&sr=8-1

And his blog is here:

http://akliman.squarespace.com/

Enjoy....

This week we talk to Professor Andrew Kliman, about the current economic crisis, and what Karl Marx would make of it all. Professor Kliman, is a Professor of Economics at Pace University and author of several publications on Marxian economics, including the books Reclaiming Marx’s “Capital”, and ‘The Failure of Capitalist Production: Underlying Causes of the Great Recession’. We talk of Marx's labour theory of value, the falling rate of profit, production for productions sake, and what Marx would think about the insights of the post-keynesian, Hyman Minsky.

The Professor is a leading proponent of the Temporal Single System Interpretation of Marx's labor theory, which defends Marx’s cconomic theories against various claims of its inconsistency from other economists. I’m currently reading Das Kapital myself, so it’s a real treat to hear what one of the worlds foremost Marxists has to say about the current economic situation.

You can buy his books here:

http://www.amazon.com/Andrew-Kliman/e/B001JSALNS/ref=sr_ntt_srch_lnk_1?qid=1351094041&sr=8-1

You can check out his blog here:

http://akliman.squarespace.com/

Enjoy!

This week we talk to farmer and permaculturist extraordinaire, Paul Wheaton. Paul has just returned from his ‘Symphonies in Seed and Soil’ speaking tour of America, and currently finds himself trying to buy a new farm up there in Montana. He runs: www.Permies.com, the worlds most popular Permaculture forums and website, and is a prolific podcaster in his own right.

We talk of chickens and pigs, American culture and the metric system, moving earth and building ponds, agri-business and industrial farming. Unfortunately skype ate some of the interview, so I wasn't able to include the question where he told me exactly how tall he his. All I can say for certain, is that he is order of magnitudes taller than my spindly frame.

Here is his podcast: http://www.richsoil.com/permaculture/

Here is his brilliant and very popular youtube channel: http://www.youtube.com/user/paulwheaton12

Enjoy!