Lost Xplorers

How do you break out of stale patterns of thought? We dive deeper into the dark heart of American Mayhem, exploring the sinister alchemy of Charles Manson moving to Los Angeles. Are there living demons of regional America? Did the Sharon Tate murders have a symbolic, occult effect on the country?

“I’ve Got a Crush on You” by Charlie Watts

The Orange Julius Demon

Ashland Burial Mounds

Sinister Forces by Peter Levenda

Stranger in a Strange Land by Robert A. Heinlein

“White Rabbit” by Jefferson Airplane

“The Sound of Silence” by Simon & Garfunkel

“Self-Reliance” by Ralph Waldo Emerson

“Dickens’s Dream” by Robert William Buss

“Aja” by Steely Dan

Kris took a road trip to see Patti Smith perform at the Henry Miller library. We have a discussion about both the importance of a set of rules, and the imperative to break them. Is cancel culture on its last legs? What is "doomer optimism"? At the end of the day, if we're ever going to move past some of this stuff, we have to get tired of ourselves.

Brother (1997)

Patti Smith

The Henry Miller Library

The Tropic of Cancer by Henry Miller

The Air-Conditioned Nightmare by Henry Miller

D.H. Lawrence

Walt Whitman

Jean-Paul Belmondo

Kate Millett

“Rock and Roll N*****”

So You’ve Been Publicly Shamed by Jon Ronson

Panopticon

Erica Jong

Was the accidental death of Brandon Lee on the set of The Crow an accident at all? Or was some kind of curse involved? David tells the story of the strange happenings on the set of the film, the demon that followed Bruce Lee through Dragon, the similarities between Brandon's death and The Game of Death, and much more. This leads to a conversation about curses in general, and the perception of them in PNG culture in particular. There's also a practical tip relating to enhancing your memory and shifting the way you perceive the things that you can't change.

Blue-winged wasp

Ghost signs

1962 World’s Fair

Natalie Wood

Daniel Foor

Bruce Lee Interv

In this episode, Kris and I take a deep dive into the mystery surrounding the death of Bruce Lee. We also wonder where all of the stars have gone? Is there a reservoir of attention and charisma that is spread too thin across the internet? Was part of Bruce Lee's appeal a kind of doomed energy? Does the fact that he’s from Seattle have anything to do with it? What's going on with Seattle and the PNW in general, anyway? Probably ghosts.

Dragon: The Bruce Lee Story

Bruce Lee’s Grave

Capitol Hill Seattle

Wah Mee Massacre

Enter the Dragon

The Green Hornet

Tangerine

Once Upon a Time in Hollywood

Will Self Psychogeography

Richard Brautigan

Balch Creek

Kris and I talk about the sense of psychic collective guilt permeating the atmosphere these days. What’s the deal with all of those signs touting “kindness” as a virtue? Where did the phrase “shooting fish in a barrel come from?” All this and more in this extra episode.

Heaven’s Gate

The Naked Gun

Gary Snyder

Beat Ecopoetry

“The Contagion is the Solution” by The Last Psychiatrist

Philip Henry Gosse

Introduction to Reality Tunnels

Theremin

We have our first guest! Please welcome Kris’s mother, Ellen to the show. We talk about hearing about Pearl Harbor on the radio, child development, and the power of music. Does she reveal any deep dark secrets from Kris's past? One or two.

The History of the Legendary 10th Mountain Division

The Invention of Jell-O

Victory Gardens

Jim Whittaker

Futility by Morgan Robertson predicting the wreck of the Titanic

Hildegard von Bingen (incorrectly said to be 15th century, actually 12th century)

Lawrence Kohlberg

Anaphora

How do our personal associative patterns work? How does swarm intelligence work? Is there any thinking outside of communication? Kris and I continue our deep dive into how patterns and associations work, and investigate a strange synchronicity between Kris’s dreams and David’s real life.

River Dave / Synchromysticism / Victor Hugo Thought He Was Victor Hugo / Wherever Two or More Are Gathered in My Name

Human Smoke by Nicholson Baker

Euell Gibbons

The Secret Sun Blog

Jean Cocteau

Marvin Minsky

Programmed to Kill by David McGowan

Swarm Intelligence

Alan Watts

Janet Landsbury

John Archibald Wheeler

Is it valuable to actively engage with dissonant ideas? Should we uproot our understanding of how the world works? In this episode, Kris puts the idea of conspiracy theories into practical terms. How do we break out of tautological thinking? Why did the “Richard Gere gerbil” story gain such traction?

What is “Conspiracy Brain”? / Conspiracy as Metaphor / The Council Bluffs Scenario / Visualizing Patterns

Giorgio Agamben

Jim Marrs

Richard Gere and the Gerbil

David Icke’s lizard people

Angel City by Sam Shepard

James Purdy

Mark Lombardi

What do you do when it’s raining outside and the weather app tells you it’s sunny? Is it possible to collage together pieces of different conspiracy theories to create a dada/surrealist interpretation that defies all reason? How would that effect our approach to narrative? Can we implement a trickster spirit to how we interface with the presentation of reality?

The Uncertainty of Technological Time / The Value of Argumentation / How to Break Down Narratives

Show Notes:

The Alexandria Quartet by Lawrence Durrell

The Topology of Violence by Byung-Chul Han

Elko, Nevada

The Berenstain Bears and Too Much TV by Stan & Jan Berenstain

“The Conspiracy Myth” by Charles Eisenstein

River Dave

What happened to Malaysia Air Flight 370? We go over the narrative and discuss alternative theories. We go into other plane disappearances, whether or not LOST was a good show, and the limits of human technology. Why don’t we have jetpacks and self-driving cars already? Why can we go to space and have iPhones but we don’t have flying motorcycles?

The Official Consensus on MH370 / Oblique Directions and Spiral Possibilities / Don Lemon’s Black Hole Theory / Was LOST a Good Show? / Where’s the Good Tech?

Show Notes:

The Atlantic article about MH370

Malaysia Airlines Route Map and Destinations

MH 17

Fate is the Hunter (Full Movie)

LOST

Twilight Zone episodes:

“The Odyssey of Flight 33”

“The Arrival”

“And When the Sky Was Opened”

Amelia Earhart

Mangosteens

The Malthusian Theory of Population

The Mary Celeste

"J. Habakuk Jephson's Statement" by Sir Arthur Conan Doyle