Panhandle Primate Podcast

Highways allow us to get where we’re going at high speeds, but this convenience doesn’t come without risk. We have the ability to easily travel between locations, but we now have to worry about high speed car wrecks. Our modern lifestyle creates new hazards. Thus, the guardrails were designed to offer protection and minimize risk, but what are other areas of society that need metaphorical guardrails? In this episode, we discuss societal trade-offs - trading in one risk for another. We talk about distinctions between Eastern and Western thought, the advancement of modern medicine, and the emergence of fitness centers. Have we traded in our humanity for the guise of progress?

Roald Dahl has recently become a hot topic of debate regarding censorship, sensitivity, and posthumous changes to art. At the start of 2023, Puffin Books decided to make hundreds of revisions to Dahl’s large collection of works due to feedback from sensitivity readers. Many of these revisions change or erase any text which discusses weight, race, gender, and violence. These changes have many people, including ourselves, asking, “What do we think about this?” In this episode, we discuss our opinions on these revisions, the implications of censorship, and if an author can be separated from his works.

Do you own your culture? Or does your culture own you? I have always been curious about the line between cultural characteristics and genuine persona. Where does your culture stop and the individual start? In this episode, we explore the way cultures around the world modify their bodies to participate and play a role within their culture. We then turn the lens onto our own post-internet culture to see the parallels and contradictions.

If you would like to get more involved with us, you can follow us on instagram at

Dexter and Shannon Cearley (@thecearleycultivation) • Instagram photos and videos

Dexter Cearley (@panhandleprimate) • Instagram photos and videos

Shannon Cearley (@shanncearley) • Instagram photos and videos

Biar Cattle Company (@biarcattlecompany) • Instagram photos and videos

References- We hope you will support a local book store with your purchase of any books

Born to Run- Christopher McDougall Here

1984- George Orwell Here

Sex at Dawn- Dr. Christopher Ryan Here

Anarchist Handbook- Micheal Malice Here

The Prison Notebooks - Antonio Gramsci Here

Black Skin, White Masks - Franz Fanon Here

Chinua Achebe Here

Tribes-

Kayan people (Myanmar)- Neck Rings Here

The Crocodile Men (Papua New Guinea)- Scaring Here

Chinese (China 10th-20th centuries)- Foot binding Here

Body builders (Gym near you)- Massing out Here

This episode was years in the making. Shannon has been in graduate school at Texas Tech for the last 5 years, and she is now officially finished. She has been an inspiration to me through this process, and I couldn’t be more proud. For this episode, we really just wanted to talk about her experience in school and explore the world of linguistics. Shannon nerds out about topics such as linguistic hegemony, the wug test, and optimality theory. Consider this a toe dip into the vast ocean of Linguistics. We’re sure there will be more in-depth episodes over these topics in the future, but for now, consider this a teaser.

This episode is following up on some concepts introduced in the last episode, The Zero. When people talk about metrics, it’s usually used to discuss something quantifiable…things like money or data. What if we instead applied it to other, less-quantifiable things as well - things like happiness or time well spent. Shannon and I explore how metric and data collection, when applied outside of the normal metrics, can reveal aspects about ourselves that are often hidden from view. Join us in rethinking some of the metrics around us as we head into 2023!

Thank you for the support over the past few years, we launched this podcast at possibly the worst time for us with living situation and life responsibilities, However… we are now ready to pursue The D_program Podcast with the enthusiasm that it, and you, deserve. We have goals for this next year which include more consistent content!

When I first presented the idea of doing an episode over Zero, Shannon was skeptical. How much is there to say about nothing? Turns out, quite a lot. In this episode, we explore Zero as a number, a concept, and as an abstraction. Zero may seem like nothing, but as with most things, there is more than meets the eye.

Stranger Things season four just came to an end, and it grabbed the attention of the masses. The show’s 80’s culture, supernatural twists, and detective narrative are a few aspects which contribute to the show’s popularity. Hosts Dexter and Shannon dive into Hawkins to explore the themes, symbols, and characters within the show and what our fascination might say about our own culture.

We hope you enjoy the show! We took a break, but we are back.

Special thanks to Hayden Pedigo for the outro music and Jeff Wyrick for the cover art.

We recently started a new instagram account following our family’s move to the farm and quickly realized how little we knew about growing an account. We googled and clicked and learned about the vast world of instagramming. Our biggest takeaway was that we needed “pillars.” In the instagram world, what is it that we will be posting? As we’ve thought about this question, it became an interesting challenge to try to define ourselves. Thus, this episode was born! In this episode, we lay out the driving principles which inspired this show and how these pillars relate to our newfound farm life. This is the last episode of 2021 and stands as a road map for where we hope to go in 2022. We hope to see you there!

The emergence of the “Meta Verse” represents a new stage of the internet, dubbed “Web 3”. This new platform presents a new level of virtual existence, which just so happens to feel eerily similar to many dystopian novel plots. With virtual reality at our doorstep, Shannon and I felt intrigued to look into simulations and how they relate to society and to humanity as a whole. In this episode, we introduce simulation as a concept and dig into Nick Bostrom’s Simulator Theory. We also discuss varying degrees of abstractness within the concept of simulation. We hope this is only the first of many episodes to come covering simulations. What do you think? Are we in a simulation?

Left vs. Right. Pro-choice vs. Pro-Life. Pro-vaccine vs. Anti-vaccine. I always get a little weary when complex issues become reduced to binaries, as if those are the only two choices. Most of the time, binaries exist when there is a limitation of options or when your options stand to be limited. Because we are inundated with binaries in our lives, it’s important to know how these narratives shape our thoughts. In this episode, Shannon introduces and gives a brief history of binary oppositions. We have felt pulled towards the relevance of this concept and its application in contextualizing some of the prevailing mainstream narratives both politically and socially. Hope you enjoy this episode!

Show notes 

00:16:25- Intro music 

00:17:58- What is binary opposition?

00:19:07- Quick history- 

 Ferdinand de Saussure: Structuralism- language as a binary code

 Jacques Derrida: Post structualism -Deconstructing binaries

00:26:31- The narrative of colonialism -duality as a means to incite -binarry narrative

Postcolonialism

00:29:06- Spoiler alert 

00:35:40- Michael Malice: Anarchist Handbook

00:38:20- Derek Walcott: Pantomime

00:43:20- Why do you favor one over the other?

00:46:30- Dividing by columns

00:51:10- Binary reenforced 

00:53:10- Gender non-binary  

Judith Butler: Leading Queer Theory scholar

01:00:53- Political non-binary 

We hope you are enjoying the show! If you would like to support this show, please share the episode with a friend or on a social platform. We are currently in a ramping-up period and plan to have more ways to support the podcast. If you are “homesteading” or trying to be more self-reliant, please reach out to us. We would love to hear from you.