The Change Paradox

A grounding exercise with Dodge based on W. Lance Bennett.

Hi everybody,

This week we’re talking about Lance Bennett, Professor Emeritus and the founding director for the Center for Communication and Civic Engagement at University of Washington. His speciality, political science and civic engagement. He joined us last week to talk about politics, partisanship, and the climate crisis, and today we’re going to try and pull that conversation apart.

Thanks to you all for showing up and bringing your best selves to an often difficult conversation.

— Pete

Hey everybody... it's Pete...

Welcome to Season 2. We're still here, me and Dodge, talking about change and the paradox therein. We learned a lot last season and in spite of coming face to face with our own in adequacies as we work to impact change in our lives — I'll go ahead and speak for myself there — we're pretty darned tickled to be back with another slate of guests to keep us pushing forward and learning this season.

We start with Lance Bennett. Lance is Professor Emeritus and the founding director for the Center for Communication and Civic Engagement at University of Washington. His speciality, political science and civic engagement, which I hope you could guess, and he's been a valiant contributor to the body of knowledge in the field for decades.

He's with us this week to talk about change as it manifests in our current political and media landscapes and along the way, we do our best to unravel some of the things we've done to ourselves as human organisms that get in the way of the change we'd like to see in the world. At least... the change some of us would like to see in the world. It's hard to see an all of us these days, isn't it?

Lance's latest book hit the shelves just a few months ago and it's a primer for those of us concerned with the state of our environment and our apparent inability to act aggressively in response. His thesis: "How can we communicate and act more effectively to make the political and economic changes required to survive and even thrive within the life-support capacities of our planet?"

The book is called Communicating the Future: Solutions for Environment, Economy and Democracy and it's available now.

Thanks for sticking with us. This show is an incredible joy to produce and we're honored to have you. We hope you enjoy this conversation with W. Lance Bennett and Dodge Rea.

Links & Notes

• About W. Lance Bennett

Hey everybody...

Well, we made it. We hit eighteen. That wraps our first season. And with it, after all the interviews and all the Afterthoughts, we decided it might do us some good to reflect on the season as a whole.

To Ben, Ted, Dave, Carleen, Nikki, Sam, Suman, and Linda, your generosity and expertise are boundless. Thank you for sharing your wisdom with us and brightening the world with your courageous teaching.

To those who are hearing us for the first time, this whole Afterthoughts thing happens in between every one of our interviews, a chance for Dodge and I to reflect together on how each guest has changed us in some way. If you find it provocative in any way, we invite you to become members of our community. You’ll get your own podcast feed where you’ll automatically receive both the public interviews and the Afterthoughts episodes alike.

To those who have supported us from the beginning this season, we thank you more than you can know. Your support has made it possible for us to invest our time and attention on the show and that has been a powerfully rewarding endeavor. We hope you’ll stick around for season two.

Speaking of season two, we’re going to be recording over the month of February and plan to begin releasing our new episodes in March. Thank you for your patience and grace.

Talk to you in a handful of weeks...

— Pete

Linda Odom leads us through an exercise targeted at helping us all learn the sacred language of our dreams.

Hi everybody,

We go through Linda’s exercise and — even as superficially doing it on a podcast — we learn some crazy things about ourselves. Especially yours truly. The dream, now titled “The Little Piano Boy”, is far more than the comedy I’d first thought. It’s bananas.

Thanks to you all for showing up and doing the work right along with us.

— Pete

Hey everybody,

Happy New Year. As this episode drops for members, it is New Years Day, and we made it. We made it to 2021. We closed the door on 2020 and are on to something new.

But are we, really? What is 2021 more than an arbitrary flip of a calendar page? It is powerful to so many of us because we invest that power in the New Year. I'm not great at resolutions. I don't usually set them myself, but I know more than a few people who live by their resolutions, who are able to make change in their lives in no small part because they believe in the power of change that comes in our collective embrace of transformation at the New Year.

Why do I say all that. Because our guest this week is a practitioner in the language of dreams. Now, I know as a reasonably experienced student of self that dreams are powerful. But, like the New Year, our dreams are only as powerful as the investment we make in learning about them... understanding them.

Linda Odom is a gatekeeper of sorts. She's a clinical psychologist in Nashville and while much of her work is around healing and recovery, she has a special knack for dreamwork. She teaches classes and workshops in which she teaches people how to access their own inner guidance through the language of dreams.

Here's an interesting lesson learned for me, in fact. I tend to be somewhat cavalier about my dreams. I'll talk about them casually as a good source for table humor at dinner, that sort of thing. After just a few minutes with Linda, working through her simple exercise at the end of this episode, she had me. I was a mess. In fact, I think I've turned to realize just how disrespectful I've been in treating my own dreams as superficial comedy when they're working so hard to be my teachers.

Our great thanks to Linda for her time to sit down with Dodge and educate us all. And thanks to you, as always, for your commitment to the work.

— Pete

A vipassana exploration of silence.

Hi everybody,

This week we’re talking about Suman Chaudhuri. First, we acknowledge just how charming and handsome he is. Then, at some point, we realize that it’s not just skin deep. This is a conversation about how we exist in space and time, how our limbic system gets in the way of our curiosity, and how we can all learn from guides that come from surprising places.

Thanks to you all for showing up, and for taking those first steps — actively — to do nothing.

— Pete

Hey everybody....

I can’t believe I have an opportunity to talk about Seinfeld twice this season. First, “world’s collide.” And now, “a show about nothing.” You remember the thing, right? George and Jerry are talking about salsa and seltzer and decide that the TV show they’re about to pitch is actually void of any sort of story, but is instead a show about nothing. It’s an homage to the “who’s on first” classics of vaudeville. “So it’s a show about nothing? I think you may have something here.”

I’m not going to try to explain vipassana here because our guest does that for us far better. What you need to know is that we spend the next hour and a half or so embracing a meditation practice which calls for nothing as an action. It is a practice which, when illuminated by an expert teacher, is at once a mountain to climb, an ocean to swim, and a soft pillow to rest our heads.

Suman Chaudhuri is our healer, educator, and guide today. He is the owner of Karuna Center for Natural Healthcare in Nashville. He was formally trained as a chiropractor and naturopath, and has done extensive training in energy medicine including Reiki and hands-on healing. To us, today, he is a meditation teacher, having spent decades immersed in the study and practice of meditation for healing and spiritual cultivation.

Frankly, he’s also incredibly chill. As with all these interviews, we performed this one over zoom and I’m not kidding, the moment he appeared on screen, we were moved to relax. He’s a bit contagious that way.

If the experience of vipassana is new to you, as it was to me, I encourage you to relax into it. This might not be the best episode to listen to while operating heavy machinery, for example, or performing any kind of surgery. Instead, consider sitting in a comfy chair with a cup of tea. If you have a child, instruct them to fan you gently with a giant ornamental rhubarb leaf. Close your eyes, especially for the meditation exercise to come toward the end of the show today, and join us for the most engaged experience of nothing you’ve ever had.

Our deep thanks to Suman for his time to sit down with Dodge and teach us today. And thanks to you, as always, for your commitment to the work.

— Pete