Wiki Politiki

Aired Tuesday, 17 April 2018, 5:00 PM ESTCan the “Food Revolution” Unite Us?A Conversation with Food Activist Ocean Robbins“We need to shift the focus from ‘identity’ issues that keep us divided to the ‘identical’ issues that unite us — clean food, clean air, clean water and clean government.” — Swami BeyondanandaUntil now the two-party duopoly has kept us divided by “identity” issues so that we have been unable to unite around “identical” issues, those all of us share in common like clean air, clean water, clean food and clean government.As more people from both the conservative and progressive “tribes” begin to awaken around the need for unadulterated, nutritious food — and also begin to explore medicine beyond drugs and surgery — there is a new potential for a unifying force that can “overgrow” the misrepresentations by big Pharma and agribusiness.Our guest this week, Ocean Robbins, is a leading voice in food education and helping the public discern real information from industry “impropaganda”. In doing s

Aired Tuesday, 10 April 2018, 5:00 PM ESTGuns and the Right to Bear Arms – Beyond Victims and VillainsA Conversation with Progressive Gun-Owner Veronica Monet“Every child should learn the appropriate use of arms — for hugging.” — Swami BeyondanandaThe problem with “hot button” issues like gun control / 2nd Amendment rights is that they are “hot” — lots of heat, not nearly enough light. From the meta-view, they keep the culture wars alive, and this war prevents “we the people” from uniting around the larger issues of governance, what my friend and associate Joseph McCormick calls “who’s in charge of who’s in charge”.So it may be that the Parkland students’ movement, while seeking to address the problem at a higher level, could easily be diverted into positionality that avoids the real problem. This week’s guest, self-described progressive and gun-owner Veronica Monet takes us deeper into the conversation: Why IS the school-shooting problem so indigenous to the USA? How do we protect the rights of individual ci

Aired Tuesday, 3 April 2018, 5:00 PM ESTWhen We the People Become King… the Queendom of Heaven Will Be at HandHealing Martin Luther King’s Murder, and Embodying His Legacy“The truth shall upset you free.” — Swami BeyondanandaThis week on Wiki Politiki, we commemorate the 50th anniversary of Martin Luther King, Jr.’s assassination. And in the true spirit of “apocalypse”, we lift the veils both on the awful truth and the awesome opportunity.The awful truth is that MLK wasn’t killed by the alleged assassin James Earl Ray, but was brought down by the FBI, the Memphis police, and other government agencies. How do we know? Because William Pepper, attorney for the King family, presented the case at a US Court in Memphis in 1999. The depositions, testimony and other evidence provided caused the jury to decide — after deliberating less than an hour — that indeed this was the case, and James Earl Ray was an innocent “patsy”.Why doesn’t everybody know this?Because we’re not supposed to know this, just as we’re not suppo

Aired Tuesday, 27 March 2018, 5:00 PM ESTLiving Room Conversations: Can A New “Parlor” Game Heal the Divide?A Conversation With Living Room Conversations Co-Founder Joan Blades“When we connect personally, we don’t take things poisonally.” — Swami BeyondanandaDid you know (From the Living Room Conversations website) … “Living rooms used to be the place where people would gather to socialize and relate with each other. Inviting someone into your home was to treat them as valued and worthy of respect. But before they were called living rooms these rooms were referred to as “parlors” – a term that comes from the French and means place for speaking.”At a time when there’s been precious little civil discourse — let alone civic discourse — can transpartisan “living room conversations” heal the divide?Joan Blades, co-founder of the very partisan MoveOn.org thinks so.In 2010, she and conservative colleagues founded Living Room Conversations to “re-humanize” the other side (whichever side the other side is to you) by s

Aired Tuesday, 20 March 2018, 5:00 PM ESTThe New Republic of the Heart – From Emergency to Emergent SeeingA Conversation With Integral Thinker and Author Terry Patten“Can we undo the doo-doo that has been done, or will the done doo-doo be our undoing?” — Swami BeyondanandaThere’s the classic story about the hiker who slips off a mountain trail, and the only way he can break his fall is by grabbing on to a thin branch. As he holds the branch, he sees that it’s only a matter of time before the branch breaks under his weight. So he begins to pray for God’s help. To his surprise the clouds part in the sky and he hears an unmistakable voice that says, “Let go.”He continues holding the branch, and once again and louder the voice says, “LET GO!”At that point, the hiker turns to the sky and asks, “Is there anyone else up there?”That seems to be our human condition, and conditioning, when faced with the kinds of vexing issues we face today where our survival as a species is threatened, and yet we continue to do the ve

Aired Tuesday, 13 March 2018, 5:00 PM ESTWise Democracy, the Great Upwising and A New “Common Sense”A Conversation With Evolutionary Activist Tom Atlee“A revolutionary uprising to overthrow the system? Nah, that’s strictly old paradigm. What we really need is an evolutionary upwising to OVERGROW the system.” — Swami BeyondanandaWhile doing research for Spontaneous Evolution ten years ago, I came across a book that forever changed how I viewed the collective wisdom of we the people. The book was called The Tao of Democracy and it offered example after example of how the collective voice and view of ordinary citizens could provide more helpful and functional solutions than the best-informed experts.The author of that book, Tom Atlee, has been an “evolutionary activist” for more than 30 years, focusing on the power of collaboration and collective intelligence. In 1996, he founded the Co-Intelligence Institute to aid in the “conscious evolution” of our society, and our species.His work on “wise democracy” feature

Aired Tuesday, 6 March 2018, 5:00 PM ESTConspiracy and Cons’ Piracy – Cultivating Deep Wisdom About Deep PoliticsA Conversation With Author and “Conspiracy Literacy” Expert Mark Robinowitz“In these times of fake news, it’s hard to know who to NOT believe.” — Swami BeyondanandaDid you know… that the term “conspiracy theory” was put into circulation by the CIA in the late 1960s to marginalize those who were questioning the official Warren Commission Report on the JFK assassination?Our guest this week Mark Robinowitz knows that, and he also knows that many of the current viral “conspiracy theories” circulating are intentionally meant to discredit and “pollute” the real ones. Mark is a writer and researcher who focuses on the intersection of deep politics and deep ecology. He runs several websites, including OilEmpire.US – A Political Map, PeakChoice.org – Cooperation or Collapse, and JFKMoon.org about President Kennedy’s call to end the Cold War and convert the Moon race to a joint US – Soviet mission. Mark is b

Aired Tuesday, 27 February 2018, 5:00 PM ESTIf This Candidate Wins, We ALL DoA Conversation With Sander Hicks, Congressional Candidate, NY’s 12th District“The Republicans have sold their soul to the devil. The Democrats? They’ve just been renting theirs.” — Swami BeyondanandaAh, New York, New York.If you can make it there, you can make it anywhere.There’s a forward-thinking, visionary, courageous and creative candidate running for Congress in New York’s 12th Congressional District, and if Sander Hicks makes it there, he wins for all of us.Sander Hicks — writer, publisher, entrepreneur, musician, carpenter, and truth-seeker — is our guest on this week’s Wiki Politiki, and he is campaigning to win the primary and unseat a Democrat who has been in the pocket of the banking industry and the military industrial complex throughout the 26 years she has been in office.Over the past generation, the Democratic (sic) party has devolved into the “other” corporate party, which is why disillusioned young voters stayed home

Aired Tuesday, 20 February 2018, 5:00 PM ESTTo Know Water Is to Love WaterA Conversation With “Hydro-luminary” Jim Lauria“We humans, without water, we’re sunk.” — Swami BeyondanandaWater is life.It has been said many times and many ways … and it is true.Not only do we humans require water, but every human endeavor does as well — agriculture, energy, industry, business, recreation. Even the “cloud” requires water, because the more information being stored and used, the more water is needed to cool the servers. The good news is, if we humans work together to manage our most precious “we-source”, we also create the pathway to manage all of our other collective problems.Our guest this week Jim Lauria, has had a lifelong love affair with water. From his childhood in Queens at a time when New York City was famed for having the best water in the world, to his travels as an engineer to countries across the globe, to his current mission, a book called “To Know Water Is To Love Water,” Jim is a true “hydro-luminary”, a

Aired Tuesday, 13 February 2018, 5:00 PM ESTEngaging the Other - Finding TRUE Common Ground in the Age of PolarizationA Conversation With Steve Olweean, Director Common Bond Institute“Before we have peace in the Middle East, we first need to create peace in the Middle West.” — Swami BeyondanandaMy colleague Bruce Lipton, cellular biologist, tells us that the next phase of human evolution is an evolution in consciousness, where we recognize that we are each and all cells in the larger body of humanity. If that is true, it’s easy to see how so much of our resource and intention is tied up in obsolete and “obsolethal” forms of interactivity that can best be seen as autoimmune disease. After all, when healthy humans on two sides of an issue spend their time and energy in combat, two things happen. First, warfare endangers not just the lives of those engaged in the conflict, but life on the planet. Secondly, precious energy and resources that could be used to work together is being dissipated and wasted.That’s why

Aired Tuesday, 6 February 2018, 5:00 PM ESTNational Town Square, Part 2 - The New “Common Sense” and a Coherent Voice for We the PeopleA Conversation With Richard Lang, Author, Virtual Country And Rev. Lupton Abshire, Democracy Calling And… YOU!“We need a new PRECEDENT. Government of, by and for the people where the government does OUR bidding, not the bidding of the highest bidder.” — Swami BeyondanandaTwo weeks ago, our guest Richard Lang laid out an outside the (ballot) box strategy where a key missing ingredient can be added to “government by the people” — the PEOPLE!His new book, Virtual Country: Strategy for 21st Century Democracy, offers a simple and yet radical (meaning: to the root) way for we the people to have “an individual vote, a collective voice” that could very well call forth a “new common sense.” Writes Richard:“By accessing and quantifying our common sense, one issue at a time, in an authenticated, secure, easy-to-use way that gives each citizen a voice and a vote, we can begin to define ou

Aired Tuesday, 30 January 2018, 5:00 PM ESTThe Mondragón Experiment, Worker Ownership and Thrival for AllA Conversation With Georgia Kelly, Praxis Peace InstituteSWAMI’S DICTIONARYThrival: The stage beyond survival where we all weave a web of mass-construction and reap a “world win”. — Swami BeyondanandaThere’s a famous joke purportedly told by a Soviet delegate during a meeting to discuss trade between the two countries during the Cold War Era:What’s the difference between capitalism and communism?In capitalism, man exploits man. In communism, it’s the other way around.The 20th century offered up plenty of evidence that — given human nature, and the nature of the “dominator virus” that has dominated human affairs for the past 5,000 years — despite the best intentions, neither system has created social justice or sustainable economic well being.The problem with any ideology is, while it might be a helpful place to be “coming from”, it doesn’t allow the flexibility required when we’re ready to stop defending p

Aired Tuesday, 23 January 2018, 5:00 PM EST National Town Square — A New National Institution to Represent “Us” and “We-Distribute” Political Power A Conversation With Richard Lang, Author of Virtual Country “We don’t need a revolution to overthrow the system. We need an evolution to help us overgrow it.” — Swami Beyondananda If you’ve had the sense that the will of the ordinary citizen in America has little or no impact on what legislation actually gets passed — you’re right. A study conducted by Princeton University in 2014 concluded: “The preferences of the average American appear to have only a miniscule, near-zero, statistically non-significant impact upon public policy.In other words, a huge majority of American citizens can support a policy like, for example, Net Neutrality — but if this policy flies in the face of what the most influential corporations want … well, we’ve seen what’s happened to Net Neutrality in recent months. And, if the overwhelming majority of Americans OPPOSE a policy — like the w

Aired Tuesday, 16 January 2018, 5:00 PM EST How Bat-shit Crazy Became the New Normal: Donald Trump’s “Family” Values A Conversation With Steve Villano, Author of TIGHTROPE: Balancing a Life Between Mario Cuomo and My Brother “Our President is a champion of ‘family values’ — Gambino Family values.” — Swami Beyondananda Over the past week or two, the media buzz has been about Michael Wolff’s book that has called into question Donald Trump’s emotional and mental capacity to govern. My guest this week, author Steve Villano, offers a much, much deeper analysis of the “shituation” tracking Donald Trump and the Trump family history to the KKK and the Mob. Villano’s new book, TIGHTROPE: Balancing a Life Between Mario Cuomo and My Brother, chronicles his own “balancing act” when he was head of New York Governor Mario M. Cuomo’s New York City Press Office while his brother was connected with the John Gotti crime family. As we will learn, the book is much more than a personal history. It’s the story of Italians in Ameri

Aired Tuesday, 9 January 2018, 5:00 PM ESTBusiness As UNusual: How A Life Economy Can Overgrow the Death EconomyA Conversation With Conscious Business Initiative’s Steve Farrell“Putting the pie-in-the-sky ideal into the down-to-earth real deal is where the karma meets the road.” — Swami BeyondanandaSteve-Farrell_Wiki-Politiki_OMTimes-RadioA little more than a year ago, I heard author John Perkins (Confessions of An Economic Hit Man) speak, and found one piece of his message particularly heartening. Perkins, as you may know, spent years working for the World Bank selling boondoggle projects to developing nations. His book was an exposé of economic exploitation disguised as “development.” He has since turned his focus to exposing the “death economy” that involves four “E’s” (extraction, exploitation, extortion and yes, extinction) and empowering the life economy based on 4 R’s — renewables, respect for the web of life and human life as well, and redefining “growth” as growth in happiness and wellbeing while usi

Aired Tuesday, 2 January 2018, 5:00 PM EST 7 Words That Can Change The World Can A Simple Idea Coalesce A Movement of Movements? A Conversation With Author Joe Simonetta “Of course Jesus believed in evolution. Otherwise he would have said, ‘Now don’t do a thing till I get back’.” — Swami Beyondananda At a time when “reality” is up for grabs, and the chasm between competing worldviews in this country seems almost unbridgeable, could there possibly be a unifying thought, idea, human aspiration that can unite us? Architect, author, and Harvard Divinity School graduate Joe Simonetta thinks so, and he has boiled it down to seven simple words. No, I won’t tell you what those words are. You’ll have to tune in to find out. I will tell you, they are NOT the seven words that George Carlin said cannot be said on the air! In Spontaneous Evolution, Bruce Lipton and I recognized that our world was caught between two competing paradigms, neither of which by itself could take us through the current “existential crisis” of ou

Aired Tuesday, 26 December 2017, 5:00 PM EST Eco-Astrology: The Planetary Ecosystem, the Human Ego-System and the Evolutionary Upwising A Conversation With Eco-Astrologer Stephanie Austin “I don’t make predictions because I don’t want to lose my non-prophet status.” — Swami Beyondananda Astrology. Before I met my wife Trudy, I was a skeptic. Anytime anyone asked, “What’s your sign?” I would reply, “Slippery when wet.” Ha-ha- ha. However, I couldn’t discount Trudy’s insights about my own personality based on this ancient tool. Then there was the time we were watching our first World Series together, and the announcer was Joe Morgan. At one point, she asked, “Is he a Virgo?” Looked it up in my trusty Baseball Encyclopedia and sure enough he was. So I devised a test. I chose three of my family members whom she had met, but didn’t know their birthdates. For each, I gave three possible birthdates, one of them correct. In all three cases, she picked the correct birthdates, based on what she knew about their persona

Aired Tuesday, 19 December 2017, 5:00 PM EST CHRISTMAS IN THE TRENCHES: Breaking the Trance of War and Standing for Justice A Conversation With Author David Swanson (War Is a Lie) and Activist Jul Bystrova “If war is a necessary evil, why not stand for peace as a necessary good?” — Swami Beyondananda It used to be that the “work of heart” I most associated with Christmas was the Frank Capra movie, “It’s A Wonderful Life.” But ever since my friend Shanti Norman recorded John McCutcheon’s song, “Christmas in the Trenches” in 2000, I have held that extraordinary piece of work as best symbolizing the light that can shine in times of greatest darkness. After World War I started in 1914, the Pope suggested a truce around Christmas time. The generals pursuing the war didn’t like this idea one bit, and in fact one of their concerns was that the enemy trenches were so close, that soldiers could hear the enemy speaking to their comrades, and even smell the food they were cooking. What came to be known as the “Christmas

Aired Tuesday, 12 December 2017, 5:00 PM ESTEXPLOITATION AND SEXPLOITATION: Beyond Shame and Blame, Victims and VillainsA Conversation With Relationship Specialist, Sexologist and Empathy Expert Veronica MonetWhy is it that so many self-righteous males who claim to be following the Big Guy Upstairs are really following the little guy downstairs? — Swami BeyondanandaIt started with Harvey Weinstein… and has now turned Al Franken into Frankenstein.Over the past month, more and more men in high places have been accused of inappropriately touching women in private places. This obviously has been going on for centuries, so why is it coming to the surface now? Is this backlash against the groper-in-chief currently in the White House? Is this the new Inquisition against abusive male power? Will it lead to more retribution, or will there be a breakthrough?This week on Wiki Politiki we interview Veronica Monet, a one-time sex worker who now offers perspective and wisdom through her platform, The Shame-Free Zone. A wis

Aired Tuesday, 5 December 2017, 5:00 PM ESTDefying Gravity: How the Power of Levity Can Uplift Us in Unfunny TimesA Conversation With Firesign Theatre Co-Founder Phil ProctorWe must all laugh together, or else we will cry separately. — Swami BeyondanandaIt was the summer of 1969, and I found myself in Berkeley visiting a friend. I had just smoked some particularly strong California weed, and that put me in an altered state. What happened next would alter my state even more …As I walked into her house, I heard a strange radio show playing, a quiz show called “Beat the Reaper”… it sounded so real, and yet the premise was entirely bizarre: The contestant was injected with some deadly disease, and if he or she guessed the disease in time, they’d be given the antidote. After a while it became apparent I was listening to some dark parody, kind of Bob & Ray meet the Twilight Zone. I soon discovered I was listening to the Firesign Theatre, and from that moment on I was hooked.Don’t Crush That Dwarf, Hand Me the P