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| Bill Meacham, right, with Rag Radio host Thorne Dreyer in the studios of KOOP Radio in Austin, Texas, Friday, May 31, 2013. Photo by Tracey Schulz / Rag Radio. |
Rag Radio podcast:
Philosophy scholar Bill Meacham,
author of ‘How to Be an Excellent Human’
“By working for the good — that is, the healthy functioning — of the world around us, we nourish that which nourishes us, and we thrive.” — Bill Meacham
By Rag Radio | The Rag Blog | June 6, 2013
Also find the podcast of our May 24, 2013, Rag Radio interview with counterculture legend John Sinclair, below.
Philosophy scholar and activist Bill Meacham, the author of How to Be an Excellent Human: Mysticism, Evolutionary Psychology and the Good Life, was Thorne Dreyer’s guest on Rag Radio, Friday, May 31, 2013.
Rag Radio is a syndicated radio program produced at the studios of KOOP 91.7-FM, a cooperatively-run all-volunteer community radio station in Austin, Texas.
Listen to or download our interview with Bill Meacham here:
On the show we discuss issues raised in Bill’s book, How to Be an Excellent Human and in his essay, “Imagine There’s No Morality,” posted at The Rag Blog. We talk about how to use the discipline of philosophy to address questions like what it means to be a human and how we can live good and fulfilling lives; how we can make ethical and moral decisions; and the ethical implications and motivations involved in working for social change.
Bill also contrasts what he poses as the “Goodness” paradigm vs. the “Rightness” paradigm, and addresses metaphysical issues like “panpsychist” mysticism and the mystical concept of “Oneness” — and how quantum physics may be seen to inform that concept.
Bill Meacham is an independent scholar in philosophy. Also an activist and former staffer at Austin’s ’60s-‘70s underground paper, The Rag, Bill studied philosophy at Williams College, Columbia University, and the University of Texas at Austin where he received his Ph.D. Meacham also spent many years working as a computer programmer, systems analyst, and project manager. He blogs at Philosophy for Real Life and The Rag Blog, and his writings can also be found at What’s What.
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| John Sinclair. |
Rag Radio podcast:
Sixties counterculture legend John Sinclair
Also listen to our Rag Radio interview with Amsterdam-based poet John Sinclair. A legendary counterculture figure from the ’60s and ’70s, Sinclair founded the White Panther Party in Detroit in 1968, managed the historic “avant-rock” proto-punk band, the MC5, worked with the underground newspaper, the Fifth Estate, and founded the Detroit Artists Workshop.
Find our May 24, 2013 interview with John Sinclair here:
After John Sinclair was sentenced to 9-1/2-10 years in prison for giving two joints to an undercover policewoman, John Lennon celebrated him with the song “John Sinclair.”
A 29-month campaign to gain his freedom climaxed in a mammoth eight-hour “John Sinclair Freedom Rally” in Ann Arbor, where John Lennon and Yoko Ono, Stevie Wonder, Allen Ginsberg, Phil Ochs, Bobby Seale, and others performed and spoke in front of 15,000 people. Three days after the concert, the Michigan Supreme Court released Sinclair, and later overturned his conviction.
Sinclair moved to New Orleans in 1991, where he was named the city’s most popular disc jockey by OffBeat Magazine five years in a row, and moved to Amsterdam in 2003. Since the mid-’90s, John Sinclair has performed spoken-word poetry with his band, The Blues Scholars. One of the pioneers of podcasting, his weekly internet program, the John Sinclair Radio Show, is the flagship of Radio Free Amsterdam.
Rag Radio is hosted and produced by Rag Blog editor and long-time alternative journalist Thorne Dreyer, a pioneer of the Sixties underground press movement.
The show has aired since September 2009 on KOOP 91.7-FM, an all-volunteer cooperatively-run community radio station in Austin, Texas. Rag Radio is broadcast live every Friday from 2-3 p.m. (CDT) on KOOP and is rebroadcast on Sundays at 10 a.m. (EDT) on WFTE, 90.3-FM in Mt. Cobb, PA, and 105.7-FM in Scranton, PA.
The show is streamed live on the web by both stations and, after broadcast, all Rag Radio shows are posted as podcasts at the Internet Archive.
Rag Radio is produced in association with The Rag Blog, a progressive Internet newsmagazine, and the New Journalism Project, a Texas 501(c)(3) nonprofit corporation. Tracey Schulz is the show’s engineer and co-producer.
Rag Radio can be contacted at ragradio@koop.org.
Coming up on Rag Radio:
THIS FRIDAY, June 7, 2013: Mother Jones correspondent Tom Philpott on agricultural sustainability and the “Politics of Food.”
