Seen From Space: The Inaugural Secret Soup Summit

I rarely speak. It's one of the hazards of self-employment. I'm alone most of the day, trapped within my own inner dialogue. I don't get many opportunities to flex those verbal muscles, but am thinking I should take it upon myself to practice, y'know, talking more often. 

I don't do many podcasts anymore either. I used to do them all the time but just found them exhausting, which I hear is a classic sign of introversion (being exhausted by extended verbal contact, not podcasts per se. I don't think Jung had podcasting in mind when he worked up diagnoses for introversion and extroversion). That's something I'd like to work on as well.*

Luckily, I was recently on Gordon White's Rune Soup podcast, Gordon being one of the most eloquent, articulate, downright silver-tongued bastards out there. He was willing to oblige my verbal warmup by drawing upon his apparently bottomless well of erudition until I got the old motors revvin'. And then he couldn't shut me up. 

We ended going way over his scheduled time, having hit that groove and letting it flow. It was one of the least exhausting experiences I've had, which Mr. White should take as the sincerest compliment I can possibly muster.

What did we cover? Well, for once no Jack Kirby or X-Files but as Gordon puts it, we talk "about the Nine, Esalen, elite belief systems, alien cargo cults, Star Trek, tarot, psychogeography and what may or may not be coming down the pipe in 2016." 

We also cover the so-called Breakaway Civilization, the utter improbability of the SR-71 Blackbird, the impossible city-state of Dubai, Roswell and reverse engineering, the postwar tech and national security explosion, the role of 19th Century archaeology in the rise of the 21st Century space race, the profound influence of Richard Hoagland's work on the field of Synchromysticism, and psi, magic and moving beyond Synchronicity.

Click here to listen to the Rune Soup podcast.

* As well as the issues with my Wi-Fi, that I had with the Mystery Hour and linger still. My wife thinks it's me, that I somehow effect the Wi-Fi somehow, since she had no trouble getting a strong signal in the same area. That might be true, it would fit a certain profile, certainly.