Tag Archives: Diana Walsh Pasulka

Is spiritual tech possible? My conversation with UFO scholar Diana Walsh Pasulka + media analyst and tech critic Doug Rushkoff on AEWCH 204!

23 Nov

LISTEN HERE VIA SOUNDCLOUD OR ON Apple Podcasts • Spotify • Breaker • Anchor

SUPPORT AGAINST EVERYONE WITH CONNER HABIB

If you don’t already, please do the following to keep AEWCH going:

  • Give via patreon – Patreon.com/connerhabib – this is the best way to support the show
  • Tell people about the show and, if it feels okay, to support it on patreon (especially if you already know your pals are fans of the show but don’t support it).
  • Give the show a 5 star rating and positive review on Apple Podcasts.
  • Tweet and Insta quotes from and thoughts inspired by episodes (with a link!)

Friends,

As the weird tech world of social media seems to be crumbling around us, and UFOs have made the mainstream news, and all our problems seem both fixable and unfixable by technological solutions… we feel ourselves detaching from the period that lasted roughly the last two decades, as well as its accoutrements and decorations and denials.

So where are we going? I wanted to take a look at some of these changing features, but to look at them with as many  factors in site as possible (at least in an hourlong podcast). 

To that end, I’m so happy to have brought to luminaries together: religion scholar and UFOs-in-culture expert, Diana Walsh Pasulka – author of American Cosmic: UFOs, Technology, Religion –(she was on the show back on AEWCH 144) and Doug Rushkoff – media analyst and tech critic – my friend, host of the Team Human podcast and author of so many books (most recently Survival of the Richest: Escape Fantasies of the Tech Billionaires was last on the show on AEWCH 125.

SHOW NOTES

WHAT BOOK YOU SHOULD READ?
I haven’t read this book yet, so take my recommendation with a grain of salt – but it’s Doug’s recommendation to. Whose Global Village?: Rethinking How Technology Shapes Our World by Ramesh Srinivasan.

WHAT OTHER AEWCH EPISODE YOU SHOULD LISTEN TO?
One of my favorite episodes I’ve done on tech is AEWCH 183 where I talk about esoteric Christianity as a counter to the dangers of technology.

MORE ON DIANA and DOUG
Here’s Diana’s second appearance on Rune Soup. Here she is on a long (almost 3 hours!) podcast that often has… less interesting guests, the Lex Friedman show. And here’s her CV on her university’s site. Doug’s website is here. And be sure to listen to his podcast Team Human (which I’ve been on twice now!)

Until next time friends… uh, keep it real!
CH

Tags: , , , , , ,

Alienation & Alien Nation. Catholicism and UFO researcher Diana Walsh Pasulka on AEWCH 144!

16 Mar

LISTEN HERE VIA SOUNDCLOUD OR ON Apple Podcasts • Spotify • Breaker• Anchor

This podcast is only possible because listeners like you support it. Do contribute to my mission by supporting Against Everyone With Conner Habib on Patreon!  Thank you so, so much.

Want to buy the books mentioned on this ep? To buy Diana’s books, and books related to this episode, please go to my booklist for AEWCH 144 on bookshop.org. It will  help support independent bookstores, and the show gets a small financial kickback, too.

Friends,

Everyone who listens to this show knows that I’m interested in the intersection of spirituality, politics, and philosophy. Not in some sort of parapolitics or conspiracy way, of course – which I generally find plays out a bit shallow, even when there is truth there – but in the way the aforementioned currents play out in our inner lives, in our spiritual understandings, in our desires and drives, in our ethics and morals and activism.

Of course, this means, more and more, that I find myself contending with technology and the scientistic worldview that accompanies it.

It’s why this episode’s guest – religion and UFO scholar Diana Walsh Pasulka – is a perfect person to talk to on the show. Diana Walsh Pasulka  is the author of American Cosmic: UFOs, Religion, Technology, Heaven Can Wait: Purgatory in Catholic Devotional and Popular Culture and co-editor (with Simone Natale) of Believing in Bits: Digital Media and the Supernatural . They’re all amazing books.

At the top of this episode, I also spend a bit of time pulling apart something that comes up, and that’s the topic of AI, and how it relates to political economy and UFOs (phew!).

I’m still reeling from this conversation with Diana. She’s warm and thoughtful, and she’s mediating a lot of the intensities of the world that we need mediated. Ethics, morals, spirituality, science, tech, religion, and more.

I’m so excited to share this conversation with you.

(PS: As a bonus, this is coming out just before St. Patrick’s Day and has some St. Patrick’s lore in it! So it’s a sort of holiday episode!)

ON THIS EPISODE

  • Why do we not believe the things we don’t believe
  • Stopping ourselves from saying “that was weird” and “that was crazy”
  • The language of art as a way of knowing and learning
  • St. Patrick’s revelation
  • Diana’a UFO initiation process and academia as a site of false initiation
  • Academia’s resistance to supernatural and paranormal phenomena
  • Interacting with the dead in study and research
  • What’s the difference between Purgatory and limbo, and where is Purgatory (hint: Ireland)
  • When did physical evidence become a necessary aspect of making spiritual claims?
  • Are we all in Purgatory/limbo in quarantine?
  • My undergrad Geocities site as evidence of me speaking in tongues
  • When Diana’s social media was destroyed by bots
  • The burden and adventure of seeing what you see in the world

SHOW NOTES

• For more on Diana here’s her first and second appearance on Rune Soup. Here she is on a long (almost 3 hours!) podcast that often has… less interesting guests, the Lex Fridman show (I like Lex himself, no comment on him!). Here’s her CV on her university’s site.

• I talked about creating the new symbolic forms and language in the first episode of 2021, AEWCH 136. And here’s my discussion about metamodernism and theosophy with Jason Josephson Storm on AEWCH 141.

• The review of Diana’s book American Cosmic that was…not exactly positive, but still worthwhile in its critiques was from hermeticist Poke Runyon (who also identified the initiation event in Diana’s life).

• The shaman who said “you’ve graduated into a new danger” to me was Malidoma Some.

• I did a whole series on spirituality, politics, and tech – AEWCH 112 with Peter Berbergal an occult technology, AEWCH 113 with Duncan Laurie on the magical tech of radionics, AEWCH 114 on destroying Silicon Valley, and AEWCH 115 with Joanne McNeill on the inner experience of the internet.

• Here’s the trailer for Host, which, though flawed, is a really enjoyable horror film. Watch it on your laptop, for full effect!

• Here’s Somi Arian’s essay/“open letter” to tech about ethics/morals/free will.

• Steiner’s book, Friedrich Nietzsche: Fighter for Freedom, hasn’t been reprinted in the Collected Works series, but you can read it here.

Until next time friends,

CH

Tags: , , , , , , , , ,