Lost Xplorers J David Osborne & Kris Saknussemm

On this episode, Kris and JDO break down a lot of the overly-complex cultural conversations to a brutally simple (but not easy) question: why can’t we just be courteous to each other?
We also talk about “rewilding” social situations, keeping things fresh, and not taking people for granted. Bringing back the sacred.
What does it mean to a child when their parents are too involved in their phones to talk to each other, let alone the child?
JDO is given an imaginative challenge as a gender swapped John Wick, and we discover the ultimate hack for writers’ block.
Revising opinions on art.
(This episode was recorded before the Kent Axell episode, but JDO wanted to get that one out ASAP. Same thing for the next episode.)

We have a very special guest for this episode of Lost Xplorers. The great Kent Axell, Vegas stage magician and all-around cool guy, joined us to chop it up.
On this episode, we talk about the different types of magic, paranormal phenomena, the writing process of a magic routine, James Randi's Million Dollar Challenge, the need for mystery in These Capitalized Times, choosing to believe, and the creative process.
One of the most interesting conversations I've had in a while. Kent's a fascinating dude. If you're in Vegas, check out his show Ghost Stories. You can find out all the information you need on him via his website.

Kris and JDO talk about the strangness of passing time. JDO talks about the biggest viral scam he ever fell for. “Americans love nothing better than to be fooled.” JDO continues his path to becoming a cult leader by channeling Alan Watts. The strangeness of Florida. The World Weekly News as the ultimate American newspaper. What would an American Tory look like?
Philip K. Dick vs. Alan Watts. There’s something in the searching. We are all still children who want to stay up late at night. Speaking in metaphors.
Degrees of compassion. Focused and tactical intimacy. Conversion is a drug. “Language determines the world.”

Red-headed robins, challenged by the weather, and Oklahoma mythology, including serial killers, mass murders, and werewolves. Imaginative subversion of the terrain. Students are not co-teaching. Two-headed chickens. A homeless freestyle rapper named Big Weiner.
And from the notes of Kris Saknussemm:
-Rapper 50 Cent, age 48 and trying desperately to look like a cartoon version of someone my students’ age, says to his 12 million X followers, “It’s almost over,” as in Humanity. This while he’s embroiled in collateral flak from the federal investigations of Puff Diddy for sex trafficking, rape, domestic abuse, drugs, guns—the usual. And where did all the playground-sounding names come from? Puff Diddy. Charlemagne Tha God. Megan Thee Stallion. Strange mix of adolescence (if not childishness) and sexual perversion.
-Sawfish. Improbable creatures that look like they were designed for sheer novelty. They’re somehow going crazy and committing communal suicide in the shallow waters of Florida’s beaches. Perhaps a strangely apt metaphor.
-Weirdly echoed by parents (particularly white parents) in epidemic numbers seeking professionally certified diagnoses of their kids as being autistic, ADHD, clinically depressed, or neurodivergent. Why? In order to secure more time on tests like the SATs and ACTs.
-Meanwhile, Harvard, the jewel brand in the Ivy League (and the pressurized Holy Grail of the test taking frenzy) sees the first drop in applications ever. Antisemitism and plagiarism scandals are credited as causes in the decline. The Harvard Corporation (note that term) has also come under legal fire for DEI discrimination against Asians, artificially promoting underqualified African American applicants—while it’s been revealed that a disturbing percentage of white admissions are solely legacy based—children of alumni, faculty, and staff, who are in the main unable to compete outside the nepotism advantage.
-On a broader, global scale, scientific experts from many fields debate the concept of the Anthropocene as umbrella label for the current era / epoch. But what no one ignores is that the Human Impact in question is viewed as entirely destructive. And on perhaps the principle of compounding interest, a great deal of the “damage” has occurred since the mid-20thcentury, which mirrors the rise of Environmentalism and green ideologies. Say one thing, do another.
This inventory of Dysfunction could go on and on. We know. But like many curious and concerned thinking people today, you and I have talked about the Dysfunction often in terms of mass psychosis. A spiritual, psychological vortex-disease on the Cultural scale. I now wonder if the truth isn’t conceptually much simpler.
Let’s take our sawfish death spiral despair as the emblematic end result of the ambient, atmospheric Dysfunction. If 50 Cent says world doom is at hand, what hope do sawfish have? Talk about a marginalized community. But what links these other crises (and so many more)?
I’m coming around to viewing the “problem” as a fundamental collapse / erosion of Morality. Morale. Moral. How often do we connect those two notions? Are our problems today really all that complicated? Don’t they in fact amount to people knowing what the right thing to do is and not doing it? Each of the above examples from recent news is about a failure of moral conscience and basic decency. Perversion arises from selfishness.
We can break down or address each of these issues (selected from far too many others) in almost child-level moral terms. Many people (particularly NPR followers) now embody a genuine hatred of Humanity for our environmental destruction. Does this mean they’re trying to live and consume more sensibly and sensitively? Nope. For the most part, they just complain about what governments and corporations are doing or not, while they go on consuming like it’s 1999 or 1979.
Ivy League schools, and now so many downstream schools, companies, and g

From the notes of Kris Saknussemm...
Travel becomes Tourism. This Sacred - > Profane style degeneration is hardly an isolated phenomenon—in fact it might seem to be a Deep Algorithm. But I think the progenitors of the Tourism Age can to some extent be forgiven. It’s fine to say now that they should’ve extrapolated—seen ahead to what large-scale, organized, budget-minded transportation of people around the world for the purposes of recreation or information, fulfillment of some kind—what that would mean. What impact. Think of Tahiti and Hawaii, Venice and Dubrovnik. Yellowstone National Park.)The problem is the Education has so much more to do with Tourism than with Travel—and has for several decades. Public Education tried to apply the values of Trade School (standardization, consistency, certification) to a Liberal Arts model…while wholesale abandoning the Trade School and apprenticeship streams. Meanwhile, Liberal Arts succumbed to customer service.Here's the concluding sentence of one of my students’ analysis of the essay “The Loss of the Creature” by Walker Percy, which is as much about this theme / crisis as anything can be.“If you don’t know the significance of William Faulkner, the story of Robinson Crusoe, the message within A Brave New World, or the man who discovered insulin, it may be very difficult to understand, and Percy’s true message may never be revealed to a 21st century student.”

From the notes of Kris Saknussemm...
We said last time that we were going to investigate further how the distinction b/w Travel and Tourism might help us understand what’s happened to the project of national public Education in America. An odd proposition to some perhaps.     But I think this is easily done, although it’s also easy to be very hard on Tourism. Travel can take many forms, but it’s never crass. Tourism can’t escape that tinge, that odor. Looking deeper, Travel suggests an openness to experience, a willingness to take risks, and to confront unexpected situations, even illness, violence, natural calamity, or falling in love. Tourism is precisely focused on at least managing risk, streamlining possibilities, reducing the unexpected, and delivering a consistent experience. Experience as Product (right off the conveyer belt).     This Sacred - > Profane style degeneration is hardly an isolated phenomenon—in fact it might seem to be a Deep Algorithm. But I think the progenitors of the Tourism Age can to some extent be forgiven. It’s fine to say now that they should’ve extrapolated—seen ahead to what large-scale, organized, budget-minded transportation of people around the world for the purposes of recreation or information, fulfillment of some kind—what that would mean. What impact.     But they had no precedent—nothing on the scale that would emerge. They weren’t far or deep thinkers and didn’t claim to be. But while there was a lot of greed and foolishness (and still is), there were good intentions too. I believe some early Tourism champions genuinely thought that exposing ever more middle class Westerners to beauty, culture, and wonders around the world would do them good—and wouldn’t degrade the points of interest, destinations, and ports of call. (In addition to the interesting philosophical questions involved, there are very practical physical matters of traffic congestion, inflated prices, resentful locals, and clogged toilets. The list is long, but think of Tahiti and Hawaii, Venice and Dubrovnik. Yellowstone National Park.)