On this episode, Kris and JDO talk: Uneasiness at work, the notion of time passing, teachers moving on, how to create amazing life stories, working on fishing boats in the North Sea. What is the psychology of someone who chooses to be homeless? How are some people built for adventure and others aren’t? Japanese cholos, psychotronic imagery, syncret…

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…

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 …

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 To…

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…

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, or…

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 T…

From the notes of Kris Saknussemm... Temporary tattoos and the latest Oscar’s night—two more examples of why we’ve entered the Post-Civilization Age. People who say the Oscar’s have been in “decline” for quite a while are the kind of folks who wouldn’t draw much distinction between Ted Bundy returning to have sex with a corpse three days after the …

FROM THE NOTES OF KRIS SAKNUSSEMM... If people haven’t read Jung’s work on Flying Saucers (as modern myth), I recommend it. I hadn’t looked at it in some time, but I think it reads even better in this age of social media. He completely skirts the issue of “real” or “imagined,” and focuses on the sheer popularity of the mythology. This is the view I…

Today on the show we have a special guest: author/teacher Matthew O'Brien! We chat about the expat lifestyle, finding love through a language barrier, and the lives of people who live in the flood channels beneath Las Vegas. It's a great conversation. Matt is a fascinating guy. Here's his bio from his website, Beneath the Neon: Matthew O’Brien is a…

From Kris's notes: I take the view that visual Art begins at the crossroads of eyes and hands. A stick or a bone is good…dust mixed with water. Blood. It’s a start. (With Sculpture, the question seems to me to be how does one escape? The whole world including open ocean is one vast sculpture park.) With music, hands and voice are the original party…

JDO gives his AWP trip. Lots of books sold! Many of JDO’s ideas about how culture is were troubled by how cool everybody was. Is the negativity we hear online…just an online thing? Is there value in starting a collective rather than pursuing publication by an indie press or traditional publishers? The distinctiveness of Christopher Walken’s accent……

SHOW NOTES... We’ve been talking a lot about Education of late, and the insurmountable problem of getting kids interested in reading if they aren’t already. Two clear thoughts have emerged. One, I think the tired but all-too-accurate metaphor that American society is an Allegory of High School (jocks, cheerleaders, druggies and criminals in the mak…

SHOW NOTES... Relaxed, deep sleep is perhaps the single best natural healing agent there is. If we wake slowly, there’s still a profound vibration of nurture, if not immediate refreshment. But pattern is the key. The reliability of satisfying sleep is elemental to its satisfaction. Consider this then. We live in a time increasingly characterized by…

FROM KRIS SAKNUSSEMM'S NOTES 1/23/24 Hidden Terrain… What appears to be mythic exhaustion—the Jungian Collective Unconsciousness turned to Dustbowl—may be a socially engineered fiction. Our psychological / mental health apparatus is dysfunctional and overwhelmed. All our approaches center on social-public behaviors. As several noted sex researchers…

First day back teaching. Education of today no longer lines up with the needs of young people. What if education was project-based? Outdoors? Kris recounts his history with his Black Mountain Nemesis. Is there something wrong with the architecture of schools? The impossibility of convincing teenagers who don’t like to read, to read. What’s going on…

Snow on the mountains. Starting to teach Jurassic Park. The tallest novelist of all time. Crichton’s most controversial novel. Was Crichton a good novelist? Trapped in the bathroom. Is the science ever settled? Harmful Content. Militant non-musicians. Compliance. Kris vs. The Looping World. Lost malls. Hunting for bookstores in a small town. The wo…

Kris and I get in the holiday spirit! Well, we start off cheery, at least. Learning how to reuse the internet. Crossing the Drake Passage. The Truth About Dinosaurs. Shout out Jay for putting me on to new ways to surf the web. Are you using your tools, or are your tools using you? Robot Santa Carnival of Blood. Kris has invented The Memory Game. Wh…

We've got a slightly darker episode this time around. But there's lots of valuable insight to be had. Kris meets a magician named Kent Axell. Area 15 in Vegas. JDO vents about frustrations with adminstrators. Being a high school teacher is kind of like being Tyler Durden. Learning how to teach The Great Gatsby. The tragic figure of F. Scott Fitzger…

Look out for another new episode dropping on Saturday! Words of the year. The etymology of authentic. JDO talks about getting a bunch of birthday cards. Visual novels. Mother Killed by Shark. Do You Know Where Your Parents Are? The inverse of a viking helmet. Pharrel’s Dudley Do Right hat. What about all the good things cults have done? The strange…

Over the next few days, there will be a new episode of Lost Xplorers dropping daily! A Christmas miracle! JDO got a bit behind on the uploading during finals season at school, and it is time to catch up so our official Christmas episode drops around Christmas. It’s officially Christmas season! Cheddar biscuits. Ultimate endless shrimp. Mcnugget box…

Kris and JDO record a Tascam episode! Walking and thinking. The Accelerants. Atomic age cartoon characters. Milestones vs. mileblurbs. What has happened to the holiday season reindeer? Undercover teacher. The Long Kiss Goodnight. JDO recounts his most recent move into an apartment. Mental illness invariably involves time distortion. Personal alignm…

On this episode, we begin with a bullet-pointed takedown of Neil Degrasse Tyson. Then we talk scientism as an unstable foundation to build knowledge. Philosophy of science. All sciences are not created equal. The price tag of academic credentials. Bergson’s Principle of Proving a Negative. Shutting down interesting ideas. Thomas Kuhn’s The Structur…

On this episode of the podcast, we invite our second guest (the first being Ellen) onto the show to discuss education. Lisa Sezate is a lifelong educator working in elementary schools, and she brings a unique look into that side of education. Kris teaches college, David teaches high school, and Lisa teaches elementary. Between the three of them, th…

"Courage borne out of Curiosity" New segments and lowered sumo standards. Unexamined cultural phrases. Engaging with the unknown throughout the day. Giving credence to memory. Dedicated reading rooms and responsible education. Growing up on algorithm curated feeds. Ancient character divides (Ambush vs. Surprise). A self-fulfilling mass psychosis in…

A little grumpy luminosity at the dermatologist. Some Lake Mead diving magic. Nominal Strangers and the Agents of Synchronicity. The Doppelzüngig. The sanctity of Good Shelter. Making sense with mondegreens and celebrating ghost stories. A billionaire manufactures thought contagion music with "Spanky Hanky". Seeding culture; paving paths. Crotch Le…

On today's episode we're getting attention while gaining traction and forming a humble rapport between audiences in a dead age. Having 3500 years of material to sift through. Absorbing news tangentially. Nostalgic lyric-memory messages. Maintaining a harmonic congruence with reality. Being hyped on ambient anxiety. The perverse side of heroism. Sur…

From Kris's notes: I wonder if an analogy for what lies between the private consciousness-structuring agencies we’ve presented as the Memory Palace and the Swamp (the wilderness of All the Things Someone Doesn’t Know) can be found in the Tent Cities and Homeless Camps we see today in almost every American metropolis? -Memory as species of Hallucina…

Getting in tandem with psychomagnetic rapports and poignant quietudes. A bit of Freudian-Quaalude lounge music with the band HypnoLiquid Motion. Tonal give-aways. Cleopatra Denial Syndrome vs. Resonant Harems. The admission of denial and denial as admission. Being the steward of your inverted Memory Palace. Being in charge of your psychic construct…

This week, a review of the terrain the Lost Xplorers have crossed and the expedition ahead. Exploring the multiple angles of motifs. Hunting butterflies in strange lands. The decompositions of The Machine Elves. Taper erections. The Unspatialized vs. The Intangible. The prism of masculinity and the hidden melancholy behind behinds. The Alienated Ex…

On today's episode we begin with an exorcism of distraction and nonsense while getting in motion with The Spheres. Then doing some down home divinity exams while learning to occupy vacancies during a deficit. From there it's on to reforming demoralized educators, going back to The Schoolhouse, and ironing out some spiritual deformities in The Educa…

Fortean verifications and odd news. Vanishing Bigfoot Hunters in the Outlands. Being energized through the counterintuitive. The Sick Passenger Dilemma. Yellow Bird Bait. The Stage vs. The Class (social bandwidth). Praising good intellect and having an assertive teaching ethic. After that The Raunchettes shock the Woke Nation in an inverted field o…

On this episode we begin with Peripheral People surviving a Live Event Exploration. Needing burly men to build stages. The "Missing" at Large. Unassuming students and augmented plagiarism. Deprogramming epileptic willpower. The Role of Ministers. Following the vibrational grooves. Resurging secret histories in the New Dark Age. The Serpent Jaguar P…

In this episode we talk about Satan's honor and disheartened colleagues who retreat into the dark. Trading in the general malaise of critical thinking and flexibility of mind with strict psychic discipline and defense. The LX Mission Statement: "look to the fun". Triangulating problems, personalities, and proximity. The physicality of writing and p…

What is the value of The Tunnel? In this episode we talk about strange summer winds steering us back to shore. The Osborne Curriculum (always have something to do). Learning to trust what you Herd. Stage managing the depths of downtime prep. The confidence of Method (performing to standard). Wincing at flaming pedagogies. A game where you learn as …

Mirage = Message / Noise = Signal In this episode we talk about disappointing thunderstorms and dog-men transformations. Self-righteous conundrums. Archonic Co-Option. "Becoming Animal" vs. Artificial Furry Movements. William James recording at the Lyceum of the 21st Century. Grammar Warriors. The Totemic Attraction of Evil Antlers. Instead of a ba…

We have a bit of an ayahuasca purge on this episode. The past three years left a bad taste in JDO's mouth, and he articulates what exactly bothered him so much about people's response to global crisis. Next time, we get fun and positive as a palate cleanser, but this one felt necessary at the time to get all the poison out. We can move on from here…

How you spend your time is how you live your life. Today we talk administrative nonsense during system collapse. Rediscovering an old cache of photos. Hometown house hunting (the seller-buyer synchronicity). Reading between the signs. Lawn care character assessments. A reverse car chase leading to a door that does not open. Phantom story arcs. Anti…

A sequence of photographs suggests all the photographs missing from the sequence. What does it mean when one person in a relationship takes all the photos? When is a key not a key? On this episode, we talk: Surviving the heat, big horn sheep, snake invasion, roadrunners, Tim Powers novels, the Tarantella, the Theatre Royale of Castlemaine, the Radi…

Laser on the Prairie Is a life made up of a series of images? Which images do we choose? Do you begin to fade if there are no images of you? Heat wave, 4th of July weekend recap, doing things when you want to, Dogs Per Minute, bonelessness, the word “sploot,” hauntological music, modern rock music, the Gorillaz, the confusion and sorrow of the time…

Are aesthetics a kind of philosophy? What is the most important photo of all time? Kris’s birthday celebration, shoutout to Jay Springett, starting the day off right, The Miracle Morning, Gus encounters a passed-out junkie, Pat Murphy’s Points of Departure, (JDO incorrectly states that Tea with the Black Dragon won the 1984 PKD award; it was actual…

“Emblematic congruence” refers to how well a person represents the culture from which they grow. This leads to some interesting questions: is your culture strong enough to weight you with this cargo? What creates squalor in a neighborhood? Can architecture be embellished and still squalid? On this episode, we talk: UFOs when the sun goes down, 4am …

On this episode, Kris and I develop ideas as to how to break down prepositional distance, and how to frame an approach to writing and life. What does the term “structural” even mean? What is structure? Art exhibit retrospective, coming home, spaceship homes, how much money it would take to get Kris to live in Seattle, running away from home, return…

Kris and I begin this conversation by talking about the simulation of photography, the predictive nature of it, and move into a talk about appreciation for sentence- or paragraph-level writing, and how to perhaps sell that love to lure readers in. We talk: Seattle masks, Eternal Jing, the connection between Zanesville and Altered Carbon, double bin…

On this episode, Kris and David talk about the out of control homeless problem in America. Notes: Reporting live from a closet, museums and graveyards, different kinds of benches, crow attack, holding onto losses in the past, catfish girlfriends, radical agreement, living cliches, everything wants to be found, learning how to speak extemporaneously…

On this episode, Kris and David debrief each other on Kris’s art show and David’s three-day trip to Las Vegas. Stick to the end of the show to hear David fall down a rabbit hole over where his thoughts are coming from. Dad fitness, devouring sound, Radiohead at 800% slower, art as a mode, being too real to live, plague masks, time shamans, the size…

On this episode, we talk about the nature of time, and the repeating nature of certain types of people throughout history. Other topics discussed: Taking a handsaw to branches, feeling good after exercise, to-do lists, following through on tasks, Heavy Prowl Area, hot car music, having faith in the essential strangeness of life, objects in the mirr…

Kris and I have an in-depth discussion about run-down American towns. Notes: Kris gives a recap of his installation setup, how to run a self-publishing business, where the time goes when you’re parenting, anthills, what you can measure is what you can’t measure, inscape and instress, Gerald Manley Hopkins, Thin, Gently Scorched Metal, leaving a par…

This begins our discussion on the introduction of photography, and how it changed the world. On this episode, we talk: Our reflections on the Lost Xplorers journey, doing what energizes you, expressions of gratitude, unknown callers, the difficulty of procrastination, beds of nails, never leaving well enough alone, Robert Loewy, one person having a…

On this episode, Kris and David close out their architecture series. We talk: Making documentaries, three years of Lost Xplorers, almost good at podcasts after 400 episodes, beginner’s mind, areas unexplored due to ants, constructing unknown areas in the mind, defense mechanisms against derangement, a go master vs. a computer, doing everything wron…