Lost Xplorers

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, syncretic religions, and abandoned asylums. “Memory is wh...

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...

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 cr...

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...

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 student...

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...

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...

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 murder, or three weeks. I maintain there’s a diffe...

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 took of cargo cult beliefs when I was a failed yo...

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 writer, editor and teacher/tutor who lived in La...

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 starters…splashing water. Two rocks would be hand...

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…and Kris’s. The disappearance of regional American...

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 making, nerds, and disaffected sub-groups, etc.)...

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 sleep problems. Go to the appropriate aisl...

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 lament, what incentive do people have to share...

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 with the price of sandwiches? Kris’s band for the...

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 worst bookstore in the history of America. Return po...

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. Which game improves memory the most? JDO attempts to...

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 Fitzgerald. A potluck band. Tribal music making. Bighorn...

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 strangeness of time. Every Wednesday is the same Wednesd...

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 boxes. Gas prices. On-the-street, at-the-drive-thru-m...

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 alignment vs. societal expectations. Blackout time. Stre...

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 Structure of Scientific Revolutions. The God of Evidence....

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, they have a wide ranging conversation about the defi...

"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 the form of a band that's more of an urban lege...