This 6th Legacy Edition of Wise Talkers features a 1979 radio show in which I was interviewed about meditation on KNCO in Grass Valley, California. I was teaching meditation classes at the time. It’s an interesting look back on how meditation was viewed 45 years ago, and how I taught and practiced it in a practical, ‘demystified’ way.
With questions from the host, KNCO’s Mark Johnson, and four callers, we discussed: how meditation compares to day-dreaming; how it can be used for planning and decision-making; group meditation; physical and mental benefits of meditation; children and meditation; and the pros and cons of using a mantra.
The 1979 interview closes with me answering a caller’s question about what I had personally gained from meditating.
In the Epilogue, I discuss future podcast plans, including likely taking a break through the November election to focus on my new political blog, wholenewworld.com.

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This 5th Legacy Edition features an interview I conducted in 1981 with Swami Kriyananda, direct disciple of Paramahansa Yogananda and founder of Ananda Village, headquartered in Nevada County, California.
Kriyananda was a controversial figure in the world of yoga gurus. He was beloved and even favored by Yogananda, but fell out of favor with the organization Yogananda founded, the Self-Realization Fellowship (SRF) ten years after Yogananda’s death. Several years after being harshly renounced and ex-communicated from SRF in 1962, which was devastating to Kriyananda, he set out on his own, by founding Ananda, to fulfill what he believed to be Yogananda’s vision.
My interview with Kriyananda in 1981 proved have been conducted at a pivotal point in his journey, as just two years later he let go of his monastic vows, including celibacy, and left Ananda. He married in 1985, divorced in 1994. He took up his vows again in 1995 and spent his years thereafter teaching mostly in Europe and India to devoted audiences until his death at 86 in Assisi, Italy.
In retrospect, this 43-year-old interview provides an intriguing snapshot near the midpoint of a fascinating life and career.

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This 4th “Legacy Edition” of the Wise Talkers podcast features an interview I conducted in 1996 on KMUD radio in southern Humboldt County, California. In conversation with two doctors from the heart of the famed Emerald Triangle, one of the world’s largest marijuana-producing regions, we discussed the long-term health effects of regular marijuana use.

There were very few research studies in the United States on marijuana in 1996, 20 years before it became legal for recreational use in California. We reviewed research conducted in Jamaica and other countries, and also the professional expertise of Dr. Marc Phelps and Dr. Bill Hunter. Four listeners called in, relating their own experience and views on the subject, addressing built-in research bias issues, sacramental used of cannabis, and how usage and health effects vary in different cultures.

Only the first half of the original one-hour interview was available, unfortunately, but it nonetheless covers a variety of views on and experiences with cannabis use. After the truncated interview plays, I close with a suggestion of doing a future live-streamed episode of Wise Talkers with listener call-ins, focusing on the use of marijuana not just for recreational or medical benefits, but as an aid in the exploration and expansion of consciousness.

(I did not create a transcript for this episode, partly because it was difficult to distinguish voices when there was cross-talk. However, Apple Podcasts features their AI-generated transcript of the episode.)

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