Turtles All The Way Down

Furniture, design, meditate, masculine, drawing, art, artist, children’s, book, rightbrain, ugly, beauty, Seville, Spain, Europe, eu, architecture, Toronto, Junction, JunctionTO, cooking, Italy, change, revolution, structure, creativity, limits, rules, dogma95, manufacturing, consumption, China, solar, energy, Facebook, Mac, pc, catholic, religion, diversity, restaurants, retreat, shippingcontainer, tinyhome, spa, retreat, experiences, yoga, anxiety, depression, breathe, selfhelp, impulse, anger, diet, exercise, movement, walking,

Photographer, robotics enthusiast, and all-around curious guy Angus Rowe McPherson is back for another breezy long-form conversation about life, the universe and everything.

AI, robots, psychedelics, adderall, ritalin, caffeine, coffee, addiction, cannabis, edibles, ayahuasca, placebo, mania, setandsetting, depression, IQ, brains, culture, philosophy, science, dunbar, primates, scale, knowledge, culture, academia, blockchain, politics. networks, decentralization, information, singularity, simulation, self, aliens, sci-fi, frameworks, darwinism, fermi, transparency, job, posting, interview, attention, social, persuasiveness, speed-dating, children, twins, fatherhood, family, game theory, negotiation, PA, assistant, photography, creativity, ableton, music, production, 

Physicist and IT pioneer Ian Graham, like Jake, now lives a life of leisure. They were both hyper rational young men who had to learn how to properly understand their less rational sides. 

High level, deep discussion with two middle aged smart guys into what they’ve learned along the way about the most impressively complex information processing system they know of, the human being.

Jake is better at getting off the couch and promises more output soon. He spoke with Matt Ratto who is an Associate Professor in the Faculty of Information at the University of Toronto. Matt directs the Semaphore Research cluster on Inclusive Design, Mobile and Pervasive Computing and, as part of Semaphore, the Critical Making Lab. His work explores the intersections between digital technologies and the human life world, with particular focus on new developments that trouble the divide between online and offline modes of production. 

Chris is a talented magician who has been having fun in Toronto's improv comedy scene.

Jake has been a bit manic lately and having trouble getting these episodes out. 

Claire has been on team Turtle from the beginning as the producer of this podcast. She’s been busy with other projects lately including @AnimalStone which brings people and animals together through the creation of artful silver animal charms and the narratives around them. 

As usual, their conversations tend to become personal and serve as inspiration for anyone trying to figure out how to navigate their meat puppets through our world of ideas. 

It’s been a hard winter full of personal and practical challenges for Jake Cenk, but it’s turning around as the season changes and he finds himself in love again with the universe.

An AI program called Deep Mind recently beat the world’s best human Go player embodied in Lee Sodol. Jake discusses the match then Cenk improvises music based on the audio from the Korean TV commentators reactions to the surprising (creative?) move 37 made by the AI.

Richard Gudiño used to play bass guitar in a heavy metal band named Medieval Rhyme. These days he's an executive recruiter with a wife and six kids in Toronto.

Blues & Gospel musician Grant Heckman (The Honeyboys, Isaiah Lighting) visits Jake in the loft so the conversation turns to the Gods and Devils in music. 

Jake speaks with artist/scientist Kira Della Stua. Her brain was seriously altered in a car accident in Paris a couple of years ago. She’s since had to learn and relearn a great deal to adjust to her new reality. The conversation gets trippy fast.

Find Kira @ https://www.kiradellastua.com

Jake talks with clown, /performance artist, /comic, /actor Allan Turner about the art of clowning, and of birthing and coexisting with alter egos. Allan brings out his zombie clown alter ego Jean Paul Mullet to continue this chill chat with Jake.

On his last night in Italy Jake sits down with writer/journalist Daniela Piteo whom he's known for quite some time. Wine, agriturismos, life in Italy, privacy, religion and family are some of the topics they touch on in under an hour of friendly conversation.

Online dating and the Self.

In this monologue Jake tries Tinder and finds it weird how we try to describe ourselves to others, especially since we're not really a static and singular being to which we could easily point to and describe.

Jake speaks with Toronto Artist and Jewellery Designer Delane Cooper. Delane and Jake take a trip through the personal territory of Jake’s psychedelic habits and later Delane talks about her personal history as a survivor of childhood sexual abuse. We learn about her artistic process for jewellery design as well as her upcoming art project which will honour 12 survivors with a piece of jewellery designed specifically to tell that person's story.

For more information about Delane check out her art project: The Story of Many on fb: The Story Of Many and see some of Delane's Jewellery designs @ http://www.delane.ca/

In this episode Jake reports from Italy where he’s spending the better part of the summer. Inspired by a trip to The Pantheon in Rome, Jake explores the tension between the gods of pantheism and the God of Judeo-Christian monotheism to get at the central message common to most world religions. The special nature of human being is highlighted as the only space we know of where that which is present as well as that which is not present can exist simultaneously and bring about a communion of the disparate realms of heaven and earth. This is where we access the cosmic consciousness and is where Jake considers to be the place where art happens. This segues into his conversation with documentarian, psychonaut, and bio-hacker Victor Mifsud who talks about his lastest film “My Neuroplastic Adventure” which explores the brain's capacity and propensity to change itself. They discuss epigenetics, biohacking and the importance of environmental factors such as electromagnetic fields as determinants in one's well-being

Andrea Subissati is a writer, sociologist and executive editor of Rue Morgue Magazine. She is also the cohost of The Faculty of Horror Podcast.

Jake's monologue deals with the philosophical mystery of existence in films, theatre and popular tv shows.

The episode ends with Cenk's improvised kinetic music. 

Jake welcomes local Toronto artist and digital innovator, Anthea Foyer. They talk of media, digital culture, AI, making a living as an artist, the death of capitalism and other big developments that are currently underway. Anthea is a story teller who talks about the power of narrative and it’s value for social good.

Cenk music follows at the end but first we start with Jake’s musings on living systems. This time he highlights the common history between mother and child, from two completely enmeshed body systems into two divergent ones. He explores the process of finding a mate and how the prior experience of mother child bonding might influence his search and how it is likely built upon various biases of attraction. While the mind may say one thing the heart often moves  action in a different direction, idea systems vs body systems.

Jake begins this episode with his thoughts on building new neuronal pathways with practice. He distinguishes the mind as the mansplainer, know it all while the body is like a non-verbal, autistic genius who is magical and mysterious and works with feelings and images; the verbal vs the textual. How then, do we learn to get the mind and body to cooperate? We can look to ancient practices such as Yoga or Thai Chi which work on the same substrate of breathing. This week our guest is Andy Keen, a local film maker best known for his film Bobcaygeon, a documentary on the legendary Canadian rock band, The Tragically Hip. The two discuss, film, art and more. 

Jake primes this conversation with his thoughts on anxiety and the cyclones of energy that make up our inner and outer worlds. He says understanding anxiety often means sitting with it. Which is made difficult when we're living in a culture that appeals to laziness with short cuts to everything from cleaning the house with a Febreze bottle, fitness miracles and now durable toilet paper that will keep your ass clean for days. Alas, there are no short cuts, he reminds us. This week we take a journey with Eva Garber who takes us on a trip through her own neurotic tendencies and gets personal about her journey as an aspiring writer and comedian. Her gregarious nature makes for a wildly entertaining discussion on life, loss, fear, death and hypochondria and how to make it as an artist. Eva reflects on states of being, fame, self-respect, validation and how she’s learning to navigate her own career.