Audio Interviews

If You’re Just Joining Us
Home Schooling, Noam Chomsky, and the Time Box-April 28th, 2010

Douglas Lain is the author of dozens of short stories and two novels. His work appeared in nationally distributed literary magazines and journals such as Lady Churchill’s Rosebud Wristlet and Amazing Stories since 1999. His first book Last Week’s Apocalypse was a collection of these stories published by Night Shade Books. His first novel, entitled Billy Moon: 1968, tells the story of Christopher Robin Milne’s fictional involvement with the French general strike in May of 1968, and is due out from Tor Books in 2011.
He has hosted the excellent weekly Diet Soap Podcast for more than a year, and is embarking on a new community and writing endeavor he’s calling the Pick Your Battle Project. If you’d like to help support the PYBP, please visit his page on Kickstarter. Find his homepage at: DouglasLain.com.
Douglas and I talked about podcasting, homeschooling, his Pick Your Battle Project, his new short story, Noam Chomsky and the Time Box, and more.

Interviews on the C-Realm Podcast
Episode 200: The Long Defeat
In this 200th episode of the C-Realm Podcast, KMO blends content from Corey Olsen (AKA the Tolkien Professor), James Howard Kunstler, and Doug Lain of the Diet Soap podcast to concoct a brew that mixes fantasy, politics, and personal narrative. What can the long defeat of the elves of Middle-Earth tell us about our societal psychology of previous investment? Is it noble to fight a battle that cannot be won, or does finding our direction begin with abandoning our long-held ambitions? Music by Woodland-5.
Episode 186: ’09 Wrap Up
In this final installment of the C-Realm Podcast for 2009, Doug Lain, host of the Diet Soap Podcast, joins KMO to revisit 2009 C-Realm interviews with Jeff Vail, Thomas Homer-Dixon, Joe Bageant, and Frank Rotering. Can inferences about the economy and social relationships legitimately be drawn from observations about the cyclical behavior of a forest ecosystem, or does this sort of comparison lend legitimacy to unjust power relationships? Can a recovering Libertarian and a wavering Marxist even hear one another through the ideological noise? Take heart.
0h 9 0h 9 0h 9-Episode: 170
In this year’s 9/11 extravaganza KMO welcomes Douglas Lain, author, editor, and fellow podcaster, to the program to help make sense of some 9/11 themed commentary from James Howard Kunstler, John Horgan, Gwynne Dyer, and (indirectly) Douglas Rushkoff. Doug & KMO then continue the conversation in episode 22 of the Diet Soap Podcast. Lorenzo Hagerty of the Psychedelic Salon adds his perspective on attitudes surrounding 9/11 to the C-Realm mix in a prelude to next week’s show.

Interview on Next Step Podcast
Pick Your Battle (w/ Doug Lain)
Become a Time Traveler.
Doug Lain returns to the show to discuss his time-sensitive project, Pick Your Battle(Urban Foraging as Radical Self-Help).
The idea is to take advantage of the food trees in his local Portland by organizing picking expeditions and distribution networks with an overall view and push to help create a more “Abundant City” in Portland. This project is something full of heart and goodness and is also a direct inspiration for others who would like to see this happen in their town.

The Next Step Podcast: Vive le Diet Soap
Douglas Lain Editor/Publisher/Madman, Diet Soap ‘Zine, for writers and free thinkers (and post-revelation primates).
We have a common enemy, it is spectacular and horrific. It sees man, woman, black, white, muslim, jew, young and old as the same- the enemy. A threat. It surrounds us, and we play with it constantly. It is putty in our hands if only we learn to manipulate it. Let us make the world safe for philosophers and the masses. Head and heart.
Think for Yourself, Question Authority.
Think for Yourself, Question Authority.

Interview on Agroinnovations Podcast
Episode #75: A 21st Century Anarchist with Doug Lain
Doug Lain is a fiction author and the anarchist podcaster behind the Diet Soap Podcast. In this interview, Doug and I discuss the intellectual roots of socialist anarchism, Paris in 1968, Silent Revolution, and Psycho-Geography.

Interviews on Warty Theorems Podcast w/Jason Horsley
Episode #26: The Somebody Virus
The second half of a two-hour conversation with Douglas Lain from Diet Soap, in which Doug snatches some free SWEDA-time with Jason and they discuss Doug’s alien encounters, his early writing career, his bid to be a somebody, his social libertarianism, 9/11 obsession as a way to escape marriage troubles, escapism and self-medication, enjoyment of the body as opposed to enjoyment with the body, Doug’s activism, connecting via podcasts, his lousy job situation, being a father and husband, the danger of becoming a burden to one’s family, the somebody virus, seeing problems as they are instead of trying to fix them, existential psychology versus mysticism, how we are fully responsible for our circumstances, and finally Doug queries Jason on the responsiblity of giving advice and his recent chat with Steve Willner.
Episode #13: Thetas? Me Worry! Sex, Paranoia, and Gurus
A blend of two conversations, the edited portion of Jason’s chat with Douglas Lain for Diet Soap, in which Jason and Doug discuss paranoid awareness, the occult path, social awareness versus self-awareness, why revolutions never work, surrendering to a fucked-up world, our natural state as fucked up humans, Jason’s encounter with John De Ruiter and how his teachings have filtered down into SWEDA, SWEDA as a training ground for leaders (but *not* a revolutionary movement). For the second part, Jason and Ross continue their discussion on porn addiction and sexual energy, porn as a way to avoid intimacy, of hardening and closing, how misuse of sex can destroy us, a word on Jason’s dark side and his dandy brother Sebastian, the SWEDA arrangement of several males grouped around a single female, the wounded anima, SWEDA as The Crucible, the sustained discomfort of alchemical relationships, revealing unconscious matter before we have integrated it, the art of making love without putting our hands on the life force vs. sex as self-medication.