Pitchblack Playback

Take a cinema or live venue with a good sound system, optimize a classic or brand new album for it, dim the lights to a legal minimum… and just shut up and listen to the music with others.

Insignificant

A wonderful little animation film to re-calibrate your perspective on your aspirations and hopes, your everyday worries and your place in space, as we call if for lack of a better word. A wonderful little animation film to re-ignite your sense of wonder and appreciation for nature and all the things you already have.

Study Links Spiritual Training To Narcissism

“An implicit feature of spiritual training is that it allows its adherents to distance themselves from their egos, and thereby from things such as the need for social approval or success. [….] But as a new paper explains, spiritual training may have the opposite effect. Namely, spiritual training might in fact enhance people’s need to feel ‘more successful, more respected or more loved’ […].”

Kūmāré – The Spiritual Placebo Effect

In case you missed it: The 2011 documentary Kūmāré was quite an intriguing and entertaining social experiment. It explores the need for leaders and gurus that is hardwired into the brains of many humans and the powerful psychological mechanisms that are triggered by this need. Check out the trailer below and learn more about the…

Barack Obama on Activism

“There is this sense […] of ‘the way of me making change is to be as judgmental as possible about other people.’ […] That’s not activism, that’s not bringing about change. If all you’re doing is casting stones, you’re probably not gonna get that far. That’s easy to do.” Barack Obama

The Bomb

The Bomb is a compelling audio-visual experience that opens a dark perspective on some of humanity’s highest technological achievements. Original soundtrack by The Acid. Available on Netflix.

Happiness

In this short film Steve Cutts portrayals the everyday life of the great majority of people out there: Happiness in the spiraling age of consumerism.

Want to fight climate change?

Low-impact actions, such as recycling, were still worth doing: “All of those are good things to do. But they are more of a beginning than an end. They are certainly not sufficient to tackle the scale of the climate challenge that we face.” Reflections on the much avoided subject of overpopulation.

Debunking Detox, Diets and Wellness

A different view on what is widely considered  a healthy diet these days: The Guardian ran an interesting-to-read interview with Anthony Warner, the man behind the blog Angry Chef, who’s “on a mission to confront the ‘alternative facts’ surrounding nutritional fads and myths”. Read the full interview here.

Yvon Chouinard Hits The Mark 17 Times

The untiring outdoor enthusiast Yvon Chouinard hits the mark 17 times in this inspiring quote collection: 1. “Taking a trip for six months, you get in the rhythm of it. It feels like you can go on forever doing that. Climbing Everest is the ultimate and the opposite of that. Because you get these high-powered…

Stop Googling. Let’s Talk.

Well-written article in the New York Times, already more than a year old but still up-to-date as it can be: […] Studies of conversation both in the laboratory and in natural settings show that when two people are talking, the mere presence of a phone on a table between them or in the periphery of…