About

Hi. I'm Todd. I like traveling, reading, sunny days, and free porn. What do you do for fun?

In early 2018, Escaping the Cave became a podcast. It's hard to describe it other than to say my title was carefully chosen. It's borrowed from Plato's Cave, and I see this podcast and my entire body of "work", from traveling to writing to this, as my attempt to escape our virtual Cave in order see the organic Upper World, reality, for what it is and as best I can. That's become an investigation of both us and our common human experience. What I'm finding in the age of the Social Media Disease and boutique "realities" has been disturbing. Both collectively and personally.

Topics vary but most often include:

  • Propaganda, Propaganda, and Propaganda
  • The Social Media Disease
  • Political and social division
  • Tribalism and virtual mobs
  • The corrosive for-profit media model-including virtual celebrities and "influencers"
  • Ideological religions 
  • Social & evolutionary psychology
  • An increasingly dystopian future starting with the coming post-election hellscape


Thick material.

I ask as many questions as I presume to answer and the podcast loosely targets people who are curious (or wary) of what the sudden flood of connective technology, data, and constant propaganda is doing to us psychologically and socially.

It's now 2020. Politics is everywhere, including this podcast more than I'd like. I typically try to speak to the ignored center, both politically and philosophically, but lately my targets tend toward the extreme left and how they've managed to become just as ridiculous and divisive as Trump. But, like millions of others, I've been politically orphaned. So, if you're seeking comforting political platitudes, you've been warned. 

This podcast lays no claim to having an all-encompassing Grand Design and I strongly suggest blocking those who do. I openly wonder if realistic and comprehensive solutions even exist! While there's a thin line between cynicism and realism, there's also a distinction between hope and delusion. If you're delusional, my realism will sound like cynicism. 

If you need happytalk and Sausage Party Hope, you'll encounter firebrand preachers all over cyberspace. Try the social media wing. Or, maybe a church/political party. If you crave something ideologically pure and soothing, or religious-grade assurance that utopia or Heaven on Earth will soon arrive, there are literally millions of carnival barking "influencers" to choose from. Mine is a waste of your time.   

Ads: 

I am...
  • not hunting clicks to put eyes in front of dick pill banners 
  • not running ads or "mentions" for VirtualHorseshit.com
  • not striving to build a virtual "community" with me as Jim Jones
  • not trying to build an "effective brand" to "increase my revenue stream." 
Podcasting costs me money. I'm fine with that. When I'm not I'll stop. Ads = brand-product-marketing-pandering. Remember the product-money relationship, virtual guest. It will make you a better informational consumer. I highly suggest the Media 101 episode if you're new.

Comments: I enjoy insightful exchanges and constructive criticism. Do I even need to explain why they're off?
  





On the Old Travel Material:

This is my fourth blog since I began "adventure" traveling in 2008. (The first three consolidated) The traveling began shortly after radio and I divorced and I had a Thoreauian vision of learning what I could do without and how that applied to "freedom." I intended to go Suvivorman, maybe even McCandless, but that changed almost immediately after discovering the "Monastery of the Road"; an organic observational-yet-introspective energy of life "lived" in the real world. Put another way, I figured out the meaning of the line attributed to Muhammed and paraphrased by my Muslim lifeboat while rescuing me from being stuck in southern Idaho: "Live your life as a traveler." Or, “Be in the world as if you are a stranger or a wayfarer.” Detatch. Keep moving. Keep searching. Even if you're not sure what you're looking for.

For millennia, travelers set off to learn more about themselves, humanity and the world in general. In some circles, it's still considered a divine quest; a search for something collectively lost. Here, and moreso on the other blog, is where I shared stories, ideas, insights, even organic and sometimes borrowed philosophy, occasional videos, and other things.

When I first stumbled onto that path in 2004, I was lucky to find someone walking across the country and providing an authentic account of the experience rather than just blowing mass-appeal glitter up the reader's ass. I wanted to pay that forward so refrained from sanitizing and/or glorifying the people, places, and things that ultimately become the heart of the narrative. 

You'll find the good, the bad, and yes, the ugly. In both me and the other characters. And hopefully you'll see, as I did, that, despite often paralyzing initial fear, the world in general isn't so frightening once you actually dive in using your own flesh-and-blood senses rather than relying on electronic eyes and hearsay to perceive and, worse, interpret reality. 

Despite grandiose delusions of snowflake grandeur, we're really not all that different regardless of cultural, religious, or *cringe* ideological preferences. A reminder of our commonality is something we desperately need these days, and I've still found no better way to reconnect to it than spending a few minutes, hours, sometimes even days interacting with random strangers, often at truck stops, in diners, public parks, on sidewalks, or just sitting on the side of the road. But most effectively: in their own cars speeding down backroads or the interstate.

In short, if you're seeking amateur Lonely Planet hackery you should ignore the old material. It will be a huge disappointment!