About The NoiseToKnowledge Podcast
We live in a culture of noise.
Social networking, blogs, Youtube, Twitter, Facebook, have joined the old media of television, radio, and the press in creating an overload of information.
Though we now have more information accessible at our fingertips than ever before in Western industrialized human history, our ability to process that information – to make sense of it with our minds and to make it humanizing – has not kept up.
Our reach has exceeded our grasp.
Today news stories, societal ideas, memes, and events become trending topics reported upon by several sources all at once, and each with their own kind of perspective and seldom, if ever, ever explored in depth.
We open our newsfeeds and read a story reporting one thing, only to find other stories that report the opposite.
We hear of fake news, alternative facts, and biased reporting.
We read about real catastrophes and death in one moment while in the very next we watch baby pandas sneeze, sloths sing, or a political debate overdubbed with humorous banter.
24 hours of free flowing information travel at a quick pace along superhighways of light and electric current that never stands still long enough to truly get a grasp upon.
It is no wonder that today many feel anxious, uncertain, and off balance about the future.
There is a Solution
Though the specific details of ideas, news, events and happenings we find on our newsfeeds may change daily, there are ways of making sense of all the noise.
One way of transforming noise into knowledge is by exercising our skills of perception. And the way you do that is to expand the tools we have for “seeing” the world, others, and media environment.
The social psychologist Kurt Lewin famously observed that “There is nothing more practical than a good theory.”
He meant that theories can be “ways of seeing,” that is, ways of exercising our perception.
Theories are not simply something used to explain what we see, but they are something we can also see with.
In other words, theories can help us see the world in useful and practical ways.
The NoiseToKnowledge Podcast helps the media weary person seeking genuine insight find knowledge in the noise through short theory driven lectures, discussions, and interviews.
Each podcast introduces a “way of seeing” from a theorist, philosopher, or commentator and applies that perspective to trending news topics to find unconventional, surprising, and practical ways of making sense of societal and media noise.
Unlike other podcasts that offer their opinions about the news, events, and life the NoiseToKnowledge Podcast does not offer opinions.
Rather, the NoiseToKnowledge Podcast introduces listeners to ways of reasoning and perceiving the media and trending topics through the thoughts of some of the greatest minds in history.
The Magic of the NTK Podcast…
The specific format of the podcast was inspired by ambient, post-rock music, specifically my experience of performing in the post-rock band Goodrich. Many, many years ago.
We would set up in a late night coffeehouse. The scent of nag champa, patchouli, and clove cigarettes mingled with scents of coffee, pastries, and a succulent ambient murmur of conversations.
As we would start to play, we would merely drone on in one or two simple keys as our improvised guitars, prerecorded audio loops and beats, and analogue synths would cast a soundtrack for the weary and late night bohemians.
After our melodic, slow, and wandering sonic soundscapes would end people would often come up to us and express how the sounds made them think, reflect, and contemplate.
We had created a space for contemplation, a space for people to SLOW DOWN and consider the noise of their lives with more attention and focus.
Given the faced-paced nature of our current noisy media environment, each NTK podcast episode is deliberately slow, wandering, and sonically ambient so as to massage the senses into a space of contemplation, reflection, and focused attention.
In other words, you will begin your training of perception simply by listening to the NoiseToKnowledge podcast and allowing yourself to drift…
…drift as we transform noise into knowledge.
Welcome to the NoiseToKnowledge Podcast.