David Boles: Human Meme

Those who prepare to live -- also prepare to die! We rally to the cry of The Doomsday Prepper who is always scheming to die to survive; and, in some ways, so too, is the faithful Mormon family. What happens when those of us who are not Preppers, or Mormons, also survive the end of the world? Do we all share everything? Can you kill enough people who want to take the stuff you stored? These are the conundrums of modern living that will bite, and chew, every survivor -- without swallowing!

Every century, or so, we are all replaced! We wonder if we really understand how to manage our hundred year window on life, or if we waste ourselves, elusively, in the search for meaning in work, and in the hope of connecting with another. 

Václav Havel was a Playwright Head of State. We discover delight in the life of Václav Havel, who spent a lifetime of learning to defeat Communism in Czechoslovakia, and who then became a democratically leader of the free world. A Liberal Arts education matters and has grand substance beyond the theoretical and the performance.

Life is now about paying for access to the best people. We share the realization that to be a fully propagated person, you have to pay to play. You pay the doctor to see you without insurance. You pay The Ivy League, not for just an education, but for access to knowing... people; and this is all the start of opening your wallet to buy your way into more than a middling life.

We cannot go home again, except to ghosts. We try to return to the living, but we fail because we are unable to recognize, from afar, what we once knew, is no longer. We step back in time to demonstrate how only those who escape, are able to know what was has been lost in the bones.

A rolling Peter Stone gathers no moss -- nor constructive criticism! We share a memory of Peter Stone and his -- "Rule of Threes" -- when it came to revising a Broadway show. Manipulation! Cruelty! Beauty! They're all here, waiting for your discovery as the core of the human, dramatic, condition!

We live to love, but we are only valued as beings for our data bits. We examine how we fail to negotiate the important bytes of us when it comes to doing business in a charitable world built against us. 

Helicopter Parents believe their child's job interview belongs to them. We reveal the theory of the "hovering parent" who cannot let go -- and cut the apron and purse strings -- that will enable their child to live a free, and uninhibited, life away from them. 

What do we make of those born into wealth? Do we envy them? Or do we pity them? We have been taught to worship wealth, but how do those born into a bank account revere what they did not earn? We dive into the Trust dividend to fund those caught between the coattails of the dead. 

"Leave me in the garden." That's what one instructor told his UMDNJ Public Health Students to do with him after they refused to leave his dead body in the gutter. In this Human Meme podcast, we dig into the bones of us to discover what is really left behind in the coffin. 

"Mansplaining" is a gender-specific cudgel for punishment! We unravel the hoary definition of Mansplaining -- in the historic context of -- The Male Chauvinist Pig, the Nag, the Backseat Driver and I Love Lucy.

Do we marry for love or a green card? That's the conundrum TLC presents us in their 90 Day Fiancé reality television series. We discover love is always bound in money, and tied to the anchor of green card citizenship. 

David L. Meisenholder preyed on children. David L. Meisenholder died in 1999, but his molestation lingers from the grave. We look back on 40 years of terror, and share the experience fending off the sexual advances of a -- Tidy Monster -- who hid in plain sight, in the spotlight, of the public square.

Being alone is painful. How do we live in a world where everyone good, and righteous, is already connected with someone else? We unearth the values of belonging, and the perils of coveting -- all in the unified, identified, effort of finding that one, certain someone, you can love.

How do we negotiate the power dyad between the sexes? We examine the nature of sexual human attraction, and the powerful abuses therein. Did the catching of the predator begin in the modern world with Monica's Blue Dress? How should we view the victim who accepts a check to keep quiet in the future? How do we mark the real heroes who stand against the monster, and fight in the light of day? 

Those who speak of Fake News are spreading the thin lie of the truth. We chip away at the cheapening of a moral reality by those with vested, evil, interests in obscuring what is really happening in fact without fiction. 

How do we interpret our moral code? Are we born "bad in the shell" as Shakespeare believed? Or are we taught to be evil, and our goodness must be earned, and never purchased? Join us as we struggle to endure the immoral among us.

Be not afraid of those who work for you so they may realize their own dreams. We recall the right lessons of the classic television Western, "Have Gun -- Will Travel," and the lessons that show still leaves on us, to teach us today, about dreams, and belonging, and helping other people in need, even when it conflicts with our own best interests.

A short history of Racism and Genderism in America. We take on the notion that the majority power prefers to do without -- than to share their wealth and privilege -- with the poor and the genetically undeserving. From the "Whites Only" Pool, to the darkness of "Title IX" Voodoo Economics, no harbor is safe from the discrimination of the power majority against the basest, minority, interest. 

If we only knew then what we know now, would we still want to live? That question has bedeviled the human mind for a millennia. We travel back in time to meet the young actress Debralee Scott -- to ask her about the life, the tragic end, that would befall her in a few short years -- and to wonder, with her, and against her, if the rest of her life would have been worth living.