Hello everybody and welcome back to Revolutionary Left Radio.

On today's episode I have Joshua Con Russell on to talk about his extensive organizing experience

and really open an ongoing sub-series with Joshua on a plethora of issues from organizing

the limits, the mental, emotional sort of pitfalls and limits of organizing the promise and pitfalls

of the use of psychedelics, spirituality, dialectics, a whole range of issues that we plan

to have several episodes exploring.

And this episode is going to be an extensive introduction into Joshua's life and his

basic story so as to create a context in which future episodes will happen in the

sub-series.

So just be aware that this is the opening salvo and an ongoing sub-series and it lays on

the table a lot of the threads that will pick up and carry forward in the coming episodes.

He did also want me to make a little caveat up front just to be very clear when he expresses

skepticism about scientific materialism he wants to make sure that people know that he is

delineating that from Marxist materialism.

He is very much a Marxist and understands historical materialism to be the essential

way to understand the evolution of history, politics and economics.

So when he is talking about scientific materialism he is separating that, he is talking about

the philosophy and the ontology of viewing the universe in a certain way as compared

to the analysis that a Marxist would use that we would call materialism.

And as a side note before we get into the episode I also wanted to just say that this was

recorded during Yam Hoshoa.

Most of you will know that as Holocaust Remembrance Day I just wanted to put that forward and memorialize

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