Missing Paul Walker

Dale here. In the same week that we are marking the death of Nelson Mandela, David and I instead did a podcast trying to make sense of the impact of the death of Paul Walker.  The first reason for this would be that, well, Mandela died the day after we recorded.  The second reason is that the reaction to the death of Paul Walker is harder to explain, at least for me.

For the first time in a while the death of a celebrity impacted me.  I saw a post come up on Facebook, and immediately I thought "oh please let this be a hoax", but it wasn't, and it hit me.  At the same time, it wasn't supposed to - he's a celebrity, not part of my life, not the most amazing actor, and I'm supposed to be above this.  But I'm not.

In this podcast David and I try to get to the bottom of why the death of Paul Walker seems to have resonated with so many people, including myself, and what the implications of this situation are.

     Listen here: Missing Paul Walker

And for those who are just missing Paul Walker, here's a youtube memorial video for him, that incorporates some of the reasons why I think people miss him:

Made for the Story?

One of the ways to start talking about something is to, well, start talking about it.  To that end, here is the first in a long series of podcasts! Unfortunately I pulled out the mic when we were already a little bit into the conversation, so here's an intro.

We were talking about Jacques Ellul's book On Freedom, Love, and Power in the context of a discussion about how we use stories, especially in a culture where we have stories that can tell us what to do in every decision.  Do we view our myths and stories as boundaries, boxes, that we must live in, or do are they less boundaries and more guides?  Do we have a mixture of the two?  Our discussion is here:

     Were we made for the story, or the story made for us?

     And a second link via Spreaker with it's own forum for comments

And an addendum - here are links and citations to some of the texts and stories referenced in the course of the the discussion.

     Brown, Wendy. States of injury: Power and freedom in late modernity. Vol. 120. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1995.

     As it Happens interview with Tariq Ali on the death of Hugo Chavez

     Ellul, Jacques. On Freedom, Love, and Power. University of Toronto Press, 2010.

     Ingold, Tim. Lines:: A Brief History. Routledge, 2007.

     Selmanovic, Samir. It's Really All About God: Reflections of a Muslim Atheist Jewish Christian. Jossey-Bass, 2009.

     The Hebrew Yeshua versus the Greek Jesus, a presentation by Nehemia Gordon, a Karaite Jew

     Choice: a podcast from Radiolab.

Many of the other stories referenced, The Bible, Rambo, The Shawshank Redemption, The Hurt Locker, and The Hobbit you'll have to find for yourself, as well as the two works by Joss Whedon referenced, Firefly and Angel.