Talking to Jason Pizzino on Thailand, Life & Politics

One hour long, on Youtube: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vC-TI4ZLZC0

Also available as an audio-only MP3 (not quite "a podcast"): https://archive.org/details/Eisel-Jason-and-Henya-2016

Ethics, Vegans and Various Questions of Good and Evil.

Ethics: Vegans, Vasectomies, Flexitarians… questions of good and evil (on Youtube): https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qhKiQ_E7dik

Interview vs. "The Violent Vegan"

On Youtube: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6Nkdq6T8IRE

ALSO AVAILABLE AS A PODCAST (audio-only MP3): https://archive.org/details/Eisel-Mazard-2016-Interview

"Being a Nice Guy" vs. The Vegan Jerk

The minor agonies of the whole man-of-principle thing (and refusing to wear wool suits), in an era when being an uncompromising character is considered a bad thing.  On Youtube: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rCIn_Xs-VLI

On Freelee's Credentials (or Lack Thereof)

Freelee's Credentials: Half-Truths & Pseudoscience.  This one actually contains quite a few digressions (with all due humility) on my own credentials, and on the struggle to make it clear (in newspaper interviews, job interviews, etc.) what exactly your credentials are (and aren't).  On Youtube: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MNzElhpjgjQ

Beauty is Meaningless.

On Youtube: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OkRtcb4cryM
I somehow managed to include the word "atavistic", in these reflections. ;-)

Air Pollution, Catching Up With Kunming

The graphic above is a snapshot of air pollution at a particular moment in time: circa 11:30 AM (Beijing time), 17 degrees Celsius in Kunming, in mid-March, 2016.

However, you'll notice that Kunming is actually less polluted than many of the surrounding cities, at least at this moment in time.  Remarkably, air-pollution in 西雙版納, 德宏, and many other (small) cities has caught up with Kunming, and has even exceeded it.

I wonder if Kunming has upgraded its power-plants to take some measures to ameliorate air-pollution that haven't yet reached the smaller cities.  Those smaller cities are often presented to tourists as offering cleaner air than the regional capital; but, at least for the moment, that seems to be untrue.

Vegans Kill Rats. REAL TALK.

On Youtube: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=piNb3mIGTv8

Passion vs. Organization

On Youtube: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7uRcs6iBXbw

A Funeral in Laos (5 Min. Video)

Very few people know me well enough to understand why this video is emotionally moving for me, or what it would mean to me.  No, not a few: not even one.  Nobody.

In many ways, this period of my life has been consumed by a sort of mourning for my own lost potential, and for the loss of all the years that I committed to gaining expertise I'll never be able to use.  But also, on a simple, human level: I care.  I didn't care about Laos as an abstraction: I cared about it-and-them in their all-too-human reality.