The Daily Evolver Jeff Salzman

Hey Folks,

This week we’re looking at Maestro, Bradley Cooper’s new movie about Leonard Bernstein. Bernstein has been a favorite of mine since I happened upon a lecture he gave in the 70s charting the development of music from a single note to the full musical polyphony we have today, as well as the two polarities in nature that transform sound into art (The Greatest Five Minutes in Musical Education).

Maestro tells the story of Bernstein in three distinct periods, each rendered with the perspective and language of the time, quite literally in the first segment which is filmed in 35mm black and white and spoken in the Mid-Atlantic accent. It’s one of the best attempts I’ve seen at resisting interpreting the past through contemporary sensibilities. As such we get a palpable transmission of the evolution of not only the artist himself but also the culture at large.

This episode is edited from my live Fireside Chat, hosted by the Integral Life practice community. Nomali Perera, the founder of the community (and lover of Maestro), and several listeners weigh in too. I hope you can join us for the next Fireside Chat on Wednesday, February 21, at 1pm PT, 9pm GMT, where we look at culture and politics through an integral lens.

I hope you enjoy the episode and check out Maestro on Netflix and in theaters.

Jeff Salzman

This week I’m sharing a terrific conversation I had with Nomali Perera and Lee Mason reviewing 2023 from an integral perspective. Through a series of lightning-round questions — greatest surprise, greatest disappointment, etc — we tour the evolving culture, politics, art and the integral movement itself. I hope you enjoy it and best wishes for the New Year!

– Jeff Salzman

Lee Mason and Nomali Perera – Practical Integral 

A year away from the US Presidential election, Ankur Delight and I ponder the spectre of Donald Trump being the odds-on favorite to win. Our muse this week is Rick Wilson, the founder of the Lincoln Project, who sounds the “Never-Again Trump” alarm in his recent Substack article, Red Caesar and the Next Regime. As Wilson points out, “Red Caesar” is a term used by “the New Right, to mean a leader whose post-Constitutional rule will restore the strength of his people.” Ankur and I discuss an integral perspective, which would categorize Trump’s ruling philosophy as pre-Constitutional but no less “Red”. It looks like we are fated to live a very interesting next year. Enjoy the episode!

— Jeff Salzman

Ankur Delight: 10,000 Heroes Podcast

Is America really getting stupider? Social psychologist Jonathan Haidt makes the case in his influential essay in The Atlantic Magazine titled “Why the Past 10 Years of American Life Have Been Uniquely Stupid”.

I challenge his thesis from an integral perspective. Growing from a cultural conversation dominated by a modern worldview to one where many perspectives are online may feel like going backward (kind of like a sweet 12-year-old becoming a sour 13-year-old). But every new stage of development looks like a regression to the stage it is emerging out of. In this episode I make my case. Enjoy!

In this episode, I take another look at the movie Everything Everywhere All At Once in light of its popularity and controversy – including in the integral community. I also consider how taking one new perspective on the play, The Realistic Joneses by Will Eno, turned it from infuriating to infatuating. And more on the ongoing saga of pronouns. Enjoy the episode!

From a Live Fireside Chat at Integral Life, this recording is from earlier in the summer of 2023.

On today’s Daily Evolver Live (every Thursday @ 10am PT on YouTube) Ankur and I discussed the new Speaker of the US House of Representatives, Mike Johnson. He’s a fundamentalist Christian who supports Trump and the election deniers. He’s also for Covenant Marriage and against porn, two views that may be evolutionarily potent. Ankur and I tease apart what is good and what is retrograde in his views.