KMO

KMO is the host and producer of the C-Realm Podcast and author of the book ‘.’ He recently relocated from the Ecovillage Training Center on the Farm in Summertown, TN to Brooklyn, NY. He describes himself as, “a recovering libertarian and Singularitarian.”

He was an early employee of Amazon.com, made a lot of money on stock options, spent it all, and had to re-enter the rat race with a decade-sized hole in his resume. He spent a good portion of his temporary, early retirement studying NLP, public speaking, and leadership while working to establish himself as a web-cartoonist. During this period he also traveled repeatedly to the Peruvian Amazon to participate in Ayahuasca ceremonies.

Libertarian ideology and techno-utopian fantasies are very attractive and self-validating when one is living on the proceeds of an internet stock-option windfall. They are less attractive and self-validating when scrambling to earn a living and starting from scratch in middle age. The six year arc of the C-Realm Podcast provides an unintended look into KMO’s evolving worldview.

Within a couple of months of learning of the existence of podcasts he was creating weekly episodes of the C-Realm Podcast. That was in 2006. Since then he has conducted over 300 podcast interviews on topics ranging from organic farming and permaculture, peak oil and the collapse of industrial civilization, to psychedelic spirituality and drug policy reform.

Doug Lain, creator of the Diet Soap on-line zine (later to manifest as the Diet Soap Podcast) wrote, “KMO was once a winner in the capitalist game. He had high tech dreams and plenty of ambition, but somewhere along the line KMO dropped out, spent what he had, and started over in a simpler way. No longer rich and no longer so enamored with the technocratic fantasies of the prevailing order, he squeaks by in this world while seeking another. More than anything KMO is a broadcaster and interviewer who has a gentle and amiable way of challenging and inspiring interesting conversations with authors, artists, psychedelic gurus, sociologists, NASA scientists, economists, and more on his weekly podcast called the C-Realm.”

The roster of C-Realm Podcast guests includes Bill McKibben, Dmitry Orlov, Albert Bates, Thomas Homer-Dixon, Charles A.H. Hall, Albert Bartlett, Richard Heinberg, Ellen Brown, Nicole Foss, Steve Keen, Charles Stross, Nate Hagens, Charles C. Mann, James Howard Kunstler, Derrick Jenson, Lierra Keith, Jeremy Narby, Bruce Damer, Neil Kramer, and Dennis McKenna.

In addition to the C-Realm and C-Realm Vault Podcasts, KMO is the co-host of the Z-Realm Podcast with Marty and the Lovely Olga K. He also teams up with Olga to create the monthly Psychonautica Podcast for the Dopefiend.co.uk Podcast Network. While at the Ecovillage Training Center, KMO published several episodes of the ETC Voices Podcast.