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The Story:
Destination set, arrival time approximated and all essentials packed. Vehicle of choice: not just any old VW sedan, a special VW beetle named “Vocho-Vochito”, but to his friends, he is “Vochilango”. Just as it’s bad luck to set sail without first naming your ship, giving your trusty vehicle a name brings your ride to life. Something special happens and a soul is born, your car will adopt a personality and accompanying behaviours. Unfortunately, this also allows your newborn friend to misbehave.
Vochito and I work as a team, with Vocho deciding many important things for me – such as when, or if, I’m going to arrive. The beetle acts as a channel for divine providence, allowing him to stop in unexpected places and enjoy magical coincidences. Anything can happen and everything is possible.
In this episode I tell a short story of a Vocho weekend adventure. The VW bug was well-behaved as I stretched all gears around the Mexican country side, bending time and entering G-force on the hairpin turns. Heavy on the breaks as the wheels lock up, in an attempt to avoid being swallowed by the holy trails created by the hurricane the week before. It’s time to enjoy yet another trip through … The Paradise Paradox.
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The Story:
Every year in Guadalajara, they hold the Romería festival, and every year the danzantes dance from the Cathedral in the city centre, all the way to the Basílica in Zapopan. It can be tough walking five kilometres, even more so when you’re taking two steps forward and one step back, and tougher still when the construction of a new subway line forces you to take a fifteen kilometre detour.
Aaron had some interesting experiences, preparing his costume, trying to find all the right feathers for an (more or less) authentic native American headdress, and dancing himself into a trance for an intense journey that might end up binding him to the Earth Father Tlaltecuhtli, Our Lady of Guadalupe, or the Virgin of Zapopan.
Join us as we put our feet to the concrete in another exciting adventure of … The Paradise Paradox!
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The Story:
In 2007, two graphic designers were having troubles making ends meet in their San Francisco apartment. They had some space that they could free up in the loft which they thought they could use to accommodate travellers, and thought about putting it on Craigslist, but they thought it was too impersonal. Instead, they decided to create a website, offering people passing through a chance to stay cheaply on some air mattresses and eat a home-cooked breakfast. Pretty soon they were receiving emails asking when the service would be available in Buenos Aires, London and Tokyo, and they began to formulate a vision.
They contacted their old roommate, an engineer, to join the team. In a clever move to raise funding for the project, they designed custom boxes for cereal to appeal to voters in the upcoming election, selling 500 boxes of both Obama O’s and Cap’n McCains for $40 each, raising $30,000.
Inviting the hosts to share their listings on Craigslist helped build their guest numbers and traffic considerably, as did spamming existing listings on Craigslist for similar properties. Then by developing their philosophy of offering personalised service, hospitality and something that guests just couldn’t find in a traditional hotel, they solidified their place as a key player in the accommodation industry.
Today, millions of people use AirBNB to travel cheaply, and to make money, subverting the conventional model of tourism and helping people to enjoy cities in a friendlier way. How has this business opened up the world to travellers, making it more affordable and interesting? What is the value of travel in general? Why do some people resist travelling adamantly? We explore these questions and more, in the next breathtaking chapter of … The Paradise Paradox!
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The Story:
A man steps off an aeroplane in a foreign country, with little more than a few bags, a few changes of clothes. This man is no stranger to foreign countries, having travelled through his own country as a child, with his belongings stuffed in the back of a Mazda MQ, and just recently has skipped from the beaches of Sri Lanka to the ghettoes of Los Angeles. An experienced traveller with all of his bridges burnt, within days he is forming sentences in the land he has just discovered. The land is Mexico, and that man’s name is “Charlie”, but in Mexico he goes by “Carlos”. This fellow is a rugged mix of academic theory studied in a university, and raw experience of life.
Now, upon arrival in Mexico, he realises that he has no safety net, as his government has decided to stop giving him money to study. Can he survive in a foreign country with nothing but a Tarzan-like grasp of the local language, his Tarzan-like stature, and his wits?
In this episode, Carlos tells us about his adventures in Australia, Sri Lanka, the USA, and his philosophical adventures, criticisms of the higher education system in Australia, and his ideas about ideas.
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The Story:
Living in the USA, the media bombards you with stories telling you that you should accept immigrants, or that you should be afraid of immigrants stealing your welfare benefits. When trapped in a limited media FOX/CNN right/left propaganda paradigm, it may be difficult to overlook the fact that more and more people are deciding to leave the USA and never come back. Some of them are looking for the principles of liberty and opportunity that made America great. Some of them are increasingly concerned about political risk. And some of them just want an opportunity to break their daily routine, leave the ordinary life behind, and find what mysteries the world has to present to them.
Naturally, some of these adventurers have decided to spend some time in Magical Mexico. Kurt’s neighbour Taylor Alan is one of these gringos that decided to explore the world, if only by accident. On a month-long family trip to France, she met a charming local and decided not to leave.
In this episode, we interview Ms. Alan and find out how she managed to survive France barely speaking the language, her easy-going attitude, and how she ended up in Mexico.
Join us on another exciting, world-shattering adventure on… The Paradise Paradox!
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The Story:
The Volkswagen Beetle was and is a fine example of German engineering. It has just the bare minimum amount of moveable parts, was built to last, and still lives up to its name as “The People’s Car”. Adolf Hitler first commissioned the Beetle in 1934, and the design was completed by Ferdinand Porsche in 1938. Many models, 30 years old and even older, are still running in many countries, especially in third world countries, and Mexico is no exception. The Mexicans, saving the hassle of trying to pronounce a German word, know the vehicle as the “vocho”, and you can see them used as taxis in certain cities, most notably Acapulco.
In this episode, Aaron tells us about a dream he had where he was driving a group of friends in his black vocho, when everything goes wrong. The breaks don’t work, the road drops out, and the laws of physics abandon him. Find out what happens next in this exciting chapter of … The Paradise Paradox!
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The Story:
Most children dream of a trip to Disneyland, or visiting Santa at the North Pole, or maybe being locked in a super toy store over night. We are all big kids and we should all be active dreamers. It took me too long to complete my dream of taking the journey to Tulum, Mexico. I had plans to go in 2008 and 2012, but cheap thrills and weak distractions would always somehow get the better of me. Not this time – 2015 is and was the year.
The ‘Ruins of Tulum’ is one of the most visited archaeological sites of Mexico. This Mayan city, is situated on the Yucatan Peninsula overlooking the Caribbean sea, now ticked off my bucket list, and should find a place on yours. Please join me as I invite you to explore new ideas and an alternative view of Tulum. I have no doubt you will share new thoughts on this amazing ancient city. Even with my high expectations, I was still taken by surprise and completely blown away.
One cannot prepare themselves for the intimate experience with this ancient world. The site is beautiful, the climate is unbearably wonderful – very hot, the beaches are magnificent and I didn’t look at my watch – not even once.
In this episode I touch on the spirituality and mention a few cultural practices of the Mayan people. I speak about their beliefs in the earth’s energy, and explore the parallels of morphic resonance, consciousness grids, and the earth grid. The Mayan people built their cities with this intention and purpose of energy communication. They held strong beliefs in keeping a connection to their planet in balance, they also believed that the Yucatan Peninsula was the centre of an energy vortex. Tulum was constructed to represent to the 5th energy chakra, the Vishuddha. The primary connection with the material realm, the speaking of truth and manifestation.
Scientists have later discovered that this area of Mexico has strong electromagnetic fields which is believed to be caused by a meteorite hitting the Yucatan Peninsula roughly 65 million years ago. Furthermore, studies found that specific Mayan cities and structures actually magnify and focus these electromagnetic fields, in particular ‘El Castillo’ (the Castle), which is the principle pyramid of Tulum. There is no doubt in my mind that electromagnetic technology was discovered, developed and utilised by the Mayan people. Where as, today in these apparent modern times we are only just discovering the healing properties for magnet therapies.
Maybe the Mayan people were not so primitive as believed.
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The Story:
Thursday, May 14th 2015, Chihuahua, Mexico. A group of five children aged 11 to 15 knock on the door of their neighbour, Christopher Raymundo Márquez Mora, 6 years old. They ask Christopher if he wants to come play with them and gather some firewood. Christopher obliged. The children told Christopher that they wanted to play a game of kidnapping. Christopher Márquez was never seen alive again.
Days later, the Missing Persons Unit started questioning the youths, as they were the last people seen with Christopher. Their stories quickly became contradictory, and soon they were confessing to an awful crime. They had tied Christopher up, nearly suffocated him with a metal bar, stoned him to death, removed his eyes from his head, stabbed him several times in the back, and buried him in a shallow grave. The children covered the grave with weeds and a dead animal, presumably to mask the smell and stop any predator from digging up the corpse.
This case is particularly shocking in its brutality. On the whole, the world is becoming less violent. But a lot of violent cases still occur. In Australia, tens of people die per year as a result of being hit with no warning – what’s now known as a “coward’s punch”. Then there are reported cases of college students killing homeless in the USA as a sort of game.
What could have inspired these young boys and girls to murder Christopher Márquez? What cultural factors might be involved in producing such deadly games? Do people really know what morality is, or do they just think of what they can get away with? Do people know what it means to have a moral compass? We ask these questions and more in this exciting chapter of … The Paradise Paradox!
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The Story:
The date was May 1st, 2015. I picked up my phone and noticed an unread message. “Do you know something about the narcobloqueos?”
“Hm… no. What’s that?”
“Aahh okay. Some shitty thing about narcos.”
I don’t own a television, don’t listen to the radio, and so sometimes remain in a state of blissful ignorance about the outside world, so I had no idea that on nine roads and highways in Guadalajara, there were burning buses, allegedly set on fire by agents of drug cartels – specifically the Jalisco New Generation cartel. Seven people were killed that day, mostly police officers and military. Twelve were injured, and three people went missing. It also meant my friend couldn’t catch the bus to her home in El Salto.
I asked a few people about it, and the response was that it happened every election season. The rumour was one of conspiracy. The theory is that every election, the government, in collusion with the drug cartels, does something to spook the people just a little bit. Then, whoever is in government can swoop in, saying that they will be extra hard on drug traffickers, appearing as the hero to anyone who isn’t paying enough attention to know what is really going on. The cartel refrains from burning any buses for a few months or a few years, and it appears that these violent symptoms have been pacified. Naturally, the core issue remains unaddressed.
About two weeks ago, I saw a protest in downtown Guadalajara.
A little more than a year ago, the second largest market in downtown Guadalajara, Mercado Corona, had gone up in flames, and with no official investigation, and little investigation in general. Nobody can say for sure who did it. However, a certain statesman was, just a few months previously, calling for the demolition redevelopment of that exact piece of real estate, it’s not surprising that suspicious people are quick to ask questions. And they are right to ask questions. A people that is not suspicious of its government will quickly get lead astray.
North of the border, in Baltimore, Maryland, on the 27th of April, the media started reporting a riot. Again, suspicious people started to question. For reports of a riot, the media seemed to have a lot more footage of police officers, than they did of actual rioters. Then, a lone CNN camera managed to capture what appeared to be a carefully choreographed performance involving a young protester being abducted by the police.
It is in the interest of the media to sensationalise events. Humans seem to have an evolutionary instinct to react to bad news, and that keeps people glued to their TV sets. But is there more to this story than sensational journalism?
In both of these cases, there are interests who are trying to manipulate public opinion, whether it be the narcotraffickers, the media, or the governments. In this episode, we attempt to analyse some of those factors and speculate on who might benefit from a conspiracy beyond what you can view on your television.
The most precious resource for human life is undoubtedly water. But what happens when the government shuts down the water supply for an entire suburb without warning? How long does it take for people to start behaving like they’re in a zombie apocalypse? And what’s the quickest way to catch a brain-eating amoeba? All these questions are asked, and more, in this exciting chapter of The Paradise Paradox!
