Category: Words from Wizards


Who invented the first computer? No question that chief engineer Presper Eckert was the “sparkplug” of the ENIAC project.  This is a 5 hour conversation with Eckert about his childhood inventions, his early work with counting circuits and the steps that led to the development of ENIAC. It was the first all electronic computing machine. (1991)

Listen to what he has to say about who took what ideas from whom.

Presper Eckert talking with Alex Randall – download

Kenneth Boulding was a Quaker Economist and general Systems Theorist. For me this was a trifecta. Three reasons to go to his home and talk. This is a recording of our discussion about the Economics of peace and Love.

Kenneth Boulding talking with Alex Randall – download

Alex Randall reading the Book of Q – download

This is for people who don’t like church religion but are interested in what Jesus said. Remove all the arguments about how he arrived and how he left, and take away all the things people said about him, and the stories about miracles, remove the Greek myhts that got woven into Christianity and what’s left is JUST what Jesus SAID. Just the words. It is wonderfully refreshing. Like meeting a very wise man. Listen to what he said.

Digging the Weans”- Download

This is charming… What would an archeologists say about us? If they dug up New York or Washington, what would the scientists say about modern Americans… The Weans. excellent perspective on who WE are.

Aldous Huxley – Reading Stories and Poems – download

Aldous is reading from his poems and stories from Folio Two – recorded in 1949

Aldous Huxley – Reading from Time Must Have a Stop – 1949

Aldous Huxley – The Human Potentialities – Download

Buckminster Fuller – Talk over Lunch – November 20 -1975 – Download



Margaret Mead answered my question about creativity by saying, “You need to talk to Bucky.”
“But I don’t know him…” I responded.
“Just call him and tell him you want to have lunch. Ask his secretary to send ‘one-of-everything’ in his reprint room, read it all, and read all of his books before you go… Just tell him I said so.”
This was how Margaret organized my education… Call up a wizard, ask for an appointment, then read all their stuff, then have lunch, or stay for a week or camp out at their office. This recording is my conversation lunch with Bucky – November 20, 1975.
“How do you feel when you find out that someone else is developing one of your ideas?”
“Intense relief!” he answered.

Edmund Carpenter – Beyond Translatability ZBS Media – Download

Edmund Carpenter talks to ZBS Media about ideas in culture that are beyond translatability.

Albert Hofmann talking about LSD – Download

Alex Randall traveled with Nina Randall and Pam Wesson to interview Albert Hofmann at his home outside Basle Switzerland in 1973.

Aldous Huxley – Visionary Experience

Timothy Leary at the Boston Computer Society – October 22 1986

No, he is not talking about drugs. Timothy Leary was also a computer maven and this is a lecture about the social impacts of computers… Before the Internet was popular. The Monastary as the mainframe of the Middle Ages and the democratization of technology. Delivered to the Boston Computer Society October 22, 1986

Margaret Mead – The World of Sleep and Alex Randall talking about Dreams – Download

She had opinions on almost everything and she had done research, studied and thought about it all too. This is Margaret Mead talking about sleep and how cultures around the world deal with the universal experience – we all sleep every night.

Margaret Mead – Social Structures – Download

Margaret Mead – President of the American Association for the Advancement of Science – Download

It is 1976, Margaret Mead is President of American Association for the Advancement of Science. She took the occasion of her keynote address to talk about field research and what Anthropologists do in their research. February 20, 1976.