Is our digital legacy the final frontier of storytelling?

In this episode, we sit down with Miles Spencer, a serial entrepreneur, world traveler, and the founder of Reflecta AI. Spencer, who co-created the long-running PBS series Money Hunt, has dedicated his career to the power of narrative. Now, he is using artificial intelligence to bridge the gap between physical archives—like shoe boxes of old photos and letters—and a dynamic, conversational digital legacy that allows families to preserve the voices and stories of their loved ones.

Beyond technology, Spencer shares insights from his global travels, including following the footsteps of T.E. Lawrence through the Middle East and mentoring entrepreneurs in Cuba. We explore the strategic importance of "gateway cities" like Havana and Damascus, the surprising similarities between cultures we often view as different, and how human decency often overrides geopolitical tensions.

In this episode, we discuss:

The DNA of Storytelling: How being the 23rd of 24 children in a family of Pennsylvania storytellers shaped Spencer’s worldview.

Reflecta AI: Creating "AI for humanity" through spontaneous and dynamic digital legacies.

The Jurassic Park of Islands: Observations from mentoring technologists in Cuba during a brief window of diplomatic opening.

A "Halftime" View of Syria: Experiences in Damascus between conflicts and the strategic realities of location versus resources.

The Homogeneity Trap: Why the relative similarity of North American culture can make the diversity of the rest of the world feel more remote than it actually is.

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Musis by Bitterlake, Used with Permission, all rights to Bitterlake

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Crew:
Host: C. Derick Varn
Intro and Outro Music by Bitter Lake.
Intro Video Design: Jason Myles
Art Design: Corn and C. Derick Varn

Links and Social Media:
twitter: @varnvlog
blue sky: @varnvlog.bsky.social
You can find the additional streams on Youtube

Current Patreon at the Sponsor Tier: Jordan Sheldon, Mark J. Matthews, Lindsay Kimbrough, RedWolf, DRV, Kenneth McKee, JY Chan, Matthew Monahan, Parzival, Adriel Mixon, Buddy Roark, Daniel Petrovic,Julian

Is it anthropology or a high-stakes hoax?

In this episode of the Varn Vlog, we dive deep into the enigmatic life of Carlos Castaneda with author and visual artist Ru Marshall. Marshall’s expansive new biography, American Trickster (OR Books), unearths the startling reality behind the man who convinced the world he was apprenticed to a Yaqui sorcerer named Don Juan.

We explore how Castaneda transitioned from a UCLA PhD candidate to a global counterculture icon, selling tens of millions of books while living a life of elaborate reinvention—including claiming to be Brazilian despite being Peruvian. Marshall details the darker side of Castaneda's "Nagual" legacy: his transformation into a cult leader, his manipulation of academic elites like Harold Garfinkel, and the tragic disappearances of the women in his inner circle following his death.

In this episode, we discuss:

• The Academic Scam: How Castaneda used "ethnomethodology" to seduce brilliant sociologists and anthropologists at UCLA.
• The Arana Family Secret: The "Mark of the Arana" and the dark Peruvian history Castaneda spent his life running from.
• Tensegrity and Cultism: The transition from bestselling author to a high-control leader who promised his followers they would never die.
• The Death Valley Mystery: The discovery of Nuri Alexander’s remains and the final "flight into infinity" that turned fatal for his followers.

Ru Marshall is an acclaimed writer and visual artist whose work explores the intersections of faith, identity, and cultural mythology. Their debut novel, Separate Reality, was a Lambda Literary Award finalist for Debut Fiction. Marshall's insightful non-fiction and essays have been featured in prominent outlets including Salon, n+1, Evergreen Review, and Kenyon Review. Their most recent work, American Trickster: A Biography of Carlos Castaneda, is the culmination of nearly two decades of research into one of the 20th century’s most complex and controversial literary figures.

Send us Fan Mail

Musis by Bitterlake, Used with Permission, all rights to Bitterlake

Support the show

Crew:
Host: C. Derick Varn
Intro and Outro Music by Bitter Lake.
Intro Video Design: Jason Myles
Art Design: Corn and C. Derick Varn

Links and Social Media:
twitter: @varnvlog
blue sky: @varnvlog.bsky.social
You can find the additional streams on Youtube

Current Patreon at the Sponsor Tier: Jordan Sheldon, Mark J. Matthews, Lindsay Kimbrough, RedWolf, DRV, Kenneth McKee, JY Chan, Matthew Monahan, Parzival, Adriel Mixon, Buddy Roark, Daniel Petrovic,Julian

A lot of people can quote the right theory, wear the right shirt, and post the right meme. Then the moment arrives when you have to sit down with a coworker, ask what they need, and move them toward collective action and suddenly they vanish. We take on that tension by reading and reacting to the provocation “The Left-Wing Deadbeat,” using our own union organizing experience to separate what’s real from what’s just frustration dressed up as advice.

We talk about why some organizing stories feel instantly familiar yet still leave out the most important details: timelines, workplace conditions, power mapping, and what the organizer actually did to develop leaders. From disruptive committee members to under-socialized online habits, we keep coming back to a basic organizing truth: you don’t win by judging politics, you win by building relationships, teaching skills, and giving people a path to act. That includes modeling one-on-one conversations, debriefing conflicts, and treating coworkers like human beings instead of line items.

Along the way we get into labor movement debates that shape strategy on the ground: rank and file unionism versus staff-driven approaches, labor aristocracy and “PMC” shorthand, what proletarianization looks like in tech and academia, and why certain alliances like cozying up to police unions can blow back strategically. We also look at militancy, when it helps, when it becomes a burnout machine, and why political education matters even in bread-and-butter fights.

If you care about workplace organizing, union strategy, and building durable worker power, subscribe, share this with a coworker, and leave a review. What kind of “deadbeat” behavior have you seen, and what actually helped turn it around?

Link: https://organizing.work/2020/05/the-leftwing-deadbeat/

Send us Fan Mail

Musis by Bitterlake, Used with Permission, all rights to Bitterlake

Support the show

Crew:
Host: C. Derick Varn
Intro and Outro Music by Bitter Lake.
Intro Video Design: Jason Myles
Art Design: Corn and C. Derick Varn

Links and Social Media:
twitter: @varnvlog
blue sky: @varnvlog.bsky.social
You can find the additional streams on Youtube

Current Patreon at the Sponsor Tier: Jordan Sheldon, Mark J. Matthews, Lindsay Kimbrough, RedWolf, DRV, Kenneth McKee, JY Chan, Matthew Monahan, Parzival, Adriel Mixon, Buddy Roark, Daniel Petrovic,Julian