The B and P Realm Podcast

14/10/2024

As much as I’ve long loved a good novel, I’ve often found myself left flat by short stories.

So reading one that works for me, that transports me, and that leaves me with an ineffable, fresh perspective on the tragic comedy of the human experience is a rare, delectable treat.

This one, “After the Ball,” written by Leo Tolstoy near the end of his life, was a tasty, if dark, morsel, indeed.

The writing is economical yet flows like a river that knows where it’s going, and the moral isn’t turned into a club to beat you with its righteous indignation, yet it’s there all the same.

So let me put my too-flowery “pen” down and invite you to spend 10-15 minutes with a master storyteller from another time which could have been yesterday.

Enjoy!

“My love? It decreased from that day. When, as often happened, she looked dreamy and meditative, I instantly recollected the colonel on the parade ground."

14/09/2024

I know we're now a few days past the anniversary of 9/11 (and a 23rd anniversary isn't usually one we note), but I want to share this excellent resource for making sense of what happened on that tragic day.

I think people with discerning, compassionate minds who, no matter where the evidence might lead them, seek truth, will quite enjoy this video. It's a thought-provoking piece that encourages critical thinking and awareness of alternative perspectives, which I believe will be intellectually stimulating for you.

For one, I appreciate how they open with an example of how a US government agency gives us a step-by-step guide to discerning information and then shares their version of it. I really appreciate how they point out that the government version is disempowering, whereas the other focuses on empowering people.

Having said all of that, I recognize that getting to the bottom of what truly happened on 9/11 is not everyone's path. However, I believe that each of us has a responsibility to seek the truth. If not enough people make that effort, we're going to continue living in a sick world based on illusions. It's our collective responsibility to prevent this, and I hope this resource will motivate you to join this quest for truth.

Anyway, rather than me blathering on, here's the link to the article, and the video is embedded at the bottom of it. The article is a short read—just a few minutes—and the video is about 1 hour and 45 minutes. I wouldn't be sharing this if I didn't think it was excellent and important.

If we're going to build the more beautiful world our hearts know is possible, we've got to be better at discerning our reality.

Yes, another conversation. But this time with the intention of bridging gaps and reaching across divides.

27/08/2024

Request for YOUR feedback for a media project I'm working on re: your media consumption habits. (See comments)

20/08/2024

Asking me to feel honest joy for Kamala and Tim is like asking me to have an or**sm with my pinkie.

17/08/2024

I’ve always been weird and always will be, and there’s nothing anyone can or should do about it.

10/08/2024

Looking at the astrology of this coming week, there's a strong likelihood I will express my defiance toward "authority."

For those interested in how I understand this, there are two main factors.

1) The transiting Mars-Jupiter conjunction (pictured in the Chart I've shared) just past midnight here in Japan on Thursday, August 15th is conjunct my natal Saturn (just over one degree).

That can lead to some very feisty feelings (Mars-Jupiter) with authority (Saturn).

2) Transiting Mercury (retrograde) in Virgo is trine my natal Virgo in Capricorn.

Mercury is our thinking and communication, and a trine is of the nature of Jupiter, which means it's very supportive. Thus, I will feel called to express my thoughts about authority, restrictions, and limitations (all Saturnian things).

I'm going to do my best to honor this impulse and make sure that HOW I express it is mature (positive Saturn) and aimed not at destruction (Mars in the negative) but construction (Jupiter in the positive). Of course, sometimes we have to knock down a rotted structure to create the space to build something new, so we'll see how this all goes!

There's MUCH more to this, but I just thought I'd share this as a peak at how I work with astrology personally.

I'm continuing my studies, and hopefully, by next year at this time, I'll have the confidence to begin offering my services as a consulting, professional astrologer. I'm not rushing this process because I have A LOT of Saturnian influence in my chart---a guy born under the Sun in Capricorn with the Moon, Mercury, Jupiter, and the North Node of the Moon there definitely does. Thus, I take things slow and deep, especially things I consider to be valuable and powerful. The last thing I want to do is rush into practicing astrology and then harm possible clients because of that decision.

Anyway, I'll try to occasionally post things like this to share how I am using this powerful tool for personal growth.

06/08/2024

"My Daily Bryan Podcast, And An Important Episode Today"

Some of you know I've given myself a goal of publishing a podcast every single day of 2024. My main reasons for doing this are to work with the Saturn archetype, which encourages consistent, steady effort and to practice making media with the hopes of opening some opportunities for work and career down the road.

The main topics of my show are: current events and politics, especially in my native US, astrology, and archetypes. Because it's a daily show, though, I speak about other things, too, such as my love of music (mostly rock), sports (mostly baseball and American football), books (I read from certain books or give little reviews of stuff I've read) and daily check-ins on my life, including on what it's like to live and work in Japan.

Anyway, so far, so good, haven't missed one yet, with episode 219 just published.

Occasionally, I'll have an episode where I feel like I "missed," due to time constraints, a busy day, tech issues, or just not being in the right frame of mind to put out media. Still, I believe those episodes are few and far between (and I also try to warn listeners at the start when I feel like it might be one of those episodes, such as Episode 218, where I played the background music too loud but just didn't have the time (or patience) to do the whole episode again).

Anyway, today's episode, "219: Never Again (On the Nuclear Bombing of Hiroshima and a Look at John Hersey's "Hiroshima)" is, I believe, an important one so I'm sharing it here in the link below.

Llike it or not, a nuclear war, if one should break out, has the potential to impact all of us. Thus, as a guy who lives in the only country to have had a nuclear bomb dropped on it (by my home country, I'd add), I felt called to share an episode about the topic.

I wanted to move past the politics and into the direct experience of people who were there on that day, so in the final 12 minutes of this 30-minute episode, I read from John Hersey's amazing work of journalism, Hiroshima, which gives first-hand accounts of six people who were in that Japanese port city on that fateful day, and then tracks them over the next few weeks before revisiting them one year later.

I only read from the very start, but if you listen, I think you may feel like me; that this is, just on the merits of the writing alone, an article worth reading. In fact, because I hope some of you will join me in reading it---even just the very start---I'm going to share the link to the full, original article here: https://www.newyorker.com/magazine/1946/08/31/hiroshima

Having said all of that, one thing that I believe I'm definitely doing a good job on with my show is my reading (and listeners have told me as much), so you could check out the show and listen to my reading from Hersey's book.

After I introduce the episode, I read a short article from a national newspaper today on how Japan is remembering 8/6/1945, and then I read from the Wikipedia entry on Hersey's Hiroshima to give you some context and background.

If you do have a chance to listen, I welcome feedback---either here or via the links in the show notes for "How to Connect with me."

Okay, thanks for your time!

https://podcasters.spotify.com/pod/show/bryan-winchell5/episodes/219-Never-Again-On-The-Nuclear-Bombing-of-Hiroshima-and-a-Look-at-John-Herseys-Hiroshima-e2ms6el

A hundred thousand people were killed by the atomic bomb. Survivors wonder why they lived when so many others died.

02/08/2024

Note: I’m not active in Alcoholics Anonymous, but I still find these daily reflections from the Everything AA app useful and think no matter if you have a history with addiction or not, they can be helpful for those who want to proactively participate in their personal growth.

01/08/2024

Jonathan Pageau

Jonathan Pageau, host of "The Symbolic World" YouTube channel/podcast who is a Christian and a scholar, uses X/Twitter to share the same advice I've been giving in some of my media---find a way to enjoy the craziness of 2024 and not take it all to heart---and in this video, he breaks down the Opening Ceremonies at the Paris Olympics in a very clear way.

He's worth a follow to help make sense of some of the craziness, to be sure!

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rckBhO23cIA

30/07/2024

Bu****it, bu****it, bu****it, bu****it!!

That's what I say to this narrative that both Mayor Cheat...er Pete...and John "I Try To Be Fair (But I'm Just Another Democratic Party Cheerleader In the End" Stewart are spinning about how, in Pete's smooth-talkin' words we "may be underselling how world historically rare it is to be literally the most powerful person in the world laying power aside just because it is the right thing to do"---

NO! NO! NO!

Thats NOT what happened, and you fu***ng know it, Snaky Pete!

God, this guy has disgusted me ever since he snuck up on the stage in Iowa in 2020 with ZERO PERCENT of the votes officially tallied and claimed victory, all while the very shady tech company vote-counting machine called---I kid you not, Shadow---who both his campaign and Hillary Clinton's former campaign had major ties to, somehow were unable to do the very process that people in Iowa had been doing for decades---counting the votes accurately and getting them reported that night---

Seriously.

The bu****it is running SO thick at this point of the interview that I couldn't go on much more.

It's one thing for the naive, sycophant studio audience to suck it all up----though they are certainly not living up to any measure of "informed citizen" if they buy Pete's charm and eloquence so easily and don't ever stop to ask, "How is he spinning this?"----but the fact that the media guy---John Stewart---sits there and piles up the bu****it with his "rights" to Pete's BS about how Biden has "consolidated his standing as one of America's great presidents," but then Stewart follows with a mocking question that makes it seem ridiculous that Biden was "bullied"---"Can you even do that to an American president?"

FFS---the "American president" is a fu**in' human being, John Stewart. Human beings can be manipulated and pressured.

And to act like there wasn't three weeks of pressure mounting, three weeks of reporting about it, by mocking it away with such a stupid fu***ng question....what a goddamn insult to the intelligence of anyone who has a working memory.

Seriously, everyone---how do you all play along with this s**t (if you do, that is)? Is the hatred of Trump and fear of a Republican Party in the White House so strong that you'll just completely buy into what is obviously a crafted narrative, that you'll just completely forget what happened the past few weeks?

This hero worship--of Biden, of Trump, of Obama, of Harris----this whole game is just so freakin' see-through and disgusting yet everyone plays right along every four years...

My fellow Americans, I've been thinking for too long now that you're biggest problem is there's little to no integrity in your culture. The way you choose your president exposes it and it's only getting worse.

I pray that some of you reading are honest enough to see through this stuff, no matter which side it's coming from (and as I wrote in my previous post, it's coming from the JD Vance's and Republicans of the world, too---in fact, Stewart's segment on how the Republicans are reacting to Harris' candidacy was full of some of that side's insanities, so I'm an equal opportunity critic!

PS Even saying "At the end of the day it was (Biden's) choice" as Pete says, well .... there are plenty of reasons to call that into question. He was VERY clear for three weeks saying he HAD made his choice, he was NOT stepping down and only God could get him to step down ... then he "caught COVID" and while he was sequestered, apparently so far away that he couldn't bother to address the American people with a short 1-minute video announcing his resignation .... his TEAM releases a photo of a document on X/Twitter that's not even the usual White House stationary....saying he was quitting.

How can you know FOR SURE that someone on his team didn't put that out into the world and then said, "Look, Joe, we released it already. You HAVE resigned. Your move."

Honestly, if you see such questions and just shout "conspiracy theorist," all I can say is you've not looked into how politics is played and how the Democratic Party has been playing them, especially over the past several years.

No, I'm not saying this is WHAT happened, but the more I hear smooth-talking liars like Mayor Cheat go on TV and spin these narratives of how Biden is a historically selfless man who made the decision without any pressure .... the more I suspect that something like that happened.

In the end, all I DO know is the BS he's spinning is NOT what happened and shame on John Stewart for contributing to it!

“What’s the point of having a conversation if you’re not speaking to people who don’t already agree with you?” Pete Buttigieg talks to Jon Stewart about why ...

19/07/2024

For those who want to get to know a bit more about Trump's VP pick, this article has some juicy info about his Big Tech ties and it's also a great read for those of you who appreciate good writing.

The only comment I'll make is: There are NO Saviors, and especially not from our presidential candidates. For those who think Trump is either Savior or Bully (i.e. "Hi**er"), I invite you to consider that this is part of a Drama Triangle way of thinking, and we're being invited to move beyond it.

This is not the first, and certainly not the last, time I've brought up this (Karpman) Drama Triangle---Victim, Savior, Bully---and how it seems pretty clear to me that evolving out of it is the big challenge of our time.

I recognize that it's such an enticing, engaging drama to get involved in and that's why it gathers people in to play it. I also recognize that we humans have been playing it for many generations now.

As a result of this recognition, I'm not here to judge folks who are playing roles in this game. Instead, I'm doing what I can to offer you a shift of perspective so that you may find there's a way to live your life, and engage with current events and politics, without being a participant in that game.

If it wasn't for what seems to be the fact that if enough of us don't give up this game, we may do great damage to each other and this world we live in, I might even be compelled to quit talking about it and to just witness it all. But my deep sense is that playing it is not only damaging to the players but it has very real impacts on those of us who aren't playing it.

Anyway, if you're curious about how this relates to the US Presidential Election and how I see the events of this week, let me know, and I can write (or speak) more about it.

For now, here's the article, with the final comment that all I'm asking people to do is to go a little deeper than usual and to keep a detached, open mind about all of the things going on, including the new power players like JD Vance:

Trump VP pick J.D. Vance is the creation of Silicon Valley’s worst billionaires

28/06/2024

It's cringeworthy to watch the CNN analysts take turns twisting the knife into Joe Biden's back about his predictably poor debate performance, acting all earnest about how he needs to step down for the sake of the country when they actively sought to defy the FCC and the traditions of American debates by keeping a candidate who could replace Biden off the stage in RFK, Jr.

There's NO respect for the American public in ANY of this.

If there was, first the DNC would have allowed a member of one of their most prominent families, a family who was historically wronged by assassin's bullets in the 1960s, onto a primary ticket and then run a legitimate, EARNEST Democratic Primary.

Second, CNN would have alllowed RFK Jr. to participate tonight.

So, sorry, I'm not buying any of the crocodile tears from the CNN panelists.

"This was a hit job," Matt Taibbi said about CNN hosting this debate and their response to it.

Indeed.

It seems increasingly likely that they moved this debate to this unprecedented early time slot---debates have always been held in the fall---so that they and viewers could watch what we all know—Biden's too old for the job—and then pile on him and prepare to announce a replacement candidate by the time of the Democratic National Convention in August.

Nothing is earnest in US politics and corporate US political media. And we ALL suffer for it, no matter your political perspective.

20/06/2024

My latest blog post on the "psychology weather forecast" for Cancer Season 2024 is out....it's been a hard day's week getting this sucker ready for y'all! Happy to have it done so I can take advantage of the chill out of the Cancer Sun over this weekend.

For a bit of a dip into a post with a lot more info than this, here is the section titled "An Overview of the Month." If you enjoy this, please consider clicking on the link, subscribing to the blog, and reading the rest of the article! Your life may very well depend on it! Ha ha.

---

"An Overview of the Month"

For this 2024 Cancer Season, the astrological energies invite us to slow down, especially in the first part of the month when the Sun, Mercury, and Venus are all in Cancer after their stay in Gemini.

Second, about one-third of the way into Cancer Season, two outer planets—Saturn and Neptune—will join Pluto in retrograde motion. Briefly, planets in retrograde can express themselves more introvertedly than when they are moving direct.

As we move further into Cancer Season, things will start heating up again, with Mercury (July 2) and Venus (July 12) moving into Leo, followed by a potentially explosive meeting between fiery Mars and revolutionary Uranus in Ta**us (July 15), right in time for the three-day Republican National Convention (RNC) from July 15-18 in Milwaukee, as though American politics needs any help being wild.

Not to worry, folks. An intuitive iguana disguised as a toilet bowl cleaner in Mar-A-Lago is employed on my diverse staff, and he’s sure to keep me—and, by extension, you—informed about what’s really going on behind the scenes in Trump Town.

For now, let’s not worry ourselves over such trifling matters as presidential politics, and let’s turn to a more focused, week-by-week look at the astrology of Cancer Season."

After a hyperactive few months, the astrology of this month takes its foot off the gas and invites us to feel our way forward into the second half of 2024

08/06/2024

My latest blog post is a pretty fun one in which I share about how the archetype of Saturn is connected to the archetype of the Threshold Guardian but I do it by taking you on a photo journey of an epic bike ride to a cool Japanese temple in the mountains, too (with lots of silly captions along the way).

Enjoy!

A photo-essay journey exploring the archetype of Saturn and its relationship to the Threshold Guardian archetype

24/05/2024

(Since I'm in the mood to share some of the media I've been making---see the post below this for my most recent blog post on Gemini Season---in the first Comment, I'll share a link to my most recent podcast episode, which was a rather inspired-by-the-Sagittarius-Full-Moon energies ad-libbed chat about a powerful dream I had, the movie "Forrest Gump," and what I think are some challenging conversations that we should consider taking on if we are going to heal some of the many divisions our society is facing.

24/05/2024

Are you feeling a different energy this week than last week? Perhaps a bit more outgoing, more talkative? Maybe it's even a bit too much energy? I know I've been feeling it.

Well, one of the reasons I'm entering into the field of astrology in this, my post-age-50 "Second Life," is so that I can more consciously work with these energies and, by extensions, help others work with them, too.

And this week, after a few weeks where we had a lot of earthy, grounded Ta**us energy, the planets are beginning to shift over into the first Air sign of the Zodiac, Gemini, one of my personal favorites (though I really shouldn't chose), partly because my awesome mother, Leslie Fitzgerald Winchell, is a Sun sign Gemini, and partly because it's just a sign that brings with it a lot of wit and playfulness.

Anyway, while I shared this link a few days ago, I'm going to re-share it, but this time I'll put it in my first Comment, thinking that might allow the secretive Facebook algorithms to give it more visibility. Speaking of that, does it ever bother you, as it does me and some others I've spoken with, that these algorithms are secretive? Yeah, it does make "being social" on social media harder when we don't know what the rules of the party are.

Here's to Pluto's transit through another Air sign, Aquarius, over the next 20 years, reworking our social media platforms, bringing more Power to the People. Anyway....for more about the energies of this week and the next three---Gemini Season until the Summer Solstice---go to the first Comment! Enjoy!

19/05/2024

Here's a link to my monthly blog post.

The first half is dedicated to an overview of the month ahead and teaches about astrological archetypes, notably Jupiter and Gemini, and the language of astrology.

The second half is a week-by-week breakdown of some of the major transits and aspects and how these things might show up in your life and our world. Enjoy!

Jupiter moves into the sign of the twins and offers expansive opportunities for our communications, but be mindful of Information Overload and long-windedness