I have posted episode 14 of my podcast. This one follows episode 13 about the history of Planet X to be the second in my four-part series this month on Intro to 2012. (The next two will be on galactic alignments and what the sky looks like. Then, throughout 2012, there should be at least one episode a month about some idea related to it in the popular/alternative culture.)
In this episode, I interviewed Dr. Johan Normark who lives and works in Sweden*. Johan and I have been commenting on each others’ blogs for a few years now and actually he’s the only person I’ve ever asked to do a guest post on picking apart astrologer Terry Nazon’s “facts” about 2012. I’ve also used him as a quick resource a few times for some later posts on 2012 when I mentioned archaeology or the Maya.
Hence, it seemed like a good idea to interview him to get the “low down” (or whatever the kids these days are calling it) on what the Maya actually said or didn’t say about 2012 and to get an introduction to their calendar system. I realize this isn’t a podcast about archaeology, nor is it a blog about archaeology. However, the whole reason for the 2012 doomsday/goodday that most people are advocating is the Mayan long count calendar. So, in any series about 2012, you kinda need to get into the Mayan calendars.
This interview is long, and the audio quality isn’t stupendous. Blame it on going from Skype in America to a landline in Sweden. I’ve cut the interview down from around 1 hour 10 minutes to about 50-55 minutes, but I really didn’t want to cut out too much (a large portion of what was cut were pauses). We talk about a lot of things, but the basic coverage is (1) Johan’s background and interest in 2012, (2) about the Mayan calendar, (3) how their calendar may or may not line up with ours, (4) who some of the big players are or big claims related to 2012 from his perspective, (5) his least favorite “popular” claims related to the Maya or archaeology in general, (6) evidence, and (7) what the Maya actually “said” about 2012.
*As a quick end-note, I also want to apologize if I still got some Swedish words pronounced incorrectly … including Dr. Normark’s first name.
Exposing PseudoAstronomy 
[…] me last Saturday night. You can find this interview with me speaking perfect Swenglish on his 14th podcast. Stuart will be covering other astronomical parts of the 2012 phenomenon later on (such as the […]
Pingback by 2012: Me on Exposing Pseudoastronomy « Archaeological Haecceities — December 9, 2011 @ 12:58 am |
Thanks Stuart. I will listen to it during this weekend. I hope I did not mispronounce too many English words. I have been trained in British English in school but mainly worked with Americans and Canadians so my spoken English is a mixture that we can call Swenglish.
Comment by Johan Normark — December 9, 2011 @ 1:05 am |
Just as I post my comment to your blog, you post to mine. 🙂 As I said there, I thought it worked out pretty well all things considered. MUCH better than I could do with Swedish (since I don’t know any Swedish), but still also much better than I could do in Spanish (I took Spanish for almost a decade … though my Spanglish is pretty good 😉 ). It’s nice to know that the idea of mixing languages and their names (Spanglish, Swenglish, Franglais, etc.) exists cross-culturally.
Comment by Stuart Robbins — December 9, 2011 @ 1:07 am |
Swenglish translates as svengelska in Swedish. We have no similar term for Spanglish, etc. as far as I know.
Comment by Johan Normark — December 9, 2011 @ 4:08 am |