At the recent annual meeting of the Media Ecology Association hosted by Daemon University in Amherst, New York on June 6th to 9th, three members of the Board of Trustees of the Institute of General Semantics were honored for their contributions and achievements: Corey Anton, Susan Drucker, and Thom Gencarelli. The awards ceremony was hosted by IGS President Lance Strate, assisted by MEA Vice-President Heather Stassen.

Thom Gencarelli was presented with the MEA's 2024 Edmund S. Carpenter Award for Career Achievement in Editing in recognition of his service as editor of the IGS journal ETC: A Review of General Semantics.

Susan Drucker was presented with the MEA's 2024 Christine L. Nystrom Award for Career Achievement in Service in recognition of his contributions to the IGS, the MEA, and as a founder and leader of the Urban Communication Foundation. 

And Corey Anton was presented with one of the MEA's highest honors, the MEA's 2024 Walter J. Ong Award for Career Achievement in Scholarship.

We join with our friends and colleagues in the MEA in congratulating our hardworking and talented trustees, Thom Gencarelli, Susan Drucker, and Corey Anton. And we also want to express our appreciation to the Media Ecology Association for their recognition.

The twenty-second episode of Semantic Reactions, the official podcast of the Institute of General Semantics, is now available for your listening pleasure. Our June 2024 episode was recorded at a local radio station in the city of Gold Coast in Australia, and features Australian media personality and researcher, Renée Peterson. Renée has spent over two decades as a media industry professional in Australia and the US, as a radio and television producer, writer, and on-air broadcaster, and is currently completing her doctoral degree at the Royal Melbourne Institute of Technology. She joins IGS trustees Lance Strate, Thom Gencarelli, and Laura Trujillo-Liñán, who were in Australia for the annual meeting of the International Communication Association (the IGS is an ICA affiliate organization). Their conversation centers on the role of radio, along with sound recording and newer forms of digital media, in Australia, the United States, and Mexico, as well as on celebrities, influencers, and more recent developments in digital media. They also talk about language, dialects, and not surprisingly, general semantics.

You can access Episode 21 via our host site, and it is also available through most major podcast platforms, also on YouTube, and below:

After last year's successful summer seminar in New York City, the IGS will be holding a 3-Day In-Person General Semantics Seminar in London, UK, on July 25-27.

Navigating the Now: A Guide to Recognizing What Is Going On will be taught by IGS Trustees Nora Bateson, Dom Heffer, Mary P. Lahman, and Lance Strate.

During the seminar, we will explore how unexamined language behaviors perpetuate misperceptions of past and present controversies in professional and personal spaces. And we will determine which language and listening behaviors respect the infinite worth of each person in the interaction.

The seminar will be held over 3 full days (9 AM to 5 PM) on July 25th to 27th in London, UK, at the October Gallery.

For more information and to register, click here.

The twenty-first episode of Semantic Reactions, the official podcast of the Institute of General Semantics, is now available for your listening pleasure. Our May 2024 episode features an interview with Dr. Margaret Cassidy, the newly elected president of the New York Society for General Semantics, and the author of Bookends: The Changing Media Environment of American Classrooms; and of Children, Media, and American History: Printed Poison, Pernicious Stuff, and Other Terrible Temptations. Peggy Cassidy is Professor and Chair of the Department of Communication at Adelphi University, and a past president of the New York State Communication Association, and the Media Ecology Association. In conversation with IGS Trustees Lance Strate and Thom Gencarelli, the discussion deals with dance and choreography, language and the arts, symbolic form and musical notation, orality and literacy, education and communication, technology and psychotherapy, leadership and administration, and of course general semantics.

You can access Episode 21 via our host site, and it is also available through most major podcast platforms, also on YouTube, and below:

The twentieth episode of Semantic Reactions, the official podcast of the Institute of General Semantics, is now available for your listening pleasure. Our April 2024 episode features an interview with lawyer, media activist, and artist-designer Paul Guzzardo. The conversation ranges across topics such as digital arts and deep fakes, the music of Ustad Imrat Khan, Henry Ford and the United Steel Workers labor union, Marshall McLuhan and Walter Ong, Patrick Geddes and Aldous Huxley, Josephine Baker, Walter Winchell, Giovanni Piranesi, and of course general semantics, and takes us on a trip from Guzzardo’s hometown of St. Louis to his current residence in Buenos Aries, Argentina, with stops along the way in places such as New York City, Edinburgh and Dundee in Scotland, and Calcutta, India. .

You can access Episode 20 via our host site, and it is also available through most major podcast platforms, also on YouTube, and below:

The nineteenth episode of Semantic Reactions, the official podcast of the Institute of General Semantics, is now available for your listening pleasure. Our March 2024 episode features a discussion held in the media lab at Panamericana University in Mexico City with Panamericana's Media Lab Director Gustavo Navarro, IGS Trustee and Panamericana Philosophy Professor Laura Trujillo-Liñán, and visiting IGS Trustees Thom Gencarelli and Lance Strate. Their conversation covers media ecology, new media, education, general semantics, and more.

You can access Episode 19 via our host site, and it is also available through most major podcast platforms, also on YouTube, and below:

The eighteenth episode of Semantic Reactions, the official podcast of the Institute of General Semantics, is now available for your listening pleasure. Our Febuary 2024 episode features the second part of an interview with singer-songwriter and activist Michelle Shocked. In conversation with IGS trustees Lance Strate and Thom Gencarelli, they discuss Michelle's career and music, and issues regarding copyright, media and technology, artists' rights, and human dignity (and includes a bit of salty language). The episode concludes with a live performance and a prerecorded song. If you haven't heard episode 17, you may want to listen to that one first.

You can access Episode 18 via our host site, and it is also available through most major podcast platforms, also on YouTube, and below:

The seventeenth episode of Semantic Reactions, the official podcast of the Institute of General Semantics, is now available for your listening pleasure. Our January 2024 episode features an interview with singer-songwriter and activist Michelle Shocked. In conversation with IGS trustees Lance Strate and Thom Gencarelli, they discuss Michelle's background and music, and issues regarding copyright, media and technology, artists' rights, and human dignity, and conclude with a live performance.

You can access Episode 17 via our host site, and it is also available through most major podcast platforms, also on YouTube, and below:

The sixteenth episode of Semantic Reactions, the official podcast of the Institute of General Semantics, is now available for your listening pleasure. Our December 2023 episode features an interview with former IGS Executive Director and Trustee Steve Stockdale. In conversation with IGS President Lance Strate, Stockdale discusses his background and connection to general semantics, his experiences setting up a MOOC and teaching a course on general semantics online, and his initiative known as “calling out the symbol rulers”. 

You can access Episode 16 via our host site, and it is also available through most major podcast platforms, and on YouTube, and below:

The presentations at the 71st Annual Alfred Korzybski Memorial Lecture and the Non-Aristotelian Perspectives, Ecological Approaches, and the Anthropocene Symposium held on October 27th-29th, 2023 at The Players, New York City, are now available for viewing via the IGS YouTube channel.