Dec 12

Dec 12 True West: Myth & Mending In The American West / Betsy Gaines Quammen

Historian and author Betsy Gaines Quammen returns to the podcast to discuss her new book, True West: Myth and Mending on the Far Side of America, published by Torrey House Press. Building on her previous book, American Zion, Gaines Quammen follows the historical roots and trajectories of troubling political trends in the Western United States, decoupling the myths and material realities of the landscapes and the peoples and the more-than-human lives that occupy them.

“True West explores myths of the West and how, if left unexamined, they distort the realities of the present and exacerbate polarizations. These misperceptions about land, politics, liberty, and self-determination threaten the wellbeing of western communities overrun by newcomers seeking a dream—and the country, unless America recognizes the dangers of building a national identity on illusion. Gaines Quammen interrogates it all by listening, carefully, to people from varying political and cultural perspectives as she seeks to reconcile the deep anger and broad misunderstandings that linger amid myths that define and impede the West and America.”

Nov 9

Nov 9 A Nation For A Nation: Full-Scale Vengeance; Antisemitic Zionism / Shane Burley

Patrick Farnsworth

Shane Burley, 353

Journalist and author Shane Burley returns to the podcast to discuss his article The Story of a Post-Holocaust Group Seeking Revenge Against Nazis is Part of the Story of Israel Itself, published by Religion Dispatches. He addresses historical traumas and contexts that underlie, in part, the dramatic escalation of violence by the State of Israel in the Palestinian territories since Hamas’s October 7th attack. This is a two-part interview.

As of the release of this episode, the Gaza Health Ministry has reported over 10,000 people in Gaza have been killed in the ongoing incursion by the Israeli military, with over 4,000 of those being identified as children—nearly half. Since the October 7th attack by Hamas militants, Israel has bombed hospitals, refugee camps, aid convoys, and entire neighborhoods, while cutting off electricity, fuel, and other vital supplies and utilities to the over two million residents of the Gaza Strip, with no way for them to escape.

To describe this as anything other than genocide would be to betray the Palestinian people, as well as our humanity. With the full backing of Western powers—especially the United States—Israel is engaging in an ethnic cleansing campaign, one that has been ongoing for the better part of a century. The founding of the State of Israel in 1948 was an act of settler colonial violence, one that instigated the Nakba—the “disaster” or “catastrophe”—expelling 750,000 Palestinians from their lands. To discuss the October 7th attack by Hamas militants, or the recent bombardment by the Israel Defense Forces in Gaza, without contextualizing the colonial realities Palestinians have endured for many decades—even before the founding of the State of Israel in 1948—is to perpetuate a wholly unjust, murderous status quo.

While stating the obvious is crucial, there are complexities that need to be contended with. To describe this situation as “complicated” or “complex” is often part of a rhetorical cop-out—an obfuscation from speaking to the vast scale of injustices the Palestinian people and their allies are fighting against. That’s not what I’m referring to in this introduction, and not what I’m gesturing toward in this interview with Shane Burley. There are diasporic historical traumas that need to be reckoned with to, at the very least, understand how this horrific ongoing catastrophe reached this inflection point and commonly perceived intractability.

Oct 23

Oct 23 Bananas For Socialism: The Horizons Beyond Food Production Under Capitalism / Arun Gupta

Patrick Farnsworth

Arun Gupta, 352

In this expansive discussion, investigative journalist and food columnist Arun Gupta tackles the extremely online drama between "progrowth" and "degrowth" leftists about one of the cheapest fruits you can find in the supermarket: the banana. Will we have bananas under socialism?

Capitalism and its global distribution networks do more than just transport criminally cheap goods from the so-called “Banana Republics” of South and Central America to Global North markets, it works to disperse the responsibility for such a ruthless system: no consumer is completely to blame, nor completely blameless, either. Some are more than others, sure—like the corporations and their government partners—but we’re all implicated, just by the mere fact we need to eat.

We can make better choices when we consume. Instead of plastic, I can use a paper or metal straw to drink an iced coffee. I can go vegan. I can source all my food—meats and produce—from local farms and growers. These choices matter, but frankly, most of the choices most human beings can ethically make are terribly limited under capitalist hegemony. These are lifestyle choices, and are not liberatory in the truest sense.

None of this was inevitable. Other horizons exist. So, when the “banana discourse” erupted on one of the hellsites many of us frequent, the question became: will there be bananas under socialism? And Arun Gupta, who thinks and writes a great deal about food, in more or less words, answers: well, yes, of course we’ll have bananas. But frankly, this not really the right question, or even the right framing.

Sep 26

Sep 26 The Evolved Nest: Nature’s Way Of Raising Children / Darcia Narvaez + G.A. Bradshaw

Patrick Farnsworth

Darcia Narvaez, G.A. Bradshaw, 351

Darcia Narvaez returns to the podcast, along with co-author G.A. Bradshaw, to discuss their new book, The Evolved Nest: Nature's Way of Raising Children and Creating Connected Communities, published by North Atlantic Books.

By drawing on the ancestral legacies of child-rearing and broader nesting practices and contemporary breakthroughs in neurology and developmental psychology, we can better understand how integral intergenerational cultural practices bear on the complex development of human beings. But, what of our animal kin? What are their evolved nests, and what lessons can we learn from them? How does a broken or intact human evolved nest impact and interact with the evolved nests of other animals?

Over the course of ten chapters of their new book The Evolved Nest, Narvaez and Bradshaw describe “different animal’s parenting model[s], sharing species-specific adaptations that allow each to thrive in their evolved nests.” Some examples include: how wolves build an internal moral compass; how beavers foster a spirit of play in their children; how octopuses develop emotional and social intelligence; and how, when, and whether (or not) brown bears decide to have children.

For me, this discussion with these two women is a dialogue on non-dual consciousness and how the ecological and the social are the same. The brokenness of modern human societies bleeds into all systems of life, and while it may be difficult to imagine returning to lifeways that regenerate the integral components of the evolved nests of human and more-than-human beings, still, we can look to our animal kin and see ourselves—our pains and joys, our love and traumas, our brokenness and healing. Whatever the path to ecological regeneration may be at this late stage of biospheric collapse, it will involve looking to our more-than-human kin to recognize ourselves in them, to see what has been lost, and what yet can be reclaimed.

Aug 11

Aug 11 Fire Weather: The Petrocene & The Making Of A Beast / John Vaillant

Patrick Farnsworth

350, John Vaillant, Transcript

Acclaimed author John Vaillant joins me to discuss Fire Weather: The Making of a Beast, a masterfully written chronicle of the destructive power of fire in the twenty-first century.

Humanity’s kinship with fire extends across the millennia. The conditions that allow fire to exist, let alone flourish, are the same that allow Homo sapiens to survive and thrive on this planet. Our relationship with this element has been mutually beneficial. Our ancestors use of fire propelled the rapid evolution of human anatomy and cognition. In turn, fire was able to spread, shaping the environments that allow us to co-exist, survive and thrive, forever binding the fates of human and more-than-human life with it.

Since the Industrial Revolution, and especially since the beginning of what Vaillant calls the Petrocene, the co-adaptive, co-evolutionary path we have carved out with this life-giving/life-destroying element has become discordant and unbalanced. Industrial humans, harnessing the incredible power of ancient fossil fuels over the past few centuries—a mere blink of an eye in Earth’s geological timescale—claimed mastery over this lively entity, and has, in turn, altered the global climate system so dramatically as to trigger a mass extinction event. A relatively small subset of the peculiar species we belong to have, with careless abandon, produced the conditions for fire to claim a larger and destructive role on the planet. Is it really that we are masters of fire, or instead, is it the other way around?

Fire Weather is an astounding chronicle of the boreal fire that swept through Fort McCurray, Alberta in May 2016. Over the course of 24 hours, the nearly 90,000 residents of this modern-day bitumen subarctic boom town evacuated, escaping the out of control fire as it eviscerated everything in its path. Vaillant zooms in close, guiding us through the decisions made that day as the fire raced into the city, made by residents and authorities alike as catastrophe unfolded. He expands the story to situate Fort Mac as a nexus point in the larger settler colonial history of Canada and its inextricable relationship with the fossil fuel industry and extractive capitalism, all situated within our present paradigm of ecological crisis, climate change, and 21st century fire.

Jul 28

Jul 28 We Want Them Infected: Contrarian Doctors & The Failed Quest For Herd Immunity / Jonathan Howard

Patrick Farnsworth

349, Jonathan Howard

Jonathan Howard MD joins me to discuss his timely book, We Want Them Infected: How the Failed Quest for Herd Immunity Led Doctors to Embrace the Anti-Vaccine Movement and Blinded Americans to the Threat of COVID, published by Redhawk Publications.

As much as Jonathan Howard’s book is a scathing examination of how various very influential and contrarian doctors misled the US public about the coronavirus pandemic, it is also a historical document. By meticulously, carefully, and thoroughly quoting countless social media posts, statements, essays, op-eds, and interviews from certain highly accredited doctors, Dr. Howard compares their claims to actual reality as the virus began to rip through the population. Over and over again, these outspoken figures made bold and inaccurate claims that the pandemic was just about to end; herd immunity was just around the corner; the worst of the plague had already past; children were unaffected; and so on. Over and over again, these contrarian figures were proven wrong. And yet, despite overwhelming evidence, they still maintain their professional status and accreditation to this day, seemingly unhindered—professionally, at least—by the widespread consequences of their repeated false assumptions and claims.

Jul 24

Jul 24 The Myth Of Man The Hunter: Human Locomotion & The Diversity Of Foraging Societies / Cara Wall-Scheffler

Patrick Farnsworth

Cara Wall-Scheffler, 348

Biological anthropologist Dr. Cara Wall-Scheffler joins me to discuss the evolution of human locomotion and how it dovetails into the findings and conclusions of the research article she co-authored, The Myth of Man the Hunter: Women’s contribution to the hunt across ethnographic contexts, published last month in PLOS ONE.

The data gathered and examined across numerous foraging societies by the authors of this ethnographic review points to the incredible diversity of labor males and females typically engage in to acquire food and other resources. Simultaneously, the findings and conclusions in this study upend stereotypical and essentialist notions about what the commonly understood sexual divisions of labor are—the “man as hunter” and “woman as gatherer” myth—with implications for not only anthropology as a field of study, but for contemporary discourse on topics of gender and sex.

May 12

May 12 Broken Sociality: Isolation, Social Murder, & The Process Of Depoliticization / Nate Holdren

Patrick Farnsworth

Nate Holdren, 347

Legal historian and author Nate Holdren joins me to discuss broken sociality, political and social loneliness, and social murder and its depoliticization during the pandemic, as elucidated in his Peste Magazine essay Broken Sociality: Isolation in the Pseudo-Return to “Pre-Pandemic Normal”.

The pandemic emergency has been declared over, both here in the United States, and by the World Health Organization. That does not mean the pandemic is over, but it marks an official end to an emergency level institutional response to it. Any sort of practical and enforceable mitigatory practices to reduce the spread of the virus has been firmly relegated to the past. To add insult to injury, the trauma or discomforts incurred over the past three years are often blamed on these public health measures themselves by high-status conservative and liberal commentators and so-called experts alike. Nevermind the millions dead, the global vaccine apartheid, the tens of millions disabled and those that continue to become disabled, and what those facts mean. The virus’s plethora of variants will continue to infect and reinfect the global population into the foreseeable future—a slow burn with grim long-term consequences.

When I read Nate Holdren’s essay on broken sociality and political and social loneliness as the “urgency of normal” takes precedence in the US, it struck a chord within me. He provided a language to describe my feelings and experiences at this stage of the ongoing pandemic.

For those of us still masking and avoiding the plague, still keeping up on covid research to the best of our ability, and still admonishing our peers to be mindful of how our behaviors and decisions impact all of us, especially for the most vulnerable, oftentimes a gulf can and does emerge and deepen between our relationships with others that disregard these considerations. When an intrinsically collective health crisis is minimized, and in many cases, outrightly denied by our peers, day-to-day life becomes a lonely affair.

May 2

May 2 Disaster Spirituality: The Self Project & How The Apolitical Is Political / Matthew Remski

Patrick Farnsworth

Matthew Remski, 346

Conspirituality podcast co-host and journalist Matthew Remski returns to the podcast, bringing his ongoing analysis of online cultists, grifters, and conspiritualists to a discussion that relates to the book he co-authored with co-hosts Julian Walker and Derek Beres titled Conspirituality: How New Age Conspiracy Theories Became a Health Threat, forthcoming from Public Affairs/Random House in June.

We begin our discussion by delving into what Matthew describes as the “amoral attention economy” and how becoming “professionalized into the cursed news cycle” impacts one’s mental health. Matthew has taken it upon himself to jump into the fray of online “disaster spirituality” and the circles of culty health and wellness grifters—a psychologically and emotionally taxing beat to be on. Based on personal experiences he’s had, some of which he shares in this interview, along with a deep research background into cultic dynamics and abuse in spiritual movements, Matthew has developed an ability to adeptly spot, analyze, and critique the charismatic, narcissistic, self-aggrandizing public personas that contaminate public discourse. He walks us through the dynamics at play, and provides a material framework for understanding how these figures and ideas become so influential to begin with.

Apr 20

Apr 20 Rumination On Truth: The Destruction Of Iraq, Twenty Years On / Dahr Jamail

Patrick Farnsworth

Dahr Jamail, 345, Transcript

Author and former climate journalist Dahr Jamail returns to the podcast to discuss the 20th anniversary of the invasion and occupation of Iraq by United States-led coalition forces. Jamail began his journalistic career as an unembedded journalist documenting the war from the ground beginning in 2003, highlighting the countless war crimes committed by the occupying forces against the civilians of Iraq, superbly documented in his first book on the subject, Beyond the Green Zone: Dispatches from an Unembedded Journalist in Occupied Iraq published in 2007 by Haymarket Books.

Apr 7

Apr 7 The Startup Nation: The French Go On Strike; A Broken Social Contract / Alley Valkyrie

Patrick Farnsworth

Alley Valkyrie, 344

Social critic and activist Alley Valkyrie returns to the podcast to discuss the recent wave of strikes and civil disrupt in France. As someone who has spent most of their life within the borders of the United States and a current resident of Rennes, France, Alley provides a well-rounded description of events that have led to one of the largest strikes and protests in recent memory in the nation.

Anglophone media rarely provides accurate insight into the protests in French society. Regarding the nationwide labor strikes and confrontational protests in major French metropolitan areas over the past several weeks, US media in particular simplifies the demands of those participating in them, resorting to common stereotypes and tropes of the lazy French and the robust social welfare system that spoil them. The reforms neoliberal president Emmanuel Macron forces through the legislature that strip hard-earned gains of the citizens of France are minimized, whether subtly or overtly. Having lived in Rennes for the better part of a decade now, Alley cuts through much of those cultural biases common in the nation she was born and raised, and what these strikes are really addressing, including the risks that come with them, both presently and in the coming years.

Mar 30

Mar 30 Stop Cop City: Weelaunee Forest Defenders & The Chilling Intent Of State Terror / Clark, Atlanta Community Press Collective

Patrick Farnsworth

Clark, ACPC, 343, Transcript

Clark from the Atlanta Community Press Collective joins me to discuss the Stop Cop City movement, also known as the Defend the Atlanta Forest (or Defend Weelaunee Forest) movement in Atlanta, Georgia. Clark is not a representative of the movement, but through his coverage, speaks clearly to the concerns raised by activists and forest occupiers of the construction of Atlanta Public Safety Training Center (Cop City).

Based in Sydney, Australia, Foundry is a blog by Rebecca Thao. Her posts explore modern architecture through photos and quotes by influential architects, engineers, and artists.