All tagged Collapse

A Hundred Years Of Covid: Plague As A Process, Not An Event / Nate Bear

A Hundred Years Of Covid: Plague As A Process, Not An Event / Nate Bear

Patrick Farnsworth
Nate Bear, 360

Social critic and writer Nate Bear joins me to discuss his work over the years communicating his insights into the intersections between the ongoing pandemic, human-caused climate disruption, and biospheric collapse. Nate describes how the abandonment of the population to repeated infection, mass illness, and death, is layered into the compounding crises affecting the living systems of the planet today.

Reading Nate Bear’s writings have been a balm for me. His essays are fascinating and educational, citing diverse sets of scientific research and historical accounts that bring our Covid age into a starker clarity. While many of the subjects he chooses to cover are often dire in nature, I find it reassuring to read his honest assessments of the global pandemic and how it intersects with the broader existential and ecological predicaments we face on this planet we all share. As listeners of this podcast have shared with me, having meaningful discussions about—or in the case of Nate’s essays, reading about—our global predicament, and the political, economic, cultural, and historical reasons why it’s occurring, can provide psychological and emotional relief from the inane, obfuscating, trivial bullshit that demands our regular attention. 

Off The Charts: Climate Data, Doomerism, & Deceptive Expectations / Eliot Jacobson

Off The Charts: Climate Data, Doomerism, & Deceptive Expectations / Eliot Jacobson

Patrick Farnsworth
Eliot Jacobson, 356

Eliot Jacobson—climate science communicator and “know-it-all doomer”—joins me to discuss his eclectic background, why climate change data in 2023 was off the charts, and what it means to be a doomer at his stage of climate and ecological breakdown.

2023 was truly unprecedented, with record-breaking temperatures recorded across the globe. We know the planet we are living on has changed; this new world we are in is unrecognizable. It becomes harder to ignore and forget how fucked we are when you’re choking on putrid smoke for weeks on end; when the asphalt buckles under the stress of heat domes that last weeks; when basic food staples become unaffordable at the supermarket; when reports about “wet bulb temperatures” become common in the headlines; when millions of carcasses of sea life wash ashore on the beaches around the world; when climate scientists say things like “[t]his month was—in my professional opinion as a climate scientist—absolutely gobsmackingly bananas.”

Death Keeps You Honest: Decentering The Individual, A Story Of Loss / Rachael Rice

Death Keeps You Honest: Decentering The Individual, A Story Of Loss / Rachael Rice

Patrick Farnsworth
Rachael Rice, 327

Artist, writer, and death worker Rachael Rice joins me to discuss death practice, entitlement, and honesty in our time of collapse and extinction.

This is an honest conversation, between friends. Both Rachael and I have very different lived experiences, but we align in several significant ways, especially when it comes to interpreting and navigating an extraordinarily messy time. The felt sense and scope of loss in the midst of the ongoing pandemic is shared between us. We bear witness to the wide-spread denial and full-faced First World entitlement — the “return to normal” and “I’ve-got-mine-ism” of it all, from top to bottom. It is a lot to bear. And yet, we acknowledge the time we are living through may be remembered as the good ol’ days in the years and decades to come.

Hot As Hell: The Quickening Of Incredible, Deadly Weather Events / Nicholas Humphrey

Hot As Hell: The Quickening Of Incredible, Deadly Weather Events / Nicholas Humphrey

Patrick Farnsworth
Nicholas Humphrey, 325

Meteorologist and geoscientist Nicholas Humphrey returns to the podcast, sharing his insights into the various catastrophic, record-breaking heatwaves and weather events currently playing out in numerous regions across the planet. He explains how the complex dynamics of anthropogenic climate disruption is quickening the pace of these events, and in turn, how ill adapted and ill prepared we are in addressing the realities of this predicament.

Death Wobbles: Regenerative Prep For Systemic Collapse / The Poor Prole’s Almanac

Death Wobbles: Regenerative Prep For Systemic Collapse / The Poor Prole’s Almanac

Patrick Farnsworth
The Poor Prole's Almanac, 312

Andy Ciccone and Elliott Evans, hosts of The Poor Prole's Almanac, join me to discuss a variety of subjects relating to the broad subject of collapse. We expound on what the "death wobbles" of the fragmenting, and declining, society we live within means for present and near future survival. How do we prepare for what is happening? How do we orient ourselves beyond the hyper-individualist notion of "prepping" for the apocalypse, as is often conceived of in US culture?

Systemic Failures: Rolling Blackouts, Decline, & Fragmented Realities / Richard Heinberg

Systemic Failures: Rolling Blackouts, Decline, & Fragmented Realities / Richard Heinberg

Patrick Farnsworth
Richard Heinberg, 290

Richard Heinberg of the Post Carbon Institute discusses the increasingly precarious situation we find ourselves in as fossil fuel energy production meets numerous intersecting crises, including, but not limited to: an aging and outdated energy grid, abrupt climate disruption-related weather events, rapidly depleting cheap fossil fuel reserves, and the fracturing of consensus reality. 

Today Is Better Than Tomorrow: A Time Of Endings; Shades Of Denial / Dahr Jamail

Today Is Better Than Tomorrow: A Time Of Endings; Shades Of Denial / Dahr Jamail

Patrick Farnsworth
Dahr Jamail, 257, Transcript

In this episode, I speak with award-winning journalist and author Dahr Jamail. 

I can imagine most of you listening to this episode will recognize what Dahr and I both feel and know in this time we are in. Many of us are beginning to come to terms with the reality we have been dealt — a global predicament that includes a pandemic that won’t soon leave us, economic crisis and social unrest that will only worsen as the months pass on, and nonlinear climate disruption that continues to rear its ugly head, portending horrors that are only beginning to make themselves a reality. And we know, from these trends, this breakdown will only accelerate as the months and years pass. As Dahr states, citing his time in Iraq, “today is better than tomorrow.”

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