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At the time, I was learning engineering methods for controlling systems and optimizing outcomes, powerful techniques that I thought could alone solve society’s mounting problems. But I quickly realized my team with Fathom was a system that belied ambitions of control.

Hence, the severe restrictions in the flow of oil though the Strait of Hormuz, resulting from the recent US-Iranian attacks, may be seen as a stark rehearsal for the consequences of a severe shock in the global oil supply, as might be experienced from a “peak oil” crisis, with volatile price spikes and supply chain disruptions.

We need a plan B. In case society starts to, erm, collapse… We need to be prepared…It won’t do to plan to WAIT til we win intellectual debates such as that around growth/degrowth before we get together to prepare…Theo Cox, Liam Kavanagh and Rupert Read outline their new OSF-funded report, just launched this week…

This is the paradox both Saudi Arabia and the UAE are now navigating. The grey war they are waging — economically, culturally, through regional proxies — is a race to secure the post-oil future before the other does.

After the financial crash of 2008-9, I started to discover tools and ideas that I thought were promising, but discrete and disconnected. But they’re not: they can be (and are being) used together to form networks that have the potential to grow exponentially to challenge the status quo – to build a commons economy, a commons society, a commons world.

In this episode, Nate speaks with primatologist and author Dr. Christine Webb about human exceptionalism – the deeply embedded belief that humans are separate from and superior to the rest of nature. Webb argues this worldview is not a universal human trait but rather a product of a few dominant cultures, and that it lies at the root of many of our most pressing global challenges.

I don’t think anything is more important than challenging the notion that ‘they’ will solve the current poly-crisis and keep people safe and fed via existing and new technologies, economic policies and political negotiation. They won’t. It’s time for ordinary people to try to do it for themselves.

All we can do now is stop being dumb enough to think our brains are capable of outsmarting ecology, and aim for lifestyles that are less obviously catastrophic—relying heavily on proven examples from the distant past.

The 24-mile-wide Strait of Hormuz in the Persian Gulf, through which roughly 20 percent of world oil shipments pass, is an obvious pinch point for a vital industrial resource. But it also serves as an apt metaphor for the brittle global supply chains upon which the entire economy depends.

In this installment, Nate addresses the U.S. and Israeli military offensive against Iran and traces the reverberating effects that extend far beyond the conflict itself, starting with what the closure of the Strait of Hormuz means for a civilization that routes a massive share of its physical economy through a single maritime corridor.

We believe that more historians and archaeologists can step into a public, reflective role, helping societies explore narratives beyond either progress and growth fetishism on the one hand, or nostalgic and fortress mentalities on the other.

In this episode, we run a special fantasy-football style draft to take a look at immortality projects, some horrendous, but some with positive effects.