Insight and inspiration in turbulent times.
The question of who’s the real nut often arises for us collapse-aware folks living here in Crazy Town. Since Mr. Peanut is no longer returning their phone calls, Rob, Jason, and Asher invite Douglas Rushkoff, media theorist, professor, and host of the Team Human Podcast to answer the question.
This week’s Frankly marks a turning point in the work of The Great Simplification. Having spent twenty years articulating the more-than-human predicament, Nate shifts from diagnosis to direction as current events – including conflict in the Strait of Hormuz – accelerate the timeline. Today Nate shares a first-pass framework for action and response that’s organized around what to do now, which could be applied to various places and at multiple scales.
As I’ve emphasized repeatedly here, the fundamental problem isn’t the contextual distinction between farming and foraging. It’s the way that predatory states exploit both. But now we need to find more resilient, local, stress-tolerant strategies.
Hunter-gatherers engaged fully in life with their psyches intact. They experienced far richer meaning and deeper relational being than we can now even imagine. That is what we must recover as we fight back.
As the current situation (March 2026) around the Strait of Hormuz continues to destabilise the global economy, it is timely to return to Alexander’s analysis outlining ‘the Disintegration of Empire’ (being Chapter Two of Entropia).
Financial markets so far have reflected the belief that the Iran war will be over soon and that commerce will return to normal. I explain why I think this belief is unwarranted and why President Trump’s latest announcement regarding bombing Iran’s power plants is economic suicide.
Several commentators have remarked that the United States’ war on Iran carries echoes of 2008. A potential financial crash this year could actually be much worse.
It is time to examine how we live, where we live, where we draw the line. We can take our anxiety and move it into action. We can plan and protect ourselves. And, amazingly, wonderfully, saving rainwater is something every one of us can do. It’s time.
Before plants and animals recolonize after a wildfire, fungi get to work.
The question is no longer just how to succeed in the world. It is how to remain human in a time of unraveling, and how to become, in the deepest sense, both soulful and revolutionary: ruthless in understanding the material conditions of the age, yet still capable of love, grief, reverence, and fidelity to life.
If we and our descendants succeed in realising this new green Earth, I think it will result from ordinary people sharing and distributing what they need locally to generate renewable communities oriented to practical livelihood.
The eclipse, then, is an invitation. Not a warning or a demand, but a quiet reminder that clarity is possible. Justice has not abandoned us. We stepped out of alignment with it, and we can step back. The shadow will stay as long as we remain in it, but it will fade the moment we stop standing in it.
