Alexandre Tannous: “Sound Thinking: Using Music, Resonance, and Harmonics for Human Wellbeing”

Music has been an integral part of the human experience for thousands of years, and continues to embody a unique aspect of culture across the world today – yet most people hold only a preliminary understanding of the full range of benefits that sound, resonance, and harmonics can provide. Today, Nate is joined by ethnomusicologist Alexandre Tannous for a deep dive on the evolution of the human relationship with sound and how music could be used as a tool to facilitate personal resilience and healing.

Brace for Peak Impact

Now that I have a demographic tool, I can ask questions relating to when we might hit peak power as a civilization. I use power (rate of energy use) as a proxy for all manner of resource dependencies, as energy usage correlates strongly with materials use and ecological impact. Plus, it is a readily-available measure.

How an Aboriginal woman fought a coal company and won

In 2019, Australia was on the cusp of approving a new coal mine on traditional Wirdi land in Queensland that would have extracted approximately 40 million tons of coal each year for 35 years. But that didn’t happen, thanks to the advocacy of Murrawah Maroochy Johnson, a 29-year-old Wirdi woman of the Birri Gubba Nation, who led a lawsuit against the coal company in 2021, and won.