Insight and inspiration in turbulent times.
In this episode, Nate is joined by John Cook, a researcher who has spent nearly two decades studying science communication and the psychology of misinformation. John shares his journey from creating the education website Skeptical Science in 2007 to his shocking discovery that his well-intentioned debunking efforts might have been counterproductive.
The Darien is a hub of extraordinary terrestrial and aquatic diversity, a sanctuary of indigenous communities already devoted to protecting local wilderness, and habitat for endangered Apex predators, including the Harpy Eagle. It also, unfortunately, serves as an example of contemporary environmental and societal threats magnified by large-scale geopolitical changes.
When farmers, researchers, designers and policymakers work together, farms and bio districts can become true laboratories of resilience – capable of regenerating ecosystems while shaping fairer and more adaptive governance models.
To live outside of one’s ecological context—and in fact where no ecology of any relevance exists—would require somehow creating a suitable ecology, or borrowing a sufficiently-complete subset of an existing one that can tolerate a completely novel setting for which the beings are not adapted.
Deep as we now are, tragically, in the age of consequences, only a more deeply deliberately transformative effort at responding smartly to the damage that is here and preparing for the unpredictably worse damage that is to come has any chance of being sufficient.
We need all hands on deck to ideate new ways to equip the Youth Movement with a holistic, radical approach. To generate systemic change, young activists must be brave in their criticism of capitalism and growth. Unfortunately, they must also get comfortable with doubt, not knowing exactly what tomorrow will look like.
This week’s Frankly is another edition of Nate’s Wide Boundary News series, where he invites listeners to view the constant churn of headlines through a wider-boundary lens. Today’s edition features reflections on renewable energy and CO2 emission trends, updates on species adaptability, and a discussion about nuclear treaties and Iran.
Keep records. Learn the new patterns — if there are any. Because the challenge we will be facing for decades to come is a seeming lack of pattern, and we humans don’t do well in random time.
In this week’s Frankly, Nate looks at how aggregate human behavior changes as groups scale from small tribes to large and complex societies. He uses the framing of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde throughout the episode to illustrate how traits that once helped small groups survive can serve to destabilize complex societies when expanded globally.
Some thirty years ago, one of the organic pioneers, Carl Haest, said about sustainable agriculture, “friend in the field, foe in the market”. That seems to hold also for regenerative agriculture.
An attack on Iran appears imminent. Here’s why I think it’s unlikely that we’ll see President Trump “TACO” this time.
Shane has been busy with the next generation on and off the farm too, visiting schools with a herd of Old Irish Goats. Once a common sight in the Irish countryside, this rare native breed is helping to revive a cultural heritage that has lessons to teach us today, on biodiversity, wildfire management, and the transmission of knowledge from one generation to the next.
