Insight and inspiration in turbulent times.
In this episode, Nate is joined by New York Times bestselling author and professor of psychiatry, Anna Lembke, to explore how modern society has “drugified” our lived experience through digital media, processed foods, and instant gratification, resulting in an environment that propagates addiction.
Why is strict materialism a hard sell for many in our dualist-dominated culture?
Yes, the West has been subjected to extensive critique. But I will show that such critiques rarely reach its core nature and are more often absorbed, neutralized, and ultimately survived by the system itself.
None of us gets to choose the era we live through or to control a whole lot about the world we live in. But we should strive to rise to the challenge of the situation we are confronted with, by doing what we can to make our communities, our country, and our world as livable (and worth living in) as we can.
The idea that we are stardust, and made of the same stuff that all the plants, animals, and Earth itself contain is a very unifying truth. Everybody plays by the same rules.
We should admit that widely-mandated climate optimism has been actively harmful to the needful acknowledgement of reality – and to the active collective self-protection that we now desperately need to get serious about making happen.
Let us humbly receive the minimal (experimentally validated) foundation that can plausibly account for everything we experience, even if we can’t ourselves connect all the dots. Trust the universe, not our brains.
Archaeology’s singular contribution to understanding people and their interactions with each other and the natural environment has always been its worldwide documentation of past lifeways over long time spans.
Consider the staggering impact that the invention of cordage and textiles has had on human development. Hank Green has added them to his list of the ‘foundational’ technologies of our species. (Plus a note on the use of AI.)
Thus, adaptation to change is essential. We are in new, unfamiliar territory, and how we negotiate this is the challenge, or the journey’s course will be taken out of our hands.
What does a realistic and positive future look like? Alex joins the hosts of Crazy Town to imagine life in the 22nd century: walking from our family farms into communal villages, living off the land in a low-energy lifestyle, taming our pet donkeys, and resisting our local warlords.
In this week’s episode, Nate reflects on four years(!) of the podcast by answering listener-submitted questions, which cover a broad range of topics related to The Great Simplification.
