Insight and inspiration in turbulent times.
Leslie Davenport Leslie Davenport’s new podcast, Burning Questions: Conversations About Our Living World, brings together thought leaders navigating the emotional, strategic, and relational dimensions of our planetary moment. In this episode, Leslie is joined by Dr. Elizabeth Sawin to explore something both timely and timeless: how do we find leverage for transformation when the crises keep compounding?
To be clear, a sustainable farmer does not grow food. With adequate nutrition from the soil, with energy from the sun, and moisture from the rain, plants do all the growing by themselves. And animals grow by acquiring the energy and nutrition from plants.
From rising GDP losses to ecosystem collapse, climate reports are stacking up fast. The problem is we have no language for the difference between a bad situation and a civilisational threshold.
The Windigo diagnosis reveals that the threat we face is not only ecological or political. It is civilizational. It is rooted in a system whose deepest logic is to convert the living world into fuel for its own endless expansion.
Green AI will likely continue to stretch as different communities bring their own priorities and imaginaries to the term. But if its dominant forms remain tethered to extractive assumptions, it risks becoming little more than an alibi for the systems driving planetary breakdown.
The entire Community of Life—humans included—were better off when shrouded in the mysterious magic of the living world: held in awe, humility, and respect. We came into being inside the feedback loop, and threaten to destroy much when presuming to extract ourselves from its magical protection.
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.
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).
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.
