Insight and inspiration in turbulent times.
The power of story to define experience and understanding is as old as our species: we are storytellers, whose stories are not only narrative but also define our lives. A change of story can transform our life.
The US midterms offer hope that Americans are tiring of cruelty and division. But confronting the inexorable crises coming our way will require more than electoral victories; it will take communities willing to work across differences.
What can one person actually do about the metacrisis? In this week’s Frankly, Nate explicitly outlines just a few of the countless actions we can take to actually change what’s coming.
Nate reflects on a week spent with friends and peers who share his understanding of the world’s converging crises and what it revealed about the deeply human need to be fully seen.
With age, I’ve become more aware of the world’s complexity but also better equipped to come to simple, albeit painful, conclusions: We need to replace fantasies of endless growth with ideas about managing the contraction.
As authoritarianism, military tensions, and temperatures rise, it is easy to look at the end of the world as we know it and ask what the point of academia is.
Everyone is now on board with the theory of multipolarity. But now that it’s mainstream that unipolarity is dead, it’s time to ask: is the world actually becoming multipolar?
Investigating how and why complex societies or civilizations have risen and fallen in human history, anthropologist and historian Joseph Tainter uncovered a dynamic that can help us make sense of our present situation and future prospects.
The impacts of a strengthening El Niño and the war in Iran highlight in the Greater Horn of Africa, an area already beset by prolonged crisis and conflict, factors that are combining with others to potentially create a major, multicountry polycrisis.
Nate scales his exploration of civilizational futures down to the future of a single human life and analyzes how the same patterns that shape economies, power, geopolitics, and Earth systems turn inward.
In this excerpt from the Seeds Series Volume 2, interviewees argue that deeper shifts in consciousness, economics and governance are needed to confront the polycrisis.
In this presentation for The Climate Dialogue Group, Richard Heinberg shares his insights into why a world of climate disruption and energy volatility demands a shift from maximizing growth to strengthening community resilience.
