Human Nature Odyssey

How do we live through wild times? Legendary scholar, activist, and systems thinker Joanna Macy named the moment we are living through the Great Unraveling—a time when our ecological, political, economic, and social systems destabilize to the point of no return. And yet, she also insisted that we stand on the threshold of a Great Turning: a profound transition toward a more just and sustainable world. Before Joanna's death in 2025, climate activist Jess Serrante recorded a series of intimate and insightful conversations with her. In this episode, Alex sits down with Jess, weaving in clips from those recordings to explore the questions Joanna devoted her life to asking: How do we live with meaning as civilization unravels? How do we turn toward the grief of this moment—and transform it into action? And how do intergenerational relationships help us become elders for the future - when wisdom is needed most? CITATIONS We Are The Great Turning [podcast] If you'd like to support Human Nature Odyssey, please subscribe wherever you listen, leave a review, and join us on Patreon for exclusive audio extras, writings, and notes. For full episode transcripts, essays, and additional context, visit: resilience.org/human-nature-odyssey-podcast Music: Celestial Soda Pop By: Ray Lynch From the album: Deep Breakfast Courtesy Ray Lynch Productions © Ⓟ 1984/BMI All rights reserved.

At first glance, believing the earth is flat and dreams of colonizing Mars couldn't seem further apart. But both are built on the same story — that reality can be escaped if we just think big enough. This episode looks at two beliefs that seem opposite — flat earth and space colonization — and asks what they reveal about our urge to escape reality rather than reckon with it. One is the belief that humans could, and should, live in space: that we're destined to leave our planet behind and colonize the stars. The other is the belief that we're not on a planet at all—that the Earth is actually… flat. While one is held by fringe figures and the other by some of the most powerful men on the planet, both rest on the premise that humans are exceptional, unbound by limits, or somehow separate from the earth. To explore these modern myths, we're joined by two guests: astrophysicist Tom Murphy and documentary filmmaker Daniel J. Clark, whose film Behind the Curve follows prominent figures in the fringe—but growing—flat Earth movement. Together, we'll examine the stories we tell ourselves about the world we inhabit, how we determine what's real or possible, and what kind of world these stories create. CITATIONS Do The Math [blog] Behind the Curve [film] (2018) Return to Space [film] by (2022) If you'd like to support Human Nature Odyssey, please subscribe wherever you listen, leave a review, and join us on Patreon for exclusive audio extras, writings, and notes. For full episode transcripts, essays, and additional context, visit: resilience.org/human-nature-odyssey-podcast Music: Celestial Soda Pop By: Ray Lynch From the album: Deep Breakfast Courtesy Ray Lynch Productions © Ⓟ 1984/BMI All rights reserved.

This is the first 30 minutes of a longer conversation. The full conversation is available on the Human Nature Odyssey Patreon. === 28 years after the Rage Virus spread across the UK, the British Isles have been completely quarantined from the rest of the world. Zombies roam the forests and countryside while the survivors huntwith bows and arrows and make do in their fortified village. But for 12-year-old Spike, this is all normal. 28 Years Later is director Danny Boyle's sequel to the classic zombie thriller 28 Days Later. In this bonus conversation, Jake Marquez and Maren Morgan from the Death and the Garden podcast join me to explore the post-industrial world of 28 Years Later. If you'd like to support Human Nature Odyssey, please subscribe wherever you listen, leave a review, and join us on Patreon for exclusive audio extras, writings, and notes. For full episode transcripts, essays, and additional context, visit: resilience.org/human-nature-odyssey-podcast

Picture the future 100 years from now. What do you imagine? Flying cars? Space colonies? AI talking toasters? But if we can't sustain an endlessly growing economy - even with a transition to green energy - 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. It's not the future the movies told us to expect. But it might be a future we enjoy living in. CITATIONS Crazy Town podcast If you'd like to support Human Nature Odyssey, please subscribe wherever you listen, leave a review, and join us on Patreon for exclusive audio extras, writings, and notes. For full episode transcripts, essays, and additional context, visit: resilience.org/human-nature-odyssey-podcast Music: Celestial Soda Pop By: Ray Lynch From the album: Deep Breakfast Courtesy Ray Lynch Productions © Ⓟ 1984/BMI All rights reserved.

What does a livable future look like 100 years from now? If we unlocked unlimited green energy, what would we actually do with it? And are our dreams of a renewable-energy utopia sometimes just as delusional as the fossil-fueled drill baby drill mentality? In this two-part series, Alex is joined by the hosts of Crazy Town—Jason Bradford, Rob Dietz, and Asher Miller—a research biologist, ecological economist, and Executive Director of the Post Carbon Institute, who bring a depth of knowledge as well as dad jokes. Together, they explore the implications of exponential energy growth on a finite planet, the hard truths behind a renewable-energy future, and which expectations we need to rethink as we chart a path forward. Along the way, we encounter an Olympic athlete attempting to toast bread using a bicycle. We also step inside a billionaire's latest invention: a time-travel device promising to fling us ahead one hundred years. Will the future be a gleaming techno-utopia powered by infinite green energy? A scorched wasteland of collapse? Or something else entirely—a lower-energy world that future generations might actually enjoy living in? Stay tuned for Part 2 where we take the full leap into the time machine and imagine what life a century from now could really look like in a post high-energy future. CITATIONS The Toaster Challenge, Olympic Cyclist Vs. Toaster: Can He Power It?, 2015 Tom Murphy, Galactic-Scale Energy, Do the Math, 2011. Tom Murphy, Limits to Economic Growth, Nature Physics, August, 2022. Solar Freakin' Roadways, Indiegogo, 2014 Crazy Town podcast ADDITIONAL MUSIC Modified version of "Also sprach Zarathustra, Op. 30" by Strauss, from classicals.de — licensed under CC BY 4.0 If you'd like to support Human Nature Odyssey, please subscribe wherever you listen, leave a review, and join us on Patreon for exclusive audio extras, writings, and notes. For full episode transcripts, essays, and additional context, visit: resilience.org/human-nature-odyssey-podcast Music: Celestial Soda Pop By: Ray Lynch From the album: Deep Breakfast Courtesy Ray Lynch Productions © Ⓟ 1984/BMI All rights reserved.