What Elephants Can Teach Us About Civil War
Elephants are changing. The various traumas of extermination—witnessing the deaths of their companions, developing in atypical social structures—are making elephants more aggressive. In this episode, ...
5 Okt 20201h 53min
Do Not Worship the Deities That Came Before the Fire
"Climate denial" has the specific connotation of outright denial such a thing exists, but what about all the other forms of denial? The human mind has a general tendency not to come to terms with over...
27 Sep 202033min
Nature-Nurture Death Spiral pt. 4: Academic Gibberish vs. Life on Earth
Academic constructs, valid or otherwise, tend to diffuse into our culture at large. How has this impacted social and political conflict? Quite a lot, and mostly badly. In this episode, we look at clim...
18 Sep 20201h 50min
Nature-Nurture Death Spiral pt. 3: Foucault Ruins Your Meeting
In this episode, we trace the journey of 20th century social sciences through innumerable versions of the nature vs. nurture debate, talk about how the denial of human nature led scientists to torture...
27 Aug 20201h 45min
Nature-Nurture Death Spiral pt. 2: The Universal People
Because anthropology describes the observed range of human variation, as well as constants in human life, it is inextricably linked to the project of describing what is possible for a revolution to ac...
11 Aug 20201h 43min
Nature-Nurture Death Spiral pt. 1: Margaret Mead Goes to Samoa
What kind of societies are ultimately possible (i.e. within the range of variation our biology allows)? Why are social movements so prone to division and self-annihilation? These questions may seem un...
28 Juli 20201h 51min
The Wilderness of Mirrors
A CIA counterintelligence chief once described his world as a wilderness of mirrors. In this episode, we ask how ecological and egalitarian movements can navigate this wilderness. The internet is open...
15 Juli 20201h 25min
Genocidal Mystics
We've looked at some of the psychological traits that correlate with ideology, but what about those that don't? Considering the tendency for systems of power to behave the same regardless of their ove...
2 Juli 202056min
