This piece is part of the Reality Studies Resilience & Preparedness Manual. For more, see the full Resilience & Prepping section.

As I wrote last week, fallout from the Iran War is going to hit the rest of the world financially. I got a number of requests asking what the cheapest items folks could buy that would have the highest impact. There’s no one list that magically solves all your problems, but I thought it’d be worthwhile to address this question.

If you only have $50-$100 to spend, the highest-impact move is not what’s commonly considered (and marketed as) “survival gear.” As Sam Bloch, Founder of Camp DoomsDaddy recently explained on the Urgent Futures Podcast: “I’ve even had a lot of friends who [say], ‘Oh, well, like, the state of the world is getting crazy, climate change, everything. I’m going to go…take a wilderness survival course. I tell people all the time, like 20 years on the front lines, I’ve never seen somebody have to rub two sticks together to start a fire.”

SO. The immediate dimensions you want to cover on a shoestring budget should hit: cheap calories, clean breathing, off-grid cooking, off-grid information, & light. Some of those might only be necessary if a crisis turns severe—but you’ll be thankful you have them if such a time occurs—and they’re good to have as a general preparedness practice.

Rather than a flashy wilderness survival pack with lots of bells and whistles you may never use, this list focuses on what’s actually useful relative to the obstacles you might face in the coming months.

5 Items to Buy on a Shoestring Budget

1) Rice (Bonus: Add Beans)

The cheapest hedge against inflation is shelf-stable calories. A 20lb bag of rice gives you weeks of cheap baseline calories, stores easily (for as much as 30 years under the right conditions!), and becomes a force multiplier when groceries spike or supply chains get weird. This is the single highest “dollars to resilience” buy on the list. Pair it with dry beans if you want to stretch protein without substantially increasing cost.

At current prices, a 20lb bag is still roughly the cost of one takeout meal and can cover a meaningful chunk of a household’s emergency calories. Great Value Enriched Long Grain Rice is about as cheap as preparedness gets—currently $11.46 for a 20lb bag—and it solves the most expensive problem first: food (I know, I know, but I’m trying to live up to the promise of the headline; use your own ethics and budget constraints to determine what’s right for you). Costco also has some good offerings.

Other options include:

• Mahatma Extra Long Grain Rice 5 Pound Rice-Bag, Gluten Free and Non-GMO White Rice Bulk Bag, (Pack of 4)

• Iberia Jasmine Long Grain Fragrant Rice, 18 Pound

• Carolina long grain rice 25 LB

• Authentic Royal Basmati White Rice, 15 lbs (Pack of 2)

• BEN’S ORIGINAL Enriched Long Grain White Rice, Parboiled Rice, 10 lb Bag (Pack of 3)

By the way, I have a full food prepping guide here:

2) N95 Masks

This is the cheapest insurance against the “secondary effects” people forget. It’s not just for respiratory illnesses (though, hey, you definitely don’t want those either!)—they offer some protection against: smoke, fires, industrial haze, and poor indoor air during power outages. This is especially important as we approach the summer, which experts are concerned will entail a dangerous fire season. And let’s not forget that, unlike other respiratory illnesses, Covid-19 often sees summer surges.

Note: N95 masks aren’t directly tied to the Strait of Hormuz, but they are exposed through the petrochemical supply chain. Their key filter layer is made from melt-blown polypropylene, a plastic derived from oil-based feedstocks, which means disruptions in Gulf energy flows can raise costs and tighten supply for the raw materials that make masks possible. Even when N95s are assembled domestically, they often still depend on imported resin, elastic, nose clips, packaging, and freight networks, so a Hormuz shock is more likely to make masks pricier, lower quality, and less consistently available than to make them disappear outright.

This 20-pack of 3M Aura N95 Particulate Respirators is currently $15.11.

3) Butane Camp Stove

Because of the impact to energy flows brought on by the Strait of Hormuz Crisis, it is possible you’ll face rolling blackouts or energy rationing, depending on where you live. One scenario you want to avoid is having food but no way to cook it when your power source gets disrupted. A cheap single-burner stove turns your pantry into usable calories, lets you boil water, and gives you optionality when the grid is unreliable.

Coleman and Olympia both have options for around $40, and if budget is especially tight, this backpacking stove is only $15 at the time of this writing. Butane itself is also still pretty affordable; this pack of 12 canisters is currently around $27.

4) Hand-Crank Radio

We’re so accustomed to instant information via our devices that it’s hard to imagine life without it. What you don’t want is to have no way to get information in the event of a serious disruption, whether induced by a natural disaster or civil unrest. A hand-crank radio gives you grid-independent access to weather, emergency broadcasts, and infrastructure updates without relying on cell towers, broadband, or a charged phone.

This radio/flashlight combo is only ~$16, and there’s a higher-end option for about double that price that is well-reviewed, but honestly just pick whichever one seems the best for your situation (there’s no shortage of options).

5) Extra Lighting (Flashlights & Lanterns)

Cheap, redundant light buys you safety, mobility, and immediate stress reduction in the event of a grid-down situation. Critically, it also preserves battery life on your phone, which matters more than you might initially realize in a prolonged disruption.

The reason this makes the top five is simple: it’s cheap, it’s instantly useful, and it solves one of the first quality-of-life failures in any outage. FEMA and Red Cross both still treat lighting as a first-line essential for good reason.

I use a few of these EVER flashlights (they’re great and only about $10), but you also might consider this or this more powerful option, and it never hurts to have a few extra headlamps if budget allows.

Note: this is not meant to be a comprehensive list—far from it—but hopefully it gives you a place to start in assembling your basic prep.

That said, what’s arguably the most important thing you can be doing is engaging with other people. It’s time for frank conversations and preliminary planning with families, friends, and neighbors, and if you feel up for it, connecting with local mutual aid groups, community kitchens, local farmers, et al. In the event of serious disruptions, we always do better together (not for nothing, it’s how our species outperformed other hominids against the hostile ice-age conditions of our distant past). If you’ve built up your networks in advance, you’ll be much better buffered and prepared to contribute if disaster strikes.

Stay safe out there.

This piece is part of the Reality Studies Resilience & Preparedness Manual. For more, see the full Resilience & Prepping section.

On Feb. 28, 2026, the United States and Israel launched Operation Epic Fury against Iran. Within days, Iran’s Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC) had effectively shut down the Strait of Hormuz, a narrow maritime chokepoint through which roughly 20% of global petroleum consumption, more than 20% of global LNG trade, and about one-third of global seaborne fertilizer trade normally move. The International Energy Agency has called it “the largest supply disruption in the history of the global oil market.”

Nearly eight weeks later, the strait remains severely disrupted. Ceasefire talks in Islamabad on April 12 failed to produce a deal, and a second round planned for this week fell apart after Iran refused to send a delegation.

In a truly remarkable self-own, the Trump administration imposed a U.S. naval blockade of Iranian ports on April 13 following the collapse of the Islamabad Talks, creating a ‘dual blockade’ of the strait. On April 19, the U.S. Navy seized an Iranian container ship in the Gulf of Oman—the first interception under the blockade—and Iran has since attacked multiple commercial vessels in the strait in retaliation.

Most recently, China has deployed a 352-meter floating barrier and multiple coast guard/militia vessels to restrict access to Scarborough Shoal in the South China Sea. Given that the South China Sea carries nearly a third of global shipping, even localized disruptions can produce broader economic effects.

Oil surged to nearly $120 a barrel at its peak, briefly plunged below $91 on April 17 when Iran declared the strait open during the Lebanon ceasefire, then surged back to around $106 this week as the U.S. blockade and renewed Iranian attacks on shipping escalated (Brent was around $72 before the war).

U.S. gas prices crossed $4 a gallon nationally in early April and peaked at $4.16 on April 9, with California averaging $5.89 (and some stations well above $6). As of April 23, the national average sits at $4.02, about 35% higher than before the war began. Diesel is up over 50% year-over-year, averaging $5.40 nationally. And these are just the initial first-order effects!

The second- and third-order effects—on food prices, fertilizer availability, medical supplies, manufacturing, shipping costs, and the broader inflationary environment—are only just beginning to unfurl. Some won’t be felt for weeks; others will take months and even years. Unless something dramatic happens, this is looking really, really troubling. In this piece, I won’t spend much time on the moral injury of being an American or Israeli and watching your nation wage an ill-advised, illegal war that will cause completely unnecessary suffering among Iranians (as well as casualties among our own servicepeople). Suffice it to say: this continues to weigh on me personally. The focus of this piece is how fallout from the war will impact your life and what you need to do to prepare.

This can all feel abstract now, but soon it will not. Lots of Americans have been comparing this to the first couple months of 2020, when Covid was clearly spreading around the world but hadn’t yet hit the U.S. I’m a bit tired of this analogy, but all the same I think it is accurate.

What follows is my attempt to map the most obvious (but by no means comprehensive) cascade of impacts of the Strait of Hormuz Crisis, and ground all of this in an actionable plan for you. My hope is to clarify what’s already getting more expensive, what’s about to, what might become scarce, and what you can do right now to prepare.

Energy: Gas, Heating, & Electricity

Gasoline

The national average crossed $4 per gallon on April 2, its highest since August 2022. The March CPI report showed gas prices rose 21.2% in a single month, the largest monthly increase since 1967. If the strait remains disrupted through Q2, analysts project prices could top $5 nationally. The EIA’s April Short-Term Energy Outlook forecasts U.S. retail gasoline to average near $4.30/gal in April, with peak-of-crisis projections of Brent at $115 per barrel in Q2 in their high-disruption scenario.

Diesel

Diesel matters more than gasoline for the broader economy because it’s the energy source powering the trucks, trains, and ships that move everything you buy. Diesel has surged over 50% year-over-year, climbing as high as $5.64 per gallon and currently averaging $5.40. Nearly every single product that arrives at your door, your grocery store, or your workplace by truck is absorbing that cost increase. RSM U.S. chief economist Joe Brusuelas told Bloomberg that a 10% rise in diesel pushes the consumer price index up by 0.1% (and note that diesel is up considerably more than 10%).

Natural Gas

Natural gas and heating oil are climbing, though the U.S. is somewhat buffered by its domestic production. European and Asian natural gas prices have surged (up by as much as 45% and 140%, respectively) since the war started, in so small part because of Qatar’s significantly disrupted liquified natural gas (LNG) export capacity. Iranian drone strikes damaged the Ras Laffan complex, the world’s largest LNG facility, where repairs to damaged capacity are projected to take 3-5 years. U.S. natural gas prices are more insulated since they reflect domestic supply and demand, but heating oil, a refined petroleum product linked to global crude prices, is already rising. So if you heat with oil, expect significantly higher bills next winter.

Electricity

Electricity prices are affected indirectly. About 40% of U.S. electricity comes from natural gas. While domestic gas prices haven’t spiked as dramatically as global LNG, electricity was already getting more expensive before the war; retail prices rose 4.6% over the prior 12 months in March 2026. The war will only amplify that trajectory.

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What You Can Do

Note: none of the below—or the commensurate “What You Can Do” sections that follow—will “solve” these problems, but preparedness is about increasing your own adaptability to face whatever might emerge, not removing the problem outright. Additionally, because some of this deals with financial matters, DISCLAIMER: None of the below is financial advice.

• Consider reducing discretionary driving wherever possible, whether through walking, riding your bike, investing in an e-bike if your budget allows, consolidating errands, carpooling, et al.

• Related: start discussing work-from-home options with your employer if possible (I recognize this is a privileged position, but if you have that privilege, use it—this also helps make sure folks who do have to commute have access to gas in the event of energy rationing).

• If you were considering switching to solar power or a more fuel-efficient vehicle (hybrid, EV, et al.), this may be your sign—but only if you can do so without taking on unjustifiable debt (it’s probably not an ideal time to spend recklessly).

• If you heat with oil, consider locking in a delivery price now rather than waiting for winter, and explore whether a heat pump or alternative heating source makes sense for your situation.

• Reduce electricity consumption: LED bulbs, smart thermostats, weatherization, and behavioral changes all compound. Every dollar you save on energy is a dollar available for the price increases headed your way in other categories.

Food: Fertilizer, Farming, & Grocery Prices

This is the impact that has been stressing me the most; its impacts are profound, but they’re on a lag, so most Americans haven’t experienced them yet.

Again, about one-third of global seaborne fertilizer trade normally passes through the Strait of Hormuz. The Gulf region exports nearly half the world’s urea and 30% of its ammonia. Natural gas, the primary feedstock for nitrogen fertilizer, has seen a 20% drop in production and price increases of up to 70% in some regions due to the Iran War—and curtailed production in key exporting hubs such as Qatar. U.S. fertilizer prices rose as much as 40% in the first month after the war began. On March 27, Iran agreed to a UN request to allow humanitarian and fertilizer shipments through the strait, though actual transit volumes remain far below pre-war levels.

The timing is spectacularly bad. The war started just as American farmers were beginning spring planting. In mid-March, U.S. fertilizer supply was at roughly 75% of normal levels according to UPI. Corn Belt farmers who couldn’t secure affordable fertilizer are now making agonizing decisions: apply less fertilizer (reducing yields), switch to soybeans (which need less fertilizer), or plant fewer acres entirely. Any of those choices reduces the corn supply, which feeds into livestock feed, ethanol, corn syrup, and hundreds of other products. (Related: beef prices were already up 16% since March 2025, with projections to continue increasing even prior to the war).

Meanwhile, Russia has suspended exports of ammonium nitrate to preserve domestic supply. China has blocked phosphate exports, removing around a quarter of global seaborne phosphate exports. The combined effect is a global fertilizer squeeze that mirrors—and could in fact exceed—the 2022 crisis following Russia’s invasion of Ukraine.

The UN World Food Programme projects that an additional 45 million people worldwide could face acute food insecurity or worse if the conflict does not end by mid-year and oil prices remain above $100 a barrel. For Americans, the impact will be felt more in the wallet than in empty shelves. Analysts warn that if the strait remains disrupted through planting season, the effects will compound through the fall harvest and into 2027.

What to do

• Today’s prices vs. Tomorrow’s Prices. The most straightforward hedge available to any household is to stock up on shelf-stable staples—rice, dried beans, pasta, canned goods, cooking oil, flour—when prices are lower. Current educated guesswork would tell us that these goods will cost more in 60-90 days than they do today. Buying a month’s extra supply now is not hoarding; it’s purchasing ahead of (predictable) inflation. Rotate as always.

• Support local food systems. Local producers are not immune to fertilizer, fuel, or packaging costs, but shorter supply chains can be more resilient than long global ones. CSA memberships, farmers’ markets, local food cooperatives, and community gardens are all forms of supply chain resilience. If you don’t already have relationships with local food producers, it’s a good time to build them.

• Grow what you can. Even a small garden reduces your dependence on global supply chains. Herbs, salad greens, tomatoes, peppers, and beans are high-value crops that thrive in containers and small spaces (and you can dehydrate them to increase shelf-life—I’ve recently been having a blast making things in my dehydrator). A small garden won’t feed your family, but it reduces how much exposure you have to surging prices—and the skills you develop now compound over time.

• Cook from scratch. You may be tired of hearing this, but it’s still worth repeating. Processed and prepared foods absorb energy, packaging, and transportation cost increases faster than raw ingredients. A household that cooks from basic staples will feel this crisis less than one dependent on frozen meals and takeout.

• Reduce food waste. The average American household wastes roughly 32% of the food it buys. In an inflationary environment, that waste is getting more expensive by the week. Meal planning, proper storage, and using leftovers are both ethically and financially advisable actions you can take.

Psst: after I received some comments expressing frustration about being budget-constrained, I decided to publish a guide outlining 5 cheap, high-impact preps. Find that here:

Beyond Energy & Food: Hidden Supply Chains

The Strait of Hormuz isn’t just an oil highway. It’s a chokepoint for a web of industrial commodities that feed into practically everything modern life depends on. The World Economic Forum and other industry analyses have mapped out at least nine major non-oil commodity categories affected:

Helium

Qatar produces roughly a third of the world’s helium supply. Spot helium prices have risen sharply, with some reports saying they roughly doubled. This matters because helium is essential to MRI systems and to parts of semiconductor manufacturing and other high-tech industrial processes. Industry executives and analysts warn prolonged shortages could slow chip output and disrupt production plans. For consumers, this means potential delays and price increases on electronics, medical imaging, and anything that depends on semiconductor supply.

Aluminum

Gulf states account for about 8% of global aluminum production and a meaningful share of global exports. Iranian strikes on Emirates Global Aluminium caused massive production disruptions. Aluminum feeds into automotive manufacturing, aerospace, construction, packaging (including food and beverage cans), and consumer electronics. Prices have already increased, and supply constraints could persist even after the strait reopens if damage to production capacity takes time to repair.

Plastics, Resins, & Synthetic Fibers

The Gulf is a major source of petrochemical feedstocks including methanol, monoethylene glycol, and naphtha, which are used to make plastics, polyester, packaging, and textiles. Around 85% of Middle Eastern polyethylene exports go through the strait. Shortages are already pushing plastic prices up by double-digit percentages across most manufacturing categories.

Sulfur

Half of global seaborne sulfur came from the Gulf. Sulfur is critical to fertilizer production, metal processing, and semiconductor manufacturing. Disruption ripples into agriculture, mining, and tech simultaneously.

Automotive & EV Production

The cascade is especially acute for automakers: aluminum, plastics, rubber, steel feedstocks, synthetic graphite for EV batteries (produced from petroleum coke, a byproduct of oil refining), and helium for semiconductor fabrication all converge. Toyota has already cut production by nearly 40,000 units. New vehicle prices and availability will likely be affected.

What to do

• Consider accelerating planned purchases of durable goods. If you need a new appliance, vehicle, computer, or phone in the next 6-12 months, you will likely save money buying it before inflationary events.

• Prioritize repair over replacement. Every item you fix instead of replacing avoids the inflated replacement cost. Invest in basic repair skills and tools. The iFixit community provides free guides for thousands of products.

• Consider stocking up on maintenance consumables. Oil filters, air filters, wiper blades, batteries, light bulbs, phone cables are all small items that are heavily import-dependent and likely to see price increases or spot shortages.

Financial & Economic Fallout: Prepping Finances

The macroeconomic picture is grim. The March CPI showed energy prices up 10.9% month-over-month, and meanwhile airline fares rose 14.9% year-over-year that same month. The Fed is trapped between cutting rates to support a slowing economy and holding rates to combat surging inflation, the dreaded ‘stagflation’ scenario. Financial markets have been volatile, even as major U.S. stock indexes have remained relatively resilient. The word “recession” is back in the conversation.

For households, this translates into a squeeze from multiple directions simultaneously: higher energy costs, higher food costs, rising prices on goods and services across the board, potential job market softening, and continued uncertainty about how long the disruption lasts.

What to do

REMINDER: This is not financial advice.

• Consider building or fortifying your emergency fund. The economic environment just became substantially more uncertain. If you can set aside even an extra $50 per week, that’s extra cushion for the future.

• Consider reducing discretionary spending preemptively. It’s not prudent to wait until your budget is stretched to then start cutting. This category includes: non-essential subscriptions, dining out, impulse purchases, and convenience spending—things you might reduce now to free up cash for the rising cost of essentials.

• Consider locking in costs where possible. Fixed-rate contracts for heating oil, insurance renewals at current rates, annual subscriptions versus monthly—anywhere you can lock in a price before the next round of increases flows through, do it.

• Consider holding cash. In general it’s a good preparedness practice to hold some cash, but that’s especially true during periods of geopolitical instability. Systems can go down and payment networks can be disrupted. Having 1-4 weeks of essential expenses in small bills at home is a baseline prep.

• Be wary of panic-selling. Selling long-term investment portfolios may not be the best choice of action; markets have recovered from every geopolitical crisis in history. The risk of selling now is locking in losses and forfeiting the prospective recovery, though the right answer will be unique to each person’s individual circumstances. Basically just stay frosty; be extremely careful and deliberate about decisions you make under duress, and ideally speak with a financial planner before doing anything dramatic.

Transportation & Mobility

Diesel price increases flow directly into shipping, public transit, and air travel costs. Airlines have already begun passing through higher fuel costs via fare increases and fee hikes, and Delta CEO Ed Bastian said strong demand leaves room to recover more of those costs. JetBlue and other airlines have raised some fees, while higher fuel costs are also pressuring freight and delivery networks more broadly. If your commute depends on driving, every additional dollar per gallon is a direct cost increase.

What to do

• Optimize your commute. Carpool, combine trips, work from home when possible. If you have two vehicles, preferentially use the more fuel-efficient one.

• Maintain your vehicle. Properly inflated tires, clean air filters, and timely oil changes improve fuel efficiency by 3-10%. In a high-price environment, these small efficiencies compound.

• Rethink air travel. If you’re planning discretionary flights in the next 6 months, be aware that fares are rising and will likely continue to do so. Book early if you must fly; consider ground transportation alternatives for shorter trips.

Medical & Pharmaceutical Considerations

The pharmaceutical supply chain is exposed to the Hormuz crisis in two ways: direct disruption of raw materials and energy costs that increase manufacturing expenses.

The FDA claims that about 78% of active pharmaceutical ingredient (API) manufacturers serving the U.S. market are located outside the United States, with India and China accounting for close to a third. India buys over 40% of its urea from the Gulf region and has already reduced production at some chemical facilities. Additionally, helium shortages could affect MRI availability and other high-tech manufacturing processes.

These effects are less immediate than energy and food price increases, but they’re potentially more dangerous for vulnerable individuals.

What to do

• Maintain a 90-day supply of all prescription medications. If you haven’t done this yet, make it a priority this week. Talk to your doctor and insurer about 90-day mail-order prescriptions.

• Stock backup OTC medications. Pain relievers, allergy medication, cold medicine, digestive aids, first aid supplies, anything you use regularly. Buy a backup supply now, at today’s prices.

• If you or a family member depends on an MRI for ongoing diagnosis, communicate with your provider about potential scheduling delays and whether alternative imaging modalities might serve as interim options.

The Psychological Dimension

I know this is a lot. The Iran war comes on the heels of an already exhausting sequence of crises in this decade—pandemic, inflation, tariffs, political upheaval, climate disasters, to name a few—and adds a genuine wartime economy on top. The temptation to either panic or dissociate is strong (believe me, I get it)

Neither helps. Panic leads to bad decisions (impulse purchases, hoarding, financial mistakes driven by fear) and dissociation leads to inaction (the “I’ll deal with it later” response that leaves you exposed when the price increases hit). The middle path is structured preparedness. Not everything at once, not in a frenzy; pick one domain from this guide and take one concrete action on it today. Then another tomorrow. Ibid the day after. Convert the anxiety into a checklist, and work the checklist at human speed.

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Sample Consolidated Checklist

Reminder: This is not financial advice. This is a sample checklist I made for myself that I am sharing with you below.

This week:

• Fill your gas tank and keep it above half (avoid being caught in a price spike or shortage)

• Buy a month’s extra supply of shelf-stable staples at current prices

• Refill all prescriptions to maximum supply; order 90-day refills where possible

• Review your household budget for areas to cut in anticipation of rising costs

This month:

• Build or reinforce your emergency fund (even $200 matters)

• Lock in any fixed-rate contracts where possible (heating oil, insurance)

• Make any planned major purchases (appliances, electronics, vehicles) sooner rather than later

• Start or expand a home food garden, even if it’s just herbs and greens

This quarter:

• Establish or deepen relationships with local food producers

• Develop repair skills that reduce dependence on replacement purchases

• Reduce energy consumption through weatherization, LED lighting, and behavioral changes

• Build a 2-4 week supply of household essentials including OTC medications

Ongoing:

• Follow the conflict’s trajectory and its effects on commodity prices

• Adjust your budget as new price realities set in

• Share information and resources with your community

• Vote, organize, and advocate for the policies and systems you believe would prevent the next crisis

To Bang My ‘Resilience’ Drum One More Time

The Hormuz crisis is a systems crisis that demonstrates how interconnected the modern world is, and how a single chokepoint failure cascades across industries, continents, and households.

The deeper lesson is that resilience is a mindset, and it takes time to cultivate. The sooner you start, the better prepared you’ll be for whatever might come. The households that entered this crisis with pantries stocked, emergency funds built, debts paid down, and community ties established are obviously better prepared to weather it than those who didn’t. General preparedness is broadly applicable.

You can’t control anything to do with the Strait of Hormuz. Nor can you control oil prices, fertilizer markets, or Federal Reserve policy. But you can control building a strong community (both locally and digitally), the skills you’ve developed, and what’s in your pantry. Most of all, you can control how you think about prepping—shifting it from stock stereotypes of survivalists to the opportunity to develop a sense of empowerment and agency in a moment where those are hard to come by. And you can share that with your friends, families, and neighbors. The situation is deteriorating rather than stabilizing; the dual blockade is active, Iran has resumed attacking ships in the strait, and a second round of talks collapsed this week. If the strait remains closed through summer, things could get extremely hairy.

Stay safe out there.

This piece is part of the Reality Studies Resilience & Preparedness Manual. For more, see the full Resilience & Prepping section.

Welcome to the Urgent Futures podcast, the show that finds {signals} in the noise. Each week, I sit down with leading thinkers whose research, concepts, and questions clarify the chaos, from culture to the cosmos.

👉 Never miss an episode! 👉 Subscribe to Urgent Futures now: Youtube | Apple Podcasts | Spotify.

And if you’re loving the show, please share it with a friend who you think would as well! You have no idea how much word-of-mouth helps the channel find new audiences (and thank you to everyone who has supported the show by leaving ratings and reviews on your preferred podcast apps!)

My guest this week is Sam Bloch.

Sam Bloch is the founder and lead trainer at Camp DoomsDaddy. Sam comes with 20+ years of emergency response experience at the front-lines of disasters worldwide, from tsunamis and earthquakes to wildfires and war zones. A co-founder of Communitere International and former Director of Emergency Response at World Central Kitchen, he has led response efforts in more than 50 countries and worked at the epicenter of them in more than 30 U.S. disasters alone. After decades helping people who weren’t prepared, Sam is now focused on ensuring individuals and communities have the skills they need to take care of themselves and each other before disaster strikes. Sam is also on the Advisory Board of Watch Duty, and a trained wild land firefighter.

As I’ve discussed in a few other episodes, I’m of the mind that we need to reclaim the notion of prepping and shift it away from a stock stereotype about loner survivalists (though, hey, good for them). Rather, I’m excited by the version of prepping that’s growing out of the mutual aid movement, which foregrounds community care and self-empowerment. I did a collaborative video with forecasting agency Death to Stock outlining some of these ideas, which went a little viral, and beyond vanity, I’m glad it did; it led me to meet Sam Bloch, founder of Camp DoomsDaddy.

Want to go to the next Camp DoomsDaddy? Sign up here.

What Sam is doing is precisely what I see as the potential of turning preparedness and resilience into commonplace aspects of our lives. Essentially, he moves from the twinned premise that community is a superpower and resilience should be fun. He’s run two camps already—and has one coming up in May that, if you can go, you really should!—and if the documentation of their time is to be believed, they really did have a blast. All while learning critical skills to navigate volatile futures.

And Sam is the perfect person to do this; he’s a sort of preparedness and disaster relief auto-didact, having kicked off his career in Southeast Asia two decades ago, and becoming a leading figure in humanitarianism along the way. He sensed—rightly, in my estimation—that while disaster relief remains critical, a missing piece is building communities of people who have learned how to prepare in advance.

In this conversation, we talk about his background in disaster relief, his focus on dignity and community empowerment vs. “aid” in the traditional sense, as well as his present work with DoomsDaddy and what’s on the way. His work inspires me tremendously and I’m sure you will feel the same, so please enjoy this rigorous and fun conversation with Sam Bloch.

Another episode you might like:

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ZBiotics: Right now, get 10% off ZBiotics. Just head over to zbiotics.com and use code JESSEDAMIANI. If you have an evening with drinking and a morning you need to feel fresh, these are a great help. Genetically engineered by a team of PhD microbiologists, ZBiotics is a probiotic drink that breaks down the byproduct of alcohol responsible for rough mornings after drinking (acetaldehyde).

MUD\WTR: Right now, save $20 on starter packs using this link. There’s four different blends to choose from, but my current favorite is :rest. “This is our protest to hustle culture,” they say, and that resonates with me. Not only does it actually help me ramp down to sleep, but since I froth a little milk and make a latte with it, I get the warm cozy feeling of morning coffee at night. (For the evening tea drinkers out there: I’m not saying it’s better, just different!)

Mission Farms CBD: Right now, get 25% off your first order using this link to sign up for emails. Mission Farms CBD crafts full-spectrum CBD products for specific conditions like sleep, stress, and discomfort, using a combination of CBD and terpenes found in essential oils. I swear by this stuff. All of Mission Farms’s CBD comes from a small farm in Bend, Oregon. They farm the hemp organically, tend every plant by hand, and test for purity four times: the soil, the hemp, the hemp-extract, and the final products. This CBD is designed for wellness and it shows.

CREDITS: This podcast is edited and produced by Adam Labrie and me, Jesse Damiani. Adam Labrie also edited the video version, which is available on YouTube. The podcast is presented by Reality Studies. If you appreciate the work I’m doing, please subscribe and share it with someone you think would enjoy it.

Find more episodes of Urgent Futures at: youtube.com/@UrgentFutures. Past conversations include Taylor Lorenz, Lisa Messeri, Legacy Russell, William E. Rees, Renée DiResta, and more. Here is another recent episode with about Orbán’s loss and fallout from the Iran War:

Get more from Jesse Damiani in the Substack app

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Audio versions of this episode can be found here on Substack, Apple Podcasts, and Spotify.

My guest today is Eric Czuleger.

is a geopolitical analyst and journalist who has worked across 45+ countries. Trained under George Friedman at Stratfor, he holds a Master's in National Security from the RAND School of Public Policy and an MSt in Creative Writing from Oxford. He is the author of You Are Not Here: Travels Through Countries That Don't Exist. A returned Peace Corps volunteer (Albania, 2011–2013) and former ambassador from Liberland to Somaliland, he splits his time between Tirana, Albania and Los Angeles.

Eric also runs The Under Report, which you should subscribe to here!

Viktor Orbán is widely regarded as having written the playbook for ‘illiberal democracy’ that has been used by those aspiring to turn democracies into autocracies—including Donald Trump. But last week, he lost the election—and miraculously, actually stepped down. What should we make of all this? What does it mean for Hungary, the EU, and the world? I chat with friend of the pod Eric Czuleger to find out.

We also spend some time at the end discussing Iran—and though the news has swerved a bunch since then, the gist remains the same: the Strait of Hormuz Crisis is going to hit us hard.

Another episode you might like:

Support Reality Studies

NOTE: Thank you for supporting my work by purchasing these products through the links provided. I will only ever share products I actually believe in.

In case you haven’t noticed, it’s time to take your digital hygiene seriously. There are a few super simple, effective things you can do to up your digital self-defense considerably, and the first is to get a VPN. ProtonVPN is the gold standard, with fast service and a commitment to transparency. I promise you: once you realize how easy it is to use your VPN, you’ll be kicking yourself that you didn’t start sooner. Click here to get 55% off VPN Plus ($4.49/mo).

1Password: Password managers may not make for the most riveting dinner party conversation, but listen: 1) They make your life so much easier—it’s called “1Password” because once you get set up it’s the only password you’ll ever need to remember again. 2) They make your online life so much safer, ensuring that you use unique passwords for every account, stored with a high degree of encryption. 3) They are not nearly as complicated to set up as you think they are! Head over to 1Password using this link for a free trial, and individual plans for less than $3/mo after that.

ZBiotics: Right now, get 10% off ZBiotics. Just head over to zbiotics.com and use code JESSEDAMIANI. If you have an evening with drinking and a morning you need to feel fresh, these are a great help. Genetically engineered by a team of PhD microbiologists, ZBiotics is a probiotic drink that breaks down the byproduct of alcohol responsible for rough mornings after drinking (acetaldehyde).

MUD\WTR: Right now, save $20 on starter packs using this link. There’s four different blends to choose from, but my current favorite is :rest. “This is our protest to hustle culture,” they say, and that resonates with me. Not only does it actually help me ramp down to sleep, but since I froth a little milk and make a latte with it, I get the warm cozy feeling of morning coffee at night. (For the evening tea drinkers out there: I’m not saying it’s better, just different!)

Mission Farms CBD: Right now, get 25% off your first order using this link to sign up for emails. Mission Farms CBD crafts full-spectrum CBD products for specific conditions like sleep, stress, and discomfort, using a combination of CBD and terpenes found in essential oils. I swear by this stuff. All of Mission Farms’s CBD comes from a small farm in Bend, Oregon. They farm the hemp organically, tend every plant by hand, and test for purity four times: the soil, the hemp, the hemp-extract, and the final products. This CBD is designed for wellness and it shows.

CREDITS: This podcast is edited and produced by Adam Labrie and me, Jesse Damiani. Adam Labrie also directed, shot, and edited the video version of the podcast, which is available on YouTube. The podcast is presented by Reality Studies. If you appreciate the work I’m doing, please subscribe and share it with someone you think would enjoy it.

Find more episodes of Urgent Futures at: youtube.com/@UrgentFutures. Past conversations include Taylor Lorenz, Lisa Messeri, Legacy Russell, William E. Rees, Renée DiResta, and more. Here is another recent episode with Lee Buck on the hows and whys of decarbonization:

Welcome to the Urgent Futures podcast, the show that finds {signals} in the noise. Each week, I sit down with leading thinkers whose research, concepts, and questions clarify the chaos, from culture to the cosmos.

👉 Never miss an episode! 👉 Subscribe to Urgent Futures now: Youtube | Apple Podcasts | Spotify.

And if you’re loving the show, please share it with a friend who you think would as well! You have no idea how much word-of-mouth helps the channel find new audiences (and thank you to everyone who has supported the show by leaving ratings and reviews on your preferred podcast apps!)

My guest this week is Lee Buck.

Leonard Buck is an investor and philanthropist focused on the challenges and opportunities presented by climate change.

He previously supported the regional entrepreneurial ecosystem as an early-stage investor, mentor, and board member. He has served on dozens of boards, including NC IDEA, CED, and the UNC Board of Visitors, and was a Blackstone Entrepreneur-in-Residence.

Earlier in his career, Buck founded a succession of software companies that partnered with leading technology firms such as Apple, Oracle, Microsoft, and Sun Microsystems. He also contributed to early internet standards through a working group of the W3C.

Buck lives in Hillsborough, North Carolina, with his wife, Libby.

I had the good fortune to meet Lee last summer in Maine while my partner was in residency at Reach Projects in Blue Hill. It’s a really lovely community of people up there, and Lee is an esteemed member, a great host, and grills a mean burger to boot—and we quickly bonded over both our commitment to climate-related work and our background in tech.

Lee’s perspective on climate progress (or lack thereof) stems from his work as an investor and philanthropist, which gives him a unique view into what’s afoot in ClimateTech, as well as the struggles that startups and even more established companies face in implementing effective responses under current social, cultural, political, and economic conditions. It’s a perspective I haven’t yet had the chance to feature on the show, so I’m glad Lee agreed to sit down with me.

You’ll also hear his reflections on solar power, on what Silicon Valley felt like during the dot-com boom, and his advocacy for Apple vs. Android products, and much more. So without further ado, please enjoy this illuminating conversation with Lee Buck.

Another episode you might like:

Support Reality Studies

NOTE: Thank you for supporting my work by purchasing these products through the links provided. I will only ever share products I actually believe in.

In case you haven’t noticed, it’s time to take your digital hygiene seriously. There are a few super simple, effective things you can do to up your digital self-defense considerably, and the first is to get a VPN. ProtonVPN is the gold standard, with fast service and a commitment to transparency. I promise you: once you realize how easy it is to use your VPN, you’ll be kicking yourself that you didn’t start sooner. Click here to get 55% off VPN Plus ($4.49/mo).

1Password: Password managers may not make for the most riveting dinner party conversation, but listen: 1) They make your life so much easier—it’s called “1Password” because once you get set up it’s the only password you’ll ever need to remember again. 2) They make your online life so much safer, ensuring that you use unique passwords for every account, stored with a high degree of encryption. 3) They are not nearly as complicated to set up as you think they are! Head over to 1Password using this link for a free trial, and individual plans for less than $3/mo after that.

ZBiotics: Right now, get 10% off ZBiotics. Just head over to zbiotics.com and use code JESSEDAMIANI. If you have an evening with drinking and a morning you need to feel fresh, these are a great help. Genetically engineered by a team of PhD microbiologists, ZBiotics is a probiotic drink that breaks down the byproduct of alcohol responsible for rough mornings after drinking (acetaldehyde).

MUD\WTR: Right now, save $20 on starter packs using this link. There’s four different blends to choose from, but my current favorite is :rest. “This is our protest to hustle culture,” they say, and that resonates with me. Not only does it actually help me ramp down to sleep, but since I froth a little milk and make a latte with it, I get the warm cozy feeling of morning coffee at night. (For the evening tea drinkers out there: I’m not saying it’s better, just different!)

Mission Farms CBD: Right now, get 25% off your first order using this link to sign up for emails. Mission Farms CBD crafts full-spectrum CBD products for specific conditions like sleep, stress, and discomfort, using a combination of CBD and terpenes found in essential oils. I swear by this stuff. All of Mission Farms’s CBD comes from a small farm in Bend, Oregon. They farm the hemp organically, tend every plant by hand, and test for purity four times: the soil, the hemp, the hemp-extract, and the final products. This CBD is designed for wellness and it shows.

CREDITS: This podcast is edited and produced by Adam Labrie and me, Jesse Damiani. Adam Labrie also edited the video version, which is available on YouTube. The podcast is presented by Reality Studies. If you appreciate the work I’m doing, please subscribe and share it with someone you think would enjoy it.

Find more episodes of Urgent Futures at: youtube.com/@UrgentFutures. Past conversations include Taylor Lorenz, Lisa Messeri, Legacy Russell, William E. Rees, Renée DiResta, and more. Here is another recent episode with on ‘enshittification’:

If current events are any indication, you need to start taking personal and collective resilience seriously, and part of that is focusing on preparedness. Not just in terms of stockpiling resources, but in connecting with your local communities and developing key skills that will help in the event of an unexpected disruption. This is a thread I’ve been pulling for years now, so I’m organizing my existing writing on Reality Studies into one place, with more on the way! Thus, I present you…

The Reality Studies Resilience & Preparedness Manual

The Resilience & Preparedness Manual is a collection of explainers, analysis, essays, and other posts that help clarify the many dimensions of the term “resilience.” My hope is that this can be a one-stop shop for all things resilience, a term that has become all the more relevant given how the 2020s have progressed. *sad emoji*

This list is continuously updated, so bookmark it and make sure to check back—or subscribe now so they go straight to your inbox:

The Basics

• Resilience FAQ

• Psychological Resilience and the Benefits of Resilience Counseling

• What is Resilience? Understanding Individual and Collective Resilience

  • Resilience vs. Resiliency. Which is Correct?

  • Individual Resilience vs. Community Resilience

  • Professional Resilience: Training, Retreats, and Leadership for a Thriving Career

Preparedness (aka “Prepping”)

• The Prepper FAQ: Practical Answers to Top Emergency Prep Questions

• What Is a Prepper? Meaning, Mindset & Myths Debunked

• Community Prepping: Build a Resilient Neighborhood & Thrive in Any Emergency

• What Food Should a Prepper Buy? | 2026 Smart-Storage Guide

• Emergency Water Disinfection: Boiling, Bleach & Filters (2026 Guide)

• Lefty Preppers: Sustainable & Community-Focused Preparedness in 2026

• How Many Americans Are Preppers? 2025 Stats & Trends

• It’s Time to Get Serious.

• How to Prepare for Iran War Fallout: What to Do, Buy, & Plan for as the Strait of Hormuz Crisis Intensifies

Climate & Polycrisis

• Climate Resilience: Defining and Building Capacity in the Polycrisis

• Ecological Resilience: What Does it Mean for an Ecosystem to Be Resilient?

• Supply Chain Resilience Explained: What It Is and Why It Matters

Professional Resilience

• Professional Resilience: Training, Retreats, and Leadership for a Thriving Career

• How to Pick a Resilient Career: Future-Proofing Your Job Search

Miscellaneous

• The Iran War is Proving Why We Need to Fight for Solar Energy

• 1Password Travel Mode: How to Protect Your Phone and Login Information at the Border (2025 Guide)

• 32 Famous Quotes About Resilience

Welcome to the Urgent Futures podcast, the show that finds {signals} in the noise. Each week, I sit down with leading thinkers whose research, concepts, and questions clarify the chaos, from culture to the cosmos.

👉 Never miss an episode! 👉 Subscribe to Urgent Futures now: Youtube | Apple Podcasts | Spotify.

And if you’re loving the show, please share it with a friend who you think would as well! You have no idea how much word-of-mouth helps the channel find new audiences (and thank you to everyone who has supported the show by leaving ratings and reviews on your preferred podcast apps!)

My guest this week is Cory Doctorow.

is a blogger, journalist, and activist. For more than twenty years, he has worked with the Electronic Frontier Foundation on campaigns to safeguard and further our human rights online. He was coeditor of the weblog Boing Boing for nineteen years and now maintains a daily(ish) newsletter at Pluralistic.net. He has written more than thirty books, including nonfiction books, many science fiction novels, collections of short stories and essays, young adult novels, graphic novels, and even a picture book. Born in Toronto, he now lives in Burbank, California. He was awarded an honorary doctorate in laws by York University and an honorary doctorate in computer science by the Open University. He has been inducted into the Canadian Science Fiction and Fantasy Association Hall of Fame and was awarded the Sir Arthur C. Clarke Award for Imagination in Service to Society. He holds visiting professorship and research appointments at MIT, the University of North Carolina, Cornell University, and the Open University.

Enshittification. It’s a word that has taken the world by storm, dubbed the 2023 Word of the Year by the American Dialect Society and the 2024 Word of the Year by the Macquarie Dictionary. It’s a delicious word—playfully naughty and piercingly descriptive.

Today’s guest is the man behind the word, and he’s something of an expert in crystallizing complex ideas with memorable turns of phrase. What started as a blog post a few years back has become a full-blown book (and a great one, at that, so pick your copy now!).

Grab Enshittification: Why Everything Suddenly Got Worse and What to Do About It here!

The concept describes the process by which tech products degrade over time—specifically through economic and political pressures and incentive structures—and the book breaks this down in page-turning detail, with case studies that make your stomach turn. If you’ve interacted with tech products at all over the past couple decades, everything about this book will ring painfully true to you.

But all hope is not lost; Cory also outlines how we fight against these enshittificatory processes. It’s truly a must-read, and in the meantime, I hope this conversation is an invitation into this vital body of ideas. So without further ado, please enjoy this illuminating conversation with Cory Doctorow.

Another episode you might like:

Support Reality Studies

NOTE: Thank you for supporting my work by purchasing these products through the links provided. I will only ever share products I actually believe in.

In case you haven’t noticed, it’s time to take your digital hygiene seriously. There are a few super simple, effective things you can do to up your digital self-defense considerably, and the first is to get a VPN. ProtonVPN is the gold standard, with fast service and a commitment to transparency. I promise you: once you realize how easy it is to use your VPN, you’ll be kicking yourself that you didn’t start sooner. Click here to get 55% off VPN Plus ($4.49/mo).

1Password: Password managers may not make for the most riveting dinner party conversation, but listen: 1) They make your life so much easier—it’s called “1Password” because once you get set up it’s the only password you’ll ever need to remember again. 2) They make your online life so much safer, ensuring that you use unique passwords for every account, stored with a high degree of encryption. 3) They are not nearly as complicated to set up as you think they are! Head over to 1Password using this link for a free trial, and individual plans for less than $3/mo after that.

ZBiotics: Right now, get 10% off ZBiotics. Just head over to zbiotics.com and use code JESSEDAMIANI. If you have an evening with drinking and a morning you need to feel fresh, these are a great help. Genetically engineered by a team of PhD microbiologists, ZBiotics is a probiotic drink that breaks down the byproduct of alcohol responsible for rough mornings after drinking (acetaldehyde).

MUD\WTR: Right now, save $20 on starter packs using this link. There’s four different blends to choose from, but my current favorite is :rest. “This is our protest to hustle culture,” they say, and that resonates with me. Not only does it actually help me ramp down to sleep, but since I froth a little milk and make a latte with it, I get the warm cozy feeling of morning coffee at night. (For the evening tea drinkers out there: I’m not saying it’s better, just different!)

Mission Farms CBD: Right now, get 25% off your first order using this link to sign up for emails. Mission Farms CBD crafts full-spectrum CBD products for specific conditions like sleep, stress, and discomfort, using a combination of CBD and terpenes found in essential oils. I swear by this stuff. All of Mission Farms’s CBD comes from a small farm in Bend, Oregon. They farm the hemp organically, tend every plant by hand, and test for purity four times: the soil, the hemp, the hemp-extract, and the final products. This CBD is designed for wellness and it shows.

CREDITS: This podcast is edited and produced by Adam Labrie and me, Jesse Damiani. Adam Labrie also edited the video version, which is available on YouTube. The podcast is presented by Reality Studies. If you appreciate the work I’m doing, please subscribe and share it with someone you think would enjoy it.

Find more episodes of Urgent Futures at: youtube.com/@UrgentFutures. Past conversations include Taylor Lorenz, Lisa Messeri, Legacy Russell, William E. Rees, Renée DiResta, and more. Here is another recent episode with on quantum computing:

Welcome to the Urgent Futures podcast, the show that finds {signals} in the noise. Each week, I sit down with leading thinkers whose research, concepts, and questions clarify the chaos, from culture to the cosmos.

👉 Never miss an episode! 👉 Subscribe to Urgent Futures now: Youtube | Apple Podcasts | Spotify.

And if you’re loving the show, please share it with a friend who you think would as well! You have no idea how much word-of-mouth helps the channel find new audiences (and thank you to everyone who has supported the show by leaving ratings and reviews on your preferred podcast apps!)

My guest this week is Dr. Bob Sutor

has been a technical leader and executive in the computer and DeepTech industry for over 40 years. He is a theoretical mathematician by training, with a Ph.D. from Princeton University and an undergraduate degree from Harvard College.

During his career, Dr. Sutor has spoken to and briefed government legislators and policymakers around the world, such as his 2022 testimony before the United States Senate Committee on Commerce, Science, and Transportation on “Securing U.S. Leadership in Emerging Compute Technologies.” He was a co-author of the 2024 Quantum Economy Blueprint from the World Economic Forum.

Dr. Sutor is the CEO and Founder of Sutor Group Intelligence and Advisory. He helps clients and investors understand sophisticated technologies such as quantum computing and use them effectively to succeed in their organizations and industries. Bob is a member of the Board of Directors of Nu Quantum and an advisor to the Forma Prime venture capital firm. He is also an Adjunct Professor in the Department of Computer Science and Engineering at the University of Buffalo, New York, and spent over two decades at the IBM Thomas J. Watson Research Center. Dr. Sutor is the author of the bestselling 2019 quantum computing book Dancing with Qubits.

Grab your copy of Dancing with Qubits here!

Over the years, you’ve probably heard many references to quantum computing. In geopolitics and tech matters, it’s considered an area of extreme interest, and yet it remains a subject that many don’t fully understand (even within the tech commentariat). That’s why it felt important to host a conversation with somebody who could cut through the noise and explain the basics of the technology, including its promise and peril. Among Dr. Bob’s many talents, he’s a gifted communicator about this particular subject, and this conversation does not disappoint. If you’ve been looking for the opportunity to grasp the basics of quantum computing, this is a perfect starting point. So, without further ado, please enjoy this conversation with Dr. Bob Sutor.

Another episode you might like:

Support Reality Studies

NOTE: Thank you for supporting my work by purchasing these products through the links provided. I will only ever share products I actually believe in.

In case you haven’t noticed, it’s time to take your digital hygiene seriously. There are a few super simple, effective things you can do to up your digital self-defense considerably, and the first is to get a VPN. ProtonVPN is the gold standard, with fast service and a commitment to transparency. I promise you: once you realize how easy it is to use your VPN, you’ll be kicking yourself that you didn’t start sooner. Click here to get 55% off VPN Plus ($4.49/mo).

1Password: Password managers may not make for the most riveting dinner party conversation, but listen: 1) They make your life so much easier—it’s called “1Password” because once you get set up it’s the only password you’ll ever need to remember again. 2) They make your online life so much safer, ensuring that you use unique passwords for every account, stored with a high degree of encryption. 3) They are not nearly as complicated to set up as you think they are! Head over to 1Password using this link for a free trial, and individual plans for less than $3/mo after that.

ZBiotics: Right now, get 10% off ZBiotics. Just head over to zbiotics.com and use code JESSEDAMIANI. If you have an evening with drinking and a morning you need to feel fresh, these are a great help. Genetically engineered by a team of PhD microbiologists, ZBiotics is a probiotic drink that breaks down the byproduct of alcohol responsible for rough mornings after drinking (acetaldehyde).

MUD\WTR: Right now, save $20 on starter packs using this link. There’s four different blends to choose from, but my current favorite is :rest. “This is our protest to hustle culture,” they say, and that resonates with me. Not only does it actually help me ramp down to sleep, but since I froth a little milk and make a latte with it, I get the warm cozy feeling of morning coffee at night. (For the evening tea drinkers out there: I’m not saying it’s better, just different!)

Mission Farms CBD: Right now, get 25% off your first order using this link to sign up for emails. Mission Farms CBD crafts full-spectrum CBD products for specific conditions like sleep, stress, and discomfort, using a combination of CBD and terpenes found in essential oils. I swear by this stuff. All of Mission Farms’s CBD comes from a small farm in Bend, Oregon. They farm the hemp organically, tend every plant by hand, and test for purity four times: the soil, the hemp, the hemp-extract, and the final products. This CBD is designed for wellness and it shows.

CREDITS: This podcast is edited and produced by Adam Labrie and me, Jesse Damiani. Adam Labrie also edited the video version, which is available on YouTube. The podcast is presented by Reality Studies. If you appreciate the work I’m doing, please subscribe and share it with someone you think would enjoy it.

Find more episodes of Urgent Futures at: youtube.com/@UrgentFutures. Past conversations include Taylor Lorenz, Lisa Messeri, Legacy Russell, William E. Rees, Renée DiResta, and more. Here is another recent episode with on Internet freedoms:

History repeats itself: a major oil-producing nation is attacked, oil markets react, prices surge. Kuwait in 1990, Iraq in 2003, Libya in 2011, Saudi Arabia in 2019, Ukraine in 2022. In “normal” times, folks in the comfortable West don’t think much about energy (beyond the American public’s pathological obsession with gas prices), but when moments like these happen—as with the war on Iran right now—we’re painfully reminded how much of our daily lives depend on things happening very far away that we have precisely zero control over. And by proxy, we’re reminded how much of our entire existence is predicated on the availability of cheap energy, propped up by the global infrastructure and cooperation required to move that energy around the world.

What’s unfolding in Iran right now is repeating the cycle, and of course the stakes are always higher when Iran is involved because of the Strait of Hormuz; roughly 20% of the world’s oil (and a similar percentage of the world’s fertilizer) passes through this single, narrow route.

Astonishingly—I mean that literally; it’s genuinely astonishing—the Trump administration purportedly “underestimated Iran’s willingness to close the Strait of Hormuz,” even though, as one former U.S. official explained: “Planning around preventing this exact scenario … has been a bedrock principle of US national security policy for decades.”

There’s plenty more I could say about how foolish, unnecessary, poorly planned, and unpopular the war on Iran is, but that’s not the focus of this piece. This piece is about energy security.

The Role of Fossil Fuels in Modern Life

Fossil fuels are known for their potency and portability. As we’re seeing, under current conditions, the former is heavily impacted by the latter. When portable energy can’t be, well, ported, and demand must look elsewhere, supply costs increase (oftentimes based more on perception and opportunism than actual supply-demand economics). Thus, the simple fact that fossil fuels have to be extracted and transported across vast distances becomes a flaw when global cooperation breaks down.

Unfortunately, life as many Americans, Europeans, and other wealthy populations know it is predicated on uninterrupted “good times,” which is why you may be suddenly hearing about soaring gas prices and, depending on where you live, energy rationing, rolling blackouts, and other fun/not-at-all disruptive prospects.

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The part that’s easy to miss is how quickly this stops being just “about oil” and starts being about…everything else. The price of fuel is baked into nearly every step of modern life—growing food, transporting it, keeping buildings running, manufacturing basic goods. As referenced above, supply doesn’t even need to collapse—just the threat of disruption is enough to induce chaos. Markets move on anticipation and oil companies preemptively hike pries. It’s a structural vulnerability; we’ve built a world where stability depends on a long chain of things consistently going right (geo)politically, militarily, and logistically.

Solar Now, Please?

At some point, we ought to stop and ask ourselves: how many times will we need to relearn this lesson before we actually change our behavior?

It’d be one thing if this switch were far out of reach, but it’s not. Solar energy has seen a meteoric pace of innovation and reduction in production costs over the past few decades. If we exerted the political will to incentivize it and fought to overhaul utilities as public goods rather than profit-making enterprises, we would not only decrease our dependence on fragile global systems, we would—depending on where we respectively live and the available sunlight—likely pay a lot less for energy in the long run. And to state the obvious: once installed, solar is not dependent on globalization and just-in-time logistics. It simply depends on the sun, which we have good reason to believe will keep on shining for the next ~5 billion years.

To understand how fossil fuel infrastructure is throttling the energy transition, watch this episode of Urgent Futures with Prof. Brett Christophers:

Resilience is a cool word, but it often looks boring in practice. It looks like decentralization—like millions of small, unremarkable systems quietly doing their job instead of a few massive ones (which create isolated points-of-failure) that everything depends on. It’s essentially redundancy vs. efficiency. It’s not a silver bullet—we will continue to face a number of other immense obstacles—but if lots of us had rooftop or ground-mounted solar; if we pushed our local communities to implement public solar energy and utilities optimized for it, we’d be going a great way toward ensuring that we could meet our basic energy needs and take care of each other, regardless of what's happening in shipping routes.

I’m in no way trying to glass-half-full the war, here; again, it’s reckless and as conducted is only producing suffering. But I’m encouraging us to recognize it as an occasion to eke out one modest but profound win in the face of a tentacular catastrophe. Solar is a darling of the climate community for good reason—make no mistake: we absolutely must curb carbon emissions if we’re going to survive this century—but this isn’t even a moral argument, it’s a security argument.

Resilient Energy for VUCA Futures

For all the ways Biden’s IRA was a step in the right direction, it embedded the assumption that top-down approaches to the energy transition would be the way the U.S. would decarbonize. Yes, some of the barriers to adoption are federal, and we need to fight for these too—things like sanction policies and tax incentives—but so much else can be addressed at the local level. Ask yourself: what could happen in my community that would spur solar adoption and decrease fossil fuel dependence? Then ask yourself: how could I bring those about? No wrong answers here; creative workarounds encouraged!

We tend to treat moments like the war in Iran as interruptions—temporary shocks to an otherwise stable system, from which we’ll eventually return to “normal.” I’m asking you to view moments like this as your normal now; they are instances of a failing system revealing its true self. More will come, and probably with higher frequency, more startling volatility, and more lasting consequences.

The 21st century is and will continue to be the story of VUCA: volatility, uncertainty, complexity, and ambiguity. We all—but especially those of us in wealthy western nations—have to stop pretending that we live in a relatively stable and abundant mid-20th century paradigm (all requisite asterisks here about stability and abundance for whom). We have to face reality as we encounter it in fact, and act accordingly. The most painful outcome of our fossil-fuel dependence is the ongoing destruction of the biosphere, but let’s not forget that it’s also just going to cost us a whole lot more than the alternative(s)—literally, emotionally, and psychologically.

We know we have to end our addiction to fossil fuels; why not go ahead and kickstart the transition to solar (and, yes, wind + other “renewable” sources)? It might seem like an uphill battle now, but as the war in Iran is clearly communicating: it’s only going to get harder as time marches on.

Another post you might like:

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Audio versions of this episode can be found here on Substack, Apple Podcasts, and Spotify.

My guest today is Noelle Perdue.

is a writer, producer, and Internet porn historian with nearly ten years of experience working platform-side for multiple mainstream and independent adult companies. Having written everything from Food Network porn parodies to legally binding terms and conditions, much of her current work explores obscenity law and how pornography’s history can influence our digital and political futures. Noelle’s writing work has been published on Wired, Washington Post, Pornhub, Slate, Brazzers, Input, etc., she’s also been featured as an industry expert on multiple programs including the BBC, CBC, The Guardian, Rolling Stone, and on Netflix’s 2023 documentary Money Shot.

This marks Noelle’s—count it!—fourth time on Urgent Futures, and I continue to be grateful to have her as a dialogue partner on all things Internet freedoms. This conversation most directly builds on our Aug. 2025 episode, which focused foremost on the threats to privacy and security smuggled in with ‘age verification’ laws. That conversation is as timely and relevant today, so if you want to learn more, be sure to check that episode out as well.

Noelle also runs the excellent Porn World with Noelle Perdue newsletter—so pop over there and subscribe for smart takes on spicy topics!

In today’s episode, we jump off from her recent founding of the Anti-Censorship Coalition with . They’ve both been doing great work explaining the stakes, particularly involving a possible repeal of Section 230, part of the 1996 Communications Decency Act, which protects online platforms (websites, apps, ISPs) from liability for content generated by users on said platforms.

I recognize this might feel too tech-centric or legalistic for some folks, but I feel obligated to encourage you to think otherwise; our ability to communicate freely on the Internet is a baseline need for intervening in the polycrisis, and moreover, pushing against the ongoing surveillance creep occurring in much of the “modern” world.

Another episode you might like:

Support Reality Studies

NOTE: Thank you for supporting my work by purchasing these products through the links provided. I will only ever share products I actually believe in.

In case you haven’t noticed, it’s time to take your digital hygiene seriously. There are a few super simple, effective things you can do to up your digital self-defense considerably, and the first is to get a VPN. ProtonVPN is the gold standard, with fast service and a commitment to transparency. I promise you: once you realize how easy it is to use your VPN, you’ll be kicking yourself that you didn’t start sooner. Click here to get 55% off VPN Plus ($4.49/mo).

1Password: Password managers may not make for the most riveting dinner party conversation, but listen: 1) They make your life so much easier—it’s called “1Password” because once you get set up it’s the only password you’ll ever need to remember again. 2) They make your online life so much safer, ensuring that you use unique passwords for every account, stored with a high degree of encryption. 3) They are not nearly as complicated to set up as you think they are! Head over to 1Password using this link for a free trial, and individual plans for less than $3/mo after that.

ZBiotics: Right now, get 10% off ZBiotics. Just head over to zbiotics.com and use code JESSEDAMIANI. If you have an evening with drinking and a morning you need to feel fresh, these are a great help. Genetically engineered by a team of PhD microbiologists, ZBiotics is a probiotic drink that breaks down the byproduct of alcohol responsible for rough mornings after drinking (acetaldehyde).

MUD\WTR: Right now, save $20 on starter packs using this link. There’s four different blends to choose from, but my current favorite is :rest. “This is our protest to hustle culture,” they say, and that resonates with me. Not only does it actually help me ramp down to sleep, but since I froth a little milk and make a latte with it, I get the warm cozy feeling of morning coffee at night. (For the evening tea drinkers out there: I’m not saying it’s better, just different!)

Mission Farms CBD: Right now, get 25% off your first order using this link to sign up for emails. Mission Farms CBD crafts full-spectrum CBD products for specific conditions like sleep, stress, and discomfort, using a combination of CBD and terpenes found in essential oils. I swear by this stuff. All of Mission Farms’s CBD comes from a small farm in Bend, Oregon. They farm the hemp organically, tend every plant by hand, and test for purity four times: the soil, the hemp, the hemp-extract, and the final products. This CBD is designed for wellness and it shows.

CREDITS: This podcast is edited and produced by Adam Labrie and me, Jesse Damiani. Adam Labrie also directed, shot, and edited the video version of the podcast, which is available on YouTube. The podcast is presented by Reality Studies. If you appreciate the work I’m doing, please subscribe and share it with someone you think would enjoy it.

Find more episodes of Urgent Futures at: youtube.com/@UrgentFutures. Past conversations include Taylor Lorenz, Lisa Messeri, Legacy Russell, William E. Rees, Renée DiResta, and more. Here is another recent episode with on the contentious subject of geoengineering:

Welcome to the Urgent Futures podcast, the show that finds {signals} in the noise. Each week, I sit down with leading thinkers whose research, concepts, and questions clarify the chaos, from culture to the cosmos.

👉 Never miss an episode! 👉 Subscribe to Urgent Futures now: Youtube | Apple Podcasts | Spotify.

And if you’re loving the show, please share it with a friend who you think would as well! You have no idea how much word-of-mouth helps the channel find new audiences (and thank you to everyone who has supported the show by leaving ratings and reviews on your preferred podcast apps!)

My guest this week is Wim Carton.

is Associate Professor of Sustainability Science at Lund University, Sweden. He’s the author of over 20 academic articles and book chapters on climate politics. His work has appeared in top journals such as Nature Climate Change, WIRES Climate Change and Antipode. He co-wrote both Overshoot: How the World Surrendered to Climate Breakdown and The Long Heat: Climate Politics When It’s Too Late with Andreas Malm.

Grab your copy of The Long Heat here!

It is a loud, chaotic time. There are so many worrying developments that demand our immediate attention, action, and solidarity. I know that we all have limits to how much depressing information we can withstand. The not-so-awesome followup here is that there are things unfolding in the background that are also worthy of your attention, but they get virtually zero airplay because they’re not immediate disasters. If you’ve followed my channel for a while, you’re already familiar with a bunch of these, so I won’t belabor this point.

One of the most critical ones you need to be aware of is solar geoengineering, an umbrella term for speculative technologies designed to temporarily cool the Earth by reflecting sunlight back into space, typically through dispersing large quantities of sulfates in the atmosphere. At first blush, this may not sound like the worst idea. We know from researching the aftermath of volcanic eruptions that the cooling effect is real, not hypothetical, and especially given the unprecedented heat of the past three years, finding a seemingly straightforward way to cool the planet down might seem like a no-brainer. Unfortunately, it’s too good to be true, which is what today’s guest Wim Carton—along with his co-author Andreas Malm—go to great lengths to demonstrate in their absolute must-read book, The Long Heat. This book is something of a sequel to their likewise superb Overshoot (and for an invitation into that book, be sure to check out my earlier episode with the two of them).

Grab your copy of Overshoot here!

Having learned from folks like Wim, I think this issue is one of the single most important topics we need to be discussing right now, before it spirals out of control. Because make no mistake: even though we aren’t yet witnessing much geoengineering—and therefore not seeing its knock-on effects—interest is increasing. Israeli-US startup Stardust Solutions announced it had raised $60 million last year, claiming they would begin with experiments in April 2026. And of course, as the impacts of climate change and extreme weather become more pronounced—and we emit ever more greenhouse gases into the atmosphere—desperate times might cause many to turn to desperate measures.

After reading The Long Heat, I could spend all day explaining all the ways this go wrong, but instead, I’m going to let you hear it from the author himself. Please enjoy this vital conversation with Wim Carton.

Another episode you might like:

Support Reality Studies

NOTE: Thank you for supporting my work by purchasing these products through the links provided. I will only ever share products I actually believe in.

In case you haven’t noticed, it’s time to take your digital hygiene seriously. There are a few super simple, effective things you can do to up your digital self-defense considerably, and the first is to get a VPN. ProtonVPN is the gold standard, with fast service and a commitment to transparency. I promise you: once you realize how easy it is to use your VPN, you’ll be kicking yourself that you didn’t start sooner. Click here to get 55% off VPN Plus ($4.49/mo).

1Password: Password managers may not make for the most riveting dinner party conversation, but listen: 1) They make your life so much easier—it’s called “1Password” because once you get set up it’s the only password you’ll ever need to remember again. 2) They make your online life so much safer, ensuring that you use unique passwords for every account, stored with a high degree of encryption. 3) They are not nearly as complicated to set up as you think they are! Head over to 1Password using this link for a free trial, and individual plans for less than $3/mo after that.

ZBiotics: Right now, get 10% off ZBiotics. Just head over to zbiotics.com and use code JESSEDAMIANI. If you have an evening with drinking and a morning you need to feel fresh, these are a great help. Genetically engineered by a team of PhD microbiologists, ZBiotics is a probiotic drink that breaks down the byproduct of alcohol responsible for rough mornings after drinking (acetaldehyde).

MUD\WTR: Right now, save $20 on starter packs using this link. There’s four different blends to choose from, but my current favorite is :rest. “This is our protest to hustle culture,” they say, and that resonates with me. Not only does it actually help me ramp down to sleep, but since I froth a little milk and make a latte with it, I get the warm cozy feeling of morning coffee at night. (For the evening tea drinkers out there: I’m not saying it’s better, just different!)

Mission Farms CBD: Right now, get 25% off your first order using this link to sign up for emails. Mission Farms CBD crafts full-spectrum CBD products for specific conditions like sleep, stress, and discomfort, using a combination of CBD and terpenes found in essential oils. I swear by this stuff. All of Mission Farms’s CBD comes from a small farm in Bend, Oregon. They farm the hemp organically, tend every plant by hand, and test for purity four times: the soil, the hemp, the hemp-extract, and the final products. This CBD is designed for wellness and it shows.

CREDITS: This podcast is edited and produced by Adam Labrie and me, Jesse Damiani. Adam Labrie also edited the video version, which is available on YouTube. The podcast is presented by Reality Studies. If you appreciate the work I’m doing, please subscribe and share it with someone you think would enjoy it.

Find more episodes of Urgent Futures at: youtube.com/@UrgentFutures. Past conversations include Taylor Lorenz, Lisa Messeri, Legacy Russell, William E. Rees, Renée DiResta, and more. Here is another recent episode with Stephen Marche about the ‘Next Civil War.’

Welcome to the Urgent Futures podcast, the show that finds {signals} in the noise. Each week, I sit down with leading thinkers whose research, concepts, and questions clarify the chaos, from culture to the cosmos.

👉 Never miss an episode! 👉 Subscribe to Urgent Futures now: Youtube | Apple Podcasts | Spotify.

And if you’re loving the show, please share it with a friend who you think would as well! You have no idea how much word-of-mouth helps the channel find new audiences (and thank you to everyone who has supported the show by leaving ratings and reviews on your preferred podcast apps!)

My guest this week is Stephen Marche.

Stephen Marche is the author of The Next Civil War and On Writing and Failure. He frequently experiments with literary AI.

That modest bio doesn’t do justice to Stephen’s extensive writing and public intellectualism across culture, politics, and technology. We’ve been connected for a few years because of his early experiments with AI in writing—and as you’ll hear in the episode, he actually holds a number of historical firsts in this regard. In 2022, he published The Next Civil War, a book that is exactly what it sounds like: speculative scenarios rooted in rigorous research—including roughly 200 interviews with subject matter experts—about how the next American Civil War might transpire. It’s a bracing read, and unfortunately, much of what he put in that book is coming true.

Grab your copy of The Next Civil War here!

So it might also come as a surprise to discover that Stephen is Canadian, though he lived in the US for many years. This insider-outsider perspective is critical for discussing such a fraught topic. And his Canadian-ness is also what led me to host this rapid response episode—I’d been meaning to invite him on the show for a while to discuss the aforementioned, but then Canadian Prime Minister Mark Carney gave his address at the World Economic Forum. Fans of the channel will know that I have closely tracked the prospect of the “rules based” international order’s collapse, and Carney pretty baldly named this.

If you haven’t watched the address or read about it, I encourage you to do so now. Suffice to say, it felt critical to foreground Stephen’s analysis. And then, toward the end of the episode, we also discuss his literary AI experiments, his take on the current state of affairs, and much more.

So buckle up. I’m sure you’ll enjoy this wide-ranging conversation with Stephen Marche.

Another episode you might like:

Support Reality Studies

NOTE: Thank you for supporting my work by purchasing these products through the links provided. I will only ever share products I actually believe in.

In case you haven’t noticed, it’s time to take your digital hygiene seriously. There are a few super simple, effective things you can do to up your digital self-defense considerably, and the first is to get a VPN. ProtonVPN is the gold standard, with fast service and a commitment to transparency. I promise you: once you realize how easy it is to use your VPN, you’ll be kicking yourself that you didn’t start sooner. Click here to get 55% off VPN Plus ($4.49/mo).

1Password: Password managers may not make for the most riveting dinner party conversation, but listen: 1) They make your life so much easier—it’s called “1Password” because once you get set up it’s the only password you’ll ever need to remember again. 2) They make your online life so much safer, ensuring that you use unique passwords for every account, stored with a high degree of encryption. 3) They are not nearly as complicated to set up as you think they are! Head over to 1Password using this link for a free trial, and individual plans for less than $3/mo after that.

ZBiotics: Right now, get 10% off ZBiotics. Just head over to zbiotics.com and use code JESSEDAMIANI. If you have an evening with drinking and a morning you need to feel fresh, these are a great help. Genetically engineered by a team of PhD microbiologists, ZBiotics is a probiotic drink that breaks down the byproduct of alcohol responsible for rough mornings after drinking (acetaldehyde).

MUD\WTR: Right now, save $20 on starter packs using this link. There’s four different blends to choose from, but my current favorite is :rest. “This is our protest to hustle culture,” they say, and that resonates with me. Not only does it actually help me ramp down to sleep, but since I froth a little milk and make a latte with it, I get the warm cozy feeling of morning coffee at night. (For the evening tea drinkers out there: I’m not saying it’s better, just different!)

Mission Farms CBD: Right now, get 25% off your first order using this link to sign up for emails. Mission Farms CBD crafts full-spectrum CBD products for specific conditions like sleep, stress, and discomfort, using a combination of CBD and terpenes found in essential oils. I swear by this stuff. All of Mission Farms’s CBD comes from a small farm in Bend, Oregon. They farm the hemp organically, tend every plant by hand, and test for purity four times: the soil, the hemp, the hemp-extract, and the final products. This CBD is designed for wellness and it shows.

CREDITS: This podcast is edited and produced by Adam Labrie and me, Jesse Damiani. Adam Labrie also edited the video version, which is available on YouTube. The podcast is presented by Reality Studies. If you appreciate the work I’m doing, please subscribe and share it with someone you think would enjoy it.

Find more episodes of Urgent Futures at: youtube.com/@UrgentFutures. Past conversations include Taylor Lorenz, Lisa Messeri, Legacy Russell, William E. Rees, Renée DiResta, and more. Here is another recent episode with Prof. :

Get more from Jesse Damiani in the Substack app

Available for iOS and Android

Get the app

Audio versions of this episode can be found here on Substack, Apple Podcasts, and Spotify.

My guest today is Jonathan Tonkin.

I love that Professor Tonkin shares his bio in the first person, so I’m copying that here for you:

I’m Jonathan Tonkin (Jono for short) — an ecologist and biodiversity scientist at the University of Canterbury in New Zealand, where I’m a Professor and Rutherford Discovery Fellow.

My research has spanned continents and ecosystems, but I’ve always returned to one core question: How do we predict and adapt to environmental change in a way that supports life — all life?

I’ve spent much of my career documenting biodiversity loss, especially in freshwater ecosystems. Now, I’m pivoting toward solutions: redirecting effort, exploring policy levers, and amplifying the science that can help us adapt. After publishing 100 peer-reviewed papers — including in Nature and Science — I want to share what I’ve learned beyond academia: translating the latest science into plain language, before it even reaches the headlines, to inform, inspire, and equip a wider community.

I’m also a parent of two young kids. That perspective shapes everything I write.

You can learn more about my research and lab at tonkinlab.org — we focus on biodiversity science for a changing world.

🏆 Recently, I was honoured with the New Zealand Prime Minister’s MacDiarmid Emerging Scientist Prize.

For as much as I bemoan the attention fracture that occurs on social media, there are times I’m so grateful for it; I discovered the work of through a Substack Note about ecosystem services—the financial value that the natural world provides, which is vast and yet is barely ever accounted for under capitalist economics (on that note: please be sure to bookmark my conversation with Alyssa Battistoni on the ‘free gifts’ of nature).

While we’re at it, please subscribe to his incredible newsletter, Predirections, right now:

Predirections

Weekly future-focused writing on biodiversity, climate, and water for a changing world — by Prof. Jonathan Tonkin.

By Jonathan Tonkin

Fast forward and I was lucky that he agreed to join me for a discussion on biodiversity, and in particular his research on freshwater biodiversity. This is one of those subjects that is massively important (to put it mildly!), yet doesn’t get quite as much airtime as more “charismatic” crises like climate change. As Jono explains:

There’s a lot here, including a discussion about the wonder of braided rivers and broader questions around how we balance “human urgency” and “ecological rhythms,” advocating for what he calls “patient urgency.” We also get into his journey on Substack, and how he balances the differing demands of being an academic and a public communicator. Also he just got a new dog! All to say: if you’re like me, you’ll leave this conversation feeling both inspired and ready to take action in your own life to protect what is precious on this planet.

Share

Another episode you might like:

Support Reality Studies

NOTE: Thank you for supporting my work by purchasing these products through the links provided. I will only ever share products I actually believe in.

In case you haven’t noticed, it’s time to take your digital hygiene seriously. There are a few super simple, effective things you can do to up your digital self-defense considerably, and the first is to get a VPN. ProtonVPN is the gold standard, with fast service and a commitment to transparency. I promise you: once you realize how easy it is to use your VPN, you’ll be kicking yourself that you didn’t start sooner. Click here to get 55% off VPN Plus ($4.49/mo).

1Password: Password managers may not make for the most riveting dinner party conversation, but listen: 1) They make your life so much easier—it’s called “1Password” because once you get set up it’s the only password you’ll ever need to remember again. 2) They make your online life so much safer, ensuring that you use unique passwords for every account, stored with a high degree of encryption. 3) They are not nearly as complicated to set up as you think they are! Head over to 1Password using this link for a free trial, and individual plans for less than $3/mo after that.

ZBiotics: Right now, get 10% off ZBiotics. Just head over to zbiotics.com and use code JESSEDAMIANI. If you have an evening with drinking and a morning you need to feel fresh, these are a great help. Genetically engineered by a team of PhD microbiologists, ZBiotics is a probiotic drink that breaks down the byproduct of alcohol responsible for rough mornings after drinking (acetaldehyde).

MUD\WTR: Right now, save $20 on starter packs using this link. There’s four different blends to choose from, but my current favorite is :rest. “This is our protest to hustle culture,” they say, and that resonates with me. Not only does it actually help me ramp down to sleep, but since I froth a little milk and make a latte with it, I get the warm cozy feeling of morning coffee at night. (For the evening tea drinkers out there: I’m not saying it’s better, just different!)

Mission Farms CBD: Right now, get 25% off your first order using this link to sign up for emails. Mission Farms CBD crafts full-spectrum CBD products for specific conditions like sleep, stress, and discomfort, using a combination of CBD and terpenes found in essential oils. I swear by this stuff. All of Mission Farms’s CBD comes from a small farm in Bend, Oregon. They farm the hemp organically, tend every plant by hand, and test for purity four times: the soil, the hemp, the hemp-extract, and the final products. This CBD is designed for wellness and it shows.

CREDITS: This podcast is edited and produced by Adam Labrie and me, Jesse Damiani. Adam Labrie also directed, shot, and edited the video version of the podcast, which is available on YouTube. The podcast is presented by Reality Studies. If you appreciate the work I’m doing, please subscribe and share it with someone you think would enjoy it.

Find more episodes of Urgent Futures at: youtube.com/@UrgentFutures. Past conversations include Taylor Lorenz, Lisa Messeri, Legacy Russell, William E. Rees, Renée DiResta, and more. Here is another recent episode with Joseph Tainter on when, how, & why complex societies collapse:

Welcome to the Urgent Futures podcast, the show that finds {signals} in the noise. Each week, I sit down with leading thinkers whose research, concepts, and questions clarify the chaos, from culture to the cosmos.

👉 Never miss an episode! 👉 Subscribe to Urgent Futures now: Youtube | Apple Podcasts | Spotify.

And if you’re loving the show, please share it with a friend who you think would as well! You have no idea how much word-of-mouth helps the channel find new audiences (and thank you to everyone who has supported the show by leaving ratings and reviews on your preferred podcast apps!)

My guest this week is Joseph Tainter.

Joseph Tainter is an anthropologist and retired professor, formerly at Utah State University. He is the author of The Collapse of Complex Societies, and co-author with Timothy F. H. Allen and Thomas W. Hoekstra of Supply-Side Sustainability. With Roderick and Susan McIntosh he edited The Way the Wind Blows: Climate, History, and Human Action. With Tadeusz Patzek he wrote Drilling Down: The Gulf Oil Debacle and Our Energy Dilemma. Dr. Tainter’s research has been used in over 50 countries and his books have been issued in 10 languages. His work has been consulted in the United Nations Environment Programme, UNESCO, the World Bank, the Rand Corporation, the International Institute for Applied Systems Analysis, the Beijer Institute of Ecological Economics, the Earth Policy Institute, Technology Transfer Institute/Vanguard, and the Highlands Forum. His research has been applied in economic development and energy.

Having researched the topic of collapse for more than half a decade, I can say with some confidence that interest in it has increased over the past few years. And it makes sense—wherever you look, be it politics, climate change, the economy, tech accelerationism, or otherwise, we’re getting a lot of scary signals. But collapse is a slippery word—what exactly does it mean? And what exactly qualifies a particular breakdown as collapse?

To get granular, I’m happy to share this conversation with collapsology legend, Joseph Tainter, who was researching collapse long before it was en vogue, notably authoring The Collapse of Complex Societies nearly forty years ago. Perhaps his most notable argument from this work is that collapse occurs when a civilization reaches a point of diminishing returns on complexity—that is, when increasing amounts of capital, energy, and resources are required just to sustain the system, until the cost of maintaining it outweighs the benefits.

It’s a provocative argument, and folks like existential risk researcher Luke Kemp, who I had on the show late last year, have proposed alternative viewpoints—but which nevertheless build on Professor Tainter’s remarkable scholarly legacy. This argument is especially worth considering when we look at the current strain on the “rules-based” international order that the United States has (otherwise) maintained since the end of WWII.

There’s so much in this conversation, drawing together his collapsology research with his contributions to energy and sustainability research—and much more, examining how it all fits together in today’s global context.

So without further ado, please enjoy this illuminating conversation with Joseph Tainter.

Another episode you might like:

Support Reality Studies

NOTE: Thank you for supporting my work by purchasing these products through the links provided. I will only ever share products I actually believe in.

In case you haven’t noticed, it’s time to take your digital hygiene seriously. There are a few super simple, effective things you can do to up your digital self-defense considerably, and the first is to get a VPN. ProtonVPN is the gold standard, with fast service and a commitment to transparency. I promise you: once you realize how easy it is to use your VPN, you’ll be kicking yourself that you didn’t start sooner. Click here to get 55% off VPN Plus ($4.49/mo).

1Password: Password managers may not make for the most riveting dinner party conversation, but listen: 1) They make your life so much easier—it’s called “1Password” because once you get set up it’s the only password you’ll ever need to remember again. 2) They make your online life so much safer, ensuring that you use unique passwords for every account, stored with a high degree of encryption. 3) They are not nearly as complicated to set up as you think they are! Head over to 1Password using this link for a free trial, and individual plans for less than $3/mo after that.

ZBiotics: Right now, get 10% off ZBiotics. Just head over to zbiotics.com and use code JESSEDAMIANI. If you have an evening with drinking and a morning you need to feel fresh, these are a great help. Genetically engineered by a team of PhD microbiologists, ZBiotics is a probiotic drink that breaks down the byproduct of alcohol responsible for rough mornings after drinking (acetaldehyde).

MUD\WTR: Right now, save $20 on starter packs using this link. There’s four different blends to choose from, but my current favorite is :rest. “This is our protest to hustle culture,” they say, and that resonates with me. Not only does it actually help me ramp down to sleep, but since I froth a little milk and make a latte with it, I get the warm cozy feeling of morning coffee at night. (For the evening tea drinkers out there: I’m not saying it’s better, just different!)

Mission Farms CBD: Right now, get 25% off your first order using this link to sign up for emails. Mission Farms CBD crafts full-spectrum CBD products for specific conditions like sleep, stress, and discomfort, using a combination of CBD and terpenes found in essential oils. I swear by this stuff. All of Mission Farms’s CBD comes from a small farm in Bend, Oregon. They farm the hemp organically, tend every plant by hand, and test for purity four times: the soil, the hemp, the hemp-extract, and the final products. This CBD is designed for wellness and it shows.

CREDITS: This podcast is edited and produced by Adam Labrie and me, Jesse Damiani. Adam Labrie also edited the video version, which is available on YouTube. The podcast is presented by Reality Studies. If you appreciate the work I’m doing, please subscribe and share it with someone you think would enjoy it.

Find more episodes of Urgent Futures at: youtube.com/@UrgentFutures. Past conversations include Taylor Lorenz, Lisa Messeri, Legacy Russell, William E. Rees, Renée DiResta, and more. Here is another recent episode with :

Get more from Jesse Damiani in the Substack app

Available for iOS and Android

Get the app

Audio versions of this episode can be found here on Substack, Apple Podcasts, and Spotify.

My guest today is Qasim Rashid.

is a human rights lawyer, author, and former nominee for U.S. Congress. He received his BSc from the University of Illinois at Chicago, his JD from Richmond Law, and served as a visiting fellow at Harvard University.

Qasim’s human rights work includes supporting survivors of domestic and sexual violence, representing asylum seekers, and serving as a first responder to global disasters. He has published numerous books, academic law reviews, and articles across the media spectrum in TIME, New York Times, Washington Post, NPR, and USA Today.

Qasim is the Founder and President of Just Win, a creator representation firm focused on social justice and human rights. He runs a popular human rights Substack with more than 165,000 subscribers titled “Let’s Address This with Qasim Rashid,” and has more than 2.25 million social media followers. You can find him across platforms @QasimRashid. Subscribe to his Substack now—trust me, you’ll be glad you did:

Let's Address This with Qasim Rashid

As a human rights lawyer I bring the receipts to debunk disinformation and advance the fight for absolute justice.

By Qasim Rashid, Esq.

Is it okay for those of us on the left to criticize the Democratic Party? Or are we supposed to just accept that they’re the “lesser of two evils,” even as their actions put us in ever more danger?

Qasim Rashid lost thousands of followers because he chose to speak up. When I saw this post, I knew I needed to have him on the show to discuss. As many of you know, I’ve long felt dismayed by the ways the Democratic Party plays the comfortable role of controlled opposition, and that there’s no meaningful leftist party or even coalition represented in national politics. Yes, of course we must rail against the politicians actively promoting the destruction of democracy, but if the Democratic Party is not rising to the occasion in fighting those politicians, well, we simply must rail against them too. It’s not only okay to demand better of “your side” if they’re not advancing justice, it’s your duty.

Of course, that’s easy to say but complex in practice. What strategies can we use to bring about meaningful change? Qasim and I spend some time discussing this—special attention here on Sway and Working Families Party. We discuss what informed, ethical resistance looks like as authoritarianism continues its march into American politics. We also get into Minneapolis, corporate media’s complicity in America’s authoritarian turn, and Qasim’s reading club around his book The Wrong Kind of Muslim (buy your copy here!), through which Qasim shares more about his relationship with his touching relationship with his father and faith journey. To join in the book club, be sure to subscribe to Qasim’s other Substack, Islam Today:

Islam Today

A newsletter by Qasim Rashid that answers your questions on Islam, debunks disinformation, and builds interfaith bridges of understanding and dialogue.

By Qasim Rashid, Esq.

Another episode you might like:

Support Reality Studies

NOTE: Thank you for supporting my work by purchasing these products through the links provided. I will only ever share products I actually believe in.

In case you haven’t noticed, it’s time to take your digital hygiene seriously. There are a few super simple, effective things you can do to up your digital self-defense considerably, and the first is to get a VPN. ProtonVPN is the gold standard, with fast service and a commitment to transparency. I promise you: once you realize how easy it is to use your VPN, you’ll be kicking yourself that you didn’t start sooner. Click here to get 55% off VPN Plus ($4.49/mo).

1Password: Password managers may not make for the most riveting dinner party conversation, but listen: 1) They make your life so much easier—it’s called “1Password” because once you get set up it’s the only password you’ll ever need to remember again. 2) They make your online life so much safer, ensuring that you use unique passwords for every account, stored with a high degree of encryption. 3) They are not nearly as complicated to set up as you think they are! Head over to 1Password using this link for a free trial, and individual plans for less than $3/mo after that.

ZBiotics: Right now, get 10% off ZBiotics. Just head over to zbiotics.com and use code JESSEDAMIANI. If you have an evening with drinking and a morning you need to feel fresh, these are a great help. Genetically engineered by a team of PhD microbiologists, ZBiotics is a probiotic drink that breaks down the byproduct of alcohol responsible for rough mornings after drinking (acetaldehyde).

MUD\WTR: Right now, save $20 on starter packs using this link. There’s four different blends to choose from, but my current favorite is :rest. “This is our protest to hustle culture,” they say, and that resonates with me. Not only does it actually help me ramp down to sleep, but since I froth a little milk and make a latte with it, I get the warm cozy feeling of morning coffee at night. (For the evening tea drinkers out there: I’m not saying it’s better, just different!)

Mission Farms CBD: Right now, get 25% off your first order using this link to sign up for emails. Mission Farms CBD crafts full-spectrum CBD products for specific conditions like sleep, stress, and discomfort, using a combination of CBD and terpenes found in essential oils. I swear by this stuff. All of Mission Farms’s CBD comes from a small farm in Bend, Oregon. They farm the hemp organically, tend every plant by hand, and test for purity four times: the soil, the hemp, the hemp-extract, and the final products. This CBD is designed for wellness and it shows.

CREDITS: This podcast is edited and produced by Adam Labrie and me, Jesse Damiani. Adam Labrie also directed, shot, and edited the video version of the podcast, which is available on YouTube. The podcast is presented by Reality Studies. If you appreciate the work I’m doing, please subscribe and share it with someone you think would enjoy it.

Find more episodes of Urgent Futures at: youtube.com/@UrgentFutures. Past conversations include Taylor Lorenz, Lisa Messeri, Legacy Russell, William E. Rees, Renée DiResta, and more. Here is another recent episode with Roger Berkowitz on what we can learn from Hannah Arendt today:

Welcome to the Urgent Futures podcast, the show that finds {signals} in the noise. Each week, I sit down with leading thinkers whose research, concepts, and questions clarify the chaos, from culture to the cosmos.

👉 Never miss an episode! 👉 Subscribe to Urgent Futures now: Youtube | Apple Podcasts | Spotify.

And if you’re loving the show, please share it with a friend who you think would as well! You have no idea how much word-of-mouth helps the channel find new audiences (and thank you to everyone who has supported the show by leaving ratings and reviews on your preferred podcast apps!)

My guest this week is Roger Berkowitz.

Roger Berkowitz is Founder and Academic Director of the Hannah Arendt Center for Politics and Humanities and Professor of Politics, Philosophy, and Human Rights at Bard College.

He is author of The Gift of Science: Leibniz and the Modern Legal Tradition (Harvard, 2005, Fordham, 2010; Chinese Law Press 2011) and his new book A World We Share: Hannah Arendt and the Power of Friendship in a Broken World will appear in 2026 from Yale University Press.

Berkowitz is the host of the podcast, Reading Hannah Arendt with Roger Berkowitz. He is also a regular panelist on The Roundtable, a daily news show for WAMC, the NPR affiliate in Albany, NY, and hosts For the Love of the World on Radio Kingston. Berkowitz wrote the Introduction for On Civil Disobedience: Henry David Thoreau and Hannah Arendt (Library of America, 2024), and he has edited Tribalism and Cosmopolitanism (DeGruyter, 2025) and Perils of Invention: Lying, Technology and the Human Condition (Blackrose Books, 2022). He is co-editor of Thinking in Dark Times: Hannah Arendt on Ethics and Politics (2009), The Intellectual Origins of the Global Financial Crisis (2012) and Artifacts of Thinking: Reading Hannah Arendt’s Denktagebuch (2017). His writing has appeared in The New York Times, The American Interest, Bookforum, The Paris Review Online, Democracy: A Journal of Ideas, and many other publications. He is a co-editor of the book series “Thinking With Arendt” published by DeGruyter and past editor of Just Ideas, a book series published by Fordham University Press.

If you’re looking for historical thinkers who can help you navigate authoritarianism, fascism, totalitarianism, and questions of human rights, you’d do worse than to start with Hannah Arendt, one of the most influential political theorists of the 20th century. I’ve found myself returning to her words repeatedly over the past few years for exactly this reason. You’re perhaps already familiar with the phrase “the banality of evil.” This is one of her most famous contributions to thought, and emerged from her analysis of the trial of Adolf Eichmann, one of the key Nazi figures in organizing the Holocaust in the book Eichmann in Jerusalem.

Bard College is home to the Hannah Arendt Center for Politics and Humanities, whose mission is to “create and nurture an institutional space for bold, risky and provocative thinking about our political world in the spirit of Hannah Arendt,” and to “to empower a plural people to at once (re)discover their unique opinions and political agency and also find common ground to build together a shared world through thinking, listening, and talking with one another.”

Today’s guest is the founder and academic director of the Center, and as you’d guess, we have a wide-ranging conversation linking the aforementioned topics to today’s political environment, with a special eye on the US. We also discuss the 2025 edition of the Center’s annual conference, themed “Joy: Loving the World in Dark Times,” which feels especially pertinent as America continues to tilt toward authoritarianism—an evolution I’ve called quantum fascism. Notably, Roger disagrees that we Americans are currently living under a fascist regime, though understands why people are inclined to think we are. Whether or not you agree, his argument is compelling and based in close analysis.

What I so appreciate about this conversation is that Roger is committed to his political and personal ethics, and in some cases this means he gets a little controversial relative to more mainstream liberal or leftist positions. The result is a bracing, edifying conversation. We get into so much, in fact, that we held off on diving deep on his forthcoming book, A World We Share: Hannah Arendt and the Power of Friendship in a Broken World. The good news is Roger has agreed to come back on the show in the fall to go deep on it with me. Until then, please enjoy this powerful conversation with Roger Berkowitz.

Another episode you might like:

Support Reality Studies

NOTE: Thank you for supporting my work by purchasing these products through the links provided. I will only ever share products I actually believe in.

In case you haven’t noticed, it’s time to take your digital hygiene seriously. There are a few super simple, effective things you can do to up your digital self-defense considerably, and the first is to get a VPN. ProtonVPN is the gold standard, with fast service and a commitment to transparency. I promise you: once you realize how easy it is to use your VPN, you’ll be kicking yourself that you didn’t start sooner. Click here to get 55% off VPN Plus ($4.49/mo).

1Password: Password managers may not make for the most riveting dinner party conversation, but listen: 1) They make your life so much easier—it’s called “1Password” because once you get set up it’s the only password you’ll ever need to remember again. 2) They make your online life so much safer, ensuring that you use unique passwords for every account, stored with a high degree of encryption. 3) They are not nearly as complicated to set up as you think they are! Head over to 1Password using this link for a free trial, and individual plans for less than $3/mo after that.

ZBiotics: Right now, get 10% off ZBiotics. Just head over to zbiotics.com and use code JESSEDAMIANI. If you have an evening with drinking and a morning you need to feel fresh, these are a great help. Genetically engineered by a team of PhD microbiologists, ZBiotics is a probiotic drink that breaks down the byproduct of alcohol responsible for rough mornings after drinking (acetaldehyde).

MUD\WTR: Right now, save $20 on starter packs using this link. There’s four different blends to choose from, but my current favorite is :rest. “This is our protest to hustle culture,” they say, and that resonates with me. Not only does it actually help me ramp down to sleep, but since I froth a little milk and make a latte with it, I get the warm cozy feeling of morning coffee at night. (For the evening tea drinkers out there: I’m not saying it’s better, just different!)

Mission Farms CBD: Right now, get 25% off your first order using this link to sign up for emails. Mission Farms CBD crafts full-spectrum CBD products for specific conditions like sleep, stress, and discomfort, using a combination of CBD and terpenes found in essential oils. I swear by this stuff. All of Mission Farms’s CBD comes from a small farm in Bend, Oregon. They farm the hemp organically, tend every plant by hand, and test for purity four times: the soil, the hemp, the hemp-extract, and the final products. This CBD is designed for wellness and it shows.

CREDITS: This podcast is edited and produced by Adam Labrie and me, Jesse Damiani. Kyriaki (Claire) Lampidou shot and produced this episode, and Adam Labrie edited the video version, which is available on YouTube. The podcast is presented by Reality Studies. If you appreciate the work I’m doing, please subscribe and share it with someone you think would enjoy it.

Find more episodes of Urgent Futures at: youtube.com/@UrgentFutures. Past conversations include Taylor Lorenz, Lisa Messeri, Legacy Russell, William E. Rees, Renée DiResta, and more. Here is another recent episode with Dr. Chris Ellis on becoming a ‘resilient citizen’:

Welcome to the Urgent Futures podcast, the show that finds {signals} in the noise. Each week, I sit down with leading thinkers whose research, concepts, and questions clarify the chaos, from culture to the cosmos.

👉 Never miss an episode! 👉 Subscribe to Urgent Futures now: Youtube | Apple Podcasts | Spotify.

And if you’re loving the show, please share it with a friend who you think would as well! You have no idea how much word-of-mouth helps the channel find new audiences (and thank you to everyone who has supported the show by leaving ratings and reviews on your preferred podcast apps!)

My guest this week is Chris Ellis.

Dr. Chris Ellis is a career Army officer, disaster readiness expert, and lifelong student of how people, communities, and nations prepare for the worst. With over twenty-six years of military service—including time in combat zones and collaborative work across five continents—Chris has seen firsthand what resilience looks like under pressure.

Chris holds a Ph.D. in Government from Cornell University, along with four other advanced degrees covering public policy, military strategy, and international security. His work blends academic insight with boots-on-the-ground experience, tackling big-picture threats like civil unrest, nuclear catastrophe, economic collapse, and even the end of the world.

Folks who have followed the channel will know that the subject of preparedness—what you colloquially hear referred to as “prepping”—is a subject of great importance to me. For a while now, I’ve felt like it was necessary for us to reclaim, normalize, and broaden the notion of prepping away from the stranglehold that the lone survivalist has on the prepper stereotype.

The world that is fast emerging is what US military experts have referred to as VUCA—volatile, uncertain, chaotic, and ambiguous. As we learned during the Covid-19 pandemic, there are some disasters that the government just cannot—or will not—save you from, or even help you recover from. Why not instead weather disasters by embracing the radical potential of our wits, creativity, perseverance, and communities?

After I released an episode sharing these thoughts, Kate Parsons, a friend of mine from the new media art scene, and who it turns out has a vested interest in the subject, introduced me to today’s guest, Dr. Chris Ellis. He had a soon-to-be-released book called Resilient Citizens—a book that I’d later get to read in advance of this conversation.

Grab your copy of Resilient Citizens here!

This book is an absolute must-read, breaking down the “people, perils, and politics of modern preparedness.” This is a jam-packed episode—we dive into his definition of a resilient citizen, the history of prepping and prepper stereotype, the five types of resilient citizens, why it’s vital to remember that resilience is a mindset, and how to integrate it into your life. This form of preparedness might evoke a very particular stereotype, but in practice it’s a way of developing self-reliance, new skills, and strong, vibrant communities. I think that’s something we can all get behind.

So please enjoy this insightful conversation with Dr. Chris Ellis.

Another episode you might like:

NOTE: Thank you for supporting my work by purchasing these products through the links provided. I will only ever share products I actually believe in.

In case you haven’t noticed, it’s time to take your digital hygiene seriously. There are a few super simple, effective things you can do to up your digital self-defense considerably, and the first is to get a VPN. ProtonVPN is the gold standard, with fast service and a commitment to transparency. I promise you: once you realize how easy it is to use your VPN, you’ll be kicking yourself that you didn’t start sooner. Click here to get 55% off VPN Plus ($4.49/mo).

1Password: Password managers may not make for the most riveting dinner party conversation, but listen: 1) They make your life so much easier—it’s called “1Password” because once you get set up it’s the only password you’ll ever need to remember again. 2) They make your online life so much safer, ensuring that you use unique passwords for every account, stored with a high degree of encryption. 3) They are not nearly as complicated to set up as you think they are! Head over to 1Password using this link for a free trial, and individual plans for less than $3/mo after that.

ZBiotics: Right now, get 10% off ZBiotics. Just head over to zbiotics.com and use code JESSEDAMIANI. If you have an evening with drinking and a morning you need to feel fresh, these are a great help. Genetically engineered by a team of PhD microbiologists, ZBiotics is a probiotic drink that breaks down the byproduct of alcohol responsible for rough mornings after drinking (acetaldehyde).

MUD\WTR: Right now, save $20 on starter packs using this link. There’s four different blends to choose from, but my current favorite is :rest. “This is our protest to hustle culture,” they say, and that resonates with me. Not only does it actually help me ramp down to sleep, but since I froth a little milk and make a latte with it, I get the warm cozy feeling of morning coffee at night. (For the evening tea drinkers out there: I’m not saying it’s better, just different!)

Mission Farms CBD: Right now, get 25% off your first order using this link to sign up for emails. Mission Farms CBD crafts full-spectrum CBD products for specific conditions like sleep, stress, and discomfort, using a combination of CBD and terpenes found in essential oils. I swear by this stuff. All of Mission Farms’s CBD comes from a small farm in Bend, Oregon. They farm the hemp organically, tend every plant by hand, and test for purity four times: the soil, the hemp, the hemp-extract, and the final products. This CBD is designed for wellness and it shows.

CREDITS: This podcast is edited and produced by Adam Labrie and me, Jesse Damiani. Adam Labrie also directed, shot, and edited the video version of the podcast, which is available on YouTube. The podcast is presented by Reality Studies. If you appreciate the work I’m doing, please subscribe and share it with someone you think would enjoy it.

Find more episodes of Urgent Futures at: youtube.com/@UrgentFutures. Past conversations include Taylor Lorenz, Lisa Messeri, Legacy Russell, William E. Rees, Renée DiResta, and more. Here is another recent episode with on the state of AI:

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Audio versions of this episode can be found here on Substack, Apple Podcasts, and Spotify.

My guest today is Erald Kolasi.

is a writer and independent researcher focusing on the nexus between energy, technology, economics, complex systems, and ecological dynamics. His first book, The Physics of Capitalism, came out from the Monthly Review Press in February 2025. He received his PhD in Physics from George Mason University in 2016.

This conversation emerged after I posted a note about degrowth—basically arguing that effective degrowth in practice will not be a uniform process; we have to account for historical inequities and the building of off-ramps, which themselves will take time, resources, and yes, fossil fuels. If we want the minerals we need for solar infrastructure, for example, we’re still going to need to mine for them (and do so with some amount of fossil fuels). But degrowth proponents argue that this can be down without the extreme inequity that is currently involved, in which wealthy nations force developing nations to extract these at the cheapest possible rates, leading to unacceptable outcomes like dangerous child labor.

Erald saw this and struck up a conversation with me via DM, and I was instantly excited by his vision and clarity of thought. So we agreed to do this live conversation, and it does not disappoint. He maps not only the why of decarbonization, but the how—what are the challenges we face and what are the methods we can adopt in order to ethically surmount them? If this topic matters to you—and I really hope it does, as it’s one of the most urgent global challenges—you’d do worse than to start your learning journey with his insights.

In the course of the conversation, we touch on a few pieces he’s written, which I encourage you to read as key supplements to this conversation. While you’re at it, be sure to subscribe to his channel!

Erald Kolasi

Technological Change Under Capitalism: Conversional Dynamics and Catalytic Spectralization

In my new book, The Physics of Capitalism, I focus on the concept of energy conversion as the critical element for understanding the energy scale dynamics of modern capitalism. Understanding these scale dynamics is important if we want to construct a stable global civilization that operates within…

Read more

a year ago · 30 likes · 13 comments · Erald Kolasi

Erald Kolasi

Technological Dynamics Under Valerism: From Catalytic Spectralization to Universal Modularization

In my book, The Physics of Capitalism, I analyzed the internal technological dynamics of modern capitalism and explained how they were related to its external relations with the natural world. This post is an attempt to unveil what an entirely new cosmology of technological development would look like under valerism, the name I gave to a new framework f…

Read more

10 months ago · 30 likes · 11 comments · Erald Kolasi

Erald Kolasi

The Political Economy of Housing

The housing affordability crisis in the United States and much of the Western world has emerged as a major political and economic problem. In the popular discourse that pervades the media, and the world of punditry, the issue has been reduced and trivialized to a matter of providing adequate supply by removing restrictive zoning regulations and governme…

Read more

a year ago · 34 likes · 22 comments · Erald Kolasi

Another episode you might like:

Support Reality Studies

NOTE: Thank you for supporting my work by purchasing these products through the links provided. I will only ever share products I actually believe in.

In case you haven’t noticed, it’s time to take your digital hygiene seriously. There are a few super simple, effective things you can do to up your digital self-defense considerably, and the first is to get a VPN. ProtonVPN is the gold standard, with fast service and a commitment to transparency. I promise you: once you realize how easy it is to use your VPN, you’ll be kicking yourself that you didn’t start sooner. Click here to get 55% off VPN Plus ($4.49/mo).

1Password: Password managers may not make for the most riveting dinner party conversation, but listen: 1) They make your life so much easier—it’s called “1Password” because once you get set up it’s the only password you’ll ever need to remember again. 2) They make your online life so much safer, ensuring that you use unique passwords for every account, stored with a high degree of encryption. 3) They are not nearly as complicated to set up as you think they are! Head over to 1Password using this link for a free trial, and individual plans for less than $3/mo after that.

ZBiotics: Right now, get 10% off ZBiotics. Just head over to zbiotics.com and use code JESSEDAMIANI. If you have an evening with drinking and a morning you need to feel fresh, these are a great help. Genetically engineered by a team of PhD microbiologists, ZBiotics is a probiotic drink that breaks down the byproduct of alcohol responsible for rough mornings after drinking (acetaldehyde).

MUD\WTR: Right now, save $20 on starter packs using this link. There’s four different blends to choose from, but my current favorite is :rest. “This is our protest to hustle culture,” they say, and that resonates with me. Not only does it actually help me ramp down to sleep, but since I froth a little milk and make a latte with it, I get the warm cozy feeling of morning coffee at night. (For the evening tea drinkers out there: I’m not saying it’s better, just different!)

Mission Farms CBD: Right now, get 25% off your first order using this link to sign up for emails. Mission Farms CBD crafts full-spectrum CBD products for specific conditions like sleep, stress, and discomfort, using a combination of CBD and terpenes found in essential oils. I swear by this stuff. All of Mission Farms’s CBD comes from a small farm in Bend, Oregon. They farm the hemp organically, tend every plant by hand, and test for purity four times: the soil, the hemp, the hemp-extract, and the final products. This CBD is designed for wellness and it shows.

CREDITS: This podcast is edited and produced by Adam Labrie and me, Jesse Damiani. Adam Labrie also directed, shot, and edited the video version of the podcast, which is available on YouTube. The podcast is presented by Reality Studies. If you appreciate the work I’m doing, please subscribe and share it with someone you think would enjoy it.

Reality Studies is a reader-supported publication. To receive new posts and support my work, consider becoming a free or paid subscriber.

Find more episodes of Urgent Futures at: youtube.com/@UrgentFutures. Past conversations include Taylor Lorenz, Lisa Messeri, Legacy Russell, William E. Rees, Renée DiResta, and more. Here is another recent episode with Alyssa Battistoni discussing her latest book Free Gifts: Capitalism and the Politics of Nature:

Since the re-election of Donald Trump, I’ve observed a steady drumbeat of media articles and influencer-promoted narratives around the prospect of American liberals and leftists embracing gun ownership. It’s couched in the language of sensible preparedness and self-protection—topics I am demonstrably invested in.

These pro-Second Amendment arguments intensified over the course of 2025, as ICE increasingly acted in blatant violation of the Constitution (and often in violation of basic decency). In the wake of the public execution of Renee Good—and now reaching fever pitch with the execution of Alex Pretti, who exercised his legal right to concealed carry (though was not actually brandishing his weapon when he was killed).

Perhaps I’m colored by what I’m seeing and learning in Ken Burns’s superb The American Revolution documentary, but what’s happening now feels like it has the jagged edges of revolutionary spirit. There’s much to be excited about in this; the American imperial project has produced untold harms for its entire existence, and the neoliberal status quo has been harming us for decades—and left unchecked these systems will render the planet uninhabitable. In some form, what will be required to survive this century is a dramatic overhaul of our current accepted systems. Revolution is perhaps the “loudest” answer that has historically produced such an effect, and indeed some form of “revolution” will inevitably be necessary to break the stranglehold toxic capitalism (or, what has called ‘technofeudalism’) has on all over our other social and political systems.

But as the gun conversations have intensified, my spidey sense has started to tingle. I should say up front that I’m speaking from my affective experience, predominantly accumulated via various forms of doomscrolling. That said, my track record when it comes to following my spidey sense is (unfortunately) pretty strong. I noted and extensively covered the rise of lefty prepping throughout 2025, and essentially called the broad strokes of what we should expect from a Donald Trump 2.0 presidency within a week of the election in 2024:

So take all that for what you will.

Yes, owning a gun is still a right possessed by all Americans (at least, for now); yes, it’s a right that was designed as a counter-tyranny measure; and yes, tyranny is ascendant in America.

I just can’t shake the feeling we’re being politically kettled into the exact position the tyrants want us in.

It is now something like common knowledge that Trump will compromise the midterm elections. After all, his actions are increasingly unpopular, and the only remaining possible check under normative democratic processes would be for the Democrats to flip both houses of Congress (though please, even if by some miracle this were to happen, I beg you to remember the Democratic Party’s track record on opposing authoritarianism). In what follows, the impression I don’t want you to take away from this is that I think we should all sit back, wait for the elections, and cross our fingers. Quite the opposite.

Many believe Trump’s election interference will live and die with martial law. Indeed, martial law is the most powerful lever for outright election cancellation or postponement—I’ll come back to this in a bit—but it’s foolish to think they would bet the farm on that lever alone. Instead, we should expect to see them roll out a bevy of tactics, form-fit for different contexts. These could include:

• Executive orders by Trump that federally restrict mail-in voting, absentee ballots, or voting methods. Sure, courts might block these—but the Supreme Court could then overturn those rulings.

• Pushing for strict ID or citizenship documentation requirements that make it harder for people to register or vote.

• Pressure federal agencies to demand detailed voter data (e.g., Social Security numbers), increasing risk of inaccurate purges from voter rolls.

• Targeting or pressuring local and state election officials to change how elections are run or counted (see: Georgia in the 2020 election). While this form of interference could still happen after the fact if the election goes against Trump’s desires, it could also happen beforehand (read: now), with the administration encouraging state legislatures to pass election laws or redraw districts (gerrymandering) to favor one party, especially in states with tight races.

• The deployment of “poll watchers,” federal agents (ICE, CBP, or otherwise) or National Guard units at polling locations under the pretext of security, but in fact to intimidate voters or election workers. It’s also possible Trump will simply encourage “patriots” to undertake these actions in their duty as citizens.

• Using federal data systems (like the SAVE program) to remove eligible voters from rolls by misclassifying their eligibility status. Going further: the administration could actively encourage or legitimize state roll purges under the banner of “cleaning voter lists,” even if they disproportionately affect certain demographic groups. Because of DOGE and cooperation with surveillance companies like Palantir, this information is readily available.

• States, meanwhile, could proffer alternative electors if a (requisite majority of) their respective lawmakers greenlight such overt interference. Because Republicans currently hold the trifecta of power in government, nobody would necessarily be able to stop them from doing this.

I worry that many who are celebrating folks on the left becoming gun owners are unwittingly playing into the Trump administration’s hand, providing easy fodder for narrative warfare that will be used to bolster support for any of the above.

Now, again, does that mean I’m saying you should not own a gun if you believe it’s critical for your own self-defense? No. You should do whatever feels right for you and your situation. But there’s a whole lot of narrative smuggling happening right now—the sense that owning a gun is a precursor step to bringing about long overdue systemic change. What I’m cautioning against is jumping headfirst into that narrative.

Recently, laid out the case that promoting violence through gun ownership is a doom loop, writing “all of this 2A yeehaw bullshit is going to get vulnerable people killed. You are being manipulated.”

It’s worth watching the video in full here. I want to specifically direct your attention to this clip:

I recognize there are meaningful reasons why you would consider embracing your Second Amendment rights right now, and to repeat myself one more time for folks who only scan articles: if this feels like a necessary self-defense action for you and your circumstances, by all means, follow your conscience. But what do I vehemently caution against is viewing this as true change for the exact reason highlights: by doing so, you are playing on the gameboard the tyrants want you on, rather than pursuing the strategies they don’t want. This aspect isn’t a moral argument so much as a strategic one.

Of course, the moral dimension focuses on the outcomes of civil conflict—or God forbid a new kinetic Civil War—which will produce outsized harm for children and endangered groups.

So I’m asking you to be very, very vigilant about the feelings of cathartic frisson that might arise within you from the prospect of gun ownership. That affective dimension might feel like an afterthought, but it’s the absolute core of the matter. There is a critical difference between quietly becoming a gun owner and communicating that privately with friends and family for awareness vs. openly parading this choice on social media and calling for others to do the same, pointing to government tyranny as the raison d’etre.

Because the actual “war” that’s being fought right now—and the “war” that will determine what happens over the next few months and years—is a narrative one. It might surprise you to hear that, right now, the left is winning that war. Support for ICE is decreasing, and even Republicans are beginning to worry about the impacts this will have in the midterms. This is precisely because the tyranny is being made explicit; people are legally protesting without open violence and being executed in the streets for it.

To be clear, I do not intend this to mean that we should celebrate people being killed by our government because it helps our narrative. All of this is devastating; all of this has produced overwhelming moral injury in me, and in many ways disrupted my ability to think about anything other than ICE and the evolution of American fascism. But the facts are I know are this: whatever guns we might bring to the gun fight, they have us vastly outgunned. Their technologies of violence are many orders of magnitude more powerful and effective than anything we might try to counter them with.

Fighting fire with fire here will lead to many more deaths, and would inevitably bolster the administration’s arguments for why ICE actions are necessary—not only to sweep up innocent immigrants, but to crack down on “domestic terrorists,” and more broadly to make the case for intensifying their authoritarian crackdown.

It would be one thing if violence were our only option, but it’s not. We have a whole toolset for upending authoritarianism predicated on strategic nonviolence, adaptations of historical tactics that have actually worked. I don’t mean protests like No Kings—while those are perhaps a productive and cathartic first step for many, there’s so much more we can do that we haven’t yet embraced at scale: community organizing, constructing parallel systems of support, legal physical obstruction in your neighborhood, economic warfare (namely: a general strike!), and digital self-defense, to name just a few categories. I’m going to spend some time over the coming days and weeks researching and publishing what these tactics might look like in practice. But for now it feels critical to get this simple message out: promoting violence through gun ownership might feel cathartic, but it’s not the answer. Of course, neither is sitting around and waiting for the midterms. So we need to double down on the strategies that will actually yield durable, positive outcomes.

As I said in the subhead, this is still raw for me. I recognize there might be points I’m missing—and certainly recognize that it’s not a simple issue because violence has indeed worked to bring about systemic change in the past. I just feel strongly that it’s not the only or even best option, for the reasons outlined above. Put simply, I believe violence should only ever be considered as an absolute last resort, and despite how it may feel, we have so many other options at our fingertips right now.

I welcome disagreement in the comments, or, for subscribers, via a response to this email. What I want to share with my friends and comrades who are more excited about the gun narrative is an urgent desire to topple authoritarianism and promote democracy in the United States, one that is more just than this country has ever been, that lives into its stated ideals.

I’m sharing this not as an indictment of those who have been heartened by the lefty 2A movement—I recognize your feelings of righteous anger and I share those feelings. Rather, I’m asking you to slow down (following Báyò Akómoláfé’s usage) and remember that we have so many other, better options available to us to bring about systemic change. Yes, they involve hard work—work that is much more complex and multifaceted than the simplistic abstraction of gunfights in the streets. But if we want durable change, we’re going to have to get a whole lot more strategic than what I’ve been seeing. I hope you’re able to hear this.

Stay safe out there.

Welcome to the Urgent Futures podcast, the show that finds {signals} in the noise. Each week, I sit down with leading thinkers whose research, concepts, and questions clarify the chaos, from culture to the cosmos.

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My guest this week is Timothy B. Lee.

is a reporter who has written about technology, economics, and public policy for more than a decade. Before he launched Understanding AI in 2023, he wrote for the Washington Post, Vox.com, and Ars Technica. He has a master’s degree in computer science from Princeton.

If there are two letters in the English language you’ve been unable to escape over the past four years, it’s A and I. Artificial intelligence has emerged as the buzziest tech category since the metaverse and NFTs, but unlike those, AI has managed to reach a level of market dominance that almost defies imagination—to quote my article on the prospective AI bubble:

AI [absorbed] 57.9% of all global venture capital funding in early 2025…and a growing share of venture debt. The stock market itself has become hostage to this concentration: the “Magnificent Seven” dominate the S&P 500, with Nvidia alone accounting for close to 8% of its weight … a recent Financial Times report—ominously titled, “America is now one big bet on AI,” found that the hundreds of billions of dollars companies are investing in AI accounted for an eye-watering 40% share of all U.S. GDP growth in 2025.

Sit with that for a second.

Thus, whether you like it or not, it’s in your best interest to have a clear understanding of what AI is, even in the broad strokes. And that’s a deceptively tricky thing to do amid all the frenzied hype and doomerism; there’s a lot of nonsense and ungrounded speculation flying around. So I thought I’d sit down with somebody whose work helped ground my own understandings: today’s guest, Timothy B. Lee.

Tim published a piece on his Substack Understanding AI a few years ago called “Large language models, explained with a minimum of math and jargon,” which for my money is still the single most lucid plain-English breakdown you’ll find anywhere. And he’s continued to produce other informative analyses—if you haven’t already, I encourage you to subscribe to Understanding AI to, well, understand AI.

Understanding AI

Exploring how AI works and how it's changing our world.

By Timothy B. Lee

It’s remained a key reference for me as I navigate the AI hype-doom binary, so I wanted to bring him on the show to talk about what he’s learned and what he’s thinking about, including his current assessments of the AI industry and its future prospects, and he did not disappoint.

Longtime Urgent Futures audiences will note that he’s a bit more optimistic about the state of affairs than I am, though he’s certainly not a blind booster. And while I remain deeply critical of many of the social, economic, and political trappings associated with the AI industry, the clarity of his thought offered additional dimensions for consideration. So without further ado, please enjoy this illuminating conversation with Timothy B. Lee.

Another episode you might like:

A far out conversation on “rewilding reality” in the AI age with polymath :

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CREDITS: This podcast is edited and produced by Adam Labrie and me, Jesse Damiani. Adam Labrie also directed, shot, and edited the video version of the podcast, which is available on YouTube. The podcast is presented by Reality Studies. If you appreciate the work I’m doing, please subscribe and share it with someone you think would enjoy it.

Find more episodes of Urgent Futures at: youtube.com/@UrgentFutures. Past conversations include Taylor Lorenz, Lisa Messeri, Legacy Russell, William E. Rees, Renée DiResta, and more. Here is another recent episode with Alyssa Battistoni discussing her latest book Free Gifts: Capitalism and the Politics of Nature: