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 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.
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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 Timothy B. Lee on the state of AI:
