The Daily Zeitgeist - The Ministry for the (Non-Dystopian) Future 08.08.23

Episode Date: August 8, 2023

In episode 1527, Jack and Miles discuss… The Problem With a Dystopian Mindset, The Car Bloat Problem, Ideas That Work, The Need to Transition to a Post Capitalist System for World Governance, Regenerative Agriculture, Will it Take Massive Death? And more! The Car Bloat Problem "There’s a problem with transporting new vehicles across the country: They’re too heavy." Dimming the Sun to Cool the Planet Is a Desperate Idea, Yet We’re Inching Toward It How Mondragon Became the World’s Largest Co-Op Regenerative Agriculture READ: The Ministry for the Future by Kim Stanley RobinsonSee omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

Kay hasn't heard from her sister in seven years. I have a proposal for you. Come up here and document my project. All you need to do is record everything like you always do. What was that? That was live audio of a woman's nightmare. Can Kay trust her sister or is history repeating itself? There's nothing dangerous about what you're doing.

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sponsored by Gilead, now on the iHeartRadio app or wherever you get your podcasts. New episodes every Thursday. Hi, everyone. It's me, Katie Couric. You know, lately I've been overwhelmed by the whole wellness industry. So much information out there about flaxseed, pelvic floor, serums,

and anti-aging. So I launched a newsletter. It's called Body and Soul to share expert-approved advice for your physical and mental health. And guess what? It's free. Just sign up at katiecouric.com slash body and soul. That's K-A-T-I-E-C-O-U-R-I-C dot com slash body and soul. I promise it will make you happier and healthier. Hello, the internet, and welcome to season 299, episode of their daily psychic day production of my heart radio this is a podcast where we take a deep dive into america's shared consciousness and it is tuesday august 8th 2023 which of course means oh yes your boy is slipping because the fever done cooked his brain a little bit over the weekend. But he's back, folks. He's feeling better. I'm back, folks. And don't we love it?

It's actually National Dollar Day. Don't know what that means, but someone's holding a bunch of singles. National Happiness Happens Day. What? Dollars. Bribery. Underrated. There you go. When it comes to little children. That sounds weird. When it comes to my own children,

getting them to do their oh for a dollar for a dollar yo my five-year-old woke up this is this also has to do with like jet lag but yeah he woke up and did his they they do like like kuman yeah you know that like they they do that and he i he will fight me to the death to get like just one six traced. Usually this morning. Wait, what do you mean? He woke up. Oh, like to write a six?

Yeah, to just write the six. He'll do it wrong on purpose. He'll draw, you know, he just, he's. Drawing sperms and shit? Yeah. He's like, wow, I think it's like a six. I don't know. He got up before us and did his kuman today because there was a single

dollar at stake. So shout out to National Dollar Day. Wow. Did your younger, the youth there? That was the youth there. The elder was pissed that he got up before him.

Very competitive, these kids, these children these children very competitive i get it you see a dollar shit i was like when i would be when my grandparents would babysit me and like my cousins or some shit and like my younger cousin will get like a dollar so i'm like i'll do that eight times better i like trying to take his dollar yeah yeah anyway it's also national cbd day bruh uh national mochi day national pickleball day uh-oh ileball Day I know that's contentious Global Sleep Under the Stars Night National Frozen Custard Day

I love a frozen custard I had some frozen custard Core Brothers back in Ocean City Oh yeah When it drips it's still like so thick You know It's delicious It's a non-newtonian

substance yeah my name's jack o'brien aka i hit him up said i'm on the zeitgeist it's been a while i think since 99 we started talking work i asked what do you do but then he said private equity and that's when i started talking uaps nobody likes that private equity making cash on companies death throes have you heard of coal gas study i think we should have a living wage what's a fair wage again uh that is courtesy of johnny davis of Johnny Davis, folks. SST Spice on the Discord. And I'm thrilled to be joined, as always, by my co-host, Mr. Miles Gray! Oh, it's Miles Gray, a.k.a.

Gray Man. Ah! Father of the Zeit Child. Ah! Champion for his son. You're the master of Burbank and Lancashire for everyone. I mean, you know, Burbank, like the street, yeah, you know, I wouldn't say like as a town, like that's really my

shit, but it's adjacent. You know, it is bordering. It does touch. You touch elbows with North Hollywood. So yes, by just like when you're playing Civilization and you want to get a cultural victory, you know, the influence does spread past my borders into Burbank. yes thank you to taxi cr for that one on the discord my man well miles it is the expert guest episode and we are thrilled to be joined in our third seat

by nobody me i read a fucking book but a good book i am a genius i read a book worth talking about i'm gonna tell you about it jack likes to do this and i keep telling him i can read but he won't tell me the book and then he's like i gotta tell you about it i'm like if you just told me about it i could read it too this thing i i learned it's in my brain now so i gotta tell you about it have you ever met people who would not share a book title with you because like they were they wanted to sit on that information this is sort of pre-internet era no oh man they'll be like i forget what it's called or they're just like yeah yeah kind of like they don't want like they don't want other people like my one of my older cousins didn't want to share confessions of an economic hit man with me well that's top level intel man you can't tell you

about that on that i think he just liked it because like at the time when that book came out like he was trying to be like the fucking dos equis most interesting motherfucker in the room kind of thing yeah you actually know about the like how why the pan Canal is built. It's like, okay, hold on. Let's not do this right now. Where'd you learn that? Top-level clearance. You should really look at a lot of the engineering firms that do a lot of these large-scale infrastructural programs that are funded by the IMF.

And you're like, what? What is this? What? Oh, you read Confessions of an Economic Inventor? No. You did. But yeah, just like... That book that book though that was a real phenomenon where you felt like you were getting oh cia briefed with some information that like you're like looking around as you're reading it being like is someone gonna kill me

for no all this am i about to get two to the back of the dome right now yeah baskin robbins for having this book out i think the version that i had like looked like it was like printed on a dot matrix printer or something it wasn't it wasn't like a full-ass book like from a good publishing house oh no it was like passed over to me by there's probably just somebody doing the same thing as your cousin like wanting to see him like they were like in on some hot shit and so yeah created a version that looked like shit. Absolutely. Anyways, that's a good book that kind of touches on some of the themes that the book I'm talking

to you about today talks about. That book, I finished The Ministry for the Future. Yeah. So we're going to talk about some of the themes, some of the reasons that I think it's, you know, usually I'll read a book and then I'll just find really sweaty ways to like shoehorn the information I learned in the book into the conversation that we're having. Speaking of Trump, electric vehicles. What? What the fuck are you talking about? what what the fuck are you talking about uh so this is just you know we have these evergreen tuesday episodes this is a chance for me uh and you to kind of have a more extended conversation and i think about the subject the reason being like we have so many depictions of what like

end game climate change disaster looks like and we have really shitty examples and when you have someone who's a little puts a little bit more thought into their hard science fiction rather than like roland emmerich you get things that are tied a little bit more to what's happening around us and i think it it's yeah it offers it's good because it gives you a good idea of another way to actually take in what is happening on the planet but also you know we also there are many ways that we can combat this because those ideas are also presented in the book yeah yeah but before we get to any of that miles we do when it's just you and me we like to give our listeners a chance to uh get to know us a little bit better on the monday trending we do our overrated underrated thought this might be

a fun time to uh do a little bit search history what was my over my overrated was uh oh yeah like dude dude reviews dude barbie takes dude by work dude by mouth barbie reviews uh and underrated shout out pedialyte don't be like you stay fucking goaded baby and i don't even want some hot pedialyte takes as someone who even drank as much as i did when i was younger and like yeah who would just who in my mind hitting a volcano vaporizer and eating jack-in-the-box was how i did it like completely putting out the hydration element of it i really feel like fucking stupid for coming to pedialyte this late in the game and not even for a hangover for my my fucking illness. Yeah. The thing I

most recently Googled, Googled, goggled? Googled. Was what we were talking about right before we started recording. Chupa Hut toasted subs. I did not realize this was a thing.

And boy are their sandwich names a lot of fun. Yeah. For sandwich names. A lot of fun. Yeah. For people who know a lot about weed. I don't know that Jamaican Red or Cali Mist are weed strains. Yeah. They're like kind of old timey. They're like Gen X strains.

You know what I mean? Okay. I've heard of that. Yeah, exactly. You've heard of that because you heard it in the 80s film. Yeah. You know what I mean? I've heard that like yeah exactly you've heard of that because you heard it in the 80s film yeah you know what i think it was the 70s i think it was like blow when he was like first a weed dealer oh yeah yeah yeah exactly like that and like and like sensei anything like sensei like because that's from the word since the mia and as in no seeds

which was like one of like the first moves if you watch like narcos mexico's that's sort of like the or like origin crop that like one of the the big traffickers sort of started with off with is like we need like some real high quality shit no seeds and so anyway uh but you are did you go to a chiba hut you are interested now since we were just heard about it from you and super producer justin and now i believe that it exists i also don't think i knew how to spell chiba i think i was spelling it with an i in there chiba so oh well that is the japanese uh that's a region of japan of course it's very cultured so obviously obviously obviously 50 is the name of the sandwich that's all the pig baby smoked ham genoa salami, prosciutto pepperoni bacon.

I'm curious who the owner is. It's some guy named Scott Jennings, which feels like... That doesn't feel very Chiba Hut to me. Scott Jennings, dude. There's a YouTube video with this guy in a real flat rim Chiba Hut hat.

Hold on. Yeah. Let's hear this really quick in case this guy real flat-brimmed Chiba Hut hat. Oh, hold on. Yeah, let's hear this really quick in case this guy says some really sick stuff about Chiba Hut. Oh, Jack. Scott Jennings is here to fuck. My name is Scott Jennings. I'm the founder of the Chiba Hut. This dude is high. Yeah.

I'm a foodie. So I do get high as well. So I'm going to combine the two things i was best at dude arizona state he's wearing an arizona state sweatshirt with a surfboard uh looks like he couldn't be further away from an ocean and uh slamming a brew with your other hand yeah well okay you know what scott you okay looks You definitely present as someone who's been living that life. Our king, Scott Jennings.

They have fucking Kool-Aid there, like out the fountain. I remember the first time I went to a Chiba Hut was in Eugene, Oregon. My friend was going to U of O. And I was like, what the fuck is this? And he's like, it's all weed names, dude. And they have Kool-Aid. For whatever reason, dude. And they have Kool-Aid.

And for whatever reason, I love when places serve Kool-Aid. Yeah. It's just. Purple Kool-Aid. I actually had that in Eugene, Oregon as well, but I don't think it was the Chiba Hut. It was a different. Oh, but at a restaurant? Yeah, at a restaurant.

Yeah. And I know like, you know, like barbecue places will have them like in other like certain restaurants and like regionally they'll have it. But like you never see it in California. I think California is just like, what the fuck? Kool-Aid and I'm like, it's the best. You're already drinking a Sparta may all days might as well just go whole hog

with it. Yeah. How about you? What's a what's something in your search history? Oh, okay. So I I finished the latest season of Righteous Gemstones. Big recommend. You get some great Uncle Baby Billy in there. Oh, yeah, you got to the part where he was pushing Baby Billy's bobble bonkers.

Uh-huh, yeah, yeah. Baby bobble bonkers. Baby Billy's bobble bonkers. The way he says it with his like big fake teeth is just really something else but in as i watched the whole season there is a there like without spoiling anything they're like sturgill simpson is is playing a character in it the country artist and i i've heard tell of him i've not really like listened to his music but in it he sings like this song which i think is originally by the gatlin brothers called

all the gold in california and it's just kind of like the the way it was sung and like the arrangement was actually really fun and like one of the first times i was like i like this little country ditty here and so i i went on it like i was just looking at every conceivable cover of this song like who else is saying it like who started singing it i watched like eight versions of the gatlin brothers singing in the 70s i don't know what grabbed you just it's got a good it's the i think there's like at a certain point it becomes like a a choral thing like there's like multiple voices singing so the harmonies become really good and it reminded me of kind of like gospel like singing.

So I think that, and there's like, there was a little bit of tambourine and shit in the background. So it felt, it was very accessible from like the gospel perspective in my mind. I think that's what kind of opened the door. And then I just liked the, I think I just liked the song too.

Cause it's kind of about like show business, but in this like very country way where it's like, Hey man, living in the spotlight very country way where it's like, Hey man, living in the spotlight, we'll kill a man out. Right. And it's just,

you know, it's, you know, you don't want to, you don't want to be chasing after all that glitters. Cause it ain't gold. They got some of the best needle drops. Oh yeah. The stand on the word at the end of the,

that it's like one of the first episodes after they like hit the guy with their car. Yeah. They killed him. Yeah. Drop right into a stand on the word. It's whoever one of the first episodes after they like hit the guy with their car. Yeah. They killed him. Yeah. Drop right in to stand on the word. It's whoever the music director is for Danny McBride and all of his projects. They're fuck.

And it could be him, too. But my God, from like even eastbound and down. Yeah. Like songs, too, where you're like, what the fuck? This is fantastic. Hmm. Fantastic. Yeah. All all right let's take a quick break we'll come back uh and we'll get into the book that i read about climate change the

novelization of the day after tomorrow we'll be right back this summer the nation watched as the Republican nominee for president was the target of two assassination attempts, separated by two months. These events were mirrored nearly 50 years ago when President Gerald Ford faced two attempts on his life in less than three weeks. President Gerald R. Ford came stunningly close to being the victim of an assassin today. Gerald R. Ford came stunningly close to being the victim of an assassin today. And these are the only two times we know of that a woman has tried to assassinate a U.S. president. One was the protege of infamous cult leader Charles Manson. I always felt like Lynette was kind of his right-hand woman. The other, a middle-aged housewife working undercover for the FBI in a violent revolutionary underground. Identified by police as Sarah Jean Moore.

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And we're back and i gotta say like so you know i've got to read read the news for for this for this job but to this point my and not really you know i'm yeah you you folks can tell I'm just I'm skimming here and there. But in terms of like my fiction intake. Yeah. The climate change fiction that I've taken in over the course of my life has mainly been mad. The Mad Max is. Yeah. All the Mad Max films. Waterworld. Uh huh.

The Day After Tomorrow. Yeah. Yeah. And I think that's... I mean, 2012, I think seems like it should be a climate change parable, but it's actually, it goes out of its way to say

that it's like something weird happening with the core of the Earth. Yeah, new neutrinos, Jack, from a solar flare, obviously are doing something in the core or something something but it's also 2012 mine was new that so it was a spooky year yeah dude did you did you buy it did you even part of you think about 2012 no we i mean at cracked we definitely covered the bullshit but we i did not i did not i didn't believe it was I was not worried. I remember in 2009,

I started thinking about it. Oh yeah. I was like, damn, I'm 25. Like, what can I get done? Like,

can I make my mom proud? Three years. 2012 and shit. Cause right now I'm like living with her and like just eating all her food and shit. Like struggling to get a job in the recession. Like, please. How?

What do I do? do but yeah it was scariest of all years there were those mitt romney videos yeah yeah yeah but uh i don't know the solutions of those films and in just like the popular imagination to a large degree seems to be everyone's gonna die and then you're left behind because you're the main character of the story to kill or be killed i think the day after tomorrow i remember ending with people like on the space station looking at the globe and the u.s is like mostly frozen ice yeah and then they're like yeah but the air never looked so clean it And it's like, that's the earth healing itself, killing us all off.

So just, yeah, just put it, just freezing North America is the solution. I mean, fine. If so be it, I guess.

Yeah. Do you have anything else to offer us? That does seem to be like sort of stylish. Nihilism seems to be the way that is at least I think I default approach climate change until like we really started digging into it right because like books like man or not books you know novels like water world again the novelization very fucking water world fucked me up so bad as a kid like fucked me up because wouldn't that come out like 94 or some shit i'm like 10 years old i went to see that the magic johnson theater with my grandfather and he was like wow

he's like that's i was like what a movie huh and i was like shaken to my core as a kid really yeah and i was like because you were like this is how we're going to be living. And well, the logic made sense. Cause like you knew about like the earth heating up and pollution and things at the time. Right now we had just celebrated getting rid of styrofoam. I remember in like CFCs and shit. And, but like,

but the logic path of earth become warm, ice cap, ice melts. Therefore the water everywhere. Visa V. Yeah. And I was a bad swimmer. I was a terrible swimmer so there was nothing more terrifying than a world where everything was someone's pool party where i sucked at swimming yeah you know what i mean and so like there were multiple layers to it and again that shit didn't really offer you any

solution aside from like maybe you could find this map to find a fucking hidden island you could fucking live on or some shit yeah but it wasn't like you're gonna have to wear a t-shirt to cover your weird chest hair because it's a pool party exactly and i think the kids aren't ready to really accept that yet or your your three hairs you have on your armpit my chest hair grew in. I still have a weird patch of chest hair, but it grew in asymmetrically. What do you mean? Like it favored one side of your chest? It favored one side and was very like, it wasn't like a small amount came at a time. It was like, bam, there's a weird patch of hair.

Like I was just like one tenth of my chest was werewolf right away no way yeah yeah and just like coming down like the left chest poor guy yeah so wait you had to wait so so oh so you were you were rocking you were rocking the shirt in the pool kind of thing sweatshirt in the pool no but but yeah that that was a thought that crossed my mind yeah if that's if that's water world then that's your your cross to bear too but but yeah no i think all that to say is like so from time immemorial my concept of climate change is literally skip any anything in the middle it's just jump to Earth death where I'm holding the dust that was once my family.

Yeah. And it ignores what the reality of the next 40 years is probably going to look like. So the goal of the mystery for the future is to imagine the time between now and you know when it's like people describe it as like utopian but millions of people like die from climate change which it seems like might be inevitable but it's describes a possibility of like humanity changing the way that we live on the earth to actually like have a chance and it's very i don't know i kept waiting for it to like

have like a plot twist or something where it's like and actually i was the one blowing up those planes because and instead it's just very, it's kind of hyper, like feels like his goal the whole time is just like, keep it realistic. And this is like the main character is a bureaucrat and you are just like kind of working through it. And it's,

I read a review that said it's interesting in the way that like the map of your hotel room floor becomes interesting when someone pulls the fire alarm like you are just like okay well this this is certainly relevant to me now it's not like i'm not saying it's bad it's definitely worth reading but it's like it really delves into like there's long passages that are just meetings with like finance people and stuff and talking about how you would make this shit possible. But gives you a much more vivid, you know, idea of like what potentially is the work or the processes that we're going to undertake rather than like because I feel so much of what we're experiencing right now is to be like, so are we ever going to undertake. Rather than like. Because I feel so much of. What we're experiencing right now. Is to be like. So are we ever going to get off fossil fuels? Yeah.

And then we kind of feel really fucking. Just destitute. And downtrodden. And like you know hopeless. Because of just like focusing on one part. When this is like a multifaceted issue. With many ways to approach it. To solve it. And I think that's what that's why I appreciate works like that that can kind of break's been associated with the author of this book he's

not the one who said it and like when i've heard him interviewed about it he's like i don't i don't like that quote anymore but like it's easier to imagine the end of the world than the end of capitalism for me that rings true like i just couldn't yeah and and therefore every solution that like comes up i'm like but corporations are just gonna like fuck that out of existence like if you like any anything like that is just going to get ruined by us and i think one of the things that i learned in reading this book is that it's hard to imagine the next 40 years from inside the united states and like especially from inside like if you pay a lot of attention to the united states zeitgeist like it is it has not been leading us in a direction that would suggest like that

these things are possible right that we're going to be talking about so i don't know let's let's dive in i mean the first big question the book suggests that like the radicalizing event that had that will bring about this sort of global zeitgeist change is that india sees a heat wave that kills like 5 million people. Like it's the, there's a certain point at which if the humidity is high enough and the heat is high enough, your body just can't cope.

Like the human body can't cope. And so like, it seems like if, if things don't change, this is something that's somewhat inevitable. And this radicalizes india as a country and they start doing some of the things that have been like sort of controversial ideas that people have put out there like you know putting reflective material in the upper

atmosphere to reflect to like basically dim the sun um that we we did miss snowpiercer as an oh yes there's another uh cheerful look just get on the train yeah how we might address climate change but they call it in the book like a double pentatubo because pentatubo was the volcanic eruption that most recently like significantly altered the temperature globally for a period of time, I think a year or two. The people of India dropped a double pentatubo on the rest of our asses

over the objection from the UN. It's temporary, but it's the first thing that changes people and starts getting people motivated to, all right,

how are we going to deal with this? We need like, because that can never happen again. Yeah. That can never happen again. It's the largest mass death, like in the history of the world. And again,

if you're just tuning in, we're talking about a science fiction book. Right. What does this happen? Yeah. Talking about your ministry for the future. If you're just joining us, this is this happening? Talking about ministry for the future. If you're just joining us, this is Terry Grofe. Kim Stanley Roberts.

It's science fiction, but a recent article in the New Yorker pointed out that we're actually not far from the thing, from that inciting incident happening. This spring, or I guess it was last spring, saw the most dire pre-monsoon heat wave in Indian history. And it was only a slightly lower humidity that prevented a real life, you know, event on par with what happens in the book. And still like lots of people died. Lots of people are dying from heat already, you know,'s just our i don't know like it we've talked

we've suggested that it's just you know because it's hard to imagine and there aren't that many movies that depict people dying from heat so you like you don't really have it in your head like what that looks like and the pictures that come with it in newspapers or people having fun while opening up a fire hydrant. Right. Yeah. And so this is an event that like kind of makes it real for everybody in India,

at least. And that, that, that seems to be something that they also wrestle with that. I'm glad they did. It's not like all of a sudden everybody in texas is like man what happened to the people in india is really bad and we need to act on it in the book they're like it needs to happen to you or to like your community for it to be real too yeah and clearly we're i

mean that's usually how the u.s works is like it has to literally be on your fucking doorstep, walk through the door and fuck your shit up. And then you're like, oh, OK, so that's a thing. But yeah, he talks about an example of like a neighborhood that got destroyed by a tornado. And like the people in the neighborhood over were like, yeah, well, that was on them. They were they were in the path of that tornado. And it's like that could have been anything. Well, yeah, that's like even like those, like,

like small group of Republicans in North Carolina. They're like really worried about sea level rise. And yeah, like the other people like, just shut up. They're like, I live here and I'm watching it. What are you talking about?

Right. Yeah. But anyways, so he wrote this book in 2019. Right. He gave a speech this pastil that he actually said the book is too bleak like he says calling like the the book talks about how the 30s is what he calls a zombie decade because of all the like institutions that are still coasting on the inertia of you know

the past order of things right which you know banks running everything in the united states and stuff like that even though they no longer serve us or you know make sense in the world and he thinks that's actually already too pessimistic and like to me that sounds like oh that's a great description of the world as it feels inside america right now you're in that in between yeah just things that are coasting off of inertia but he sees a lot of like really cool programs around the world that he finds encouraging i do think this book kind of turned him into a public eco intellectual and so he is getting a lot of the information about like all the stuff people are trying, which is cool. It's it's stuff that doesn't get covered in the mainstream media. And that's probably why, you know, I want to talk about it so much because it does feel like it's being kept like a secret.

Right. From us. And it's kind of important information. So what are the kind of departures from our current norm that society moves into in terms of addressing this? Yeah, everyone just needs to get a Tesla

and you're good. Yeah, just get a Tesla and give you a lot of good money and we're good here. Oh, then alright. Well, dude, it's been a great episode. Right, gang? You heard it. been a great episode right gang you heard it get a tesla baby get that tesla tesla no actually there's i it's conspicuous in the omission that like he doesn't even bring up electric vehicles or if he does it's just like as a like there's more adoption of this happening like in the early stages sure sure we actually like there's another thing from my search history is like car bloat which is something i found about found out about over

the weekend which is that like as people are making this transition to electric vehicles they're also making the cars way bigger way bigger on the roads yeah and even in europe like europe i'm sorry i picture europe as like a bunch of people hunched inside like those little tykes size, you know, those like plastic red and yellow. Yeah. Like that's what I picture the shape of European cars. But like the third most popular highest sales car model in Europe in 2022 is an SUV. Like they're They're turning into us. Yeah, we touched on

just on the normal show about how people who are city planning and do that kind of stuff are just like, cars are too fucking big for streets, for fucking parking lots. You're not... Eventually, the cars are literally just going to be too fucking big and people are just going to

bump into each other. Not to mention that these cars are literally going to be too fucking big and people are going to like fucking bump into each other. Not to mention that these cars are just like way fucking heavier and more tankish than ever do. Yeah, there's so much heavier like EVs like it compared to the like similar size gas burning vehicle. It's not like, well, so you should keep burning gas. But it's just it's a good example of like how in the current system. Right. Like why I'm so cynical is like the current system will find a way to take it and turn it into like in this case, an arms race. Yeah.

Or some kind of consumer consumerist commodification fuck fest where it's like, oh, yeah yeah the way we get out of it is you buy this thing yeah it's like but that's more consumption when we're talking about what what so what the fuck yeah and so yeah it's it's like breaking roads and it's also it's like really scary because those car carriers so the way the way this is being dealt with right now by the way just real quick and then we'll get into the things that actually work but just as an example of why this like hasn't naturally occurred to us like this this is what gets done with good ideas is like so they get these giant like f-150 pickup trucks that are twice the size of like an f-150 in 1993 but they're electronic and then they are like one of the complaints that people have is that when you have to like transport

them they put them on the back of those car carriers yeah but they're so big that like they don't you can you can only fit like a handful of them oh on the back of car carries wise like because yes you can see them loaded up with like the normal combust combustion cars but the uvs are so much heavier oh those things are already the scariest things to be driving next to oh fuck yeah like those car carriers where you can like just see the weight like you can just see it looks like it's like a drunk like 300 pound person just like teetering next to you and i have seen bad boys too so i'm already like terrified of what's going to happen with those so the way that the shipping and you know

trucking industry is trying to deal with the fact that it's like you can't fit as many on is just asking for them to change the weight limit on car carriers so that they can carry see right more of them we're ants we're we're not salt we're not a rise we're not rising to the occasion with like actual solutions stupidity so to make things more convenient for the sale of objects yeah and so this novel asks you to imagine that like they're like as the consequences of climate change continue to become realer and realer to people, you get a world where people are like, wait, what if instead of just doing that,

what if we built more reasonably sized cars? Or what if since cars don't actually work and electric vehicles are still polluting through the like manufacturing process like what if we found other solutions for getting around like what yes so one of the things that he talks about is just the need to transition to a post-capitalist system for world governance, just generally. All right. Just like that. Right.

He says, easy. Easy does it. I love that. Oh, yeah, for sure. The point is that the climate and inequality are part of the same problem. 100%. The extremely wealthy will continue to make decisions as if the rest of us don't exist because under the current system, practically speaking, as far as if the rest of us don't exist because under the current system,

like practically speaking, as far as they're concerned, we don't exist. They never have to see us. They never have to like deal with the consequences of their actions to also capitalism as currently constituted. We'll continue to extract them, like burn fossil fuels,

if not otherwise encumbered. Right. And so like the current system is set up to reward people for doing things that are bad for us. Yeah, right, right, right. The incentives are things that are not moving towards solutions or anything. Or they may be perceived as that in the beginning, but ultimately no. Yeah.

And the most powerful country in the world uh still the u.s and it's run by capitalism without restraint like proudly like right so one of the things he uses the model of mondragon okay which is a worker-owned collective in the basque region of spain españa uh-huh país País Vasco. instead you have a tryout period and then if they like you enough you get a chance to buy in to be a part owner of the company that you work for right and there is like a ceo type person that's called a managing director and you know but the members themselves vote on many of everything i mean yeah like everything yeah strategy. Strategy, salaries, policy, the votes

of all members, whether they're senior management or blue collar, all count equally. So like in it, he's saying that like moving first of all, like we're going to be probably moving towards worker owned collectives in order to survive. Yes. And that is a really like that example. If you

really like read up on there's like documentaries or you can find shit about the mondragon like they it it it will blow your mind as an american labor worker to see that you're like and then so the person right there in the factory line they own they also own the company yes Yes, exactly. And then, but what happens if they make less money? What about layoffs? Well, see, they own the company. So then rather than answering to shareholders who are saying, well, I need my fucking shareholder value to hold up,

so you need to lop some heads off and do layoffs, they decide internally what has to be sacrificed, what can be dialed up, what can be dialed down in order for the company to keep going long term and like that is such a completely different way to engage with what you do for work when you actually have ownership for it which i'm glad to see something like that would seem normal like would seem like naturally like a fair thing to somebody if you like presented the idea to them is potentially especially if the alternative of like just full-blown unfettered capitalism or neoliberalism the current like

form of capitalism we live under is just like we start to see the evidence more clearly that it just doesn't like it's not possible going they got fucking little kids working at the bars now right like that's where we're at so they can get their little hands inside the pint glasses miles and that helps yeah they keep the fruit flies out of the mixer bottles like no this is it but again yeah like we it we can see it play out because it is almost going like we actually already have a script it's called called Idiocracy. Right. Yeah. It's it is that version. My brain, you know, is so like capitalism poisoned like it immediately when you talk about like a co-op like there's

this quote in this profile of Mondragon in The New Yorker where Larry Summers, our favorite guy, Harvard president. So he must be liberal and smart, characterized co-ops as intrinsically sleepy and short-sighted. When you put workers in charge of firms and you give them substantial control over the firms, the one thing you do not get is expansion. You get more for the people who are already there. Wow. Everyone is greedy and will try and fuck you, so you just have to fuck them back. It's just that very basic, intrinsic,

kind of cellular greed capitalism model of humanity that I grew up in. That's how I thought for a long time the world worked. So Mondragon, there's probably a good reason that we don't know about it is it like has succeeded sorry did i cut you off no no i'm just kind of just rambling on the side agreeing because yeah i mean like the it's just wild when he's basically saying it's like yeah the problem is no just destructive growth right that's the thing that's the only thing about it and when you hear

people who work in worker-owned co-ops or like even people in like in mondragon they're like it's clear profit is important because you need that to to help sustain a business but that is not the fucking be all end all it's to it's's to, it's to ensure the longevity of the, of, of this project and just be able to have it be something. Cause like these, some of these people are like second generation, uh,

in the co-op or they're like, yeah, my fucking parents started this shit. Yeah. And so now it's up to us to like, to, to shepherd it. As far as the,

like no growth thing is concerned. This started in, I think the forties as like a four people four students from like this priest who is the founder like created a community college and then like worked with four of the people who graduated from there who were like really promising students like i don't think i have all this correct but like it started with like four people that he was like i bet you guys would make a good company and now they employ around 80 000 people 76 of those work in manufacturing co-ops and are owners and it's not like i think the only thing that i had really heard of as a co-op in the u.s

is like grocery stores or like little like boutique stores this like mondrag on like what one of the manufacturing companies makes bicycles at an industrial scale others make elevators produce huge industrial machines using the production of jet engines rockets wind turbines they have schools large chain, a catering company, 14 technology, R&D centers. They even have a McKinsey-like consulting firm. Hey, see? Right? Yeah, exactly.

In 2021, the network brought in more than 11 billion euros in revenue. So I don't know. Like, I don't want this to be like, and they've never had a problem, but it's so directly flies in the face of everything I've ever heard about socialism or the possibilities of how an incentive structure can work because of being raised in this country. And so the book just like generally creates a model of the present and near future where like things just aren't, I think I assumed like the internet had this like promise when it first like became a thing and like websites and you know, the freedom of information. And I just assumed that like the fact that it inevitably got fucked up

by the forces of capital like it that it is inevitable and but like when you take a step back and like think about how things could work under a system where like the economy works to serve people rather than like people working to serve the economy like that's a line from the book that is like so basic i'm embarrassed that i stopped and like wrote it down but it like seems profound that was your that was your real eyes realize real lies you're like oh what the fuck man hold on man yeah i totally know it's so simple but again to when you've been propagandized and evangelized about capitalism through from fucking the gamete phase of your life yeah like yeah it does it does seem like it's just like you can't even imagine

the inversion of something it's like no what yeah we gotta we gotta help the economy it's like no motherfucker there's nothing about social media that inevitably says that the cup the companies who provide that service would sell your information for marketing purposes and it's kind of weird that like it turned into like a brainwashing like addictive competitive like fucked up thing like it right like but that's what hyper capitalism does to everything like the blockchain is a cool technology in theory and hyper capitalism turned it into a fucking ponzi scheme right like that's what people think of when they think of a blockchain whereas like it could be a very valuable tool and probably will be into the future they actually do talk about the blockchain event how is it used in the future in the in uh ministry for the future they use it to just make it so that the hyper

wealthy can't hide their money in tax havens like all money is yeah all money's, so it can't be hidden anywhere. And the way that that's brought about is that there's an attack on the Swiss banks where a lot of the hyper-wealthy hide their money. And they lose track of all the different accounts that they have. And basically, they're like, all like all right well we need to make it so that this information is just publicly available yeah because the old system kind of no longer works and i guess the the importance of the internet like point that is that like now everyone knows so much more than they did before like the internet gives us access to all this information all these tools for accessing the information and it's still just like a tiny drop but it

right it's harder to fool people and it's easier to kind of it's going to be harder to hide the realities of the ship from people or at least it should be in theory right right right it's i mean it's interesting because so many of these things right because i know another element because i've i've seen kim stanley roberts speak before too and he also talks out about like regenerative agriculture and you know that for something you know in my mind it's kim stanley robinson i've said that before i think yeah what did i just say stanley ro. Oh, yeah. Sorry. And I said Kim Stanley Roberts for anyway, like in other talks I've seen him give just like about the book and just like other sort of like climate change. is to also see like regenerative agriculture be brought up so much which again feels like when the ultimate sort of theme like if there is any sort of quote-unquote solution it's like to completely like unfuck our heads with the idea that growth is good and we need to be seeking

profits at all costs yeah and especially with regenerative agriculture it's like a really good way to wrap your head around just how we do things in like the most backwards way. Because current like just gigantic mega agribusinesses, we're all about, especially in America, just monocrops. It's like this piece of ground will only grow fucking soybeans or corn or whatever. When that's done, we're going to gonna fucking we're gonna boost the fucking because it's all about yields what we can get from this it's all about putting as many fertilizers in and all kinds of chemicals and shit to bring about higher yields and then once we pull that shit out we just let that patch of dirt stay fucking dirt and do let like don't let like nature do its thing

like allowing like for example just like the soil erosion is a huge thing that I was not really like really understanding its connection to our ecosystem. And the destructive way that we farm doesn't allow for our soils to actually regenerate the microorganisms that it needs and also allows for things like, you know, better water absorption. allows for things like, you know, better water absorption. So they're like versions of it, like no till farming, like we're not just fucking ripping shit up and allowing plants to put roots deeper into the ground, which means if they have, they can go deeper into the ground photosynthesis, they can take that fucking CO2 and put carbon directly into the soil. And another huge part of it, I did not realize was that as a reservoir to capture carbon, the ground is like something like many times larger than the atmosphere in terms of its capacity to absorb carbon. And like, when you look at something like that and you're like, holy shit,

a lot of, and I'm, again, I'm doing a very like, uh, very simplified distillation of, of regenerative agriculture, but the idea that we need to be actually working in harmony with the earth actually also helps for things like the desertification of our land, for drought and, you know, carbon capture. And now that's... Miles, how do we 10x that? How do we scale that? Okay, this is how we 10x that.

Double click on that real quick for me. Yeah, yeah. Bank play? Bank run on that? Yeah. Dude, what do you think? VC play on that? Yeah. Dude, what do you think? VC play on that? Yeah, this should regenerate about agriculture.

Should be people's new social media. It should be people's new bank. Well, this is the thing. This is where our old ways kind of slip in, right? Because now many people are using the term, but with interchangeable definitions, whether that means it's regenerative in the sense in the process that we're doing or that the outcomes are regenerative. And they mean very different things in terms of how we're interacting with the earth. So again, like when I read stories about that and some people like the most optimistic forecasts and the white paper that

the stud that this like forecast was based off of has been debated by other scientists was saying that like, you know, if you actually were able to properly do certain regenerative practices on like all of our grasslands and farmlands, and that just sort of became the norm, we would capture all of the carbon that's emitted right now already and have the capacity for more gigatons of carbon. Now, I think a more not getting completely carried away with that version of that, at least for me, that is heartening is the idea that we we have all of these tools that we know work. Right. And whether that means it's going to 100 percent or even fucking 30 percent, any reduction is a good thing, along with all the other things we're trying to do as a, as a, as a, as a species, but being able to see that those things are available. These are things that we are trying to implement. People are definitely trying to implement it. There are definitely like large interest groups that are trying to do it for many different reasons, but that helps me as a human being move away a little bit from the water

world idea of where this thing goes and to know that like like they're there we have the ways to do this we just have to fucking put it together yeah and that's the fucking hard part right and but i think for me it's better to have an idea of how to like to actually address the situation rather than to be completely resigned to the fact that it's going to overtake it. Like the way I felt about police violence in 2014 is very different than how I think about police violence and how to actually address it now. Now that I've, I've done like more research, more work, more interacting, more conversations with people to know that it's not just like, man, it's always going to be like this. It's like, well, no, there's things like qualified immunity that are holding us back. And in the same way, it's really good to be able

to also arm yourself with these kinds of points of knowledge because it goes a little bit less from like, okay, well, I guess I'm going to wear my football pads with spikes in it and face paint i burnt out honda prelude in the desert to being like no man like these are a lot of things like we need to be thinking about more and are there but again that's that's our main battle is to not is to be able to coalesce around these things yeah kim stanley robinson like in a in a speech from roberts kim stanley i think i've been saying roberts and that might have fucked everyone else up but i it was funny i when i googled his name a few weeks ago i found a i found a like what one of the google hits was a transcript of one of our podcasts where i called him Kim Stanley Roberts.

I know. And every time I actually talk about in my mind, I always say Swiss family Robinson. I said to Kim Stanley Robinson too. That's a miracle, empirical rap. Miracle. Yeah.

Yeah. Sorry, y'all the fever, fever cooked my brain. But he, he talks about how like in the years since the book, because the book does talk about regenerative agriculture, but he's like, I was a little bit skeptical that it was as big a deal as people were making it seem. He was like, I thought it might be kind of like AI, like this buzzword that people are throwing out.

I'm like, this is just the solution and we can, knock it out and 10 exit and scale it and he he's like no it's you know it's actually a real thing but again it's it really is like a thing that i've heard him say multiple times is that like and he says it a couple times in the book also is that like profit is inherently predatory and is inherently going to like that that can't be the motive of a world that gets out of this problem so right because that's yeah if that if that in any way is intersecting with what's presented to you as a solution it is not it's actually the problem and even as much and we see so much, like in how we are presented products as consumers, as a way to do your part, et cetera.

When you do, you do a lot better is like, if you fucking can find ways just to do things immediately around you. But yeah, it is, that's kind of what's interesting or that's, that's what makes it so daunting is that it's like, okay,

so the way out of this is the opposite of this eventually. Yeah. But I think at a certain point there, there are too many people who are not benefiting from the current like order of things that you, I guess our hope is that we can, we just hit that critical mass where we're all realized like it's, like something has to be drastically different.

Yeah. All right. Let's take one more quick break. We'll be right back. This summer, the nation watched as the Republican nominee for president was the target of two assassination attempts separated by two months. These events were mirrored nearly 50 years ago, when President Gerald Ford faced two attempts on his life in less

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I've been thinking about you. I want you back in my life. It's too late for that. I have a proposal for you. Come up here and document my project. All you need to do is record everything like you always do. One session. 24 hours.

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And we're back. And just real quickly, I mean, some of the other ideas that they mention that I think are worth mentioning here. So I've heard a lot about like carbon credits and some financialization of like giving people a reason to do like he talks about how our current system incentivizes people to do things that are bad for the planet and bad for other human beings. So in, in the book, they like create a currency that is basically in the same way that the

dollar was originally backed by gold, like the gold standard. This is backed by a carbon standard where, but like a reverse gold standard where it's backed by the absence of carbon. So it's like, you know, all the oil or natural gas that is

currently in the earth that hasn't been extracted like money is created that represents that value and like gives it to the people who like have access who have ownership over that energy and then like they basically get paid over a period of time as long as they're like good actors but it's it's an interesting idea that i think is only interesting to me because it it right it's about something that is the the extinction of the entire species and many other species that's our new gold standard is preventing that yeah but it's like it's kind of the idea which i don't know yeah well but to your point it's like when you look at where like you know fucking funds go from like national banks or like the imf and stuff like that it it's not we're not incentivizing people to to undertake these kinds of projects that are going to be a net benefit it's like oh yeah like some more drilling

okay yeah like we'll finance that rather than realizing but again that's another subtlety that we have to be able to approach and is happening on a smaller scale you know like they do have funds set aside to be able to like help stabilize other nations that are going through like economic uncertainty you know obviously in the past that's been done with in a very coercive manner but it it's like it's like the conversations are changing there i think it just feels very weird right now because we're like at the doorstep of hopefully a lot of things changing so they just feel so fucking in between yeah but my hope is that it's moving in that direction i don't know i mean he he's also, he's pretty impressed by the IRA under Biden,

the Inflation Reduction Act. You know, it's wild that they had to call it the Inflation Reduction Act to get it passed, but it is a huge spend. It's the biggest climate bill of all time. And, you know, he says that like groups have estimated that $1 trillion a year would be enough to get people to do the work to get us to a non-apocalyptic future, which sounds like a lot. But the world domestic, like the WDP, the gross domestic product for the world is seventy five trillion dollars a year.

And we don't have a world if we don't spend that one trillion. So can we connect those dots? Yeah. And I think I think we are there's i think we were watching some probably the same talk too is that for where we're at it is important to understand yes we are watching the world literally burn at times flood in biblical ways we had never seen before but that like i think he was likening it to the san francisco bay and like a choppy like the top of the fucking there's a cross chop it looks really fucked up there's disasters or setbacks and things like that but ultimately the current is moving in

the right direction right and that is again it's not a cure-all to like, or to think that the work is done, but I think it definitely helps to at least understand a little bit and make sense of that despite we are in this very chaotic transition, but there is in fact a transition happening. It's not that it's just staying at one place. So in that sense, I'm like, I, it helps me feel a little bit better while also helping to like, I know like, Oh, these are the kinds of things like we're going to have to do.

Yeah, absolutely. All right. Well, that's kind of what I wanted to do with the episode. It was just like kind of talk about some of these ideas that are giving me maybe not like outright hope, but like, just,, but like just,

I feel like I, a lot of my pessimism was misplaced or at least like not, not based on how things could actually go. I wasn't fully aware. And this book helped me to kind of deal with that. So, but I'm like, as is very evident from,

you know, everything i've said here i'm very early in my education process on this so you know zeitgang hit us up let us know like what what we could be reading what what's interesting to you if there's anything giving you hope on this front and yeah i think that's gonna do it anything else you wanted to cover yeah there's um there's no no i thought i did no i was gonna say something frivolous about baskin robbins again but no is there a new baskin robbins no no i'm talking about it but yeah i think again i just say like to your point, it's always important when we're faced with existential dilemmas like this, that we don't just take the water world route in our mind and just go and then it's water world. Yeah, that is truly like that is how you get.

That's the quickest road to apathy for any topic that we're facing right now. the quickest road to apathy for any topic that we're facing right now and i think it's it's so much more you you you feel a little bit more connected when you understand that like this is something that many people are putting their expertise into but there's also just that critical mass thing that we have to hit where we all can collectively say that like this is how we have to do it and you know uh unshackling ourselves from the like the financial overlords well that's that's another conversation probably for a different kind of episode we'll probably have robert evans on for that yeah yeah i think there's like i noticed myself having this moment where i was like there's like a narcissism about wanting to be part of like the end times and like there is as you imagine like that oh no

this is going to keep going on and there's going to keep being struggle and like the future and like this conflict never stops coming and you're just trying to do your part to like get people to a better place in this conflict like the people who come after you like there's a i i get why people want it to be nah fuck that it's mad max because there's like something it appeals to the inherent like american narcissism but it's actually like super unhealthy and bleak well right because you look at preppers and they're like yeah don't worry dude i'll eat i'll eat tin cans of food and that's how i get out of it yeah it's like but that's i can i get you know what it probably food and that's how i get out of it yeah it's like but that's i can i get you know what it probably feels like that's how you're gonna do it but the solutions

actually seem a lot easier yeah and you get to hang out with people we miss each other believe like believe it or not that's a you probably a lot of problems are caused by the fact that we we miss hanging out with people well we miss you all right that's it where can people find you miles at miles of gray wherever and you know all the podcasts yeah you can find me at jack underscore Well, we miss you. All right. That's it. Where can people find you, Miles? At Miles of Gray, wherever. And you know, all the podcasts. Yeah. You can find me at Jack underscore O'Brien. That's going to do it for this episode.

Back tomorrow. Talk to y'all then. Later today. We're back this afternoon. Yeah. See the fever fried everyone's brain. Yeah. Fever.

Your fever fried my brain. Exactly. All right. We'll talk to y'all later. Bye. Bye. Bye. Kay hasn't heard from her sister in seven years. I have a proposal for you.

Come up here and document my project. All you need to do is record everything like you always do. What was that? That was live audio of a woman's nightmare. Can Kay trust her sister or is history repeating itself? There's nothing dangerous about what you're doing. They're just dreams. Dream Sequence is a new horror thriller from Blumhouse Television, iHeartRadio, and Realm.

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