Wild with Sarah Wilson

Naomi Klein (No Logo author, journalist, filmmaker) wants to warn us about what the tech billionaire edgelords are *really* up to. Her new book, End Times Fascism, cowritten with political organiser and author Astra Taylor, explains the seemingly bizarre (and chaotic) alliance between far-right Christians, the megalomanic tech bros, Israel and MAGA (and, increasingly, many other nation states). And why they are gunning for an apocalypse. The book, which became an instant bestseller in the US, Canada and UK when it came out two months ago, issues a wake-up call, but also serves as a guidebook to where the vulnerabilities lie in the mad, evil plot (so that we can exploit them, and flip the story).

I’ve been wanting to talk with Naomi… for most of my adult life! I’ve followed her work since No Logo came out in 2000. All of her books have identified dangerous shifts in the Zeitgeist, coined terms and served as portents. So, too, End Times Fascism. It covers the collapsing phenomenon I track in I Eat the Stars but coming at things through a specific lens, getting into the guts of what is motivating the Musks, Vances and Thiels of the world.

Naomi is also Professor of Climate Justice at the University of British Columbia and co-director of its Centre for Climate Justice. Her other books include The Shock Doctrine: The Rise of Disaster Capitalism (2007); This Changes Everything: Capitalism vs. the Climate (2014); and the brilliant Doppelganger: A Trip into the Mirror World (2023), which I reference in this conversation.

SHOW NOTES
Here’s the chapter on Israel and Palestine from Doppelgänger
I invite you to follow Aja Barker over on Patreon, Britt Wrey and Harrison Gardener on Subtack.
Here’s the book trailer video that Naomi mentions…it sets up the thesis super well by showing what the main players themselves are actually saying.

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Watch on YouTube or Substack
If you need to know a bit more about me… head to my "about" page
For more such conversations, subscribe to my Substack newsletter, it’s where I interact the most!
Let’s connect on Instagram
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Lizzie Wade (anthropology journalist, author of Apocalypse) has studied history’s most notorious civilizational collapses and has arrived at a bold conclusion: catastrophe and metacrises don’t always have to spell human wipeout. Instead, they can be the very thing that creates the future…even a better one.

Lizzie is an award-winning science journalist and correspondent for Science, one of the world's most prestigious scientific journals. She covers archaeology, anthropology, and Latin America for the journal and also writes for Wired, The Atlantic, Slate, The New York Times, etc. Her recent book, Apocalypse: How Catastrophe Transformed Our World and Can Forge New Futures, came out as I was finishing edits on my book, and it explores a range of apocalyptic events, like El Niño disasters from 5000 years ago and the Black Death.

Drawing on archaeology and anthropology, it talks us through what we can urgently learn from our ancestors today. And it’s not necessarily what you’d expect.
I was super keen to have this chat because Lizzie’s thesis stretches what we already know about our predicament in challenging, and quite heartening, ways.

SHOW NOTES
You might also like to listen to my interview with Luke Kemp, who covers a few of these ideas through an historical lens
Get your copy of Apocalypse: How Catastrophe Transformed Our World and Can Forge New Futures

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Watch on YouTube or Substack
If you need to know a bit more about me… head to my "about" page
For more such conversations, subscribe to my Substack newsletter, it’s where I interact the most!
Let’s connect on Instagram
Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Margaret (Meg) Wheatley (collapse theorist, leadership elder), after working in systems change for more than 50 years, wants to warn us that our current moment demands that we learn how to persevere. Many of us have been “struggling” to “fix” what’s going on in the world and we’re angry, sad, exhausted and despondent with all our efforting.

In this follow-up conversation to the very confronting one we recorded three years ago (in which she says when collapse will occur, and how), Meg talks us through a unique thesis for staying on the “warrior of the human spirit” path…and deriving joy and energy from it. We talk about what to do with our anger, how to handle abject stupidity from others, and techniques for staying vigilant (we go through my terrible morning routine). It’s an episode to pass around all your activist, empathetic, engaged - or otherwise just deeply human - friends.

Meg has worked with global leaders (in the US Army, business, disaster zones, etc.) for five decades, guiding them to see the world through a systems and spiritual lens. She’s published more than a dozen books on her wisdoms, including her 2010 book of consolations Perseverance: A Companion for the Journey, which has just been re-released.

SHOW NOTES
Get your copy of Perseverance: A Companion for the Journey by Margaret J. Wheatley
Here's the first Wild chat with Meg: An episode on civilization collapse (warning: truly confronting)
Meg and I also recorded a second and even more challenging episode that can be found over at my Substack. In this extra episode, we cover how long we've got left, and how collapse will play out.
Other Wild conversations with awesome elders: Stephen Jenkinson, Sister Helen Prejean, John Seed and Margaret Atwood
Learn more about Meg and her work here.

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Watch on YouTube or Substack
If you need to know a bit more about me… head to my "about" page
For more such conversations, subscribe to my Substack newsletter, it’s where I interact the most!
Let’s connect on Instagram
Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Indy Johar (founder of Dark Matter Labs, systems designer) closes this 12-part series on the life-enhancing “what comes next” that we need (and want) to be creating. Indy is one of the world’s most original voices on redesigning societies and he has a radical thesis that brings together most of the themes we’ve discussed so far. He calls it “civilisational optionality”. Our job is not to save civilisation or to know what comes next…. It’s to preserve or expand the capacity for life (that is, humanity and the living world) to adapt to whatever comes next.

Indy is an architect and Professor of Planetary Civics at Melbourne’s RMIT and the University of Sheffield. He has advised organisations including the United Nations, the World Economic Forum, and governments across Europe and the UK, helping them solve all kinds of complex, entangled problems.

In this very wild conversation, Indy returns to Wild to loop together many of the themes of this series – emergence, fascism, steering AI to a pro-human future and, importantly, wrestling with what it means to be human. An expansive, fun and very real finale, to be sure!

SHOW NOTES
You can listen to our previous conversation: The Starkest Collapse Prognosis I’ve Heard
We discuss game theory, and I point to a former Wild interview that explains this, specifically “Moloch”. Catch up here.
I reference Indy’s Substack essay on the collapse of the self.

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Watch on YouTube or Substack
If you need to know a bit more about me… head to my "about" page
For more such conversations, subscribe to my Substack newsletter, it’s where I interact the most!
Let’s connect on Instagram

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Sarah Stein Lubrano (neuroscientist, political scientist, former obituary writer!) is an expert in how to change people’s minds most effectively and for the betterment of all beings. In this chat, we talk through why the techniques that dominated the “old world” – debate, reason, bludgeoning people with facts – no longer serve us. We then go through how persuasion and change will need to work going forward, as we find ourselves needing to cooperate and communicate more effectively than ever before.

We cover the role of third spaces, why fascist governments always want to shut down cafes, the “gateway” rituals, practices and spaces that get people to open into change as well as how to talk about collapse with people still stuck in a linear mindset (essentially the content of her new book Don’t Talk About Politics, How to Change 21st Century Minds).

Sarah is the head of research for The Future Narratives Lab, which focuses on narratives about social and political change, and serves on the Institute of Imagination’s Global Imagination Board. She was previously the head of content at Alain de Botton’s School of Life.

SHOW NOTES
You can get your copy of Sarah’s book Don’t Talk About Politics: How to Change 21st-Century Minds here. You can also follow her work on socials.
Here’s the Substack post that Sarah mentions toward the end: "Don't Talk About Politics"
Alain de Botton was also a Wild guest, and you can listen to his episode here.

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Watch on YouTube or Substack
If you need to know a bit more about me… head to my "about" page
For more such conversations, subscribe to my Substack newsletter, it’s where I interact the most!
Let’s connect on Instagram

Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.