Pretty Heady Stuff

Pretty Heady Stuff
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This podcast features interviews with a variety of theorists, artists and activists from across the globe. It's guided by the search for radical solutions to crises that are inherent to colonial capitalism. To this end, I hope to keep facilitating conversations that bring together perspectives on the liberatory and transformative power of care, in particular.

  1. APR 2

    Wim Carton dissects the gore, gaslighting and chaotic consequences of fossil capitalism

    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. His book with Andreas Malm, The Long Heat: Climate Action When It's Too Late, is a study of the science and politics of geoengineering, carbon capture and "muscular" climate adaptation. The book offers what Wim calls an "event ethnography" of the people and organizations adopting tactics to fix the climate crisis, and the ways they end up fixing the status quo of climate breakdown through capitalist accumulation firmly in place. Carton and Malm learned in their research that functionaries are "very aware of the flaws and the problems" with their approach, but can't or won't abandon the assumption that the "solutions they've always believed in" will succeed, despite so much evidence that markets, private capital and the pursuit of profit are leading us into the slow violence of escalating disaster. One of the core problems is technological optimism, or the dangerous persistence of a mechanistic worldview when it comes to the way the world works. Regardless of how necessary it will be to build resilience as we hurtle into the long heat, faith in climate adaptation is strengthening as the resolve for addressing the drivers of climate change weakens. We can't allow adaptation to "substitute for dealing with the real problem." In this moment, too, we see the emergence of technologies like carbon capture and storage or geoengineering replacing and displacing the push for mitigation. Carton talks about the dark side of these technologies as forms of "reputation management" that enable further investment in fossil fuel infrastructure. The planet doesn't care if we ignore its limits. If we create an entirely new climate, we are playing with fire. Allowing the ruling classes to "look away from the suffering that is being rained down, literally, on people in Gaza, Iran and much of the Global South" will only deepen the coldness that characterizes our current age. In opposition, we need a revolutionary alternative that holds power to account, to rage against the deadly incrementalism that defers action and renders the future unlivable. In Wim's words, crises always expose "cracks in the system," and right now, in the context of an imperial war sowing chaos in the site of some of the most rapacious fossil fuel extraction, the "obvious solution is to go full-on renewable and reduce dependence" on this toxic sludge. #juststopoil #endfossilfuels #phaseout #fossilphaseout #ccus #geoengineering #climateadaptation #technologicaloptimism #technology #capitalism #endtimes #climatebreakdown #fossilcapital #climateaction #thelongheat ⁨

    55 min

  2. MAR 26

    Jeff Diamanti tracks the shockwaves disrupting the global economy as war rages on in Iran

    Jeff Diamanti is Associate Professor of Philosophy and Cultural Analysis at the University of Amsterdam and Professor of Global History of Sustainable Development at the Vrije Universiteit Amsterdam. For over a decade he has researched and written on logistical cartographies, energy infrastructure, and political ecology. Diamanti and I discuss the reverberations in the global economy caused by Iran's shutting down of a crucial chokepoint in the arteries of fossil capitalism: the Strait of Hormuz. Jeff has seen this vital space of maritime passage with his own eyes, having visited it during a research trip alongside colleagues who were interested in the energy infrastructures that are becoming visible in this time of crisis.One of the things we focus on is the emergence of different kinds of literacy in these emergencies -- how we become more aware of the ways we're yoked to oil by an economy built around overproduction and profit, or the ways that our food is a commodity predicated on the endless supply of fossil fuel feedstocks. What those literacies look like and can translate into politically is an open question, though, as Diamanti points out, because it hinges on the simultaneous emergence of different networks of care that have largely atrophied as a result of neoliberal atomization.As war halts the flow of commodities through a key chokepoint, we can see how the disproportionate impacts are felt most acutely by the global poor. And this is why Jeff stresses that we shouldn't presume that those in power had no plan, or that they were simply unhinged in making the strategic decision to bomb thousands of sites in Iran. There is an unreasonable rationale that justifies, from their fascistic worldview, the intervention in the Middle East. Chaos is benefiting the ruling elite in settler colonial societies that have long sought to exploit destabilization and disruption. The pain this causes is precisely the point.Cynicism about secular stagnation and the termination shock of this cycle of accumulation coming to a violent close is an easy and understandable response. Against that reasonable despair, Diamanti offers anger, pointed criticism and a global perspective that sees chokepoints as important places where fossil capitalism can be contested. #iranwar #trumpwar #uswar #israel #middleeast #imposedwar #warofchoice #china #russia #oman #iran #energycrisis #capitalism #colonialism #oilshock #supplychain #straitofhormuz

    51 min

  3. MAR 22

    C. Thi Nguyen troubles the way the art of play and agency in games is co-opted & commodified

    Publisher bio and book description: C. Thi Nguyen is associate professor of philosophy at the University of Utah, and a specialist in the philosophy of games, the philosophy of technology, and the theory of value. A former food writer for the Los Angeles Times, Nguyen is active in public philosophy, writing for The New York Times, The Washington Post, New Statesman, and elsewhere. One of the leading experts on the philosophy of games and the philosophy of data, Nguyen takes us deep into the heart of games, and into the depths of bureaucracy, to see how scoring systems shape our desires. Games are the most important art form of our era. They embody the spirit of free play. They show us the subtle beauty of action everywhere in life in video games, sports, and boardgames—but also cooking, gardening, fly-fishing, and running. They remind us that it isn’t always about outcomes, but about how glorious it feels to be doing the thing. And the scoring systems help get us there, by giving us new goals to try on. Scoring systems are also at the center of our corporations and bureaucracies—in the form of metrics and rankings. They tell us exactly how to measure our success. They encourage us to outsource our values to an external authority. And they push on us to value simple, countable things. Metrics don’t capture what really matters; they only capture what’s easy to measure. The price of that clarity is our independence. https://www.penguinrandomhouse.com/authors/2288505/c-thi-nguyen/

    53 min

  4. MAR 6

    Shora Esmailian refuses to abandon hope for freedom and self-determination in Iran

    Shora Esmailian is a journalist, author and lecturer based in Sweden. Her latest book is entitled Gaza: Att Spranga Ett Getto (2024). She is also the co-author, with Andreas Malm, of Iran on the Brink: Rising Workers and Threats of War (2007, Pluto Press) and Explosive Power in Iran: Workers’ Fight and War Threat (2005).In the wake of the United States and Israel illegally attacking Iran and sparking a regional conflagration that is dragging the world deeper into ecocidal warfare, Esmailian describes a liberatory alternative. From her position in the Iranian diaspora and her perspective as a journalist and social critic, Shora opens up a conversation about the irreducible complexity of the struggle. In Iran, there are groups on the left that occupy a diverse array of anti-imperialist positions; should they converge in the aftermath of this bombing campaign, they might emerge as a force that can reclaim the country from both the repression of the Islamic Republic and the violence of Western regimes who continue to seek control over the region.Esmailian makes it clear, too, that Israel is committed to destroying Iran because it sees it as the last remaining force that can counter the normalization of its settler colonial occupation of Palestine. The "Axis of Resistance," as it is known, may not be a purely liberatory force, in the sense that Iran's Islamic Republic, in fact, has its own imperialist ambitions, but it remains the primary barrier to Israel's military domination. Shora also shares the important insight that, while the Islamic Republic has come to the defense of Palestine to a limited extent--courting the ire of Tel Aviv in the process--it never fully committed to halting the genocidal campaign of annihilation that continues in Gaza and spreads now into the West Bank. If there is hope now, it is for a grassroots democratic movement to rise up in defiance of imperialism and defect from oligarchic control and state repression.#FreeIran #WomanLifeFreedom #Geopolitics #USMilitary #GulfRegion #USIranConflict #IranIsraelWar #MiddleEastConflict #IranIsraelConflict #MiddleEastCrisis

    52 min

  5. FEB 26

    Alyssa Battistoni takes apart the hostile system that incentivizes taking selfishly from nature

    Alyssa Battistoni is an assistant professor of political science at Barnard College. She is the coauthor of A Planet to Win: Why We Need a Green New Deal and the recent Free Gifts: Capitalism and the Politics of Nature. Alyssa knows why you feel helpless to stop the end of nature. In Free Gifts, she looks at the history of environmental degradation under capitalism and explains how an economic system that expropriates from the natural world has normalized an unapologetically exploitative relationship to the Earth. Her work gives us essential tools and strategies for regaining the freedom to respect nature, built from her sense that we don't actually want to dominate it, but instead that something is putting pressure on us in our everyday lives and compelling that domination. In the end, she contends, we don't need individual responsibility, we need collective power to preserve the systems that sustain us, and end the systems that don't. We need the power to restructure the system that is leading us down the path to environmental collapse. Battistoni writes that "capitalism limits our ability to treat nonhuman nature as something other than a free gift. It constrains our ability, individually and collectively, to make genuine decisions about how to value and relate to the nonhuman world, and to take responsibility for those decisions." What she calls the "structure of market rule" compromises "our ability to take responsibility for the world we have made." This is because ultimately "markets are indifferent to our purposes, seeing only prices" that "detach intentions from consequences." We talk about these ideas, and about the consequences of the now-normative "absorption" theory of pollution, which commodifies our ability, as living beings, to suck in and survive all of the poisons produced under capitalism. In the end, it's a hopeful conversation, though; one that bangs the drum for winning back the planet.

    1h 1m

  6. FEB 19

    Timothy Leduc finds meaning in humility, ecological wonder and pluralistic thinking

    Timothy Leduc is faculty in Land-based and Indigenous Social Work at Wilfrid Laurier University in Brantford, Ontario. He is author of A Canadian Climate of Mind (2016) that looks at climate change as a spiritual initiation into healing the pain at the root of modern culture.In this conversation, we talk about being stuck within a system that extracts and destroys the Earth, not knowing how to hold onto hope within that system, and being, instead, moved by the numinous "technologies" of nature. At a time when there is crisis everywhere, can education find ground to bring people together? Can social workers acquaint themselves with ecological connections? Are we able, as a people, to break from the doom and gloom of modern industrial capitalism?Leduc is a thinker who gains power and solace from engaging with Indigenous knowledges; knowing that he is limited as a settler and as a human with a necessarily finite capacity for reasoning, he also finds meaning in humility.

    1h 8m

  7. FEB 4

    James Adomian goads us to laugh our way through the absolute absurdity of our moment

    James Adomian is a brilliant stand-up comedian, voice actor, writer and impressionist known for his work on Comedy Bang! Bang!, Last Comic Standing, and his many hilarious podcast appearances. He's also one of the funniest people in the world. Renowned for his impressions of figures like Bernie Sanders, David Attenborough, Elon Musk and Mike Lindell, Adomian's recent comedy special Path of Most Resistance showcases a remarkable range of talents, including the ability to skewer some of the central political absurdities of our time. There's a tendency to see comedy as political in a sort of surreptitious way: sneaking it past people by making them laugh. ‪@JamesAdomianXOXO‬ is a good example of this, but in our conversation he discusses the different strategies comedians take today to commit to what's historically been called "gallows humour." Do artists build trust with their audiences so that they can bring them to the gallows, or is it better to find a tactic that puts them immediately off-balance: bombarding them with the obvious perils that populate the world?In the places where Path of Most Resistance dives into these lived realities, Adomian can bring you through that peril using a dizzying array of characters. One of the things he explains is that comedy has been hamstrung by the paucity of opportunities to do real sketch comedy. The centrality of Saturday Night Live means that the sketch work that exists in its orbit really stays in the shadows, unless it buys into the lowest common denominator logics of "the algorithm."This is where James is at his most vociferous: eviscerating the "brute force" dumbing down of audiences today that are being made more vacuous by a highly resourced right populism and dog whistle politics of division and discrimination thriving on social media. One of the most fun interviews I've ever done. Hope you enjoy! Watch Path of Most Resistance on YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pJ5DFrdOyig

    59 min

  8. JAN 20

    Harsha Walia reframes ICE fascism and American aggression in an era of border brutality

    Harsha Walia is a South Asian activist and writer based in Vancouver, unceded Coast Salish Territories. Author of the essential Border and Rule: Global Migration, Capitalism, and the Rise of Racist Nationalism, Walia has been involved in community-based grassroots migrant justice, feminist, anti-racist, Indigenous solidarity, anti-capitalist, Palestinian liberation, and anti-imperialist movements, including No One is Illegal and Women’s Memorial March Committee. The poet and theorist Gloria Anzaldúa once wrote that “The world is not a safe place to live in. We shiver in separate cells in enclosed cities, shoulders hunched, barely keeping the panic below the surface of the skin, daily drinking shock along with our morning coffee, fearing the torches being set to our buildings, the attacks in the streets. Shutting down.” In this discussion, Walia and I talk about working to shut down the structural forces that are trying to force us to shut down, to drink shock and resist panic.We look at the fascistic violence happening in the United States, the Trump administration’s blood-soaked invasion of Venezuela, and the ongoing push, in Canada, for a border enforcement regime that aligns more closely with the United States’ crackdown on immigration. What, if anything, does the spectre of securitized borders mean in the context of rising eco-fascism and global resource wars? Canada claims to be a climate leader and yet remains a place for rapacious extraction; we profess to being a bastion of multiculturalism and humanitarian values, but wage war on Indigenous communities and perceived others. Walia helps us understand the links between systems of border reinforcement and the monopolization of violence by police. Under capitalism, this sort of fascistic slide is central to the consolidation of moneyed power. It facilitates oligarchic rule. And the accelerating annihilation of democracy should not come as a surprise in this context. If twelve people can possess the wealth of four billion, then democracy will not be allowed to live. If eighteen trillion dollars can be hoarded by a small group of elites, then democracy will be destroyed in order for that system to continue. But we can’t let it, because the possibility of self-determination and the social good are literally at stake. This is why Walia proposes the idea of becoming ungovernable: becoming capable of democracy in the direct sense of disrupting, building support structures for disruptors and generating the momentum needed to take power and protect all people. According to Walia, the infrastructure that the left requires to contest fascism will need to be developed outside the digital realm that you are currently reading this in. If solidarity is to become a serious threat to the status quo, it cannot be reduced to a sentence shared in the comment thread. A shift could send shockwaves, but we’ll need to reanimate the democratic muscles that seem to have atrophied over the course of neoliberalism’s deranged ascent.#leftpolitics #anticapitalism #anticolonialism #ice #fuckice #antitrump #antizionism #antifascism #socialism #venezuela #handsoffvenezuela #monroedoctrine #maduroarrested #nooneisillegal

    38 min
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About

This podcast features interviews with a variety of theorists, artists and activists from across the globe. It's guided by the search for radical solutions to crises that are inherent to colonial capitalism. To this end, I hope to keep facilitating conversations that bring together perspectives on the liberatory and transformative power of care, in particular.

Information

  • Creator
    Pretty Heady Stuff
  • Years Active
    2020 - 2026
  • Episodes
    148
  • Rating
    Explicit
  • Copyright
    © Pretty Heady Stuff
  • Show Website
    Pretty Heady Stuff