Ashes Ashes is a show about systemic issues, cracks in civilization, collapse of the environment, and if we’re unlucky the end of the world. The name is borrowed from the nursery rhyme “Ring a Ring o’ Roses,” a song that children sing while spinning in a circle before collapsing on the floor in heaps of laughter. Some claim that the lyrics were written in response to England’s Great Plague and Black Death, and the line Ashes! Ashes! We all fall down is interpreted as death and the cremation of bodies. Although apocryphal, this interpretation is fitting for our times. While human civilization owes its existence to the unimaginable wealth that nature freely provides, our current growth trajectory is increasingly being fueled by the direct erosion of biodiversity, ecosystem services, cultural heritage, and more, effectively cannibalizing our future for the sake of short-term “progress.” Our show is dedicated to understanding this process, and illustrating its many forms, which includes everything from environmental destruction and unsustainable economic extraction to social atomization and isolation. Although these themes may appear dark, awareness is what can help open the door to collective action through which the strength of our communities can prevent the great falling down of life as we know it.
Episodes, complete transcripts, sources, links, credits, and more for Ashes Ashes are available here.
Subscribe now on: iTunes | Google Play | Stitcher | Soundcloud | Spotify | RSS | or search "Ashes Ashes" on your favorite podcast app.
Don't know where to start? We love Ep 44, Ep 34, Ep 31, Ep 28, and Ep 23 (but they're all good). Fan favorite: Ep 63
Are these topics giving you existential dread? Go here: Coping With Collapse
What began as a harmless attempt by the wealthy to escape the poor peasants they were forced to rub shoulders with in the cities turned into the greatest infrastructural nightmare ever to be unleashed upon this world: the American suburb. Countless people and generations of their progeny who got swe...
What compels a group of truck owners to drive in a procession down the sandy Florida coast (and how does racism relate to environmental issues)? How can you bypass the paywall to access the latest scientific papers? Why do you need an adblocker? Can the world create a co-op burger joint with vegetar...
They're the single biggest polluter on earth in both chemicals and greenhouse gas emissions, their effects can be felt around the world in both rising temps and destroyed lives, in fact they're in the very business of destruction: it's the US Military. This week we are joined be researcher Dr. Patri...
South Korea is elminating coins and requiring shoppers to upload their cash receipts to a digital database; Indians are still reeling from a 2016 decision that turned 86% of the country's cash worthless in a matter of hours; migrants and refugees are being targeted for new schemes of financial inclu...
It has threatened to start wars and it has (arguably) finished them; its effects and influences can be found throughout our world today; it has nearly limitless power for creation and destruction; and according to some people it may be our only hope. This week (and the last one too) we are digging d...
It has threatened to start wars and it has (arguably) finished them; its effects and influences can be found throughout our world today; it has nearly limitless power for creation and destruction; and according to some people it may be our only hope. This week (and the next one too) we are digging d...
Merchants of Death. War Profiteers. Death Dealers. These are the people who fan the flames of war to transmute human suffering into profit. They play one nation against another to sell to both sides. Although the international community condemned these actors as conspirers in the tensions leading up...
Sweeping deregulation of the Airline industry in 1978 brought big changes to air travel. Lower prices, more routes, and consolidation of the market allowed for regional hub-and-spoke models of logistics and greater access to air travel with the associated massive surge in passengers. Now, with the c...
For once we thought it would be nice to look at a culture of building things up, rather than the slow collapse of everything around us that we normally discuss. We find this culture in a huge variety of different fields from repair in the home to hacking and building in farming fields to careful exp...
The past few decades has seen explosive growth in the number of universities around the world, but it may not be for the noble reasons we would like. Decreased public funding, and new conceptions of universities as engines for economic growth has spurred an intensity of competition for student fees....
The world may be burning, but more and more companies are giving us green alternatives to our favorite products so we can continue to shop and consume the same way we always have, but without hurting the Earth - or so they would like us to believe. Greenwashing, the practice of making bad things see...
Half of America's poor pay at least 50% of their income on rent, while a quarter of them pay over 70%, and this trend is worsening as the number of affordable housing units continues to outpace Americans' abilities to pay for them. How did we get in a scenario where so many Americans are surrenderin...
The world is garbage and we're talking trash in this week's episode. With so many people consuming so many products all across the world there's bound to be some questions about all that refuse we're creating. What really happens when you throw something away? Is recycling as green as we think it is...
It's natural, it's delicious, it's everywhere, and it may be killing us. For years, sugar has been overlooked as a serious detriment to our health because of the manipulations of the sugar industry in both science and politics, but the lies are coming to light as the diseases caused by that deadly w...
Some 37% of workers believe their jobs are pointless, and if we include the jobs that exist to serve those pointless jobs in some way, it's possible that half of the jobs in our economy today (mostly residing in the informational sectors of white-collar work) could disappear with no ill-consequences...
In an age of global disparity and inequity, billionaire philanthropists (dead and alive) are stepping up to the plate with powerful foundations and acts of charitable giving to solve some of the world's greatest challenges. But how much faith should we place in the hands of individuals with concentr...
Invisible, but they define our world. Borders are the lines that limit us as we live our lives and as we increasingly feel the frictions they cause, it brought us to wonder: where did these things comes from anyway? A look back through history shows that what we take for granted may in fact be ridic...
After the US government shutdown of 2018-2019 witheld two paychecks from 800,000 federal workers and countless more contractors and businesses, and with US officials encouraging furloughed employees to simply take out loans, we've got debt on the mind again. Citizens of the US and UK are experiencin...
With the deadline for keeping global warming below 1.5C quickly approaching (at least according to the extremely optimistic IPCC calculations - and we know how we feel about those), the time for renewable energy is yesterday. The transition to these clean sources of energy should be a no brainer, ri...
Beneath our paving stones, paved roads, walls, windows, computers, industry, and more, is a collection of hard material no larger than a speck. Sand is the fundamental building block of modern civilization, mined and extracted more than any other natural resource after water, and this fact should gi...
Amazon created competition between cities to land its HQ2 location, along with hefty tax subsidy packages. While this process garnered significant media attention, businesses and municipalities regularly engage in these types of deal making in which the promise of jobs and economic development all o...
Following the acquisition of Monsanto by Bayer, just a handful of companies now control over 70% of the world's supply of pesticides and 60% of patented seeds. Consolidations like this speak to an underlying trend in industrial agriculture, and in this episode we stop to consider the role that pesti...
The final part of our American healthcare series, painKiller brings together everything we've learned the past two weeks and beyond in Ashes Ashes to explore how the opioid crisis was created and how it is perpetuated to fulfill a single ultimate goal: profit. Pharmaceutical companies, the insurance...
Drug prices, shortages, and barriers to access are out of control, prompting hospitals to join forces to make their own, and spurring the emergence of inventors hoping to chart a future in which life-saving drugs can be made cheaply at home. To lock in high prices, drugmakers have learned to game th...
American healthcare is taking a toll on America's health. Costs outpace economic growth, medical debt plagues millions, confusing and surprising bills infect further more, insurance premiums and deductibles are out of control, and at the end of the day we're not even receiving better care as a resul...
The peak of our industrial fishing returns has come and gone, despite a myriad of innovations. In fact, these very innovations may be driving food insecurity even deeper. As fish stocks decline, new methods of extraction are trained on ever-dwindling fish populations to prop up an unsustainable syst...
Last week we explored some of the conditions of the record number of slaves all across our world today. But to really understand the issue, we need to look at the systems that create and depend upon this cheap form of exploited labor - and to do that we turn our conversation to logistics.
No other...
Despite universal condemnation of slavery, there are more slaves than ever before. They are cheaper (and more disposable) than they ever have been. Who are these people toiling without rest and what forces bind them? Can economic expansion find innovative solutions to this age-old problem? Or is sla...
Ideas have become property. This is the magic spell that intellectual property has cast across our society. Innovation, art, new ideas, and even our culture can be locked behind the restrictions of the law, protected by armies of lawyers, devastating fines, and the full power of the justice system....
This week we explore updates to many of the subjects we've tackled so far. Guest host Moriah King joins us as we discuss our biggest fears, as well as updates in government surveillance, water insecurity, automation, financial crises, and so much more. Strap in: it's a few months of bad news all at...
This episode is all about debt. Where does debt come from? Why is the concept of borrowing and lending mired in moral confusion and contradiction? What is the purpose of debt and who ultimately pays?
To get to the heart of all these questions, one hast to navigate through economic myth, blood and...
By 2030 over 800 million jobs could be automated globally. While in the past, increased productivity from innovation tracked positively with wage increases and employment, these trends have parted ways. The integration of information tech, precision manufacturing, and machine learning place us on th...
There seems to be a perfect storm of factors that threaten to completely reshape who owns farmland here in the US and globally. 400 million acres of farmland in the US alone will change hands in the next 20 years, farmers are retiring and there is a much smaller generation of young farmers to replac...
We frequently hear that this is the greatest time in human history, that we've never had it this good before. And actually that's absolutely true - if you're one of the wealthy few that can take advantage of the system. But for the rest of humanity, and make no mistake it's the vast majority of the...
What does it take to make a shirt? That question might seem simple at first glance, but as we explored the fashion industry, we discovered a world of environmental destruction, exploitation, and human suffering on a staggering scale. Hidden just out of sight from the cheap clothes we find in our clo...
One of our hosts is out of town, so we take this week to explore updates to many of the subjects we've discussed so far. Guest host Moriah King helps us explore everything from the power grid to pensions, state surveillance to sea level rise, and so much more. Strap in this week: it's a few months o...
It's natural, it's delicious, it's everywhere, and it may be killing us. For years, sugar has been overlooked as a serious detriment to our health because of the manipulations of the sugar industry in both science and politics, but the lies are coming to light as the diseases caused by that deadly w...
What do suffragettes, cigarettes, Sigmund Freud, bacon and eggs with breakfast, bananas, and a coup in Guatemala all have in common? We'll explore the answer to that question in this week as we look at the lessons from an important man and contemplate the extraordinary effects he had (and continues...
Pensions have long been considered to be the gold standard of retirement, the treasured benefit of public service and big company jobs. But because of changing demographics, evolving financial environments, and poor accounting practices, these once sure things may soon become a liability. With a rec...