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.

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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

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Episode 77 - Coping With Collapse

Awareness of the systemic threats to our world comes at a cost. Often, that cost includes feelings of isolation, existential dread, depression, shock, and other uncomfortable realities. But these emotions do not define the final stage of our journeys. This week we read from listener emails, each des...


Episode 76 - Self-made

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...


Episode 64 - Sweet Re-Release

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...


Episode 62 - Separate Ways

A global epidemic of loneliness is spreading rapidly. 20% of the UK population claims to be always or often lonely, 3 out of 4 people fin the US are affected by loneliness, a quarter of Japanese men over 60 don't have a single friend or family member they can talk to, and there is an alarming rise o...


Episode 57 - Do No Harm

By now we are used to the idea that every action we take in the world is tracked, but what happens when that all-pervasive panopticon is turned inside each and every one of us? An explosion of personal medical technology, health programs, and terrible data practices have meant that the very records...


Episode 52 - Killing Fields

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...


Episode 49 - The World Might Be Broken

This week we present a short presentation we gave during the Sound Education conference at the Harvard Divinity School. The World Might Be Broken is a summation of some of the topics we cover in this show, the way they are interrelated, and how our approach to solving them will require an awareness...


Episode 47 - painKiller

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...


Episode 46 - Pill of Sale

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...


Episode 45 - Bill of Health

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...


Episode 44 - Do Not Disturb

Bernie Krause joins us to help illuminate the complexity of natural soundscapes, and the threats to their stability.

The world is waking up to the negative health consequences of noise pollution. The WHO recognizes noise as a health crisis, and the number of places around the world not devastated...


Episode 41 - Dead Tired

Despite a plethora of health benefits that sleep promotes, and a host of dramatic consequences when we neglect it, the world is rapidly trending towards fewer and fewer restful hours. 40% of Americans are sleep deprived and on average we get 2 hours less sleep than just a few decades ago. What has d...


Episode 38 - Dead Air

Despite efforts to develop cleaner technology, air pollution remains quite possible the world's greatest killer. New reports by the WHO put the annual deaths around 7 million, with 90% of the global population breathing dangerous air. Air pollution itself is an amalgam of particles with different si...


Episode 35 - Plugged In

What compels people to throw their money away at a slot machine? In short: design. The design that goes into making a slot machine addicting is deliberate and effective, but restrained in some part by regulation. But what happens when the same tools used to addict people to losing money are released...


Episode 30 - Parched

As always, the world is facing a crisis. This week we explore the exploding problem of water access as large swaths of the world find themselves drying out risking agriculture, industry, and the very water we drink. By 2020, 100 million Indians will find themselves without water - and this is just t...


Episode 25 - Heat Death

As climate change accelerates, much attention is given to effects like rising seas, and increased weather variability. Often overlooked is the temperature itself, and the direct impact warmer temperatures will have on our ability to maintain infrastructure, our health, agriculture, and our ability t...


Episode 20 - Irresistible

Around the world, pathogens of all types are showing resistance to standard treatment. Failure among so called "drugs of last resort," a decline of disease prevention programs, and shifting climate all present ominous signs for the risk of global infectious disease.

Joining us this week are three...


Episode 19 - Life in Plastic

Despite what you might have heard, our life in plastic is less than fantastic. Plastic is everywhere and enables our modern standard of living, but it turns out that this comes at a cost. Recent discoveries have found plastic in the oceans, in our soil, in the food we eat, and even the air we breath...


Episode 14 - Sweet Release

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...


Episode 08 - A Better You?

Genome engineering, CRISPR-Cas9, gene drives, designer babies, and so much more. Recent breakthroughs have given us the tools and techniques to alter the genetic code of living things around us and even dabble in playing with the very DNA that makes us human. But as the speed of these technological...


Episode 07 - Last Gasp

There's something in our air that's making us sick - fatigue, eye problems, inability to concentrate, headaches, obesity, even cognitive declines to name just a few symptoms. What's more, this health hazard is increasing at an alarming rate and researchers and doctors are only now beginning to under...