Ashes Ashes

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, right? Well, as always, the story is more complicated than it would first appear and our addiction to cheap and highly energetic fossil fuels isn't going away anytime soon. Can we break our addiction and create real change?

A full transcript is available as well as detailed links and sources (plus credits and more) on our website ashesashes.org.

Find more information along with relevant news and links on your favorite social network @ashesashescast.

CC BY-SA 4.0

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 of who we are are being packaged, sold, and stolen. Our health records have become assets used to sell us out - and the dangers are only growing.

Can we regain our most intimate form of privacy? Or are we doomed to a future where the details of our body and mind are open to the highest bidder?

A full transcript is available as well as detailed links and sources (plus credits and more) on our website ashesashes.org.

Find more information along with relevant news and links on your favorite social network @ashesashescast.

CC BY-SA 4.0

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 give us pause. Where does all this sand come from in the first place? What are the environmental consequences of sand mining? Most importantly, what happens when access to this most basic component of modern life begins to run out? Our modern civilization may pass, like sand through an hour glass.

A full transcript is available as well as detailed links and sources (plus credits and more) on our website ashesashes.org.

Find more information along with relevant news and links on your favorite social network @ashesashescast.

CC BY-SA 4.0

It's a new year and perfect time for reflection, resolutions, and hope for something better. This special episode features both Daniel and David explaining what they work on outside of the show to make the world better (even if just a little bit), why that matters, and different ways that we all can do our part to push things forward towards fixing everything that's broken around us.

A full transcript is available as well as detailed links and sources (plus credits and more) on our website ashesashes.org.

Find more information along with relevant news and links on your favorite social network @ashesashescast.

CC BY-SA 4.0

Much maligned by history, they nevertheless hold a special place in culture and our hearts. This week we're discussing all things pirates. What drove these men and women to a life as enemies of all nations? What went on aboard their ships? Is a pirate's life really for us? We answer these question and much more as we look back to the Golden Age of Piracy and what we can learn from the period and how it relates to the piracy ocurring today.

(we apologize for the audio issues in this episode. we recorded out of our regular set up, but we'll fix it when we get time back in studio)

A full transcript is available as well as detailed links and sources (plus credits and more) on our website ashesashes.org.

Find more information along with relevant news and links on your favorite social network @ashesashescast.

CC BY-SA 4.0

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 ostensibly justify enormous costs at the taxpayer's expense. Amazon alone has received over $1.6bn in economic development packages for it's various warehouses, so it's high time that we ask what's really going on behind the scenes. Does the public actually benefit from corporate welfare deals or is this just another method of transferring wealth out of local communities? In addition, we explore miscellaneous tools used for similar means, like Tax Increment Financing, and Tax-Exempt Municipal Bonds for stadium construction.

A full transcript is available as well as detailed links and sources (plus credits and more) on our website ashesashes.org.

Find more information along with relevant news and links on your favorite social network @ashesashescast.

CC BY-SA 4.0

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 pesticides play in a system of food production that threatens biodiversity, food security, human health, and the environment on which crops are grown. In addition, we ask what impact these trends have on small farmers, and what we can learn from the efforts by local community seedbanks to preserve diversity and resist industrialization.

While we do explore the human health consequences of certain pesticides, as well as the risks we may not be certain of, we primarily choose to focus more deeply on why pesticide-aided industrial practices attract investment in the first place and what effects that has had on Earth and all of us.

A full transcript is available as well as detailed links and sources (plus credits and more) on our website ashesashes.org.

Find more information along with relevant news and links on your favorite social network @ashesashescast.

CC BY-SA 4.0

Surveillance technology continues to creep into our lives, whether it’s facial tracking in NY kiosks, invasive monitoring in Venezuela, China’s expanding social credit system, or entire cities being designed from the ground up in Egypt to better capture the intimate lives of its residents. These initiatives are driven by desires for profit and power, and justified through campaigns of fear.

Technology however is just one facet of any surveillance machine. According to former CIA and NSA director Michael Hayden in 2013: "the top 20% of American intelligence - that exquisite insight into an enemy's intentions - is generally provided by human sources." To understand the role in which we as individuals are turned into tools for surveillance, the so called “eyes and ears” of the state, we examine the historical development of crowd-sourced community policing, and the related programs that have been developed in the US for conscripting citizens into harvesting data on their neighbors, friends, and family.

Detailed links and sources (plus credits and more) are available on our website ashesashes.org.

Find more information along with relevant news and links on your favorite social network @ashesashescast.

CC BY-SA 4.0

The IPCC recently released its most dire report yet, warning us of a planet quickly warming to 1.5C, implications for our future, and offering pathways for mitigating the damage. But at the core of these pathways are flawed assumptions, paradoxes, and impossible promises. Why do these failures persist at our highest international institutions, what does this signal about the broader economic and political failings that got us to this dire situation, and how can we re-frame our perspectives to face the greatest challenge we as a species have ever faced?

A full transcript is available as well as detailed links and sources (plus credits and more) on our website ashesashes.org.

Find more information along with relevant news and links on your favorite social network @ashesashescast.

CC BY-SA 4.0

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 of their systemic roots, and specific action. A brief audience discussion follows, as well as our post-conference thoughts.

Detailed links and sources (plus credits and more) on our website ashesashes.org.

Find more information along with relevant news and links on your favorite social network @ashesashescast.

CC BY-SA 4.0