Ashes Ashes

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 sizes and chemical properties, and so the health impacts of polluted air are complex and encompass a diversity of chronic illnesses, cognitive dysfunction, infectious disease, and more. The implications of this health crisis are not fully understood, but the costs are widespread, and rising. Worse, addressing this problem seems to lead us into a classic catch-22. Can we afford to ignore this problem anymore? Can we afford not to?

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

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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 force has reshaped our world as much as modern day logistics. From it's humble beginnings with the shipping container to redefining national security and our very political borders today, the massive power of shipping goods from A to B has dramatically changed the world - often for worse. This week we explore some of the effects of this force and the workers that get caught up in the process.

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

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 slavery itself built into the foundation of our modern economy?

We will explore these questions and more, as well as the connections between slavery and environmental destruction, migration, and the products we consume daily.

This is the first of a two part series.

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.

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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 unfettered into products and services we interact with every day, constantly? And how might these tools evolve when aided by artificial intelligence that can customize design for each individual without their consent or awareness? Is such a thing even plausible?

Join us as we explore these questions and much, much more.

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.

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The expansion of human beings is perhaps unrivaled by any other species. Yet that success threatens to be our downfall. As civilization grows, the wildlife that enables it gets pushed out, and valuable ecosystems are stressed to their breaking point. Worse still, the destruction of biodiversity means the keys that could unlock a path forward for life are lost forever.

How much time do we have to halt the sixth mass extinction before we too drown in its wake? The answer is much, much shorter than you think.

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.

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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 system is built for and run predominantly by publishers, not the creators it purports to support - and we all suffer from it.

How did we get here? Where did we go astray and lose control of the very act of creation that defines what it is to be human? This week we explore the foundations of intellectual property, the effects it has had on our history and our current day, times and places where IP is lacking and creativity flourishes, and finally we share our hope for a better future.

This is the most expensive Ashes Ashes show ever and we hope you enjoy and share freely.

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 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 once (with a little good news and a whole lot of analysis thrown in), but as always we hope you'll be as motivated by these stories as we are to start working towards something better.

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.

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Rescue ships denied; children detained far away from parents; smugglers profiting to the tune of hundreds of millions. As crises across the globe drive people from their homes, the nations of the world are stepping up border security and building walls like never before in human history. While walls purport to increase security and halt unwanted people and activities, a closer inspection reveals something entirely different.

In the first of a series exploring the ins and outs of borders, we examine the paradoxes that exist on the margins of the walls that define our nations today. This is a world desperate to resist the powerful forces of climate change and economic collapse (events we directly caused) - and failing miserably. Walls, borders, immigration, what it means to be a human in a global age, and so much more this week in Ashes Ashes.

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.

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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 the beginning of what might be the largest disaster in human history.

Can states prepare themselves for the coming hordes of water refugees? Can civilization survive water hungry industrial agriculture as climate change reshapes where rain falls? Can we act as sustainable stewards of our shared water resources? Or is it all too little, too late?

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.

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International calls to ban autonomous weapon systems have done little to slow the escalating arms race between nations to acquire weapons of the so called third revolution in warfare - or simply "killer robots." The intersection of AI, deep learning, and lethal weaponry presents a future of war unlike any the world has ever seen. In the crosshairs of this new frontier of violence we find moral accountability, the ethics of killing, and of course the comforting lullaby that we have any meaningful control over our world.

What will war become when all the warriors are replaced by weapons that "think" but do not feel? Listen in this week to find out.

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