I’ve been called a prepper more times over the past few weeks than I have in my entire life. In this Rapid Response episode, I want to explain why.

And moreover, I want to explain why I believe we should appropriate, normalize, and broaden the notion of prepping.

Support the show by checking out: ZBiotics (Decrease impact of hangovers. Code: JESSEDAMIANI for 10% off), MUD\WTR (43% off starter kits), 1Password (simplify your life and increase digital safety), Mission Farms CBD (healthy, effective CBD for relief, sleep, and wellbeing—25% off with email), NordVPN (the simplest way to protect yourself online, 74% off 2-year plans).

Relevant links from the show:- https://www.realitystudies.co/p/resilience-faq- https://www.realitystudies.co/p/what-is-resilience-climate-resilience-explained- https://www.realitystudies.co/p/psychological-resilience-explained-counseling-cbt-narrative-therapy-emdr- https://www.realitystudies.co/p/climate-resilience-guide

Find video versions of Urgent Futures episodes at: youtube.com/@UrgentFutures.

Once upon a time, the Internet was heralded as a great open space, the utopian dream of free information flow. Obviously those ideas were misguided (at best); the Internet we experience today is a far cry from what Silicon Valley promised us. What went wrong?

Today’s guest argues that it's because we’ve boxed ourselves—or maybe more accurately, been boxed into—platforms.

The Internet as we understand it is dominated by platforms; in large part they define the logic of digital life. So what can we do about it? Listen on...

Get your copy of Against Platforms here!

Support the show by checking out: ZBiotics (Decrease impact of hangovers. Code: JESSEDAMIANI for 10% off), MUD\WTR (43% off starter kits), 1Password (simplify your life and increase digital safety), Mission Farms CBD (healthy, effective CBD for relief, sleep, and wellbeing—25% off with email), NordVPN (the simplest way to protect yourself online, 74% off 2-year plans).

Mike Pepi is a writer and critic exploring the intersection of technology, culture, and politics. His work has appeared in e-flux, Frieze, Art in America, Spike and other publications, where he interrogates the ideologies behind digital tools and cultural production. He is the author of Against Platforms: Surviving Digital Utopia (Melville House, 2025).

CREDITS: This podcast is edited and produced by Adam Labrie and me, Jesse Damiani. Adam Labrie also edited the video version of the podcast, which is available on YouTube. The podcast is presented by Reality Studies. If you appreciate the work I’m doing, please subscribe and share it with someone you think would enjoy it.

Find more episodes of Urgent Futures at: youtube.com/@UrgentFutures.

As soon as the cost of renewable energy drops to or below fossil fuel levels, we'll easily make the transition away from fossil fuels, right?

...Unfortunately, that's just not how things are playing out in practice. Even though wind and solar energy have seen remarkable innovation and rollouts around the world, fossil fuels remain dominant. What gives?

Today's guest, Brett Christophers, believes it's because we've gotten it twisted: under the complex, capitalistic infrastructures that define the energy economy, it's not cost that matters—it's price. In fact, he wrote a whole book about it: The Price is Wrong: Why Capitalism Won't Save the Planet—which is the focus of our conversation today.

Get your copy of The Price is Wrong here!

Support the show by checking out: ZBiotics (Decrease impact of hangovers. Code: JESSEDAMIANI for 10% off), MUD\WTR (43% off starter kits), 1Password (simplify your life and increase digital safety), Mission Farms CBD (healthy, effective CBD for relief, sleep, and wellbeing—25% off with email), NordVPN (the simplest way to protect yourself online, 74% off 2-year plans).

Brett Christophers is professor of human geography at Uppsala University’s Institute for Housing and Urban Research. He is the author of 10 books, including Our Lives in Their Portfolios, Rentier Capitalism, The New Enclosure, and most recently, The Price is Wrong. Christophers is one of the world’s most influential geographers. Recognized for his work on land privatization, the growth of rentier capitalism, the role of asset managers in owning housing and other essential infrastructures—and the political economy of climate change and the energy transition—he has written for the Financial Times, The Guardian, London Review of Books, The New York Times, TIME Magazine, Washington Post, among many others.

CREDITS: This podcast is edited and produced by Adam Labrie and me, Jesse Damiani. Adam Labrie also edited the video version of the podcast, which is available on YouTube. The podcast is presented by Reality Studies. If you appreciate the work I’m doing, please subscribe and share it with someone you think would enjoy it.

Find more episodes of Urgent Futures at: youtube.com/@UrgentFutures.

Bit of a different episode this week! It’s a recording of my Substack Live with Better Future w/ Michael Mezz, where we dive into all the topics listed in the title, plus a few surprises.

It was a fun little experiment that ends up packing a punch—all thanks to Michael’s ability to sensemake such volatile, complex topics. He’s also a past guest of the show, and our conversation is a fantastic introduction to degrowth and post-growth economics (which we need to be considering now more than ever).

Support the show by checking out: ZBiotics (Decrease impact of hangovers. Code: JESSEDAMIANI for 10% off), MUD\WTR (43% off starter kits), 1Password (simplify your life and increase digital safety), Mission Farms CBD (healthy, effective CBD for relief, sleep, and wellbeing—25% off with email), NordVPN (the simplest way to protect yourself online, 74% off 2-year plans).

👉 Never miss an episode! 👉 Subscribe to Urgent Futures now: Youtube | Apple Podcasts | Spotify.

Back with new full episodes next week!

Find more episodes of Urgent Futures at: youtube.com/@UrgentFutures. Past conversations include Taylor Lorenz, Lisa Messeri, Legacy Russell, William E. Rees, Renée DiResta, and more.

What if the ongoing devastation of the biosphere and the ascendancy of complex AI are rooted in the same anthropocentrism? What if there were a new theory of mind that incorporated our biological kin and AI? What if such a theory foregrounded ecological relationality and a broadening of our idea of what cognition is—and what can be a cognizer?

Today's guest, N. Katherine Hayles, proposes such a theory—the integrated cognitive framework (ICF)—in her new book, Bacteria to AI. It's a wild mutant of a read, drawing ideas from evolutionary biology, feminist theory, speculative fiction, and more—and I cannot recommend it enough.

Grab your copy of Bacteria to AI here!

Support the show by checking out: ZBiotics (Decrease impact of hangovers. Code: JESSEDAMIANI for 10% off), MUD\WTR (43% off starter kits), 1Password (simplify your life and increase digital safety), Mission Farms CBD (healthy, effective CBD for relief, sleep, and wellbeing—25% off with email), NordVPN (the simplest way to protect yourself online, 74% off 2-year plans).

N. Katherine Hayles is the Distinguished Research Professor at the University of California, Los Angeles, and the James B. Duke Professor Emerita from Duke University. Her research focuses on the relations of literature, science and technology in the 20th and 21st centuries. Her twelve print books include Postprint: Books and Becoming Computational (Columbia, 2021), Unthought: The Power of the Cognitive Nonconscious (Univ. of Chicago Press, 2017) and How We Think: Digital Media and Contemporary Technogenesis (Univ. of Chicago Press 2015), in addition to over 100 peer-reviewed articles. Her books have won several prizes, including The Rene Wellek Award for the Best Book in Literary Theory for How We Became Posthuman: Virtual Bodies in Literature, Cybernetics and Informatics, and the Suzanne Langer Award for Writing Machines. She has been recognized by many fellowships and awards, including two NEH Fellowships, a Guggenheim, a Rockefeller Residential Fellowship at Bellagio, and two University of California Presidential Research Fellowships. She is a member of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences. Her latest book will be is, Bacteria to AI: Human Futures with our Nonhuman Symbionts from University of Chicago Press.

CREDITS: This podcast is edited and produced by Adam Labrie and me, Jesse Damiani. Adam Labrie also edited the video version of the podcast, which is available on YouTube. The podcast is presented by Reality Studies. If you appreciate the work I’m doing, please subscribe and share it with someone you think would enjoy it.

Find more episodes of Urgent Futures at: youtube.com/@UrgentFutures.

Can feminism be African? The more you sit with this question, the more its complexities reveal themselves; as you emphasize different aspects of the question, new subtexts and assumptions come into view.

This question is also the title of a new book by Minna Salami, today's guest. It's a remarkable read—I encourage you to pick up your copy now!

Support the show by checking out: ZBiotics (Decrease impact of hangovers. Code: JESSEDAMIANI for 10% off), MUD\WTR (43% off starter kits), 1Password (simplify your life and increase digital safety), Mission Farms CBD (healthy, effective CBD for relief, sleep, and wellbeing—25% off with email), NordVPN (the simplest way to protect yourself online, 74% off 2-year plans).

Minna Salami is a Nigerian-Finnish and Swedish feminist author, social critic and currently Program Chair at THE NEW INSTITUTE. She is the author of Can Feminism Be African? (Harper Collins) and Sensuous Knowledge: A Black Feminist Approach for Everyone (Bloomsbury 2020) which has been translated into multiple languages. She has also co-authored children’s books and written content on feminism for numerous anthologies as well as educational textbooks.

A leading voice of contemporary feminism, she has drawn over a million readers to her multiple award-winning blog MsAfropolitan.com. Her writing can be found in the Guardian, Project Syndicate, Al Jazeera, and The Philosopher, and many others. She is a frequent speaker and lecturer including at some of the world’s most prominent institutions such as the UN, EU, Oxford Union, Cambridge Union, Yale University, and the Singularity University at NASA. She has worked as a Research Associate and Editor at Perspectiva, consulted governments on gender equality, written school curricula, and curated cultural events at The Victoria & Albert Museum in London.

CREDITS: This podcast is edited and produced by Adam Labrie and me, Jesse Damiani. Adam Labrie also edited the video version of the podcast, which is available on YouTube. The podcast is presented by Reality Studies. If you appreciate the work I’m doing, please subscribe and share it with someone you think would enjoy it.

Find more episodes of Urgent Futures at: youtube.com/@UrgentFutures.

What are the three types of eroticism? What is it like being someone who fetishizes foot fetishists? What is it like writing the script for an adult video in this genre? Speaking of fetishes, were you aware of the balloon ("looner") fetish?

All that and more in this freewheeling conversation with today's guest, Noelle Perdue. A doubly fun episode because it marks the official launch of my "Riffs & Speculations" series on Urgent Futures.

Support the show by checking out: ZBiotics (Decrease impact of hangovers. Code: JESSEDAMIANI for 10% off), MUD\WTR (43% off starter kits), 1Password (simplify your life and increase digital safety), Mission Farms CBD (healthy, effective CBD for relief, sleep, and wellbeing—25% off with email), NordVPN (the simplest way to protect yourself online, 74% off 2-year plans).

Noelle Perdue is a writer, producer, and Internet porn historian with nearly ten years of experience working platform-side for multiple mainstream and independent adult companies. Having written everything from Food Network porn parodies to legally binding terms and conditions, much of her current work explores obscenity law and how pornography’s history can influence our digital and political futures. Noelle’s writing work has been published on Wired, Washington Post, Pornhub, Slate, Brazzers, Input, etc., she’s also been featured as an industry expert on multiple programs including the BBC, CBC, The Guardian, Rolling Stone, and on Netflix's 2023 documentary Money Shot. Noelle also runs the Porn World with Noelle Perdue newsletter—so pop over there and subscribe for smart takes on spicy topics!

Fans of the show will recognize Noelle from an earlier episode I did with her in August 2024. It’s a great dive into the more serious aspects of porn in society: how a society’s relationship to porn reveals the biases and forms of repression that society weaponizes, how obscenity law regarding pornography is used to smuggle anti-queer and -trans legislation, how the perceived frivolity of porn allows for creative experimentation that often doesn’t occur in other mediums. As mentioned, this conversation took a different approach—let me know what you think!

CREDITS: This podcast is edited and produced by Adam Labrie and me, Jesse Damiani. Adam Labrie also edited the video version of the podcast, which is available on YouTube. The podcast is presented by Reality Studies. If you appreciate the work I’m doing, please subscribe and share it with someone you think would enjoy it.

Find more episodes of Urgent Futures at: youtube.com/@UrgentFutures.

Plato is among the most famous thinkers in all of Western philosophy. What if his notion of transcendence—of there being a reality "out there" that's "higher" than our earthly plane—underlies everything that's broken about modernity.

If you can believe it, that's a core argument of an otherwise touching book about one ecologist's experience raising and ultimately freeing an orphaned screen owl. That book, Alfie & Me, was written by today's guest: legendary ecologist Carl Safina.

Support the show by checking out: ZBiotics (Decrease impact of hangovers. Code: JESSEDAMIANI for 10% off), MUD\WTR (43% off starter kits), 1Password (simplify your life and increase digital safety), Mission Farms CBD (healthy, effective CBD for relief, sleep, and wellbeing—25% off with email), NordVPN (the simplest way to protect yourself online, 74% off 2-year plans).

Carl Safina is an ecologist, author, and founding President of the Safina Center. He is the first Endowed Professor for Nature and Humanity at Stony Brook University. His work centers on animal psychology and the relationship between humans and nature. His book "Alfie & Me: What Owls Know, What Humans Believe," is a moving account of raising, then freeing, an orphaned screech owl, whose lasting friendship with him illuminates humanity’s relationship with the natural world.

CREDITS: This podcast is edited and produced by Adam Labrie and me, Jesse Damiani. Adam Labrie also edited the video version of the podcast, which is available on YouTube. The podcast is presented by Reality Studies. If you appreciate the work I’m doing, please subscribe and share it with someone you think would enjoy it.

Find more episodes of Urgent Futures at: youtube.com/@UrgentFutures.

Conspiracy theories are all over the place, but...what are they, exactly? How do they work and what's their history? Who is susceptible to them? What do they tell us about the human condition?

These are just a few of the questions that today's guest, David Guignion, examines in his research. He's also the founder of the popular Theory & Philosophy channel and podcast, so he knows a thing or two about making complex ideas accessible to the public.

Support the show by checking out: ZBiotics (Decrease impact of hangovers. Code: JESSEDAMIANI for 10% off), MUD\WTR (43% off starter kits), 1Password (simplify your life and increase digital safety), Mission Farms CBD (healthy, effective CBD for relief, sleep, and wellbeing—25% off with email), NordVPN (the simplest way to protect yourself online, 74% off 2-year plans).

David Guignion is currently a Visiting Assistant Professor in Occidental College's Critical Theory and Social Justice Department. He completed his PhD at The University of Western Ontario where he studied conspiracy theories, media studies and continental philosophy. He is creator and host of Theory & Philosophy, a YouTube channel and podcast dedicated to making the history of ideas accessible to everyone. His published work covers myriad topics from conspiracy theories to French post-structuralism to Feminism and beyond. His most recent publication can be found in The University of Wisconsin Press' recently published Whispers in the Echo Chamber.

CREDITS: This podcast is edited and produced by Adam Labrie and me, Jesse Damiani. Adam Labrie also edited the video version of the podcast, which is available on YouTube. The podcast is presented by Reality Studies. If you appreciate the work I’m doing, please subscribe and share it with someone you think would enjoy it.

Find more episodes of Urgent Futures at: youtube.com/@UrgentFutures.

The Dark Gothic MAGA oligarchs are going for everything at breakneck speed. We are playing defense and cleanup—and badly. It's time for a switch-up.

Let's talk about Canada—and the prospect of Blue States joining it.

Support the show by checking out: ZBiotics (Decrease impact of hangovers. Code: JESSEDAMIANI for 10% off), MUD\WTR (43% off starter kits), 1Password (simplify your life and increase digital safety), Mission Farms CBD (healthy, effective CBD for relief, sleep, and wellbeing—25% off with email), NordVPN (the simplest way to protect yourself online, 74% off 2-year plans).

What if we used the legal mechanisms available to us to badger our governors and state legislatures to join Canada? What if they too saw the writing on the walls and decided to go for it? What if, for once, we put the oligarchs and MAGA on the back foot, forced them to spend their time and energy trying to stop such an effort?

Whatever you think about the prospect, the point I’m trying to make is that this is the kind of expansive strategizing and activity we need to undertake now. Mass protests are important signaling exercises but they are not going to cut it—especially because a lot of us already expect Trump & co to inject false flag violence into protests to lay the groundwork for martial law. We need to think bigger, weirder, messier. How can we use the legal mechanisms (still) available to us to become sand in the gears of the steamroller? Because the “Dark Gothic MAGA” movement is thinking massively. They are reaching for everything. Unconstitutional? No problem.

Because to recap what I’m sure most of you already know, the U.S. government is currently in the midst of a coup. Between President Donald Trump’s hundreds of executive orders—many of which are unconstitutional—and unelected co-President Elon Musk’s meddling with federal agencies, any semblance of the U.S. government is fast unraveling.

Have any big ideas to share? Leave your thoughts in the comments for other people to see.

Find more episodes of Urgent Futures at: youtube.com/@UrgentFutures.