Podcast appearances and mentions of Ronald Wright

Colin Harris speaks with Dr. Jenellen Good about issues like climate change, technology, and eco-spirituality. They discuss how these issues are communicated, both societally and educationally, and the role these issues play within the education system. Dr. Good is currently the Department Chair of Communication, Popular Culture and Film at Brock University in Ontario. She is also a professor at Brock University researching the role of communication in how people relate to the “natural environment.” More specifically, she explores intersections of screens and the climate crisis, materialism, eco-spirituality and media/digital literacy. She teaches classes about environmental communication, psychology of screens, audiences, environmental justice, and communication research methods. She has published widely on these topics including her book Television and the Earth: Not a Love Story as well as many journal articles and newspaper op-eds. She is currently working on her new book entitled Stories, Stuff & Spirituality. Show notes: - Dr. Good vaguely mentions one happiness alternative economic index and also mentions Bhutan's alternative economic index. Bhutan's index is actually a “Gross National Happiness Index” and other similar indices that she talks about are the Genuine Progress Indicator (GP), Human Development Index (HDI), Index of Sustainable Economic Welfare (ISEW) and the Happy Planet Index (HPI). - Ronald Wright's Massey Lecture book A Short History of Progress was published in 2004. - COP 2024 was in Baku (there was a COP in Doha – in 2012  

More than 1 in 3 Americans - roughly 38% - are having difficulty meeting their basic needs each month. You may be one of them, or know someone who is. Or you don't know, because they're hiding it from you. Regardless, the number remains: 123 million people. Broke in America authors Joanne Samuel Goldblum and Colleen Shaddox believe it doesn't have to be this way, and they're ready to prove their case.Broke in America: Seeing, Understanding, and Ending US Poverty, by Joanne Samuel Goldblum & Colleen ShaddoxNational Diaper Bank NetworkAlliance for Period Supplies"John Steinbeck once said..." - Ronald Wright, A Short History of Progress10 Policies to Prevent and Respond to Childhood Lead Exposure - Pew Charitable Trusts"You're Not You When You're Hungry" - Snickers CommercialDoes 'Medicare For All' Cost More Than The Entire Budget? - PolitiFactWestern Regional Advocacy ProjectFeeding AmericaFollow Joanne on Twitter: @jgoldblumFollow Colleen on Twitter: @ColleenFree----------Email: wherewegopod@gmail.comInstagram: @wwgnpodcast

America's Obsession with Illusion Richard Gale and Gary Null PhD Progressive Radio Network, January 14, 2022 “He who despises his own life is soon master of others” – English proverb For the vast majority of Americans, the past year has been the most challenging in their lives – certainly for young adults. However, not everyone has been suffering equally. The nation's health or illness is not uniform. Much of our suffering is dependent upon the institutionalization and negligence of previous injustices, the loss of social equanimity, economic heedlessness, and our leaders' unmitigated greed and pursuit of power. Nor is everyone adversely affected by the shifts underway in the imaginations of the political and ideological universes. The transnational class of corporate and banking elites, for example, has little motivation to respect or contribute to national boundaries and interests. They perceive themselves as global actors. For the generals and captains of neoliberal globalization, the puppet masters of financial markets, the Covid-19 pandemic only caused annoying disruptions in the quality of their lives. For the remainder, it has been cataclysmic. As we begin 2022 should we not pause and reflect carefully about what we want and don't want as individuals and a nation to secure a sustainable future? A deep and collective introspection into the shared moral principles is called for. It is no longer what we say or profess that has any truth or significance. Rather what we actualize in our daily lives and as a society is going to determine whether the future will be better future or worse. Only our actions can realistically convey the deeper values in the American psyche. Therefore we need to ask ourselves more difficult questions to discover the real moral poverty that defines us as a civilization. Where were the large demonstrations against the trillion-dollar bailout of Wall Street and foreign banks when barely a penny was spent for the average citizen? Where were the demonstrations against home foreclosures and the loss of small family farms?  Debt drenched student aid? Exploitive payday loans and exorbitant credit card fees? There was no outrage against Obama's broken promises on universal healthcare, a platform that helped bring him to the White House. The single-minded attention on the pandemic has cancelled out 2.5 million homeless American children and 46 million adults and children who go hungry daily. Where was a collective voice condemning the hundreds of billion tax dollars to increase the power of the military and intelligence complexes as American cities further collapsed into ghettos? Where were the marches against corporations off-shoring jobs? Why no vocal outrage against the invasions of Libya and Syria, or the US' ongoing support of rogue dictatorships, such as Saudi Arabia and the UAE for crimes against humanity in Yemen? Where are the protests against corporations exploiting slave labor in poor countries such as Bangladesh and Indonesia?  There were no noteworthy protests for any of these issues. And yet these are true existential threats to our very democracy. Bertrand Russell wrote, “one should care about the world they do not see.” Should we not be planning ahead for the future of our children, grandchildren and ourselves instead of being incapacitated by fear? The national popular disinterest in these and other crises foreshadows something on the horizon that does not bode well for most Americans. It is a simple principle to understand; yet so subtle it will likely go unnoticed until everyone is individually and collectively affected. It is the utter lack of balance within the nation's body politick, and across the media that spoon feeds us virtual images of a faux theatrical play, the illusory icons on our minds' monitor screens, that shape our perceptions of reality. This is how control is exerted over our thoughts, speech and actions. In fact, it is only after people exercise their thoughts independently, with the certain belief that they have actual self-control over their lives, that they can arrive at the realization that their perceptions may be largely distorted. Throughout America's history there has been a system of three federal branches to assure there is a platform for checks and balances as well as a structure to contain the tensions between them. That system now is being rapidly challenged and eroded. Now the middle of the road Democrats officially control the White House and both legislative bodies. We will see what awaits us. There is also what is commonly referred to as the “fourth estate,” the powers of the press and news media that control the framing of the political narrative and partisan issues. In the past, the media was expected to hold the government accountable by exposing its conflicts of interest that endanger the public, its misdemeanors, and systemic corruption. This too is in decay as the media has been fully captured by corporate interests and now aligns itself politically and ideologically with the new political elite determined to reshape democracy and launch a new reset that will dramatically infringe on individual rights and liberties. Finally, there is the growing influence of a fourth branch of government, the corpocracy and its private interests. We might also include the US intelligence community that increasingly operates independently from executive and legislative oversight. Together we can witness this loose cabal of seemingly independent entities, working simultaneously in consortium and in opposition to each other, propelling us towards a future tsunami of greater polarization and immense social disruption. Earlier generations were not threatened by the telecommunication and technological giants, such as Google, Facebook and Amazon. Clinton's Communications Decency Act of 1996, despite its well-meaning intentions to protect free speech, was otherwise destructively naïve. At that time it was sensible; however, that was before the advent of the social media that now dominates our lives and shapes political discourse. Silicon Valley has become a force far more powerful than the lobbyists on K Street to ensure that corporate Democrats are raised to a position of absolute power. Yet the problem would be equally threatening if it were the corporate and radicalized GOP in power. The centrist Democratic left, lulled in a passivity that “it can't happen here,” is every bit as dangerous and delusional as the Republican far-right's paranoia over conspiracies squatting behind every nook and cranny. A moderate centrist right no longer exists as it has now exited reality like a herd of lemmings to follow Trump phenomena over a phantasmagoric cliff. The more important question to contemplate is how this will impact yourself and average citizens. What happens elsewhere around the world can no longer be viewed in isolation. Globalization is perhaps the most holistic phenomena within the matrix of financial capital movements and post-modern social restructuring. China has the means to socially control most of its population, especially in urban areas. On the other hand, China would be unable to succeed in this endeavor without the direct assistance, trade and technological development of Silicon Valley and the private innovators of intelligence and surveillance applied science. China has already launched social scoring, a nefarious means to reward and penalize public activity. If a person protests the lack of personal freedom, democratic values and free speech, his or her social score decreases. And through digital networks, authorities can monitor and identify every Chinese citizen's movements. All of this technology is ready for launch in the US and other developed nations. However, rather than social scoring, it is block chain, the digital database that gathers any information it is programmed for. Block chain has already been employed for almost a decade. At this moment the federal government and individual states are blindly over-reacting to Covid's health threats, the climate and environment, and the collapse of social cohesion. These threats are eliciting government mandates, such as vaccination. A Biden federal vaccine mandate would overrule individual state laws. The fact that this is being publicly stated should quell many conspiratorial theories. It is part of a more comprehensive and long-term agenda for expanding government social control under the pretense and propaganda of keeping Americans safe under the banner of national security. New laws are under construction that would redefine hate speech. Censorship of free speech for criticizing official narratives and policies to tackle the pandemic are being enforced. Any criticism towards the failures of the Covid-19 vaccines is redefined as threats to public health. People raising such critiques may eventually find their names on domestic terrorist lists. This scenario is not beyond the imagination. Wikileaks revealed that environmental, animal protection, and human rights groups have been labeled as domestic terrorist organizations. Guilt by association laws, for example buried in Obama's National Defense Authorization Act, are in place. Expanding a law's scope is far easier than erasing it from the books. Consequently, it is not unlikely that these laws may eventually widen to include charges of subversion based solely on the emails you read, the videos you watch or the broadcasts you listen to. This would inevitably lead to the death toll for any residue of integrity in journalism. Silicon Valley's collusion with the government has canceled the voices of some of our best investigative journalists, such as Chris Hedges, Sharyl Attkinsson, Glenn Greenwald, Max Blumenthal and Craig Murray. These are only a few of many examples. The new unstated law is that original investigation must support the official narrative, otherwise it will be prohibited from accessible public view. We may recall that under the second Bush administration, the justice department created “free speech zones,” fenced off or confined areas where demonstrators were only permitted to exercise their Constitutional rights of free protest and expression. Today we are only several small amendments away before the right to assemble being banned altogether. Faced with growing condemnation by many nations, the US' hegemony on the world geopolitical arena has waned considerably. Biden's administration and its return to neocon foreign against Russia and China and neoliberal market policies will likely make every effort to regain the dominance it lost during the past four years. What has vanished in the US' former full spectrum dominance over the geopolitical landscape is now being inverted to strengthen federal hegemonic reign over the American population. Finally, we need to awaken to modern technologies' remarkable sophistication and its certain threats to the health of our societies, and even to our definition of being human. Sadly, this is an industry each of us has been complicit in advancing. Coining a term by one of the planet's most important and forgotten 20th century prophetic voices, the Trappist monk Father Thomas Merton, we are facing a great Unspeakable, a spiritual crisis contributing to the existential vacuity of modern American culture. Few are aware that in his 1964 collection of meditations, Seeds of Destruction, Merton predicted that the civil rights movement would confront a catastrophic impasse and may find itself without leadership. Four years later, Martin Luther King Jr, who Merton had a deep correspondence with, was assassinated. Merton would die suddenly later that same year under very mysterious circumstances in Thailand. Another way to describe the Unspeakable is criminal Sovereignty, with a capital S, to convey its almost numinous qualities. If alive today, Merton would look upon both the extreme right and left as mere expressions of the meaninglessness of American life manifesting as a turbulent ocean of afflictive emotions and thoughts. Instead of technology serving the needs of humanity, Americans are being increasingly conditioned to willingly bow as slaves to technology. The public, Somerset Maugham warned, “are easily disillusioned then they are angry or it was the illusion they loved.” The Unspeakable's unspoken mantra is: technology must progress regardless of how many people fall destitute, jobless, debt ridden and physically ill with only suicide as a recourse to escape. “American democracy today,” Merton observed over 55 years ago, “is just cheap pressed wood fiber, cardboard and spray paint.” Consequently, the elite sitting in the global control tower view the Great Reset's technological regime as preferable to democracy's kabuki theater. Advanced surveillance, artificial intelligence, intelligent robotics, transhumanism, a 5G internet of everything, genetic engineering, and weather modification should be our guiding avatars. The solutions, he would argue, can no longer be found in civil discourse or the rights of human beings gathering in assembly. For the ruling elite, the masses are blind sheep wandering in search of a shepherd. This is what author Ronald Wright called the “progress trap” – progress' unending efforts to feed technology's hunger to devour natural and human capital, interest free. And the mainstream press and news media, in its' malady of cognitive dissonance, serves as its unreflective cheerleader for our march towards civilizational collapse. Merton was keenly aware of technology's dangers to social stability. In a 1967 letter he took aim at the “universal myth that technology infallibly makes everything in every way better for everybody. It does not.” However, Merton was by no means a Luddite. “Technology could indeed make a better world for millions of human beings,” he wrote. Yet there remained the nightmare of technology transforming the world into a “more collectivist, cybernated mass culture.” Decades before the first desktop, Merton foresaw a complete fragmentation of the nation's moral and spiritual fabric when people will begin basing all of their political and ethical decisions on computers. Prophetically he wrote to a friend, “just wait until they start philosophizing with computers!” That was 1967. He even foresaw technology becoming a means to elevate the slaves of technology's false self, to satisfy narcissistic appetites for admiration and status. In other words, the woke social media. “The greatest need of our time,” Merton wrote in his Conjectures of a Guilty Bystander, “is to clean out the enormous mass of mental and emotional rubbish that clutters our minds and makes all political and social life a mass illness. Without this housecleaning we cannot begin to see. Unless we see we cannot think. The purification must begin with the mass media.” For this reason we urgently need to penetrate the illusions of propaganda and popular falsehoods, across the entire political spectrum as well the self-appointed pontificating Pharisees who are ushering a new socio-economic era where endless technological innovation has precedence over human lives. Despite its newness, it has also been clearly predictable. No doubt, if Orwell were penning his great novel today, the emergence of this new American era we are witnessing would not be fiction.

America's Obsession with Illusion Richard Gale and Gary Null PhD Progressive Radio Network, January 14, 2022   “He who despises his own life is soon master of others” – English proverb   For the vast majority of Americans, the past year has been the most challenging in their lives – certainly for young adults. However, not everyone has been suffering equally. The nation's health or illness is not uniform. Much of our suffering is dependent upon the institutionalization and negligence of previous injustices, the loss of social equanimity, economic heedlessness, and our leaders' unmitigated greed and pursuit of power.  Nor is everyone adversely affected by the shifts underway in the imaginations of the political and ideological universes. The transnational class of corporate and banking elites, for example, has little motivation to respect or contribute to national boundaries and interests. They perceive themselves as global actors. For the generals and captains of neoliberal globalization, the puppet masters of financial markets, the Covid-19 pandemic only caused annoying disruptions in the quality of their lives. For the remainder, it has been cataclysmic.   As we begin 2022 should we not pause and reflect carefully about what we want as and don't want as individuals and a nation for securing a sustainable future? Fundamental is a deep introspection into the common and moral principles we are living today. It is not what we say or profess, but what we actualize in our daily lives and as a collective society that matters. Only our actions can realistically convey the deeper values in the American psyche.    Therefore we need to ask ourselves more difficult questions to discover the real moral poverty that defines us as a civilization. Where were the large demonstrations against the trillion-dollar bailout of Wall Street and foreign banks when barely a penny for the average citizen was spent? Where were the demonstrations against home foreclosures and the loss of small family farms?  Debt drenched student aid? Exploitive payday loans and exorbitant credit card fees. There were no protests against Obama's broken promises on universal healthcare. The single-minded attention on the pandemic has cancelled out 2.5 million homeless American children and 46 million adults and children who go daily. Where was a collective voice condemning the hundreds of billion tax dollars to increase the power of the military and intelligence complexes as American cities further collapsed into ghettos? Where were the marches against corporations off-shoring jobs. Why no vocal outrage against Obama's invasions of Libya and Syria, or the US ongoing support of rogue dictatorships, such as Saudi Arabia and the UAE, for crimes against humanity in Yemen. Where are the protests against corporations exploiting slave labor in poor countries such as Bangladesh and Indonesia.  There were no noteworthy protests for any of these issues. And yet these are true existential threats to our very democracy. Bertrand Russell wrote, “one should care about the world they do not see.” Should we not therefore be planning ahead for the future of our children, grandchildren and ourselves instead of being incapacitated by fear.   The national popular disinterest in these and other crises forebodes something on the horizon that does not bode well for most Americans. It is a simple principle to understand; yet so subtle it will likely go unnoticed until everyone is individually and collectively affected. It is the utter lack of balance within the nation's body politick, and across the media that spoon feeds us virtual images of a faux theatrical play, the illusory icons on our minds' monitor screens, that shape our perceptions of reality. This is how control is exerted over our thoughts, speech and actions. In fact, it is only after people exercise their thoughts independently, with the certain belief that they have actual self-control over their lives, that they arrive at the realization that their perceptions may be largely distorted.   Throughout America's history there has been a system of three federal branches to assure there is a platform for checks and balances as well as a structure to contain the tensions between them. That system now is being rapidly challenged and eroded. Now the middle of the road Democrats officially control the White House and both legislative bodies. We will see what awaits us.   There is also what is commonly referred to as the “fourth estate,” the powers of the press and news media that control the framing of the political narrative and partisan issues. In the past, the media was expected to hold the government accountable by exposing its conflicts of interest that endanger the public, its misdemeanors, and systemic corruption. This too is in decay as the media has been fully captured by corporate interests and now aligns itself politically and ideologically with the new political elite determined to reshape democracy and launch a new reset that will dramatically infringe on individual rights and liberties.   Finally, there is the growing influence of a fourth branch of government, the corpocracy and its private interests. We might also include the US intelligence community that increasingly operates independently from executive and legislative oversight.   Together we can witness this loose cabal of seemingly independent entities, working simultaneously in consortium and in opposition to each other, propelling us towards a future tsunami of greater polarization and immense social disruption.   Earlier generations were not threatened by the telecommunication and technological giants, such as Google, Facebook and Amazon. Clinton's Communications Decency Act of 1996, despite its well-meaning intentions to protect free speech, was otherwise destructively naïve. At that time it was sensible; however, that was before the advent of the social media that now dominates our lives and shapes political discourse. Silicon Valley has become a force far more powerful than the lobbyists on K Street to ensure that corporate Democrats are raised to a position of absolute power. Yet the problem would be equally threatening if it were the corporate and radicalized GOP in power.   The centrist Democratic left, lulled in a passivity that “it can't happen here,” is every bit as dangerous and delusional as the Republican far-right's paranoia over conspiracies squatting behind every nook and cranny. A moderate centrist right no longer exists as it has now exited reality like a herd of lemmings to follow Trump phenomena over a phantasmagoric cliff.   The more important question to contemplate is how this will impact yourself and average citizens. What happens elsewhere around the world can no longer be viewed in isolation. Globalization is perhaps the most holistic phenomena within the matrix of financial capital movements and post-modern social restructuring. China has the means to socially control most of its population, especially in urban areas. On the other hand, China would be unable to succeed in this endeavor without the direct assistance, trade and technological development of Silicon Valley and the private innovators of intelligence and surveillance applied science. China has already launched social scoring, a nefarious means to reward and penalize public activity. If a person protests the lack of personal freedom, democratic values and free speech, his or her social score decreases. And through digital networks, authorities can monitor and identify every Chinese citizen's movements. All of this technology is ready for launch in the US and other developed nations. However, rather than social scoring, it is block chain, the digital database that gathers any information it is programmed for. Block chain has already been employed for almost a decade.    At this moment the federal government and individual states are blindly over-reacting to Covid's health threats, the climate and environment, and the collapse of social cohesion. These threats are eliciting government mandates, such as vaccination. A Biden federal vaccine mandate would overrule individual state laws. The fact that this is being publicly stated should quell many conspiratorial theories. It is part of a more comprehensive and long-term agenda for expanding government social control under the pretense and propaganda of keeping Americans safe under the banner of national security.   New laws are under construction that would redefine hate speech. Censorship of free speech for criticizing official narratives and policies to tackle the pandemic are being enforced. Any criticism towards the failures of the Covid-19 vaccines is redefined as threats to public health. People raising such critiques may eventually find their names on domestic terrorist lists. This scenario is not beyond the imagination. Wikileaks revealed that environmental, animal protection, and human rights groups have been labeled as domestic terrorist organizations. Guilt by association laws, for example buried in Obama's National Defense Authorization Act, are in place. Expanding a law's scope is far easier than erasing it from the books. Consequently, it is not unlikely that these laws may eventually widen to include charges of subversion based solely on the emails you read, the videos you watch or the broadcasts you listen to. This would inevitably lead to the death toll for any residue of integrity in journalism. Silicon Valley's collusion with the government has canceled the voices of some of our best investigative journalists, such as Chris Hedges, Sharyl Attkinsson, Glenn Greenwald, Max Blumenthal and Craig Murray. These are only a few of many examples. The new unstated law is that original investigation must support the official narrative, otherwise it will be prohibited from accessible public view.    We may recall that under the second Bush administration, the justice department created “free speech zones,” fenced off or confined areas where demonstrators were only permitted to exercise their Constitutional rights of free protest and expression. Today we are only several small amendments away before the right to assemble being banned altogether.   Faced with growing condemnation by many nations, the US' hegemony on the world geopolitical arena has waned considerably. Biden's administration and its return to neocon foreign against Russia and China and neoliberal market policies will likely make every effort to regain the dominance it lost during the past four years. What has vanished in the US' former full spectrum dominance over the geopolitical landscape is now being inverted to strengthen federal hegemonic reign over the American population.   Finally, we need to awaken to modern technologies' remarkable sophistication and its certain threats to the health of our societies, and even to our definition of being human. Sadly, this is an industry each of us has been complicit in advancing. Coining a term by one of the planet's most important and forgotten 20th century prophetic voices, the Trappist monk Father Thomas Merton, we are facing a great Unspeakable, a spiritual crisis contributing to the existential vacuity of modern American culture. Few are aware that in his 1964 collection of meditations, Seeds of Destruction, Merton predicted that the civil rights movement would confront a catastrophic impasse and may find itself without leadership. Four years later, Martin Luther King Jr, who Merton had a deep correspondence with, was assassinated. Merton would die suddenly later that same year under very mysterious circumstances in Thailand.   Another way to describe the Unspeakable is criminal Sovereignty, with a capital S, to convey its almost numinous qualities. If alive today, Merton would look upon both the extreme right and left as mere expressions of the meaninglessness of American life manifesting as a turbulent ocean of afflictive emotions and thoughts. Instead of technology serving the needs of humanity, Americans are being increasingly conditioned to willingly bow as slaves to technology. The public, Somerset Maugham warned, “are easily disillusioned then they are angry or it was the illusion they loved.” The Unspeakable's unspoken mantra is: technology must progress regardless of how many people fall destitute, jobless, debt ridden and physically ill with only suicide as a recourse to escape. “American democracy today,” Merton observed over 55 years ago, “is just cheap pressed wood fiber, cardboard and spray paint.” Consequently, the elite sitting in the global control tower view the Great Reset's technological regime as preferable to democracy's kabuki theater. Advanced surveillance, artificial intelligence, intelligent robotics, transhumanism, a 5G internet of everything, genetic engineering, and weather modification should be our guiding avatars. The solutions, he would argue, can no longer be found in civil discourse or the rights of human beings gathering in assembly. For the ruling elite, the masses are blind sheep wandering in search of a shepherd. This is what author Ronald Wright called the “progress trap” – progress' unending efforts to feed technology's hunger to devour natural and human capital, interest free. And the mainstream press and news media, in its' malady of cognitive dissonance, serves as its unreflective cheerleader for our march towards civilizational collapse.    Merton was keenly aware of technology's dangers to social stability. In a 1967 letter he took aim at the “universal myth that technology infallibly makes everything in every way better for everybody. It does not.” However, Merton was by no means a Luddite. “Technology could indeed make a better world for millions of human beings,” he wrote. Yet there remained the nightmare of technology transforming the world into a “more collectivist, cybernated mass culture.” Decades before the first desktop, Merton foresaw a complete fragmentation of the nation's moral and spiritual fabric when people will begin basing all of their political and ethical decisions on computers. Prophetically he wrote to a friend, “just wait until they start philosophizing with computers!” That was 1967. He even foresaw technology becoming a means to elevate the slaves of technology's false self, to satisfy narcissistic appetites for admiration and status. In other words, the woke social media.   “The greatest need of our time,” Merton wrote in his Conjectures of a Guilty Bystander, “is to clean out the enormous mass of mental and emotional rubbish that clutters our minds and makes all political and social life a mass illness. Without this housecleaning we cannot begin to see. Unless we see we cannot think. The purification must begin with the mass media.”   For this reason we urgently need to penetrate the illusions of propaganda and popular falsehoods, across the entire political spectrum as well the self-appointed pontificating Pharisees who are ushering a new socio-economic era where endless technological innovation has precedence over human lives. Despite its newness, it has also been clearly predictable. No doubt, if Orwell were penning his great novel today, the emergence of this new American era we are witnessing would not be fiction.

The Hilary Weston Writers’ Trust Prize for Nonfiction is given for the year’s best work of Canadian nonfiction and spotlights books with a distinctive voice, as well as a persuasive and compelling command of tone, narrative, style, and technique. The eventual winner receives $60,000. The 2020 finalists were selected by a jury composed of writers Helen Knott, Sandra Martin, and Richard Wright. Listen to them discuss what it’s like to be on a literary prize jury, the tricks and techniques they used to wade through 100+ books, and what was remarkable about the finalists they chose.

In his 2004 CBC Massey Lectures, Ronald Wright warned us a “progress trap” was closing around our technologically-advanced, but dangerously self-destructive, civilization. Wright tells IDEAS now he’s unsure as to whether there is any wiggle room left.

In this episode we’ll be speaking with Leah Kostamo. Leah and her husband Markku co-founded A Rocha Canada, and today she provides leadership and spiritual direction at A Rocha’s Brooksdale Environmental Center in the greater Vancouver, BC area. We’ll be talking about her work, and also about a book that she wrote, called Planted: A Story of Creation, Calling, and Community. Leah explains the work of A Rocha worldwide, an organization that is in great part focused on education—on helping people to understand the spirituality of creation care, but also the science of it—and importantly, on the interconnectedness of both realms. We also touch on themes of hospitality, children and nature, spiritual practices, eco-justice and our “ecological footprint”, and environmental science. Guest: Leah Kostamo https://arocha.ca/who-we-are-a-rocha-canada/team/Book: Planted: A story of creation, calling and communityhttps://arocha.ca/who-we-are-a-rocha-canada/our-story/A Rocha, Canadahttps://arocha.ca/Peter & Miranda Harris, founders of A Rochahttps://www.arocha.org/en/people/?filters[position]=founderProfessors Loren & Mary Ruth Wilkinson, Regent College https://www.regent-college.edu/faculty/retired/loren-wilkinsonhttps://www.regent-college.edu/faculty/part-time-and-visiting/mary-ruth-wilkinson Dr. Frank Richardson, ornithologist, and Dorothy (Frank’s obituary)https://academic.oup.com/auk/article-abstract/103/4/812/5191568?redirectedFrom=fulltextRachel Carson, The Sense of Wonder,1965. https://books.google.com/books Richard Louv, Last Child in the Woodshttp://richardlouv.com/books/last-child/Eva Selhub, Your Brain on Naturehttp://www.yourbrainonnature.com/Dr. Steven Bouma-Predigerhttps://hope.edu/directory/people/bouma-prediger-steven/index.htmlHebrew Passover prayer: Dayenuhttps://www.myjewishlearning.com/article/dayenu-it-would-have-been-enough/Ecological footprint calculatorhttp://www.footprintcalculator.orgSemiahmoo Peoplehttps://www.surreyhistory.ca/semipeople.htmlDr. Cheryl Bearhttps://cherylbear.com/Dr. Terry LeBlanchttps://naiits.com/faculty/Ronald Wright, A Short History of Progresshttps://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ronald_WrightJoanna Macy, on active hopehttps://www.joannamacy.net/main

Chris Ryan is the bestselling author of Sex at Dawn & Civilized to Death. He also hosts a podcast called Tangentially Speaking. We talk about everything from President Clinton's infamous blowjob to male vulnerability to the importance of embracing uncertainty and heartbreak in one's life to the myth of "progress" and the (eventual? hopeful? inevitable?) downfall of civilization as we know it.  Find out more about Chris at ThatChrisRyan.com and on Instagram and Twitter.  Chris' Book Recommendations: A Short History of Progress by Ronald Wright, Finite and Infinite Games by James Carse and The Unbearable Lightness Of Being by Milan Kundera Songs featured: "Talyat" by Tinariwen and "Pacing the Cage" by Bruce Cockburn How to support the show: Rate, review and subscribe to the podcast on iTunes! Support my work on Patreon and get access to perks like an exclusive WhatsApp group chat just for patrons! Visit my website - AnyaKaats.com & Find me on Instagram Get full access to A Millennial's Guide to Saving the World at anyakaats.substack.com/subscribe

Progress is something we all try to work toward, but how do we really know if we're making any? And if progress isn’t permanent, is it progress at all? In this episode, we'll explore progress and the ways that certain forms of it actually trap us in the past...LinksRonald Wright, A Short History of ProgressInterview with Ronald Wright, "What is Progress"MusicAll music used in this episode is independently produced and licensed by Design Tomorrow for non-commercial use.Early Renaissance Music, Shakespear's TimeWestern Sycamore, by r benyOur Digital Compass, by Blue Dot SessionsString Theory, by r benyTraditional Polynesian Music, The Culture SocietyBurl, by r benyJune 12, 2014, by r benyDulcinea Eurotrack Modular Ambient, by r benyCreditsDesign Tomorrow is produced by Chris Butler at the Tomorrow office in Durham, NC.You can follow the show on Twitter @dsgntmrrw. You can visit the show's website at designtomorrow.co, and you can email me at chris @ designtomorrow.co.Thanks for listening, and remember, what we do and think today can create a better tomorrow. See acast.com/privacy for privacy and opt-out information.

Climate change is real, and we are causing it. At least, that’s the consensus among scientists around the world. A tiny handful of academics disagree, and that is a critical feature of science, but does this mean we should debate it as if it were an open question? Part of the reason we seem to so freely and so brazenly challenge those who have done their homework is because we lack the tools to distinguish between fact and fiction. We, as citizens, need to be literate in science in order for the real debates to be had. Joining Ben for an impassioned conversation is renowned climate scientist Dr. John Smol. Read the blog post for this episode. About the Guest Water pollution, climatic change, declining fisheries – these environmental problems are at the forefront of many people’s minds. And so are the dreaded diseases like cancer, asthma, autism, that many experts feel are linked to toxic chemicals in our environment, in particular, our fresh water supplies. John Smol and his team at the Paleoecological Environmental Assessment and Research Laboratory (PEARL), at Queen's University, go deep below the surface of our lakes and rivers to uncover the secrets of our environmental history, written in the mud and silt. Professor Smol’s work has been informing policy discussions and decisions nationally and internationally for many years, starting with his acclaimed role in the acid rain debates. With the help of the PEARL team, his research has enabled policy makers to make knowledgeable, proactive decisions in areas such as agricultural runoff, clearcutting, protection of fish habitats, and air pollution control. With a public more concerned and informed about the environment than ever before, PEARL’s ongoing discoveries enable governments to be leaders in the stewardship of Canadian natural resources. No matter how complicated paleolimnology might sound to you, to John, it’s all about one simple vision: the more we know about our environment, the better decisions we can make to protect it. Learn more about John. Mentioned in this Episode A poll from 2018 that shows 1/3 of Canadians don't believe humans and industry cause climate change James Powell, a US geologist and author who argues that the acceptance of anthropomorphic climate change in the scientific community is virtually universal 27th International Polar Conference (2018) A poll from 2017 that shows nearly half of Canadians think science is a "matter of opinion" A Short History of Progress, a book by author Ronald Wright based on his 2004 Massey Lectures Clip (YouTube) from the television program Newsroom, featuring a climate scientist who has essentially given up The Quote of the Week The purpose of education is to replace an empty mind with an open one. - Malcolm Forbes

Is the first person to live to 1,000-years-old, alive today? And if that's true, what does that inevitably mean for the future of the human condition? One of the world's leading anti-aging researchers, Aubrey De Grey, (and strangely—my neighbor) believes that to be 100% true. Because, well, Aubrey's the one who said it. And if what Aubrey says is true, would you then believe Arthur C. Clarke's third law, which states: Any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from magic? Meaning that modern technology can seem like literal witchcraft to the ignorant, or simple science to the learned.  Popular mystery writer, Agatha Christie, once wrote, "The supernatural is only the natural of which the laws are not yet understood."  And I agree. However... Are we metaphorically "summoning the demon," as tech mogul Elon Musk fears? The Guardian published an article on former vice-president of user growth for Facebook—one you may have read or, at the very least, heard about in November of 2017. The former executive said that he feels "tremendous guilt" over his work on “tools that are ripping apart the social fabric of how society works.” Chamath Palihapitiya said, "This is not about Russian ads.” “This is a global problem. It is eroding the core foundations of how people behave by and between each other.”   Historian and novelist Ronald Wright popularized what is called a progress trap. The exact definition of a progress trap is as follows:  The condition human societies experience when, in pursuing progress through human ingenuity, they inadvertently introduce problems they do not have the resources or political will to solve, for fear of short-term losses in status, stability or quality of life. Many of the problems we're seeing now–whether we're talking about hunger or massive inequity–whether we're talking about climate change or the loss of biodiversity–have been driven over the last 250 years by a system of overproduction and overconsumption of stuff.  You've probably heard Einstein's famous quote, "I fear the day that technology will surpass our human interaction. The world will have a generation of idiots." This quote, although popular on the Internet, is false. Einstein did say, however, "I believe that the abominable deterioration of ethical standards stems primarily from the mechanization and depersonalization of our lives,” he wrote in a letter to his friend, psychiatrist Otto Juliusburger, in 1948, “a disastrous byproduct of science and technology. Nostra culpa!" And In many ways science and technology have become the new religion of our time. Karl Marx described religion as an opiate to the masses because it dulled the senses and kept people passive and accepting of a capitalist, industrialist culture warped on the idea of consumption and growth. Freud, the father of modern psychology, argued that religion served to repress and sublimate an individual's desire into activities that serve the culture. This, Freud argued, produces neurosis and mental illness in those that civilization seeks to domesticate. And so if we imagine technology as a drug, where its purpose is to manage pain and create sensations of calm and well-being, do we not forget that we are apart of the natural world, fighting for survival, just like everything else? In many ways technology works much like religion, distracting us from our inevitable deaths with feelings of fleeting invincibility and immortality.  (I'd like to thank my friend Julian Langer for that connection between technology and religion.) Anyways, guys! This is part 2 of 2 of Privilege, Identity Politics, and the Transhuman Agenda with Daniel Vitalis. All-in-all, this was a challenging conversation to navigate for both Daniel and myself, so please keep an open mind, ear, and heart. So... In today's episode, you'll learn... The three mishmashed values (—and science) that Daniel says he approaches the world with, Daniel's personal relationship with modern technology, Daniel's thoughts on merit, identity politics, and the transhuman agenda (i.e. "the cult of progress"), and... Much, much more. Episode Breakdown Daniel says he approaches the world like a mishmash of these three values—and science Sophia the AI robot, identity politics, and the challenge Daniel has with privilege and where it's going Daniel's thoughts on bio and nano technology What Daniel says his religion would be if he were to subscribe to one Why Daniel says people who practice animism today aren't the same as people who practiced animism in the past Are we in an augmented reality? Elon Musk, Space X, and artificial intelligence. Are we summoning the demon? Daniel's personal relationship with modern technology Daniel recalls the first time he saw someone walking down the street talking to themselves (on a hands-free cellular device) Why Daniel feels he's lost some of his intelligence (and what happened to it) Peter Thiel, the Bulletproof Conference, and how Peter (Thiel) sees the future state of humanity's relationship with technology The juxtaposition between The Bulletproof Conference and the 2017 Annual North American Rewilding Conference Daniel's foreboding observation about the Pixar's animated movie Wall-E Are we going into an age of biological denial? Daniel's thoughts on merit, identity politics, and the transhuman agenda (i.e. "the cult of progress") How modern technology, Daniel says, has effected humanity throughout the past few generations James mentions AHR episode #4 with Arthur Haines and the allegory of the cave How Daniel talks about his work What Daniel says is the theme of today's episode Why you won't hear Daniel use the word rewilding (...much)

Alison Hagan of the MS Society shared her journey on this episode. Conversation about the importance of farm communities, the history of cutting and pasting, the state of journalism, cycling culture and much more. We also ask the question, “what is progress?” Alison & Paul swap 4-H stories. Paul tells us about founding the West Michigan Coop. Alison attended the University of Regina. Our guest recommends CBC, NPR and Common Dreams for news coverage. Paul likes the BBC and Aljazeera. Alison moved up the ranks of the MS Society from Red Deer to Edmonton. We learn about the support the MS Society offers. University of Alberta. Canadians, be sure to get your vitamin D! We learn about the popularity of the MS Bike events in Canada. Alison & the Canadian MS Society work closely with the National MS Society in the States. The BP MS 150 from Houston to Austin. You can also help by participating in the MS Walk. In Edmonton it is held at the Ballpark, formerly Telus Field. Stew Hutchings of the Devon Bicycle Association organizes a practice ride before MS Bike in Edmonton. The night before the podcast, Alison was at an event to raise money held by Patrycia Rzechowka. Alison tells us there are a number of events held by third-parties to raise money. You can find them by clicking the Events tab on mssociety.ca. Alison appeared on The Oilers Rig Radio during a fundraising event. We learn about the Partnership Group and Brent Barootes. Alison was asked to speak at the 2016 Western Canada Fundraising Conference. The Human Venture Institute. Recommended reading from The Human Venture Institute, A Short History of Progress by Ronald Wright. Other readings are featured on the Book Lists page. Radiolab episode, From Tree to Shining Tree. Thanks to Alison Hagan for spending her evening with us and thanks to you for listening. Please check out the MS Society in Canada or the US and see how you can help. To talk to us, head over to Facebook, Twitter or Patreon. Support Montreal Sauce on Patreon

A panel of scholars discusses Professor Darryl Brown's book, “Free Market Criminal Justice: How Democracy and Laissez Faire Undermine the Rule of Law,” published by Oxford University Press. Professor Brandon Garrett moderates the event, which includes University of North Carolina law professor Joseph Kennedy and Ronald Wright, Needham Yancey Gulley Professor of Criminal Law at Wake Forest University School of Law, in addition to Brown. Vice Dean George Geis provides introductory remarks. (University of Virginia School of Law, Sept. 16, 2016)

Deconstructing Dinner has recently been reflecting on the model of agriculture itself as the primary source through which most people on earth access their food. From our exploration of ethnobiology to recent topics on permaculture, it's clear that there are other models available, which, for some people are a substitute for agriculture, and for others, complementary practices. But what within that dependence on agriculture are we all dependent upon? Multinational corporations? The chain grocery store? Perhaps the microwave!? Well behind those dependencies, which are precarious at best, is a more deeply rooted dependence... soil - a dependence of which its once-deep roots have demonstrated over time to have become progressively shallower as 'modern' agricultural practices deplete soil depth and nutrients. On this broadcast, Deconstructing Dinner features voices of researchers who have explored the evolution of agriculture and soil alongside civilization.   Voices David Montgomery, professor, Earth & Space Sciences, University of Washington (Seattle, WA) - David is the author of the 2008 book "Dirt: The Erosion of Civilizations" (UC Press). The book explores the idea that we are and have long been using up Earth's soil. Once bare of protective vegetation and exposed to wind and rain, cultivated soils erode bit by bit, slowly enough to be ignored in a single lifetime but fast enough over centuries to limit the lifespan of civilizations. At the University of Washingotn, David studies the evolution of topography and the influence of geomorphological processes on ecological systems and human societies. He received his B.S. in geology at Stanford University (1984) and his Ph.D. in geomorphology from UC Berkeley (1991). David was hosted at Oregon State University in July 2009 by PAGES and was later interviewed by Tom Allen of KBCS. Ronald Wright, author, A Short History of Progress, (Salt Spring Island, BC) - Ronald Wright is a novelist, historian, and essayist, and has won prizes in all three genres, and is published in ten languages. Ronald was the 2004 Massey Lecturer - a presitigious annual public event in Canada, for which he presented A Short History of Progress. One of his more recent works is "What is America: A Short History of the New World Order". He was born in England, educated at Cambridge, and now lives in British Columbia, Canada.

In a provocative new book, Ronald Wright contends that right from its start as a frontier society, America has used militarism and religious extremism to expand and prosper. His book is called What is America? A Short History of the New World Order.

Ronald Wright, the author of "What Is America?: A Short History of the New World Order", examines the dichotomy between "America's ideals and the realities". Wright discusses how such conflicts as those between Native Americans and the Europeans who came to settle the new world have shaped the American identity.

Interview with the author and historian Ronald Wright about his book 'A Short History of Progress.'