Urgent Futures with Jesse Damiani

In September, then- Washington Post Global Opinions Editor Karen Attiah was fired from the Washington Post for expressing her opinions about gun violence. What has happened since is the real story. Support the show by checking out: ProtonVPN (gold-standard VPN—fast and safe. Click the link to get 55% off VPN Plus: $4.49/mo). ZBiotics (Decrease impact of hangovers. Code: JESSEDAMIANI for 10% off),...

I love when a conversation on Urgent Futures feels truly hybrid—that my guest has an irrepressibly curious mind and expansive practice. This is one such conversation. Dr. Alhassen weaves together her committed practices as a writer, historian, activist, academic, and somatic teacher (among others…see her bio). To try to sum this up in a pithy context paragraph would be a fool’s errand, so please j...

What does Strait of Hormuz Crisis fallout mean for you? What does the Donroe Doctrine means for the emerging world order? American soft power on the decline & more from former USAID Project Directors, Adames Global. Support the show by checking out: ProtonVPN (gold-standard VPN—fast and safe. Click the link to get 55% off VPN Plus: $4.49/mo). ZBiotics (Decrease impact of hangovers. Code: JESSEDAMI...

A lot of writing about collapse ends up feeling abstract—like the authors are writing from a remove about an alien species. But today's guest, Sarah Wilson, has written a collapse book that does something incredibly rare. Listen on to find out, and of course: Grab your copy of I Eat The Stars now! Support the show by checking out: ProtonVPN (gold-standard VPN—fast and safe. Click the link to get 5...

I was lucky to meet today's guest, Cy Canterel, a few years ago during the downslope of hype around NFTs and web3—a moment we actually dive into during the episode—fully aware of the ways many people will hear those terms an instantly tune out. My hope here isn’t to valorize the aforementioned (though we do discuss how there were seeds of something meaningful that were drowned out by all the grift...

How can art—especially new media art—be used to intervene in polycrisis? Across projects like Apocalypse Early Warning System, ICEspy, & more, artist Kyle McDonald charts a path. Support the show by checking out: ProtonVPN (gold-standard VPN—fast and safe. Click the link to get 55% off VPN Plus: $4.49/mo). ZBiotics (Decrease impact of hangovers. Code: JESSEDAMIANI for 10% off), MUD\WTR (43% off st...

From comedies like Anchorman and Step Brothers to The Big Short , Vice , and 2C —a forthcoming film about climate apocalypse—Adam McKay's evolution as a storyteller and public figure epitomizes the journey we will need many other creative folks to undertake if we're going to survive what's coming. We get into all of it (including teasers about forthcoming projects). Support the show by checking ou...

By now, the company Palantir has probably entered your field of view—but many still don’t quite get the scope and scale of what they’re building and why. Juan, today's guest, formerly worked at Palantir and other AI companies, and has now emerged as leading advocate for a people’s movement to regulate AI and promote liberatory futures. So listen/watch on to understand into the invisible dangers of...

If you spend enough time learning about climate change, you come to regard the molecule carbon dioxide—abbreivated to CO2—with fear and frustration. After all, the long accumulation of CO2 is behind roughly 75% of Earth’s warming. Leaving aside the fact that we’re the species that put all that CO2 in the air, we’re also not viewing the bigger picture. That bigger picture is the subject of today's...

When you think of threats from heat, your mind probably goes to wildfire threats. And don’t get me wrong, having lived through wildfires firsthand, they’re not to be underestimated! But the headline-grabbing nature of fires might overshadow the fact that plain old heat can be a real threat to your health. In fact, extreme heat is the leading cause of weather-related deaths in the U.S.; more than h...

What happens when a veteran humanitarian and disaster relief specialist founds a camp for building resilience and community? Listen on... Support the show by checking out: ProtonVPN (gold-standard VPN—fast and safe. Click the link to get 55% off VPN Plus: $4.49/mo). ZBiotics (Decrease impact of hangovers. Code: JESSEDAMIANI for 10% off), MUD\WTR (43% off starter kits), 1Password (simplify your lif...

Viktor Orbán is widely regarded as having written the playbook for 'illiberal democracy' that has been used by those aspiring to turn democracies into autocracies—including Donald Trump. But last week, he lost the election—and miraculously, actually stepped down. What should we make of all this? What does it mean for Hungary, the EU, and the world? I chat with friend of the pod Eric Czuleger to fi...

I don't think people fully understand how incredible solar power has gotten—and what it would mean for the future of our planet (and species) if we pursued an aggressive solar effort. Today's guest, Lee Buck, explains what solar futures might hold—and why we should be doing everything we can to bring them about. Support the show by checking out: ProtonVPN (gold-standard VPN—fast and safe. Click th...

Remember when the Internet was a fun place, not where you were hypersurveilled while doomscrolling? Enshittification. It’s a word that captures what's happened to the Internet—and critically, why . It has taken the world by storm, dubbed the 2023 Word of the Year by the American Dialect Society and the 2024 Word of the Year by the Macquarie Dictionary. It’s a delicious word—playfully naughty and p...

Over the years, you’ve probably heard many references to quantum computing. In geopolitics and tech matters, it’s considered an area of extreme interest, and yet it remains a subject that many don’t fully understand (even within the tech commentariat). What is it, how does it work, and what are the implications of a world suffused with this technology? Today's guest, Dr. Bob Sutor, breaks it down....

This marks Noelle’s—count it!—fourth time on Urgent Futures , and I continue to be grateful to have her as a dialogue partner on all things Internet freedoms. This conversation most directly builds on our Aug. 2025 episode, which focused foremost on the threats to privacy and security smuggled in with ‘age verification’ laws. That conversation is as timely and relevant today, so if you want to lea...

Geoengineering might sound nice in theory, but the consequences could be disastrous. Today's guest, Wim Carton, co-wrote The Long Heat with Andreas Malm, which helps paint the full picture. Grab your copy of The Long Heat here! Support the show by checking out: ProtonVPN (gold-standard VPN—fast and safe. Click the link to get 55% off VPN Plus: $4.49/mo). ZBiotics (Decrease impact of hangovers. Cod...

My guest this week is Stephen Marche. Stephen is the author of The Next Civil War and On Writing and Failure . He frequently experiments with literary AI. Support the show by checking out: ProtonVPN (gold-standard VPN—fast and safe. Click the link to get 55% off VPN Plus: $4.49/mo). ZBiotics (Decrease impact of hangovers. Code: JESSEDAMIANI for 10% off), MUD\WTR (43% off starter kits), 1Password (...

For as much as I bemoan the attention fracture that occurs on social media, there are times I’m so grateful for it; I discovered the work of Jonathan Tonkin through a Substack Note about ecosystem services—the financial value that the natural world provides, which is vast and yet is barely ever accounted for under capitalist economics (on that note: please be sure to bookmark my conversation with...

Having researched the topic of collapse for more than half a decade, I can say with some confidence that interest in it has increased over the past few years. And it makes sense—wherever you look, be it politics, climate change, the economy, tech accelerationism, or otherwise, we’re getting a lot of scary signals. But collapse is a slippery word—what exactly does it mean? And what exactly qualifie...

Is it okay for folks on the left to criticize the Democratic Party? Qasim Rashid lost thousands of followers because he did. What are our responsibilities as Americans who believe in democracy and resisting fascism? What strategies can we use? Support the show by checking out: ProtonVPN (gold-standard VPN—fast and safe. Click the link to get 55% off VPN Plus: $4.49/mo). ZBiotics (Decrease impact o...

If you’re looking for historical thinkers who can help you navigate authoritarianism, fascism, totalitarianism, and questions of human rights, you’d do worse than to start with Hannah Arendt, one of the most influential political theorists of the 20th century. I’ve found myself returning to her words repeatedly over the past few years for exactly this reason. You’re perhaps already familiar with t...

Folks who have followed the channel will know that the subject of preparedness—what you colloquially hear referred to as “prepping”—is a subject of great importance to me. For a while now, I’ve felt like it was necessary for us to reclaim, normalize, and broaden the notion of prepping away from the stranglehold that the lone survivalist has on the prepper stereotype. The world that is fast emergin...

We all know that we have to end our addiction to fossil fuels, but how do we actually do that in practice? Today's guest, Erald Kolasi, breaks it down. Support the show by checking out: ProtonVPN (gold-standard VPN—fast and safe. Click the link to get 55% off VPN Plus: $4.49/mo). ZBiotics (Decrease impact of hangovers. Code: JESSEDAMIANI for 10% off), MUD\WTR (43% off starter kits), 1Password (sim...

If there are two letters in the English language you’ve been unable to escape over the past four years, it’s A and I. Artificial intelligence has emerged as the buzziest tech category since the metaverse and NFTs, but unlike those, AI has managed to reach a level of market dominance that almost defies imagination—so whether you like it or not, it's in your best interest to understand how it actual...