Ashes Ashes

Episode 68 - "Mask Off" Half of all US Citizens have their faces in a database that can be searched by facial-tracking software, and the slow creep of surveillance technology means more of us are being watched and analyzed by AI face-detection cameras, often without us knowing, and almost always without our consent. So what are some of the ways companies and governments deploy these technologies today? What are the limits and blind spots to these systems? More importantly, what can and does go wrong when we choose to outsource human recognition to automated computers? Chapters 03:21 Implementations 11:25 Landlords, Churches, Hotels, and Schools - Oh My! 23:30 Technology Creep 31:29 Potential for Abuse 37:24 Ridiculous Ideas 41:43 Failures and Blind Spots 48:43 Irrevocable Consequences 55:25 Aiding Selective Enforcement 1:05:41 Fighting Back 1:15:01 Daniel moving to Boston? A full transcript is available as well as detailed links and sources (plus credits and more) on our website ashesashes.org. Find

Episode 67 - "Collapse Chat: So Long and Thanks for All the Surveillance" This week we're trying a new format for periodic updates. Daniel, David, and Moriah King all sit down together to discuss a handful of important articles and texts they selected covering everything from dolphins to tragedies. We go over the key points of each piece and spend a little time discussing the ramifications of what these (typically dark) pieces of news means for us and the entire world. Hopefully we take away some valuable lessons that allow us to build better things. Chapters 03:04 Dolphins and Language 15:59 Surveillance for Profit 24:38 Acceleration of Time 47:42 Freedom Technologists 57:40 Christchurch 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

Episode 66 - "Trash Talk" The world is garbage and we're talking trash in this week's episode. What really happens when you throw something away? Is recycling as green as we think it is? Just how much garbage are we making anyway? All this answered and so much more as we find ourself waist deep in the world of waste. Chapters 00:31 Trash Opportunities 06:01 Trash Stories 17:10 Trash Stats 36:16 The Big Biz of Recycling 1:05:47 What Can We Do? 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

Episode 65 - "Above the Paving Stones, the Desert" Two-thirds of Spain is at risk of permanent desertification. The cold and wet country of Iceland holds half of all Europe's deserts. China's Gobi Desert is expanding rapidly, swallowing thousands of villages and threatening to envelop the capital city Beijing. In just 40 years a third of the plant's arable land has eroded, and each year desertification destroys the potential to grow 20 million tons of grain. Once again, a show all about sand, but this time we're not building with it; we're running from it. What are some of the long-term systems that lead to desertification? What are some of the simple causes? And in what ways does human and economic development play a role in this process? Chapters 00:32 Civilizations Rise and Fall 12:00 "Spain, Iceland, China, Mongolia" 24:54 Global Aridity 31:30 Desertification Causes and Feedbacks 44:28 Land Use 53:07 Incentives 59:09 What can we do? 1:06:55 Carbondale Spring A full transcript is available as well

Episode 64 - "Sweet Re-Release" It's natural, it's delicious, it's everywhere, and it may be killing us. For years, sugar has been overlooked as a serious detriment to our health because of the manipulations of the sugar industry in both science and politics, but the lies are coming to light as the diseases caused by that deadly white powder threaten to overwhelm the health systems of the world. Can we wake in time up to the danger that this major health risk is posing? Or are we too addicted to the sweet release? Join us this week as we explore the how and why of sugar. This episode originally published March, 2018, and we have a few up to date comments to make before and after. Chapters 05:45 Progress in the 21st Century 09:50 The Scam 18:11 "Pure, White, and Deadly" 19:12 Ancel Keys 20:17 Seven Countries Study 22:16 Coca-cola continues the scam in 2015 25:00 The Start of Nutrition 29:24 Pendulum Swings 32:32 The Failure of the Scientific Method and Industry Infiltration 35:43 "This is Objective Scien

Episode 63 - "Busy Work" Some 37% of workers believe their jobs are pointless, and if we include the jobs that exist to serve those pointless jobs in some way, it's possible that half of the jobs in our economy today (mostly residing in the informational sectors of white-collar work) could disappear with no ill-consequences. In this episode we read and hear from listener-submitted examples of pointless jobs, explore the nature and causes of this phenomenon as outlined in David Graeber's book on the subject, and imagine a world where such pointless assaults on our soul can't happen. Chapters 07:29 Our Own BS Jobs 18:24 What are the definitions and categories of BS jobs? 31:09 Even More BS Jobs 47:47 Concepts about these BS jobs 1:00:13 BS jobs responsible for social media? 1:06:07 Why do BS jobs proliferate? What are the structures? 1:19:55 Bringing it all home; policies to support; what we can do A full transcript is available as well as detailed links and sources (plus credits and more) on our websit

Episode 62 - "Separate Ways" A global epedimic of loneliness is spreading rapidly. 20% of the UK population claims to be always or often lonely, 3 out of 4 people fin the US are affected by loneliness, a quarter of Japanese men over 60 don't have a single friend or family member they can talk to, and there is an alarming rise of youth across borders who are feeling joyless, useless, and alien in their own homelands. This is a growing health disaster: loneliness has been shown to significantly increase the risk of early death, heart disease, stroke, and much more. Medicine and the high tech industry are working on "loneliness pills" and other high tech software fixes, but we're increasingly afraid that they've missed the point and are wasting time chasing symptoms. This week we explore the systemic causes of why we all feel so alone and look towards a world where we make the dramatic shifts to our social insitutions, governments, economic relationships, and very culture so we can begin to repair the frayed se

Episode 61 - "Owning Change" In an age of global disparity and inequity, billionaire philanthropists (dead and alive) are stepping up to the plate with powerful foundations and acts of charitable giving to solve some of the world's greatest challenges. But how much faith should we place in the hands of individuals with concentrated wealth and power? And if we take a step back to examine the broader system in which these individual philanthrocapitalists function, do we find any contradictions between wealth doled out and the process of accumulating it? Further, despite some of the good that we perceive directly stemming from philanthropic efforts, what are some of the hidden motivations behind these efforts that ultimately seek to deepen the same structures that produced the problems in the first place which philanthropy purports to solve? Chapters 04:44 The Man Who Wrote the Gospel 40:44 Philanthropy and Celebrity 48:11 The Larger System 54:12 Just How Rich? 1:03:04 "How philanthropy shapes foreign pol

Episode 60 - "Drawn Apart" Invisible, but they define our world. Borders are the lines that limit us as we live our lives and as we increasingly feel the frictions they cause, it brought us to wonder: where did these things comes from anyway? A look back through history shows that what we take for granted may in fact be ridiculous, that lines on a map can be a world changing invention, and that things that feel as old as civilization may have surprisingly recent origins. Join us this week as we draw a line in the sand and begin working towards tearing down the myths, preconceptions, and assumptions we share about the lines that divide us. Chapters 06:58 Evolution of Border Concepts 37:38 Modern Map Origins 44:52 The Question of National Identity 57:44 Freeports and Free Flowing Capital 1:04:13 UK Home Office Incompetence 1:17:48 Indigenous People on the Margins 1:24:58 Who moves anyway? 1:29:09 The C Word 1:32:12 No Man's Land A full transcript is available as well as detailed links and sources (plus cr

Episode 59 - "Bankrupt Ethics" After the US government shutdown of 2018-2019 witheld two paychecks from 800,000 federal workers and countless more contractors and businesses, and with US officials encouraging furloughed employees to simply take out loans, we've got debt on the mind again. Citizens of the US and UK are experiencing record high levels of debt concurrent with falling wages, and higher costs of living. But the financial systems that enable these vicious debt spirals play out on the world stage, as private companies and wealthy governments alike employ innovative strategies for ensnaring vulnerable countries, companies, and individuals in inescapable economic webs. Vulture funds play an important role here, but we also want to understand how the opportunities for vulture funds open in the first place. Will we finally solve the global debt crisis, or will the hole get deeper and deeper? Chapters 00:33 Debt on the Mind 13:35 Africa: opportunities for predatory financial systems 26:30 Sudan and t

Episode 58 - "Renewable Problems" 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? Chapters 00:29 Energy Investment in Southern Mexico 10:12 Why is Ashes Ashes hating on renewable technology? 16:11 Individual vs Social Change 20:56 Energy Density 29:35 Hidden Externalities 34:57 Grid storage 39:37 Struggling to Maintain Renewables 46:51 Close 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 favori

Episode 57 - "Do No Harm" 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? Chapters 05:50 DNA and Me 11:56 Corporate Wellness Programs 19:31 Why might your employer want your health information? 27:09 Anonymous data isn't? 34:42 Mental Health Surveillance 41:01 Building a nefarious infrastructure 48:47 In who's hands are the keys to women's health data? 57:53 Pirvacy concerns in Australia 1:00:27 Benefits from central health databases? 1:04:46 What can we do? A full

Episode 56 - "Beneath the Paving Stones, the Beach" 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. Chapters 02:42 Why Sand? 03:31 What is Sand and Where is it? 08:40 Why do we care about sand? 16:09 Some History 20:59 Economics of Sand Scarcity 28:05 Destructive nature of Sand Extraction 39:07 Sand Mafias 48:06 Tragedy of the Unmanaged Commons 58:50 The Best of Times? A full transcript is available as well as detailed links and sources (plus credits and more) on

Episode 55 - "What We Can Do" 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. Chapters 01:24 Daniel's Story 11:40 David's Story 18:35 Community 21:23 Organizing 28:13 Individual Actions 34:12 Collective Action 41:17 Homework 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

Episode 54 - "Golden Age: A Pirate's Life" 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) Chapters 10:37 Why become a pirate? 13:12 A more equal social order 26:12 What systems made pirates inevitable? 31:47 Perks of a pirate's life 39:05 Courage above all else 41:21 A pirate's life was made possible by a long history of cultural and generational knokwledge and tradition 45:38 Fast forwarding to the modern day 59:53 Closing thoughts A full transcript is available as well as

Episode 53 - "Welfare Titans" 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. Chapters 02:31 Economic Development Incentives 14:01 Company Queens of Tax Grift 37:40 Tools of Diverting Public Funds: Tax Increment Financing 43:40 World of Sp

Episode 52 - "Killing Fields" 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. Chapters 00:36 Agrochemical consolidation and pesticide d

Episode 51 - "Eyes on Me" 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, f

Episode 50 - "Apocalypse Now" 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? Chapters 03:46 A 1.5C World 07:33 Preventing a 1.5C World 13:42 Ecological Consequences of 1.5C 20:51 IPCC Failures 23:57 Ecological Feedback 32:39 Magic Technology Needed 37:55 Indigenous Knowledge and Economic Growth 50:00 Why Does the IPCC Miss the Target? 1:03:06 Shared Memory and Loss 1:10:04 Hope 1:13:51 Imagination A full transcript is available as well as detailed links and sources (plus credits and more) on our websi

Episode 49 - "The World Might Be Broken" 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. Chapters 02:05 The Presentation 13:13 Audience Questions 25:30 Post Presentation Discussion 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