Podcast
Human Nature Odyssey Episodes

What does a livable future look like 100 years from now? If we unlocked unlimited green energy, what would we actually do with it? And are our dreams of a renewable-energy utopia sometimes just as delusional as the fossil-fueled ‘drill baby drill’ mentality?

A horrific zombie apocalypse has ravaged the world—but hardly anyone seems to notice. One lone podcaster sets out to document this strange new reality: from mindful zombie retreats, to those fortifying shotgun bunkers, to others disappearing into the woods to build something entirely new.

If 99% of human history was spent as hunter-gatherers, what can that way of life teach us about equality, freedom, and hierarchy today? We connect our foraging past to modern politics—and ask if industrial civilization is all it’s cracked up to be.

New York Times bestselling author Christopher Ryan joins the odyssey to discuss human nature. What’s universal, what’s cultural, and what’s personal? Can we really change the culture we live in? And are some societies better suited to human well-being than others?

Join us for a live online conversation inspired by the Human Nature Odyssey podcast, tracing the long arc of the global battle between monarchy and revolution, authoritarianism and democracy, hierarchy and equality.

Several decades after the Cold War, Russia and the U.S. found themselves on eerily parallel oligarchic paths. In this episode, we trace how the world drifted from dreams of liberation to authoritarian control—and how a new generation began planting the seeds of liberty and equality once again.

We continue that epic struggle across centuries and continents—from the upheavals of the Russian Revolution, to the rise of fascism, the global crucible of World War II, the tense Cold War standoff, the youth protests of 1968, and the ongoing battle for power, equality, and freedom.

After the more than two centuries since the American and French Revolutions, the kings are back — or at least, trying to be. But we don’t have to be stuck in this strange cycle.

Across the world, politics is often framed as left vs. right. But where did that divide begin? This episode traces the roots back to the French Revolution and the centuries-long struggle over liberty, power, and the future of democracy.

Sociologist Immanuel Wallerstein’s World-Systems Analysis is our instruction manual to colonization and exploitation. We explore how dominant countries rise and fall, the dance between capitalism and the state, and the unexpected truth about what real power looks like.