The design of The Conversation podcast is brilliant.
It’s framed around big questions: Are we in a time a crisis? How would you describe the challenges we face? What does a better future look like?
Interviewee selections are eclectic, from Richard Saul Wurman to Frances Whitehead and Douglas Rushkoff.
Plus, it’s a time capsule project, a set of conversations conducted over several months in 2012. Aengus Anderson traveled around the U.S. by motorcycle, meeting people on their home turf. On the backend of each podcast, Aengus checks in with cohost Micah Saul, and they weave the interviewee’s thoughts into the whole of the project.
Here’s one with Wes Jackson of The Land Institute, talking a little about his quest for an agriculture based on “herbaceous, perennial, seed-producing, polycultures” — but mostly ranging over broader concerns.
The plowshare has destroyed more options for future generations than the sword. …
I think we’re now experiencing the worst form of fundamentalism to ever arise on the planet. Far worse than any form of religious fundamentalism is technological fundamentalism: the belief that we’re going to solve all our problems through technology. …
The creativity of the scientist in the lab or the artist at the easel is really pipsqueak creativity. … This creativity that we talk about in humans — we ought to at least recognize we do [it] as consequence of the larger creative force. To use our technology to compromise that creative tendency of the ecosphere is hubris. …
I wrote an essay entitled “The Information Implosion.” That is, as we destroy ecosystems, we destroy information. And the amount of information we’ve destroyed is far greater than the amount of information we’ve acquired. …
I think it’s [currently] the most important moment, including our walk out of Africa. … The big question is: can we start living within our means and retain the knowledge [to] as T.S. Eliot put it, ‘And in the end know our place for the first time.’
See also: Wes Jackson’s essay, “Toward An Ignorance-Based World View.”
