Today on the show I aired an interview I recorded two weeks ago with James Howard Kunstler, author, social commentator, and general snark-about-town. He has quite a cult following among certain sects of society, but he is most well known for two works of non-fiction, The Geography of Nowhere, which is about the inherent problems of suburban sprawl and was, in 1993, one of the first non-geological texts talking about an impending energy crisis. The second is The Long Emergency, about the now-imminent energy crisis and what will come after it. Lately he has released two works of fiction about the immediate post-carbon future, World Made By Hand and The Witch of Hebron. He is often accused of being a bit doomy, as he tends to deal in worst-case scenarios, but the longer we wait to address the effects of energy depletion on modern civilization the more likely his scenario becomes.
It’s quite long, this interview, so rather than play the whole thing I ran it in bits, and played some songs and gave some commentary along the way. He is very well-respected in a lot of areas, but he also tends to stray outside those issues pretty regularly, and so a lot of what he has to say is not without its problems. I don’t address them all, but I do my best to offer an alternate perspective where I think one is required. Press play now!
