Conversations on Collapse: C-Realm Podcast Transcripts [Paperback]

KMO (Author)

Book Description

Publication Date: 2010

Conversations on Collapse collects early interviews that turned a project intended to focus on transformative technologies into one that explores the multiple failure modes of technological civilization. Featuring interviews with Bill McKibben, Dmitry Orlov, Sharon Astyk, James Howard Kunstler and other authors and thinkers on the topic of collapse.

Product Details

• Paperback
• Publisher: C-Realm Media Collective; 1ST edition (2010)
• ISBN-10: 0557333172
• ISBN-13: 978-0557333172
• Product Dimensions: 8.9 x 6 x 0.7 inches
• Shipping Weight: 5.6 ounces
• Average Customer Review: 4.7 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (3 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #2,296,314 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

More About the Author

KMO is the host and producer of the C-Realm Podcast and author of the book 'Conversations on Collapse.' He recently relocated from the Ecovillage Training Center on the Farm in Summertown, TN to Brooklyn, NY. He describes himself as, "a recovering libertarian and Singularitarian."

He was an early employee of Amazon.com, made a lot of money on stock options, spent it all, and had to re-enter the rat race with a decade-sized hole in his resume. He spent a good portion of his temporary, early retirement studying NLP, public speaking, and leadership while working to establish himself as a web-cartoonist. During this period he also traveled repeatedly to the Peruvian Amazon to participate in Ayahuasca ceremonies.

Libertarian ideology and techno-utopian fantasies are very attractive and self-validating when one is living on the proceeds of an internet stock-option windfall. They are less attractive and self-validating when scrambling to earn a living and starting from scratch in middle age. The six year arc of the C-Realm Podcast provides an unintended look into KMO's evolving worldview.

Within a couple of months of learning of the existence of podcasts he was creating weekly episodes of the C-Realm Podcast. That was in 2006. Since then he has conducted over 300 podcast interviews on topics ranging from organic farming and permaculture, peak oil and the collapse of industrial civilization, to psychedelic spirituality and drug policy reform.

Doug Lain, creator of the Diet Soap on-line zine (later to manifest as the Diet Soap Podcast) wrote, "KMO was once a winner in the capitalist game. He had high tech dreams and plenty of ambition, but somewhere along the line KMO dropped out, spent what he had, and started over in a simpler way. No longer rich and no longer so enamored with the technocratic fantasies of the prevailing order, he squeaks by in this world while seeking another. More than anything KMO is a broadcaster and interviewer who has a gentle and amiable way of challenging and inspiring interesting conversations with authors, artists, psychedelic gurus, sociologists, NASA scientists, economists, and more on his weekly podcast called the C-Realm."

The roster of C-Realm Podcast guests includes Bill McKibben, Dmitry Orlov, Albert Bates, Thomas Homer-Dixon, Charles A.H. Hall, Albert Bartlett, Richard Heinberg, Ellen Brown, Nicole Foss, Steve Keen, Charles Stross, Nate Hagens, Charles C. Mann, James Howard Kunstler, Derrick Jenson, Lierra Keith, Jeremy Narby, Bruce Damer, Neil Kramer, and Dennis McKenna.

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

3 of 3 people found the following review helpful

5.0 out of 5 stars Over the top and down the slide October 28, 2010

By Albert Bates

Format:Paperback

I confess that as one of the interviewees in this book, I am not an impartial reviewer. I recommend it not for my own interview but for those with whom it was my honor to be joined.

Having written a number of books and been interviewed hundreds of times, I have to say there are good interviews, pedestrian interviews, and abysmally disgraceful interviews (the kind where it is obvious the interviewer has not done any homework, is badly misinformed about nearly everything, and moreover, insists on asking questions that can go nowhere except into the ludicrous fantasies of their own echo chamber). You know?

KMO is not that kind of interviewer. He is well-informed, well-read, articulate, and able to push the boundaries of those with whom he converses. The product of those skills is on display here. Putting a great interviewer in the same space with amazing personalities is like being a fly on the wall at G.I. Gurdjieff's Meetings with Remarkable Men, or hanging out downstairs in the bar at a Bilderberg Group meeting.

I recommend this little book to anyone thinking about their future and wondering how they should best prepare for what we are about to experience. And then, when you are ready, head for The Post-Petroleum Survival Guide and Cookbook: Recipes for Changing Times.

3 of 3 people found the following review helpful

5.0 out of 5 stars It's all here except for the roosters crowing October 18, 2010

By B. Woodside

Format:Paperback

Regular listeners to KMO's C-Realm Podcast will know what I'm talking about. On Wednesday of every week for the past few years now, I've been religiously checking my iTunes podcast inbox for the latest installment out of the C-Realm (the "C", as fellow podcaster Black Beauty occasionally reminds us, standing for, among other things, Consciousness), and I can't think of an instance in which I've been disappointed.

As I write this review, KMO is currently up to podcast number two hundred and twenty-seven, and there hasn't been a bummer in the lot. Somehow, through tech glitches, bad phone connections, intermittent Internet service, aging computer malfunctions, and domestic upheaval, he has managed to not only remain true to his schedule, but has steadfastly maintained a level of intelligent, courteous, and thoughtful discourse with a succession of remarkable contemporary authors, artists, pundits, lecturers, scientists, philosophers, theorists, and even an Archdruid, asking the pointed questions you want him to ask and then stepping aside to graciously allow his interview subjects the freedom to respond at length. It's a rare thing these days to experience, in any venue, conversations that seem to flow along so effortlessly, despite the fact that the participants are seldom in physical proximity. And, at least for this listener, there's a sense of privilege - that one gets to sit in, like the proverbial fly on the wall, listening to thoughtful people talk about things that matter....

This first volume of transcripts, "Conversations on Collapse," manages to capture the flavor of the podcasts without trying to somehow reproduce the experience (which accounts for the absence of the roosters, who punctuate the beginning and end of each recorded episode with a cry that's like a zen wake-up call or a slap upside the head.) Better still, the transcripts follow the thread of the "collapse" theme, sending it in any number of different directions, building on and amplifying the subject as one proceeds through the book, touching on the crucial concerns of food security, economic dislocation, and cultural re-evaluation.

There's a method to their placement that is more than mere chronology; you can sense the intellectual curiosity that is driving KMO to interview these particular guests and ask them these particular questions, guiding them back towards the subject when they threaten to stray too far afield but at the same time allowing them to take the random turn into an interesting byway (the conversation with blogger Joe Bageant is a fascinating case in point.) You get a sense of where, at any particular point in time, his sympathies may lie, but he is not there to score points at his guests' expense. When he presses them, his aim is always in the service of clarification.

I strongly recommend that you not only purchase and read "Conversations on Collapse", but that you also make a point to subscribe to the C-Realm Podcast in order to continue the exploration of its themes. I came to the C-Realm to listen to conversations about Peak Oil and sustainability issues, quite possibly among the most pressing and important topics of our time. But I stayed for the ayahuasca journeys, the Technological Singularity dissections, and the Tolkien discussions. Personally, I've found that just about wherever KMO wants to go turns out to be a destination I had in mind as well, and it's a pleasure accompanying him on these intellectual travels. Read more ›

3 of 3 people found the following review helpful

4.0 out of 5 stars Buy this book! October 9, 2010

By Dan Krotz

Format:Paperback

Kevin Michael O'Connor, the Host and Producer of C-Realm Podcasts, has compiled a fascinating anthology titled Conversations on Collapse that is comprised of interviews with a number of contemporary public intellectuals such as Joe Bageant, James Howard Kunstler, and Cornelia Butler Flora.
Conversations asks the question "is industrial civilization headed for a collapse?" O'Connor, or KMO as he is known to his listeners, clearly believes that the answer is yes, as do the majority of his interviewees.
One of KMO's interviews is with Thomas Homer-Dixon, author of Environment, Scarcity, and Violence and The Ingenuity Gap. In it, Homer-Dixon discusses production agriculture and the cost of turning petroleum into food. "We have, on a per acre basis" says Homer-Dixon, "multiplied our agricultural productivity about fourfold in the last century or so, but we have increased our energy input per acre by eightyfold. That is clearly, in a world of much higher energy cost, going to be much more difficult to sustain. Is that going to produce a population correction?"
The term "population correction" pops up in many of KMO's interviews, probably because most of his subjects are Malthusian theorists. Malthus, by the way, was a mathematician and philosopher who famously predicted that, at some point, population would outstrip production with mass starvation and scarcity as the result. Without putting too fine a point on it, "population correction" means that millions and maybe billions of people will die.
In roughly 586 BC, the Prophet Jeremiah foretold the imminent destruction of the civilized world. Doomsayers--and KMO's subjects certainly fall into that category--have been at it ever since.... And, thanks to our flu-like economy, we are treated to threats of extinction on all fronts, twenty-four seven. Hardly anyone feels good about the state of the world's affairs.
Today's Jeremiahs point to over-population, government deficits, global warming, homosexuals in the military, the death of print, oil and fossil fuel depletion, international terrorism, production agriculture, and Hoards of Big Fat Over Privileged Baby Boomers going on the dole, as the immediate causes.
As a Big Fat Over-Privileged Baby Boomer I've been through the Commies under the bed catastrophe, the Elvis induction, Vietnam, assassinations, Black Power, The Moral Majority, the Johnson Nixon Carter Reagan deluge, the War on Drugs, Bill Clinton feeling my pain, W. feeling no pain, and Barack Obama turning his administration over to a bunch of Corporate Sharpies.
The temptation to go on is considerable. I haven't even touched on seeing a Fruit Loop on the radio become a Major Conservative Voice, a Junk Food Executive from Mars Candy appointed USDA's Undersecretary for Research, Education, and Economics, and Harry Reid and Mitch McConnell divvying up $72.6 million dollars from lobbyists who've contributed to their campaigns.
Ain't it awful?
Actually, it is. Without belaboring a point you know, Congress simply functions as a shell game--and the institutions that we depend on for cultural and civic guidance--our churches, public schools, newspapers, and philanthropic organizations--have become increasingly irrelevant as they struggle to deal with technological change, and a more and more distracted people.
Joe Bageant, the author of the bestselling book Deer Hunting with Jesus, said, "Most people [Americans] have been reduced to a market demographic. They're consumers, they're not citizens. No matter how active they are within the system [employment, religion, government, etc.] the system is the problem."
The transformation of citizens into simple consumers is a prevalent theme though out the interviews, summarized by Bageant as "the Stockholm syndrome of the soul," where people become willing hostages to corporations and political parties that con them into acting against their own best interests. This allows people to believe that we are, for example, "supporting our troops" by waging war in the Middle East at the cost of $100 million dollars a day with money borrowed from the Chinese.
KMO's intent and the intentions of the people he interviews is to create awareness that "this time" things are different: bad things are going to happen if we don't throw off the shackles of consumerism and our enslavement to party politics.
Whether we throw off shackles or throw rascals out of office ultimately depends on whether people are willing to change how they live. We've done a poor job of accepting change, as a people and as a civilization, for most of our history. But if KMO is right, we should get ready.
The interviews in Conversation on Collapse can be heard at [...]. Read more ›