KunstlerCast - Conversations: Converging Catastrophes of the 21st Century

#371 — Dmitry Orlov, the author of “Reinventing Collapse”, moved to the USA as a boy when his dissident parents managed to get out of the Soviet Union. He spent most of his life here, went through school and college, but ventured back to Russia for a while in the 1990s out of curiosity after the fall of the USSR. He returned to the USA where he worked in IT and eventually moved onto a boat in Boston Harbor. He’s published many other books, including “The Five Stages of Collapse,” “Shrinking the Technosphere,” “The Pitfalls of English,” and has put out the Club Orlov Blog for more than a decade. I’m a big fan of his writings.      After the Great Financial Fiasco of 2009, Dmitry divided his time between Boston and wintering on his boat in Central America. For several years after he started a family, he sojourned in the waters off Beaufort, South Carolina. Finally, before the Covid Melodrama, he up and resettled in St. Petersburg, Russia, where he is establishing a new phase of his literary career writing in the Russian Language. He continues to blog in English. He is a keen observer of the political and technological scene. The KunstlerCast theme music is the beautiful Two Rivers Waltz written and performed by Larry Unger.

Stephan Sanders-Faes is an historian of Central and Eastern Europe at the University of Bergen, Norway. He received his Ph.D. from the University of Graz in 2011 and obtained the Habilitation in Early Modern and Modern History from the University of Zurich in 2018. Before joining the Bergen faculty in 2020, he taught for ten years at the history departments at the Universities of Zurich and Fribourg, as well as held the István Deák Visiting Professorship in East Central European Studies at Columbia University in 2018. Stephan’s research focuses on post-medieval Central and Eastern Europe (c. 1350-1850), with a particular interest in urban-rural relations, administrative, bureaucratic, and constitutional changes ("ABC history"), and state transformation — that is, the emergence, and change over time, of the European national state. He’s the author of two books: Urban Elites of Zadar (2013); and Europas Habsburgisches Jahrhundert (2018). His next book will be Lordship and State Transformation: Bohemia and the Habsburg Monarchy from the Thirty Years War to the War of the Spanish Succession, expected in 2022.  He blogs on current events at https://fackel.substack.com. Fakel means “torch” in German. Currently, Stephan is investigating the diffusion of state authority into the rural periphery of Habsburg Lower Austria from the late eighteenth century to the advent of constitutional rule in 1860s, exploring the role of non-state actors as state-builders, the patterns of transition, and the social factors influencing them. His other contributions to the field includes consulting for the EU Commission’s Research Executive Agency (Marie Curie-Skłodowska fellowships), the Polish National Science Centre (Narodowe Centrum Nauki), and the Swiss National Science Foundation, as well as serving on the international editorial board of Atti (published by the Center for Historical Research in Rovinj/Rovigo, Croatia), and as peer-reviewer for Annales: Histoire, Sciences Sociales, Archivio Veneto, and the Zeitschrift für Kunstgeschichte, among others. The KunstlerCast theme music is the beautiful Two Rivers Waltz written and performed by Larry Unger.

 C. J. Hopkins is an award-winning playwright, novelist, and political satirist, and author at The Consent Factory blog. His plays have been produced and have toured at theaters and festivals including Riverside Studios (London), 59E59 Theaters (New York), Traverse Theatre (Edinburgh), Belvoir St. Theatre (Sydney), the Du Maurier World Stage Festival (Toronto), Needtheater (Los Angeles), 7 Stages (Atlanta), the Edinburgh Festival Fringe, Adelaide Fringe, Brighton Festival, and the Noorderzon Festival (the Netherlands), among others. His writing awards include the 2002 First of the Scotsman Fringe Firsts, Scotsman Fringe Firsts in 2002 and 2005, and the 2004 Best Play of the Adelaide Fringe. His political satire and commentary has also been published by OffGuardian, ZeroHedge, ColdType, Rubikon, RT.com, CounterPunch, Dissident Voice, and many other publications, and has been widely translated. His dystopian science fiction novel, Zone 23, is published by Snoggsworthy, Swaine & Cormorant. The KunstlerCast theme music is the beautiful Two Rivers Waltz written and performed by Larry Unger.

David Collum is the Betty R. Miller Distinguished Professor of Chemistry at Cornell University. He moonlights as an Internet gadfly offering commentary on culture, politics, finance, and technology, He publishes a massive Year in Review essay every Christmas season and it’s available at Chris Martenson’s Peak Prosperity Website. It’s a humdinger. In this chat, we reference the Christmas battlefield hiatus over in Ukraine — but we recorded this before the Jan 2 missile attack on a Russian barracks in Donbas that killed many Russian soldiers. Hope we don’t nuked for that. The KunstlerCast theme music is the beautiful Two Rivers Waltz written and performed by Larry Unger.

Stephanie Seneff is a Senior Research Scientist at the MIT Computer Science and Artificial Intelligence Laboratory. For over three decades, her research interests have always been at the intersection of biology and computation. She has published over 170 refereed articles on these subjects, In recent years, Dr. Seneff has focused her research interests back towards biology, especially the relationship between vaccines and autism; the harmful effects of the agricultural herbicide glyphosate (sold as “Roundup”); and study of the spike protein associate with the Covid-19-virus and the mRNA vaccines developed for it. She has published several papers on it with Dr. Peter McCullough and others.   The KunstlerCast theme music is the beautiful Two Rivers Waltz written and performed by Larry Unger.

 The New Revenant Society is the website and blog of the two Christophers —Christopher M and Christopher S, two off-the-grid homesteaders who are founding a tea plantation in rural Virginia. They invite correspondence by US Mail at 44 Kingston Dr. #159 Daleville VA 24083.     Christopher M is an author and former counterintelligence analyst living in the Appalachian mountains. After high school, he joined the Army Intelligence Corps and deployed to Afghanistan in 2013. His time in the military drove him to want to understand cultures, leading to his completing a bachelor's in sociology and an MBA in strategic management. When he isn't writing, he enjoys reading, cooking, drawing, researching, and spending time with his cats, chickens, and ducks. His new book, The Psychology of Collapsing, will be published in paperback and e-book on December 16, 2022. If you have a Kindle, you can pre-order the e-book now!    Christopher S’s  dedication to horticulture and sustainable living propelled him to earn a  B.S. in Environmental Sustainability. His passion for nature and sustainable living came together once he discovered Permaculture and its design ethic. Since then, he has worked on several tiny house builds, designed permaculture properties, and currently resides on an 11-acre property in Appalachia, cultivating tea (and other garden projects). Being off-grid has been a challenging experience to break into, but one that aligns with his values and purpose in life. He writes diligently about adapting to a life beyond fossil fuels and building sustainable communities. The KunstlerCast theme music is the beautiful Two Rivers Waltz written and performed by Larry Unger.

David McAlvany is a thought leader on the global economy and author of The Intentional Legacy, his thoughtful memoir on the power of legacy and what it means to create a meaningful family culture. McAlvany graduated from Biola, served as a wealth manager at Morgan Stanley, and is the second-generation CEO of the McAlvany Financial Group. He has been a featured guest on national television programs, including CNBC, Fox News, Bloomberg, and at financial seminars around the world. David is also the host of the McAlvany Weekly Commentary, one of the longest-running economic and geopolitical podcasts online. The KunstlerCast theme music is the beautiful Two Rivers Waltz written and performed by Larry Unger.

Tom Luongo is the voice behind the Gold, Goat’s and Guns  blog and podcast, often featured on Zero Hedge and other sites. We venture into the dark backwaters and sidetracks of global intrigue as Western Civ goes off the rails and the US midterm election looms ominously weeks ahead. Tom describes himself as a former research scientist, amateur diary-goat farmer, anarchy-libertarian, and obstreperous Austrian economist. He built the house he lives in and he’s a lot of fun.  The KunstlerCast theme music is the beautiful Two Rivers Waltz written and performed by Larry Unger.

Jacob Dreizen, a new face on the blogging scene, went to Washington as a young man, worked at a prestigious lobbying organization and briefly on Capitol Hill as well as volunteering for a successful Senate campaign.  A U.S. Army veteran, Jacob is fluent in Russian and has emerged as a leading independent commentator on the origins of the Russia-Ukraine conflict -- and the U.S. role in the conflict.  He has made a number of successful calls on global events, such as predicting fertilizer shortages months before awareness of the dynamic went mainstream, and warning as early as December 2021 that Western sanctions in response to Russia's pending invasion of the Ukraine would boomerang back on the West. He’s written for American Thinker and American Greatness, and has been a guest on The Duran, Viva Frei, Jackson Hinckle, and Two Mikes. His own commentary can be found at www.thedreizinreport.com and his Rumble and Odysee channels. The KunstlerCast theme music is the beautiful Two Rivers Waltz written and performed by Larry Unger.

Ray Jason blogs as the Sea Gypsy Philosopher. He has lived on his sailboat, the Aventura, for nearly thirty years, lately off the coast of Central America. Before that, Ray worked as a street performer, juggling in San Francisco. He’s crossed the Pacific solo from California to Hawaii many times, and is the author of Tales of a Sea Gypsy and, of course The Sea Gypsy Philosopher. I enjoyed discussing the technicalities of life on a boat with him. I hope you find this a charming relief from the political calamities and anxieties of the day, as much as I did — and perhaps an inspiration to find a rewarding journey in life away from the humdrum annoyances of the landlubber way. The KunstlerCast theme music is the beautiful Two Rivers Waltz written and performed by Larry Unger.