Thinking Ahead with Carter Phipps

Inflation. Recession. Bubbles. Interest rates. Sovereign debt crisis. Today, everyone’s financial portfolio is falling and that makes people upset about markets and economics. But being angry or frustrated about the market is easy, understanding how and why we arrived at this point  is much more challenging. I was recently helped along in my journey of understanding by a fascinating new book, The Price of Time: The Real Story of Interest , by financial journalist and historian Edward Chancellor. The book examines the history of interest rates, going  all the way back to the beginnings of civilization, and takes a particularly close look at periods in history where unusually low interest rates encouraged excesses of financial speculation, like the Japan in the 1980s or the Mississippi Bubble in the 18th century.  Are we in one of those periods now, or have we been? And what might we do about it, if so? Some of this inquiry involves going back to the basics. What is money?  What are interest rates? Why do we have them?Why did ancients feel so strongly about them, and attach so much moral weight to their use?  Indeed, what purpose have they served historically? And most important, what impact are they having today, as central banks are raising them, after a long a period of historically low rates. Interest rates are critical to financial markets. And financial markets are a key hinge that economically connects the present day with the future. Markets allocate money, investment, and capital, not just across existing businesses and ventures, but across time - they connect the realities of today with the possibilities of tomorrow. And the price of that investment, or the price of that risk over time, or the "price of time", is what we measure and call "interest rates". They may seem obscure, but given their outsized influence over the future, they are rather important in the evolution of our economic lives. So what will be the outcome of this inflationary period, where the Federal Reserve is raising rates after dropping them so very low for so many years? Chancellor and I explore that question and others in this deep dive into interest, finance, speculation, risk, and their profound impact on the future of America and the world.  

What would you do if a whale landed on top of you—and you lived to tell the tale? That’s exactly what happened to wildlife biologist and filmmaker Tom Mustill in 2015, when a breaching humpback whale came crashing down on his kayak in California’s Monterey Bay—an event that was caught on video and quickly went viral. And what Tom did was to embark on a multi-year journey to better understand the inner life of the majestic sea mammal that had come so close to ending his own life. Why do whales breach? Do whales communicate? What is the meaning of their songs? These questions and more led him into the fascinating world of animal communication, enabled by the latest breakthroughs in technology that are enabling us to gather and analyze unprecedented volumes of data. The resulting book, How to Speak Whale: A Voyage Into the Future of Animal Communication, is an extraordinary and engaging read, filled with groundbreaking new research and insights.As a lifelong lover of animals, I count this book among a handful of seminal works that have, over the past decades, powerfully changed my own understanding and reshaped our collective perception of a particular animal species and also of animal life in general. We still have so much to learn about inner lives, the cultures, and the intelligence of the other sentient beings with whom we share our planet. And as we learn, we must grapple with profound, even existential questions about our own place in the web of life, our impact, and the ways we relate to our fellow creatures. I was thrilled to have the opportunity to explore some of these big questions with Tom Mustill on this episode of Thinking Ahead.

In the 2019 book American Cosmic, scholar Diana Pasulka offers a surprising and original perspective on one of my favorite topics: UFOs. She proposes that UFOs and the obsession with them has become a type of post-secular religion. She even shows that modern accounts of UFO encounters closely resemble religious visions of yesteryear. But one of the most interesting things about Pasulka’s book is what she shares about the shift she underwent personally as she studied more and more about the subject—from somewhat skeptical to more and more curious to eventually convinced that there is a real phenomenon that we need to study. She was helped along on that journey by two individuals, scientists who are part of what is sometimes called the “Invisible College,” meaning researchers and academics who study this phenomenon but don’t talk publicly about it. One of those individuals, celebrated Stanford professor Gary Nolan, has since become more public. And UFOs have as well. The subject has emerged from underground counterculture conversations into something approaching the mainstream. Even government is getting involved, with the recent congressional hearings (something I discussed with Australian journalist Ross Coulthart on an earlier episode of this podcast). For this episode, I’m happy to have the opportunity to talk to this unique religious scholar who is delving deeply into the more esoteric dimensions of subject—beyond the “nuts and bolts” of UFO research. Her inquiry is less about sightings of physical aircrafts (though she does share a fascinating story of being taken, blindfolded, to an alleged crash site in the desert)—and more focused on consciousness, subjective experience, and meaning. Indeed, there is a dimension of this phenomenon that interfaces with spiritual or ontological aspects of the human experience in ways that are unusual, surprising, and sometimes just, well, strange. I’ve wanted to talk to Dr. Pasulka for a long time and I’m thrilled to finally have her on the podcast. 

When we think about energy, we often forget one critical element—the grid. Most of us depend every day on our national grid to supply the energy we need for our life and work. And our need for electricity continues to grow and is likely to increase further over the coming years with, among other things, the move to electric vehicles. So how do we build a grid that fits a future in which our need for electricity is growing, and our need for low-carbon sources is as well? Is it possible? What are the challenges? Energy Analyst Meredith Angwin, author of Shorting the Grid: The Hidden Fragility of Our Electric Grid is an expert in the essential skillset that we often take for granted as we consider the future of energy—engineering. With the rush for low-carbon alternatives to coal and oil, the engineering challenges of distributing new sources of energy through the grid are considerable. So what solutions are on the horizon, if any? Is there a path to reliable decarbonization? What should be the role of renewables, natural gas, hydro, and nuclear? In this episode of Thinking Ahead, Meredith Angwin brings her deep knowledge of how we source energy and how we distribute it though our national grid to help us discern the realistic options for our future from the many optimistic dreams and pessimistic fears that occupy the cultural conversation. Alarmed by the growing fragility of our national grid, she calls for a future with “less slogans, more engineering.”

If you’ve followed this podcast for a while, you’ll know that I’m something of an economics nerd, and occasionally I indulge this passion by choosing guests who can offer insight into our past, present, and future through a financial lens. I was particularly excited to speak with journalist and author Christopher Leonard because he speaks to issues that have been troubling me for some time about the “easy money” policies of the Federal Reserve over the past decade or so. Since the Financial Crisis of 2008, we’ve gotten accustomed to hearing about low or even zero interest rates, “quantitative easing,” and other monetary policies designed to jump-start the economy. Which sounds like a good thing, right? Well, maybe. Or maybe not. I started questioning these policies when I was living in Northern California and watching the tech bubble form as hundreds of billions of dollars of venture capital flowed though that economic ecosystem. I watched the housing market go crazy, first in the Bay Area and the across the nation, and the extraordinary run of the stock market reshaping the contours of our economy. And I asked myself repeatedly, is this really a good thing? Of course, anyone who owns assets likes to see them go up in value. But is the economy as a whole served when the Fed pursues policies that significantly distort the functioning of markets? My guest on this episode, Christopher Leonard, suggests that the cost of these policies may be much greater than we realize. His recent book, Lords of Easy Money: How the Federal Reserve Broke the American Economy takes readers inside one of our country’s most unique institutions, and argues that the Fed is responsible for accelerating income inequality and setting us up for the problems we’re facing today, with inflation on the rise. Even if you’re not an economics nerd like me, I hope you’ll find this episode to be a highly lucid analysis of issues that affect all of us, whether we realize it or not.

Why did the leopard cross the road? Well, because he had to. He might have been searching for food, or a mate, or a new territory. But if he made it safely to the other side, it just might be because someone built him a bridge. And today's guest on Thinking Ahead might have had a hand in that effort.One of the many great challenges of this century, to my mind, is finding a way for nature to thrive alongside humans. The rise of Modernity has made an enormous difference for human thriving but has put tremendous pressure on the natural world, a pressure that we have only recently started to make the effort to mitigate. But with population growth falling, technology improving, wealth increasing, and knowledge of natural ecosystems becoming more sophisticated, there are tremendous opportunities ahead of us to find better ways to coexist with the wild. And one of the people working to do just that is Darryl Jones, a world expert on building wildlife crossings to help animals migrate safely as their territories become divided and circumscribed by human roads. His new book, A Clouded Leopard in the Middle of the Road, documents the rise of one of the newest ecological areas of study, known as Road Ecology, and shares some of the extraordinary success stories he's been involved in, from the United States to Africa to Europe to Australia. In this episode, he explains the groundbreaking public-private cross-disciplinary partnerships that make such projects possible, and shares his personal passion for making roadkill a thing of the past. 

Psychedelics are having a moment. There’s never been a time in which we’ve seen more research into, experimentation with, and acceptance of the use of psychedelics—for therapy, for inner exploration, and for spiritual awakening. Of course, psychedelics themselves are anything but new (just ask Brian Muraresku, who shared with me on this podcast his fascinating research into their use over millennia). And pioneering research was done in the sixties and seventies before the use of psychedelics was forced underground. But today, the topic is out in the open, championed by high-profile cultural influencers, researched by major academic institutions, and inspiring a number of popular books, such as Michael Pollan’s How to Change Your Mind. Even amidst this explosion of experimentation, however, few people if any can match the experience and knowledge of Chris Bache. Back in the eighties and nineties, Chris took a series of more than eighty high-dose LSD journeys, all carefully documented. He initially wrote about these experiences in his 2000 book Dark Night, Early Dawn, but more recently he’s published a fuller account of them and a more mature reflection on what he learned in his new book LSD and the Mind of the Universe: Diamonds from Heaven. What makes Bache’s account particularly interesting is that through his journeys he seemed to tap into more than just his own inner world; his intent was to explore, as he puts it, the very “mind of the universe.” Others might call this the collective unconscious or “intersubjective” dimension. Pierre Teilhard de Chardin called it the “noosphere.” At times, Bache even ventured beyond anything related to humanity and glimpsed deeper states and dimensions of cosmos and consciousness. His precise and poetic documentation of these journeys offers a fascinating window into an intensive experience that few may match—but one that perhaps offers valuable lessons for anyone interested in the inner cosmos.

Regular listeners of this podcast or those who have followed my work over the years will recognize the name Steve McIntosh. Steve and I have been collaborating for almost two decades, including as coauthors (with John Mackey) of Conscious Leadership and cofounders of the Institute for Cultural Evolution. He is also a regular guest on this show. In this episode, we reflect on the current progressive inclination to highlight the wrongs of America's past, in contrast to traditional patriotism. Certainly, there's much to be ashamed of in our nation's historical record, especially the horrors of slavery, segregation, and the violence perpetrated against Native American populations. But should we allow that shame to eclipse any expression of national pride? Inspired by Steve's recent article "The Politics of Pride and Shame: Integrating 1776 and 1619," this conversation explores a potent cultural polarity and asks how we might come to a more integrated synthesis. As always, Steve brings a historically informed, culturally intelligent, and philosophically nuanced perspective to the topic. Here are a couple of links to items referenced in our conversation: Steve's recent article "The Politics of Pride and Shame: Integrating 1776 and 1619"The Developmentalist: a media portal dedicated to advancing the evolution of American politics.

In our modern world, we often think of history as being mostly driven by international politics and economics and technology and demographics and the movement of money. Much of the time, that’s true. But every so often, events transpire that remind us that there are deeper undercurrents that also drive history—forces like religious passion, spiritual yearning, deep nationalism, and the search for cultural identity. The recent Russian invasion of Ukraine has been a stark opportunity to learn that lesson again. As we struggle to understand what’s behind the horrors we’re seeing on our television screens, we may need to look for answers in unconventional places. Indeed, as esoteric scholar and prolific author Gary Lachman points out, Vladimir Putin is deeply influenced by a constellation of ideas and worldviews that stem from a little-understood but powerfully influential era in Russian history. In his recent book, The Return of Holy Russia—a book that has turned out to be prescient, having been published several years before the invasion—Lachman looks back to an era of Russian intellectual thought sometimes called the Silver Age. This period in the late nineteenth and early twentieth century was a mini-Renaissance of new thinkers writing before the Russian revolution, a time in which new progressive spiritualism and occultism mingled with more ancient Orthodox mystical and religious currents and even new science. Many Russian thinkers of that era imagined a cultural and spiritual destiny for Russia as an alternative to the more overt materialism and increasing atheism of Europe and the West. As with many traditional theologies and even some progressive spiritual movements of the time, there was eschatological or apocalyptic aspect to a lot of this thinking. And more than a century later, these ideas have been revived in parts of Russian culture, including in the mind of Vladimir Putin. To help shed light on what’s driving Russia’s brutal attack on its neighbor, I was delighted to welcome Lachman, one of the most cogent and thoughtful scholars of the esoteric, to join me in this episode.

When was the last time you remember a significant battle on the high seas? If you’re like me, such an event may well be hard to recall. I’m old enough to remember the Falklands war, but that’s about it. Today’s guest on Thinking Ahead, author Gregg Easterbrook, wants his readers to understand that that blank space in most of our memories is not an accident. It has come about courtesy of a very particular set of circumstances that have arisen over the last half century—many of which come down to the superiority and effectiveness of the US Navy. In his recent book, Easterbrook coined the term “The Blue Age” to describe this unique period of history in which there has been peace and prosperity on the world’s seas. Not since the Phoenicians, he points out, has there been anything resembling what we’ve seen in the last decades. And one of the consequences of that relative peace has been an explosion in global trade, and a subsequent and massive reduction in global poverty. So, can this unique historical situation continue?  What forces, or countries, threaten the Blue Age? Is a potential new naval arms race on the horizon? Is the Blue Age actually sustainable—technologically, geopolitically, and also environmentally? In this episode of the podcast, I speak to Gregg Easterbrook about his new book; the challenges of maintaining US Naval supremacy and using it wisely in a multipolar world; and the various other promises and perils that present themselves, many decades into the Blue Age.