Is it time to panic? In this episode, we invite rhetorician Ira Allen to the bar to explore the possibility that, yes, it might be—and that panic isn’t just an irrational breakdown but a vital, even necessary, affective response to the ongoing collapse we’re all living through. Allen’s recent book Panic! Now: Tools for Humanizing in an Age of Staggered Collapse challenges the neoliberal injunction to “stay calm” and instead asks what might be made possible if we allowed ourselves to feel—and live with—our panic.
Together with co-hosts Leigh Johnson, Talia Bettcher, and Rick Lee, Allen traces how the overlapping crises of climate change, late capitalism, and colonial legacies (what he dubs the "CaCaCo assemblage") have produced a collective emotional numbness, even as our world becomes increasingly uninhabitable. The conversation ranges from the epistemic realism of panic, to historical insights on military discipline, to a speculative politics of reorganization rooted in solidarity, care, and a radical openness to the more-than-human world.
Equal parts sober analysis and mischievous wordplay (yes, CaCaCo is a "shit company"), this episode offers listeners a profound reframing of emotional collapse not as weakness, but as a portal to collective possibility. Whether you're already living in the slow burn of existential dread or just now starting to smell the smoke, you won’t want to miss this disarmingly hopeful invitation to “panic wisely.”
Full episode notes available at this link:
https://hotelbarpodcast.com/podcast/panic-now-with-ira-allen
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