Human Nature Odyssey
Human Nature Odyssey: a podcast about humanity, civilization, and the fate of the world. You are living the latest chapter in a 10,000 year story. Join storyteller Alex Leff on a search for better ways to understand and more clearly experience the incredible, terrifying, and ridiculous world we live in. The first stop on our quest through a landscape of ideas and stories is the 1992 novel Ishmael by Daniel Quinn about a telepathic gorilla with great hope for humanity.
Episodes
A horrific zombie apocalypse has ravaged the world—but hardly anyone seems to notice. One lone podcast sets out to interview those navigating this strange new reality: from people attending mindful zombie retreats and binging zombie media, to those stockpiling shotguns and fortifying bunkers, to others disappearing into the woods to build something entirely new.
CREDITS
This is an original script written...
This is the first 30 minutes of a longer conversation. The full conversation is available on the Human Nature Odyssey Patreon.
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A long time ago, in a galaxy far, far away, there was an old Republic that, out of fear of a phantom menace, voted to consolidate authoritarian power—unknowingly sealing its own demise. It transformed into an Empire, bent on wielding its weapons of mass d...
What insights can our ancient past shine on our political future?
Were hunter-gatherers the ultimate traditionalists—or proto-communists?
Is it possible hunter-gatherers lived with greater equality and more political freedom than most societies today?
And why do both communism and capitalism, despite being sworn enemies, rest on the same assumption of endless growth?
This is the first 30 minutes of a longer conversation. The full conversation is available on the Human Nature Odyssey Patreon.
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Jake Marquez and Maren Morgan are fellow podcasters, filmmakers, and new friends. Starting today, the three of us are joining forces to create monthly bonus episodes where we'll seek to better understanding this self-destructive civilizational 10,000 year predicament we find ourselves in.
...
Christopher Ryan joins the odyssey to discuss human nature - shouldn't be surprising - it's in the name! What's universal, what's cultural, and what's personal? Can we really change the culture we live in? And are some societies better suited to human well-being than others?
Christopher Ryan is the New York Times bestselling author of Sex at Dawn: How We Mate, Why We Stray, and What It Means for Modern R...
Breaking news: The Soviet Union has collapsed! The Berlin Wall has crumbled! Communism has fallen! Capitalism wins! USA! USA!
But wait… what's this? Russia has been overtaken by oligarchs and an authoritarian dictator. Oh no… Well, at least that could never happen in the United States. Right?
This is the climactic Part Three of our three-part series on the history of the left/right political s...
In the The King Is Dead, Now What? we're exploring the history of the left / right political spectrum and the 250 year struggle for democracy.
In Part 1 we started telling the story that began with the French Revolution of 1789, when those in favor of monarchy sat on the right wing of the national assembly room and those in favor of revolution sat on the left wing.
In the wake of the 1848 ...
How many people are happy with the way society is headed? There seems to be a general consensus - maybe the one thing we all agree on - that things are not right.
But our different opinions on what's wrong and what directions could be better too often fall on either side of a left vs right political spectrum.
Where did we get this idea of a left wing and a right wing anyway? How is it in a wo...
What will happen to our scientific knowledge if civilization collapses? Will astrophysics survive a future stone age?
In this episode, we rest from our journey to talk with astrophysicist Tom Murphy, who's been on an odyssey of his own—moving from academia to a growing concern about the collapse of civilization, to an ever expanding appreciation of the cosmos.
Together we'll gaze at the gra...
Looking for a game to play over the holidays? Why not try the real world global economy? Too late, you're already playing it!
Have you ever noticed how the most popular board games just so happen to reflect core components of our civilization? Settlers of Catan involves the extraction of raw materials. Risk is the imperialism and war between nations. Monopoly de...
Gather around the campfire for a ghost story about the most destructive monster in history: civilization itself.
In this episode, we delve into the countercultural writings of Fredy Perlman, whose strange 1983 book "Against His-Story, Against-Leviathan"—riddled with grammatical errors and misspellings—blends myth and history to explore the nature of power, subj...
In the spring of 1992, twenty-four-year-old Christopher McCandless left society behind, hitchhiking 3,000 miles into the Alaskan wilderness.
Two years earlier, Chris had donated his entire life savings to Oxfam, burned his social security card, and headed west seeking life on his own terms - without telling a soul, particularly his parents.
In th...
Is it possible to escape industrialism, capitalism, imperialism or are we trapped? Crazy Town podcast hosts Jason Bradford, Rob Dietz, and Asher Miller join us for a wide-ranging discussion of big topics like modern civilization's converging crises, the concept of 'red pilling', and the 1993 Bill Murray classic film Groundhog Day.
With equal pa...
What death is required for life to grow? In our culture's resistance to death we seem to have caused so much of it.
And what if humans aren't inherently a destructive force on the planet? How might we actually be another symbiotic part of our ecosystems?
Jake Marquez and Maren Morgan are the hosts of Death in the Garden, a podcast exploring the complex intersection between myth,...
Civilization is an interactive immersive experience. Worldbuilding isn't just for sci-fi and fantasy, but how we can change our society.
Abraham Burickson, co-founder of Odyssey Works—an organization dedicated to crafting personalized, immersive experiences—has long been captivated by the transformative power of design. Whether in the structure of a building or the verses of a poem, he explores how these...
In this very special episode, author Daniel Quinn's wife Rennie Mackay Quinn joins us for her first ever interview: sharing untold stories, new insights, and reflections on her life and journey with her beloved late husband & Daniel Quinn.
Rennie tells us about the 15 years it took Daniel to write Ishmael, the childhood dream that sparked it, how the word "hamburger" changed their lives, how they navigated the response and acclaim ...
In this climactic culmination of the Ishmael series, we ask the question : how do we transform an entire society?
Ishmael doesn't give us the "10 Simple Steps to Save the World" instead, he offers us a map and compass to navigate our intergenerational civilizational transformation ourselves. Where we go from here is up to us.
We'll meet the fantastical Prince who first concocted the criminal justice system, have a final reckoning...
Is it possible to build a civilization that flies? (metaphorically speaking of course)
How did we eventually learn to fly? It wasn't by defying gravity and disobeying aerodynamics but by learning how to work with them.
Daniel Quinn, in his novel Ishmael, argues there are laws of nature that we have to learn to live within, rather than resist, if we are to continue as a society. In this episode we explore what this "Law of Life" co...
Who first told the story of the Garden of Eden? Could it have been a way to explain the unfolding Agricultural Revolution from the perspective of the people who were there?
The Garden of Eden has been told and retold for thousands of years. Why do we keep telling it? With insight from modern biblical scholarship, we investigate the origins of this ancient story and what warning this active myth still has yet to be heeded today.
I...
In this episode we take a step back from Ishmael to better view the philosophical context it was written in.
We explore the history of the terms "civilized" and "primitive" and how their definitions have evolved over time.
Topics include: Rome's influence on Western European colonization, noble savage theory, primitivism, and the rise of the identity "indigenous".
When we say civilization who do we include and exclude? Who is ci...
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