Human Nature Odyssey

Ishmael theorizes our culture is held captive by a story, a mythology we take for granted, act out every day, and is leading to the destruction of the world. So in this episode we tell this story out loud, from beginning, to middle, to end.

Along the way we chat with a 6-year-old animal expert, discuss adult imaginary games, analyze the subliminal cultural messages conveyed in religion and philosophy, and meet a sassy imaginary top hat with a poorly performed Brooklyn accent.

Taker Mythology, the grand sweeping narrative playing out behind the scenes of our culture, just might explain how we got here and where we’re going... if we don’t find a way to tell another story.

If you’d like to support Human Nature Odyssey, please subscribe wherever you enjoy your podcasts, leave us a review, and visit humannatureodyssey.com.

Join us on Patreon and get exclusive access to audio extras, writings, and notes.

Citations

Ishmael by Daniel Quinn (1992)

A Sand County Almanac by Aldo Leopold (1949)

Leviathan by Thomas Hobbes (1651)

Music: Celestial Soda Pop

By: Ray Lynch

From the album: Deep Breakfast

Courtesy Ray Lynch Productions © P 1984/BMI

All rights reserved.

1. Amazon: Celestial Soda Pop

https://amazon.com/music/player/albums/B000QQXURI

2. iTunes:

https://music.apple.com/us/album/celestial-soda-pop/3242445?i=3242425

3. Spotify:

https://open.spotify.com/track/2THDVIVytLuGX7S7UghuC1?si=20ea63807bba401f

Why can’t we seem to stop destroying the world? Like seriously though?

Ishmael, the telepathic gorilla from Daniel Quinn’s philosophical novel, suggests we’re captives of a society where our individual society depends on our collective destruction.

As we embark on our quest through the landscape of ideas in Quinn’s novel, we’ll travel to a dystopian future where Nazi Germany won the war, meet our long lost furry and feathery cousins, explore a sinister layer where villainous henchman plot the end of the world, conduct an investigation into a planet-wide crime scene, and meet the gorilla we’ve all been waiting for.

If you’d like to support Human Nature Odyssey, please subscribe wherever you enjoy your podcasts, leave us a review, and visit humannatureodyssey.com.

Join us on Patreon and get exclusive access to audio extras, writings, and notes.

Citations

Ishmael by Daniel Quinn (1992)

Gerta Keller, Professor of Paleontology and Geology in the Geosciences Department at Princeton University

https://www.cnn.com/2020/06/01/world/sixth-mass-extinction-accelerating-intl/index.html

https://www.huffingtonpost.co.uk/entry/un-environment-programme_us_684562

https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/abs/pii/0959378094900035

Music: Celestial Soda Pop

By: Ray Lynch

From the album: Deep Breakfast

Courtesy Ray Lynch Productions © P 1984/BMI

All rights reserved.

1. Amazon: Celestial Soda Pop

https://amazon.com/music/player/albums/B000QQXURI

2. iTunes:

https://music.apple.com/us/album/celestial-soda-pop/3242445?i=3242425

3. Spotify:

https://open.spotify.com/track/2THDVIVytLuGX7S7UghuC1?si=20ea63807bba401f

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 with our Taker Mythology hat, and return to the abandoned land of Ashbourne.

Thank you to Honan and Dylan for their voice acting.

CITATIONS

Ishmael by Daniel Quinn (1992)

Washington Post "Turner Prize" by David Streitfeld (1991)

creativity-found.org/ted-turner

AV Club "CNN’s doomsday video" by Sean O'Neal (2015)

Music: Celestial Soda Pop

By: Ray Lynch

From the album: Deep Breakfast

Courtesy Ray Lynch Productions © P 1984/BMI

All rights reserved.

1. Amazon: Celestial Soda Pop

https://amazon.com/music/player/albums/B000QQXURI

2. iTunes:

https://music.apple.com/us/album/celestial-soda-pop/3242445?i=3242425

3. Spotify:

https://open.spotify.com/track/2THDVIVytLuGX7S7UghuC1?si=20ea63807bba401f

If you are reading this that means you are about to listen to a special and temporary episode that in a month will only exist on the HNO Patreon.

On our odyssey, we're going to need friends to help us along the way. Jake and Maren are exactly that - as well as hosts of their own podcast Death in the Garden. All you have to do is visit their website and you'll immediately know why I wanted to talk with them. In their own words, DITG is a "quest for ecological & cultural regeneration." In it they "question the direction of industrial civilization."

Here's their origin story:

"Feeling dislocated and helpless to make the world a better place, despair took over. Jake and Maren met each other at just the right time, and emboldened within each other a shared passion to do somethingabout the wrongness they had always felt. They began with a hypothesis of how to solve the problems of the world, and found themselves on a quest that shocked and surprised them as they began to untangle the web of interconnected problems that we face as a species. Instead of coming to a conclusion about what can be done to solve the problems of the world, their path follows the questions and quandaries they faced in making this film, and instead have arrived at a thesis as to how we got here, and what we do about it, well, that remains to be seen."

This was a fun conversation. You'll certainly learn a lot about them and their story - and you'll also learn more about mine.

Join us on Patreon and get exclusive access to audio extras, writings, and notes.

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 grandeur of the stars and marvel at the complexity of one of our oldest cousins: the amoeba. If you’re seeking a moment to marvel at the interconnectedness of life on Earth and the universe its interwoven with, this is the episode for you.

Tom Murphy is an Emeritus Professor of Physics and Astronomy/Astrophysics at the University of California, San Diego. After a career studying colliding galaxies and testing General Relativity using lasers to the moon, Murphy retired early to shift focus onto Planetary Limits and the intrinsic incompatibility between modernity and ecological longevity. Creator of a textbook on energy, the Do the Math blog, and the Metastatic Modernity video series, his main plea is that you bypass these resources and read the book Ishmael, by Daniel Quinn.

Join us on Patreon and get exclusive access to audio extras, writings, and notes.

More from Tom:

Do the Math blog

Metastatic Modernity

Music: Celestial Soda Pop

By: Ray Lynch

From the album: Deep Breakfast

Courtesy Ray Lynch Productions © P 1984/BMI

All rights reserved.

1. Amazon: Celestial Soda Pop

https://amazon.com/music/player/albums/B000QQXURI

2. iTunes:

https://music.apple.com/us/album/celestial-soda-pop/3242445?i=3242425

3. Spotify:

https://open.spotify.com/track/2THDVIVytLuGX7S7UghuC1?si=20ea63807bba401f