Urgent Futures with Jesse Damiani

Feb 03 2025 45 ep. 99 mins 12
Urgent Futures with Jesse Damiani Podcast artwork

Welcome to the Urgent Futures Podcast, the show that finds signal in the noise. Each episode, I sit down with leading thinkers for dialogues that clarify the chaos, from culture to the cosmos.

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LA Wildfire Recovery: Ecological Remediation to Heal Contaminated Sites - Danielle Stevenson | Rapid Response #5

Feb 03 2025 48 mins  
Decontaminating the air, soil, and water in Los Angeles in the wake of the wildfires is going to be a long road. But Centre for Applied Ecological Remediation Founder and President Danielle Stevenson has spent more than a decade refining her research in "ecological remediation"—integrated social and environmental practices that could be crucial in not only healing LA, but better

Rachel Donald: Why is the World in Crisis—& What Can We Do About It? | Urgent Futures #40

Jan 30 2025 93 mins  
Why is the world in crisis? How can we get a view of the bigger picture?My guest this week is Rachel Donald—and she's something of an expert in these questions.Support the show by checking out: ZBiotics (Decrease impact of hangovers. Code: JESSEDAMIANI for 10% off), MUD\WTR (43% off starter kits), 1Password (simplify your life and increase digital safety), Mission Farms CBD (heal

Climate Trauma & Fire Brain: Understanding the Mental Health Impacts of the LA Wildfires & Developing Resilience - Jyoti Mishra | Rapid Response #4

Jan 27 2025 45 mins  
Los Angeles: have you been doomscrolling and unable to concentrate? There's a reason, & it has to do with how our brains respond to trauma. I spoke with Dr. Jyoti Mishra, a leading neuroscientist to make sense of it.If you appreciate the work I'm doing, make sure to subscribe here so you never miss an episode! Urgent Futures is also a video podcast, available on YouTube.Support the

Wim Carton & Andreas Malm: Overshoot & Climate Breakdown | Urgent Futures #39

Jan 22 2025 92 mins  
Wim Carton and Andreas Malm are the co-authors of the superb, devastating new book Overshoot: How the World Surrendered to Climate Breakdown. Here’s a quote to give you a sense of its argument:"And when the third decade of the millennium dawned, the relationship remained firmly in place: the warmer the globe became, the more fossil fuels were poured on the fire. The higher the te

"The Disaster After the Disaster": LA Air Quality & Public Health - Jane Williams | Urgent Futures Rapid Response #3

Jan 19 2025 55 mins  
If you live in Los Angeles, I urge you to listen to this and share it with everyone you care about right now—especially if you/they live in or near ash zones. Even though the AQI is low again, the impacts of wildfire smoke are still here. Loads of nasty pollutants like asbestos, formaldehyde, lead, and other heavy metals, plastics, and volatile organic compounds (VOCs) are still

The Meaning Crisis: Wisdom, Purpose, and AI in 2025 and Beyond - John Vervaeke | #38

Jan 14 2025 208 mins  
Is the Western world in the midst of a crisis of meaning? If so, how did we get here, and what can we do about it? What should we be thinking about as we develop artificial intelligence? These are just a few of the many questions I dive into with my guest this week, John Vervaeke.Support the show by checking out: ZBiotics (Decrease impact of hangovers. Code: JESSEDAMIANI for 10% of

The Los Angeles Fires, Polycrisis, & How to Live in Collapse | Urgent Futures Rapid Response #2

Jan 13 2025 27 mins  
The Los Angeles Fires—most notably the Palisades Fire and Eaton Fire—are the most destructive in California history. They are horrific, and they are teaching us hard lessons.Support the show by checking out: ZBiotics (Decrease impact of hangovers. Code: JESSEDAMIANI for 10% off), MUD\WTR (43% off starter kits), 1Password (simplify your life and increase digital safety), Mission

Art Berman: Oil, How the Economics of Energy Impacts Global Populism, & the Huge Problem We Must Address | #37

Dec 19 2024 125 mins  
Oil defines our lives, but we actually understand so little about it—and moreover, so little about its role in driving what we call “progress.” The flip side of that, of course, is that we don’t grasp how utterly dependent modern civilization is on oil. Without it, everything we take for granted about energy, the economy, technology, agriculture, and medicine would change.

Peter Brannen: What You Need to Know About the Five Mass Extinctions (to Understand the Sixth Extinction) | #36

Dec 11 2024 112 mins  
What are the most extreme extinction events in Earth's history? And what should we learn from them to avoid a similar fate? Today's guest, Peter Brannen, is an expert in these extinctions, having written one of the key books on the topic, The Ends of the World.It’s an invigorating read, in part because you really confront the raw power and volatility of this planet—and because

Phoebe Barnard: The Human Behavioral Crisis is the Coordination Problem Underlying Overshoot and Climate Crisis | #35

Dec 04 2024 76 mins  
Humanity is in a state of ecological overshoot—put simply: we use more than the Earth can support. In many ways, this is the primary problem of modern human civilization. But driving this problem is a fundamental 'human behavioral crisis.' Understanding this is critical—and Phoebe Barnard, today's guest, can explain why.Support the show by checking out these Black Friday Deals: