_bandwidth: coast to coast

Each time I’ve talked with him, Ron Goode, the Tribal Chair of the North Fork Mono Tribe, he deposits wide chunks of previously unknown history and wisdom. In this exchange, little has changed, with the exception of us driving out of the known, and into the mystic, unexplainable, yet real. Ron in this episode riffs with me on the type of philosophy abundant in America today, what better ways there are to think about tending a forest, issuing better hunting tags, stories from his childhood,...

As more people itch to travel from a year spent with Covid, and 10 years past the time a dirt road took claim to the skin off my knee, I reflect back on what I wrote about the experience backpacking through the Philippines.

How did it come to be that there's a coordinated effort involving many actors within our government, to fix the price, supply and trade of sugar within the borders of the United States? My interview today is with Colin Grabow, Policy Analyst at the Cato Institute. Who's work focuses on domestic forms of trade protectionism. Colin has studied the sugar cartel in the US extensively, and shares his knowledge of how it got started, what this ends up meaning for consumers and industry, as well as...

I spend a lot of my free time reading some truly startling things in an attempt to better understand the reality I find myself caught within. But I cannot recall another time in recent memory, where I had to pause what I was reading after finding myself so overwhelmed with emotion and an inescapable feeling of heartache. The book that did this, was authored by this episode's guest. The book is Black Women Black love, America's War on African American Marriage, by Dr. Dianne M. Stewart...

Mexico’s drug cartels make billions of dollars a year on illegal drugs, what emerges out of those dollars is the focus of this episode’s interview. My guest, is author and journalist Ioan Grillo, who’s spent the past 20 years in Mexico reporting and authoring books on the cartels in Latin America. Ioan helps encapsulate the hydra of problems existing between the cartels, military and police, and how it plays out and is felt by the typical person caught, or tempted by the drug business. Check...

This is a fun, free flowing conversation with Joshua Lord, Assistant professor of Biology at Moravian College, where he helps break down how a changing climate and air chemistry is affecting the oceans. We cover a lot of topics, from what ocean warming means for ecosystems, how coral reefs can still thrive in a warming or rising ocean, a different way to look at thriving in the Anthropocene, and thoughts around the real difficulty in explaining something complex and detailed. If you want to...

Hiroshima, Nagasaki, Chernobyl, Fukushima-- but how much do you know about the Bikini Atoll? Or the "Bravo shot," and "Operation Crossroads"? In this episode, Chair of the Marshall Islands Nuclear Commission Rhea Moss-Christian, gives us an overview on the Runit Dome, the history of nuclear testing conducted on the islands and the effect it's had on the Marshallese people. The world came together in one connect net of commerce and culture because of the unstable safety net created by a...

Something I think about a lot, and even has as my handle for whatever media platform, is how all things in reality are efforts in trying. In this episode, we explore how once a person or culture stop the effort of trying to reach the next success and rest for a moment, is the moment they are at most danger. My guest is Philip Parker, historian and author of History of World Trade in Maps, The Empire Stops Here as well as many other books. We cover a lot of ground, from how togas relate to...

This is my interview from 2016 with the Catholic Charities in Flint Michigan during the peak of their water crisis. The first part of this interview we get a look into how widespread the problem was at the time, and how much uncertainty they were living in. Before Vicki Schultz, the CEO of Catholic Charities details how she found out about the lead in the water, as she was one of the first people called to the mayor’s office before it was announced to the residents, and the world. We’ll end...

A thought I cannot escape anymore, is just how much culture is the water we live in each day, without realizing we’re swimming. With technology more and more, creating and influencing the currents within. In this conversation, Yotam Ophir and I talk about a wide range of topics relating to our present moment, misinformation, social media and how much of our world is run on unwritten norms, not designed for an actor working in bad faith. This was a fun, captivating conversation that starts...

At the end of this month, extended unemployment benefits and the CDC eviction moratorium end. When almost half of all renters in America can’t pay rent, what’s going to happen to those people? My guest today is a lawyer with Lone Star Legal in Houston, Jonna Treble. Right now Jonna is spending her time defending tenants in eviction proceedings, trying to keep them in their homes. She shares some very human stories that her clients have experienced, including some that are incredibly...

This is my interview with author and historian Dr. James Gelvin, professor of Middle Eastern history at UCLA. The episode is centered around the Israel and Palestine conundrum, but touches upon the rich and ancient culture of the region known as Palestine and the recent normalization of relations that the Trump administration announced with the state of Israel. There's also a detour into the state of the Middle East as a whole, if the Arab spring has run dry, how the middle east is the most...

In this episode I interview historian and author of Killing for the Republic, Steele Brand. We talk about what made the Roman Republic so successful, what glued it all together, briefly introduced the intentional myth building framed by the founding fathers of the USA and how they appropriated from the Romans All before falling into a trap I set for myself, and spending the remainder of our time on Rome’s Punic wars. Twitter - @steele_brand Killing for the Republic -...

This is my interview with Dr. Heiko Balzter, Copernicus Award winner, Professor of Physical Geography and Director of the Centre for Landscape and Climate Research at the University of Leicester. We talk about a lot, but some of the highlights are him shedding light on the forest fires in Siberia, which are happening in the largest contingent forest in the world, the state of deforestation around the world, along with what carbon sinks are and why we need them. twitter - @heiko_balzter...

This is my conversation with Dr. Ari Novy, author, biologist and CEO of the San Diego Botanic Garden. It was a fun conversation that covers a lot of ground, introduces a few new ways of looking at our time, the fascinating nature of plants, what is science and what is it good for, and how given the challenge we’re up against in the Anthropocene, the only inadmissible action, is inaction. This was recorded on site at the beautiful San Diego Botanic Gardens Twitter - @AriNovy...

This is the start to an ongoing arch dedicated to the anthropocene. Here I lend some thoughts as to what it is, what the purpose of this arch will be and hopefully a little entertainment along the way.

This episode I interview Felipe Fernández-Armesto, one of the most authored in volume, width and breadth, historian of our time. We talk about the paradox of truth, comfort being the enemy of well-being, the wonder of imagination, if Europe is really a continent or just a plateau out of Asia, and a question you can use to escape out of chit chat. Felipe is an exceptional author, and I encourage you to check out his work, especially Amerigo: the man who gave his name to America, and Truth: A...

I interview Nathanael Johnson, author and senior writer at grist.org. We talk about the current state of forest management in California, how it got to be this way, and what is being done to improve the state of it. With a whole lot of faith in the future along the way. http://www.nathanaeljohnson.org/ https://twitter.com/SavorTooth

A thought on how we can use lessons from fluid dynamics, as a framework to understand the world of ideas around us.

I interviewed musician, author, poet, activist, lawyer, and Congressional Candidate Shahid Buttar. We talked healthcare, corporate consolidation, the PATRIOT act, his love of music, and how I figured out why Speaker Nancy Pelosi won’t agree to a debate. https://shahidforchange.us/