Did you ever think a baseball melee could effectively explain nuanced topics like cybernetics and systems dynamics? This episode examines the fascinating world of positive feedback loops, which play an outsized role in the not-so-positive phenomena of climate change,...

All of humanity’s feats, whether a record-setting deadlift by the world’s strongest man or the construction of a gleaming city by a technologically advanced economy, originate from a single hidden source: positive net energy. Having surplus energy in the...

Imagine a factory assembly line running at full steam, but instead of spitting out car parts or plastic trinkets, the conveyor belt is loaded down with Jeff Bezos wannabes. That’s a disconcerting image, but it’s an accurate picture of...

There’s an insidious feature of modern life: as the economy and technology continue to grow, attention becomes ever more scarce. Nowadays footage from Russian dash cams and the latest “wisdom” issued on social media by people who are good...

Velcro pants and legs. Booster rockets and spacecraft. Humans and nature. What do these three pairs have in common? They’re all things that get detached from one another. That’s right, we modern humans seem hellbent on detaching ourselves from...

Who in their right mind is against the idea of progress? You’d be hard-pressed to find a candidate for public office with a platform of maintaining the status quo or regressing to days of yore (as bad as the...

Society has become so complex that all the complexity begets more complexity. And if that’s not complex enough for you, jobs have become so specialized that hardly anyone knows how anything is made or works. Join Jason, Rob, and...