Human Nature Odyssey

Okay, it's been fifty years since the sudden collapse of civilization - why isn't everything back up and running already? In the 1949 sci-fi novel Earth Abides, Isherwood Williams tries and tries to teach the next generation about law, economics, and geometry but these dang kids would rather explore the streams that flow over abandoned boulevards and overgrown shopping malls.
In Part 2 of this two-part series, Alex and astrophysicist Tom Murphy explore the unexpected evolution of life after the fall—when civilization fades into myth, and a new way of seeing the world begins to take root.
It's been decades since airplanes filled the skies, since stadiums roared with crowds, since global supply chains stitched continents together.
The children born after the Great Disaster have never known that world. To them, skyscrapers wrapped in vines are normal. Mountain lions at the edge of the cul-de-sac are normal. The quiet is normal.
And as they grow up, they begin to tell different stories.
Stories not of dominance, progress, or control—but of relationship, mystery, and a living world they are part of, not apart from.
You don't need to have read the book to enter this world—this episode is an experience in itself.
This episode is for listeners interested in societal collapse, critiques of progress, and the big questions about the future of humanity on planet earth.
 
CITATIONS
Earth Abides [book]] by George R. Stewart (2026)

Tom Murphy's Do The Math blog

 
If you'd like to support Human Nature Odyssey, please subscribe wherever you listen, leave a review, and join us on Patreon for exclusive audio extras, writings, and notes.
For full episode transcripts and additional context, visit: resilience.org/human-nature-odyssey-podcast
 
Music: Celestial Soda Pop
By: Ray Lynch
From the album: Deep Breakfast
Courtesy Ray Lynch Productions © Ⓟ 1984/BMI 
All rights reserved.

You ever go on a little trip, to just get away from it all — only to come home and find all of civilization collapsed while you were gone and you might be the last person left on earth? 
Well then you could totally relate to George R. Stewart's 1949 science-fiction novel, Earth Abides. 
Earth Abides is not your typical post-apocalyptic tale. It challenges some of our core notions on progress, human happiness, and civilization itself.
It's a study of how our built infrastructure crumbles in our absence and becomes home to nonhuman life. It's about how human communities organize without the enforcement of the state, and how culture changes over time—taking us from the immediate aftermath of civilization's sudden collapse to a distant future when the last generation, known only as the Americans, leaves behind a people who barely remember what the United States once was.
In this two-part series, Alex is joined by astrophysicist, writer, and friend of the show Tom Murphy to retell and explore this science fiction classic, unpacking its radical ideas about collapse, resilience, and what it means to live a meaningful life.
This episode is for listeners interested in societal collapse, critiques of progress, and the big questions about the future of humanity on planet earth.
 
CITATIONS
Earth Abides [book]] by George R. Stewart (2026)

 
If you'd like to support Human Nature Odyssey, please subscribe wherever you listen, leave a review, and join us on Patreon for exclusive audio extras, writings, and notes.
For full episode transcripts and additional context, visit: resilience.org/human-nature-odyssey-podcast
 
Music: Celestial Soda Pop
By: Ray Lynch
From the album: Deep Breakfast
Courtesy Ray Lynch Productions © Ⓟ 1984/BMI 
All rights reserved.

How do we live through wild times?
Legendary scholar, activist, and systems thinker Joanna Macy named the moment we are living through the Great Unraveling—a time when our ecological, political, economic, and social systems destabilize to the point of no return. And yet, she also insisted that we stand on the threshold of a Great Turning: a profound transition toward a more just and sustainable world.
Before Joanna's death in 2025, climate activist Jess Serrante recorded a series of intimate and insightful conversations with her. In this episode, Alex sits down with Jess, weaving in clips from those recordings to explore the questions Joanna devoted her life to asking: How do we live with meaning as civilization unravels? How do we turn toward the grief of this moment—and transform it into action? And how do intergenerational relationships help us become elders for the future - when wisdom is needed most?
 
CITATIONS
We Are The Great Turning [podcast] 

 
If you'd like to support Human Nature Odyssey, please subscribe wherever you listen, leave a review, and join us on Patreon for exclusive audio extras, writings, and notes.
For full episode transcripts, essays, and additional context, visit: resilience.org/human-nature-odyssey-podcast
 
Music: Celestial Soda Pop
By: Ray Lynch
From the album: Deep Breakfast
Courtesy Ray Lynch Productions © Ⓟ 1984/BMI 
All rights reserved.

At first glance, believing the earth is flat and dreams of colonizing Mars couldn't seem further apart. But both are built on the same story — that reality can be escaped if we just think big enough.
This episode looks at two beliefs that seem opposite — flat earth and space colonization — and asks what they reveal about our urge to escape reality rather than reckon with it. One is the belief that humans could, and should, live in space: that we're destined to leave our planet behind and colonize the stars. The other is the belief that we're not on a planet at all—that the Earth is actually… flat. While one is held by fringe figures and the other by some of the most powerful men on the planet, both rest on the premise that humans are exceptional, unbound by limits, or somehow separate from the earth.
To explore these modern myths, we're joined by two guests: astrophysicist Tom Murphy and documentary filmmaker Daniel J. Clark, whose film Behind the Curve follows prominent figures in the fringe—but growing—flat Earth movement. Together, we'll examine the stories we tell ourselves about the world we inhabit, how we determine what's real or possible, and what kind of world these stories create.
 
CITATIONS
Do The Math [blog] 

Behind the Curve [film] (2018)

Return to Space [film] by (2022)

 
If you'd like to support Human Nature Odyssey, please subscribe wherever you listen, leave a review, and join us on Patreon for exclusive audio extras, writings, and notes.
For full episode transcripts, essays, and additional context, visit: resilience.org/human-nature-odyssey-podcast
 
Music: Celestial Soda Pop
By: Ray Lynch
From the album: Deep Breakfast
Courtesy Ray Lynch Productions © Ⓟ 1984/BMI 
All rights reserved.

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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28 years after the Rage Virus spread across the UK, the British Isles have been completely quarantined from the rest of the world. Zombies roam the forests and countryside while the survivors huntwith bows and arrows and make do in their fortified village. But for 12-year-old Spike, this is all normal. 28 Years Later is director Danny Boyle's sequel to the classic zombie thriller 28 Days Later.
In this bonus conversation, Jake Marquez and Maren Morgan from the Death and the Garden podcast join me to explore the post-industrial world of 28 Years Later. 
 
If you'd like to support Human Nature Odyssey, please subscribe wherever you listen, leave a review, and join us on Patreon for exclusive audio extras, writings, and notes.
For full episode transcripts, essays, and additional context, visit: resilience.org/human-nature-odyssey-podcast