Both China and the West are embracing scientific population management driven by digital technologies. Why have they given up on mobilizing their populations?

Geremie Barmé joins Ash Milton to discuss his experiences in China during the Cultural Revolution and what prior upheavals can teach us about the Xi era.

For several centuries, life has become increasingly monitored, legible, and uniform. Can we endure our centralized societies?

Wolf Tivy and Ash Milton discuss what defines elites and why we are stuck with an upper middle class today instead.

Wolf Tivy and Ash Milton discuss China’s role in industrial civilization and what we can learn from it.

Michael Zargham joins Wolf Tivy to discuss the dynamics of complex systems and what they can tell us about governing societies.

Viren Murthy joins Ash Milton to discuss the philosophy of world order from the Japanese Empire to modern China.

From Amazonian terra preta to industrial civilization, humanity has always been a world-transforming species.

Samo Burja joins Wolf Tivy from the conclusion of his expedition to Göbekli Tepe. Topics include the age of civilization, whether we could find pre-Ice Age cities, and the implications of long history.

Charlie Smith joins Wolf Tivy to debate the future of crypto. What is its strongest logic? What we should conclude about scams? And what does a rigorous case for crypto look like?

Our society has abandoned the industrial revolution, along with entire frontiers of progress. Our future depends on understanding its moral logic and creating a new industrial ecosystem.

Wolf Tivy and Ash Milton discuss cults as society’s real foundation. Cults are not a luxury that societies indulge when all other needs are met. They are the first-movers, setting the stage for everything else that follows.

Early liberal thinkers did not just propose a philosophy, but a type of regime. When power acts with liberality, the result is a stronger society of dynamic individuals.

The GameStop rebellion started and ended as an outburst. The coordinated deals behind power prevent it, and most rebellions, from ever achieving more.

Humans are irreversibly reshaping Earth, and neither degrowth nor green energy tweaks will stop it. In the long run, we will have to use our power to create a thriving garden planet.

Mike Solana joins Wolf Tivy to discuss how San Francisco’s governance works, how it has gone wrong, and what he thinks it would take to fix it.

Wolf Tivy and Ash Milton discuss accumulative versus developmental orientations to industry, and the necessity of a class with interests beyond individual finance.

Wolf Tivy and Ash Milton discuss Charlie Smith’s recent piece on posthumanism and its implications. Other topics include the ways in which a complex society impacts our agency, why the idea of discourse is a mind virus, and thinking of humanity as a hypothesis for life.