Kunstlercast - Suburban Sprawl: A Tragic Comedy

Adam Ellwanger is a professor of English at the University of Houston - Downtown, where he teaches rhetoric and writing. In addition to those topics, his varied research interests include popular culture, political philosophy, media studies, and the American Mess writ large. Check out his dangerous new book on the modern politics of identity, entitled Metanoia: Rhetoric, Authenticity, and the Transformation of the Self.  You will also like his essay on the Human Events website: Toward a Woke Metaphysics. Recently, he authored an open letter signed by over 180 professors that outlines forms of non-compliance that signatories will undertake in an effort to resist the current ideological trends on campus. Ellwanger also offers regular commentary at sites like Human Events, New Discourses, American Greatness, Quillette, and more. In his free time, he writes, plays guitar, drinks beer and ruby port, and listens to music. Follow him @DoctorEllwanger on Twitter. The KunstlerCast theme music is the beautiful Two Riv

#338 —Andres Duany is a key founder of the New Urbanist movement. His Miami-based firm, DPZ, with wife and partner Lizz Plater-Zyberk, designed the iconic new town, Seaside, Florida, and scores of other excellent projects in the USA and around the world. Andres continues to lead the way in urban design and in these turbulent times, I think you’ll appreciate communing with his fierce and humorous intelligence. The KunstlerCast theme music is the beautiful Two Rivers Waltz written and performed by Larry Unger.

David Collum is the Betty R. Miller Professor of Chemistry at Cornell University. He is the intellectual utility infielder of internet commentary, covering all the bases: culture, politics, finance, and technology, with often surprising views on the the predicaments of our time. Here we attempt to make sense of the fast-moving corona virus story and the increasingly weird and troubling second-order events spinning off of it into the global economy and fractious American politics du jour.

 Doug Casey is an American writer, financier, and the founder and chairman of Casey Research. He describes himself as an anarcho-capitalist influenced by the works of novelist Ayn Rand. Casey is known as a real estate investor as well as an advisor on how to profit from market distortions and periods of economic turmoil. He’s lately turned his talents to fiction and his new book Assassins, is the third installment in the Charles Knight series of International thrillers. He has lived abroad for many years — visiting over 100 other countries for sheer sport — and currently hangs his hat on a ranch in Uruguay. I caught up with him on a brief stopover in Aspen, Colorado, as he prepared to drive the back roads of America to Washington, DC. He blogs at Doug Casey’s International Man

This podcast speaks to a subject I’ve written about a lot lately — the demographic movement of Americans leaving the big cities for small cities and small towns. New York City alone has lost over 300,000 residents since the onset of the corona virus. John Boone and Hunter Renfro are the young principals at Orchestra Partners, a real estate investment company working to rehab old neighborhoods in Birmingham, Alabama, (pop. 212,000) and elsewhere in the south. Neither of them are trained architects or urban planners, nor are they card-carrying New Urbanists, but they’re working very much in that vein and have a lot to say about creating towns and neighborhoods that are worth living in and worth caring about. The KunstlerCast theme music is the beautiful Two Rivers Waltz written and performed by Larry Unger.

Charles A. S. Hall was born in Eastern Massachusetts in 1943, attended Colgate University, then Penn State University for a Masters in Ecology, then a PhD in Systems Ecology under Howard Odum at the University of North Carolina.  He was professor at Cornell University, University of Montana and SUNY College of Environmental Science and Forestry.  He is author, coauthor or editor of 14 books and 300 scientific papers, many in our leading scientific journals. Dr. Hall is noted especially for the concepts of Energy Return on Investment and BioPhysical  Economics, both applying the natural sciences to what is traditionally studied with conventional economics.  Currently he is retired and lives in Western Montana with his wife and their dog, but is very involved in developing a BioPhysiccsl Economics Institute.  

Dr. Jack Rasmus is the author of the recently published book, ‘The Scourge of Neoliberalism: US Policy from Reagan to Trump, Clarity Press, January 1, 2020.  Dr. Rasmus currently teaches economics at St. Marys College in Moraga, California, on subjects of US economic policy, US political change, financial business cycles, history of economic thought, American Labor and unions, and US Economic History. He is a graduate of the University of California, Berkeley (BA Economics) and University of Toronto, Canada (MA, Ph.D Political Economy). Dr. Rasmus is author of several prior books on the USA and global economy, including Alexander Hamilton and the Origins of the Fed, Lexington Books, March 2019; Central Bankers at the End of Their Ropes, Clarity Press, August 2017; Looting Greece: A New Financial Imperialism Emerges, Clarity Press, September 2016;  Systemic Fragility in the Global Economy, Clarity Press, January 2016; Epic Recession: Prelude to Global Depression, Pluto Books, 2010; Obama’s Economy: Recovery fo

David Collum is the Betty R. Miller Professor of Chemistry at Cornell University. He is the intellectual utility infielder of internet commentary, covering all the bases: culture, politics, finance, and technology, with often surprising views on the the predicaments of our time. Here we attempt to make sense of the fast-moving corona virus story and the increasingly weird and troubling second-order events spinning off of it into the global economy and fractious American politics du jour. Dave tweets most entertainingly at @DavidBCollum

JHK chats with architect and neuroscientist Ann Sussman about our damaged everyday surroundings of buildings, streets, and cities in the USA — and how they got that way.      Ann Sussman, RA, is passionate about understanding the human experience of the built environment. Her book, Cognitive Architecture, Designing for How We Respond to the Built Environment (Routledge, 2015) co-authored with Justin B. Hollander, won the Place Research Award from the Environmental Design Research Association (EDRA) in 2016. Her new book, Urban Experience & Design: Contemporary Perspectives on Improving the Public Realm, (Routledge 2020) also co-edited with Hollander, is due out in October. It explores the role PTSD — specifically veterans' brain trauma post-WWI — had in creating Modern Architecture. Ann believes new understandings from neuroscience on how the brain works and what humans need to see to be at their best, will transform architecture, including the narrative of how Modern Architecture came to be. Ann recently

 JHK hunkers down with Simons Chase, a new voice on the financial scene.  Mr. Chase is the CIO and owner of independent investment firm, SC Capital Management LLC. He has over 20 years of media, finance and early-stage investing experience on the frontiers of emerging trends. He started his career as a structured finance banker in the oil & gas sector in Russia in the 1990s. His blog, LBS.co, explores trends in investing, economics and society.

Art Berman is an independent oil geologist and industry analyst. We go pretty deep into the recent alarming price crash of crude oil, the vagaries and destiny of the shale oil business, and the implications for the American economy. Art is based in Houston. He publishes his own blog at: https://www.artberman.com/blog/ The theme music for the podcast is the Two Rivers Waltz by Larry Unger.

Charles Hugh Smith founded his blog Of Two Minds in 2005 after 17 years of free-lance journalism in the San Francisco Bay Area. Of Two Minds has grown to thousands of posts that have logged tens of millions of page views on his site and many others such as Zero Hedge and Peak Prosperity. He is the author of eight novels and fourteen non-fiction books on socio-economic-political dynamics. He lives by Winston Churchill's dictum that "Success consists of going from failure to failure without loss of enthusiasm." Charles's Blog: OfTwoMinds.com Charles's Books: Will You Be Richer or Poorer?: Profit, Power, and AI in a Traumatized World  Pathfinding our Destiny: Preventing the Final Fall of Our Democratic Republic  Money and Work Unchained 

Gail Tverberg is an analyst who has been researching the connection between oil limits and the economy for nearly 10 years.  She writes a widely-followed blog called Our Finite World. Her background is as an actuary, working as a consultant to insurance companies. She also has a foot in the academic world, where she has lectured and written academic articles, and taught at the China’s University of Petroleum in Beijing.

David Collum is the Betty R. Miller Professor of Chemistry at Cornell University. He is the intellectual utility infielder of internet commentary, covering all the bases: culture, politics, finance, science, and technology, with often surprising views on the the predicaments of our time. Here we attempt to make sense of the fast-moving corona virus story and the increasingly weird and troubling second-order events spinning off of it into the global economy and politics. Dave tweets at @DavidBCollum

Nir Buras is a PhD architect and planner with over 30 years of in-depth experience in strategic planning, architecture, and transportation design, as well as teaching and lecturing. His planning, design and construction experience includes East Side Access at Grand Central Terminal, New York; International Terminal D, Dallas-Fort-Worth; the Washington DC Dulles Metro line; work on the US Capitol and the Senate and House Office Buildings in Washington. Projects he has worked on have been published in the New York Times, the Washington Post, local newspapers, and trade magazines. Buras, whose original degree was Architect and Town Planner, has watched first-hand how architecture and urbanism impact each other. After the last decade of applying in practice the classical method that Buras absorbed in his practice, his book, The Art of Classic Planning (Harvard University Press, 2019), shows how we can best face the future by once more building beautiful, balanced, and durable urbanism. The theme music for the pod

Ben Hunt is the Chief Investment Officer at Second Foundation Partners, a consultant for large institutional investors, and the author of Epsilon Theory, a newsletter and website that examines markets through the lenses of game theory, history and nature. Over 100,000 professional investors and allocators across 200 countries read Epsilon Theory for its fresh perspective and novel insights into market dynamics. In prior positions, Ben has managed a billion dollar hedge fund and served as Chief Strategist for a $13 billion dollar asset manager. He has a Ph.D. from Harvard University, was a tenured Political Science professor, and has co-founded three technology companies. Ben spends lots of time on a family owned farm, which inspires many original ideas on the parallels between human and animal behavior The new theme music for the podcast is the Two Rivers Waltz by Larry Unger.

     Steve Keen is an Australian economist and author. He considers himself a post-Keynesian, criticizing neoclassical economics as inconsistent, unscientific and empirically unsupported. His books include Developing an Economics for the Post-crisis World (2015) and Can We Avoid Another Financial Crisis? (2017). He lives in Amsterdam, the Netherlands. The new theme music for the podcast is the Two Rivers Waltz by Larry Unger.

Larry Kummer is The editor of the Fabius Maximus website. FabiusMaximus.com He has 37 years experience in the finance industry in a variety of roles, retiring as a VP and Senior Portfolio Manager at a global investment bank. He was a Boy Scout volunteer leader for 15 years, running a Troop for 7 years and retiring as Director and VP-Finance of the Mt Diablo-Silverado Council. For 20 years he was an active Republican, working on many campaigns — until the party abandoned its traditional principles. He began writing about geopolitics in 2003 A sampling of important posts from Fabius Maximus: America isn’t falling like the Roman Empire. We're falling like the Roman Republic. Welcome to ClownWorld, the final meme for America- It is the next phase of the "crazy years", long ago predicted by Robert Heinlein. A new, dark picture of America’s future- our institutions are falling like a line of dominoes. Larry says, “I’ve written 140 posts about ways to reform America. They are the least popular posts. We want simple

Larry Kummer. Are these the Crazy Years in America? Larry is The editor of the Fabius Maximus website. FabiusMaximus.com He has 37 years experience in the finance industry in a variety of roles, retiring as a VP and Senior Portfolio Manager at a global investment bank. He was a Boy Scout volunteer leader for 15 years, running a Troop for 7 years and retiring as Director and VP-Finance of the Mt Diablo-Silverado Council. For 20 years he was an active Republican, working on many campaigns — until the party abandoned its traditional principles. He began writing about geopolitics in 2003 A sampling of important posts from Fabius Maximus:  America isn’t falling like the Roman Empire. We're falling like the Roman Republic. Welcome to ClownWorld, the final meme for America - It is the next phase of the "crazy years", long ago predicted by Robert Heinlein. A new, dark picture of America’s future - our institutions are falling like a line of dominoes. Larry says, “I’ve written 140 posts about ways to reform America.

#321 — Charles Hugh Smith writes the popular Of Two Minds blog (at https://www.oftwominds.com/blog.html) and is the author of many books, most recently Will You Be Richer or Poorer; Profit, Power, and A.I. in a Traumatized World.) He lives in the world capital of Wokesterdom: Berkeley, California.