Joe Brewer talks to Jim about homeostasis in living systems, future collapse, fat-tail risks, evolutionary transitions, collaboration, bioregionalism, and much more...

Joe Brewer talks to Jim about the memetics of regeneration & its connection to homeostasis in living systems, eco pessimism & Joe's view of future collapse, foodchain fragility, fat-tail risks, the role of emotions in existential risk, understanding manufacturing disruptions, potential silver linings in collapse, incremental vs transformation change, permaculture, evolutionary transitions, the complexity of human collaboration, bioregionalism & trade, efficiency risks, the commons, regional-scale economies, and much more.

Episode Transcript

Mentions & Recommendations

Joe's Earth Regenerators Study Group
Bill Baue's Paper, Compared to What?
Overshoot by William Catton Jr.
The Limits to Growth Forcast
Stockholm Resilience Center's Planetary Boundaries
Elinor Ostrom's 8 Principles for Managing A Commmons
Chatham House on High-impact, Low-probability Events
Detroit: The 'Shrinking City' That Isn't Actually Shrinking
Allegheny Mountain Institute
Blacksheep Regenerative Resource Management
Planet at risk of heading towards “Hothouse Earth” state
Cultural Evolution Society

Joe Brewer is the Executive Director for the Center for Applied Cultural Evolution. He is a complexity researcher trained in the cognitive and evolutionary sciences. His work focuses on the converging global challenges that currently threaten the future of humanity. He helped create the Cultural Evolution Society — a scientific organization devoted to advancing the scholarly field of research in this integrative domain. Joe has also helped launch Evonomics magazine to promote the applications of evolution and complexity to the field of economics.
He recently started a study group called Earth Regenerators to build a community of practice around the restoration of planetary health while safeguarding humanity’s future. Joe was formerly a member of the Center for Complex Systems Research at the University of Illinois, Urbana-Champaign and was a research fellow with George Lakoff at the Rockridge Institute in Berkeley.