What awaits the Kiwis as the oil runs out? Released: May 29, 2008. A listener from New Zealand asks James Howard Kunstler what peak oil holds in store for his island nation. The picture isn’t pretty. Kunstler says the Kiwis better watch their backs. China, Japan and even Australia could all pose threats to New more »
Kunstler Op-Ed In Sunday’s Washington Post
Kunstler Op-Ed In Sunday’s Washington Post
Video interview with Glen Hiemstra’s Futurist.com blog
Video interview with Glen Hiemstra’s Futurist.com blog
KunstlerCast#11: Picturing Suburbia
Painting the landscape of our time Released: April 24, 2008. When James Howard Kunstler isn’t railing against suburban sprawl, he’s painting it. Vincent van Gogh painted the peasant sleeping by the haystack because he was living in a landscape populated by people. Our landscape is populated by cars. So, as a sur la motif painter more »
KunstlerCast #10: Children of the Burbs
Suburbia: a punishing environment for our children? Released: April 17, 2008. Is raising children in suburbia a form of child abuse? What happens to developing people when public space is the berm between the Wal-Mart and the K-Mart? When school looks like a maximum security “facility”? When parents are chauffeurs? James Howard Kunstler addresses these more »
KunstlerCast #08: The Glossary of Nowhere
Parking Lagoons, Nature Band-aides & Other Kunstlerisms Released: April 3, 2008. When James Howard Kunstler wrote The Geography of Nowhere, it was to give people “the vocabulary to understand what’s wrong with the places they ought to know best.” In this installment we run down a few choice Kunstlerisms, like “parking lagoons” , “nature Band-Aides” more »
KunstlerCast #06: Zoning
The tragic tale of zoning laws Released: March 20, 2008. Ya seen one town in America ya seen ’em all. But that’s because they’re all mandated to look that way! James Howard Kunstler tells the tragic story of zoning codes in the United States. At one time, zoning was a rational response to unpleasant conditions more »
KunstlerCast #03: World Made By Hand
A post-oil novel Released: Feb. 28, 2008. James Howard Kunstler reads from World Made By Hand, his new novel based on the post-oil future. Published by The Atlantic Monthly Press, World Made By Hand is set in upstate New York in the not distant future. It is a fictional account of the ideas based in more »
KunstlerCast #02: Small Cities and Towns
After the end of oil in small American cities Released: Feb. 21, 2008. James Howard Kunstler describes the impending end of cheap oil, which he calls The Long Emergency. Suburbia is a living arrangement with no future. Things are going to get pretty gnarly in the big cities, too. But small cities, that exist at more »
KunstlerCast #01: Drugstores
Disposable architecture Released: Feb. 12, 2008. James Howard Kunstler rips on drugstores: the one-story, junk food- dispensing boxes that masquerade as buildings on America’s street corners. Topics include: monocultural zoning; big retail vs. mom & pop; separating the business programming from the container that it comes in; and the destiny of these awful structures after more »
KunstlerCast #66 (00): New Listener Orientation
JHK Explains What the KunstlerCast is About Released: May, 27, 2009. James Howard Kunstler and host Duncan Crary take a moment to welcome new listeners and explain what the KunstlerCast is about. Kunstler gives a brief overview of topics covered in this program series and explains why these topics are important. Crary explains how and more »
Forecast 2008
For the tiny fraction of people who actually pay attention to real events — those, for instance, who know the difference between Narnia and Kandahar — the final hours of 2007 leading into the fog-shrouded abyss of 2008 must induce great racking shudders of nausea. Has there ever been a society so exquisitely rigged for more »
My Hip Replacement: A Medical Comedy
My Bad HipA Melodrama in Three ActsWith Additional Notes by Jim Kunstler (Note to Readers: The acts are not in numerical order. For the purpose of narrative coherence,I want you to begin with the operation, go back to the onset of the condition,and conclude with the recovery process.) For the latest installment, scroll to the more »
Making Other Arrangements (Orion Magazine)
Making Other Arrangements (Orion Magazine)
Forecast 2007: First a Look Backward
Let’s get this out of the way up front: the worst call I made last year was for the Dow to crumble down to 4000 when, in fact, it melted up to a new all-time record high of about 12,500. The reason we saw this, in my opinion, was that inertia combined with sheer luck to more »