Originally released March 24, 2020, C-Realm Podcast episode 554 features a conversation with James Howard Kunstler, recorded just as the COVID-19 pandemic was overturning ordinary life in the United States.

The ostensible occasion was the publication of Kunstler’s new book, Living in the Long Emergency, his follow-up to 2005’s The Long Emergency. The book looks back at the predictions and assumptions of the Peak Oil era and profiles people Kunstler sees as adapting to a future of economic contraction and institutional instability. KMO is among the people profiled in the book.

But the timing made it impossible to talk about the book in isolation. The conversation took place during the first weeks of the COVID shutdowns, when an abstract discussion about disruption, fragility, and “the long emergency” had suddenly acqu ...