The Initiation

In this episode of The Initiation, I speak with Corey Bradshaw, ecologist, modeler, and global change scientist, about the uncomfortable realities of the ecological crisis — and what it means to face them honestly.Corey’s path began far from academia: growing up in the Canadian wilderness with a trapper father, learning the intelligence of animals, the harshness of wild places, and the power humans have to alter the living world. Today, he uses mathematical models to understand ecosystems, extinction, population dynamics, climate trajectories, and the future of human civilization.Together we explore why the sixth mass extinction is not just a distant scientific abstraction, how overpopulation and overconsumption are inseparably linked, why efficiency often leads to more exploitation rather than less, and why denial is such a deeply human response to ecological breakdown.This is not an easy conversation — but it is a deeply clarifying one. Corey offers a form of grounded realism: not the fantasy that everything will be fine, and not the despair that nothing matters, but the possibility of making the future “less shitty” through honest seeing, better choices, and a renewed sense of responsibility for the living systems that sustain us.A conversation about extinction, denial, resilience, collapse, and what it means to stay useful in a world that is already changing.And for new listeners, Season 1 of The Initiation lays the foundation for this inquiry - exploring the breakdowns, breakthroughs, and inner transformation shaping humanity’s collective threshold.

In this episode, I’m joined by Jeff Booth — entrepreneur, investor, author, and co-founder of Ego Death Capital — for a wide-ranging conversation on Bitcoin, money, AI, and the civilizational threshold we find ourselves in.Jeff argues that Bitcoin is not merely an asset, but a protocol for a fundamentally different kind of world: one beyond the zero-sum logic of manipulated money, extraction, and centralized control. In his view, Bitcoin opens the possibility of a true free market — one where technological progress, AI, and productivity gains can flow back to people through falling prices, rather than being captured by states, banks, or technocratic monopolies.We explore why Jeff sees Bitcoin as essential to the transition into a post-labor economy, how broken money distorts reality and fuels fear, why most of crypto misses the point, and what it means to reclaim agency in a time of accelerating breakdown and breakthrough.We discuss:– Bitcoin as a civilizational phase shift– Why the natural state of a free market is deflation– AI, robotics, and the future of labor– Why broken money concentrates power– The spiritual and psychological dimension of Bitcoin– Ego Death Capital and investing in the Bitcoin ecosystem– Why Jeff believes most other blockchains go to zero– MicroStrategy, ETFs, and the risk of Bitcoin capture– Agency, fear, and building the world that comes nextThis is a conversation about Bitcoin — but also about consciousness, courage, decentralization, and the possibility of an infinite game for humanity.And for new listeners, Season 1 of The Initiation lays the foundation for this inquiry - exploring the breakdowns, breakthroughs, and inner transformation shaping humanity’s collective threshold.

Jeremy Lent is an author, philosopher, and systems thinker whose work explores the deep roots of our civilizational crisis - and the possibility of a life-affirming future. His books include The Patterning Instinct, The Web of Meaning, and his latest book, Eco-Civilization, which asks what it would take to build a world system designed for the flourishing of all life. In this conversation, Sebastian and Jeremy explore why our current system is not simply broken, but functioning exactly as designed: extracting wealth, exploiting life, and concentrating power. From there, they move into the deeper question at the heart of Jeremy’s work: whether another path is still possible - one rooted in mutual flourishing, ecological regeneration, and what he calls “mutually beneficial symbiosis.”Together they unpack:why “there is no alternative” is one of the most powerful myths of our timethe Windigo as a metaphor for endless extraction and insatiable growthwhat hunter-gatherer societies reveal about human cooperation and dignitythe rise of inequality, domination, and alpha-male power structurescollapse, authoritarian fortress-earth scenarios, and the third possibilitythe adaptive cycle, unraveling systems, and islands of coherenceAI, the singularity, and the danger of confusing technology with transcendencewhy evolution is not only competition, but cooperation and symbiosishow to orient your life toward the possibility of an eco-civilizationAt its heart, this is a conversation about remembering who we are beneath the conditioning of a system that has taught us to crave, compete, and consume.And for new listeners, Season 1 of The Initiation lays the foundation for this inquiry - exploring the breakdowns, breakthroughs, and inner transformation shaping humanity’s collective threshold.

Richard Heinberg joins The Initiation. Richard is a human ecologist, journalist, and Senior Fellow at the Post Carbon Institute, and the author of fourteen books on energy, ecology, and the future of industrial civilization. His work traces the deep entanglement between energy systems, social evolution, and the ecological limits now confronting humanity.In this conversation, we explore the polycrisis through the lens of human ecology - examining how fossil fuels enabled the modern world, why the energy transition faces hard material limits, and what a graceful descent from industrial civilization could actually look like. What begins as a discussion about energy quickly reveals itself as something deeper: a reckoning with the assumptions, incentives, and stories that have brought us to this threshold moment.Together they unpack:why energy is the foundation beneath everything humans do - and why fossil fuels created an unrepeatable historical anomaly the hard material limits of the renewable energy transition, from minerals to recyclingwhy perpetual economic growth on a finite planet was always a temporal illusionhow the debt bomb, demographic decline, and energy descent are converging into a single systemic resetthe case for bioregionalism as the organizing principle of a post-industrial future why AI may be the worst idea at the worst possible time - and the bubble likely to pop within monthswhat indigenous societies understand about ecological limits that modern civilization has forgottenthe phase shift already underway between 2025 and 2030 - and what it asks of us psychologicallywhy the path forward isn't found in blame or technological rescue, but in rebuilding sustainable households and communitiesThis episode is a sobering yet grounding look at the ecological foundations of our predicament - and an invitation to meet this moment with clear eyes, open hearts, and a willingness to imagine human life on radically different terms.If you're new to The Initiation, I recommend starting with Season 1 - it lays the foundation for understanding the broader arc we're tracing, from breakdown to breakthrough, and the deeper initiation this moment is asking of us.