C-Realm Vault 345 - Doug Lain on Universal Basic Income

KMO is reposting this C-Realm Vault episode from 2019 because it captures a transitional moment that eventually fed into the project now called Getting Over Collapse.

The conversation with Doug Lain took place in late September of 2019—back when we were all still living in the carefree twilight of our pre-COVID innocence, blissfully unaware that the next few years would deliver a crash course in narrative management, institutional legitimacy crises, and global weirdness.

The episode opens with a bit of backstage context. KMO had recently traveled to Lancaster, Pennsylvania to record a professionally shot, on-camera interview with John Michael Greer about the sudden media deployment of the term eco-fascism and the broader question of narrative management in the media. The studio shoot required professional lighting, cameras—and yes—on-camera makeup.

When KMO mentioned that experience at the beginning of the conversation, Doug interpreted the setup differently and assumed the topic was the hypocrisy of celebrity environmentalists flying around in private jets while urging everyone else to cut their carbon footprint. The conversation briefly veered in that direction before eventually circling back to the actual intended topic: Andrew Yang, automation, and Universal Basic Income.

That pivot happens partway through the recording when KMO formally introduces Doug for a segment intended for the OuttaMyHead YouTube channel.

Listening now, the episode captures a moment when KMO was already beginning to move beyond collapse certainty and toward the broader set of concerns that would later become Getting Over Collapse: automation, narrative control, institutional legitimacy, and the shifting psychological landscape of public discourse.

For more context, see the Getting Over Collapse Notebook at the refreshed C-Realm Blogspot, along with the John Michael Greer studio interview that set up the makeup anecdote that accidentally derailed the opening of this conversation.

Getting Over Collapse Notebook: https://c-realm.blogspot.com/

John Michael Greer interview: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gMBYJa6ribg