KunstlerCast - Conversations: Converging Catastrophes of the 21st Century

JHK and Duncan walk through City Center in West Palm Beach, Fla. and comment on the built environment.

Remarks by Leon Krier, architect, urban theoretician and author Leon Krier at CNU 20, followed by interview between JHK, Duncan Crary and Krier.

This episode, featuring a conversation betweek JHK and CNU President and former Milwaukee Mayor John Norquist, was recorded before a live audience at the Congress for the New Urbanism. Norquist and Kunstler answer audience quesions on a variety of topics.

James Howard Kunstler joins other prominent New Urbanist writers on a recent panel at The Congress for The New Urbanism, held in West Palm Beach, Florida this May 9-12, 2012. Featuring: Chuck Bohl, Peter Katz, Philip Langdon, and Charles Marohn.

This is an edited, re-released version of an episode first recorded in Sept. 2008: For this program James Howard Kunstler and Duncan Crary visit Colonie Center, a 1.3 million square-foot enclosed two-level regional shopping center located in suburban Albany, N.Y. After more than $12 million in renovations to this shopping center's exterior and interior, Jim remains as unimpressed with this place as he was in the 1970s when it was first built. Before entering the mall, Jim describes the heroic suburban 6-lane boulevard of commerce upon which Colonie Center is located. Inside, Jim relaxes in one of the lounge areas provided for shoppers and provides a brief history of enclosed shopping areas. He also discusses the price that Americans have paid for trading in real public places for private commercial spaces. He speaks to the clerks at a "sideways hat store." He also observes the local fauna: land whales.

James Howard Kunstler and Duncan Crary record a podcast before a live student audience at Union College, in Schenectady, N.Y. As part of a Humanities Super Seminar on liberal arts and activism, the students read The KunstlerCast book. In this segment, students ask questions out the future of the Internet, concentrating poverty and wealth in New York City and how individuals can face the enormous issue of rebuilding our human habitat. Sponsor: "The Heirloom," by Richard Davies.

James Howard Kunstler and Duncan Crary record a podcast before a live student audience at Union College, in Schenectady, N.Y. As part of a Humanities Super Seminar on liberal arts and activism, the students read The KunstlerCast book. During the podcast Jim and Duncan riff on college architecture and the Union campus before opening up the discussion to questions from the class. Topics include: the value of a liberal arts education in The Long Emergency, monocultures concentrating poverty in the built environment, the prospects for restoring passenger rail in North America and more. Along the way Jim also delivers a call to millennial students to renounce their student loans. Sponsor: "The Heirloom," by Richard Davies.

JHK fields listeners calls about the healthcare industry and its future in the Long Emergency, the validity of peak oil, cognitive ability to retain information from a computer screen vs. the printed page, and light pollution. Sponsor: "The Heirloom," by Richard Davies: http://theheirloom.blogspot.com.

The KunstlerCast celebrates its 200th episode with listener suggested clips of favorite moments from the past four years. Duncan reads a special essay about meeting JHK at the shopping mall before retrieving some retired audio from the archive.

JHK and Duncan have a ramble 'n rant episode on the robitification of our communications landscape, that wasteland of overcomplexity and hyperdependence of modern technology. Sponsor: http://theheirloom.blogspot.com/