Resilience.org

What if the story we tell ourselves about progress is wrong? In Part 4 of our six-part summer series, Finding Crazy Town, producer Alex Leff continues his investigation into the mysterious disappearance of Jason Bradford, Rob Dietz, and Asher Miller. Following clues from the Crazy Town archives, Alex begins questioning one of the most deeply held assumptions of modern society: that history is a story of continual progress.

Declining birth rates have sparked fears of a fertility “crisis” and population “collapse.” The fears are based on misinformation, but nonetheless generate reactionary pronatalist policies aimed at boosting birth rates. They range from baby bonuses to abortion bans, and from right-wing restrictions on reproductive rights to so-called progressive pronatalism purporting to help people achieve their desired (larger) family size. But it’s fallacious to argue that falling birth rates spell disaster.

Wendell Berry died on August 31, 2026. He was one of the great men of the world, his greatness being of an entirely different sort than powers and principalities oft recognize. He lived as the kind of person who makes men want to write poetry. He was a man who allowed himself to see. Because he was willing to see, others saw. Much will be and should be written about his life and work.

Ordinary composting has some disadvantages that every gardener knows well. One can’t simply add bones or meat – and some gardeners even avoid eggshells – for fear of attracting vermin. Also, plants that have gone to seed cannot be added, or the resulting soil will be peppered with the beginning of next year’s weeds. You can’t add diseased plants, or the diseases might remain in the resulting soil, ready to infect next year’s crops.

From the archive: Originally published on July 3, 2018. The Janus decision by the U.S. Supreme Court was another blow to the labor movement. It creates a financial incentive for public-sector union members to leave the union while continuing their jobs.

Wendell Berry, the great agrarian, writer, and voice of conscience, has died. He was 92, but he seemed immortal. Berry famously wrote his many works with pencil and paper. He had much to tell us both about how we interact with the technology that surrounds us and about the land from which we live.

I was walking past Farragut Square in Washington, D.C. It was the end of my lunch break, and I needed to get back to work. Suddenly my phone rang. I looked down at the caller ID and noticed it was a Kentucky number. My stomach lurched. I answered. “Hello?” “Gracy? This is Wendell Berry. How are you?” Well, I was on the phone with my personal hero and favorite author. I was not sure how Ifelt, exactly, but definitely a bit shaky. I lied, however, and said I was fine. “How are you, sir?” I asked.

“Everything has completely changed, Tom.” Sitting in his old wooden house on a mountainside near Sibebe Rock, Eswatini, Warren lit his gas stove to boil water for two cups of tea. I mistakenly added salt to mine; he laughed and poured another. As a boy, Warren remembers bathing in the mountain streams and running naked in the warm rains of the Swazi summertime. This summer, however, was different. The rains were heavier, the ground saturated, jerseys were worn and heaters were switched on.

Theresa Leisgang spent over ten years reporting on environmental and human rights issues as a journalist, travelling for magazines and researching for her book, in places where the effects of the climate crisis are already an existential threat to livelihoods. She has interviewed people from the Amazon region to the Arctic, from South Africa to eastern Brandenburg, and had many conversations with those who have not given up hope despite it all.

Ten years after the 2016 Budapest International Degrowth Conference and three years after the 2023 Zagreb International Degrowth Conference, a Central and Eastern European Degrowth Conference was held in Kraków in June. It was much more than a regional gathering.