Social Studies Leighton Woodhouse

This episode actually just started off as an interview for the purposes of my reporting on drugs and homelessness. In fact, I wasn't really planning on doing more episodes of this podcast at all. But the conversation I had with recovering addict Jared Klickstein was so fascinating, and I learned so much, that with his permission, I decided to share it. I hope you find it as intriguing and eye-opening as I did.
You can follow Jared, by the way, on Twitter at https://twitter.com/MetaGrift.
Thanks to Thad Russell for making this connection possible by having me on his podcast. You can find that episode, which Jared mentions, here: https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/unregistered-226-leighton-woodhouse/id1227060738?i=1000580151989


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Suzy Weiss has fast become one of my favorite reporters. Her latest story, on her sister Bari’s Substack, about a baseless #MeToo accusation that got totally out of control, is a doozy. So is her recent reporting on trans swimmer Lea Thomas and on youth gender transition.
I had a fun chat with Suzy about each of those stories on my podcast. Hope you’ll give it a listen.


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Ethan Strauss, who substacks at House of Strauss, is the author of The Victory Machine, a book about the Golden State Warriors. We talked a little bit about professional sports in this episode — specifically, about the wokeness of the NBA — but mostly we just yakked about whatever came up, which included Elon Musk and Twitter, cancel culture, Tucker Carlson, Black Lives Matter, and the Group Chat.
You can read Ethan’s post on the Group Chat here:


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Zion Lights was a spokesperson for the radical climate change activist group Extinction Rebellion until she realized that it wasn’t enough just to make people panic about the end of the world — you also had to point them to solutions. To the extent that there is a “solution” to climate change, it’s nuclear energy. And yet it’s verboten in some parts of the environmental movement to talk about it.
We’re not just in a climate crisis; we’re also in an energy emergency. It’s more important than ever to talk about nuclear, especially as the myths about its dangers are so inexplicably pervasive. That’s what Zion and I did in this episode of my podcast. Hope you enjoy.
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We’re currently teetering on the edge of a world historical mass global famine. The United Nations Security Council has acknowledged as much, as have political leaders in France and the US.
Russia’s invasion of Ukraine is a key factor in the looming catastrophe, but there are other contributors, as well. Those include surging natural gas prices driven by years of misplaced faith in the promise of renewable energy technologies, global supply chain disruptions, and drought in the American West.
I spoke to Emmet Penney, editor of the indispensable GridBrief about what he calls the “Black Cascade” of converging global energy, food and logistics crises. If he and other prognosticators are right, we’re looking at another long year ahead: one full of humanitarian emergencies, political instability, and likely further geopolitical conflict.


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The Russian invasion of Ukraine feels a bit like something out of another century. It’s not just that it’s a land war in Europe, reminiscent of the mechanized industrial era. It’s that Russia’s casus belli is the opposite of strategic; Putin’s war aims seem mythical and weirdly ancient. Beneath the proximate causes, such as NATO expansion (if you’re even willing to believe that’s anything more than an excuse), lies a vision of Russia as a fallen and now resurgent imperial power, and Ukraine as a vassal state gone rogue. And the split identity of Russia as both an eastern outpost of modern Western civilization and a kind of Asiatic suzerain over a vast and wild expanse of steppeland warrior tribes — a national pathology that goes back centuries — is deeply insinuated into its paranoia over Ukrainians’ gravitation toward Europe. The war is being waged with modern technology, but in spirit, the conflict is feudal.
I don’t think you can get a complete picture of Russia’s anxieties and ambitions without considering the country’s pre-modern history. Nobody — and I mean nobody — is better at elucidating those themes than my friend Razib Khan. You’ll know Razib from the last podcast episode I posted (some time ago), which was me as a guest on his show. This time we switched mics.
Razib is a population geneticist and a huge history nerd, and his knowledge of the churn and mixture of human populations globally over the course of millennia is awe-inspiring. Our conversation took us from the Vikings to ancient Japan to colonial America, but I tried to keep us focused on the history of the region that is now serving as the potential prelude to the next world war.
Be sure to sign up for Razib’s excellent Substack.




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