Clusterfuck Nation: Podcast

KunstlerCast 448 — Lt. Morrisseau's Rebellion and the Rise of Bernie Sanders

James Howard Kunstler — Thu, 30 Jul 2026 20:46:42 GMT

On this summer break podcast. Dennis Morrisseau is an interesting friend of mine with a political history worth recounting.

He was the only US Army officer in the USA who refused orders to Vietnam after several in-uniform protests — including one at the White House gate, noted by Walter Cronkite on CBS-News at the time — and he beat the court-martial that resulted. Dennis went on to run for Congress in Vermont 3 times 1970, ‘71, 74 . Bernie Sanders was on Dennis’s campaign staff in the ‘71 election, and we’ll hear more about that.

After politics, Dennis went on to found and run the popular Burlington, VT restaurant: Leunig’s Old World Cafe (since renamed Leunig’s Bistro).

He lives in West Pawlet, VT in an art gallery on the Indian River called LOST & FOUND ART. He Winters in Belize.

The KunstlerCast theme music is the beautiful Two Rivers Waltz written and performed by Larry Unger

This podcast is sponsored by McAlvany Precious Metals. For more than 50 years, McAlvany Precious Metals has helped investors learn about and own physical gold and silver as part of a long-term approach to wealth preservation.

To explore their market insights, educational resources, and see whether precious metals make sense for you, visit: mcalvany.com.

KunstlerCast 447 — Eric Metaxas on American Revolutions Then and Now

James Howard Kunstler — Tue, 14 Jul 2026 06:31:34 GMT

Eric Metaxas is the author of seven New York Times Bestsellers, including his newest: Revolution: The Birth of the Greatest Nation in the History of the World. His earlier books include Bonhoeffer: Pastor, Martyr, Prophet, Spy and Martin Luther, as well as thirty children’s books. His works have been translated into 25 languages. Eric is the host of Socrates in the City and the Eric Metaxas Show (on Apple Podcasts), where he has interviewed Dick Cavett, Ron Howard, George Foreman, Mel Gibson, Morgan Freeman, and many others. His humor has appeared in The Atlantic, The New York Times Magazine, and The New Yorker.

The KunstlerCast theme music is the beautiful Two Rivers Waltz written and performed by Larry Unger

To explore their market insights, educational resources, and see whether precious metals make sense for you, visit: mcalvany.com.

KunstlerCast_446 — Mel K on the Infiltration and Betrayal of America

James Howard Kunstler — Wed, 01 Jul 2026 14:16:07 GMT

Mel K is an investigative writer, host, and producer. Her new book, Infiltration Instead of Invasion: America Betrayed 1944–1954, examines how intelligence networks, financial institutions, and supranational structures reshaped American sovereignty in the decade after World War II. Mel was a producer and screenwriter in Hollywood until she was cancelled by the Woke Rebellion. She reinvented her self as a podcaster and is now host of The Mel K Show, where she has been killin’ it with her commentary on the American political traumas and psychodramas of the day. She also happens to be the producer of Roaseanne Barr is America, which streams on Apple TV and other venues.

The KunstlerCast theme music is the beautiful Two Rivers Waltz written and performed by Larry Unger

To explore their market insights, educational resources, and see whether precious metals make sense for you, visit: mcalvany.com.

KunstlerCast 445 — Susan Kokinda of Promethean Action on Bringing Back "The American System," and other Matters

James Howard Kunstler — Tue, 23 Jun 2026 17:45:24 GMT

Susan Kokinda has been politically active since 1968, when she was part of the Robert Kennedy presidential campaign in Oregon and California. She pivoted politically after that, and in the 1970’s and 1980’s was active in Washington, DC, defending Richard Nixon during Watergate, covering the White House during the Carter Administration, and working with Congress in support of President Reagan’s Strategic Defense Initiative. With President Trump’s 2016 victory, she knew it was time to return to Michigan. Since then, she has been organizing throughout the state, educating and building support for President Trump’s commitment to make the U.S. a manufacturing superpower and to make the Republican Party the party of workers and producers. In March 2025, she was elected Coalitions Vice Chair of the Michigan Republican Party.

She broadcasts on the Promethean Update YouTube channel and regularly reaches over 300,000 views. Her theme, along with her co-host Barbara Boyd, is that the real battle in the world is between the opposing principles of the American System and the British System, which represent two different images of man and society.

She has been interviewed by OAN, Real America’s Voice, Stephen Gardner, and numerous podcasters.

The KunstlerCast theme music is the beautiful Two Rivers Waltz written and performed by Larry Unger

To explore their market insights, educational resources, and see whether precious metals make sense for you, visit: mcalvany.com.

KunstlerCast 444 — Richard Lyon on The Energy Trap: Why the Renewable Energy Transition Can't Work — And What Can

James Howard Kunstler — Wed, 10 Jun 2026 20:01:52 GMT

Richard Lyon is an electrical engineer, petroleum engineer, and energy economist. He spent more than twenty-five years in the oil and gas industry in senior operational management roles in the UK, Norway, Azerbaijan, Congo, and Cameroon. He writes about the gap between energy policy and physical reality at his Substack, State of Britain (richardlyon.substack.com). His book, The Energy Trap: Why the Renewable Energy Transition Can't Work — And What Can, will be published by Swift Press this coming September, 2026, available in the US through Amazon.

The KunstlerCast theme music is the beautiful Two Rivers Waltz written and performed by Larry Unger

To explore their market insights, educational resources, and see whether precious metals make sense for you, visit: mcalvany.com.

KunstlerCast 443 — Attorney Bobbie Anne Cox on the Tribulations of New York State under the Woke Witch Hochul

James Howard Kunstler — Thu, 14 May 2026 21:37:05 GMT

Bobbie Anne Cox is a New York-based civil rights attorney with over 25 years of legal experience, formerly with a large international law firm and now principal at Cox Lawyers, PLLC. She has extensive experience suing government entities on behalf of her clients and is best known for winning a lawsuit against New York Governor Kathy Hochul and the NYS Department of Health that struck down the state’s “Isolation and Quarantine Procedures” regulation (the infamous Quarantien Camps rule). She also filed a lawsuit against New York State over an amendment to the state constitution, challenging it on both procedural and parental rights grounds. She serves as Director of Stop NY Corruption, an organization focused on redistricting, competitive elections, and civil rights in New York. Ms. Cox is also a Fellow at the Brownstone Institute and writes the “Knowledge is Power” newsletter on Substack.

The KunstlerCast theme music is the beautiful Two Rivers Waltz written and performed by Larry Unger

To explore their market insights, educational resources, and see whether precious metals make sense for you, visit: mcalvany.com.

KunstlerCast 442 — Elizabeth Nickson on Globalism and its Dark Mysteries

James Howard Kunstler — Wed, 22 Apr 2026 19:57:21 GMT

Elizabeth Nickson is a Canadian journalist, author, and blogger who writes the weekly Welcome to Absurdistan newsletter on Substack, focused on politics, threats to individual liberty, and restoring rural economies. She began her career reporting for Time Magazine before becoming European Bureau Chief of LIFE Magazine and has since written for an extensive roster of publications including Harper’s, The Guardian, The Observer, The Independent, The Telegraph, The Sunday Times, and the Toronto Globe and Mail. Her first book was The Monkey Puzzle Tree, an investigation of the CIA’s MK-Ultra mind-control program. Herr second was Eco-Fascists: How Radical Environmentalists Are Destroying Our Natural Heritage.

The KunstlerCast theme music is the beautiful Two Rivers Waltz written and performed by Larry Unger

To explore their market insights, educational resources, and see whether precious metals make sense for you, visit: mcalvany.com.

KunstlerCast 441 — Heather Mac Donald on the Exhausting Journey back to Normal

James Howard Kunstler — Thu, 02 Apr 2026 00:35:20 GMT

Heather Mac Donald is the Thomas W. Smith Fellow at the Manhattan Institute and a contributing editor of City Journal. A New York Times bestselling author, she has written extensively on policing, criminal justice, race relations, higher education, and the pursuit of merit in American institutions. Her influential books include The War on Cops and When Race Trumps Merit.

A non-practicing lawyer with a J.D. from Stanford, she holds a B.A. in English from Yale (summa cum laude) and an M.A. from Cambridge University. Mac Donald is a frequent commentator on Fox News and other outlets, known for her data-driven, fearless analysis of cultural and policy issues.

The KunstlerCast theme music is the beautiful Two Rivers Waltz written and performed by Larry Unger

To explore their market insights, educational resources, and see whether precious metals make sense for you, visit: mcalvany.com.

KunstlerCast 440 — Dr. Shane Simonsen on Zero Input Agriculture, Taming the Apocalypse, and the Neo-Medieval Future

James Howard Kunstler — Wed, 18 Mar 2026 20:15:38 GMT

Dr. Shane Simonsen is an Australian experimental farmer, author, podcaster, and thinker based in the subtropical Sunshine Coast hinterland of Queensland (on around 40 acres among the Glasshouse Mountains). He holds a PhD in biochemistry and previously worked in academia and as a teacher before leaving in his late 20s — disillusioned by institutional structures, the global financial crisis, and concerns over peak oil— to pursue independent work in biology, ecology, and sustainable systems. For the last decade he obsessively developed hardy staple crops for his little mountain village. Australia is uniquely vulnerable to energy system disruptions and totally unprepared for post-industrial agriculture.

Shane blogs weekly at Recombination Nation. His podcast of the same name interviews amateur plant breeders, geopolitical experts and culture innovators.

His non-fiction book Taming the Apocalypse explores a post-industrial future built purely on biological technology

He also wrote a novel under the nom-de-plume Haldane P. Doyle, Our Vitreous Womb, imagining a biotechnological civilization in the distant future.

This podcast is sponsored by Vaulted, an online mobile web app for investing in allocated and deliverable physical gold and silver. Vaulted is backed by McAlvany Financial Group, which owns ICA, one of the largest and longest continuously operating full-service gold brokerage firms in the United States. To learn more visit: Vaulted.com/JHK

KunstlerCast 439 — Alex Krainer on Disturbances in the Geopolitical Field

James Howard Kunstler — Wed, 11 Mar 2026 14:24:51 GMT

Alex Krainer is a Croatian-born market analyst, author, and former hedge fund manager based in Monaco. Coming of age in socialist Yugoslavia, Krainer’s unconventional path took him from serving in Croatia’s war of independence to becoming one of the few fund managers to generate positive returns (+27-percent) during the 2008 financial crisis. He founded his own investment management firm in 2007 and later joined Altana Wealth, where he developed systematic portfolio allocation strategies bridging technology and finance. Krainer is the author of Mastering Uncertainty in Commodities Trading“(ranked #1 by Financial-Expert.co.uk), The Grand Deception, and Alex Krainer’s Trend Following Bible. A sought-after voice on geopolitics, commodities markets, and global finance, he publishes regular market analysis through TrendCompass and his Substack, offering sharp, unconventional insights shaped by his unique background navigating both socialist regimes and Western financial markets.

The KunstlerCast theme music is the beautiful Two Rivers Waltz written and performed by Larry Unger

KunstlerCast 438 — Stephan Sanders-Faes on Europe's Glide Path to Suicide

James Howard Kunstler — Sat, 07 Feb 2026 16:40:22 GMT

Stephan Sander-Faes is a professor of history teaching European civilization at the University of Bergen, Norway (faculty profile: https://www4.uib.no/en/find-employees/Stephan.Sander-Faes). His work focuses mainly on post-mediaeval (Central) Europe. He blogs semi-anonymously about European affairs at https://fackel.substack.com/ (click and sign up, it’s free). When he’s not teaching, he tends to his livestock (follow his sheep at https://bsky.app/profile/ramsesandhisgang.bsky.social).

In whatever spare time he has left, he explores our analogue, pre-internet world cataloging his late grandfather’s vintage picture postcard collection, which you may as well check out over at

The KunstlerCast theme music is the beautiful Two Rivers Waltz written and performed by Larry Unger

KunstlerCast 437 — Dr. Drew Miller, Col. USAF (Ret.) on the Touchy Subject of Social / Political / Economic Collapse

James Howard Kunstler — Tue, 27 Jan 2026 20:19:41 GMT

Dr Drew Miller, Col USAF (Ret) holds a masters degree and a PhD in Public Policy from Harvard. He had a distinguished career as an intelligence officer serving overseas in Iraq and as a senior executive in the Department of Defense (Now Dept, of War). Today he is CEO of Fortitude Ranch the nation’s largest catastrophe survival community and he is also Managing Director of the consulting firm Fortitude Collapse Preparedness. His new book is Preparing to Survive in the Age of Collapse, from Skyhorse Publishing.

The KunstlerCast theme music is the beautiful Two Rivers Waltz written and performed by Larry Unger

KunstlerCast 436 — Elizabeth Nickson on the Fall of Canada and Other Sorrows of Western Civ

James Howard Kunstler — Fri, 16 Jan 2026 02:32:06 GMT

Elizabeth Nickson is a distinguished veteran of American and Canadian journalism. She was trained as a reporter at the London bureau of Time Magazine and became European Bureau Chief of LIFE Magazine in its last years of monthly publication. She went on to write for Harper’s Magazine, the Guardian, the Observer, the Independent, the Sunday Telegraph, the Sunday Times Magazine, the Globe and Mail, and the National Post. Her first book The Monkey Puzzle Tree was an investigation of the CIA MK-ULTRA mind control program. She followed with Eco-Fascists: How Radical Environmentalists Are Destroying Our Natural Heritage, a look at how environmentalism, badly practiced, is destroying the rural economy and rural culture in the U.S. and all over the world. Her next is The Green Book, a collection of her essays on the environmental junta, coming in February 2026. She is a Senior Fellow at the Frontier Center for Public Policy, fcpp.org. Elizabeth Blogs at Welcome to Absurdistan on Substack.

The KunstlerCast theme music is the beautiful Two Rivers Waltz written and performed by Larry Unger

This podcast is sponsored by Vaulted, an online mobile web app for investing in allocated and deliverable physical gold. Vaulted is backed by McAlvany Financial Group, which owns ICA, one of the largest and longest continuously operating full-service gold brokerage firms in the United States. To learn more visit: Vaulted.com/JHK

KunstlerCast 435 — JHK yaks about his new book, "Look I'm Gone," with Literary Compadre, Ted Clear

James Howard Kunstler — Tue, 16 Dec 2025 16:59:16 GMT

This one’s a little break from the usual — it’s me talking to a friend about my new novel, Look, I’m Gone with a particular emphasis on the iconic American author JD Salinger, who has a meaty role as a character in my book, playing himself, kind of a first for Salinger, who passed away in 2010. My friend Ted Cleary is a writer, artist, and musician from New York City. He studied English and history at Columbia University and has taught writing and literature for several decades. He’s been a landscape gardener, assistant district attorney, and stroke oar for an American rowing team racing traditional Irish fishing boats in western Ireland. Two energetic novellas, At the End of the World and Song of the Cicada, are available on Amazon, and he has recently launched Substack as (tedcleary1) .

The KunstlerCast theme music is the beautiful Two Rivers Waltz written and performed by Larry Unger

KunstlerCast 434 — Charles Marohn on Strong Towns and the Battle to Reform the Fiasco of Suburban Sprawl

James Howard Kunstler — Sun, 30 Nov 2025 00:48:04 GMT

Charles Marohn is the founder and president of Strong Towns. With decades of experience as a land use planner and civil engineer, Marohn is on a mission to help cities and towns become stronger and more prosperous through classic, traditional town planning. He’s the bestselling author of Escaping the Housing Trap: The Strong Towns Response to the Housing Crisis. Like your host, JHK, Chuck is a member in good standing of the Congress for the New Urbanism, a national movement to repair and reform the fiasco of Suburban sprawl lanes development.

The KunstlerCast theme music is the beautiful Two Rivers Waltz written and performed by Larry Unger

KunstlerCast 433 — Piero San Giorgio Has Just Returned from Russia

James Howard Kunstler — Tue, 11 Nov 2025 16:57:10 GMT

Piero San Giorgio is one of Switzerland’s best selling authors. After 20 years as an executive in the software business, Piero decided to write essays about the future. His first book Survive —The Economic Collapse was in the top-50 best selling books of 2012 in France and has sold over 200,000 copies, with translations into English, Italian, Russian, Arabic, Romanian, Polish, Turkish etc. and has a foreword by JHKunstler. His other books are , CBRN (How to Survive Nuclear, Radiological, Biological,and Chemical events), and Giuseppe: A Survival Story, a biographical novel about his grandfather’s ordeals in WW2.

The KunstlerCast theme music is the beautiful Two Rivers Waltz written and performed by Larry Unger

KunstlerCast 432 — Jeffrey Tucker of The Brownstone Institute on his new book, The Spirits of America

James Howard Kunstler — Wed, 29 Oct 2025 00:55:25 GMT

Jeffrey Tucker is founder and president of Brownstone Institute, Senior Economics Columnist at Epoch Times, and author of 15 books. His newest book, The Spirits of America, is a reflection on American values – cultivated deep in US history dating back to the founding. The book is meant to inspire us to a restoration of our once-sturdy common culture in this period of great political turbulence. Please take the time to visit the Brownstone Institute’s excellent website and its stable of fine writers.

The KunstlerCast theme music is the beautiful Two Rivers Waltz written and performed by Larry Unger

KunstlerCast 431 — Thomas Fowler on the Diminishing Returns of Artificial Intelligence

James Howard Kunstler — Wed, 22 Oct 2025 14:51:41 GMT

Thomas B. Fowler is the author of five books and over 150 articles and reviews, ranging over philosophy, theology, engineering, physics, and mathematics. He is an expert in analyzing systems and procedures for the U.S government. He says he is “keenly aware of the rapid politicization that has occurred not just in the humanities, but increasingly in the science, technology, and mathematics (STEM) areas, and is devoted to debunking the shoddy reasoning behind many contemporary trends such as the extravagant claims made for Artificial Intelligence.” His latest book is Artificial Intelligence: Foundations, Limitations, Benefits and Dangers — and is the subject of this conversation. He is president of the Xavier Zubiri Foundation of North America, and has translated several of the Spanish philosopher’s books into English. Currently an independent consultant and Adjunct Professor of Engineering at George Mason University, he has lectured widely in the U.S., South America, and Europe on science and philosophy. His doctorate from George Washington University is in system theory.

KunstlerCast 430 — Charles Hugh Smith, blogger at "Of Two Minds," Talking Finance and The Ultra-Processed Life

James Howard Kunstler — Wed, 01 Oct 2025 02:08:52 GMT

Charles Hugh Smith founded his blog Of Two Minds in 2005 after 17 years of free-lance journalism in the San Francisco Bay Area. His 4,600 posts on the economy, society, housing and technology have logged over 150 million page views. He is the author of 9 novels and 20 non-fiction books on socio-economic-political dynamics, including The Mythology of Progress and Ultra-Processed Life. His work can also be found on Substack and Patreon.

The KunstlerCast theme music is the beautiful Two Rivers Waltz written and performed by Larry Unger

KunstlerCast 429 — Matt and Maxim Smith on "The Preparation" — Becoming a Man in Uneasy Times

James Howard Kunstler — Sat, 30 Aug 2025 18:59:22 GMT

Matt Smith is an American entrepreneur and economic commentator who relocated to Uruguay in 2021, where he operates a regenerative cattle ranch. He co-hosts the podcast Doug Casey’s Take with author and economist Doug Casey, offering analysis on global markets, monetary policy, and geopolitical trends. Matt also publishes the financial newsletter Crisis Investing on Substack. He is also co-author, with his 20 year old son Maxim Smith and Mr. Casey, of the superb new book, The Preparation: How to become Competent, Confident, and Dangerous about making boys into effective autonomous men in these uneasy times.

The KunstlerCast theme music is the beautiful Two Rivers Waltz written and performed by Larry Unger