1 hour, 12 mins / 1 hour, 20 mins / 1 hour, 9 mins
A few weeks after the beginning of the COVID pandemic, Bart invited fellow ‘apocalyoptimist’ Michael Dowd on the podcast (509), an author who shares Bart’s belief that a great societal collapse is inevitable, and that the pandemic represents the beginning of a difficult time for humanity. Among the listeners was Bart’s son Roman Campolo, who hated the episode. Not only did Roman have strong criticisms of Dowd, collapse-thinking, and the tone and content of the conversation itself, but he felt that Bart was wasting his unique skill set and intellect on apocalyptic thinking at a time when he could be applying himself to the moment more effectively. Roman came on the podcast to give his dad a strongly worded response (510), an episode which created its own response (511). Suffice to say, while we didn’t feel like we handled the arrival of a pandemic well, these three episodes stand out as interesting and unique.