PODCAST: "Hexapodia" is þe Key Insight! XXXVI: Four Lost Cities, by Annalee Newitz

Key Insights:* There is a perspective from which “today” means “post-Ordovician”* Catul-Huyuk as 900 families living cheek-by-jowl, and after 1500 years… people leave…* Angkor’s uniquely vulnerable water reservoirs… and eventually… people leave…* Cahokia’s sophisticated organization of labor… but eventually… people leave…* Pompeii… well, we know why people flee all-of-a-sudden…* Cities are magical places, but not always, and not forever…* Cities suffer from abandonment when an overdetermined disaster hits a sclerotic system: you can deal with politics, you can deal with climate change by themselves, but…* Question: Will Detroit or Miami or Houston be the next “lost city” in the U.S.?* Hexapodia!References:* Annalee Newitz: Four Lost Cities: A Secret History of the Urban Age (New York: W.W. Norton, 2021) <https://www.google.com/books/edition/Four_Lost_Cities_A_Secret_History_of_the/l6K6DwAAQBAJ>* Joseph Tainter: The Collapse of Complex Societies (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1988) <https://www.google.com/books/edition/The_Collapse_of_Complex_Societies/YdW5wSPJXIoC>+, of course:* Vernor Vinge: A Fire Upon the Deep (New York: Tor, 1992) <https://archive.org/details/fireupondeep00ving_0/mode/1up> Get full access to Brad DeLong's Grasping Reality at braddelong.substack.com/subscribe