States and civilizations have collapsed many times in the past. But we’re in an unprecedented situation globally today, with such a vast population so reliant on high-energy resource flows orchestrated by a tightly-organized global network of centralized states increasingly incapable of organizing those flows, whose citizenries are extraordinarily alienated from the material and mental resource base needed to generate local livelihoods.

I think Bumper is onto something here for sure, in that the main reason for big download numbers is to sell advertising, whereas I would just like some sort of measure of whether people find my episodes interesting and whether that is going up or down. If data collection could be automated ...