341 | Stewart Brand on Maintenance as an Organizing Principle
Sean Carroll's Mindscape: Science, Society, Philosophy, Culture, Arts, and Ideas
Sean Carroll
4.7 ā¢ 4.7K Ratings
šļø 19 January 2026
ā±ļø 73 minutes
šļø Recording | iTunes | RSS
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Summary
"Things fall apart; the centre cannot hold," wrote W.B. Yeats. I don't know about the centre, but the tendency of things to fall apart is pretty universal, ultimately due to the Second Law of Thermodynamics. Anyone living in a society or involved with technology must therefore be interested in the concept of maintenance -- keeping systems working. In his bookĀ Maintenance: Of Everything, Part One, Stewart Brand looks at the challenges and rewards of this concept.
Blog post with transcript: https://www.preposterousuniverse.com/podcast/2026/01/19/341-stewart-brand-on-maintenance-as-an-organizing-principle/
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Stewart Brand received an undergraduate degree in biology from Stanford University. He was the founder, editor, and publisher of theĀ Whole Earth Catalog, which won a National Book Award. He founded the journalĀ CoEvolution QuarterlyĀ and theĀ WELLĀ electronic community, and was a co-founder of theĀ Long Now Foundation. He has been called "the 20th century's top influencer."
Transcript
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| 0:00.0 | Hello, everyone, and welcome to the Mindscape Podcast. I'm your host, Sean Carroll. I don't know if you know, |
| 0:05.1 | but recently the Golden Globes happened. This is one of those award shows where they give prizes to |
| 0:11.7 | movie stars and TV stars and things like that, but they had a new category at the Golden Globes this year, |
| 0:18.6 | Best Podcast. The Mindscape Podcast did not win. |
| 0:23.1 | Best Podcasts. |
| 0:24.1 | It was not nominated. |
| 0:25.4 | It was probably not even noticed by the people who did the nominating and deciding who |
| 0:29.8 | was going to be on the list. |
| 0:31.4 | You know, what can we say? |
| 0:32.8 | Our civilization continues to let me down in various ways. |
| 0:36.7 | But I can't complain too much. The winner of best |
| 0:38.8 | podcast this year was Amy Poehler, who won for her podcast Good Hang with Amy Polar, which I think I've |
| 0:46.0 | mentioned previously. And it's a good podcast. You know, all of the people who actually were nominated, |
| 0:51.6 | you know, entertainers, comedians, and whatever, not a lot of natural philosophers were represented. |
| 0:57.2 | But I bring this up, not just because, you know, I want to put the idea in the minds of |
| 1:01.3 | anyone listening that maybe I should be nominated in the future, but there was an episode |
| 1:06.5 | of Good Hang with Amy Poehler featuring Kate McKinnon. |
| 1:11.1 | I haven't actually heard this episode, |
| 1:12.8 | but Jennifer, my wife, has heard it. |
| 1:15.2 | I've heard other episodes. |
| 1:16.8 | And one of the things that happened in the interview with Kate McKinnon |
| 1:20.0 | is that she expressed her enthusiasm for a YouTube channel |
... |
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