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

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

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

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

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.  

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

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

Jasun Horsley is the author of many books, including Seen & Not Seen, Prisoner of Infinity, 16 Maps of Hell, and Big Mother, which examine how popular culture, politics, occultism, science, and pseudo-spirituality all overlap on a covert, multigenerational social-engineering continuum that includes secret societies, intelligence agencies, and organized crime networks. His own Children of Job podcast can be found on Substack and iTunes. Jasun currently keeps goats and chickens and tends grapes in Galicia, Spain, while reading about Jesus. He describes himself as a lifetime truth-seeker and "hell-mapper” and he does not use AI programs.

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

  "Eugyppius” is a former academic who blogs about the pandemic aftermath and the pathological politics of modern Germany. He spent much of his life abroad and over a decade in American universities as a grad student and a teacher. He writes in English on Substack. He is very careful about revealing more of his identity given the extreme censorship and cancellation action in his country these days. You can find him at Eugyppius.com.

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

     John Seaman has corresponded with me over a year proposing a straightforward way to prosecute government officials who, so far, have gotten away with crimes committed in the RussiaGate Hoax and other high-level mischief due to the five-year statute of limitations. John is is a retired Supervisory Federal Agent with the Drug Enforcement Administration (DEA) with 30 years of experience. His special area of expertise there was as a Subject Matter Expert (SME) in conducting conspiracy investigations for federal prosecutions. He writes the Substack series, The Rule of Law — Corruption and National Security.  He’s on social media: Twitter handle: @John30113715761 or Truth handle: @johnRuleoflawmatters

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

Author Mike McCormick was a stenographer with the White House Press Office from 2002 to 2018. His duties included being a world traveler on Air Force One and Air Force Two, even into combat zones. He saw the presidency up close, with Oval Office and West Wing duties 24/7.

His books, available on Amazon, include The Case to Impeach and Imprison Joe Biden, and An Almost Insurmountable Evil. 

He is determined to testify under oath about the Joe Biden crimes he witnessed.

His Substack Midnight in the Laptop of Good and Evil  led to him being interviewed by congressional investigators looking into the Biden Crime Family.

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

    Ray Jason has been writing the Sea Gypsy Philosopher blog, for the last twelve years largely touching on politics and social issues.  His commentary is filtered through his unusual lived experience of being a longtime ex-pat open water sailor living on his boat, the Aventura.
     Ray’s greatest contribution to the blogosphere is his Sea Gypsy Tribe concept — his belief that small bands of ocean-dwelling cruisers can both survive and flourish after any type of catastrophe which is the main thrust of our conversation here Ray’s personal life path has been quite out of the ordinary.  Right after college graduation, he was drafted and ended up in Vietnam on a U.S. Navy ammunition ship. 
Post-service malaise steered him away from the so-calleed Real World and he spent the next 20 years as a highly successful San Francisco street performer — juggling, his specialty.  When that scene began to deteriorate, he commenced his sea gypsy life and has not lived on land since 1992.

     We speak with Ray today aboard his sailboat somewhere in the Banana Latitudes of Central America.  

Meryl Nass is an internal medicine physician and was the first person in the world to prove that an epidemic (anthrax in Rhodesia) was due to biological warfare, in 1992. She has given 6 Congressional testimonies regarding anthrax, biological warfare, Gulf War syndrome and vaccine safety, and has consulted for the Cuban Ministry of Health, the World Bank and the Director of National Intelligence. She blogs at Meryls Chaos Newsletter on Substack 

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

 Jeffrey Tucker is founder and president of Brownstone Institute and Senior Economics Columnist at Epoch Times. He is the author of 15 books, most recently Life After Lockdowns. Senator Rand Paul says, “In Life after Lockdown, “ Jeffrey Tucker paints a picture of the living hell that was the government lockdown and outlines a roadmap for never again allowing such a police state to occur.” Please take the time to visit the Brownstone Institute’s excellent website and its stable of fine writers

Dr. Chris Martenson, is an economic researcher and futurist specializing in energy and resource depletion, finance and banking, and the science and politics surrounding the Covid-19 affair. Before founding PeakProsperity.com, where he  provides analysis, commentary, and actionable advice, Martenson worked as a Vice President at a Fortune 300 company and spent over a decade in corporate finance and strategic consulting. His academic background includes a PhD in neurotoxicology from Duke University and a post-doctoral program in the same field, followed by an MBA in Finance from Cornell University. 

Tom Luongo is a Former Research Chemist, Amateur Dairy Goat Farmer, Anarcho-Libertarian and Obstreperous Austrian Economist who blogs and podcasts at Gold, Goats and, Guns. His work can also be found on sites like Zerohedge, Lewrockwell.com, Bitcoin Magazine and Newsmax Media. His work focuses on the attempt to connect the false narratives of geopolitics to viable long-term investment theses. He built the house that he lives in and loves hockey, his family, the art of drumming, board games of all kinds, a logically consistent argument, and the beauty of spontaneous order…. not necessarily in that order.

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

Journalist and blogger Celia Farber started out covering the AIDS crisis in the 1980s as a staff writer for Spin Magazine. She went freelance in 1997 writing for Esquire, Harper's, Rolling Stone, Salon, Observer, and more. Her 2006 article in Harpers exposing the activities of Anthony Fauci at US NIAID was followed by a “career-ending” coordinated attack on her from the medical research establishment. She started her blog, The Truth Barrier, in 2009. It was attacked and taken down in 2020, and she has since relocated it to the Substack platform. Her books are Serious Adverse Events: An Uncensored History of AIDS (2023) and Sacrifice: How the Deadliest Vaccine in History Targeted the Most Vulnerable, With Dr. James Thorp (2025). She served as AIDS historian and researcher for Robert Kennedy, Jr., on his book, The Real Anthony Fauci.

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

Peter Golden is an award-winning journalist, novelist, and historian. His novels include Comeback Love, Wherever There Is Light, Nothing Is Forgotten , and Their Shadows Deep, just published, in which John F. Kennedy is a major character. During the course of his career, Mr. Golden has interviewed Presidents Richard Nixon, Gerald Ford, Ronald Reagan, and George H.W. Bush; Secretaries of State Henry Kissinger, Alexander Haig, George Shultz, and Lawrence Eagleburger; Israeli Prime Ministers Yitzhak Rabin, Shimon Peres, and Yitzhak Shamir; and Soviet President Mikhail Gorbachev. He lives with his wife near Albany, New York.  

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

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 4,500 posts on the economy, society, housing and technology have logged over 150 million page views. He is the author of nine novels and nineteen non-fiction books on socio-economic-political dynamics, including "The Mythology of Progress." His work can also be found on Substack and Patreon. He lives by Winston Churchill's dictum that "Success consists of going from failure to failure without loss of enthusiasm."

      Bill Moyer calls himself  a radical solutionary. He’s the author of the book Solutionary Rail, a people powered campaign to electrify US railroads and open corridors for a clean energy future.  He also hosts the new podcast Reconnect America and posts essays on Solutionary Rail at Substack. The campaign has evolved into a national effort to put US rail infrastructure back in service of the public interest over Wall Street profit. He  lives with his wife and daughter in the woods of Vashon Island, WA in the Salish Sea.