Dr. Charles G. Curtin is the director of Regenerative Conservation Design.
He is the author of The Science of Open Spaces: Theory and Practice for Conserving Large, Complex Systems and the coeditor of Complex Ecology: Foundational Perspectives on Dynamic Approaches to Ecology and Conservation. His latest book is PLACE-BASED SOLUTIONS: THE POWER OF REGENERATIVE THINKING IN THE FACE OF CRISIS, published by Johns Hopkins University Press. His books explore the intersection of ecology and culture and focus on how the word’s messiness leads to uncertainty and unexpected outcomes, and what to do about it.
Not merely a world renowned ecologist with conservation collaborations including cross-cultural conservation exchanges from the Middle East and Africa to the fisheries of Maine. His Two-Cowboys Project involves cross-continent learning networks between Maasai pastoralists in Kenya and US ranchers in the New Mexico/Arizona and Mexico borderlands, as well as Montana’s Blackfoot Challenge. The Crown of the Continent Partnership is a collaboration project on the borders of Montana, Alberta, British Columbia and the Salish and Kootnai Confederation. You can find out more about this ecosystem here: https://www.crownmanagers.org/about-the-crown
We spoke to him via Zoom from his home in Ranchos de Taos, NM on March 23, 2026.
One month ago today, on February 13, 2026, our guest was the Fred Harvey Harrington Professor of History at the University of Wisconsin – Madison, Alfred McCoy. We discussed his latest book, COLD WAR ON FIVE CONTINENTS: A GLOBAL HISTORY OF EMPIRE AND ESPIONAGE, published by Haymarket Books.
With the US and Israel’s continuation of the war against Iran, which began last June, 2025 and lasted 12 days, and then recommenced on February 28, 2026, I asked him to return to share his insights and analysis.
For well over five decades he has specialized in the foreign policy of the United States, European colonization of Southeast Asia, and CIA covert operations and illegal international drug trade. In June of 1972, he testified before the US Senate Committee on Appropriations’ Foreign Operations Subcommittee, testifying that American officials were condoning and even cooperating with corrupt officials at the highest levels in Southeast Asia’s illegal drug trade out of political and military considerations. He testified that the CIA chartered Air America aircraft and helicopters in northern Laos to transport opium harvested by their “tribal mercenaries”.
His multiple awards winning books include, THE POLITICS OF HEROIN IN SOUTHEAST ASIA: CIA COMPLICITY IN THE GLOBAL DRUG TRADE; A QUESTION OF TORTURE: CIA INTERROGATION, FROM THE COLD WAR TO THE WAR ON TERROR; IN THE SHADOWS OF THE AMERICAN CENTURY: THE RISE AND DECLINE OF US GLOBAL POWER; and TO GOVERN THE GLOBE: WORLD ORDERS AND CATASTROPHIC CHANGE. He was also our guest when those last two were published in 2017 and 2021 respectively. We spoke with him via Zoom on March 9, 2026.
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