HOME | James Kaelan

We're

Getting On

Novel

Author

At a bar in Sacramento, a group of disaffected kids watch Saddam Hussein's trial on TV every night and compete with each other over who loves the tyrannical Middle East strongman most.

So when Dan, the charismatic-and-perhaps-despotic frontman of a popular local band compels four acolytes to follow him into the desert "to get to the bottom of this whole human condition," they're powerless to resist.

Originally published in 2010, We're Getting On reads now like a harbinger of America's accelerating economic stratification, political extremism, and environmental degradation.

LEONARD

Podcast series

Co-writer/Producer/Editor

In 1977, Native American activist Leonard Peltier was sentenced to consecutive life terms for killing two FBI agents. Then in 2000, a Freedom of Information Act disclosure proved the Feds had framed him. But Leonard's still in prison. This is the story of what happened on the Pine Ridge Reservation half a century ago—and the man who's still behind bars for a crime he didn't commit.

Escape Pod

The globe is warming. Machines are coming for our jobs. And the people who own those machines don't want to share their spoils.

Surviving the 21st century will require a radical rethinking what it means to be humans. Are we laborers who work so we can purchase goods in the market? Or are we animals living reciprocally in our natural environments?

Essay series

Writer/Creator

Bad CEO

Performance

Writer/Director

Andrew McCollum (Brennan Kelleher) isn't here to talk about how he captained two startups toward big exits. He wants to talk about his doubts. He wants to talk about how he became a bad CEO—and why you might want to consider becoming one, too.

Preview performance presented in collaboration with Free Machine & Ace Hotel, James Kaelan's Bad CEO is a a keynote by a fake founder having a real crisis of conscience.