Doomer Optimism
By Doomer Optimism
Doomer OptimismFeb 23, 2022
DO 143 - Wilderness Survival Skills School with Kate Parsons, Adam Mayfield, and Ashley
Ashley speaks with Kate Parsons and Adam Mayfield about their wilderness survival skills school, the role of art in society, and mindfulness in practice. A wild ride! PRIMAL U designs and implements one-of-a-kind courses with experts in wilderness first aid, leadership, survival techniques, sustainability and mindfulness training. Primal U’s mission is to train individuals holistically, providing a space to learn and grow in an outdoor setting. Our new Primal U Artist Lecture Series showcases the practices of artists and creatives working in and with the natural world. Primal U is the brainchild of Rob Mullins, Kate Parsons, and Adam Mayfield. Parsons is an artist, educator, and co-founder of the virtual reality studio FLOAT. An Assistant Professor of Digital Arts at Pepperdine University in Malibu, CA and Instructor at Art Center College of Design, Parsons is a Montana-native who knows that country life and self-sufficiency still runs in her blood. Mayfield, who is from Los Angeles, is a mindfulness specialist, an actor (Ford vs. Ferrari, All My Children) and professional survival instructor. He is a longtime alum of Boulder Outdoor Survival School, where he taught traditional living skills to folks from all walks of life, from corporate executives and military personnel to artists and political activists. Adam is also a mentor for Inward Bound Mindfulness Education, a nonprofit organization that holds both traditional and outdoor excursion retreats across the US, Canada, and the UK, teaching mindfulness to teenagers and adults. Mullins, who hails from Ohio, is a homesteader, life & leadership coach, outdoor enthusiast, ultra-marathoner, and former executive at a Forbes 107 company. As a pharmacist, Rob has a lifetime of helping others and has had tremendous results coaching and mentoring leaders for career success. In addition he holds ACC accreditation from the International Coach Federation, is an Authorized Partner for Everything DiSC and is a registered Maine Outdoor Recreation and Hunting Guide. The three met when Parsons attended one of the wilderness training camps taught by Mullins and Mayfield at Thomas Coyne Survival Schools—one of the top survival schools worldwide. Since then, they have banded together to create a unique, hybrid curriculum: A combination of straightforward survival skills, wilderness first aid training, permaculture, mindfulness techniques and leadership coaching. Primal U Montana First Session: June 16, 17, 18 Second Session: June 23, 24, 25
DO 142 - Eric Miller w/ Ashley Colby
Ashley speaks with Christopher Lasch’s biographer, Eric Miller, about all things Lasch, localism, and his forthcoming book on Wendell Berry.
Eric Miller is professor of history and the humanities at Geneva College, in Beaver Falls, PA, where he directs the college’s honors program. He is the author of Hope in a Scattering Time: A Life of Christopher Lasch (2010) and Glimpses of Another Land: Political Hopes, Spiritual Longing (2012), and co-editor of Confessing History: Explorations in Christian Faith and the Historian’s Vocation (2010). He was the project director of a grant that assembled a team of international scholars to study Brazilian evangelicalism. Their book, Brazilian Evangelicalism in the Twenty-First Century: An Inside and Outside Look, was published by Palgrave Macmillan in 2019. Eric’s essays have appeared in a range of publications, including Commonweal, Front Porch Republic, and Christianity Today. He is the editor of the online journal of opinion Current. You can find his essays for Current here.
DO 141 - Steve Mouzon w/ Ashley and Don
Don and Ashley chat with Steve Mouzon about all things New Urbanism, Wrath of Gnon, and the right approach to the 15 minute city.
Steve Mouzon is an architect, urbanist, author, blogger, and photographer based in Tuscaloosa. He co-founded the Urban Guild, which was instrumental in the creation of the Katrina Cottages initiative. The Guild is the nexus of Project:SmartDwelling, which works to redefine the house to be much smaller and more sustainable. Steve speaks regularly across the US and abroad on sustainability issues. He blogs here on Original Green Stories, Useful Stuff, and We Do This Because... He also posts to the Original Green Twitter stream.
DO 140 - Gregory Landua and Daniel Schmachtenberger
Today Jason is joined on the podcast by Daniel Schmachtenberger, a social philosopher whose central focus is civilization design and who is also a founding member of The Consilience Project, and Gregory Landua, the founder of Regen Network.
What is “high nature,” and what is its relation to high-tech? Can both co-exist? Gregory, Daniel and Jason discuss how to apply tools of coordination and technology in a way that regenerates the planet rather than depletes it, the urgency to create local resilience, and the importance of improved coordination around carbon credits.
Follow Daniel's work at civilizationemerging.com
DO 139 - Adam Greenfield w/ Dougald Hine and Ashley
Ashley and Dougald co-host Adam Greenfield to talk about his idea of LifeHouses as featured here https://www.versobooks.com/blogs/news/from-churches-to-lifehouses.
Previously a rock critic, a bike messenger, a free-clinic medic and a sergeant in the US Army, Adam Greenfield has spent the past quarter-century thinking and working at the intersection of technology, design and politics with everyday life. Before founding his own practice, Urbanscale, in 2010, he worked as lead information architect for Razorfish in Tokyo and head of design direction for service and user interface design at Nokia headquarters outside Helsinki.
Selected in 2013 as Senior Urban Fellow at the LSE Cities centre of the London School of Economics, he has taught in New York University's Interactive Telecommunications Program and the Urban Design program of the Bartlett, University College London. His books include Everyware: The Dawning Age of Ubiquitous Computing, Urban Computing and Its Discontents, and the bestsellers Against the Smart City and Radical Technologies: The Design of Everyday Life. His next book is Beyond Hope: Collective Power and Mutual Care in the Long Emergency, coming next year from Verso.
You can sign up for his irregular dispatches from London at http://tinyletter.com/speedbird , or connect with him on Mastodon at http://social.coop/@adamgreenfield
Dougald Hine is a social thinker, writer, speaker and the co-founder of the Dark Mountain Project and a school called HOME. His latest book is At Work in the Ruins (2023) and he publishes new essays on his Substack, Writing Home.
atworkintheruins | Instagram | Linktree
His substack can be found at:
Writing Home | Dougald Hine | Substack
DO 138 - Phoneless, Carless, Friendless with Clare Coffey, Donald and Ashley
Donald and Ashley interview Clare Coffey about her trio of articles at The New Atlantis:
https://www.thenewatlantis.com/collections/phoneless-carless-friendless
Clare Coffey is a writer living in Moscow, Idaho.
DO 137 - Becoming Socrates with Alex Priou and Donald
Alex Priou is Teaching Assistant Professor in the Herbst Program at the University of Colorado Boulder. He is the author of Becoming Socrates: Political Philosophy in Plato’s Parmenides from University of Rochester Press, as well as a number of articles and essays on the history of political philosophy. He has two books forthcoming this year, Defending Socrates: Political Philosophy Before the Tribunal of Science from Mercer University Press and Musings on Plato’s Symposium from Political Animal Press.
And he is a cohost of the New Thinkery podcast:
DO 136 - Pasture Agriculture with Jacob Wolki, Nate and Geoffrey
Today Nate interviews Jacob Wolki from Wolki farms in Australia and is joined later in the episode by Geoff Long of Long Story Farms in South Carolina. They talk pasture agriculture, creative farm marketing strategies, homeschooling, and the relaxation benefits of luxuriating barefoot with cows in the shade.
Nathan Gates is a licensed psychotherapist and co-host of Altered States of Context, a podcast about psychedelics, science and psychotherapy. In addition, he serves as president of the board for the Illinois Psychedelic Society and is a board advisor for Entheo Il, a group dedicated to the successful passage of Illinois HB1, the Compassionate Use and Research of Entheogens act. He also practices regenerative ranching and writes from his family's farm in rural west-central Illinois. He is a frequent guest and guest host for the Doomer Optimism podcast, a collective podcast dedicated to promotive creative and humane ways to engage with our social and environmental problems with creativity, hope, and good stewardship.
Jacob Wolki, a passionate farmer based in Albury, NSW, is on a mission to change the modern-day dinner table. He's working hard to ensure more families have access to healthy, nutrient-dense, flavour-packed protein – because your family’s health is important.
All animals on Wolki regenerative farm are raised on pasture, free from cages and chemicals. Jacob's not only creating superior quality produce, he's improving our landscape for generations to come.
Jacob's mission takes a community effort, which is why he's spreading his message far and wide - so we can all eat better without it costing animal welfare or our environment.
Geoffrey Long of Long Story Farms
Long Story Farms is a family run farm in Newberry, South Carolina. Our story started with the pain of cancer taking loved ones. We felt food was part of the problem. That coupled with a dream of self sufficient living took us from a small backyard garden with 6 chickens to a farmstead that is growing into a true farm enterprise. Long Story Farms’ motto “with prudence and thanksgiving” encapsulates our goal to heal the earth through sustainable agriculture and to honor the lives of the animals we raise. Through eating close to the earth we believe we can heal our bodies while building community and creating a healthier relationship with food.
Geoffrey works during the day as a finance guy but farms on the weekends, assisted by his wife and capable children who all still live on the farm. He is passionate about food, building and fixing things and loves to read when he has time.
DO 135 - The history and politics of homeschooling with Rita Koganzon and Donald
Episode description: First time host Donald talks to Rita Koganzon about the politics and history of homeschooling and education in America.
Rita Koganzon is assistant professor of political science at the University of Houston. Her research focuses on the themes of education, childhood, authority, and the family in historical and contemporary political thought. Her first book, Liberal States, Authoritarian Families: Childhood and Education in Early Modern Thought, examines the justifications for authority over children from Jean Bodin to Jean-Jacques Rousseau. Her writing has been published in the Hedgehog Review, National Affairs, The Point, and the Chronicle of Higher Education.
https://thepointmag.com/examined-life/reasonable-education/
DO 134 - Going to Seed with Julia Dakin and Tres Crow
On this episoode of Doomer Optimism, Tres has a sit down with Julia Dakin, Founder of Going to Seed about Landrace, her environmental journey, and why seed diversity is so important.
Julia Dakin is a farmer and seed activist in Mendocino County, California. She has been involved in agriculture for most of her life, and has devoted the past few years to growing market crops and teaching the benefits of seed saving, local adaptation, and genetic diversity. She created most of the content available in GoingToSeed’s online courses, and is working on a new course about traditional farming methods in Oaxaca and Guerrero.
Tres Crow is just a man standing before a laptop, begging to be liked.
DO 133 - Landrace Plant Breeding and the Future of Food
Joseph Lofthouse and Julia Dakin joins returning guests/co-hosts Shane Simonsen and Simon Gooder. The gang talk plant breeding, landrace style. They dig into hybrids, genetic crosses, wild analogues and fun things like grexes. Joseph and Shane tell everyone how to get started with home-scale plant breeding, and how optimistic they are about the future of food.
Joseph Lofthouse is a sixth-generation farmer, working on the land and with plant varieties is great grandparents made. He started his professional career as a chemist, but due to ethical dilemmas decided to go in search of himself, and seek refuge in a monastery before returning to the family farm. He now develops open-sourced landrace varieties of vegetables, and is an author, and teacher.
Julia Dakin is a farmer and seed activist in Mendocino County, California. She has been involved in agriculture for most of her life, and has devoted the past few years to growing market crops and teaching the benefits of seed saving, local adaptation, and genetic diversity. She created most of the content available in GoingToSeed’s online courses, and is working on a new course about traditional farming methods in Oaxaca and Guerrero.
Shane Simonsen of Zero Input Agriculture started his professional career in a similar place to Joseph before deciding to commit to growing food on his own farm in Eastern Australia. His focus is on perennial staple crops with the goal of achieving [as close to] zero input as possible, breeding for drought-resistance, productivity, and general resilience. Shane also writes some fantastic fiction, writing under the name Heldane B. Doyle!
Simon Gooder is a gardener, designer, and nature nerd. He helps run Permapeople.org - an open plant database with his co-founders/friends, and is focused on growing perennials from seed, intensive vegetable gardening, homeschooling a child, building things and connecting with community through gift economies and barter.
DO 132 - A call to religion with John, Evan, and Ashley
Ashley speaks with John and Evan, a Catholic and a Lutheran, about the recent resurgence in interest in religion, and how to embrace faith like a normal person.
John Dios (@RealJohnDios) works, lives and worships in rural Eastern Connecticut. In his spare time he produces the Cathedral in the Pines Radio Hour.
https://m.soundcloud.com/cathedralpines
Evan (@pythonrocksnake) was born in West Africa, grew up in eastern Wisconsin, and lives in Fort Wayne, IN with his family. He works in manufacturing supply chain and has a future homestead site outside of town where he grows a garden, is developing an orchard, and hopes to build a house soon.
DO 131 - Living the Old Fashioned American Dream with Keturah, Donald, and Ashley
Keturah Lamb lives the American Dream and fears no establishment. She is 4th generation without a social security number or birth certificate. In her early twenties she found the balance of honoring her family heritage while not letting it hold her back from her visions, and learned the legal loopholes for getting a passport and banking account. She travels (often barefoot) to share about her success, but loves being home where she's gathered community and works on a nearly finished hand-sewn quilt. She co-hosted the "Rage Against the State" events, organized the "Yellowstone Outpost" in New Hampshire, and is involved in many local grassroot and libertarian organizations. She also writes fiction and nonfiction, and teaches sewing, tatting, and knitting. She is currently running a school for young women in her Montana home called 'The Living Room Academy".
Personal blog: thesocialporcupine.com
School: livingroomacademy.com
How to thrive without a social security number: thegirlwhodoesntexist.com
twitter/ instagram: @keturahabigail
DO 130 - Women’s health, female archetypes, and how to solve the battle of the sexes with Ingri and Ashley
Ashley and Ingri (@IngriPauline) discuss women’s health, female archetypes, and how to solve the battle of the sexes.
Ingri is a women's weightlifting coach from Los Angeles, California. After serving in the Navy, she got her Bachelor of Science in Kinesiology at California State University Northridge. She has coached CrossFit, nutrition, and weightlifting on three continents since 2008. Her experience working in physical therapy led her to become the preferred personal trainer of the Department of Obstetrics at the historical Charité University Hospital in Berlin, Germany.
Ingri is now back in the States working from her private studio in Las Vegas, Nevada. She focuses on all women’s issues in fitness and health, including menstrual cycle synced training, pregnancy, post-partum and menopause.
A teen-friendly guide to a healthy period and how to work with it:
https://www.ingripaulineathletics.com/cyclefundamentals
A 13-part series for the beginner in the weight room:
https://www.ingripaulineathletics.com/blog/search/101
Coaches of Girl's and Women's Sports at the high school level, please email Ingri for access to an ebook for your athletes:
DO 129 - Burma revisited: Life under a military coup, the role of grassroots groups & the potential for cryptocurrency
During the night of February 1/2, 2021, a military junta deposed the elected government of Burma (Myanmar) and instituted martial law.
Protests followed, answered by a violent and swift crackdown by the newly self-installed military dictatorship. They have attacked protestors in the streets, killed innocent bystanders, and wrongfully detained, interrogated, tortured, imprisoned, and killed many innocent people seeking only peace, freedom, and self-determination.
This is the second podcast installment of a series of conversations on the situation in Burma. (The first installment can be accessed here: youtu.be/j288oI1poFE)
Once again we speak with "Romeo," a pseudonymous woman living and working in Yangon since long before the 2021 coup. Her work with the underground resistance facilitates citizens' grassroots resistance efforts including nonviolent forms of protests and general strikes to oppose the actions of the junta.
We also speak with longtime friends and colleagues Lisa and Rocky.
Rocky is ethnic Karen (from Karen State eastern Burma) and spent most of his childhood in a refugee camp. Lisa is originally from Scotland but has worked in the Thailand-Burma border region since the 1990s. She and Rocky lived in Thailand/Burma with their two kids for many years until the past few years they have been based in Scotland. They have a lot of experience working with grassroots groups of Karen women and youth on health issues, environmental issues, conflict and human rights abuses.
"Romeo" is based in Yangon but with Lisa and Rocky's perspectives we were able to expand the discussion a bit to talk about how the coup and ongoing conflict has affected border and hill tribe areas, some history of the conflict and political situation in Burma, the roles that grassroots and community-based networks have played in relief and aid during and after natural disasters and conflicts, etc.
We also talked about the potential role for cryptocurrencies facilitating exchange and support as a parallel system to gov't controlled banks and the economic/inflation crisis the country has been experiencing.
More information can be found at joshkearns.substack.com.
Our crowdfunding campaign to support underground resistance, peace, and democracy in Burma: givesendgo.com/G9TS8
DO 128 - At Work in the Ruins with Dougald Hine, Ashley Colby, and Chris Smaje
Chris and Ashley speak with Dougald about his new book At Work in the Ruins and where it intersects with both the Small Farm Future and Doomer Optimism.
Dougald Hine is a social thinker, writer, speaker and the co-founder of the Dark Mountain Project and a school called HOME. His latest book is At Work in the Ruins (2023) and he publishes new essays on his Substack, Writing Home. https://linktr.ee/atworkintheruins
His substack can be found at: https://dougald.substack.com/
Chris Smaje has coworked a small farm in Somerset, southwest England, for the last 17 years. Previously, he was a university-based social scientist, working in the Department of Sociology at the University of Surrey and the Department of Anthropology at Goldsmiths College on aspects of social policy, social identities and the environment. Since switching focus to the practice and politics of agroecology, he's written for various publications, such as The Land , Dark Mountain , Permaculture magazine and Statistics Views, as well as academic journals such as Agroecology and Sustainable Food Systems and the Journal of Consumer Culture . Smaje writes the blog Small Farm Future, is a featured author at www.resilience.org and a current director of the Ecological Land Co-op. Chris' latest book is: A Small Farm Future: Making the Case for a Society Built Around Local Economies, Self-Provisioning, Agricultural Diversity, and a Shared Earth.
DO 127 - Jane Psmith w/ Ashley and Donald
Ashley and Donald speak with Jane about her review of the book Home Comforts by Cheryl Mendelson and what being a homemaker means for modern women.
Jane Psmith is a pseudonymous suburban housewife with four kids. She and her husband review books and write about knowledge, culture, and institutions at thepsmiths.substack.com. Her review of Home Comforts is here: https://thepsmiths.substack.com/p/review-home-comforts-by-cheryl-mendelson
DO 126 - Local currencies, collaborative food production, and DAOs with Flávia Macêdo
Flávia Macêdo (@flaviagoma) and Jason have a conversation about her work in Brazil to create a local currency that reflects and reinforces values that aren't reflected in the fiat money system, her interest in collaborative food production and agroforestry, how her work interfaces with larger political structures, her work connecting with and building global support networks of like minded people that can help support local and bioregional regeneration, and her interest in the potential of AI
Despite the degree in Pharmacy, Flávia led her career as a writer and social entrepreneur. She is currently working as Community Builder at Muda Outras Economias, a social currency network, and Common Ground, a web3 native communication platform.
She is interested in the potential of technologies such as AI and Decentralized Autonomous Organizations (DAOs) in supporting regenerative initiatives. She's the founder of SintropiaDAO, where she investigates and writes about global collective intelligence, relational practices, gift economy, and regenerative cultures.
DO 125 - A Global Network of Regenerative Villages with Dakotah of Cohere Network and Jason
In this episode Jason has a conversation with Dakotah Apostolou, CEO of Cohere Network @coherenetwork about their plans to build a global network of regenerative villages, their innovative and inclusive economic model, how they plan to collaborate with local populations, and much more
Twitter thread describing what they are doing: https://twitter.com/coherenetwork/status/1506614056647598086
Bio: A designer of buildings, communities and businesses, Dakotah's training at The Frank Lloyd Wright School of Architecture has informed his passion for using built environments to create regenerative systems that restore the health of ecosystems and communities. Links: Website: https://cohere.networkCohere Costa Rica: https://cohere.network/communities/lake-arenal…Cohere Berlin https://cohere.network/communities/berlin…Twitter: http://social.cohere.network/twitterInstagram: http://social.cohere.network/instagramDiscord: http://social.cohere.network/discordYoutube: http://social.cohere.network/youtubeLinkedIn: http://social.cohere.network/linkedinFacebook: http://social.cohere.network/facebookco:lab: https://cohere.network/x/lab/guatemalaMedium: https://medium.com/@coherenetwork
DO 124 - Trout, Hippies and Cowboys with James and Nate
Two frequent guest/hosts sit down to try to hash out what the f#@k is going on with all this weird horseshoe politics business.
But first they set the stage with a discussion of their beloved western trout and the beautiful places they reside. The chat moved to western ecologies, public lands, and James' book Chosen Country as well as his recent Vanity Fair article on the strange convergence of preppers, libertarians and revolutionaries in the wilds of the mountain west.
The episode ends with a pretty solid conclusion that explains everything, but you’ll have to listen to find out.
James Pogue @jhensonpogue is an American essayist and journalist. He is a contributing editor at Harper's Magazine. His pieces have appeared on the covers of Harper's and The American Conservative. He is the author of Chosen Country: A Rebellion in the West, a first-person account of conflict over public lands in the American west.
Nathan Gates is a licensed psychotherapist and co-host of Altered States of Context, a podcast about psychedelics, science and psychotherapy. In addition, he serves as president of the board for the Illinois Psychedelic Society and is a board advisor for Entheo Il, a group dedicated to the successful passage of Illinois HB1, the Compassionate Use and Research of Entheogens act. He also practices regenerative ranching and writes from his family's farm in rural west-central Illinois. He is a frequent guest and guest host for the Doomer Optimism podcast, a collective podcast dedicated to promotive creative and humane ways to engage with our social and environmental problems with creativity, hope, and good stewardship.
DO 123 - The Marketing and Distribution Side of Local and Regenerative Food Systems with Chris, Victor, and Jason
-In this episode Jason has a conversation with Chris Jagger (@reggaj) and Viktor Zaunders (@zaunders) about the marketing and distribution (or post-farm) side of local and regenerative food systems. They discuss the various models, including farmer's markets, food hubs, CSAs, and cooperatives, the role of digital technology, and what the major challenges and opportunities are in building regenerative food systems and cultures from the ground up
-Chris Jagger has been farming for 25 years (the last 20 years in southern Oregon). Chris’s main focus has been diversified commercial vegetable production but he also has experience with dairy animals, poultry, beef, pigs, hemp, perennials, and whole systems design. He is currently agricultural director for a state licensed cannabis farm and is bootstrapping an agricultural media company focusing on the crossroads between culture and farming. His number one goal with agriculture is stewarding soils back to health via proper nutrition and biology.
Twitter: @reggaj
Instagram: Bluefoxfarm
-Viktor Zaunders has been working with software in service of place-based local regeneration for about a decade and has been a part of the Holochain ecosystem for about 4 years as a designer, communicator and architect. His main interest lies in enabling bioregional food webs and helping place-based groups to coordinate better. He wants to spark in interest in people around p2p technologies in order to lay the groundwork for a regenerative and thriving society that he hopes can replace our current degenerative civilisational patterns. He is also a mushroom farmer and whole village entrepreneur living in Röstånga, Skåne.
Twitter: @zaunders
https://darksoil.studio/
https://zaunders.medium.com/
DO 122 - Midwest Agriculture with Jason Mauck, Zack Smith, and Nate
Welcome to a Heartland edition of Doomer Optimism. Today Nate goes into the belly of the agribeast with Zach Smith and Jason Mauck. Representing the grain belt from Indiana, Illinois and Iowa, the trio discusses the status quo in big agriculture, making a living from the land, and human scale innovation.
A major question is how to scale back the total acreage of farms while increasing production and profit per acre, allowing prolific food production while making a livelihood in reach for smaller, more management intensive farms.
We discuss Zach’s invention the Cluster Cluck 5000, which integrates livestock into row crop acres, as well as Jason’s distribution innovation with Munsee Meats. All three are very clear that the status quo is on a very bad track, and the only way it gets better is if YOU do something.
Zack Smith is a farmer and entrepreneurial inventor from northern Iowa. He is co-founder of Stock Cropper, Inc - The Autonomous Livestock Grazing Company...an entity focused on building autonomous grazing barn systems to integrate multiple species of livestock intelligently back on to various landscapes. After spending the first 20 years of his career in commodity agriculture, he decided at age 42 to set it aside to focus on developing non-regressive paths for future of agriculture that create opportunities for more participants in the food system rather than fewer.
Jason Mauck is a farmer and entrepreneur from Gaston,IN. Jason has developed an intense curiosity towards creating more complex agricultural systems. Systems that manage life with life. As the years progress his goal is to connect farmers with one another to learn together. He calls the movement #farmweird
Nathan Gates is a licensed psychotherapist and co-host of Altered States of Context, a podcast about psychedelics, science and psychotherapy. In addition, he serves as president of the board for the Illinois Psychedelic Society and is a board advisor for Entheo Il, a group dedicated to the successful passage of Illinois HB1, the Compassionate Use and Research of Entheogens act. He also practices regenerative ranching and writes from his family's farm in rural west-central Illinois. He is a frequent guest and guest host for the Doomer Optimism podcast, a collective podcast dedicated to promotive creative and humane ways to engage with our social and environmental problems with creativity, hope, and good stewardship.
DO 121 - Tiny House Dreaming and Scheming with Frye, Butteryfur, and Patrick
Patrick (@RizomaAt) gets the keys to the podcast Ferrari to chat with @hi_frye and @butteryfur, Cozy Twitter power couple and amateur construction enthusiasts. The topic is their project of dreaming and scheming up their own tiny house, in which they now dwell. A DIY story that hits close to home, join us as we hear from the builders themselves about this tiny, but by no means small, accomplishment.
DO 120 - Community, Family, and the Land with Paul d'Aoust, Alex Wagner, and Ioan Mitrea
Paul, Alex and Ioan talk about searching for an intentional community, how to find the place and the people you can belong to, and community with the land you live on.
Paul d'Aoust @helioscomm is a member of an unintentional intentional community, living, eating, making music, and gardening with hiswith his wife, kids, and in-laws on an acreage in western Canada. He is trying, usually falteringly, to live more deeply into communal living and all the joys and pains that come with it. Paul works with Holochain, a framework for building applications that support thriving communities by making it easy to set up community-owned infrastructure.
Alex Wagner @alexdw5 is a writer. He publishes a weekly newsletter titled, Things That Should Exist, focusing on practical ways to build interdependence and resiliency in a changing world. He’s also a singer-songwriter and artist, publishing music under the moniker, Alex Time.
https://thingsthatshouldexist.substack.com/
https://alextimer.bandcamp.com/album/demos-2022
Ioan @awarenesss is trying to build community on land: http://elkenmist.substack.com and in the city @bridgespacepdx
Here are some thanks and links to some of the people and inspirations that came up in the conversation:
Dare Sohei from https://animistarts.art for the concept of secure attachment to land and other more than human beings.
David Abram https://davidabram.org
Ron Rivers https://singletruth.org
DO 119 - Stories, Places & Feeling at Home in the World with Brendan, Jim, and Nate
In this episode of Doomer Optimism, Brendan, Jim and Nate discuss the role that narrative and stories play in shaping the way we perceive the world around us and continually recreate the structures and processes that cohere to the narrative that we tell ourselves and each other about the world. We are narrative creatures at our core, and in our present time there are a great many competing stories that make making sense of the world and developing a coherent self-story particularly difficult. One solution to this is to live tightly in relationship with particular people and a particular place.
Jim Jones is a PhD Candidate at University of Waterloo researching narrative, craft, skills, livelihoods, place, complexity. Spooncarver and hedgelayer. @skillsrural
Brendan Barnard is passionate about stewardship, long term thinking, and the intersections of nature, art, and science, cider captured Brendan’s attention in 2016 and he hasn’t shaken it. When he’s not grafting, planting, pruning, picking, pressing, or sampling cider you’ll find him cooking for his family.
Nathan is a licensed psychotherapist and co-host of Altered States of Context, a podcast about psychedelics, science and psychotherapy. In addition, he serves as president of the board for the Illinois Psychedelic Society and is a board advisor for Entheo Il, a group dedicated to the successful passage of Illinois HB1, the Compassionate Use and Research of Entheogens act. He also practices regenerative ranching and writes from his family's farm in rural west-central Illinois. He is a frequent guest and guest host for the Doomer Optimism podcast, a collective podcast dedicated to promotive creative and humane ways to engage with our social and environmental problems with creativity, hope, and good stewardship.
DO 118 - Anarchism, Solar Punk, and Degrowth with Andrew
Andrew and Jason have a conversation around topics related anarchism, solar punk, and degrowth
Andrew is a writer, artist, and YouTuber based in Trinidad & Tobago. As an ardent anarchist and firm believer in power to the people, Andrew aims to invigorate imaginations and encourage people to create a better world in the shell of the old.
Andrew has an excellent youtube channel that can be found here: https://www.youtube.com/@Andrewism
He can also be found on twitter @_saintdrew
DO 117 - Experimental farming with Shane Simonsen, Simon Gooder, and Tres Crow
On this episode of Doomer Optimism, Simon Gooder and Tres Crow interview experimental farmer and science fiction author Shane Simonsen. Shane talks about his farming experiments in his difficult Australian ecosystem, and then dives into the impetus behind his science fiction novella series set in the distant future.
About Shane Simonsen
About Shane Simonsen Shane is a scientist, documenting his experiments through trialling and breeding crops and livestock that can produce without irrigation, fertiliser and imported nutrients on http://zeroinputagrilculture.com. A writer of biological sci-fi, working from his farm in Australia.
About Simon Gooder
Nature, gardening, permaculture, doomer optimism, design, regenerative action, community building, homeschooling. Building Permapeople.org in his spare time.
About Tres Crow
Tres is making the world a greener place one urban space at a time with my friends at Roots Down. He's also turning his .75 acre suburban lot into Old Crow Hill, a food forest, pollinator habitat, and community space. Follow along at innisfreeatl.com.
DO 166 - Black Homesteader
In this episode Jason speaks with Kimberly (@blkhomesteader) about her path towards gardening and homesteading, the Black homesteading and farming movement, the importance of own production and skill-building, the irony of underutilized land and problems of land access, political advocacy especially at the hyper-local level with HOAs, veganism and small scale livestock production, the hiphopisgreen organization, and much more.
Kimberly is an experienced master gardener and urban homesteader, living in zone 9b, who is interested learning how to live a more holistic and sustainable life.
Some links mentioned in the episode:
Infinite Zion Farms: https://www.infinitezionfarms.org/
Hip Hop is Green: https://www.hiphopisgreen.com/
https://www.localharvest.org/orlando-fl
DO 115 - Permapeople with Simon Gooder and Jason Snyder
Jason hosts an interview with Simon Gooder about his path towards permaculture, homesteading, and the plant database and seed trading platform that he cofounded with Benjamin Knofe called Permapeople.org.
Simon Gooder
Nature, gardening, permaculture, doomer optimism, design, regenerative action, community building, homeschooling. Building Permapeople.org in his spare time.
DO 114 - Energy, Emergence, and Adaptation with Matthew Pirkowski and Jason Snyder
An exploration of evolutionary dynamics and potential futures
Matthew Pirkowski experiments at the intersection of software, behavioral / evolutionary psychology, and complex adaptive systems. These interests first took root while observing and modeling the collective behavioral psychology of capuchin monkeys at Yale’s Comparative Cognition Laboratory, with the goal of understanding why–and to what extent–our conceptions of “rational action” fail to describe what we observe beyond the domain of analytic abstraction. Such experiences catalyzed an interest in designing and building the interfaces through which human perception and purpose contacts the computational processes that have thoroughly saturated our lives and minds.
Matthew is presently building a platform for modeling purpose-aligned human networks as naturally emergent organisms. He also consults on system architecture, advises nascent companies and communities, and writes about topics related to the evolution of human socioeconomic, technological, and representational systems–in particular the emergence and impact of cryptoeconomic protocols, as outlined in his Crypto Beyond Capitalism essay series. He spends most of his free time maintaining, regenerating, and growing food on a bit of land in the Cascade Range.
He can be found as @MattPirkowski on twitter
DO 113 - Life Under Military Dictatorship with Josh and 'Romeo'
During the night of February 1/2, 2021, a military junta deposed the elected government of Burma (Myanmar) and instituted martial law.
Protests followed, answered by a violent and swift crackdown by the newly self-installed military dictatorship.
In this episode we hear from "Romeo," a pseudonymous young woman living and working in Yangon since before the 2021 coup. We discuss some of the events leading up to the coup as well as citizens' grassroots resistance efforts over the past two years, the actions of the junta to attack protestors in the streets, imprison, interrogate, and torture suspected members of resistance groups, and what (albeit faint) sources of hope exist for circumstances to improve for the people of Burma.
Interview conducted by Josh Kearns, who has worked with grassroots efforts in Burma for >10 years to provide communities' access to low-cost decentralized drinking water treatment and eco-sanitation. More info at: https://joshkearns.substack.com/s/field-notebook
DO 112 - Anarchism and Complexity with Daniel Baryon, Glen Ganaway, and Jason Snyder
Daniel Baryon (@anarkyoutube), Glen Ganaway (@glenganaway), and Jason Snyder (@cognazor) discuss modern day anarchism, how it's informed by complexity science, and how it works as a map for local solutions to a planet wide crisis.
About Daniel Baryon
Daniel Baryon is an anarchist theorist and organizer. He co-founded Cooperation Tulsa and is a key member of Scissortail Anarchist Organization. He also runs the YouTube channel Anark, where he produces video essays on anarchism and libertarian socialism.
About Glen Ganaway
Glen considers himself a product of the Military Industrial Complex, The Deep South and the Southern Baptist Church. Today he identifies as an Anarchist. Born in Anchorage, Alaska to a deeply religious family and raised in the gated communities of Navy bases.The 80's found Glen doing sex work and waiting tables to support an injection habit. Glen cleaned up in the 90's and joined the Radical Faeries, a loose knit collection of Pagan Queer Anarchists. He met the love of his life Yolanda, an East Village legendary performance artist in 2004. Glen went on to be ordained an Interfaith Minister and acquire an Integral Mentor Certification and a BS in Healthcare Management, which he uses for UFCW Local 2013. Glen's passions include Advaita-Vedanta, Integral Theory, Anarchism, and Regenerative Agriculture. His next project is a 4.4 Acre Homestead in Vermont.
About Jason Snyder
Metamodern localist | homesteading, permaculture, bioregional regeneration | meditation, self inquiry, embodied cognition | PhD from Michigan State University, faculty Appalachian State University.
Episode 111 - Joe Norman and Scratchy Johnson
On this episode of Doomer Optimism, Twitter favorite Scratchy Johnson (@scratchyjohnson) sits down with the localism and applied complexity guru, Joe Norman (@normonics). Topics include: history, complexity, the role of the state, and localism. This is a real treat for fans of Joe, Scratchy, and localism.
About Scratchy Johnson
God, Family, Country. He's on Twitter. He's not hard to find.
About Joe Norman
Joe is a complex systems scientist researching risk in large-scale systems, pattern formation in biological systems, physiological patterns for improving human health, and military strategy for international and global security.
DO 110 - BridgeSpace Commons with Ioan, Josh, and Rich
Ioan, Josh, and Rich discuss BridgeSpace Commons, and in particular, the challenges of creating a different kind of community space that can be shared by different groups of people with different goals and values
Josh @pdxregencommons is part of Portland Commons Technology Project, a group building commons infrastructure for people and creatures. A budding economic solidarity bloc between arts, mutual aid, and ecology in Portland, OR.
Richard D. Bartlett @RichDecibels is a Director at Enspiral, a network of self-managing, purpose-driven companies. He co-founded Loomio, a worker-owned company that builds collaboration software, and The Hum, helping decentralized organizations thrive. He’s the author of a community building practice called Microsolidarity. He's enthusiastic about co-ownership, self-governance and building relationships of partnership instead of domination to create collaborative workplaces. Read more at richdecibels.com
Ioan Mitrea @awarenesss Founder @SellerEngine, Aspiring animist regenerative custodian of woods, creeks and meadows. Quantum physics and chaos theory. Friendly Bridgespace troll
DO 109 - Homestead Padre Joseph Smith w/ Ashley Colby
Ashley and Padre discuss homesteading in the deep south, working on rented land, making a small space productive, and the coming localist revolution!
The Homestead Padre @padrehomestead Joseph Smith is the husband of the beautiful and amazing Dr. @MRSpadrehmsted. He is a father who focuses on small space homesteading. Follow his newsletter at http://Padre.substack.com
Buy Smith Homestead products at: https://www.smith-homestead.com/
His book Homesteading: Breaking Ground https://jdmanly18.gumroad.com/l/breaking
His book: Beginning the journey to food independence https://jdmanly18.gumroad.com/l/SnpwW
The tweet he mentioned in the episode: https://twitter.com/padrehomestead/status/1613187315979124738
DO 108 - Homeschooling w/ Astrid Wilde, Lindsay Rainey, and Ashley Colby
Ashley, Lindsay and Astrid discuss the doom of industrial schooling and the optimism of homeschooling. Lindsay speaks from the perspective of a homeschooling parent, and Astrid as an adult who was a homeschooled student.
Lindsay @Lindsay_Rainey2 is a certified teacher turned home educator and a mom of two. She has over 8 years of experience as a home educator and several more in the classroom. Believing that interests lead to deeper learning, she endorses a self-directed, project based approach to education. She’s experienced how providing choice in the learning process removes friction between parents and kids. She is an expert in finding resources and crafting open ended projects that free kids to learn in ways that work for them.
Astrid @astridwilde1 is a lifelong learner brought up in a homeschooling household.
DO 107 - The Last Farm and Gregory Landua w/ Jason Snyder
A debate between an ecosocialist and a Refi OG on the path towards ecological civilization
Gregory Landua is the Co-founder of Regen Network. He dwells humbly at the intersection of ecology, economics and technology.
The Last Farm is an eco-socialist homesteader focused on the intersection of permaculture, luxurious subsistence, & politics
DO 106 - Hylo and Bioregional Organizing
Discussion about bioregional organizing and the @hylo project. Guest host @vincefhorn with @cognazor Guests: @clarebear8080 and @gabbymcnabb
Learn more about Hylo and how to onboard your community here: https://hylozoic.gitbook.io/hylo/
Join Hylo and discover groups near you: http://hylo.com
Tom Watson
- Working with Terran Collective, engineering Hylo
- Dancer, cartographer, novice land steward
- Former youth rites of passage facilitator, former intelligence analyst, former Ultimate frisbee player
- Interested in: Cultural regeneration, food-systems, right-relationship to land/water, bioregionalism
Clare is a core steward of Terran Collective, where she focuses on bioregional organizing and creating technology for a regenerative future. She is a co-creator of http://Hylo.com, the prosocial coordination platform for a thriving planet. Clare lives on a homestead in Washington, where she supports Salmon Nation bioregion in organizing The Edge Prize (http://edgeprize.org).
Vince Fakhoury Horn is part of a new generation of teachers & translators exploring dharma in the age of the network. A computer engineering dropout turned full-time contemplative, he spent his 20s co-founding the ground-breaking Buddhist Geeks Podcast, while simultaneously doing a full year, in total, of silent retreat practice. Vince began teaching in 2010 having been authorized in both the Pragmatic Dharma lineage of Kenneth Folk, and by Trudy Goodman, guiding teacher of InsightLA, in the Insight Meditation tradition. Vince has been called a “power player of the mindfulness movement” by Wired magazine and was featured in Wired UK’s “Smart List: 50 people who will change the world.” He currently lives in the Blue Ridge Mountains outside of Asheville, North Carolina with his partner Emily Horn and their son Zander.
DO 105 - PNW Crew
Jason has a conversation with Ioan @awarenesss, Jesse, Denzolo and Andy @coperthwaite about the Doomer Optimism PNW meetup and workshop, the evolution of friendship and collaboration, and bioregionalism.
DO 104 - Microsolidary w/ Rich Bartlett, Steph Soussloff, Roscoe and Ashley Colby
Rich, Steph, Roscoe and Ashley discuss their experience at the Microsolidarity Retreat in Denver in October 2022. Tune in to find out if Ashley did battle with the hippies or became one!
Steph Soussloff @stephsoussloff is an animal-lover, artist, gardener, cook, daughter & friend passionate about co-creating cultures of care, authenticity & embodied creativity. A design strategist & org development consultant by training, she loves to support clients in unfolding their shared capacity for collaboration, strong relationships and brave communication. She is a catalyst of a community project called Starter Cultures where she hosts a writing circle and a peer-coaching space.
Roscoe is a 58-year-old white guy living in Boston, Massachusetts, working as a counselor. An artist and synthesizer by wiring and practice, he cares about using the meta as a tool for advancing the ordinary good.
Richard D. Bartlett @RichDecibels is a Director at Enspiral, a network of self-managing, purpose-driven companies. He co-founded Loomio, a worker-owned company that builds collaboration software, and The Hum, helping decentralized organizations thrive. He’s the author of a community building practice called Microsolidarity. He's enthusiastic about co-ownership, self-governance and building relationships of partnership instead of domination to create collaborative workplaces.
read more at richdecibels.com
DO 103 - Mary Harrington w/ Ashley Colby
Ashley and Mary discuss her forthcoming book: Feminism Against Progress. Ashley pushes Mary to especially explore the optimism in her book, as well as the ecological underpinnings of reactionary feminism. Pre-order Mary's book now!
https://www.amazon.com/Feminism-Against-Progress-Mary-Harrington-ebook/dp/B0B5Z4YT5Y
Mary Harrington @moveincircles is a reactionary feminist, contributing editor at @unherd, and Author of Feminism Against Progress.
Ashley Colby @rizomaschool is an Environmental Sociologist who studied at Washington State University, the department that founded the subdiscipline. She's interested in and passionate about the myriad creative ways in which people are forming new social worlds in resistance to collapse. She's the founder of Rizoma Field School in Colonia Uruguay.
DO 102 - Joey Keegin w/ Donald Antenen and James Pogue
First time host Donald Antenen interviews first time guest Joey Keegin and back by popular demand guest James Pogue. They discuss the Cincinnati Bengals, underappreciated American writers Bernard DeVoto and Henry Bugbee, CrimethInc., and lessons from their anarchist days for navigating the doom of today.
Joseph M. Keegin @fxxfy is an editor at The Point and a doctoral student in philosophy at Tulane University.
Donald Antenen @riversofeurope lives with his wife and daughters in the Pacific Northwest. He is translating Genesis: Beginning: a Verse Translation of Genesis.
James Pogue @jhensonpogue is an American essayist and journalist. He is a contributing editor at Harper's Magazine. His pieces have appeared on the covers of Harper's and The American Conservative. He is the author of Chosen Country: A Rebellion in the West, a first-person account of conflict over public lands in the American west.
DO 101 - Jared Janes w/ Ashley Colby and Jason Snyder
Ashley and Jason speak with Jared on all things metamodern religion and spirituality.
Jared Janes
I have a long list of eclectic interests & experiences*, but the unifying theme seems to be human development. A theme that eventually led me to meditation in 2013. I spent the following six years exploring a handful of popular meditation methods & spiritual traditions but sensed that something was missing. Then, with the guidance of my friend & teacher Charlie Awbery, I moved from renunciative practice to the life-affirming path of a yogi. In 2020, the two of us co-founded a contemporary community of practice called Evolving Ground. Jaredjanes.com
Jason Snyder @cognazor Metamodern localist | homesteading, permaculture, bioregional regeneration | meditation, self inquiry, embodied cognition | PhD from Michigan State University, faculty Appalachian State University.
Ashley Colby @rizomaschool is an Environmental Sociologist who studied at Washington State University, the department that founded the subdiscipline. She's interested in and passionate about the myriad creative ways in which people are forming new social worlds in resistance to collapse. She's the founder of Rizoma Field School in Colonia Uruguay.
DO 100 - Ashley Colby and Jason Snyder
Ashley and Jason reflect on Doomer Optimism. We talk a little about how it started, what brought us to doom and optimism personally that led us to accidentally define the term, some of the challenges we see in building a movement, and where we see things going from here.
DO 99 - Tom Ruby w/ Anarchocontrarian and Tres Crow
AC and Tres interview Tom, the nicest guy on twitter, about his homestead, localism, distributism, as well as his mentorship with Tres.
Tom Ruby is CEO of Bluegrass Critical Thinking Solutions (www.bgcts.com), a strategic planning and leadership development consulting company geared to small businesses. Tom was born in Belgrade, Serbia, in January, 1964. His parents escaped the country in 1965 and arrived in Los Angeles in 1966 where they settled. In 1982, Tom received an appointment to the US Air Force Academy where he received his Bachelor of Science in Humanities. A 1986 USAFA graduate and three-time football letterman, Colonel Tom Ruby served 26 years on active duty in positions from Squadron Intelligence Officer, to Chief of Doctrine for the AF Intelligence, Surveillance and Reconnaissance Enterprise at the Pentagon, to Chief of Special Programs for Air Force Materiel Command where he oversaw a more than $4 Billion annual portfolio of over 100 highly classified programs. He earned a Doctorate in Political Science from the University of Kentucky and is widely published and speaks globally on topics ranging from Morality in Warfare, to Leadership, to strategy, to localism and Distributism. Tom is a Board Member of the Society of GK Chesterton and has served on 3 non-profit boards. He mentors students from high school through graduate school, as well as individuals looking to change direction in life. He and his wife, Laura, live on 15 acres in Central Kentucky where he practices land management, reforestation, gardening and building a strong local community. They strive to live a Chestertonian Distributist life. They have three daughter and a son and five grandchildren. So far...
Anarcho-contrarian @anarcontrarian is a nostalgia-poasting Twitter Anon who is passionate about the resiliency of rural places.
Tres Crow @dogeatcrow is a writer, podcast host, occasional thinker, and the President and co-owner of Roots Down, an environmental education startup that's revolutionizing the landscaping industry from one of the dirtiest industries in the US to a powerful force for positive change.
DO 98 - The Last Farm w/ Jason Snyder
Jason speaks with The Last Farm about ecosocialism and his very ambitious ideas about how it could work, based partially on this tweet thread https://twitter.com/TheLastFarm/status/1586734175326961664
DO 97 - Lyndsie Bourgon w/ James Pogue
Lyndsie's talks with James about her book TREE THIEVES. They also discuss whether or not humans belong in landscapes, the enclosures of 16th C England and what that has to do with today, as well as the lessons from Lyndsie's book for conservationism and ecology in the American West today.
James Pogue is an American essayist and journalist. He is a contributing editor at Harper's Magazine. His pieces have appeared on the covers of Harper's and The American Conservative. He is the author of Chosen Country: A Rebellion in the West, a first-person account of conflict over public lands in the American west.
Lyndsie Bourgon is a writer, researcher, oral historian, and 2018 National Geographic Explorer. She (mostly) writes about the environment and its entanglement with history, culture, and identity. Her features have been published in The Atlantic, Smithsonian, the Guardian, the Oxford American, Aeon, The Walrus, Hazlitt, and elsewhere. In 2018, she traveled to Peru with National Geographic to document indigenous experiences of timber theft. Her first book, TREE THIEVES, was published in June 2022. It uses timber poaching to explore questions of inequality, conservation history, and how the natural world defines who we are.
https://www.littlebrown.com/titles/lyndsie-bourgon/tree-thieves/9781549156120/
DO 96 - Inez Stepman w/ Ashley Colby
Ashley and Inez solve the battle of the sexes.
Inez Feltscher Stepman @InezFeltscher is a senior policy analyst at IWF and host of High Noon with Inez Stepman, a podcast that hosts conversations with heterodox thinkers on a variety of important cultural and political subjects. She has over a decade of experience in education policy, and also handles issues related to institutional capture and the definition of sex in law and culture. She is a Lincoln Fellow with the Claremont Institute and a senior contributor to The Federalist. Her work has additionally appeared in outlets such as USA Today, The Wall Street Journal, and New York Post, and she has made appearances on Fox News, PBS, CSPAN, and NPR. Inez has a BA in Philosophy from the University of California, San Diego, and a JD from the University of Virginia School of Law. She lives in New York City with her husband.
Ashley Colby @rizomaschool is an Environmental Sociologist who studied at Washington State University, the department that founded the subdiscipline. She's interested in and passionate about the myriad creative ways in which people are forming new social worlds in resistance to collapse. She's the founder of Rizoma Field School in Colonia Uruguay.
DO 95 - Blake Smith w/ Donald Antenen and Ashley Colby
Ashley and first time host Donald ask Blake about his Unherd article "What Christopher Lasch Got Wrong" in which he argues that we fundamentally need to be seeking a "politics that makes politics possible."
https://unherd.com/2022/11/what-christopher-lasch-got-wrong/
Blake Smith @blejksmith is a Harper-Schmidt Fellow at the University of Chicago. A historian of modern France, he is also a translator of contemporary francophone fiction and a regular contributor to Tablet.
Donald Antenen @riversofeurope lives with his wife and daughters in the Pacific Northwest. He is translating Genesis: Beginning: a Verse Translation of Genesis.
Ashley Colby @rizomaschool is an Environmental Sociologist who studied at Washington State University, the department that founded the subdiscipline. She's interested in and passionate about the myriad creative ways in which people are forming new social worlds in resistance to collapse. She's the founder of Rizoma Field School in Colonia Uruguay.
DO 94 - Zach on WI DO Camp w/ Patrick Fitzgerald
Zach and Patrick discuss the Driftless region of Wisconsin, the social landscape of regenerative ag in that area, and insights from the Wisconsin Doomer Optimism camp hosted by Zach and Peter Allen.
DO 93 - LM Sacasas w/ Ashley Colby
Ashley sits down with Michael Sacasas to discuss institutions, technology, conviviality, education and sitting around a table for a nice meal!
Michael (LM) Sacasas @lmsacasas Writes a newsletter, The Convivial Society, where he thinks about technology and culture.
http://theconvivialsociety.substack.com
His book: http://gum.co/CWRfq
his website: https://thefrailestthing.com/
Ashley Colby is an Environmental Sociologist who studied at Washington State University, the department that founded the subdiscipline. She's interested in and passionate about the myriad creative ways in which people are forming new social worlds in resistance to collapse. She's the founder of Rizoma Field School in Colonia Uruguay.
DO 92 - Phoebe Tickell w/ Jason Snyder and Nicholas McCay
Jason interviewing @solarpunk_girl, with special guest host Nicholas McCay @espacewalk to talk about the future of web3 and regeneration
Nicholas McCay (@ESpacewalk) is a director, producer, and writer. He is also the creator of Eclectic Spacewalk, a hub for essays, podcasts, and video productions through the lenses of the “Overview Effect” and “Science & Technology Studies (STS).
Phoebe Tickell (@solarpunk_girl): Founder/Director @moral_imagining. Imagination Activist. Scientist, strategist, writer, activist in ecology
Jason Snyder @cognazor Metamodern localist | homesteading, permaculture, bioregional regeneration | meditation, self inquiry, embodied cognition | PhD from Michigan State University, faculty Appalachian State University.
DO 91 - John Robb w/ Ashley Colby and Brian Keith
Ashley and Brian ask John about network swarms, energy, technology, and what we can be optimistic about in the face of it all.
John Robb @johnrobb -- Tier 1 special ops. Pilot. Analyst. Author. Tech pioneer. He writes The Global Guerrillas Report -- predictive frameworks for making sense of the world at the intersection of war, technology, and politics. http://patreon.com/johnrobb johnrobb.substack.com
Brian Keith podcasts on mindset, systems, and profit om Red Beard Radio. Get it at http://redbeard.am. He also interviews John Robb inside his Patreon each month. Subscribe at http://patreon.com/johnrobb.
Ashley Colby is an Environmental Sociologist who studied at Washington State University, the department that founded the subdiscipline. She's interested in and passionate about the myriad creative ways in which people are forming new social worlds in resistance to collapse. She's the founder of Rizoma Field School in Colonia Uruguay.
DO 90 - Grandpa stories w/ Anarchocontrarian, Nathan Gates and Josh Kearns
In this episode AC, TornadoNate and Josh do some irl nostalgia posting showing love for their home places and people, and telling stories about their grandpas.
Anarcho-contrarian @anarcontrarian is a nostalgia-poasting Twitter Anon who is passionate about the resiliency of rural places.
Nathan Gates @TornadoNate is a licensed psychotherapist and co-host of Altered States of Context, a podcast about psychedelics, science and psychotherapy. He also practices regenerative ranching and writes from his family's farm in rural west-central Illinois.
Dr. Josh Kearns @hillbillynarnia is a born-n-bred Appalachian and a native of West-By-God-Virginia and damn proud of it. He studied chemistry and environmental engineering at Clemson (BS), biogeochemistry at Berkeley (MS), and environmental engineering at CU-Boulder (PhD). He's spent years bumming around rural and remote communities in Thailand, Burma/Myanmar, India, Nepal, Ladakh, Sri Lanka, and Mexico, and generally tried to make himself useful while doing so. He's the Director of Science for Aqueous Solutions, and the Chief Technical Advisor for Caminos de Agua, grassroots water and health development organizations in Thailand and Mexico, respectively. He taught environmental engineering courses at NC State University for a couple of years before returning to his roots as a freelance renegade scientist and exponent of ecological transition engineering. He lives with his wife Rachael and all their critters on a small mountaintop homestead in southern Appalachia.
DO 89 - Jon Askonas w/ Ashley Colby
Ashley sits down with Jon Askonas to dive into his Compact Magazine article Why Conservatism Failed (https://compactmag.com/article/why-conservatism-failed). They discuss solutions to the problem of political or cultural 'team sports' including simply driving after the Good.
Jon Askonas @jonaskonas is a Fellow at the Center for the Study of Statesmanship at the Catholic University of America and a member of the Politics faculty.
Ashley Colby is an Environmental Sociologist who studied at Washington State University, the department that founded the subdiscipline. She's interested in and passionate about the myriad creative ways in which people are forming new social worlds in resistance to collapse. She's the founder of Rizoma Field School in Colonia Uruguay.
DO 88 - Tornado Nate w/ Jason Snyder
Jason speaks to Tornado Nate! They discuss doomer optimism, homesteading and rootedness, psychedelics, and being a hippie!
Nathan Gates @TornadoNate is a licensed psychotherapist and co-host of Altered States of Context, a podcast about psychedelics, science and psychotherapy. He also practices regenerative ranching and writes from his family's farm in rural west-central Illinois.
Jason Snyder @cognazor Metamodern localist | homesteading, permaculture, bioregional regeneration | meditation, self inquiry, embodied cognition | PhD from Michigan State University, faculty Appalachian State University.
DO 87 - Nora Bateson w/ Stephanie Lepp and Ashley Colby
Ashley and Stephanie Lepp sit down with Nore Bateson to discuss warm data, nursing mothers, balance bikes, and what all that has to do with the sustainable development goals (if anything!).
Nora Bateson is a filmmaker, lecturer, author. Founder of #WarmData #PeopleNeedPeople #symmathesy #aphanipoiesis. Ecology & society reframing & shifting perception, complexity, and tenderness.
Stephanie Lepp, producer and conceptual artist. I'm the outgoing Executive Producer at the Center for Humane Technology, and incoming Executive Director at the Institute for Cultural Evolutions.
To get a feel for Stephanie's work, listen to her interviews on The Jim Rutt Show (jimruttshow.com/stephanie-lepp/) and KALW's Inflection Point (bit.ly/3jGcAEg). The best way to be in dialogue with Stephanie is to follow her on Twitter: @stephlepp
Ashley Colby is an Environmental Sociologist who studied at Washington State University, the department that founded the subdiscipline. She's interested in and passionate about the myriad creative ways in which people are forming new social worlds in resistance to collapse. She's the founder of Rizoma Field School in Colonia Uruguay.
DO 86 - Roxanne Ahern w/ Ashley Colby
Ashley speaks with Roxanne about her new book (!!!), homesteading, her meet cute story with her husband, God, agency, and paw paws!
**please forgive the audio quality issues in this episode! Roxanne had to do this recording in a parking lot and Ashley's internet was spotty. Homestead life, sorry!
Roxanne Ahern is the author of Holistic Homesteading: A Guide to a Sustainable and Regenerative Lifestyle. She lives with her family of 7 on a homestead in the Ozarks where they grow food, raise animals, and homeschool. Follow along with Roxanne’s journey on Instagram @happyholistichomestead. Roxanne also acts as a consultant and a speaker on the topics of regenerative homesteading and gardening, permaculture, and holistic nutrition. Reach out to her at her website HappyHolisticHomestead.com.
Ashley Colby @rizomaschool is an Environmental Sociologist and co-founder of the Rizoma Field School in Uruguay.
DO 85 - Lafayette Lee w/ Ashley Colby
Ashley and Lee discuss politics, Lee's IM1776 article "Country Party Reprise," localism, family, populism, and Werner Herzog's films.
Lafayette Lee @Partisan_O is an American writer and veteran. See his writing here: https://im1776.com/author/lafayette-lee/
Ashley Colby @rizomaschool is an Environmental Sociologist and co-founder of the Rizoma Field School in Uruguay.
DO 84 - KMO w/ Steven Morris and Ben Lee
KMO was probably the original doomer podcast host starting in the mid 2000s with his C-Realm Podcast. He interviewed many of the names we recognize now. JMG, James Howard Kunstler, Dmitry Orlov, and others. Listen in as hosts Steven and Ben follow KMO on his journey from Doomer to Optimist and his new podcast Padverb.
KMO is the host and producer of the C-Realm Podcast, a cartoonist and author of the book ‘Conversations on Collapse.’ His full bio and links are here https://gebb.io/about-kmo-new/ The Padverb podcast with KMO https://en.padverb.com/s/padverb_podcast
Ben @bennirubber grew up in upstate NY, got a bachelors in psychology from Wells College and works with the developmentally disabled in Auburn, NY. He got into learning about soil health and regenerative agriculture from David Montgomery’s books, a geomorpholigist in the interest of addressing climate change. Read more about the history of colonialism as it relates to ecological “changes in the land” (William Cronon) and indigenous cultures of North America (Shepherd Krech III). Ben grew heavily interested in peak oil and the collapse of civilization from “overshoot” (William Catton) and found KMO’s C-Realm podcast at about the same time. After Covid settled down and growing nauseous toward any mindset that prescribed controlling the behavior of others, Ben settled into the collapse agnostic mindset but tried to do as much gardening around regular work and family life.
Steven Morris started his journey into then unnamed realm of Doomer Optimism in 2011 when, during the time of a divorce, he stumbled upon 3 of the many early doomer optimist voices: Chris Martenson's Crash Course, John Michael Greer's blog The Archdruid Report, and KMO's C-Realm podcast. These 3 identified the many issues of decline in the world that he could sense but didn't have words for. At the same time they all provided positive possibilities for the future. Steven considers himself an amateur Renaissance Man and Polymath of sorts with a wide variety of interests including: appropriate use of technology, regenerative systems, explorations in consciousness, alternative (sometimes called complementary) currency systems, computer technology, and complex systems. He has worked on multiple award winning independent films, managed warehouse logistics for a small business, run a college radio station and lead ecstatic dance workshops. He is a trained Host for Nora Bateson's People Need People gatherings and recently completed work as video editor for the Commons Engine on their newly released Currency Design for Social Change master class on Udemy. Steven is committed to supporting people find their way through the rapidly changing chaos, especially those who don’t see themselves as homesteaders.
DO 83 - Panel on biophysical realities and cultural potentials
Jason moderates this panel on the topic of biophysical realities and cultural potentials.
Greg Cassel @gregsc1 of @neighbour_hoods community open source #p2p inclusive organizing / protocols not platforms; communication not control/ #permaculture #madhyamika #panentheism
Ellie at Common Action @sellieyoung making climate cool again. move fast and fix things. get your CA orb: https://ca.refiorb.com join us in Slack: http://tinyurl.com/42dnwub6
Nathan @tornadonate is a licensed psychotherapist and co-host of Altered States of Context, a podcast about psychedelics, science and psychotherapy. He also practices regenerative ranching and writes from his family's farm in rural west-central Illinois.
Richard Flyer @Richard_Flyer Fall 2022 Launching Symbiotic Culture Lab. From Symbiosis -- Intentional Mutual Benefit at all scales. Global Commonwealth of Bioregional Economies.
Jason Snyder @cognazor Metamodern localist | homesteading, permaculture, bioregional regeneration | meditation, self inquiry, embodied cognition | PhD from Michigan State University, faculty Appalachian State University.
DO 82 - Jack Murphy w/ Tucker Max and Ashley Colby
Ashley and Tucker ask Jack about the version of homestead rescue he did for a member of his Liminal Order on a farm in Michigan. They discuss the barn raising, homesteading, localism and why it is important to push yourself to learn and try new things, even when it is hard to do.
Jack Murphy @jackmurphylive interviews the world’s best thinkers on Jack Murphy Live. He is the founder of the Liminal Order and an Alumnus of the Claremont Institute's Lincoln Fellowship.
YouTube.com/jackmurphylive
liminal-order.com
Tucker Max @tuckermax is the co-founder of Scribe Media, a company that helps you write, publish, and market your book. He's written four New York Times Best Sellers (three that hit #1), which have sold over 4.5 million copies worldwide. He's credited with being the originator of the literary genre, “fratire,” and is only the fourth writer (along with Malcolm Gladwell, Brene Brown and Michael Lewis) to have three books on the New York Times Nonfiction Best Seller List at one time. He was nominated to the Time Magazine 100 Most Influential List in 2009. He received his BA from the University of Chicago in 1998, and his JD from Duke Law School in 2001. He currently lives in Austin, Texas, with his wife Veronica and four children.
Ashley Colby @rizomaschool is an Environmental Sociologist and co-founder of the Rizoma Field School in Uruguay.
DO 81 - Michael Thomas w/ Jason Snyder and Anarchocontrarian
Jason and AC talk to Michael about his farm, family, the Catholic Land Movement, and distributism.
Michael Thomas of Sharon @michaelGT09 Husband of @rosary2battle Father of five. Traditional Catholic. https://catholiclandmovement.info/
Jason Snyder @cognazor Metamodern localist | homesteading, permaculture, bioregional regeneration | meditation, self inquiry, embodied cognition | PhD from Michigan State University, faculty Appalachian State University.
Anarcho-contrarian @anarcontrarian is a nostalgia-poasting Twitter Anon who is passionate about the resiliency of rural places.
DO 80 - Paul Wheaton w/ Tres Crow and Dave Aspiring Peasant
Dave and Tres interview Paul about all his various activities including Permies, Rich Soil, Wheaton Labs and more. The Duke of Permaculture, ladies and gentlemen!
Paul Wheaton @paul wheaton is an American permaculture author, master gardener, software engineer, and disciple of the natural agriculturist Sepp Holzer.
paulwheaton.com
richsoil.com
permies.com
Dave @aspiringpeasant still none of your business
Tres Crow @dogeatcrow is a writer, podcast host, occasional thinker, and the President and co-owner of Roots Down, an environmental education startup that's revolutionizing the landscaping industry from one of the dirtiest industries in the US to a powerful force for positive change.
DO 79 - Richard Heinberg w/ Jason Snyder and Josh Kearns
Jason and Josh sit down with world renowned expert on energy and the environment, Richard Heinberg to discuss the future of energy, techno-utopianism, and an optimistic vision for the future.
Richard William Heinberg @richardheinberg is an American journalist and educator who has written extensively on energy, economic, and ecological issues, including oil depletion. He is the author of 13 books, and presently serves as the senior fellow at the Post Carbon Institute. Richardheinberg.com
Jason Snyder @cognazor Metamodern localist | homesteading, permaculture, bioregional regeneration | meditation, self inquiry, embodied cognition | PhD from Michigan State University, faculty Appalachian State University.
Josh Kearns @hillbillynarnia is a born-n-bred Appalachian and a native of West-By-God-Virginia and damn proud of it. He studied chemistry and environmental engineering at Clemson (BS), biogeochemistry at Berkeley (MS), and environmental engineering at CU-Boulder (PhD). He's spent years bumming around rural and remote communities in Thailand, Burma/Myanmar, India, Nepal, Ladakh, Sri Lanka, and Mexico, and generally tried to make himself useful while doing so. He's the Director of Science for Aqueous Solutions, and the Chief Technical Advisor for Caminos de Agua, grassroots water and health development organizations in Thailand and Mexico, respectively. He taught environmental engineering courses at NC State University for a couple of years before returning to his roots as a freelance renegade scientist and exponent of ecological transition engineering. He lives with his wife Rachael and all their critters on a small mountaintop homestead in southern Appalachia.
DO 78 - Chris Arnade w/ Ashley Colby and Anarcho-contrarian
Ashley and AC talk to Chris about the dominance of Front Row thinking, and Ashley offers Chris use of her term "spreadsheet brain." We talk about antidotes to this kind of thinking, including the advice "don't be an asshole."
Chris Arnade @chris_arnade is the author of Dignity, a book exploring poverty, addiction, and faith in the US. He is currently walking across the cities of the world.
Anarcho-contrarian @anarcontrarian is a nostalgia-poasting Twitter Anon who is passionate about the resiliency of rural places.
Ashley Colby @rizomaschool is an Environmental Sociologist and co-founder of the Rizoma Field School in Uruguay.
DO 77 - Texas Slim w/ Julie Frederickson
In this episode Julie interviews Slim about his beef initiative, bitcoin and several events he has been a part of that are advancing food and community sovereignty.
Texas Slim @moderntman
Slim is the founder of The Beef Initiative and Food Intelligence. He is a Native Texan with a National Reach.
https://fountain.fm/texasslimsvision
https://beefinitiative.com/
About Julie Fredrickson I'm a founder, and now investor, with extensive experience across the internet and software industry. As a serial entrepreneur, I have overseen multiple venture and private equity fundraises for companies as diverse as direct to consumer cosmetics and online advertising networks. I have managed multi-million dollar P&Ls and successfully exited two of my companies. I'm currently the founder and managing partner of Chaotic Capital, a seed stage investment vehicle that invests in ideas that adapt humanity to complexity. We capitalize on chaos. We like companies that adapt our lives and systems to the opportunity that chaos brings. We invest in 4 key areas Personal Flexibility Organizational Agility, Systemic Arbitrage and Climate. I began my entrepreneurial career as the Co-Founder of Coutorture Media, a luxury affiliate publishing and e-commerce network of fashion websites that was acquired by Sugar Inc. I also founded and ran playAPI, a developer tool kit and SaaS platform for digital brand marketers. Most recently I was the CEO and Co-Founder of Stowaway Cosmetics a direct to consumer makeup brand re-making how premium cosmetics are manufactured, marketed, merchandised and sold online (acquired by WIN Brands Group). I have extensive experience user acquisition, audience development, digital and social marketing, communications and brand marketing for Fortune 500 brands. I've created digital, e-commerce & brand marketing strategies for brands as diverse as Pepsi, Tropicana, Nike, Michael Kors, Club Monaco, and The Gap. I have spent time in-house at Equinox as well as at Ann Taylor overseeing ecommerce and digital brand growth.
DO 76 - Carol Sanford w/ Glen Ganaway and Tres Crow
Carol Sanford @carolsanford
Carol Sanford is a consistently recognized disruptor and contrarian working side by side with new economy executives in designing and leading systemic business change and design. Through her university and in-house educational offerings, global speaking platforms, best selling multi-award-winning books, and human development work, Carol works with executive leaders who see the possibility to change the nature of work through developing people and work systems that ignite motivation everywhere. For four decades, Carol has worked with great leaders of successful businesses, educating them to develop their people and ensure a continuous stream of innovation that continually deliver extraordinary results. Carol is often called a positive contrarian bringing old practices into modern practice. But most importantly, Carol offers businesses and their stakeholders a pathway to extraordinary results.
Glen Morton Ganaway @glenganaway
Glen considers himself a product of the Military Industrial Complex, The Deep South and the Southern Baptist Church. Today he identifies as an Anarchist. Born in Anchorage, Alaska to a deeply religious family and raised in the gated communities of Navy bases.The 80's found Glen doing sex work and waiting tables to support an injection habit. Glen cleaned up in the 90's and joined the Radical Faeries, a loose knit collection of Pagan Queer Anarchists. He met the love of his life Yolanda, an East Village legendary performance artist in 2004. Glen went on to be ordained an Interfaith Minister and acquire an Integral Mentor Certification and a BS in Healthcare Management, which he uses for UFCW Local 2013. Glen's passions include Advaita-Vedanta, Integral Theory, Anarchism, and Regenerative Agriculture. His next project is a 4.4 Acre Homestead in Vermont.
Tres Crow @dogeatcrow
Tres is making the world a greener place one urban space at a time with my friends Roots Down. He's a storyteller and marketing dude. He loves natural urbanism and climate justice.
DO 75 - David Holmgren w/ Ashley Colby and Sam Sager
Ashley and new host Sam Sager sit down with legend of permaculture David Holmgren. They discuss a permaculture vision for the suburbs laid out in David's book: Retrosuburbia.
David Holmgren is the co-originator of the permaculture concept following publication of Permaculture One, co-authored with Bill Mollison in 1978. David is globally recognised as a leading ecological thinker, teacher, writer and speaker promoting permaculture as a realistic, attractive and powerful alternative to dependent consumerism. Other key publications include Permaculture: Principles and Pathways Beyond Sustainability (2002) and Future Scenarios: How Communities Can Adapt To Peak Oil and Climate Change (2009) and RetroSuburbia: The Downshifter’s Guide to a Resilient Future (2018).
www.holmgren.com.au
www.retrosuburbia.com
www.futurescenarios.org
Sam Sager is slowly building a suburban food forest on a 1/4 acre in North Carolina. He's fascinated by how we can build the capacity to respond to change within ourselves and the natural world around us. He loves exploring new ideas and experimenting in his own backyard. He runs First Stone Fitness to help people embrace exercise more fully and hosts The Self-Renewal Podcast.
Episode 74 - Mr. Cooper w/ Ashley Colby and Willow Liana
On one of the most inspiring episodes of Doomer Optimism, Ashley Colby (@RizomaSchool) and Willow Liana (@willlowthewhisp) speak with the father of Kevin Cooper (AKA Cole Summers) about his late son's work. They discuss Cole's plans and aspirations for sustainably developing the farmland where he lived to preserve the water table. Cole passed away at aged 14, leaving a huge legacy behind him. He had some of the most ambitious plans for business development and sustainable agriculture that you'll ever hear of. The hope of this episode is to inspire others to continue the work he left behind him. You can donate to help Cole's family rebuild their lives here:
https://www.gofundme.com/f/help-kevin-coopers-family
You can purchase Cole's autobiography here.
About Willow Liana
Willow is a professional social butterfly and mother of a wee babe whom she is raising in the Canadian countryside.
About Ashley Colby
Ashley is an Environmental Sociologist who studied at Washington State University, the department that founded the subdiscipline. She's interested in and passionate about the myriad creative ways in which people are forming new social worlds in resistance to the failures of late capitalism and resultant climate disasters. I am a qualitative researcher so I tend to focus on the informal spaces of innovation. She's the founder of Rizoma Field School and Rizoma Foundation.
Episode 73 - Chris Smaje and Sean Domencic w/ Ashley Colby and Nathan Gates
On this episode, Ashley Colby (@RizomaSchool) teams up with Nathan Gates (@TornadoNate) to co-host an intriguing conversation about Distributism with Chris Smaje (@csmaje) and Sean Domencic (@tradtom), co-founder of Tradistae.
About Sean Domencic
Sean Domencic is the director of Tradistae, a contributing author at New Polity, and a maintenance man who speaks and writes about Distributism and Catholic Social Teaching. He and his wife live in community at Holy Family Catholic Worker in Lancaster, PA.
About Chris Smaje
Chris Smaje has coworked a small farm in Somerset, southwest England, for the last 17 years. Previously, he was a university-based social scientist, working in the Department of Sociology at the University of Surrey and the Department of Anthropology at Goldsmiths College on aspects of social policy, social identities and the environment. Since switching focus to the practice and politics of agroecology, he's written for various publications, such as The Land , Dark Mountain , Permaculture magazine and Statistics Views, as well as academic journals such as Agroecology and Sustainable Food Systems and the Journal of Consumer Culture . Smaje writes the blog Small Farm Future, is a featured author at www.resilience.org and a current director of the Ecological Land Co-op. Chris' latest book is: A Small Farm Future: Making the Case for a Society Built Around Local Economies, Self-Provisioning, Agricultural Diversity, and a Shared Earth.
About Nathan Gates
Nathan is a licensed psychotherapist and co-host of Altered States of Context, a podcast about psychedelics, science and psychotherapy. He also practices regenerative ranching and writes from his family's farm in rural west-central Illinois.
About Ashley Colby
Ashley is an Environmental Sociologist who studied at Washington State University, the department that founded the subdiscipline. She's interested in and passionate about the myriad creative ways in which people are forming new social worlds in resistance to the failures of late capitalism and resultant climate disasters. I am a qualitative researcher so I tend to focus on the informal spaces of innovation. She's the founder of Rizoma Field School and Rizoma Foundation.
Episode 72 - Tres Crow w/ Dave, Aspiring Peasant
On this episode of Doomer Optimism, the tables turn and Dave of Aspiring Peasant (@aspiringpeasant) fame interviews occasional DO host, and podcast co-founder, Tres Crow (@dogeatcrow) about his work with Roots Down and how he came to be a Doomer Optimist.
About Tres Crow
Tres is a writer, podcast host, occasional thinker, and the President and co-owner of Roots Down, an environmental education startup that's revolutionizing the landscaping industry from one of the dirtiest industries in the US to a powerful force for positive change. Keep up with the world of Roots Down by downloading the free app, available for iPhone and Android.
About Aspiring Peasant
Still none of your business.
Episode 71 - Jeff Bilbro w/ Donald Antenen and Ashley Colby
On this episode of Doomer Optimism, first-time host Donald Antenen (@riversofeurope) and Ashley Colby (@RizomaSchool) interview associate English professor and editor of Front Porch Republic, Jeff Bilbro (@jeff_bilbro). Topics range from Jeff's experiences living in a remote part of Washington state to his work at Front Porch Republic.
About Jeff Bilbro
Jeffrey Bilbro is an Associate Professor of English at Grove City College. He grew up in the mountainous state of Washington and earned his B.A. in Writing and Literature from George Fox University in Oregon and his Ph.D. in English from Baylor University. His books include Reading the Times: A Literary and Theological Inquiry into the News, Loving God’s Wildness: The Christian Roots of Ecological Ethics in American Literature, Wendell Berry and Higher Education: Cultivating Virtues of Place (written with Jack Baker), and Virtues of Renewal: Wendell Berry’s Sustainable Forms.
About Donald Antenen
Donald Antenen lives with his wife and daughters in the Pacific Northwest. He is translating Genesis: Beginning: a Verse Translation of Genesis.
About Ashley Colby
Ashley is an Environmental Sociologist who studied at Washington State University, the department that founded the subdiscipline. She's interested in and passionate about the myriad creative ways in which people are forming new social worlds in resistance to the failures of late capitalism and resultant climate disasters. I am a qualitative researcher so I tend to focus on the informal spaces of innovation. She's the founder of Rizoma Field School and Rizoma Foundation.
Episode 70 - Ariel Greenwood and Jonathan Gay w/ Jason Snyder
Episode 70 of Doomer Optimism kicks off with Jason Snyder (@cognazor) introducing first-time host Ariel Greenwood (@greenwoodae) before launching into a discussion on ecological restoration with cattle rancher Jonathan Gay of Freestone Ranch.
About Jonathan Gay
Jonathan focuses on ranch infrastructure and restoration projects. He sees the land with its soils, plants, microbes, fungi and animals as a living entity that deserves care and tending. After a career writing software, he appreciates the chance to be working outside and seeing the growing physical results of his efforts.
About Ariel Greenwood
Ariel grew up unschooled in the rural wilds of North Carolina and began farming at 16. In college, she studied agroecology and psychology while working with community gardens and private farms.
She managed livestock in Northern California for 4 1/2 years, primarily at Pepperwood Preserve and Freestone Ranch in the North Bay region, and since 2018 she has been working in the intermountain west with Triangle P Cattle Company and as co-owner of Grass Nomads LLC, a land and livestock management and consulting company. She also serves as founding board member & treasurer for Contra Viento Journal, an art & literature journal about rangelands, and on the board of Holistic Management International.
Her work is seasonal; in the summers she manages yearlings in Montana and the rest of the time she works with cows on rangeland in Northeastern New Mexico.
About Jason Snyder
Metamodern localist | homesteading, permaculture, bioregional regeneration | meditation, self inquiry, embodied cognition | PhD from Michigan State University, faculty Appalachian State University.
Episode 69 - Malcolm Schluenderfritz w/ Ashley Colby
This episode of Doomer Optimism has Ashley Colby (@RizomaSchool) discussing voluntary poverty with Malcolm Schluenderfritz (@HAYPpodcast), the host of Happy Are You Poor, a blog and podcast dedicated to discussing radical Christian community as a means of evangelization.
About Malcolm Schluenderfritz
Malcolm Schluenderfritz hosts Happy Are You Poor, a blog and podcast dedicated to discussing radical Christian community as a means of evangelization. He works as a graphic design assistant and a horticulturalist in Littleton, CO.
About Ashley Colby
Ashley is an Environmental Sociologist who studied at Washington State University, the department that founded the subdiscipline. She's interested in and passionate about the myriad creative ways in which people are forming new social worlds in resistance to the failures of late capitalism and resultant climate disasters. I am a qualitative researcher so I tend to focus on the informal spaces of innovation. She's the founder of Rizoma Field School and Rizoma Foundation.
Episode 68 - Chris Mott w/ Josh Kearns and Ashley Colby
On episode 68, Ashley Colby (@RizomaSchool) and Josh Kearns (@HillbillyNarnia) to interview writer and historical geopolitics specialist, Chris Mott (@ChrisDMott), about his recent white paper "Woke Imperium: The Coming Confluence Between Social Justice and Neoconservatism". Show note: Ashley's anecdote about Uruguay was about Cavani, not Suarez.
About Chris Mott
Chris Mott is an historical geopolitics specialist, and Research Fellow at Institute for Peace & Diplomacy . He's the author of 'The Formless Empire'. Allergic to moralism.
About Ashley Colby
Ashley is an Environmental Sociologist who studied at Washington State University, the department that founded the subdiscipline. She's interested in and passionate about the myriad creative ways in which people are forming new social worlds in resistance to the failures of late capitalism and resultant climate disasters. I am a qualitative researcher so I tend to focus on the informal spaces of innovation. She's the founder of Rizoma Field School and Rizoma Foundation.
About Dr. Josh Kearns
Josh is a born-n-bred Appalachian and a native of West-By-God-Virginia and damn proud of it. He studied chemistry and environmental engineering at Clemson (BS), biogeochemistry at Berkeley (MS), and environmental engineering at CU-Boulder (PhD). He's spent years bumming around rural and remote communities in Thailand, Burma/Myanmar, India, Nepal, Ladakh, Sri Lanka, and Mexico, and generally tried to make himself useful while doing so. He's the Director of Science for Aqueous Solutions, and the Chief Technical Advisor for Caminos de Agua, grassroots water and health development organizations in Thailand and Mexico, respectively. He taught environmental engineering courses at NC State University for a couple of years before returning to his roots as a freelance renegade scientist and exponent of ecological transition engineering. He lives with his wife Rachael and all their critters on a small mountaintop homestead in southern Appalachia.
Episode 67 - Brendan Barnard w/ Ashley Colby and Peter Allen
Episode 67 is all about regenerative ag, with Ashley Colby (@RizomaSchool) and Peter Allen (@pclarkallen) teaming up to talk to Brendan Barnard (@IntractableLion)of Posterity Ciderworks about his cider-making philosophy, and his interest in low intervention agriculture.
About Brendan Barnard
Passionate about stewardship, long term thinking, and the intersections of nature, art, and science, cider captured Brendan’s attention in 2016 and he hasn’t shaken it. When he’s not grafting, planting, pruning, picking, pressing, or sampling cider you’ll find him cooking for his family.
About Peter Allen
Peter Allen spent a decade in Madison where Peter was researching and teaching ecology, economics, and complexity science, and his wife Maureen was studied biology, taught team building seminars at the University, and helped develop a non-profit urban farm for kids. They moved to the Driftless in 2012 to build a homestead and start a regenerative farm nestled in the hills of the Kickapoo River Valley in the heart of Wisconsin’s Driftless region.
They are inspired by the oak savanna ecosystems that once blanketed our hills and valleys. Groves of fruit and nuts trees combined with prairie grasslands to create the most diverse, productive, and functional ecosystems in the history of our continent. It's no wonder why these savanna gardens were cultivated by Indigenous Americans for millennia and manicured by mastodons for tens of millions of years. Now they’re the keystone species - planting fruit and nut trees by the thousands, thinning out overgrown woodlands, and practicing multi-species rotational grazing with cattle, sheep, goats, hogs, and poultry to manage vegetation, build soil, boost biodiversity, and produce meats and medicines at peak power and potency.
About Ashley Colby
Ashley is an Environmental Sociologist who studied at Washington State University, the department that founded the subdiscipline. She's interested in and passionate about the myriad creative ways in which people are forming new social worlds in resistance to the failures of late capitalism and resultant climate disasters. I am a qualitative researcher so I tend to focus on the informal spaces of innovation. She's the founder of Rizoma Field School and Rizoma Foundation.
DO 66 - Kev Aliti English Homestead
Kevin Alviti has been a carpenter for over 20 years, he has worked on everything from oak framed barns to high rise flats, from 18th century style carvings to cleaving the parts for a gate from a log. Kev sits down with Ashley and a few DO fans to talk homesteading, parenting, localism and then a little bit about his upcoming woodworking class in Ashley's home economics course:
https://rizomaschool.gumroad.com/l/homeeconomics101
Introduction to Woodworking. When a tree falls, we automatically think of firewood, but really that should be the last use we come to, each part should be used to its fullest extent. Wood is the greatest material there is, renewable, durable and infinitely workable. In this lecture, I’ll talk about the basic tools and equipment you need, and how to start on some simple projects. Woodworking for projects and repairs you need for your home.
Episode 65 - Mash Tun Timmy and the Brewers w/ Ashley Colby
On this episode of Doomer Optimism, Ashley Colby (@RizomaSchool) interviews "Mash Tun" Timmy (@MashTunTimmy) and his band of merry brewers about making beer, friendships, and how making things can bring people together.
About "Mash Tun" Timmy
He owns a software company. Interested in complexity, mysticism, the power of male friendship, re-enchanting the world, and brewing beer with his "Watch the Pot" brewery/club, which he helps run from a barn in Michigan.
About Ashley Colby
Ashley is an Environmental Sociologist who studied at Washington State University, the department that founded the subdiscipline. She's interested in and passionate about the myriad creative ways in which people are forming new social worlds in resistance to the failures of late capitalism and resultant climate disasters. I am a qualitative researcher so I tend to focus on the informal spaces of innovation. She's the founder of Rizoma Field School and Rizoma Foundation.
Episode 64 - Existential Risk roundtable
The 64th episode is all about disaster management, community resilience, and existential risk. Tres Crow (@dogeatcrow) hosts for a panel of brilliant people: Scott James (https://scottjames.me/), SJ Beard (@CSERSJ), and Charlotte Cecil (@thrivespring).
About Scott James
BusinessWeek named Scott James as one of America’s Most Promising Social Entrepreneurs and Forbes Magazine profiled him as a Game Changer.
Scott was awarded a Governor’s Award of Excellence in Service by the state of Washington for his nonprofit community preparedness work, Bainbridge Prepares. He was asked by FEMA to present his book – Prepared Neighborhoods: Creating Resilience One Street at a Time – at their national training symposium.
The products from his companies have been featured in publications as diverse as Oprah’s O Magazine, National Geographic, Parents Magazine, the Washington Post, Outside Magazine, and US News & World Report. His film projects range from the opening shorts at the United Nations Climate Change Summits to the breakthrough nature-based series on Netflix (title series: “Moving Art”).
His organizations tend to either focus on “people helping people” such as Fair Trade companies, or “people helping planet” (which of course also help people) such as organizations focused on the climate crisis. More details at: scottjames.me.
About SJ Beard
SJ is a Senior Research Associate and Academic Programme Manager at the Centre for the Study of Existential Risk at the University of Cambridge, an Associated Researcher at the Institute for Futures Studies and an AHRC/BBC New Generation Thinker. I work on the Evaluation of Extreme Technological Risks, and other ethical problems with ensuring a long term future for humanity. I also have a wide range of skills and experiences producing high quality research, training and analysis across education and public affairs.
About Charlotte Cecil
Charlotte studied emergency management at George Brown College in Toronto, Canada. She has been a volunteer responder with various response and recovery groups, and worked for many years as a security consultant in the UK. Following a life-threatening incident in her early 20s, she became interested in emergency preparedness and security, which evolved into a passion for community resilience. She strongly believes that communities which engage in inclusive resilience-building help create safer, healthier and more cohesive societies.
About Tres Crow
Tres is making the world a greener place one urban space at a time with my friends Roots Down. He's a storyteller and marketing dude. He loves natural urbanism and climate justice.
Episode 63 - Matt Berk w/ Ashley Colby and Jason Snyder
This episode has Ashley Colby (@RizomaSchool) and Jason Snyder (@cognazor) chatting up Matt Berk (@mattdberk), a swiss army knife a man with a broad range of interests. From energy crunch, peak oil, and climate change to high performance building and passive housing, this conversation packs a punch.
About Matt Berk
High performance building, passive house, energy and natural resources. Principal at Eco Windows and Facades.
About Ashley Colby
Ashley is an Environmental Sociologist who studied at Washington State University, the department that founded the subdiscipline. She's interested in and passionate about the myriad creative ways in which people are forming new social worlds in resistance to the failures of late capitalism and resultant climate disasters. I am a qualitative researcher so I tend to focus on the informal spaces of innovation. She's the founder of Rizoma Field School and Rizoma Foundation.
About Jason Snyder
Metamodern localist | homesteading, permaculture, bioregional regeneration | meditation, self inquiry, embodied cognition | PhD from Michigan State University, faculty Appalachian State University.
Episode 62 - Uncivilized Tom w/ Tres Crow
Tres Crow (@dogeatcrow) solo hosts this interesting conversation with musician and burgeoning Doomer Optimist, Uncivilized Tom (@uncivilizedtom). This is one of the first episodes that really stray from the normal political discussions and veer into cultural territory...in this case discussing music. Get ready to nerd out about jazz among other things!
About Uncivilized Tom
un-musician, father, husband, leader of the band Uncivilized, and writer at aquarium drunkard.
About Tres Crow
Tres is making the world a greener place one urban space at a time with my friends Roots Down. He's a storyteller and marketing dude. He loves natural urbanism and climate justice.
Episode 61 - Richard Flyer w/ Jason Snyder
This episode of Doomer Optimism has Jason Snyder (@cognazor) having a conversation with Richard Flynn (@Richard_Flyer) about building a sustainable global commonwealth of bioregional economies.
About Richard Flynn
Richard has been building local community and bioregional ecosystems for the last 40 years. He has integrated his lifelong experiences of spiritual formation with his love of nature; trained as a marine and evolutionary biologist, studying pilot whale and dolphin communication; and then applied what he learned to community development. Experiences of what he calls “Nature’s Web” led him to travel to Mexico in the 1980’s to apprentice with an Aztec Indian/Christian medicine woman, a curandara, where he experienced indigenous wisdom and followed with training in Tibetan Buddhist meditation.
He was a leader of non-profit organizations, having formed a neighborhood network in a low income, multi-ethnic area of San Diego, California. This was followed by leading the San Diego Food Bank, and to Reno to lead a statewide microfinance organization. It was then that he shifted focus to become an entrepreneur in the medical field of hyperbaric oxygen therapy, where he continues supporting therapy centers in the western US. Richard Flyer is back in the US after 6 months in Sri Lanka, where he was working with Sarvodaya, the world’s largest national bioregional network of communities. It was Mahatma Gandhi and his vision of a commonwealth of village republics, passed to the Sarvodaya movement in Sri Lanka that inspired him to translate universal principles into an urban western community context. Currently, he is working on various regenerative community projects, what he calls “Symbiotic Networks” --- a syntropic food forest project in North Kohala, Big Island, Hawaii and a local food system network in Oahu, Hawaii. He divides his time between Southern Germany, and Hawaii. Richard is launching the Symbiotic Culture Lab in Fall 2022 to promote Symbiotic Culture and Community to support bioregions around the world that want to learn to activate their own Symbiotic Networks. His book on the birth of the Symbiotic Age will be coming out Fall 2022. Best to find him on Twitter or LinkedIn, as his website, Symbiotic Culture Lab is being launched soon.
About Jason Synder
Metamodern localist | homesteading, permaculture, bioregional regeneration | meditation, self inquiry, embodied cognition | PhD from Michigan State University, faculty Appalachian State University.
Episode 60 - Hermitix x Doomer Optimism panel discussion on collapse and the good life
This episode of Doomer Optimism is a panel discussion that mashes up the Hermitix (@Hermitixpodcast) podcast sphere with the Doomer Optimism sphere. With six guests, the topics covered are as broad and diverse as the guests themselves, but the general through-line is collapse and what constitutes the "good" life.
Panelists include:
Jason Snyder (@cognazor)
Ashley Colby (@RizomaSchool)
James Ellis (@meta_nomad)
Anarcho-Contrarian (@AnarContrarian)
Senseful Ronin (@sensefulronin)
Josh Kearns (@HillbillyNarnia)
Episode 59 - Ilan Kelman w/ Donald Antenen and Ashley Colby
Episode 59 of Doomer Optimism is all about climate change. What's real, what's not, and how to sift through the noise. Ashley (@RizomaSchool) is joined by first-time host Donald Antenen (@riversofeurope) as they host a conversation with Ilan Kelman (@IlanKelman), Professor of Disasters and Health.
About Ilan Kelman
Ilan Kelman, Professor of Disasters and Health, University College London, and Professor II, University of Agder Ilan Kelman is Professor of Disasters and Health at University College London, England and a Professor II at the University of Agder, Kristiansand, Norway.
About Donald Antenen
Donald Antenen lives with his wife and daughters in the Pacific Northwest. He is translating Genesis: Beginning: a Verse Translation of Genesis.
About Ashley Colby
Ashley is an Environmental Sociologist who studied at Washington State University, the department that founded the subdiscipline. She's interested in and passionate about the myriad creative ways in which people are forming new social worlds in resistance to the failures of late capitalism and resultant climate disasters. I am a qualitative researcher so I tend to focus on the informal spaces of innovation. She's the founder of Rizoma Field School and Rizoma Foundation.
Episode 58 - Kairos w/ Jason Snyder
This episode finds two metamodernists, metamoderning together. Jason Snyder (@cognazor) interviews Justin Manchester (@kairos0101) a range of topics, using metamodernism as a launching point for discussing psychedelics, Manchester's work, and our relationship to ideas themselves.
About Justin Manchester
Construction/Engineering. Metamodern mediator in a mad house. 'Tenth Man' who realized his error. Protopian disciple of the Tao; one finger pointing to the sun.
About Jason Snyder
Metamodern localist | homesteading, permaculture, bioregional regeneration | meditation, self inquiry, embodied cognition | PhD from Michigan State University, faculty Appalachian State University.
Episode 57 - Joe Brewer w/ Steven Morris and Jason Snyder
I know we say this all the time around Doomer Optimism, but this time we really have a special episode. Brought live from Colombia, host Steven Morris (@lifesmyth) interviews Joe Brewer (@cognitivepolicy) about the Earth Regenerators community and the work they're doing in Colombia. Jason Snyder (@cognazor) also joins them. Gear up for an optimism-heavy episode.
About Joe Brewer
Joe Brewer has separate bachelors degrees in physics, mathematics, and interdisciplinary studies and a masters in atmospheric sciences. He is a complexity researcher, innovation strategist, experience designer, and serial social entrepreneur who brings a wealth of expertise to the adoption of sustainable solutions at the cultural scale. His experiences as a social entrepreneur and cross-disciplinary scholar weave together a combination of skills dedicated to open collaboration, interactive design, and empowered civic action for catalyzing change toward greater resilience in our turbulent world.
More recently, he has moved to Colombia and is engaged in regenerating an area of dry desert with the aim of returning it to flourishing biodiversity. He has written The Design Pathway for Regenerating Earth and established Earth Regenerators, a community, a study group and a place to share ideas that will bring us closer to a prosocial world, focussed on bioregions where the human and More-Than-Human worlds integrate, where we organise with direct local democracy, create a steady state economy, based on shared values and not on growth, and where we predicate our actions on trusting the good intentions of others.
About Steven Morris
Steven Morris started his journey into then unnamed realm of Doomer Optimism in 2011 when, during the time of a divorce, he stumbled upon 3 of the many early doomer optimist voices: Chris Martenson's Crash Course, John Michael Greer's blog The Archdruid Report, and KMO's C-Realm podcast. These 3 identified the many issues of decline in the world that he could sense but didn't have words for. At the same time they all provided positive possibilities for the future. Steven considers himself an amateur Renaissance Man and Polymath of sorts with a wide variety of interests including: appropriate use of technology, regenerative systems, explorations in consciousness, alternative (sometimes called complementary) currency systems, computer technology, and complex systems. He has worked on multiple award winning independent films, managed warehouse logistics for a small business, run a college radio station and lead ecstatic dance workshops. He is a trained Host for Nora Bateson's People Need People gatherings. He currently generates income from running the audio visual technology behind corporate events and is working with the Commons Engine as the video editor for their upcoming Currency Design for Change Agents master class to be launched this spring. Steven is committed to supporting people find their way through the rapidly changing chaos, especially those who don’t see themselves as homesteaders.
About Jason Snyder
Metamodern localist | homesteading, permaculture, bioregional regeneration | meditation, self inquiry, embodied cognition | PhD from Michigan State University, faculty Appalachian State University.
Episode 56 - Vivid Void and Big Buhddi w/ Ashley Colby and Jason Snyder
This episode of Doomer Optimism has Ashley (@RizomaSchool) and Jason (@cognazor) team up again to interrogate spirituality, religion, and esoterica with Big Buddhi (@embryosophy) and Vivid Void (@VividVoid_).
About Big Buddhi
+𖦹△▼࿅ entheogen flexagon ࿄▽▲𖦹+
About Vivid Void
He believes in everything; nothing is sacred. He believes in nothing; everything is sacred.
About Ashley Colby
Ashley is an Environmental Sociologist who studied at Washington State University, the department that founded the subdiscipline. She's interested in and passionate about the myriad creative ways in which people are forming new social worlds in resistance to the failures of late capitalism and resultant climate disasters. I am a qualitative researcher so I tend to focus on the informal spaces of innovation. She's the founder of Rizoma Field School and Rizoma Foundation.
About Jason Snyder
Metamodern localist | homesteading, permaculture, bioregional regeneration | meditation, self inquiry, embodied cognition | PhD from Michigan State University, faculty Appalachian State University.
Episode 55 - Magdalena Urioste w/ Ashley Colby
This episode of Doomer Optimism has Ashley Colby (@RizomaSchool) speak with Uruguayan regenerative farmer, Magdalena Urioste. Topics range from Magdalena's past as a world traveler in the United States, France, and southeast Asia to her work running Pampeanas Regenerativas Orientales, a regenerative women's ranching group in Uruguay.
About Magdalena Urioste
Magdalena is an uncompromising and passionate custodian of Nature. She studied Agricultural Sciences at the University of the Republic of Uruguay and studied and lived in the US and France, working as a language teacher, interpreter, and translator. Over 30 years she dedicated her life to education and was deeply involved in early childhood and elementary education in Thailand and Vietnam, where she founded two international schools. She lives and works at “Valle Sol”, a regenerative ranch and farm in the beautiful Sierras of Maldonado, Uruguay, where she raises cattle, sheep, horses, and chickens, and grows organic vegetables for her family and the community. The farm serves as the demonstration and learning site of Pampa Oriental, the Savory Hub in Uruguay, dedicated to training and supporting the implementation of Holistic Management in the country. In 2019, she co-founded Pampeanas Regenerativas Orientales, a women network dedicated to promoting the regeneration of the Pampas grasslands and all its inhabitants. She is a peaceful activist and works tirelessly to inform and support other ranchers and policymakers, particularly women, sharing her practical knowledge on all aspects of land, animal and human health.
About Ashley Colby
Ashley is an Environmental Sociologist who studied at Washington State University, the department that founded the subdiscipline. She's interested in and passionate about the myriad creative ways in which people are forming new social worlds in resistance to the failures of late capitalism and resultant climate disasters. I am a qualitative researcher so I tend to focus on the informal spaces of innovation. She's the founder of Rizoma Field School and Rizoma Foundation.
Episode 54 - Ladi Jadi w/ Brooke Bowman and Ashley Colby
This episode of Doomer Optimism is all about community building. Ashley (@RizomaSchool) brings back Brooke Bowman (@gptbrooke) of This Part of Twitter (TPOT) and vibecamp to chat with Ladi Jadi (@LadiJ16), intentional community veteran and otherwise brilliant individual.
About Ladi Jadi
Wife, Mama...off grid living...lover of this world Observations from my perch in the Rocky Mountains.
About Brooke Bowman
Brooke emerged from hardship a few years ago with ideas about how to thrive as humans that she's since been putting into practice by helping coordinate community building projects small and large.
About Ashley Colby
Ashley is an Environmental Sociologist who studied at Washington State University, the department that founded the subdiscipline. She's interested in and passionate about the myriad creative ways in which people are forming new social worlds in resistance to the failures of late capitalism and resultant climate disasters. I am a qualitative researcher so I tend to focus on the informal spaces of innovation. She's the founder of Rizoma Field School and Rizoma Foundation.
Episode 53 - Roland Gunn w/ Jason Snyder and Tres Crow
This is another Appalachian-centric episode of Doomer Optimism. This time, we have Jason Snyder (@cognazor) co-hosting with Tres Crow (@dogeatcrow) as they have a discussion with Roland Gunn (@RolandGunnTN) about cultural geography, the south, and what makes Appalachia such a special place.
About Roland Gunn
He's an anon, so don't ask.
About Jason Snyder
Metamodern localist | homesteading, permaculture, bioregional regeneration | meditation, self inquiry, embodied cognition | PhD from Michigan State University, faculty Appalachian State University.
About Tres Crow
Tres is making the world a greener place one urban space at a time with my friends Roots Down. He's a storyteller and marketing dude. He loves natural urbanism and climate justice.
Episode 52 - John Dios w/ Ashley Colby and Willow Liana
On this episode of Doomer Optimism, Ashley (@RizomaSchool) chats with John Dios (@FibromyalgiaDad) about rural gentrification, homesteading, catholicism, and his project Holy Agony/Cathedral in the Pines. With a special pop-in from Willow Liana (@willlowthewhisp)!
About John Dios
Order, tenderness, piety. Cathedral in the Pines & Isolation Chamber.
About Willow Liana
Willow is a professional social butterfly and mother of a wee babe whom she is raising in the Canadian countryside.
About Ashley Colby
Ashley is an Environmental Sociologist who studied at Washington State University, the department that founded the subdiscipline. She's interested in and passionate about the myriad creative ways in which people are forming new social worlds in resistance to the failures of late capitalism and resultant climate disasters. I am a qualitative researcher so I tend to focus on the informal spaces of innovation. She's the founder of Rizoma Field School and Rizoma Foundation.
Episode 51 - SaraDay Evans w/ Dr. Josh Kearns and Jason Snyder
This episode of Doomer Optimism sees Jason Snyder (@cognazor) hanging out with two native children of Appalachian, returning guest/host Dr. Josh Kearns (@HillbillyNarnia) and SaraDay Evans (@esaraday). What naturally starts as an interesting dissection of the tragi-magic quality to Appalachian living turns inevitably to SaraDay's amazing work with Accelerating Appalachia, a nature-based business accelerator that connects innovative businesses, investors and mentors who aligned with people, place and prosperity. Oh, and SaraDay is Wendell Berry's niece-in-law!
About SaraDay Evans
Sara Day Evans is the Founding Director for Accelerating Appalachia and Co-Founder of Prosperity Collective. She's a sixth generation Kentuckian, and has worked with communities and small businesses across the southeast for over 20 years. She’s served over 300 communities and small businesses in economic development, entrepreneurship and environmental protection and leveraged over $250M in funding in service to the southeast and Appalachian region. She was awarded a presidential commendation from Bill Clinton for her work in the health and livelihood of women living in Appalachian Kentucky through her clean water efforts.
With degrees in Geology/Hydrogeology and a background in water law, she was instrumental in developing Kentucky’s groundwater protection programs and later developed Kentucky’s first ongoing solid waste management fund, resulting in an 85% reduction in illegal dumping and a 25% increase in recycling. She served western North Carolina’s hardest hit counties by developing sustainable economy plans that fit with the people and place of the region and created North Carolina’s Green Economy Resources Directory. She’s particularly proud of the program she developed and implemented to install clean energy systems on farms in western NC’s high-unemployment counties while also training high school and community college students in clean energy installation.
In 2011, Sara Day co-founded the social enterprise Prosperity Collective and inspired by the textile, farming, forest products skills of Appalachians, the expanding world of social entrepreneurs and investing for good, she launched Accelerating Appalachia in 2012 to serve nature-based businesses in Appalachia and beyond.
About Dr. Josh Kearns
Josh is a born-n-bred Appalachian and a native of West-By-God-Virginia and damn proud of it. He studied chemistry and environmental engineering at Clemson (BS), biogeochemistry at Berkeley (MS), and environmental engineering at CU-Boulder (PhD). He's spent years bumming around rural and remote communities in Thailand, Burma/Myanmar, India, Nepal, Ladakh, Sri Lanka, and Mexico, and generally tried to make himself useful while doing so. He's the Director of Science for Aqueous Solutions, and the Chief Technical Advisor for Caminos de Agua, grassroots water and health development organizations in Thailand and Mexico, respectively. He taught environmental engineering courses at NC State University for a couple of years before returning to his roots as a freelance renegade scientist and exponent of ecological transition engineering. He lives with his wife Rachael and all their critters on a small mountaintop homestead in southern Appalachia.
About Jason Snyder
Metamodern localist | homesteading, permaculture, bioregional regeneration | meditation, self inquiry, embodied cognition | PhD from Michigan State University, faculty Appalachian State University.
Episode 50 - Panel w/ Kate Raworth, Nora Bateson, Joe Brewer, Daniel Christian Wahl, and Jason Snyder
On this, our 50th episode of Doomer Optimism, Jason Snyder (@cognazor) hosts a panel discussion with some of the brightest minds in regeneration. Joe Brewer (@cognitivepolicy), Kate Raworth (@KateRaworth), Nora Bateson (@NoraBateson), and Daniel Christian Wahl (@DrDCWahl) come around the virtual table to try to define regeneration, discuss their work, and find a path forward for the regeneration movement.
About Joe Brewer
Joe is a change strategist working on behalf of humanity, and also a complexity researcher, cognitive scientist, and evangelist for the field of culture design.
About Kate Raworth
Author of Doughnut Economics. Co-founder of Doughnut Economics Action Lab. Teaching at Oxford University's Environmental Change Institute.
About Nora Bateson
Filmmaker, lecturer, author. Founder of #WarmData #PeopleNeedPeople #symmathesy #aphanipoiesis. Ecology & society reframing & shifting perception, complexity, and tenderness.
About Daniel Christian Wahl
Catalysing transformative innovation, cultural co-creation, whole systems design, and bioregional regeneration. Author of Designing Regenerative Cultures.
About Jason Snyder
Metamodern localist | homesteading, permaculture, bioregional regeneration | meditation, self inquiry, embodied cognition | PhD from Michigan State University, faculty Appalachian State University.
Episode 49 - Stephanie Lepp w/ Ashley Colby and Jason Snyder
On episode 49 of Doomer Optimism, Ashley Colby (@RizomaSchool) and Jason Snyder (@cognazor) sit down with Stephanie Lepp (@stephlepp), Executive Producer at the Center for Humane Technology. They discuss a range of topics, from Stephanie's roots in Memetic Mediation to the potential for truly humane social networks. It includes a deeper discussion of Stephanie's Synthetic Strategy, a potential framework for enabling collaboration between adjacent tribes.
About Stephanie Lepp
Stephanie Lepp is a producer whose work strives to hold up a mirror — inviting us to grow from what we see.
As the Executive Producer at the Center for Humane Technology, Stephanie leads Your Undivided Attention — the podcast hosted by Tristan Harris and Aza Raskin, which has garnered over 10 million downloads. She's also working to bring the organization into new media.
Infinite Lunchbox is Stephanie's studio for independent work. Recent projects include: Deep Reckonings (deepreckonings.com), a Webby award-winning series of explicitly-marked deepfake videos that imagine morally courageous versions of our public figures, and Reckonings (reckonings.show), a podcast that tells the stories of people who've made all kinds of transformative change, which was named in The Constant Listener's Best Podcasts of 2018.
Stephanie is a member of the Guild of Future Architects. Her work has been covered by outlets such as NPR, Forbes, and the MIT Technology Review, and supported by institutions including the Mozilla Foundation, Sundance Institute, and Yerba Buena Center for the Arts.
To get a feel for Stephanie's work, listen to her interviews on The Jim Rutt Show (jimruttshow.com/stephanie-lepp/) and KALW's Inflection Point (bit.ly/3jGcAEg). The best way to be in dialogue with Stephanie is to follow her on Twitter: @stephlepp
About Ashley Colby
Ashley is an Environmental Sociologist who studied at Washington State University, the department that founded the subdiscipline. She's interested in and passionate about the myriad creative ways in which people are forming new social worlds in resistance to the failures of late capitalism and resultant climate disasters. I am a qualitative researcher so I tend to focus on the informal spaces of innovation. She's the founder of Rizoma Field School and Rizoma Foundation.
About Jason Snyder
Metamodern localist | homesteading, permaculture, bioregional regeneration | meditation, self inquiry, embodied cognition | PhD from Michigan State University, faculty Appalachian State University.
Episode 48 - Bosco and Ourania w/ Ashley Colby
On this episode, Ashley Colby (@RizomaSchool) continues her informal "Based Mommy" series with two incredible anon women, Bosco (@selentelechia) and Ourania (@ouranometrian). Topics obviously include motherhood, but also spreads into the natalism debate, the ideal number of kiddos, and what exactly "based" mothering is.
About Bosco
Bosco, or Selene is an aspiring celestial body and cyberpunk tradwife.
About Ourania
Ourania is a Maenad Queen, computer wrangler, aspiring to go from primiparous to quintiparous.
About Ashley Colby
Ashley is an Environmental Sociologist who studied at Washington State University, the department that founded the subdiscipline. She's interested in and passionate about the myriad creative ways in which people are forming new social worlds in resistance to the failures of late capitalism and resultant climate disasters. I am a qualitative researcher so I tend to focus on the informal spaces of innovation. She's the founder of Rizoma Field School and Rizoma Foundation.
Episode 47 - Simon Mostafa w/ Dr. Josh Kearns and Jason Snyder
The guest on this episode of Doomer Optimism is world traveler and do-gooder Simon Mostafa, who joined hosts Josh Kearns (@HillbillyNarnia) and Jason Snyder (@cognazor) from Spain, where he is currently working on various homesteading projects .Topics include: water and sanitation projects in the developing world, Mostafa's work in Chiapas and Spain, and facing down the existential crises of our time.
About Simon Mostafa
After graduating from Colorado University with a Ph.D. in Environmental Engineering, Mostafa moved to Chiapas to work as the Director of Research for Cántaro Azul, focusing on water sanitation research. He now lives in Spain doing community homesteading work.
About Dr. Josh Kearns
Josh is a born-n-bred Appalachian and a native of West-By-God-Virginia and damn proud of it. He studied chemistry and environmental engineering at Clemson (BS), biogeochemistry at Berkeley (MS), and environmental engineering at CU-Boulder (PhD). He's spent years bumming around rural and remote communities in Thailand, Burma/Myanmar, India, Nepal, Ladakh, Sri Lanka, and Mexico, and generally tried to make himself useful while doing so. He's the Director of Science for Aqueous Solutions, and the Chief Technical Advisor for Caminos de Agua, grassroots water and health development organizations in Thailand and Mexico, respectively. He taught environmental engineering courses at NC State University for a couple of years before returning to his roots as a freelance renegade scientist and exponent of ecological transition engineering. He lives with his wife Rachael and all their critters on a small mountaintop homestead in southern Appalachia.
About Jason Snyder
Metamodern localist | homesteading, permaculture, bioregional regeneration | meditation, self inquiry, embodied cognition | PhD from Michigan State University, faculty Appalachian State University.
Episode 46 - James Ellis w/ Ashley Colby and Jason Snyder
On this episode of Doomer Optimism, first-time hosts Ashley Colby (@RizomaSchool) and Jason Snyder (@cognazor) have a beautiful conversation with the Meta Nomad himself, James Ellis (@meta_nomad). From accelerationism to the very meaning of Doomer Optimism itself, this conversation perfectly encapsulates the Nick Land to Wendell Berry pipeline.
About James Ellis
James Ellis studied fine art at Norwich University of the Arts, after finishing his degree he completed an M.A. in continental philosophy at Staffordshire University. He blogs at Meta-Nomad and is the host of Hermitix Podcast.
About Ashley Colby
Ashley is an Environmental Sociologist who studied at Washington State University, the department that founded the subdiscipline. She's interested in and passionate about the myriad creative ways in which people are forming new social worlds in resistance to the failures of late capitalism and resultant climate disasters. I am a qualitative researcher so I tend to focus on the informal spaces of innovation. She's the founder of Rizoma Field School and Rizoma Foundation.
About Jason Snyder
Metamodern localist | homesteading, permaculture, bioregional regeneration | meditation, self inquiry, embodied cognition | PhD from Michigan State University, faculty Appalachian State University.
Episode 45 - Scott Johnson w/ Ashley Colby and Dr. Josh Kearns
On this episode of Doomer Optimism, first time host Josh Kearns (@HillbillyNarnia) teams up with Ashley Colby (@RizomaSchool) to discuss potential low tech futures with Scott Johnson (@Low_Techno), the founder of the Low Tech Institute in Wisconsin.
About Scott Johnson
Scott has been carrying out research into low tech since tried to build a catapult in 6th grade. He is a jack of all trades, but a master of none, including carpentry, gardening, electric, plumbing, beekeeping, brewing, butchery, baking, and more. His interest in past technologies led to a Ph.D. in anthropology (Tulane University, 2012), focusing on archaeology. He’s taught at universities across the US and Canada and led international field projects funded by the National Science Foundation and National Geographic Society. He is also the author of several books (Translating Maya Hieroglyphs, Why Did Ancient Civilizations Fail?). Today, he works at the Low Technology Institute and lives in the historic village of Cooksville, Wisconsin (just south of Madison), with his wife, kid, and dog. He enjoys a good cup of tea, aikido, running, and books. He is founder of the Low Tech Institute based in Wisconsin.
About Ashley Colby
Ashley is an Environmental Sociologist who studied at Washington State University, the department that founded the subdiscipline. She's interested in and passionate about the myriad creative ways in which people are forming new social worlds in resistance to the failures of late capitalism and resultant climate disasters. I am a qualitative researcher so I tend to focus on the informal spaces of innovation. She's the founder of Rizoma Field School and Rizoma Foundation.
About Dr. Josh Kearns
Josh is a born-n-bred Appalachian and a native of West-By-God-Virginia and damn proud of it. He studied chemistry and environmental engineering at Clemson (BS), biogeochemistry at Berkeley (MS), and environmental engineering at CU-Boulder (PhD). He's spent years bumming around rural and remote communities in Thailand, Burma/Myanmar, India, Nepal, Ladakh, Sri Lanka, and Mexico, and generally tried to make himself useful while doing so. He's the Director of Science for Aqueous Solutions, and the Chief Technical Advisor for Caminos de Agua, grassroots water and health development organizations in Thailand and Mexico, respectively. He taught environmental engineering courses at NC State University for a couple of years before returning to his roots as a freelance renegade scientist and exponent of ecological transition engineering. He lives with his wife Rachael and all their critters on a small mountaintop homestead in southern Appalachia.
Episode 44 - Magnus Popp w/ Ashley Colby
On this episode of Doomer Optimism we're going down south with Magnus Popp and Ashley Colby (@RizomaSchool), two Doomer Optimists that are cutting a new path forward in Uruguay. In this wide-ranging conversation, Ashley and Magnus chat about Magnus' past as a researcher in evolutionary biology, and his new life as a free man, homesteader, and self-described "beer brewing control freakish evolutionary biologist."
About Magnus Popp
Magnus Popp is a PhD in Evolutionary Biology, a Swedish homesteader in Uruguay living with his Argentinean wife Virginia and two kids. He is a self described beer brewing control freakish evolutionary biologist.
About Ashley Colby
Ashley is an Environmental Sociologist who studied at Washington State University, the department that founded the subdiscipline. She's interested in and passionate about the myriad creative ways in which people are forming new social worlds in resistance to the failures of late capitalism and resultant climate disasters. I am a qualitative researcher so I tend to focus on the informal spaces of innovation. She's the founder of Rizoma Field School and Rizoma Foundation.
Episode 43 - Rich Bartlett w/ Ashley Colby
Our 43rd episode of Doomer Optimism sees Ashley Colby (@RizomaSchool) having a one on one chat with Rich Bartlett (@RichDecibels), writer, intellectual, and founder of Loomio and The Hum. Conversation ranges from what constitutes a "cult," how to organize effective organizations, and the intersection of community and governance.
About Rich Bartlett
Richard D. Bartlett is one of those people with a lot of websites. He's the co-founder of Loomio, a platform for small-scale digital democracy inspired by the 2011 Occupy Movement. He's also co-leader of The Hum, a training & consulting company that supports decentralised organisations to work without domination hierarchies. He's also the co-director of the Enspiral Foundation, which is a professional network of friends supporting each other to do more meaningful work in the world. And he's the author of a community-building methodology called Microsolidarity.
About Ashley Colby
Ashley is an Environmental Sociologist who studied at Washington State University, the department that founded the subdiscipline. She's interested in and passionate about the myriad creative ways in which people are forming new social worlds in resistance to the failures of late capitalism and resultant climate disasters. I am a qualitative researcher so I tend to focus on the informal spaces of innovation. She's the founder of Rizoma Field School and Rizoma Foundation.
Episode 42 - James Pogue w/ Donald Antenen
On this episode, first time-host Donald Antenen (