Doomer Optimism

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.

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.

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

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.

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

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. 

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

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.

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

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