Doomer Optimism

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.

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.

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.

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.

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

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/

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.

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.

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.

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.