Doomer Optimism

Join us in this episode as Ashley and Nate delve into reforming agriculture with Greg Gunthorp. Greg reflects on the evolution of agriculture and his dedication to reforming the industry alongside Ashley and Nate. Greg Gunthorp is a proud independent family farmer at Gunthorp Farms. With a deep-rooted commitment to sustainable and high-quality farming practices, Greg continues the family legacy of rearing pasture-raised pigs. His unwavering dedication to preserving traditional values while navigating the challenges of the modern agricultural landscape sets him apart as a resilient and forward-thinking steward of the land.

Ashley, Donald and Josh discuss what would happen in the case of a digital apocalypse and how to embrace lower technologies from landline phones to family poetry readings.

Tres Crow and Sim Gooder talk with Kevin Espiritu about Epic Gardening, food production maxing, inspiring your neighbours, critical mass of small-scale food production, and running a seed business in the age of the internet. Kevin Espiritu is the founder and CEO of Epic Gardening, the world’s most-followed gardening brand and online garden store. As a self-taught gardener, Espiritu has spent over a decade producing educational gardening content across YouTube, TikTok, Instagram, Facebook, the Epic Gardening podcast, and the Epic Gardening website. He’s amassed over 3.6 million social media followers, 11 million podcast downloads, and 42 million blog visits. Additionally, Espiritu has authored two books, ‘Field Guide to Urban Gardening: How to Grow Plants, No Matter Where You Live” and “Grow Bag Gardening: The Revolutionary Way to Grow Bountiful Vegetables, Herbs, Fruits, and Flowers in Lightweight, Eco-friendly Fabric Pots.” Kevin currently lives in San Diego, California, at his Epic Homestead. His favorite plants are beans and peas.

In this episode Ashley and Jason have a conversation with Neal Gorenflo (@gorenflo ) and Daniel London (@dlondonwortel ) on the theme of solidarity and bioregional economies. Specifically, where the solidarity and bioregonalist movements intersect, blind spots of each, and where they can compliment each other to create a viable vision for sustainable and equitable economies moving forward. Neal Gorenflo is the co-founder and board president of Shareable, an award-winning nonprofit news, action network, and consultancy for the real sharing economy (plus a dad, husband, community gardener, and budding urban forester). An epiphany in 2004 inspired Neal to leave the corporate world to help people and communities share resources. Subsequently, Neal co-founded Shareable and led it from 2009-2022 as Executive Director. In the process, he became knowledgeable about resource sharing, the commons, and the solidarity economy through practice, activism, entrepreneurship, writing, publishing (4,000+ articles), consulting, and public speaking. He's consulted for Institute for the Future, Stanford University, Lowe's Home Improvement, and numerous startups. His expertise has been featured by The Today Show, NBC Nightly News, CBS Sunday Morning, Wired, Fast Company, Christian Science Monitor, Grist, and Sunset Magazine. He is an experienced public speaker with countless appearances at conferences on four continents over the last decade. His writing is featured in YES! Magazine, 7x7 Magazine, The Urbanist, and the anthologies The Wealth of the Commons, Open Design Now, and Enabling City. He's editor, publisher or author of 10 books including "Sharing Cities: Activating the Urban Commons" and "Share or Die". In 2020, he chronicled his pandemic experiences resulting in the book, "A Year of Living Locally." Neal earned a masters with distinction from Georgetown University's Communication, Culture & Technology program and BAs in American Studies and English Literature with distinction from George Mason University. Contact him at neal at shareable dot net. Daniel Wortel-London is a historian and advocate of economic and ecological justice. He currently serves as Policy Specialist for the Center for the Advancement of the Steady State Economy. He has also served as Knowledge Co-Lead for the Wellbeing Economy Alliance and Research Coordinator for the CivWorld project at Demos. He earned his Ph.D. in History from New York University, where his dissertation focused on the history of alternative economic development strategies in New York City. This project, titled "The Menace of Prosperity," is currently under advanced contract with the University of Chicago Press. A native of Hoboken, Dan works out of West Orange, NJ. You can find him on X @‌dlondonwortel, and his articles can be found at www.publicspaced.com https://www.publicspaced.com/

In this episode Jason and Josh talk with Tom Murphy, author of the blog Do The Math, about the inherently unsustainable nature of modernity and the delusion of infinite growth on a finite planet. As part of this they discuss his early retirement from academia as a successful astrophysicist at the University of California, his growing interest in indigenous wisdom and lifeways, the long view of earth history and where we’re going, and his realization that the end of modernity doesn’t mean the end of humanity Tom’s university bio: I am a Professor in the physics department at UCSD, and the Associate Director of CASS, the Center for Astrophysics and Space Sciences. From 2003–2020, I led the APOLLO project as an ultra-precise test of General Relativity using the technique of lunar laser ranging. My interests are transitioning to quantitative assessment of the challenges associated with long-term human success on a finite planet. In November 2021, I was one of five founders of the Planetary Limits Academic Network, aiming to connect scholars from all disciplines who are concerned about the deep systemic challenges humanity faces this century. Our "launch" paper gives the background, titled Modernity is Incompatible with Planetary Limits: Developing a PLAN for the Future. In 2014, I started a company (Aircraft Avoidance Systems) to provide safety devices for observatories using lasers for scientific research. Tom’s blog, Do the Math: https://dothemath.ucsd.edu/

Nate is joined by Sam Knowlton to explore agroforestry and sustainable agriculture practices. In this episode, Nate and Sam challenge the conventional narrative that advocates for high-tech, high-input agriculture to feed the world. Sam is an agronomist and the founder of SoilSymbiotics, a regenerative agronomy company, as well as the forthcoming venture, Soma Farm Group. He has worked on the ground with over 300 farms in 9 countries, helping large-scale operations transition from chemically intense production to integrated biological farming systems.

DO podcast alumnus Chris Smaje (@csmaje) returns to deflect eco-modernist criticisms of his agrarian vision laid out in “A Small Farm Future” and most recent book “Saying NO to a Farm-Free Future.” Specifically, we examine evidence for the claim that traditional/territorial food webs supply 70-80% of the nutrition people intake globally, and discuss what this means for the potential of small biodiverse farming to “feed the world.” Reasons for dispute of this claim include that much food production in traditional local food webs is “invisibilized” to top-down technocrats using data collected of commodity crops produced for the industrial food chain. This is one of several blind spots we discuss that characterize elites’ and technocrats’ worldviews, and partially explains why their prescriptions fail to deliver on promised sustainability and “equity” goals. In this episode, Chris, Jason and Josh ponder whether it’s worth it trying to persuade technocratic elites of their errors, or instead turn our attention and efforts to different natural constituencies better oriented to implementing diverse approaches to agrarian bioregionalism. We consider what barriers people may face to getting involved and how to overcome those barriers. The whole conversation pivots on the notion of Bioregional Self-Provision as a method for securing resilience for affluent-but-fragile “developed” regions while alleviating ecosystem degradation and impoverishing exploitation on poor peripheral “underdeveloped” regions, facilitating their own self-provision from local resources. Chris’ website, blog, and links to books: https://chrissmaje.com ETC Group report: “Small-scale farmers and peasants still feed the world”

painkillersTending Our Dead Ourselves with Joe Orso and Susan Nesbit Joe Orso talks to death doula Susan Nesbit about the many gifts that come with tending the bodies of our deceased loved ones at home. Their conversation covers home vigils, home burials, home funerals, washing the body after death, and how these practices have historically been done by families and communities, not professionals. They also discuss how death, like birth, has become a highly medicalized experience, in which pain-killers and high costs are the norm. Susan, who doesn't take money for her death doula practice, helped found Threshold Care Circle, an all-volunteer organization in southwest Wisconsin that integrates after-death care into family and community life. She and other volunteers supported Joe's family in doing home-based care after his father's death last winter. Threshold Care Circle: https://www.thresholdcarecircle.org/ National Home Funeral Alliance: https://www.homefuneralalliance.org/ National End-of-Life Doula Alliance: https://www.nedalliance.org/ The Oar and the Umbrella (where you can find Joe's "Home Burial" essay series): https://oarandumbrella.substack.com/t/home-burial-essays-after-my-fathers

East Tennessee farmer Brian Miller discusses his new book “Kayaking with Lambs” with Jason and Josh. The book, published by Front Porch Republic, features a panoply of sensorial and spiritual experiences observed over 25 years of farming and animal husbandry. Our conversation slaloms around Brian’s roots in anarchism and how these led him to an agrarian life, the need for renewed manual competency and appreciation for the practical arts particularly among the youth, gender relationships, and the reasonable choice of firearms for homestead protection, and the difficulties implied by rural gentrification. Brian runs Winged Elm Farm with his wife Cindy, blogs at South Roane Agrarian, and can be reached at bmiller@wingedelmfarm.com.

Sally Thomas joins Donald for another installment of the Doomer Optimism Literary Hour. They discuss her novel Works of Mercy, American poetry past and present, homeschooling, and family life. Sally Thomas is a poet and fiction writer, and author of two poetry collections, Motherland and the forthcoming Among the Living, both from Able Muse Press. Her novel, Works of Mercy, was published in 2022 by Wiseblood Books, and a short-story collection, The Blackbird and Other Stories is coming from the same publisher in the summer of 2024. With Micah Mattix, she co-edited an anthology, Christian Poetry in America Since 1940, which received Christianity Today’s 2023 Book Award in Culture and the Arts. As associate poetry editor for the New York Sun, she contributes regularly to the weekday Poem of the Day feature. The mother of four grown children, she lives quietly in North Carolina with her husband and a dog. Her novel is available from Wise Blood Books: https://www.wisebloodbooks.com/store/p123/Works-of-Mery-by-Sally-Thomas.html