Doomer Optimism

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/⁠

20 Apr 20231h 9min

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.

15 Apr 20231h 1min

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.

13 Apr 20231h 6min

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.

8 Apr 20231h 15min

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

5 Apr 20231h 30min

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: Ingripauline@gamil.com

30 Mars 20231h 11min

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

28 Mars 202351min

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.

23 Mars 20231h 33min