Cramming for the Apocalypse Podcast

We’re launching this next season of the podcast with a conversation that helps bridge our last season (practical preparedness) with this season’s focus on The Commons. It felt perfect to launch with my discussion with Eric Shonkwiler.

Eric’ s new book, Red Prepper: Building Collective Resilience in the Age of Collapse, builds off his writing and work on his When/If newsletter.

I loved Red Prepper, because it is another way to change the narrative about preparedness. It is not about individualism and hoarding resources and stockpiling guns and ammunition. Rather, it is about care and collective action. Eric does an excellent job of creating a narrative that draws you into the story, showing you how and why we should be preparing as a community, while also including easy and practical guidance.

As promised, here are the resources noted in the episode:

Mutual aid resources

* Mutual Aid: A Factor of Evolution by Peter Kropotkin

* A Visual History of Mutual Aid by Ariel Aberg-Riger

Eric’s book recommendations

* Black Against Empire: The History and Politics of the Black Panther Party by Joshua Bloom and Waldo E Martin Jr

* Black Flags and Windmills: Hope, Anarchy, and the Common Ground Collective by Scott Crow

I also mentioned a story I wrote for Civil Eats last year about the North Coast Emergency Food System Partnership; a collaboration of organizations and farms up the North Coast of California to create a more agile, localized food system in the face of disaster and beyond. You can read that story here.

Thanks again for listening and continuing to support this work! If you are a regular listener, consider upgrading to paid. Can’t swing that? Leave me a tip here or you can buy some Cramming swag on Bonfire.

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Hello Crammers!

Welcome back for another season of the Cramming for the Apocalypse podcast!

I’m really excited about Season 3 as it is focused on something near and dear to my heart, and a huge part of my newsletter and the preparedness work that I’m doing: howe we build the public commons.

I’m launching with this first episode of season 3, “Manifesting the Commons,” on U.S. Election Day, specifically, because I think the voting part is just the beginning. It is all a part of our civic responsibility as engaged citizens, but it is nowhere near enough.

In an era of seemingly unprecedented movement towards the privatization (or at least an escalation of decades of increasing privatization) of everything in America, I felt compelled to weigh in.

In a world that’s run by literal billionaires, we have been gaslit to believe we are closer to achieving that level of wealth than to destitution. Yet, when we experience a personal catastrophic life change—a job loss, a house fire, or a cancer diagnosis—the precariousness of our situation becomes so exceptionally apparent. We can’t rely on our government to catch us, and many must crowdsource to stay afloat. Billed by the media as “heartwarming stories” of the community, this is actually a tragedy. This is not our society working for us. It’s a society working for the wealthy. While the collective leaning in to support one another in crisis is a nice thing, we could actually have a society built for that collective support.

On a Substack post I wrote last spring about how stadiums for national franchise teams don’t actually benefit the community, reader, Tia, commented on this as an example of how “we privatize gains and socialize losses.” It’s the “trickle-down economics” argument that has shown us over 3+ decades that the only people it works for are the rich. The only way to truly be a society for all people is to invest in the public. But I think we can take it further, not to create this binary between “private” and “public” which feels like more of a radical approach to reclaiming our public goods.

And so I’m dedicating this entire season of the Cramming for the Apocalypse podcast to showing ways people and organizations are already creating a society that is focused on the public good. Where community and individual well-being is prioritized over profit. And where they are taking steps to create a public commons meant to support and work for everyone.

To launch on this election day, though, I’m going to read the post that sent me on this journey to creating this season: “A Manifesto for the Commons.”

Enjoy!

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Apologies for the long delay in posting the final two episodes of the Charm of the Wilderness podcast. But they come at a good time to reinvest in our thinking about public lands. Enjoy!

I discovered the National Park Mystery Series a little over a year ago when a friend recommended it. Quickly, the series became my son and my nightly read-together books that got us through many months. We both became attached to the characters, middle schoolers, Jake, Amber, and Wes, and felt incredibly invested in their adventures. Deep into the series and this research, I knew I had to have the series author, Aaron Johnson on the podcast.

The series takes the three main characters through ten national parks on a two-month vacation with their families. Truly a trip of a lifetime! And it takes readers through the history, landscape, and current challenges the parks face.

In today’s episode, I talk with Aaron about the process of writing the books, what he loves about the national parks, and what he hopes readers will get out of the series. My son, Finch, also makes a brief appearance thanks to the interview having been scheduled on a day school was closed.

You can buy the first five books of the series wherever books or sold or online at www.nationalparkmysteryseries.com. You can also pre-order Book 6, which comes out this summer! A special plug, when you order the books from the series’ website, you get special gifts such as stickers and bookmarks!

In the episode, Aaron also mentioned that one of his favorite books that he’s read in the research for the series is I Am the Grand Canyon: The Story of the Havasupai People by Stephen Hirst.

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In the Charm of the Wilderness book project, I’m using the natural elements to shape the narrative. That theme guides each park or trip. The first of all of those was a trip to Yosemite National Park I took last year that centered on fire.

The two guys I interview this week played a big role in understanding the landscape of fire and fire management in the United States and the National Park Service and I’m excited for you two get to hear from them.

Stephen Pyne is emeritus professor from Arizona State University and one of the preeminent fire historians in the United States. His work includes The Pyrocene: How We Created an Age of Fire, and What Happens Next and the book that helped me learn about fire and fire management in Yosemite, Pyrocene Park: A Journey into the Fire History of Yosemite National Park.

Tom Nichols was the chief of fire and aviation for the National Park Service from 2005-2014. Worked in NPS from 1977-2014.

Note: I very clearly made a error in the video/audio with Tom’s bio noting his position with the NPS was from 2015 to 2014—the correct dates are 2005 to 2014.

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As you’re reading or listening to this, I will be exploring Yellowstone National Park with my family. It’s the perfect on-theme activity for this series! So while I’m out with my family exploring America’s first national park, please enjoy a couple more episodes of the Charm of the Wilderness series.

In the meantime, I hope you’re off on some fun summer adventures and I’ll be back with more written content in a couple of weeks!

When discussing and writing about the outdoors, there’s always an elephant in the room: the sheer Whiteness of the outdoors space. The major outdoor brands have admittedly struggled to diversify, and there’s a particular White Male Broey-ness that has always made me feel uncomfortable with the whole industry. I wrote about that a few months ago as well.

Things are changing, though, but it’s largely been led by people of color who have carved out their corner of the internet and the industry (I’ll include some links of folks to follow below). One area, though, where diversity in the outdoors has lagged, but is largely unacknowledged, is in the national parks. This, of course, is an extension of the general lack of diversity in outdoor spaces, but it’s important because these are federally run spaces that should be by and for all people. Yet they don’t represent the diversity of our nation.

That’s why I wanted to bring on KangJae Jerry Lee to the podcast, as he is one of a little more than a dozen researchers specifically looking at diversity in the outdoors. In 2021, he and his colleagues published a study they conducted about who does and does not visit the National Park Service units. They found that Black, Hispanic, and lower-income folks were least likely to visit compared to White respondents and that there was an increased concern about safety, and preferred alternate vacation locations such as sporting events, theme parks, and socially and culturally oriented destinations. Also, among those demographics, there was less knowledge about the NPS units.

Jerry and I talk all about this on the episode as well as his book, Violent and Verdant: Systemic Injustice in Public Parks in the U.S., which expands upon the research about diversity in the NPS units and generally about how White people have segregated and dominated outdoor and green spaces in both urban and rural areas.

Check out Jerry’s book from the library and learn more about him here.

And as promised, here are some of the people and BIPOC-focused organizations to check out to see how they’re advocating for diversifying the outdoors:

* Melanin Basecamp

* Afro Outdoors

* Biking While Black (full disclosure, I work on the communications with BWB!)

* Latino Outdoors

* José González (not to be confused with the well-known musician :) ).

* Teresa Baker

* Nelson Holland

Put any recommendations you have in the comments as well

Now enjoy the episode!

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Get full access to Cramming for the Apocalypse at crammingfortheapocalypse.substack.com/subscribe

In the aftermath of what’s been dubbed the “Valentine’s Day Massacre,” where the Trump Administration unceremoniously fired thousands of federal workers, Will C. De Man’s social media platform skyrocketed thanks to a post on Instagram expressing his empathy for the park rangers who lost their jobs. As a seventh-grade history teacher who also wrote the book A Short History of the National Parks: The Southeast, he hadn’t seen himself as an “advocate,” per se, but suddenly, with that one post, that is exactly what he became.

Since then, not only has Will written another book (published last month!), Creating the National Parks: Yellowstone, Glacier and Grand Teton, but he has also become one of the prominent content creators on social media helping to spread the word about the stripping down of our public lands by this Administration.

In this week’s episode, I talk with Will all about how he got here, interesting facts and information he’s learned while researching his books, how to advocate for your favorite public lands, and his favorite national park.

You can find Will at nationalparkhistory.substack.com, www.nationalparkhistory.com, on Instagram at nationalparkhistory, and you can find both his books on Bookshop.com.

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In January 2021, The Smithsonian Magazine published an article called “The Lost History of Yellowstone.” I was already in the middle of an awakening about the origins of how the land of North America became settler land (i.e., it was stolen from Indigenous peoples). The article interviews and follows researchers who had recently uncovered artifacts that proved what is now called Yellowstone National Park was a major thoroughfare for Native communities traveling through the Northern Plains region.

These artifacts were not only interesting archeology, but they proved that the land so many of us were taught was uninhabited before it became a national park was, in fact, inhabited, and it was sacred ground. It thwarted the myth that we were all sold, which actually covered up the atrocities committed by the U.S. government to force Native peoples out of the region.

In that story, then-research associate, Shane Doyle, who is a member of the Apsaalooke (Crow) Nation, was also interviewed. The story’s author, Andrew Geiger read a quote from a current-day Yellowstone brochure to Doyle and his colleague Doug MacDonald: “When you watch animals in Yellowstone, you glimpse the world as it was before humans.”

Geiger notes that Doyle burst out laughing and responded:

“The park is a slap in the face to Native people. There is almost no mention of the dispossession and violence that happened. We have essentially been erased from the park, and that leads to a lot of hard feelings, although we do love to go to Yellowstone and reminisce about our ancestors living there in a good way.”

I have continued to go back to this story time and again and knew that I wanted to talk with Shane for this book and podcast. So when Betsy Gaines Quammen told me that she and Shane were also friends (they both live in Boseman!) I was thrilled.

Since then, Shane has gone on to write a ton about Indigenous history and is doing so much for his community in Boseman. I’m excited for you to learn from him in this podcast.

Shane is in the process of planning a Tipi Village in Yellowstone for September 2026, which is meant to celebrate the Indigenous connection to the park. Stay tuned for more information on that.

For more of Shane’s writing, check out these stories:

* Land of Steam | National Parks Conservation Association

* Commemorating Yellowstone’s 150th Birthday with the Park’s ‘First Family’ | National Parks Conservation Association

* Actors: Making Meaning and Medicine in the Land of the Burning Ground | Mountain Outlaw

* Brilliance and Beauty: Celebrating the Gift of a Blackfoot Map | Distinctly Montana

* Following the Footsteps | Outside Bozeman

* Above the Sky | Big Sky Journal

Cramming for the Apocalypse is a reader-supported publication. To receive new posts and support my work, consider becoming a free or paid subscriber.

Get full access to Cramming for the Apocalypse at crammingfortheapocalypse.substack.com/subscribe

Hello Crammers!

I’m excited to bring you the rest of the Charm of the Wildrness podcast directly to your feeds! We’ve gotten some great traction over on the podcast platforms, but many of you haven’t had the chance to hear from the amazing people I brought to the podcast, so here we are in your feed.

I’ll be publishing a couple of episodes per week, so you get to hear all 9 episodes of this series and the amazing people I got to talk with.

This week I talk with Betsy Gaines Quammen about public lands and her book American Zion!

When my family was traveling to the National Parks in Southern Utah last November, I happened to be reading American Zion: Cliven Bundy, God, & Public Lands in the West by Betsy Gaines Quammen, and I became a little bit obsessed. The moment I put it down, I emailed Betsy to interview her for the book I’m working on and to invite her to be one of my inaugural guests for the podcast.

I’m excited for you to hear more from Betsy because she’s pretty badass and such a fun person. American Zion was her first book in 2020, so lucky you get a whole set of books to read of hers, all of which focus in some way on the mythologies we tell ourselves in the American West.

Here are links to her books and other resources we mention in this episode.

Betsy’s Books:

* This Haunted Land: Reckoning with Ghosts and Stories that Shape America (Forthcoming September 2026, Torrey House Press) — PRE-ORDER NOW!

* True West: Myth and Mending on the Far Side of America (2023, Torrey House Press)

* American Zion: Cliven Bundy, God, & Public Lands in the West (2020, Torrey House Press)

Other Resources Referenced:

* Bundyville Podcast — produced by Oregon Public Broadcasting and created and hosted by Leah Sotille. This is a great deep-dive into the Bundy family and links the events they led to Trump’s America.

* Public Lands & Grazing investigative report by High Country News and ProPublica

Find Betsy Online

www.betsygainesquammen.com

@ betsygainesquammen

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Get full access to Cramming for the Apocalypse at crammingfortheapocalypse.substack.com/subscribe

Welcome to the Charm of the Wilderness podcast! I’m thrilled to release our inaugural episode featuring not only an incredible educator, but one of my oldest and best friends, Allison Depuy.

If you’re listening to this on the Cramming for the Apocalypse feed, make sure to Subscribe to this podcast at Charm of the Wilderness on Substack or you can find it wherever you get your podcasts.

In this episode, we talk about innovative ways to bring the outdoors to the classroom and how we can inspire our kids to be engaged in nature. Additionally, Alli helps me introduce the podcast and what Charm of the Wilderness is all about.

About Alli

Alli DePuy is the CEO of Inspired Classroom, is an accomplished educator, curriculum designer, and EdTech innovator with 25 years of experience. Through Inspired Classroom, she collaborates across the public and private sectors to design and implement project-based education experiences, innovative technologies, and mentorship programs that engage learners of all ages. Her work is widely recognized across Montana and supported by educators, organizations, the Office of Public Instruction, the Office of the Governor, and other state leaders.

Connect with us about Curio Camp

In this episode, Alli and I discussed a project that we’re working on, an interactive card deck for kids to be inspired and excited about nature. These decks include prompts for games, meditations, fun facts, and other ways to engage kids in the places they’re visiting.

Curio Camp is in the Beta stages and we are looking for families of elementary-age kids traveling to state or national parks this summer to help test out the product!

If this describes you, COMPLETE THIS FORM and we will be in touch! to Cramming for the Apocalypse is a reader-supported publication. To receive new posts and support my work, consider becoming a free or paid subscriber.

Cramming for the Apocalypse is a reader-supported publication. To receive new posts and support my work, consider becoming a free or paid subscriber.

Get full access to Cramming for the Apocalypse at crammingfortheapocalypse.substack.com/subscribe

Did you know this Thursday, October 16th is The Great ShakeOut? It’s a day to focus on getting ready for an earthquake. However, we at “Cramming” are using it as a day to get ready for all disasters. So we’re coming at you with a special bonus episode to introduce you to another great tool out there.

But first, don’t forget that also on Thursday, we are hosting a virtual workshop called “Get Your Go Bag Together” in partnership with MakeWith PDX. This virtual workshop is on Thursday, October 16th from 5-7pm Pacific Time. We have sliding scale pricing AND we’re offering a special opportunity to purchase some go-bag essentials.

REGISTER HERE

Now, onto my discussion with Jennifer Heller.

“Here Comes the Apocalypse”

In this conversation, I talk with designer and fellow “liberal prepper,” Jennifer Heller about a really great resource she created for regular people to not feel super overwhelmed by preparedness.

You can learn about Jennifer in this episode. In the meantime, check out here website HERE AT www.herecomestheapocalypse.com. There you can get her really exceptional (and dare I say fun?!) Disaster Playbook.

Additionally, we spoke about a story I wrote about the North Coast Emergency Food System Partnership for Civil Eats—you can find that story here.

Thank you for listening!

Cramming for the Apocalypse is a reader-supported publication. To receive new posts and support my work, consider becoming a free or paid subscriber.

Get full access to Cramming for the Apocalypse at crammingfortheapocalypse.substack.com/subscribe