Locally Grown with Jim Fini

Jim Kunstler’s Substack is a must read for me each week. He synthesizes the current events of the week through his wry and irreverent sense of humor.  It’s rare a that journalist can tell you the facts and make you laugh at the same time. 

Jim was born in New York City in 1948 and spent most of his childhood there. He has worked as a reporter and feature writer for a number of newspapers including Rolling Stone Magazine and my favorite alt magazine of in the 80’s, the Boston Phoenix. In 1975, he started as a full-time author, writing 9 fiction and non-fiction books about politics, culture, and architecture. 

His 1993 book, The Geography of Nowhere: The Rise and Decline of America's Man-Made Landscape, traces America's evolution from a nation of Main Streets and coherent communities to a land where cities are dead zones and the countryside is a wasteland of cartoon architecture and parking lots. In his elegant and hilarious prose, he describes our evolution from Pilgrim settlements to the modern suburb in all its ghastliness. 

Twenty-one years ago, in his 2005 book, The Long Emergency: Surviving the Converging Catastrophes of the Twenty-First Century, it seems like he was describing a future where the American people sleepwalk into a future of hardship and turbulence where we enter the long arc of economic, political and social decline sooner than we think. A future where Globalism withers and Life become profoundly local. I kind of feel like we are kindred spirits in the Locally Grown movement. 

In his 2009 speculative fiction novel, The World Made by Hand, he describes what America might look like in a world of de-globalization and de-industrialization after the kind of social and economic catastrophe he writes about earlier. 

His latest fiction work released last year, "Look, I'm Gone", tells the story of a middle school boy living in New York who is sent to a NH boarding school and experiences his adventures amidst the tumult of the JFK assassination.

Jim has also lectured at Harvard, Yale, Columbia, Princeton, Dartmouth, Cornell, MIT, RPI, the University of Virginia and many other colleges, and he has appeared before many professional organizations such as the American Institute of Architects, the APA, and the National Trust for Historic Preservation. He is also an accomplished artist, painting impressionistic landscapes and village scenes around his bucolic home in New York’s Hudson Valley region. All of his books, and artwork are for sale on Amazon and on his website at www.kunstler.com.

Jim Kunstler is quite the Renaissance man, and we are stoked to have him on the Locally Grown Podcast. 

United We Stand. Divided We Fall. Each One for the Other, and All for All.

I am lucky to have David Hunter as “a guy in the neighborhood”, especially at such a volatile time around the world. David and I are somewhat on opposite sides of the aisle so you will hear a really good discussion trying to find middle ground, where the truth usually lies.

United We Stand. Divided We Fall. Each One for the Other, and All for All.

Today my guest is Tommy Potter a student at the University of Michigan who I met while visiting my daughter this fall.  Our conversation over coffee was just so interesting, I had to have him on my podcast.  I think it is critical for us oldsters to elevate this future generation of leaders who will be instrumental to the survival and prospering of our society as time passes.  

The list of Tommy’s accomplishments at such a young age is extraordinary. He grew up in Moline, Illinois but got bored with school so he finished his HS degree at the U of TX online. He was a competitive youth golfer and spent a summer in the NY Hamptons as a caddy for rich entrepreneurs and financial industry guys which gave him an opportunity to start building an elite network which seemed to have lit the entrepreneurial bonfire within him.  Last summer he was a summer intern at Andreesen Horowitz, one of if not the, most successful venture capital firms in the world. We’re gonna talk more about that. He also produced an award-winning documentary on the homeless as a U Mich student. His undeclared major at Michigan covers studies in philosophy, political science and business speaks to his non-linear thinking. 

While studying at Michigan he has also built a successful elite headhunting company, for lack of a better term, for young tech talent, and counts many elite VC’s and early-stage companies as clients.  The title he as used for his LinkedIn page just says “learning.” Well, we are gonna find out what he is learning today, so welcome to the Locally Grown podcast Tommy Potter.

United We Stand. Divided We Fall. Each One for the Other, and All for All.

Now that winter is here, I start to long for those comfort foods like stews and soups and pasta dishes. One of my go-to recipes is pasta and Bolognese sauce, or ragù alla Bolognese. It’s one of Italy's most celebrated culinary creations. Here’s my take on this classic.

United We Stand. Divided We Fall. Each One for the Other, and All for All.

AI read my 285-page book and produced a cool podcast summarizing the key ideas. Google LM Notebook created a podcast with natural human characters talking. Complicated subject matter is boiled down to layman’s terms so it’s understandable with a level of interaction that is indistinguishable from real humans. I was blown away.

United We Stand. Divided We Fall. Each One for the Other, and All for All.

I’m a Boomer, married to a Gen Xer, with Gen Z kids. My and my parents’ generation has left us with an ever-expanding unsustainable federal government that has taken on a life of its own, and we are sticking our kids with the bill. However, all is not lost. There are lots of smart, practical and patriotic kids who are willing to step up now to be part of the solution that rights the American ship. My guest today is 24-year-old Lance Lunceford, one of those kids. Please join us.

United We Stand. Divided We Fall. Each One for the Other, and All for All.

In the words of the immortal Joan Jett, "I love Rock & Roll so put another dime in the jukebox baby." Join me and my older cousin Tom Fini as we traverse the decades from his early 1960s band, the Del Mars, to todays music including one of my original songs. We explore the singer-songwriter ethos, within the context of protest music then and now. Stop what you’re doing and put on those headphones because you don’t want to miss this one. 

United We Stand. Divided We Fall. Each One for the Other, and All for All.

My guest today is American entrepreneur and politician, Christopher Collins. Chris served as the U.S. representative for New York's 27th congressional district (Buffalo NY area) from 2013 until 2019. Prior to his time in Congress, he ran for Erie County Executive in 2007 on a platform of smaller county government, lower taxes and operating efficiency and he defeated the Democrat incumbent with 63% of the vote in a county with 140,000 more registered Democrats than Republicans. Quite an accomplishment.

Unlike many of our elected representatives in our 3-tier constitutional republic, Chris was a successful entrepreneur and business guy long before he ran for public office. That means he built something of value to society that employed others in our free enterprise system. After earning his BS in Mechanical Engineering and MBA, Chris started his career as a mechanical engineer at Westinghouse Electric. In 1983, Westinghouse spun off their gear division, and Chris rose to be CEO of the Nuttall Gear Corporation located in Niagara Falls, New York. In 1997, Collins sold Nuttall to Colfax Corporation.

Chris moved to Florida a couple years ago and he and his wife, Mary, have three children and three grandchildren. Full disclosure: Chris’ younger brother Ted and I were fraternity brothers at Syracuse University.

Welcome to the Locally Grown Podcast Chris Collins.

United We Stand. Divided We Fall. Each One for the Other, and All for All.

Laz Lopez joins me today to tell his family's story of escaping communist Cuba and achieving the American Dream as a successful business owner in the U.S. In these challenging times, it's just the reminder we need about how precious and tenuous our American freedom really is.

United We Stand. Divided We Fall. Each One for the Other, and All for All.

Elon Musk recently labeled NPR and PBS as “government-funded media” on Twitter, angering both organizations. Is he right, and does it matter anyway?

For many years, I supported PBS and NPR financially. I just loved their music, movies and documentaries and their news and opinion programs, that while left leaning, were conducted in a civil tone. They at least made token attempts to cover both sides of a debate but things have changed and they are now peddling activism as journalism.  Listen as I unpack this for you in great fact-based detail.

United We Stand. Divided We Fall. Each One for the Other, and All for All.