Quillwood Podcast

Lyla June Johnston is a Diné writer, singer, spoken word artist, and activist. In this episode she and Eric talk about indigenous food ways, the deeper meaning of the word "food", power structures inherent in industrial food systems, and learning lessons from the rise and collapse of civilization, among other things.

Outline

• 00:00 - 02:14 — Episode introduction
• 02:14 - 08:58 — What inspires Lyla to pursue indigenous food ways as a course of study
• 08:58 - 10:31 — Fragilities in modern industrial food systems
• 10:31 - 19:40 — Exploring the deeper indigenous meaning of the word "food"
• 19:40 - 25:22 — Indigenous food ways and the local food movement
• 25:22 - 31:04 — Power structures inherent in industrial food systems
• 31:04 - 37:48 — Learning big lessons from the rise and collapse of civilization
• 37:48 - 40:31 — Episode wrap-up

Links and Resources

• Quillwood Academy
• Telling Tales of Change
• Authoritarian and Democratic Technics, by Lewis Mumford (Technology and Culture)
• An Interview of Lyla June Johnston (As Temperatures Rise, on YouTube)
• Original Instructions: Indigenous Teachings for a Sustainable Future, edited by Melissa Nelson
• We're Not Done With DAPL: How Investors Can Still Support Indigenous Rights, by Morgan Simon (Forbes, the article Lyla alludes to at the end of the episode)

In this episode Eric reflects on how a lesson from an old martial arts mentor has influenced his thinking about today's converging crises, and how getting back to basics can help us feel safe in a changing world.

Outline

• 00:00 - 03:09 — Episode introduction
• 03:09 - 08:15 — A lesson on staying safe from a martial arts master
• 08:15 - 13:20 — Five needs we must meet to feel safe
• 13:20 - 14:45 — Invitation to reflect on how to avoid violence
• 14:45 - 16:52 — Invitation to reflect on how to stay warm or cool
• 16:52 - 18:33 — Invitation to reflect on how to maintain access to water and food
• 18:33 - 20:13 — Invitation to reflect on how to find community and social engagement
• 20:13 - 21:33 — Episode wrap-up

Links and Resources

• Quillwood Academy
• Overshoot Reading Group
• Bujinkan Indianapolis Dojo

In this episode Eric reflects on different ways of framing and talking about collapse, using metamorphosis as a metaphor to help us make sense of collapse, choosing our metaphors for collapse wisely, and the various physical, ecological, and social forces that are driving today's changing world.

Outline

• 00:00 - 02:25 — Episode introduction
• 02:25 - 05:56 — Different ways of framing and talking about collapse
• 05:56 - 09:44 — Metamorphosis as a metaphor to help us make sense of collapse
• 09:44 - 16:17 — Adaptive cycle as a model to put collapse in a broader context
• 16:17 - 21:41 — Reckoning with our blindness to the ubiquity of change
• 21:41 - 24:23 — Choosing our metaphors for collapse wisely
• 24:23 - 29:48 — The role of energy, materials, and money in forcing social change
• 29:48 - 34:26 — The role of ecological and social turbulence in forcing social change
• 34:26 - 37:58 — Episode wrap-up

Links and Resources

• Quillwood Academy
• Overshoot Reading Group
• The Great Simplification (Nate Hagens' podcast)
• The Long Descent: A User's Guide to the End of the Industrial Age, by John Michael Greer
• The Long Emergency: Surviving the End of Oil, Climate Change, and Other Converging Catastrophes of the Twenty-First Century, by James Howard Kunstler
• How Does A Caterpillar Turn Into A Butterfly, by Ferris Jabr (Scientific American)
• Adaptive Cycles (Resilience Alliance website)
• The adaptive cycle: more than a metaphor, by Shana M. Sundstrom and Craig R. Allen (Ecological Complexity)
• How Civilizations Fall: A Theory of Catabolic Collapse, by John Michael Greer
• Analysis: World has already passed 'peak oil', BP figures reveal (Carbon Brief)
• Simon Michaux: "Minerals Blindness" (The Great Simplification podcast)
• Joe Rogan Experience #1245 - Andrew Yang (YouTube)
• The Social Dilemma (trailer on YouTube)

Lyla June Johnston is a Diné writer, singer, spoken word artist, and activist. In this episode she talks to Eric about making peace with European heritage, colonial histories, place-based identities, reconnecting with our indigenous heritage, the sophistication of traditional ecological knowledge, and the fragility of American society, among other things.

Outline

• 00:00 - 02:03 — Episode introduction
• 02:03 - 07:47 — Making peace with European heritage
• 07:47 - 18:50 — Colonial histories, trauma, and place-based identities
• 18:50 - 22:41 — Processing a fear of remembering
• 22:41 - 29:06 — Reconnecting with our indigenous heritage intuitively
• 29:06 - 33:42 — Showing courage as we reclaim an indigenous identity
• 33:42 - 36:55 — Creating parallel systems rather than repairing broken systems
• 36:55 - 42:53 — The sophistication of traditional ecological knowledge
• 42:53 - 46:57 — American society as a fragile, precarious system
• 46:57 - 48:54 — Episode wrap-up

Links and Resources

• Quillwood Academy
• Overshoot Reading Group
• The Story of How Humanity Fell in Love with Itself Once Again, by Lyla June Johnston
• Mamwlad, a song by Lyla June Johnston

Dr. Kate Booth and Tristan Sykes co-founded the platform Just Collapse. In this wide-ranging episode they talk to Eric about justice and collapse as place-based phenomenon, overshoot and the Seneca effect, collapse risks in Hobart, Tasmania and Vermont, USA, collapse awareness and collapse acceptance, structural violence as collapse avoidance, and seeing overshoot ecology and justice as issues of accountability, among other things.

Outline

• 00:00 - 02:04 — Episode introduction
• 02:04 - 04:03 — Dr. Kate Booth and Tristan Sykes introduce themselves
• 04:03 - 07:47 — Justice and collapse as place-based phenomenon
• 07:47 - 13:08 — What a just collapse might look like in Hobart, Tasmania
• 13:08 - 18:30 — Overshoot and the Seneca effect
• 18:30 - 26:34 — Collapse risks in Vermont, USA, and how some places matter more than others
• 26:34 - 29:57 — Regions buying their way out of collapse
• 29:57 - 34:23 — Collapse awareness, collapse acceptance, and talking collapse
• 34:23 - 39:46 — Structural violence as collapse avoidance
• 39:46 - 43:40 — Hope, hopelessness, and motivation
• 43:40 - 50:20 — Managing our nervous system responses while engaging with collapse
• 50:20 - 56:20 — Seeing overshoot ecology and justice as issues of accountability
• 56:20 - 64:05 — How hard it is to find a path to redemption
• 64:05 - 68:08 — Episode wrap-up

Links and Resources

• Quillwood Academy
• Overshoot Reading Group
• Just Collapse website
• Just Collapse on Facebook
• Brave Little State, on Vermont Public Radio
• Gesturing Towards Decolonial Futures Collective
• Staying with the Trouble: Making Kin in the Chthulucene, by Donna Haraway
• Post Doom, Michael Dowd's website
• Global Footprint Calculator
• Slavery Footprint Calculator

Host Eric Garza invites listeners on a deep time walk that explores the energetics of human evolution and human development. He begins this journey as our lineage parts ways with ancestors of today's chimpanzees (Pan troglodytes), taking us through the development of stone tools, the harnessing of fire for warmth and cooking, the crafting of spears, clothing, and bows and arrows, and lastly more modern technologies designed to harness exosomatic energy sources often derived from fossil fuels.

Outline

• 00:00 - 02:59 — Episode introduction
• 02:59 - 06:18 — Pedagogical benefits of deep time
• 06:18 - 09:07 — Looking at human evolution and development through an energy lens
• 09:07 - 16:52 — Early human development, stone tools, harnessing fire
• 16:52 - 19:08 — The Great Escalation: spears, clothes, and the bow and arrow
• 19:08 - 22:56 — Agriculture and the expansion of ecological debt
• 22:56 - 31:05 — Modern energy innovations, and exosomatic energy
• 31:05 - 32:03 — Episode wrap-up

Links and Resources

• Quillwood Academy
• Overshoot Reading Group
• Overshoot: The Ecological Basis of Revolutionary Change, by William Catton Jr.
• Deep Time Walk
• Work that Reconnects
• Fat, Not Meat, May Have Led to Bigger Hominin Brains, by Richard Kemeny (Scientific American)
• Every human culture includes cooking—this is how it began, by Graham Lawton (New Scientist)
• The First Spears, by Zach Zorich (Archeology)
• The History of Clothing and Textiles (Wikipedia)
• Bow and Arrow Hunting, by K. Kris Hirst (Thought Co.)
• History of agriculture (Wikipedia)
• Marion King Hubbert 

Cliff Berrien is a drummer, percussionist, DJ, and music educator who uses music to develop creativity, catalyze connections, promote cultural dexterity, help to heal trauma, and deepen contemplative somatic awareness. In this episode he and Eric talk about the deep time perspective, contemplative practice and dissociation, and generative catastrophe, among other things.

Outline

• 00:00 - 06:12 — Episode introduction
• 06:12 - 17:13 — The deep time perspective
• 17:13 - 23:33 — The influence of Race and the Cosmos
• 23:33 - 39:54 — Contemplative practice and dissociation
• 39:54 - 55:34 — Exploding stars and generative catastrophe
• 55:34 - 56:25 — Episode wrap-up

Links and Resources

• The Ministry for the Future, by Kim Stanley Robinson
• Quillwood Academy
• Race and the Cosmos, by Dr. Barbara Holmes
• Bayo Akomolafe
• Walter Earl Fluker
• Rasmaa Menakem
• Alexis Pauline Gumbs
• His Holiness the Dalai Lama
• The Radiance Sutras, by Lorin Roche
• Vanessa Andreotti and the Gesturing Towards Decolonial Futures Collective
• The Four Denials
• The Dawn of Everything: A New History of Humanity, by David Graeber and David Wengrow
• Thomas Berry
• Brian Swimme
• Limits to Growth, by Donella Meadows, Dennis Meadows, Jørgen Randers, and William Behrens
• Study pinpoints timing of oxygen's appearance in Earth's atmosphere, by Jennifer Chu

Bayo Akomolafe is an author, speaker, a trans-public intellectual, post-activist, and a father, among many other things. In this episode he and Eric talk about resilience, the generative qualities of failure, finding safety amidst uncertainty, trauma as a capitalist project, cancel culture, individualism, and belonging as an artifact, among other things.

Outline

• 00:00 - 02:18 — Episode introduction
• 02:18 - 07:40 — Going into the cracks
• 07:40 - 15:58 — Resilience, giving up, experimentalism
• 15:58 - 21:11 — Nervous systems and feeling safe in uncertainty
• 21:11 - 30:50 — Staying balanced, embracing failure
• 30:50 - 57:21 — Trauma, cancel culture, and belonging
• 57:21 - 58:15 — Episode wrap-up

Links and Resources

• Quillwood Academy
• Bayo Akomolafe's website
• The Unbusinesslike Nature of Business
• Railway spine as a post-traumatic disorder
• Lauren Berlant, author
• Achille Mbembe, philosopher

Nathan Hagens founded the Institute for the Study of Energy and Our Future, and hosts The Great Simplification podcast. In this episode he and Eric talk about the genesis of his phrase The Great Simplification, the link between debt and growth, energy blindness, the three grand challenges facing us today, finding our people, and attending to our mental health and resilience, among other things.

Outline

• 00:00 - 02:33 — Episode introduction
• 02:36 - 14:24 — The genesis of The Great Simplification
• 14:24 - 19:22 — Avoiding binary outcomes
• 19:22 - 26:24 — The link between debt and growth
• 26:24 - 33:44 — Energy blindness
• 33:44 - 36:19 — Energy and power density of fossil carbon
• 36:19 - 40:04 — Three grand challenges
• 40:04 - 44:22 — Finding our people, talking this through
• 44:22 - 48:09 — Attending to our mental health and resilience
• 48:09 - 54:27 — Walking the talk and staying grateful
• 54:27 - 55:24 — Episode wrap-up

Links and Resources

• Quillwood Academy
• The Ministry for the Future, by Kim Stanley Robinson
• The Oil Drum: Discussions About Energy and Our Future
• Institute for the Study of Energy and Our Future
• The Great Simplification, with Nate Hagens
• Olympic Cyclist Vs. Toaster: Can He Power It? (YouTube video)
• Human-powered Tesla Model X Charger (YouTube)
• Energy Blind, Part 1 of 5 / The Great Simplification Series (YouTube)

Sophie Strand is a writer, poet, and compost heap based in New York's Hudson Valley. Her writing focuses on the intersection of spirituality, storytelling, and ecology. In this episode she and Eric talk about rewilding the sacred masculine, apocalypses past and present, healing and trauma in this age of turmoil, making kin, and embracing incompletion, among other things.

Outline

• 00:00 - 03:36 — Episode introduction
• 03:36 - 07:58 — Lunations of masculinity
• 07:58 - 10:37 — Apocalypses past, present, and future
• 10:37 - 23:31 — Healing and trauma in this age of turmoil
• 23:31 - 30:07 — Making kin with life and land
• 30:07 - 37:16 — Looking critically at trauma
• 37:16 - 46:30 — Embracing compost and incompletion
• 46:30 - 49:38 — Episode wrap-up

Links and Resources

• Quillwood Academy
• Sophie Strand's Instagram (@cosmogyny)
• Sophie Strand on Facebook
• SophieStrand.com
• Sophie Strand's Substack
• The Flowering Wand: Rewilding the Sacred Masculine, by Sophie Strand
• Staying with the Trouble: Making Kin in the Chthulucene, by Donna Haraway
• The Body Keeps the Score: Brain, Mind, and Body in the Healing of Trauma, by Bessel van der Kolks
• Hospicing Modernity: Facing Humanity's Wrongs and the Implications for Social Activism, by Vanessa Machado de Oliviera