Radical Pamphlets Hear and Now

The New Perennials Project at Middlebury College
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Radical Pamphlets Hear and Now is an audio production of the New Perennials project at Middlebury College. For centuries pamphlets were utilized to demand reform, equality, and justice. Our pamphlets are rooted in the local, and written by teachers, farmers, students, artists, community caretakers, and neighbors. They offer common sense and practical advice to slow down and attend to the here and now wherever you are.  Visit https://www.newperennials.org/ for more information.

Episodes

  1. SEASON 1 TRAILER

    Trailer: Introducing Radical Pamphlets Hear and Now

    Welcome to Radical Pamphlets Hear and Now, an audio production of the New Perennials Project at Middlebury College. For centuries, pamphlets were utilized to demand reform, equality, and justice. Nowadays, they can offer common sense, and practical advice to slow down and attend the here and now, wherever you are. Visit https://www.newperennials.org/ for more information.

    2 min

  2. 04/30/2025

    #1 Local Food, More Hope

    In the revolutionary spirit of Thomas Paine, author, historian, and gardener Kathleen Smythe declares in her pamphlet that the time has come for declaring independence from a global agricultural system that robs us of our food sovereignty and treats both consumers and farmers as mere colonial subjects; from the living Earth as inexhaustible rather than an exquisite complex of life that has slowly accumulated for millennia; and from human bodies as receptacles for whatever fossil fuel farming can produce most cheaply. Local food is our best hope in this declaration of inter-independence. Kathleen Smythe is a professor at Xavier University where she addresses questions of contemporary relevance through historical investigation. She prefers bodily-engaged learning as seen in her most recent book, Bicycling Through Paradise: Historical Rides Around Cincinnati (2021). She is trained as an African historian with years of fieldwork experience in Tanzania. Africa’s Past, Our Future highlights ideas and institutions in African history that broaden our social, political, and economic imagination. Whole Earth Living: Reconnecting Earth, History, Body and Mind proposes a new sustainability framework based on long-term human interdependencies with the Earth. Visit https://doi.org/10.57968/Middlebury.31169509 to read this pamphlet. Visit https://www.newperennials.org/ for more information.

    19 min

  3. APR 27

    #2 Go Farm, Young People, and Help Heal the Country

    A just and sustainable future will require rebuilding rural America. For too many decades, the countryside has been exploited and depopulated to support urban society, and enrich only suppliers and processors. For too many urban people with progressive politics, rural areas are dismissed as parochial, and resented for holding disproportionate power. And young people in rural communities have moved to cities in search of better opportunities. A better strategy, successfully pioneered a generation ago in Vermont, might be to encourage more young people to live in the country. In this pamphlet, environmental historian and farmer Brian Donahue argues for empowering rural people so that they can replace the current extractive economy with an attractive economy, and for repopulating the countryside with intrepid young people to help drive change. Brian Donahue is an emeritus professor of American Environmental Studies at Brandeis University. He has also been a farmer for almost fifty years. He is author of Reclaiming the Commons: Community Farming and Forestry in a New England Town (Yale University Press, 1999); and co-author of Wildlands and Woodlands, Farmlands and Communities: Broadening the Vision for New England (Harvard Forest, 2017), and of A New England Food Vision (Food Solutions New England, 2014). He is on the board of the Massachusetts Woodland Institute and The Land Institute. Visit https://doi.org/10.57968/Middlebury.31169548 to read this pamphlet. Visit https://www.newperennials.org/ for more information.

    52 min

  4. MAY 1

    #3 Slowing Down Is A Radical Act

    Written and read by Middlebury College student Kylie King on the importance of slowing down and taking more time with what she calls long-form content, and less time with social media sites that thrive on shortness and speed. As King explains, "deep understanding and insight are a result of being fully absorbed by what you are learning and opening yourself up to it. Spending an extended amount of time with one topic opens one to the possibility of being changed. Therefore, slowing down and being intentional about where you direct your attention is necessary for change in self and society." Visit https://doi.org/10.57968/Middlebury.27655086 to read this pamphlet. Visit https://www.newperennials.org/ for more information.

    9 min

  5. MAY 2

    #4 The Plantspeak Papers

    Imagine a group of plants getting together and figuring out how to communicate their displeasure with and to their human neighbors. What would they say? Listen in here to find out. They begin with this: "Dear Neighbor - The irony is not lost on the authors of this pamphlet that it is printed on the pulped remains of our kin. But as it is still a durable format for conveying information in your language, we have chosen it reluctantly. We may be anonymous to you as individuals, but our extended family feeds, fuels, clothes, heals, houses, beautifies, entertains, and allows you to live at all thanks to a long line of our ancestors and elders who preceded your ancestors by 460 million years." Visit https://doi.org/10.57968/Middlebury.27643983 to read this pamphlet. Visit https://www.newperennials.org/ for more information.

    12 min
  6. #5 Relationships Matter: Lessons from a Half-Ton Teacher

    MAY 3

    #5 Relationships Matter: Lessons from a Half-Ton Teacher

    Written and read by actor, director, and educator Lindsay Pontius about an experience on her farm with a cross-species teaching and learning activity involving a veteran teacher and a horse. In Pontius' words: "For more than 40 years, I have had horses in my life. Mostly, my horses are pets and partners. But I have always wanted to share with other humans the wisdom and gifts the horses offer, day by day and year by year. Now, I use my herd to give workshops to groups, such as veterans and educators, about the profound experience of linking nurturing with nature." Visit https://doi.org/10.57968/Middlebury.27661587 to read this pamphlet. Visit https://www.newperennials.org/ for more information.

    12 min
  7. #6 Faith in a Seed, Hope for the Next Generation

    MAY 4

    #6 Faith in a Seed, Hope for the Next Generation

    Inspired by John Dewey and Henry David Thoreau, Matt Schlein, outdoor educator and founder of The Willowell Foundation and the Walden Project in Monkton, Vermont, calls out the many ways the indoor classroom-model of education fails all who participate in it, particularly students, and calls for alternatives that are alive with hope, compassion, wisdom, and respect for integrity of all who engage the educational enterprise. In Schlein's words, "We need young people to feel hope, instead of the quiet desperation that pervades their daily experience. We need systems that go eyeball to eyeball with the challenges of this moment, responding with compassion and wisdom. We need to delight in this creation, to ask why, to dream, to create, and to envision a future replete with possibilities and hope." Visit https://doi.org/10.57968/Middlebury.27655089 to read this pamphlet. Visit https://www.newperennials.org/ for more information.

    8 min
  8. #7 The Middlebury College Student Almanac

    MAY 5

    #7 The Middlebury College Student Almanac

    Written and read by Middlebury College student Mary Nagy-Benson urging her classmates, and all young people who spend four years on a college/university campus, to acknowledge and engage with the town or city in which it and they are situated. In Nagy-Benson's words: "Too often, attending college can be made to feel like a necessary four-year detour through a quaint small town on the way to a career. But it doesn’t have to be that way. We can turn a detour into a destination when we experience the joy and peace that comes with being together in this time and place." Visit https://doi.org/10.57968/Middlebury.27661389 to read this pamphlet. Visit https://www.newperennials.org/overview for more information.

    9 min

Trailer

About

Radical Pamphlets Hear and Now is an audio production of the New Perennials project at Middlebury College. For centuries pamphlets were utilized to demand reform, equality, and justice. Our pamphlets are rooted in the local, and written by teachers, farmers, students, artists, community caretakers, and neighbors. They offer common sense and practical advice to slow down and attend to the here and now wherever you are.  Visit https://www.newperennials.org/ for more information.

Information

  • Creator
    The New Perennials Project at Middlebury College
  • Years Active
    2K
  • Episodes
    8
  • Rating
    Clean
  • Copyright
    © 2026 Radical Pamphlets Hear and Now
  • Show Website
    Radical Pamphlets Hear and Now