Mind, Body, and Soil Kate Kavanaugh

In this episode, materials scientist and engineering professor Deb Chachra shares about infrastructure. Her book ‘How Infrastructure Works: Inside the Systems that Shape Our World’ is a multi-layered dive into infrastructure. In this episode, Deb and Kate explore ideas of how we move resources to bodies and waste away from bodies. It is a brief exploration of the rise of globalization and our telecommunications, physical infrastructure, and roads, but it is also an exploration of how access to energy is also access to agency. In it, the concept of ‘away’ is explored - whether it’s the away that we send our waste or the away from which we extract resources using human labor and the complexities of infrastructure’s harms and benefits. It’s also a re-imagining of what the future could look like, which Deb reminds us “is not inevitable” and how we can ask ourselves questions about our values and how we might shape the our care for people now and in the future. Infrastructure is a big and complex subject and Deb’s book deftly explores it. This episode is a small peek into her work. 

Find Deb:
How Infrastructure Works: Inside the Systems That Shape Our World by Deb Chachra
Metafoundry Newsletter
X: @debcha
Instagram: @debcha

Books Mentioned:
Crossings by Ben Goldfarb
Do Artifacts Have Politics? By Langdon Winner
The Power Broker by Robert Moses 
Golden Gulag by Ruth Wilson Gilmore

Other Episodes of Interest:
With Ben Goldfarb
Solo on Infrastructure

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Connect with Kate:
Instagram
email: kate@groundworkcollective.com
Current Discounts for MBS listeners:
15% off Farm True ghee and body care products using code: KATEKAV1510% off Home of Wool using code KATEKAVANAUGH
KateK20 for 20% off Herbal Face Food

Sand. It’s everywhere and it’s foundational to the built and digital worlds, yet we rarely see or think about it. Vince Beiser’s the World in a Grain tells the story of sand as it makes its way into the materials that make up our world: concrete, glass, silicon chips, and beyond. In this episode of the podcast, we explore some of the broader implications of sand - what it means to build worlds, how to grapple with the largesse of sand’s impact as we run out of this critical resource, and what, if anything, we can change in our relationship to sand. It’s about infrastructure, but it’s also about our relationship to infrastructure and how often the use of more resources begets the use of… more resources. We dive a little into the magic of sand, not just to house and transport us, but also the creation of the lens and how sand allows us to see things really small, really far away, and also really everyday - through glasses. We also talk about time, which sand is a measurement for and also a manifestation of, with the average grain of sand created over 200 million years. This is a conversation that will change the way you see and relate to your world.
Find Vince:
World in a Grain: the Story of Sand and How It Transformed Civilization
Power Metal Newsletter
X: @VinceBeiser
Website

Books Mentioned:
Crossings and Eager by Ben Goldfarb
Ninety Percent of Everything with Rose George

Other Episodes of Interest:
With Ben Goldfarb
Solo on Infrastructure

Support the Podcast:
Substack
Leave a one-time Tip
Connect with Kate:
Instagram
email: kate@groundworkcollective.com
Current Discounts for MBS listeners:
15% off Farm True ghee and body care products using code: KATEKAV1510% off Home of Wool using code KATEKAVANAUGHKateK20 for 20% off Herbal Face Food

Our relationship to resources shapes the world. Our food, our clothing, our devices, our building materials and the infrastructure that underpins moving them from place to place. On this podcast, we've explored a lot around food as a resource - its impact on land and human health and some of the inputs and externalities of our food system. Now, I'd like to take a turn to explore some other resources and the ubiquitous, yet unseen, infrastructure that moves them to us and our waste products away from us. Coming episodes will be filled with this exploration and so I want to give us a little primer on why this became so interesting to me and why it matters.
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Leave a one-time Tip
Connect with Kate:
Instagram
email: kate@groundworkcollective.com
Current Discounts for MBS listeners:
15% off Farm True ghee and body care products using code: KATEKAV1510% off Home of Wool using code KATEKAVANAUGHKateK20 for 20% off Herbal Face Food

In this episode of the podcast, Kate sits down with author and poet Melanie Challenger to discuss her two books How to Be Animal and On Extinction. Melanie also hosted the beautiful podcast ‘Psychosphere’ exploring the minds of animals outside of the human animal. This episode explores our disconnection with nature and how it begins in childhood and how it might separate us from the truth that we, as humans, are also animals. It explores what it might mean to come home to the realization that we are animals. Death, mortality, and grief and their roles in our animal bodies are explored as is our human superpower ability to love. This is big episode with a lot of beautiful explorations into what it really means to be human. 
Find Melanie:
How to Be Animal by Melanie Challenger
On Extinction by Melanie Challenger
Galatea by Melanie Challenger
Resources Mentioned:
Animals in the Room
Support the Podcast:
Substack
Leave a one-time Tip
Connect with Kate:
Instagram
email: kate@groundworkcollective.com
Current Discounts for MBS listeners:
15% off Farm True ghee and body care products using code: KATEKAV1510% off Home of Wool using code KATEKAVANAUGH
KateK20 for 20% off Herbal Face Food

In this episode, I (Kate Kavanaugh) sit down with Cole Mannix of Old Salt Co-Op to talk about vertically integrating the agriculture of the middle with systems that are built to serve ranchers and consumers alike. Cole talks about his innovative business (and funding) structure, the upcoming Old Salt Festival in Helmville, Montana in June (I went last year and spoiler alert: it’s amazing) and the business they’re building to serve a regional food system. At least, those were all the topics that brought us to the table to talk. But what came out was something a bit different - it was about what it means to live a good life and a good death, about how limits can give us surprising freedom, and what it means to build a business that you can truly live in. This episode is about taking risks and dreaming really big dreams, really digging into what it means to build bridges and communities, and about what we might leave our children. Cole, with a varied background in biology, philosophy, and theology who grew up on the Mannix Family Ranch, had a lot to say, and to be honest, I just sat and listened. 
Find Cole and Old Salt:
Old Salt Festival Instagram
Old Salt Coop Instagram
Old Salt Outpost Instagram
Old Salt Co-Op Festival Early Bird Tickets
Old Salt Co-Op
Old Salt Producer Webinars

Resources Mentioned:
The Cross and the Machine by Paul Kingsnorth
The Haimish Line

Support the Podcast:
Substack
Leave a one-time Tip
Connect with Kate:
Instagram
email: kate@groundworkcollective.com
Current Discounts for MBS listeners:
15% off Farm True ghee and body care products using code: KATEKAV1510% off Home of Wool using code KATEKAVANAUGH
KateK20 for 20% off Herbal Face Food

Robby Sansom is one of the founders of Force of Nature Meats and has a mind for marrying the qualitative with the quantitative. In this episode, Robby and Kate explore what it means to build sustainable business models, try to make really massive numbers a little bit more tangible, and speak candidly about the meat industry. It’s an episode that explores candidly everything about the tight-margined meat business, competition between smaller and larger shareholders within the industry, and what it might mean to have a triple bottom line of people, profit, and planet.
Find Robby:
Instagram: @forceofnaturemeats
What Good Shall I Do Conference (April 19+20)
Episode with Katie Forrest from FoN
Resources Mentioned:
The Tracker by Tom Brown
Support the Podcast:
Substack
Leave a one-time Tip
Connect with Kate:
Instagram
email: kate@groundworkcollective.com
Current Discounts for MBS listeners:
15% off Farm True ghee and body care products using code: KATEKAV1510% off Home of Wool using code KATEKAVANAUGH
KateK20 for 20% off Herbal Face Food