In this week’s episode Kate sits down with the lovely, the ineffable, the effervescent May Lindstrom. Together they explore themes of grace, slowness, and the intricate dance between our inner and outer worlds. May shares many of her incredible stories and laces throughout them a call to live a life full of compassion and love and a cherishing of the everyday. She invites us to think about how we connect to ourselves and to nature, about what it might mean to grow old while integrating the perspectives of ourselves when we were younger, and to follow a north star of love. Throughout is a conversation about what it means to have a body that is bodying - whether that’s your body, a worm body, or to imagine all the other bodies that surround us. She also dives into frontloading pleasure, making a mess, and building something you really believe in. May’s words and wisdom shine in this episode that is really about coming home to yourself.

Find May:

May Lindstrom Skin

Instagram: @maylindstromskin

If you loved this episode:

With Caroline Nelson

With Lacey Jean

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: KATEKAV15
• 10% off Home of Wool using code KATEKAVANAUGH
• KateK20 for 20% off Herbal Face Food

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

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: KATEKAV15
• 10% 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: KATEKAV15
• 10% off Home of Wool using code KATEKAVANAUGH
• KateK20 for 20% off Herbal Face Food