HELEN CZERSKI is a physicist with a background in bubbles and experimental explosives. Her books The Blue Machine: How the Ocean Works and Storm in a Teacup: The Physics of Everyday Life are incredible explorations of looking at the processes of how things that we often don’t truly see in our daily lives are deeply affecting us. In this episode, we tease at some bigger themes around how to ask questions and leverage our own curiosity, what it means to find perspective, and how we might begin as a culture to look at our participation in the interconnected web of life with a different lens. We also touch on the ocean engine and how it’s time to ask ourselves what the blue in this “blue marble” really means and look at it in depth. This conversation barely touches the tip of the iceberg of Helen’s work, but hopefully it will serve as a door of curiosity for you to explore her books on your own. Helen shares insights on the importance of curiosity, the humility needed to understand natural processes, and the vital role of the ocean in history, culture, geology, ecology, and the nutrient cycles of this world.

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Find Helen:

The Blue Machine: How the Ocean Works

Storm in a Teacup: The Physics of Everyday Life

Bubbles

Rare Earth Podcast/Radio Show

Instagram: @helen_czerski

X: @helenczerski

Resources Mentioned:

Wasteland by Oliver Franklin Wallis

The Curious Mr. Feynman

Cosmic Shambles

In this episode, Kate sits down with author Jay Owens to talk about her book Dust: The Modern World in a Trillion Particles. Together, they unravel the paradoxes and challenges posed by dust - a small particle that makes a big impact throughout history. Discover how dust connects the Sahara to the Amazon, influences snowmelt, and carries historical significance, embodying both awe and horror. Dust underpins everything - it is, as Jay says, “a boundary crosser, a transgressor” and makes itself known in ice cores, the aftermath of the atomic bomb, in the drying up of bodies of water, and the pollution from our highways. It is the mark of the modern world and our incalculable impact on it. It underlines our interconnectedness and highlights the uncertainty about what happens next. This is also a call to salvage, to look at the externalities, and embrace hope at a local level.

SPONSORED BY SUNDRIES FARM GARLIC

• Hand grown Sundries Farm Garlic is certified disease-free and grown in the volcanic soils of Idaho. With a range of soft and hard-neck varietals the unmatched flavor and big cloves are perfect for both your seed and culinary needs. Pre-order now for shipping in September.
• sundriesfarm.com

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Find Jay:

Dust: The Modern World in a Trillion Particles

Instagram: @hautepop

X: @hautepop

Other Writing

Resources Mentioned:

Ways of Being by James Bridle

How Infrastructure Works by Deb Chachra

The Shepherd’s Life by James Rebanks

Also Check Out These Episodes:

Infrastructure with Deb Chachra

Water with Heather Hansman

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

In this episode, Kate sits down with author and journalist Rachel Slade to discuss her books Making It In America: The Almost Impossible Quest to Manufacture in the USA (and How It Got That Way) and Into the Raging Sea: Thirty-Three Mariners, One Megastore, and the Sinking of El Faro. Rachel’s books are incredible explorations of humanity and she deftly weaves together complex threads. We focus on Making It In America in the episode. The book is so much about where trade, manufacturing, farming, immigration, the textile industry, unions, and the history of the hoodie itself meet. We start by exploring how manufacturing made America and touching on the complex series of events that led to the offshoring of the majority of American manufacturing after NAFTA. This episode is about grit and determination and a commitment to vision by American Roots, the hoodie company featured in the book, and what entrepreneurship means and what it might mean to manufacture in America once again. It’s a wide-ranging conversation about history, geopolotics, economics and the externalities of focusing solely on the bottom line. It’s about building and re-building community and networks of support and it’s about what it means for us, as humans, to make things by hand.

We also talk about;

Men’s mental health

Supply chains

Find Rachel:

Making It in America

Into the Raging Sea

Articles + Essays

Instagram: @rachelmslade

Made in USA Brands

Resources Mentioned:

Fields of Gold by Madeleine Fairbairn:

90% of Everything by Rose George

Eating Nafta

Rachel on the Julian Dorey Podcast:

Melanie Challenger’s On Extinction

Also Check Out Episodes

-Kate’s Solo on Resources

-Melanie Challenger

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

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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: 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:

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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: 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

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.

Support the Podcast:

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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: KATEKAV15
• 10% off Home of Wool using code KATEKAVANAUGH
• KateK20 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:

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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: KATEKAV15
• 10% off Home of Wool using code KATEKAVANAUGH

KateK20 for 20% off Herbal Face Food