Mind, Body, and Soil

Episode 117 : In this conversation, Kate sits down with Cutter Wood to discuss his new book Earthly Materials: Journeys Through Our Bodies’ Emissions, Excretions, and Disintegrations . It’s a poignant and touching exploration of the often-overlooked aspects of our physical being: our body's "effluvia." From the science of mucus to our last breath, from our tears to our flatulence, Cutter delves in...

Episode 116: In this conversation, Kate sits down with John Seabrook, author of The Spinach King: The Rise and Fall of an American Dynasty , to explore the intersection of farming, family history and intergenerational trauma, and the evolution of the agricultural industry. John shares insights from his family's farming legacy, discussing the transformation from traditional farming to mechanization...

Episode 115: In this episode, Kate sits down with Jordan Thomas to talk about his new book When It All Burns: Fighting Fire in a Transformed World . It might not be the conversation you expect, opening by exploring fire’s centrality to what it is to be human and how relational and contextual fire is. Jordan guides us through the last ten thousand years of fire use by Indigenous communities. Jordan...

Episode 114: In this conversation, Kate Kavanaugh sits down with author Chris Berdik to discuss his new book 'Clamor: How Noise Took Over the World and How We Can Take It Back'. They dive into the often-overlooked significance of sound in both our personal lives and the natural world. Chris shares insights into the biology of hearing, the impacts of hearing loss, and the pervasive issue of noise p...

Episode 113 : In this episode, Kate sits down with author Marguerite Holloway to explore her new book ‘ Take to the Trees: A Story of Hope, Science, and Self-Discovery in America’s Imperiled Forests ’. Marguerite takes us on a deeply personal journey as she learns to climb trees at a women’s tree climbing workshop —an experience that shifts her perspective—quite literally—and opens her up to new w...

Episode 112: In this episode, Kate is joined by journalist Mariah Blake to discuss her new book, ‘ They Poisoned the World: Life and Death in the Age of Forever Chemicals. ’ Together, they trace the buried history of PFAS and forever chemicals—synthetic chemicals first developed in the 1930’s—that would go on to saturate everything from firefighting foam to clothes to town water supplies, with dev...

Episode 111: In this episode, Kate sits down with Tabitha Rose from Skin Fancy to go deep. At once, it’s an exploration of building a bioregional supply chain for a skincare company and looking to the plants and ingredients that are attuned to an ecosystem to create an incredible skincare line. It’s also an episode about Tabitha and she invites us into her wisdom with beautiful poignancy, sharing...

Episode 110. In this conversation, Kate sits down with author Bonnie Tsui to talk about her new book On Muscle: The Stuff that Moves Us and Why It Matters . This episode explores themes of strength, resilience, and the interplay between the physical and the philosophical. Kate and Bonnie have a wide ranging discussion that spans the metaphor and biology of muscle, how death brings us into the pres...

Episode 109. In this episode, I (Kate Kavanaugh) reflect on my personal journey with movement from a practical and philosophical standpoint all while weaving it into some of the bigger themes that we’ve been exploring on the podcast around how we move resources to our bodies and how that itself changes our movement. I start out with some historical context of movement and resources, the impact of...

Episode 108. (note: recorded Fall of 2024) This conversation with Alice Driver about her book Life and Death of the American Worker: The Immigrants Taking on America’s Largest Meatpacking Company delves into the often unseen and harsh realities faced by workers in the meat industry. The discussion highlights the dangerous working conditions, the isolation and fear perpetrated by meatpacking plant...

Episode 107. In this conversation, Kate sits down with Matt Skoglund of North Bridger Bison to have a wide-ranging conversation about agriculture, community, the meaning of work, and what it means to teach about death. Together, they reflect on the complexities of efficiency in food systems, the yearning for simplicity in a complicated world, and the values that guide their lives and work. Matt di...

Episode 106: In this conversation, Kate Kavanaugh and Kurt Gray--whose book, ‘Outraged!: Why We Fight About Morality and Politics’ is out today--explore the themes of human nature, exploring the idea of humans as prey animals and how this evolutionary bent shapes our understanding of threats in modern society. It’s an episode about how we view harm and threat in a modern social media era, how much...

Episode 105: In this conversation, Kate sits down with author and entrepreneur Paul Hawken to explore the multifaceted role of carbon in life and talk about his new book, ‘Carbon: the Book of Life’. It’s an episode challenging the conventional narrative that reduces carbon to an errant molecule within the atmosphere and connects it back to the molecule that flows through 99% of all substances on e...

Episode 104. In this episode, Kate sits down with author Will Bardenwerper to talk about baseball. Now, before you think this doesn’t tie in to some of the major themes we’ve been exploring on the podcast—think again. Will’s new book ‘Homestand: Small Town Baseball and the Fight for the Soul of America’ is a love letter to small towns, communities, and coming together to build friendship and camar...

Episode 103. In this episode of the podcast, Kate sits down with author Chloe Dalton to discuss her memoir Raising Hare. Chloe is a political speechwriter and advisor who during the pandemic finds herself caring for a hare in the English countryside. In rich and textured detail, Chloe shares her transformative relationship with the hare. The episode touches on themes around domestication, freedom,...

Episode 102. In this episode, Kate sits down with Mary-Frances O’Connor to talk about her new book The Grieving Body (a follow up to the Grieving Brain) . This is an episode for anyone to deepen their understanding and literacy of grief—grievers, grief supporters, caregivers. In the episode, they talk about attachment and what it is to form an “us” and the some of the science behind love and bondi...

Episode 101: In this episode, I reflect on my journey over the past three years of podcasting, It’s about being a human in process. It’s about taking moments to let ourselves be fallow, to stop along the journey, lay out a blanket, and watch the clouds go by. I also discuss a concept I’ve been exploring for myself where “Ease = Effort + Flow” and how a little friction and push in life can give us...

100 episodes. Countless hours (over 220 hours). An immense amount of gratitude for you—dear listener. In this episode, I share 13 lessons from the last 100 episodes and my excitement for the next 100 episodes. Themes across the lessons include curiosity, adaptability, persistence, managing our dreams, enoughness, embracing our multifaceted nature, and how deeply shared this human experience is. It...

Caroline Nelson is living into the life she wants. A lot has happened since we last talked to Caroline a year and a half ago, she opened Little Creek Feed, her meat business got bigger, so did Cowgirl Camp, and somewhere in the midst of all that she became a mother. This is an episode in equal parts the gravity of pausing to ask yourself where you are in your life and how you can live into the lif...

As Winter Solstice nears, this conversation is about the transformative power of darkness, about going into our grief, and building community to hold us. In this conversation, Francis Weller joins Kate to explore the profound importance of community and connection in human life. They discuss the pervasive sense of isolation and individualism in modern society, the various forms of grief that arise...

In this episode I sit down with Vince Beiser, whose book Power Metal: The Race for the Resources that Will Shape The Future is an incredible follow up to his book Sand: the World in a Grain. When we last caught up with Vince we plumbed the depths of sand and how, while largely unseen, it is one of the major resources our world is built on. In this conversation, Vince and I explore more unseen reso...

This is a salty conversation and it’s also the kind of conversation that cracks you wide open. I sit down with Jill Winger - not to discuss her incredible work with Old-Fashioned on Purpose, her courses, her planner, or her book which are all amazing - but to talk about her life philosophies, our shared hot takes, and to lean into our complexity as humans. We explore the complexities of modern com...

WHOOEE. Brock Dolman, folks, in this episode is weaving together all sorts of things previously explored on the podcast in a new (old) and incredibly articulate way. This podcast is about water cycles, beavers, fire, sand, geology, the oceans, a living earth, and so much more. Brock is a conservation ecologist and a specialized generalist over at the Occidental Arts and Ecology Center. He’s also,...

In this episode, I sit down with Katy Bowman. First, a long on-ramp to the episode where I talk about where some of Katy’s work dovetails with explorations of how we move resources to our bodies (when we used to move our bodies to resources) that we’ve been exploring on the podcast. Katy and I then dive into the ecology of movement, movement diets, finding your movement why, and how you might cons...

In this episode of the podcast I sit down with John Perlin, whose book A Forest Journey: The Role of Trees in the Fate of Civilization explores the history of, well, of us. As you’ll hear in this episode the history of humans is inextricably intertwined, or made possible, with the history of trees and of wood. Wood is our materia prima, the foundational material of both our ecology on earth and th...