The Quill Nook Experience

"There is a degree to which the work I've been doing for 25 years has been a failure, and a degree to which we collectively as a generation of people working on the problem haven't moved the needle as much as we need to." – Dan Ackerstein, Ackerstein Sustainability Dan Ackerstein reviewed 35 of the first 45 LEED for Existing Buildings projects. He's worked with big companies doing big, creative su...

Richo Cech is the owner of Strictly Medicinal Seeds and author of Making Plant Medicine. He's a legendary figure in the herbalism world who has spent decades growing medicinal plants and teaching others to do the same. In this conversation, Richo moves seamlessly between scientific observation (seeds erupting under microscopes) and spiritual practice (transmuting desire through incense), between p...

Where were you the morning of September 11, 2001? Joe McKay was on a Staten Island golf course, but not for long. A New York City firefighter for thirteen years, McKay spent that day, and dozens of days after, filling his lungs with debris, searching shoulder to shoulder with his fellow firefighters. He, and so many others, lost loved ones that day—coworkers and friends. And then, six months later...

Daniel Kish is an expert in human echolocation. He serves as the President of World Access for the Blind (WAFTB), a California-based nonprofit that he founded in 2000. Through WAFTB, Kish and acquaintances work with unsighted and blind children across the globe--since its establishment in 2000, they have taught 500 kids the art of echolocation as a means of moving through the world. Kish, whose st...

In 2005, Shaun Chamberlin quit his job to devote himself full-time to exploring the dominant cultural stories and ‘myths’ that chart the course for our society and, in particular, how we might change direction before we end up where we are headed. Meanwhile, putting the theory into practice, Shaun is one of the custodians of legendary free pub ‘The Happy Pig‘, and he was involved with the Transiti...

Sebastian Junger is an American journalist, author and filmmaker. He is noted for the best-written book to also spawn a great movie and a cliché, The Perfect Storm. His award-winning documentary films Restrepo and Korengal bring viewers into real wartime life. We at Quill Nook have been following Sebastian closely since he wrote Tribe in 2016 about PTSD connected to wartime experiences. He claims...

In person on Quill Nook Farm, Allison Paradise talks with Tristan about how to trust your intuition, even when it feels disruptive to the rest of your life. How to heal (and not just gain awareness/insight around) behavior stemming from childhood trauma. How to reckon with your shadow self, and stop worrying about what others think of you. Allison was the founder of My Green Lab, a nonprofit certi...

Sage Mason is a first-year law student at Washington University in St. Louis School of Law. A graduate of Emory University in Atlanta, and Phillips Academy in Exeter, NH, Sage is from New York City. You can find Sage's interview with Alan Tucker on the Buried Truth's podcast here: https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/buried-truths/id1334250929?i=1000491416914 Subscribe to The Quill Nook Experienc...