Solarpunk Now! - the podcast demanding a brighter future

Audio March 5, 2023 1 comment

Episode 10 – The Union Makes Us Strong! Stories of Tenant Organizing for a World in Crisis

Last summer, tenant organizers from all over North America came together in Los Angeles for the 2022 Autonomous Tenants Union Network Conference. The conversations in this episode were recorded with permission live at the conference.

Tenants are uniquely situated between socioeconomic inequality and climate change, so a tenants union fights against a wide variety of challenges: harassment and illegal evictions, gentrification, natural disasters, displacement, racism, and more. In this episode, we’ll hear from two tenants unions who have faced unique regional challenges. We’ll see where their struggles overlap, as well as unique obstacles they face and strategies they’ve developed as a result.

West River Tenants United, based in occupied Oceti Sakowin land (aka South Dakota), are battling racism, poverty, displacement of indigenous tenants, and the challenges of organizing in a rural area. They organize in tricky situations like trailer parks, homeless encampments, and a hostile political environment. You can find their website here.

The Houston Tenants Union operates in an area especially prone to disasters caused by climate change. They help keep each other safe and rebuild in the aftermath of disaster, offer services that landlords and the city refuse to provide, and organize buildings against negligent management. You can find their website here.

I’m currently running a fundraiser to cover my 2023 expenses for this show. Please support if you can: https://www.buymeacoffee.com/solarpunkcast

Audio January 20, 2023 0 comments

Episode 9 – Your Imagination is Haunted: Exorcising Neoliberalism’s Ghosts with Joey Ayoub

Description:

This is a collab episode with fellow podcaster Joey Ayoub of The Fire These Times. We talk in detail about the research I was doing before I started my show, as well as how it connects to Joey’s current research. We cover neoliberalism, capitalist realism, hauntology and ghosts, and all sorts of issues with temporality and imagining the future.

Fun fact, The Fire These Times was actually the podcast that encouraged me to start Solarpunk Now! I listened to some of his episodes on solarpunk while I was still learning about the genre and trying to come up with a central theme to design my own podcast around.

I’m currently running a fundraiser to cover my 2023 expenses for this show. Please support if you can: https://www.buymeacoffee.com/solarpunkcast

The Fire These Times website: https://thefirethesetimes.com/
You can also follow Joey on Twitter and Mastodon, and support his show on Patreon.

Follow me on Twitter:

@solarpunkcast

Mastodon:

@solarpunkcast@spore.social

Audio November 30, 2022 0 comments

Episode 8 – It’s Not a Revolution if We Can’t Dance!

Description:

We need to change our very understanding of nature. Or more specifically, our relationship with nature. We need to see it not as something to exploit, or restrain ourselves from exploiting, but rather as a continuation of ourselves. We desire a world where our choices don’t feel like choosing the lesser of environmental evils–where we can fully enjoy our lives without destroying a river or a rainforest in the process.

This is the second part of my conversation with Chaia Heller, author of The Ecology of Everyday Life, as well as lifelong activist and teacher. In this episode we bring her theory of the five aspects of social desire to life, showing how this theory unfolds into practice: direct actions, illustrative opposition, building alternative political structures, and beyond! The theories of social ecology and social desire provide a rational basis for solarpunk projects of all kinds.

Audio November 30, 2022 0 comments

Episode 7 – The Sensual Side of Social Ecology

Description:

When it comes to doing our part to “save the environment”, we’re often limited to making superficial choices as consumers. Choices which don’t do much, if at all, to preserve or improve the health of our planet. What if we had a real choice? What if our ways of life–from basic needs to our deepest desires–were aligned with ecology, rather than in tension with it?

In this episode I sit down with Chaia Heller, author of The Ecology of Everyday Life, to discuss social ecology and her work developing a philosophy and politics of social desire. Social ecology, starting with the work of Murray Bookchin, draws from sources like Marxism, feminism, and the environmental movement to develop a rational society that values both social justice and the environment. Chaia expands on this, drawing from feminist theories of desire and the erotic, to show how a rational ecological society should emphasize enjoyment, not just satisfying basic needs. Sounds pretty solarpunk to me!

Audio June 20, 2022 0 comments

Episode 6 – The Roleplaying Game Helping Us Build Utopia

Description:

Imagining the future isn’t easy, especially when we’re constantly told that our demands for freedom, justice, and societal transformation are unrealistic. While theorists have pointed out the importance of developing a radical imagination, it can be hard to know where to start.

Solarpunk Surf Club is “an artist collective that creates and curates egalitarian platforms for surfing the waves of still-possible worlds.” Nick and Max, two members of the collective, have spent the past few years developing a card-based tabletop RPG designed to break down barriers to radical imagination and strengthen our imaginative capabilities. That game is Solarpunk Futures. It’s well-researched, beautifully executed, and ultimately a powerful and versatile tool for imagining a better future.

In this episode, I discuss Solarpunk Futures with Nick and Max. We dig into their design process, artistic philosophy, and vision for their game as a tool that can help us transform the world.

Get Your Copy of Solarpunk Futures: https://thefuture.wtf/
More from the Solarpunk Surf Club: https://solarpunksurf.club/
Follow @solarpunkclub on Twitter

Audio May 21, 2022 1 comment

Episode 5 – Let’s All Do Acid Communism!

Description:

This is Part 2 of my conversation with Andre–hacker, gardener, organizer, and all-around solarpunk. In this episode we continue our discussion of historical social movements, then talk about how to build power and organize your community in the 21st century. The secret? A little something called Acid Communism.

You can check out Part 1 here.

Follow Andre on Twitter: https://twitter.com/HydroponicTrash
On TikTok: https://www.tiktok.com/@hydroponictrash
On Substack: https://anarchosolarpunk.substack.com/

Audio May 21, 2022 0 comments

Episode 4 – Log On, Clock In, Drop Out: Tech and Liberation

Description:

Andre–aka HydroponicTrash–is a hacker, gardener, organizer, and all-around solarpunk. In this episode we discuss technology: as an industry, as a cultural phenomenon, and as a potential method of liberation. This takes us back to the 60s counterculture, which had a big influence on the early development of the internet, and the neoliberal turn of the 70s and beyond, which played its own major role in shaping technology today.

This is Part 1 of a two part conversation. You can check out Part 2 here.

Follow Andre on Twitter: https://twitter.com/HydroponicTrash
On TikTok: https://www.tiktok.com/@hydroponictrash
On Substack: https://anarchosolarpunk.substack.com/

Audio April 12, 2022 0 comments

Episode 3 – Compassion Is Radical: Care Work Within a Punitive System

Description:

Sarah is an addiction counselor at a nonprofit agency in California. Her agency offers a wide range of services, both inpatient and outpatient, and they primarily serve low-income clients with publicly funded health insurance. In this episode we discuss: the structural barriers her clients face, encouraging developments in addiction treatment, and a vision for a future where everyone gets the care they deserve.

Audio January 18, 2022 2 comments

Episode 2 – Building a Better Democracy… with Computer Science!

Description:

Matthew Gray is a computer science researcher and history buff passionate about sortition, a method of allocating public offices by lot rather than by election. In this episode we explore the potential benefits of sortition, and Matthew explains the computer science that could make it work securely and efficiently at the national level.

Audio January 18, 2022 4 comments

Episode 1 – Why Solarpunk?

Description:

Why do certain futurist aesthetics appeal over others? What does art have to say about our political goals, or about the psychological landscape of our world today? Art can be speculative: posing questions and potential answers about how things could be, or should be, in the future. In this inaugurative episode of Solarpunk Now, I show how art and politics intertwine, and make the case for solarpunk as a speculative political project.