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.

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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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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