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 resources our world is increasingly dependent on: the critical metals that are powering our energy transition. We talk about how everything has a cost, about how the electro digital age, while feeling post-material, is anything but. We touch a little on the materials used in this energy transition. We have a complex conversation around reshoring mining and exploring if where we might mine next is here at home. And then we talk about recycling, repair, and real tangible solutions to what might happen next.

Find Vince:

Instagram: @vince.beiser

Substack

X: @vincebeiser

Power Metal: The Race for the Resources that Will Shape The Future

Sand: the World in a Grain

Resources Mentioned:

Washington Post on Data Centers

NYT Op-Ed on Reshoring Mining

Thea Riofrancos on Novara FM

Fight to Repair Newsletter

Sponsored By:

REDMOND REAL SALT

• Mine to Table Salt from Utah, Redmond Real Salt is packed full of 60+ Trace Minerals and is a staple in my kitchen. Find their salt, Re-Lyte Hydration Powder, and so much more here. Use code MINDBODYSOIL_15 for 15% off!
• redmond.life

FIELD COMPANY CAST IRON

• USA made cast iron. Light, thin bottomed, and smooth - just like vintage cast iron. My go to for everything from small skillets to big dutch ovens.
• fieldcompany.com/kate_kavanaugh

BAHÉ FOOTWEAR

• Barefoot, zero-drop, gorgeous running shoes, sandals, and hiking boots that are grounded. Meaning you can reap all the benefits of the electron flow from earth to your body while you’re getting in your steps. Use the code ‘Kate10’ for 10% off.

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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 communication, the importance of intentional living, and the challenges of building community in a polarized society. We talk about being reflexive contrarians and sometimes needing to go to an extreme to bounce back to some nuance. We discuss the value of discomfort in personal growth as much as we talk about when and how to choose ease, the balance between generalism and specialization, and the necessity of real human connection in an increasingly digital world. We explore choosing when we need to choose discomfort (often!) but also when we need to choose ease. All around, about holding the tension between modern and old-fashioned ways of living, and just holding the tension between so many paradoxical qualities of ourselves and our lives.

Find Jill:

Instagram: @jill.winger

Website

Youtube

2025 Old Fashioned On Purpose Planner

Meal Craft

Old-Fashioned on Purpose: Cultivating a Slower, More Joyful Life

Resources Mentioned:

Reclaiming Conversation: The Power of Talk in a Digital Age by Sherry Turkle

Essentialism by Greg McKeown

Molecule of More by Daniel Lieberman, MD and Michael E. Long

10x is Easier Than 2x by Dan Sullivan

Hope for Cynics by Jamil Zaki

Sponsored By:

REDMOND REAL SALT

• Mine to Table Salt from Utah, Redmond Real Salt is packed full of 60+ Trace Minerals and is a staple in my kitchen. Find their salt, Re-Lyte Hydration Powder, and so much more here. Use code MINDBODYSOIL_15 for 15% off!
• redmond.life

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

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 his own right, a linguist and an incredible waeaver of words. We explore the nouns and verbs of earth as energy flows, matter cycles, and life webs. This episode is a catch all - and at the heart of it, is a message about how to build lasting community.

Find Brock Dolman:

Occidental Arts and Ecology Center

Water and Fire Video

The Universe is a Green Dragon: A Cosmic Creation Story by Brian Swimme

Biomimicry: Innovation Inspired by Nature by Janine Benyus

Creating a Life Together: Practical Tools to Grow Ecovillages and Intentional Communities by Diana Leafe Christian

The End of Growth By Richard Heinberg

The Ghost Forest by Greg King

Eager by Ben Goldfarb

Beaver Land by Leila Philip

Tree Crops by J. Russell Smith

Picture of subsidence san Joaquin valley of telephone pole

Braiding Sweetgrass by Robin Wall Kimmerer

Thinking in Systems by Donella Meadows

Blessed Unrest by Paul Hawken

AC/DC: The Savage Tale of the First Standards War

Sponsored By:

REDMOND REAL SALT

• Mine to Table Salt from Utah, Redmond Real Salt is packed full of 60+ Trace Minerals and is a staple in my kitchen. Find their salt, Re-Lyte Hydration Powder, and so much more here. Use code MINDBODYSOIL_15 for 15% off!
• redmond.life

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 consider stacking community into movement.

Find Katy Bowman:

Instagram: @nutritiousmovement

Website

Sponsored By:

REDMOND REAL SALT

• Mine to Table Salt from Utah, Redmond Real Salt is packed full of 60+ Trace Minerals and is a staple in my kitchen. Find their salt, Re-Lyte Hydration Powder, and so much more here. Use code MINDBODYSOIL_15 for 15% off!
• redmond.life

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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Instagram: @kate_kavanaugh

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 the civilizations we have built. We explore the cycles of humanity and their relationship with wood throughout the last million years, touching on the Stone Age (which is really the wood age), Rome and Greece, the American revolution, the Industrial revolution, containerization and the green revolution, and the present. John’s book offers us a mirror to see our activities and how the stories we tell ourselves are ones we’ve been telling ourselves over and over again.

Find John Perlin:

A Forest Journey: The Role of Trees in the Fate of Civilization

Let It Shine: The 6,000-Year Story of Solar Energy

Website

Sponsored By:

REDMOND REAL SALT

• Mine to Table Salt from Utah, Redmond Real Salt is packed full of 60+ Trace Minerals and is a staple in my kitchen. Find their salt, Re-Lyte Hydration Powder, and so much more here. Use code MINDBODYSOIL_15 for 15% off!
• redmond.life

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

Support the Podcast:

Substack

Leave a one-time Tip

Connect with Kate:

Instagram: @kate_kavanaugh

In this episode, I sit down with anthropologist Alyshia Gálvez to talk about her book Eating NAFTA. The conversation is from two people who came to economic policy through unlikely means, but as Alyshia explains, economic policy in general, and NAFTA in particular - on its 30 year anniversary, has become a part of all of our bodies whether we’re aware of it or not. Alyshia’s work is incredible at connecting dots that aren’t often seen in economics - its about people, landscapes, and cultures and how they are affected by policy that favors corporations. We explore ideas of efficiency, and how the standard definition is anything but, of consumption, and the paradoxes that arise when looking at people, food, and policy. We look at corn as a material that drives our world through corn products and how landrace corn varietals have been lost to the people that first cultivated them. We also look at the health effects of policy, both here in the US, and in Mexico. Alyshia comes with a big message: if you, like us, feel like you’re a stranger to economic policy or that you can’t change it, perhaps you can and it matters now more than ever.

Find Alyshia Gálvez:

Eating NAFTA: Trade, Food Policies and the Destruction of Mexico

Patient Citizens, Immigrant Mothers

X: @alyshiagalvez

Website

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

Support the Podcast:

Substack

Leave a one-time Tip

Connect with Kate:

Instagram: @kate_kavanaugh

In this week’s episode, I sit down with geologist Marcia Bjornerud to talk about her new book Turning to Stone: Discovering the Subtle Wisdom of Rocks and to explore how we can gain a sense of feeling embedded in the time and space of Earth, as earthlings. We explore the mentorship rocks have to offer us and putting the story of Earth as a dynamic planet front and center. We talk about how learning about process, not just end product, through the lens of geology, can give us a sense of empathy and story that mirrors our own inner experiences on Earth. It’s also about the paradoxical qualities of geology, the vetoing of the term ‘Anthropocene’ in the geologic community and why it matters, and what it means to look at the future through the lens of the past. This episode is about putting Earth in the foreground, not as a backdrop for our human endeavors, but as a living and active system. Marcia is excellent at being a translator for the Earth and her books and way of speaking both illuminate Earth in an intriguing and dynamic way.

Find Marcia Bjornerud:

Turning to Stone: Discovering the Subtle Wisdom of Rocks

Timefulness: How Thinking Like a Geologist Can Help Save the World

Reading the Rocks: The Autobiography of Earth

Geopedia: A Brief Compendium of Geologic Curiosities

Resources Mentioned:

In the Weeds Interview with Marcia (Part 1 and Part 2)

Sponsored By:

REDMOND REAL SALT

• Mine to Table Salt from Utah, Redmond Real Salt is packed full of 60+ Trace Minerals and is a staple in my kitchen. Find their salt, Re-Lyte Hydration Powder, and so much more here. Use code MINDBODYSOIL_15 for 15% off!
• redmond.life

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

Support the Podcast:

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Instagram: @kate_kavanaugh

Rose George is the author of four fantastic books (Nine Pints, Ninety Percent of Everything, the Big Necessity, and a Life Removed) that share a common theme: much of her work is about seeing the unseen. It’s about those things that are ubiquitous and unnoticed, or more likely, obfuscated from us. In this episode, we focus on human waste, the shipping industry, and blood. Much of our conversation is about how we begin to see the waters we swim in, stop sanitizing our language to further obscure things, and use our awareness to create changes large and small. It’s about breaking down taboos and letting individual stories of tragedy and triumph bring us into issues that matter. It’s also a little bit about the shipping industry and how 90% of our goods get to us, how toilets can transform lives, and how period products can dramatically improve the lives of girls.

Find Rose George:

Nine Pints: A Journey Through the Money, Medicine, and Mysteries of Blood

Ninety Percent of Everything: Inside Shipping, the Invisible Industry That Puts Clothes on Your Back, Gas in Your Car, and Food on Your Plate

The Big Necessity: The Unmentionable World of Human Waste and Why It Matters

A Life Removed

Rose’s Subtack

On X

Resources Mentioned:

Surfer’s Against Sewage

Monterrey Bay Fish Guide

Sponsored By:

REDMOND REAL SALT

• Mine to Table Salt from Utah, Redmond Real Salt is packed full of 60+ Trace Minerals and is a staple in my kitchen. Find their salt, Re-Lyte Hydration Powder, and so much more here. Use code MINDBODYSOIL_15 for 15% off!
• redmond.life

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

Support the Podcast:

Substack

Leave a one-time Tip

Connect with Kate:

Instagram: @kate_kavanaugh