Episode Details

In this special episode of the Microcollege Podcast, Ashley Fitzgerald and I interview each other for our respective platforms. Ashley is an environmental sociologist from Chicago who is co-founder of Doomer Optimism, which is a podcast, a Substack, and a growing eclectic community of people interested in localism, regenerative agriculture, cultivating meaning and community in the midst of technocracy, and generally seeking ways to imagine and build a hopeful future in spite of all the gathering doom and gloom. Ashley is also an educator in the microcollege vein - after a diverse education and young adulthood, Ashley and her husband Patrick relocated to Uruguay where they started the Rizoma Field School, which introduced American university students to rural life and the practice of sustainable agriculture in that country. She is now back in her hometown of Chicago, where she is raising her three children and continuing the work of the Rizoma Field School with high school students at the Chicago High School for Agricultural Sciences.

Thank you, Ashley for a lovely conversation and for sharing it on our podcast!

Rizoma Field School - https://rizomafieldschool.com/

Doomer Optimism Substack - https://substack.com/@doomeroptimism

Doomer Optimism Podcast - https://doomeroptimism.substack.com/s/doomer-optimism-podcast

Thoreau College - https://thoreaucollege.org/