The Permaculture Podcast

My guest for this episode is Ethan Hughes. He is part of the team that lives at the Possibility Alliance and Stillwater Sanctuary in La Plata, Missouri. This is Ethan’s second time sitting down to talk to me for the show, having joined me last year for our conversation I called “Radical Possibilities.” I recommend [...]

My guest for this episode is Mark Lakeman, an architect, planner, and trained permaculture practitioner from Portland Oregon. Our conversation today is part one of two. In this conversation we discuss participatory culture and community building through action, as a way to engage the social structures that are vital to the ongoing development a better [...]

My guest for this episode is Dr. Dennis vanEngelsdorp, a research scientist with the University of Maryland and the former Chief apiarist for Pennsylvania. Dennis has investigated colony collapse disorder and the on-going bee die off since Dave Hackenberg first reported large colony losses. I wanted to speak with Dennis after seeing him in the [...]

This episode is a story written and recorded by Matt Winters, a listener to the show and a participant in the inaugural Online PDC+ that’s currently going on. This story was his response to an assignment to imagine what each student’s design site would look like over time. To step forward 100 years from now [...]

This is another moment of topical stream of consciousness stemming from the thoughts I’ve had since releasing the piece earlier this week about a permaculture world. Go back two episodes and check that one out if you haven’t already. During that previous show I mentioned that, if one has the means, they should invest in [...]

My guest for this episode is Bob Theis, the architect and natural builder from California. He returns to continue our conversation on natural building materials and techniques. If you haven’t listened to the last interview with Mr. Theis, please go back and start there, as we jump right into the conversation this time around. This [...]

My vision of a future with permaculture is a post-industrial, post-information age where we don’t so much power down, and eschew everything that non-renewable resources currently grant us, but use those resources to transition to a new stage where the developed countries use the technologies available to create greater efficiencies so we do ever more [...]

My guest for this episode is Dave Jacke, ecological designer, teacher, and co-author, along with Eric Toensmeier, of Edible Forest Gardens. Excepting Misters Holmgren, Mollison, and Hemenway, Dave Jacke and Eric Toensmeier were two of the authors whose names were well known in my local permaculture community, and I added their two-volume set to my [...]

My guests for this episode are Wilson Alvarez and Ben Weiss, two of my local permaculture colleagues and friends. I’ve known both of them since 2010 when I took my Permaculture Design Course with Ben, and Wilson joined us as a guest instructor to share more on observation skills and awareness of our surroundings. During [...]

My guest for this episode is Dan Allen, who writes about issues of energy, food, and building resilience at the community level at Resilience.org. I first heard about Mr. Allen during the interview with Keith Johnson. After reading some of Dan’s articles, I wanted to interview him as a followup to the recently released conversation [...]

My guest for this episode is Sam Thayer, the expert forager and author. You can find his personal experience working with wild foods in his books, The Forager’s Harvest and Nature’s Garden. During this conversation we talk about how Sam came to be regarded as an expert on foraging. Where you can find more information [...]

My guest for this episode is Keith Johnson, permaculture teacher, designer, part of the team at Permaculture Activist magazine, and someone incredibly active in spreading the word of permaculture to the world. During this episode we speak about abandoning hope (don’t worry it’s not as depressing as it sounds), looking towards action, and through the [...]

My guest for this episode is Dr. Laura Jackson, a biology professor at the University of Northern Iowa. Her focus is on issues of restoration ecology and sustainable agriculture. We touch on both of these in the conversation, leaning more towards the sustainable Ag side of things, then move on to cover the impacts of [...]

My guest for this episode is Nicole Foss, a lecturer and writer who tackles issues of financial and energy collapse, and provides a vision for the future to make any eventual fall less severe for those who prepare. Her goals for each of us go beyond just the self and include our communities. James, my [...]

My guest for this episode is Paul Garrett, a retired teacher, who spent the last 20 years working as an environmental educator beginning in his elementary school classes, and then in the community. In addition to his work continuing to teach in various ways, he also coordinates a high school environmental club, an adult environmental [...]