Cassie Thornton of the Feminist Economics Department drops by to discuss the Hologram — a framework for viral, peer-to-peer care she developed following a visit to post-Crisis Greece, and which people all over the world are currently using to make themselves “harder to fuck with.” We talk about the Hologram works, how to start one for yourself, and how to access the resources that are available to help you do so – and a whole bunch of other stuff, including antifragility, the Flat White Dimension, Miranda Mellis’s book Crocosmia, the brain fog of war, and what it feels like to be a human rhizome.

Terms and topics mentioned:
- The Hologram: Feminist, Peer-to-Peer Health for a Post-Pandemic Future
- Pirate Care gathering, Berlin, September 2025
- Social Solidarity Clinic, Thessaloniki
- Berkeley Free Clinic
- Medicine for Nightmares, San Francisco
- The rhizome in botany and Deleuze
- The criminalization of support for Palestine Action in the UK
- “Antifragility”
- Tensegrity structures
- The Hologram site
- Johanna Hedva
- Cassie’s new work, The Waiting Room
- T.S. Eliot, "East Coker"
- Julio Linares, Decolonizing Money
- Miranda Mellis and Crocosmia
- Ill Will Editions

Kentucky-based artist Dianna Settles joins us for a conversation about her work. We discuss what inspires the remarkable specificity in her paintings — as well as the people she doesn’t want collecting them, the mistakes first-time farmers make, the type of book one may wish not to read while nursing, and the making of a life worth living.

Terms and topics mentioned:
- Dianna’s own paintings, drawings and prints
- MARCH Gallery, New York City
- “Stacking functions” in permaculture (heads up: link is to a prepper site)
- Police violence at the 2023 South River Music Festival, Atlanta
- Pieter Bruegel the Elder
- A sampler of some Viet Cong paintings
- High Museum of Art, Atlanta
- Kristin Ross, Communal Luxury: The Political Imaginary of the Paris Commune
- Napoléon Gaillard père (shoemaker/barricadist of the Paris Commune)
- Ill Will
- Ossabaw indigo
- Lexington Still Life Club
- Phil Neel, Hellworld: The Human Species and the Planetary Factory
- Antoine Volodine
- John Berger, Pig Earth
- Joshua Clover, The Totality for Kids and Madonna anno domini
- Ursula K. Le Guin, The Dispossessed and The Left Hand of Darkness
- Greer Kirshenbaum, The Nurture Revolution
- Diane di Prima, Revolutionary Letters
- Rosie Stockton, Fuel
- Jasper Bernes, Starsdown and The Future of Revolution

- James Still, River of Earth
- May 2026 “Lifehouses, Resilience Hubs and Dual Power” gathering at Woodbine, NYC

I welcome Chris Smaje to Lifepod, to discuss his book Finding Lights in a Dark Age, an exploration of what he sees as the need for a transition from mostly urban to mostly rural “sustainable livelihood communities.” Chris shares his journey from academia to small farming in Somerset —highlighting the challenges involved in balancing high-complexity modern technology with local autonomy. We discuss the need for a practical, local politics of livelihood, and the potential for large-scale urban-to-rural movement to underwrite such a politics.

Terms and topics mentioned:
- David Graeber and David Wengrow, The Dawn of Everything
- Nebelivka, a representative ”megasite” of Neolithic Ukraine
- Colin Ward, Anarchy in Action
- Murray Bookchin, Post-Scarcity Anarchism
- Distributism
- [Garrett] Hardin
- [Elinor] Ostrom
- Mark Vonnegut, The Eden Express
- Simon Fairlie, Meat
- [Gerrard] Winstanley, the Ranters and the Diggers