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

I talk to two members of the Pirate Care collective, Valeria Graziano and Tomislav Medak, about their book of the same name. In addition to the concept of "pirate care" itself, we discuss the historical and contemporary significance of the pirate figure, the criminalization of care, the inspiration we can take from the Four Freedoms of the free software movement, the notion of “queer kinning” and its implications for solidarity, and the need to care for all those who fall through the cracks in traditional constructions of belonging.

Terms and topics mentioned:
- Vagabonds book series
- Cassie Thornton, The Hologram
- Isabelle Fremeaux and Jay Jordan, We Are “Nature” Defending Itself
- La ZAD, France
- Memory of the World pirate library
- Sea-Watch
- Women on Waves
- Freedom Flotilla
- The Four Freedoms of free software
- Richard Stallman
- La PAH, Spain
- Abdullah Öcalan, Democratic Confederalism
- Chantal Mouffe
- The Pirate Care Syllabus