Introducing Season 4

A year and a bit more or so, I had no idea we’d get this far. But here we are, about to break ground on Season 4 of our podcast.

Of all the seasons we’ve done so far, Season 4 is the one that comes closest to having a theme, inasmuch as we’ll be taking several different episodes to explore facets of one enormous topic… solarpunk housing.

For starters, this is because housing is one of solarpunk’s central dreams. What solarpunk hasn’t dreamed of those huge buildings draped in plants and solar panels? Or of cozy cottages and their resplendent gardens? But, honestly, solarpunk’s imaginings of housing ought to go deeper than the aesthetic.

How would we be best living in this housing, for instance? Alone? In nuclear family units? Far more multigenerationally or in intentional families? As parts of co-ops or communally on a far, far larger scale (think: buildings housing 20,000 people in a semi-communal setting)?

And, never mind the aesthetics of solarpunk housing from the singular to the grand, how would solarpunk housing be designed to help meet or otherwise respond to people’s physical, financial, and emotional needs? And by people, we mean everyone, not just the people who can afford to buy or rent housing in the current climate where—especially in urban and suburban North America—housing prices have been escalating ferociously faster than most people’s incomes.

On that note, a deeper dreaming of solarpunk housing would consider the revolution it would be for us to stop treating housing as assets and investments, but really honestly almost really mostly as homes. Can solarpunk imagine enormous communal housing that isn’t horrible and depersonalizing, like the cold, hard dormitories of some earlier science fiction novels, where you’re assigned a room based strictly on what is generically deemed your needs and you have to eat in a cafeteria and you have nothing to call your own aside from a couple of meager possessions.

But that’s not all Season 4 has in store. We’ll be tackling some other topics, too. We’ll be hearing about distributed production as a radically democratic means to shorten supply chains, empower people, and counter some of the ill effects of globalization. We’ll be talking about solarpunk spirituality in all its witchy bioluminescent mushroomness. We’ll hear about designing a game that helps people learn about, explore, and come to terms with climate change. And that’s not even half of what we have in store for you in Season 4.

I think it’s going to be a great season! I’m looking forward to it and I hope you are too.

Season 4 Episode 1 will go public on Monday, Nov 13, but join our Patreon now for early access to Episode 1 of Season 4 on Monday November 6, as well as bonus clips, dispatches, and other exclusive content. Either way, hope to have you there!