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In this week’s episode, Ariel quizzes guest Dr Tiffany Millacci about emotional literacy. What is this relatively new phrase? How can being emotionally literate help us to navigate difficult conversations, awkward interactions, or even generally just having relationships in the first place? Isn’t all this talk of emotions just a different way for the self-help industry to get us to buy stuff? 

Join us for a fascinating conversation about a complex topic – we barely skim the surface! But never fear, Dr Millacci has your back; listen in for some good places to start learning more.

Links:

• Dr Millacci’s author profile on positivepsychology.com

• Emotional literacy in the context of applying it to relationships

• Emotional literacy vs emotional maturity

Disclaimer: We’re coming from a white, western viewpoint and we recognize the limitations and strictures of that – even within the same cultures and societies (heck, within the same families) emotional expression can vary wildly according to personality, gender, neurodivergence, whatever your social location. This interview necessarily takes broad strokes to begin a conversation about how to better be in community with each other, and it is our hope that we can continue to showcase how this can vary, taking steps towards a solarpunk future where people can disagree – even on important topics like politics and religion – without violence or relationship rupture.

On this episode of the podcast, Ariel chats with Dr Tanis MacDonald about her upcoming course in winter 2025 on hopepunk. What exactly is so punk about this kind of hope? Can hopepunk even be said to be a genre in its own right, or is it an aesthetic or lens that we can use to think through just why the characters are deciding to have hope in bleak situations? 

Tune in for recommendations of hopepunk novels (and poetry!), ruminations on political hope, the centrality of relationships and radical empathy to these stories, and more. Plus some academic theories informing the formulations of hope, of course. 

Links:

• Tanis MacDonald | Author of Straggle: Adventures in Walking While Female

• Watershed Writers with Tanis MacDonald | Podcast on Spotify

• Hopepunk, explained: the storytelling trend that weaponizes optimism | Vox

• Companion Species Manifesto

• The Carrier Bag Theory of Fiction

• S2.9 Reframing Narratives With Ecocriticism, With Dr Jenny Kerber

Back in November, my partner and I adopted Nutmeg, a 4-year-old former feral cat who was completely terrified of humans and wanted nothing to do with us. A cat like Nutmeg most likely would have been written off as unadoptable and euthanized if she had been in a kill shelter, because she could not provide value to humans in that moment. It’s been about a year so far… head over to Patreon to read the full post* for free.

*Yes there are cute cat photos, what do you take me for?

If you’re a no-kill animal shelter or an animal rescue group and you’ve got more animals than kennels to keep them in, or you’ve got dogs or cats with health or behavioral problems that need sorting out to render the animals adoptable, what are you going to do? You’re going to call an animal fosterer like Rena Curtis to take that animal in, de-traumatize it, teach it some manners, and get its health problems sorted out so it can go a-courtin’ its forever people. Tune in as we discuss this hard, sometimes frightening, occasionally heart-wrenching, but ultimately satisfying work, why there are so many more dogs and cats than homes to put them in, and what we can do to change that situation.

 You can follow Rena on Instagram at @sockmonkeylove33

To learn more about the animal rescue organizations she has fostered for, visit https://www.yavapaihumanetrappers.org and https://yavapaihumane.org

Way back at the beginning of August, just as my life was about to become never the same again, I was in New York for about 36 hours. I didn’t manage to do much more in that time but take a long walk. What I saw was surprisingly solarpunk looking.

I put all my photos of New York as a solarpunk city up on our Patreon. That post is now public. You can find it here. Yay!

This week on Solarpunk Presents, we’re bringing you an interview with Andy Gross, one of the brilliant minds behind Fully Automated! A Solarpunk TableTop RPG (Role-Playing Game). Don’t worry, you don’t need to know game jargon to follow along for this one – solarpunk storytelling comes in a lot of different forms, and this is yet another kind for people to use to imagine a kinder, greener future that strives towards a utopia … of sorts.

RPGs get a reputation for being all about fighting. How does that work if the RPG is solarpunk? Or utopian even? What is an RPG, in the first place? What is the usefulness of a solarpunk RPG? Join us as we discuss these questions and more.

You can find Fully Automated at https://fullyautomatedrpg.com/

This week on Solarpunk Presents Podcast, Ariel chats with Selena Middleton, Publisher and Editor of Stelliform Press, all about publishing eco-fiction. What is eco-horror, and how does it relate to solarpunk fiction? What are the hallmarks of a good solarpunk story, according to Selena? How does history fit into visions of the future, and what does character have to do with it? Join us as we discuss all this and more.

Links: 

Stelliform Press website

Depart! Depart! by Sim Kern

Another Life by Sarena Ulibarri

Green Fuse Burning by Tiffany Morris

The House of Drought by Dennis Mombauer

Now streaming: some hot takes from your solarpunk aunties. Ariel and Christina consider why wallowing in negative feelings is just so delicious … as opposed to wallowing in, you know, acts of kindness and feelings of compassion, which are just a bit more solarpunk. We live in an age of outrage, it seems: cancelling, social media mobbing, cyberbullying … but also drawing attention to human rights violations, or dodgy political happenings, or just straight-up illegal goings-on! How can we tell whether our outrage is justified or not? How can we avoid emotional manipulation? Can we think of outrage as a solarpunk tool?

Links:

• What is Affect Theory?

• Cultivating Emotional Literacy

Last month I had the genuine pleasure of taking part in a small gathering to celebrate Analog and Asimov Magazines’ readers choice awards. It was super fun and inspiring to meet all the other authors involved (including one of the Imagine 2200 judges from 2023) and listen to them read excerpts from their stories. I learned so much about being a writer just from the few hours I spent chatting with them and their enthusiasm was AMAZING and infectious.

I posted some photos as a public post on our Patreon to share at least a little bit of the fun with you. I’d love it if you’d have a look.

Meanwhile, EPISODE 1 OF SEASON 6 IS ABOUT TO DROP! WOOT! We’ve got some interesting interviews and discussions lined up for you. Don’t miss them!!!

On some very serious level, it’s just not solarpunk if it’s not about a community taking action to make the world a better place. Individualism: it’s just so wrong. It’s fair to say that, not just in solarpunk, but in our cultures, “community” is right up there with “children” as an idea of something inherently good, moral, and wonderful. Community is worshiped as an answer to our problems. But Christina gets a sinking feeling every time she reads a solarpunk story that idolizes community.

In this episode, Christina tries to figure out why she’s so suspicious of community and so afraid of being suffocated by the rules, regulations, and norms of community. Join us for our Season 5 closer in which she and Ariel peek at community’s darker sides, like infighting, conformity, the potential for ostracizing people who don’t conform, and the fact that the existence of a community automatically creates a them.

Links: https://www.newyorker.com/news/on-religion/losing-a-beloved-community

Important announcement: We will be going on a short break for August, but stay tuned for season six in September!