In this special episode of the Microcollege Podcast, Ashley Fitzgerald and I interview each other for our respective platforms. Ashley is an environmental sociologist from Chicago who is co-founder of Doomer Optimism, which is a podcast, a Substack, and a growing eclectic community of people interested in localism, regenerative agriculture, cultivating meaning and community in the midst of technocracy, and generally seeking ways to imagine and build a hopeful future in spite of all the gathering doom and gloom. Ashley is also an educator in the microcollege vein - after a diverse education and young adulthood, Ashley and her husband Patrick relocated to Uruguay where they started the Rizoma Field School, which introduced American university students to rural life and the practice of sustainable agriculture in that country. She is now back in h ...