Speaker 1: Hey, everybody, Think Spring is here with our Think Spring playlist,
Speaker 1: and it's Chuck here to introduce today's episode. What's permaculture
Speaker 1: all about? Permaculture is a pretty great thing, and it's
Speaker 1: you know, if you don't know anything about it, this
Speaker 1: can teach you all about it and it may just
Speaker 1: change the way you live your life. There at yourius,
Speaker 1: so give it a try.
Speaker 2: Welcome to Stuff you should Know from HowStuffWorks dot com.
Speaker 3: Hey, and welcome to the podcast. I'm Josh Clark, and
Speaker 3: there's Charles w. Chipper, Chuck Bryant and there's Jerry Rowland,
Speaker 3: and we're all in great moods everybody, because it's stuff
Speaker 3: you should know. Time. Everything else just falls to the
Speaker 3: wayside when we record stuff you should know. It's just
Speaker 3: it's the reason we love doing it. Still, after a
Speaker 3: thousand episodes.
Speaker 1: You realize every single listener right now is thinking, why
Speaker 1: are they in a bad mood? And why is Josh
Speaker 1: being so weird?
Speaker 3: I don't think I'm being weird? Am I being? Am
Speaker 3: I over selling it? I think so oh oh sorry.
Speaker 1: It makes it sound like we all three were in
Speaker 1: a big fist fight and then Jerry.
Speaker 3: Had recorded right, She's like just jammed a Kleenex up
Speaker 3: her nose to staunch the bleeding.
Speaker 1: I am recovering a bit because we just got back
Speaker 1: from New York City.
Speaker 3: Dude, it has been a week, I know. So we
Speaker 3: did show a show Sunday, a show Monday, and a
Speaker 3: show Tuesday, all sold out at the Bellhouse, traveled home Wednesday,
Speaker 3: and are recording today Thursday.
Speaker 1: Yes, and I just want to say, there's no way
Speaker 1: that people will ever hear Tuesday's episode because it was
Speaker 1: the filthiest thing we've ever done on stage.
Speaker 3: It was seriously, man, I don't know what got into us.
Speaker 1: I think it was night three of three, So that
Speaker 1: is for the three hundred and fifty people in that room. Yeah,
Speaker 1: I hope they enjoyed it.
Speaker 3: It was fun. It was fun, and come on out.
Speaker 3: Whenever we do a live show, you never know if
Speaker 3: we're just gonna be like, this one's not getting released,
Speaker 3: let's just go crazy, you know. Especially it was a
Speaker 3: twenty one and up show, which is.
Speaker 1: Really well, well that's why we for sure why we
Speaker 1: did it.
Speaker 3: Yeah, that's what took the feedback off, you know, And
Speaker 3: that is saying I think.
Speaker 1: So put the feedbag on. Take it off.
Speaker 3: Yeah, I guess so, I guess so it's not really,
Speaker 3: but we'll just press forward. How about that. Let's do so, Chuck,
Speaker 3: I know that you know this, but not everybody knows this.
Speaker 3: I had a personal conversation with one Charles C. Mann,
Speaker 3: who wrote my favorite book of all time fourteen ninety one,
Speaker 3: that is correct, And I was talking to mister man
Speaker 3: and he has a I was talking to him and
Speaker 3: got a show coming out on Existential Risks eventually, but
Speaker 3: and he's going to be in it. It's just like
Speaker 3: interviewed for it. But he has a book coming out
Speaker 3: this January and it's called The Wizard and the Prophet.
Speaker 3: Have you heard of it?
Speaker 1: No? But did you just say that he's going to
Speaker 1: be part of Existential Risks?
Speaker 3: Yeah, he's an Interviewee.
Speaker 1: That's fantastic.
Speaker 3: Yeah, it's going to be pretty I was really psyched
Speaker 3: to just be able to talk to him, and even
Speaker 3: better than that, like you know, we were kind of
Speaker 3: rapping for a few minutes beforehand, and it was just
Speaker 3: as calm and casual as I had always like envisioned
Speaker 3: talking to him.
Speaker 1: That's amazing would be.
Speaker 3: Yeah, it was a really really neat conversation but he
Speaker 3: was telling me about the book he has coming out,
Speaker 3: The Wizard and the Prophet, and it's basically about him
Speaker 3: trying to find out how we can possibly, or even
Speaker 3: if it is possible, sustain ten billion people on planet Earth. Yeah,
Speaker 3: and not just sustained, meaning like you know, keeping him alive,
Speaker 3: but how could we do it sustain a blee. And
Speaker 3: he goes back and starts digging in and finds that
Speaker 3: there's this long standing headbutt between the techno optimists, the
Speaker 3: people who are like, well, we humans are smart enough
Speaker 3: to invent our way out of any problem, yeah, and
Speaker 3: the people who are like, no, we need to really
Speaker 3: like mitigate a lot of things that we're doing right
Speaker 3: now to make sure that we actually can keep doing
Speaker 3: this for the foreseeable future. And part of it is
Speaker 3: on Norman Borlog.
Speaker 1: And see the Wizard.
Speaker 3: He is the Wizard, that's actually absolutely right. The Prophet
Speaker 3: is a guy named William vote Vogt. I believe his name,
Speaker 3: and he I don't know nearly as much about him
Speaker 3: as Norman Borlog, which is to say, I know basically
Speaker 3: zero about him, but he's the Prophet, so I will
Speaker 3: know all about him when the book comes out in January.
Speaker 3: I'm psyched about it. But as I was researching this
Speaker 3: permaculture article, I was like, you can really see that
Speaker 3: same headbutt, that same push and pull between people who
Speaker 3: are saying we need sustainability and other people are like,
Speaker 3: we need to feed, you know, billions and billions of people,
Speaker 3: and that really comes together in the debate over permaculture
Speaker 3: and whether it works or whether it is just just
Speaker 3: a pie in the sky kind of idea.
Speaker 1: Well, I have a little something to say. Okay, I
Speaker 1: am a bit of an IRB. Well not a bit.
Speaker 1: I'm an urban permaculturist.
Speaker 3: That's awesome.
Speaker 1: We had not me as like I don't know much
Speaker 1: while I do know about this stuff now after researching it,
Speaker 1: but we are redoing our front and backyards and we
Speaker 1: hired a permaculture company to do so.
Speaker 3: Really, the Permaculture Pros.
Speaker 1: That's not their name, but maybe it should be. Uh yeah,
Speaker 1: So we're we are like right in the middle of
Speaker 1: making our small little piece of Atlanta a permaculture urban pum.
Speaker 3: I know it's hard to say now that I'm saying
Speaker 3: it out loud.
Speaker 1: An urban perm habitat if you will, urb perm that's right.
Speaker 1: So I'll be peppering, you know, little things here and there.
Speaker 3: I think that would help a lot. Yeah, because permaculture,
Speaker 3: as it turns out, and I didn't know really anything
Speaker 3: about it until we started researching this. It is a
Speaker 3: wooly idea. It's tough to pin down, which is really
Speaker 3: weird because it's actually a set of design principles meant
Speaker 3: to grow food for people in a way that's sustainable
Speaker 3: and not harmful. And it basically stands in contradiction of
Speaker 3: what you would consider like big modern agriculture, which is
Speaker 3: we grow one kind of food and we squeeze as
Speaker 3: much as we possibly can out of it from the
Speaker 3: ground we have, using as much artificial resources as we
Speaker 3: possibly need to increase our yield.
Speaker 1: Yeah, And that's like people throw around the word sustainable
Speaker 1: or unsustainable, and maybe people sometimes folks don't even stop
Speaker 1: to think about what that means. Sustainable or I guess
Speaker 1: we'll start with unsustainable. That means that you are you're
Speaker 1: depleting resources around you and you are depending very much
Speaker 1: on bringing in different resources to make that thing work, right,
Speaker 1: Like you're not just using what's available, Like that's what
Speaker 1: sustainable would be. You're using what's available. It all works
Speaker 1: together to ideally sustain itself without saying, well, now I
Speaker 1: need to bring in this thing from way over here
Speaker 1: to make these three hundred acres of corn grow.
Speaker 3: Yeah, I've got to go burn a bunch of fossil
Speaker 3: fuels to create nitrogen based fertilizer, and it's not going
Speaker 3: to attach to the soil very well, so a lot
Speaker 3: of it will run off and be wasted, and even worse,
Speaker 3: it'll end up in a pond, which will create an
Speaker 3: algae bloom which sucks up all of the dissolved oxygen,
Speaker 3: which creates a fish kill. That's unsustainable. And it's weird
Speaker 3: because I hadn't really thought about that either, Chuck. But
Speaker 3: as growing up, as like kids who are sensioned in
Speaker 3: the nineties, you hear unsustainable and it's just basically in
Speaker 3: your mind with evil, like almost intentionally malicious acts against
Speaker 3: the earth, and that's just not necessarily the case. And
Speaker 3: that's another thing about like Norman Borlog the Wizard. He
Speaker 3: had the greatest of intentions, but you can also lay
Speaker 3: at his feet a lot of the ecological problems we're
Speaker 3: facing right now because of agriculture and the agricultural practices
Speaker 3: he helped pioneer in order to feed a bunch of people.
Speaker 3: So there's this tension between unsustainability and sustainability, but it's
Speaker 3: also a tension between what's realistic and what's not.
Speaker 1: You know, Yeah, it's definitely a little sticky.
Speaker 3: It is a little sticky.
Speaker 1: But perma culture basically is trying to create like a harmonious,
Speaker 1: holistic approach to farming and whether it be a large
Speaker 1: farm or like in my case, like an urban small
Speaker 1: urban plot. And like I said, we'll kind of go
Speaker 1: over both of those through my lens and then through
Speaker 1: the larger ideas of the farm. And it's it's not
Speaker 1: like Robert Lamb wrote this article from Stuff to blow
Speaker 1: your mind. He did a good job with it, always
Speaker 1: does he does. But he does point out that you shouldn't.
Speaker 1: It doesn't necessarily mean that you have to go back
Speaker 1: to caveman days and like you have to live like
Speaker 1: tiktook and scavenge the earth. He said, to think of
Speaker 1: it in terms of a river, like you were a
Speaker 1: boat floating down a river and you were sustained by
Speaker 1: that river, but you are also navigating it as well
Speaker 1: with your rudder.
Speaker 3: And if you have to pee right now. It just
Speaker 3: increased tenfold, that's right. So yeah, it's not like just
Speaker 3: passively taking from the land what it has to offer.
Speaker 3: There's still management of it, right, Oh yeah, But the
Speaker 3: idea behind that management of it is managing the land
Speaker 3: in a way that the land.
Speaker 1: Is happy with. Yeah, kind of working with what you got.
Speaker 3: Like you can walk past a dog that's just sitting
Speaker 3: there looking at you and maybe you know, give it
Speaker 3: like a wink or something like that, and keep walking.
Speaker 3: That's passive. But if you stop and scratch it behind
Speaker 3: the ear, you're managing that dog in a way or
Speaker 3: something like that. You're at least interacting with it more
Speaker 3: and the dog likes it. You could also walk past
Speaker 3: the dog and like poking in the ribs. Yeah, that's
Speaker 3: interacting with it in a way that the dog wouldn't like.
Speaker 3: Perma culture is the middle one, right, sure. So you're saying, hey,
Speaker 3: I want to get something out of you, like a
Speaker 3: good feeling, so I'm going to scratch it behind the
Speaker 3: ear earth. And again, like you said, you're doing that
Speaker 3: by trying to create a system, whether it's your little
Speaker 3: plot of land or a full scale, industrial sized farm
Speaker 3: in a way that it has. It's sustainable, meaning it
Speaker 3: requires as few external inputs as possible. That's right, But sorry,
Speaker 3: I just need to point it again. It's still being managed.
Speaker 3: It's still being managed by you, just in a harmonious way.
Speaker 1: Yeah. I think there is a word for the other
Speaker 1: thing where you just just let everything do its thing. Right. Yeah,
Speaker 1: that's nature, maybe like wild or something or rewilding. Have
Speaker 1: we talked about that.
Speaker 3: No, we never did. I'm probably wrong anyway, although we
Speaker 3: also thought we didn't do a cat episode, So who
Speaker 3: knows if we've talked about it before or not.
Speaker 1: All right, so this all goes back to Australia and
Speaker 1: see you in September of next year. Australia. Yep, right, yep,
Speaker 1: get excited.
Speaker 3: Oh man, you just sold us a million tickets with
Speaker 3: that accent, buddy and New Zealand, so you gotta take
Speaker 3: it better than that.
Speaker 1: Well no, I'm super excited about going to New Zealand. Okay,
Speaker 1: I didn't want to not mention.
Speaker 3: That, you say in New Zealand.
Speaker 1: In New Zealand. So in Australia in the nineteen seventies,
Speaker 1: there were a couple of dudes named Bill Mullison and
Speaker 1: David holmegrin and imagine they were sitting around smoking a
Speaker 1: joint one night in the version that I have in
Speaker 1: my head. Oh yeah, when they dreamed up the word
Speaker 1: permaculture in nineteen seventy eight, which is basically what we've
Speaker 1: been talking about. This is just put a word on it.
Speaker 3: Actually two words, permanent and agriculture.
Speaker 1: Right, good point. They said let's join those up and
Speaker 1: he said right, and that was it. That's how it
Speaker 1: went down. And it's a self sustaining alternative to like
Speaker 1: what you were talking about, which is mass production of
Speaker 1: a single crop. And there are three basic ethics to
Speaker 1: the permaculture movement. Yeah, care for the earth, care for
Speaker 1: the people, and then setting limits on population and consumption.
Speaker 3: Right. And so Mollison I believe, was a professor at
Speaker 3: the time and Holmgren was his student, and they split
Speaker 3: within a few years. They had creative differences, I guess
Speaker 3: you could kind of call it. They both like pursued permaculture,
Speaker 3: but through different ways. So Mollison is frequently accused or
Speaker 3: was I think he may have passed accused of being
Speaker 3: kind of a dogmatic, charismatic egomaniac maybe where it was
Speaker 3: like it's more I waey or the haw way. And
Speaker 3: then that extended to even principles of permaculture, right, like
Speaker 3: if he said it, it was just that was just true,
Speaker 3: whereas Hommegren apparently took a little more of a pragmatic
Speaker 3: approach to studying it, finding out the best practices, discarding
Speaker 3: the ones that didn't work, even if they were like
Speaker 3: precious to everybody, including the entire permaculture movement, and movement
Speaker 3: is actually the right word, because there is like this
Speaker 3: definite well like Malison put the cult in permaculture, you
Speaker 3: know what I'm saying, Like, there's definitely an adherency to
Speaker 3: it that's kind of fervent. You know that the whole
Speaker 3: movement gets criticized for rightfully or wrongly. Yeah, but they're
Speaker 3: both kind of I think the fact that they did
Speaker 3: split probably added to this field even more because there's
Speaker 3: two different courses of study or of thinking about it
Speaker 3: at least that were able to develop in tandem.
Speaker 1: Yeah, and this stuff is nothing new. They didn't invent
Speaker 1: this idea because Tuk took in the Gang way back
Speaker 1: in the ancient days did things like this. They worked
Speaker 1: with what they had. They didn't have four hundred acres
Speaker 1: of corn. They did forest farming, they had crop rotation,
Speaker 1: they composted, they had multiple crops, and they were not
Speaker 1: just out to be leading pioneers and environmentalism. That was
Speaker 1: just the way you work the earth back then. And
Speaker 1: that's a lot of what permaculture is all about is
Speaker 1: returning to this idea of just sort of doing it
Speaker 1: the smart right way. And again, this is probably not
Speaker 1: going to be the thing that feeds the world, but
Speaker 1: that's not to say you can't have a permaculture movement
Speaker 1: in farms, in urban permaculture going on.
Speaker 3: Well, that's one of the things that it gets criticized
Speaker 3: about is that people who our big time adherents of
Speaker 3: permaculture do tend to say, like, uh, yeah, this is
Speaker 3: this is what we need to feed the world, and
Speaker 3: if we don't do this, then there's not going to
Speaker 3: be people around to feed because we're going to wreck
Speaker 3: the earth and die from climate change.
Speaker 1: Yeah. I get that, but I think I come from
Speaker 1: the like reality camp, and you're not going to undo
Speaker 1: conventional modern farming. You're not gonna just completely supplant that anymore.
Speaker 1: It's kind of too late.
Speaker 3: I agree with you. I am of the same mindset.
Speaker 3: I do think though, that you these practices or most
Speaker 3: of them, should be incorporated as best as possible.
Speaker 1: Sure, that'd be great.
Speaker 3: So I think there's a happy medium between you know, big,
Speaker 3: big time monoculture agriculture and pure permaculture, just because they're
Speaker 3: both probably unsustainable for what we need, which is to
Speaker 3: feed a bunch of people in a way that doesn't
Speaker 3: wreck the earth.
Speaker 1: Agreed.
Speaker 3: Yeah, I'm with you, man.
Speaker 1: Should we take a sure, all right, We're gonna take
Speaker 1: a little, uh, a little pause for the cause and
Speaker 1: then come back. That was so corny and sounds like
Speaker 1: our radio DJ. It was great, and then come back
Speaker 1: and talk about design principles of permaculture right after this.
Speaker 3: Okay, you back, We're back. Are we back?
Speaker 1: I'm back?
Speaker 3: Okay, I'm back to Jerry. You're back.
Speaker 1: She's back, She's back.
Speaker 3: So, like I said early on, Chuck, the permaculture is
Speaker 3: a little it's a wooly it's a wooly idea. There's
Speaker 3: so many different definitions of it, and as a results,
Speaker 3: its image kind of suffers in the mind of rational skeptics. Right, Yes,
Speaker 3: but I did find one one definition of it that
Speaker 3: I thought really got the whole point across hit me.
Speaker 3: The conscious design and maintenance of agriculturally productive systems which
Speaker 3: have the diversity, stability, and resilience of natural ecosystems. That's
Speaker 3: a big one. There's a second half even it is
Speaker 3: the harmonious integration of the landscape with people providing their food, energy, shelter,
Speaker 3: and other material and non material needs in a sustainable way.
Speaker 1: That is a great definition.
Speaker 3: I agree wholeheartedly. And I'm not sure who the actual
Speaker 3: person who said or wrote it was because it was
Speaker 3: misattributed to at least three different people. But regardless, it's
Speaker 3: a great definition.
Speaker 1: We should just throw your name in there too.
Speaker 3: Sure, we'll say I said it. So you said you
Speaker 3: brought up the three basic ethics, right, the care for earth,
Speaker 3: care for people, and setting limits on population.
Speaker 1: Correct.
Speaker 3: Feel like we should kind of go over those a
Speaker 3: little in depth, don't you think.
Speaker 1: Yeah, care for earth is it's not just like a
Speaker 1: lot of this is about plants, of course, but it's
Speaker 1: also animals and insects and how the air moves through
Speaker 1: the area, and minerals in the earth, and it's basically
Speaker 1: respecting all of the things within the ecosystem. Right, How's that.
Speaker 3: I think that's great care for people, right. So basically
Speaker 3: that's saying like that there's an importance to community. It's
Speaker 3: every person isn't just an island, right, and that this
Speaker 3: is a big one too, that access to resources is
Speaker 3: a human right and it's easy to take that for granted.
Speaker 3: You know where in places where you have easy access
Speaker 3: to land or water or something like that, but in
Speaker 3: places as diverse as Flint, Michigan, or Central America, they're
Speaker 3: the access to good stuff like water is highly restricted
Speaker 3: or the water is just not good. So the idea
Speaker 3: that everybody's should have easy, cheap, if not free, access
Speaker 3: to something like clean water is that's a that's a
Speaker 3: big one. That's it's kind of radical in a weird
Speaker 3: way these days.
Speaker 1: Yeah. And as far as limits on population and consumption,
Speaker 1: Robert puts it as recognizing how you have to reinvest
Speaker 1: money in surplus labor and energy into caring for the planet.
Speaker 1: Like it's it's it takes.
Speaker 3: Work, right, So those are like the three ethics. That's
Speaker 3: not how you go permaculture. That's just kind of the
Speaker 3: basis for the designs to permaculture, right, correct. And I
Speaker 3: think you said that this is this is not new, right,
Speaker 3: this is something that's been around for a very long time.
Speaker 3: Or these some of these ideas or the sustainable practices
Speaker 3: are adopted from like generations and generations of proven techniques, right, yes,
Speaker 3: which is pretty interesting if you ask me. That's another
Speaker 3: thing too, if you if you have not read have
Speaker 3: you read fourteen ninety one yet?
Speaker 1: Nope?
Speaker 3: Oh man, you have to read it. It talks about
Speaker 3: this kind of stuff where like they from just looking
Speaker 3: into it, they've they've found that there's all these sophisticated
Speaker 3: land management techniques that were just totally lost to time
Speaker 3: until archaeologists started discovering them. And at first they didn't
Speaker 3: even realize what they were looking at, and they'd be like, well,
Speaker 3: there's a lot of kind of weird hills in this area.
Speaker 3: It's otherwise pretty flat. And then they realized, oh wait,
Speaker 3: this is entire system of berms that used to be planted,
Speaker 3: and in between the berms were aquaculture ponds where they
Speaker 3: raised fish, and they were just doing all this sophisticated
Speaker 3: stuff that no one had any idea. That book is
Speaker 3: just all about chasing that stuff down and figuring it out.
Speaker 3: So good Chuck. One day you'll read it right, of course. Yeah.
Speaker 1: So before the break, I promised some design principles and
Speaker 1: there are believe like ten of these in our article.
Speaker 1: And it breaks down like this, and this is this
Speaker 1: is talking about a farm, but we have incorporated in
Speaker 1: this company that's come in as incorporating these most of
Speaker 1: these same principles within like a place as small as
Speaker 1: our backyard, for instance, zones. We have divided our yard
Speaker 1: up into zones now. And basically in the case of
Speaker 1: a farm, it's a little bit different. They divide areas
Speaker 1: into zones based on based on the in all this stuff,
Speaker 1: it's just sort of makes sense and it's all seems
Speaker 1: like it would be intuitive and how Tiktook would have
Speaker 1: done it. So it divides into zones based on how
Speaker 1: much attention certain things need on the farm and what
Speaker 1: does it require out of people in the different areas.
Speaker 1: And so if you think of it as a circle,
Speaker 1: you got your farm in the center. So obviously the
Speaker 1: stuff that needed the most attention would be closest to
Speaker 1: the center where the people are. And then as you
Speaker 1: go out and out, the activity decreases like the human activity,
Speaker 1: and things are allowed like trees to grow a little
Speaker 1: more wildly.
Speaker 3: Right, Yeah, So like the zone is kind of like
Speaker 3: ripples in a pond or something, right there, concentric circles, yeah,
Speaker 3: radiating from the center. And I guess the center is
Speaker 3: the actual farmer in this case, your house. Uh yeah, okay,
Speaker 3: so that's understandable enough. And then you look into something
Speaker 3: called sectors, and that's kind of similar, it seems like,
Speaker 3: but it's actually not. With sectors. Again, the center of
Speaker 3: the whole, the whole permaculture land or whatever, is the
Speaker 3: farm where the people live or whatever. And then the
Speaker 3: the zone the sectors radiate outwards, so the whole thing
Speaker 3: is one big circle around the center, but this time
Speaker 3: it's sliced into like like pizza slices.
Speaker 1: Basically, all right, I'm hungry enough.
Speaker 3: Okay, So but with that, so that doesn't mean like
Speaker 3: you do sectors or zones. These are two different ways
Speaker 3: of looking at the land that will overlay one another. Right,
Speaker 3: And I've seen a couple of places that recommend if
Speaker 3: you're setting up a permaculture farm, you want to spend
Speaker 3: basically an entire year doing nothing but observing. Don't plant anything,
Speaker 3: don't cut anything down, don't dig upond, don't do anything
Speaker 3: like that, just observe, figure out where the sun is
Speaker 3: at different parts of the year, where does the wind
Speaker 3: come from, where does the water go. Are there pollutants
Speaker 3: that come onto the property that you need to to,
Speaker 3: you know, manage where do the animals, Like if there's
Speaker 3: deer that come in and eat the garden, like, where
Speaker 3: would they be coming from? And so that's what you
Speaker 3: base the sectors on, and then that creates kind of
Speaker 3: like this underlying map beneath the zones. Does that make sense?
Speaker 1: Yes?
Speaker 3: Okay? And I got that one right, Yeah, I think so? Okay.
Speaker 1: I mean I'm sure a permaculture expert would say, oh boys, right.
Speaker 1: Relative locations another important part of permaculture. That is basically
Speaker 1: designing things and again in a way that makes sense
Speaker 1: relative to one another. So the great example that Robert
Speaker 1: gives is is planning a crop downhill from a pond.
Speaker 1: That way it's downhill, you don't need to install a
Speaker 1: pump system. The whole idea of sustainability and so if
Speaker 1: you can have the stuff you need to water downhill
Speaker 1: from your water, then you have just created a sustainable environment.
Speaker 3: Right, And that one is there's it's an actual design principle,
Speaker 3: like David Holmgren came up with twelve of them. One
Speaker 3: of them was called integrate rather than segregate, and that
Speaker 3: one's definitely part of that.
Speaker 1: That's right.
Speaker 3: There's also having single elements with multiple functions, right, Yes,
Speaker 3: So going back to that, like a pond example, a
Speaker 3: pond also not only serves as a source for irrigation,
Speaker 3: but it's also a water source for your live stock,
Speaker 3: and depending on where you put it, it also acts
Speaker 3: as a barrier between your live stock and the edge
Speaker 3: of your property.
Speaker 1: Yeah, so you don't even need a fence because cows
Speaker 1: aren't going to swim across the pond.
Speaker 3: No, you try to find one doing it, they won't
Speaker 3: do it.
Speaker 1: Or a hedge, a hedge lovely hedge connect as a
Speaker 1: wind block, things like.
Speaker 3: That, right, And it can also produce seeds that your
Speaker 3: chicken seed.
Speaker 1: Right right, or shade if you need shade.
Speaker 3: Right, and so all that I mean that just makes
Speaker 3: total sense. Of course you want to do that. But
Speaker 3: when you stop and think about the fact that they
Speaker 3: don't do this on big modern farms, like this stuff
Speaker 3: is not that's just wasted area where you could be
Speaker 3: planting more corn. You know, what I mean.
Speaker 1: Yeah, and they don't do Most people don't think about
Speaker 1: this when they're designing their home backyards either. They want
Speaker 1: they just say this looks pretty. That looks pretty, and
Speaker 1: it may be laid out in such a way that
Speaker 1: it's completely unharmonious and working against each other at times. Right,
Speaker 1: why is that thing dying? It's so pretty? It's like, well,
Speaker 1: it's not, it's not where it should be.
Speaker 3: Another permaculture principle that stands in stark opposition to monoculture
Speaker 3: is having a single thing have just one function, or
Speaker 3: have okay, a bunch of different things serving as failsafes
Speaker 3: to one another. You see what I'm saying. Right, So,
Speaker 3: like that pond can also provide water, right, so it's
Speaker 3: a it's a water reservoir. But you may also have
Speaker 3: rain barrels on site as well. So you have all
Speaker 3: these different things serving multiple functions but also serving backups
Speaker 3: to the functions that they share with one another. And again,
Speaker 3: this is the idea that you're doing this if you
Speaker 3: take the time to diversify, Like this is where the
Speaker 3: idea that you you shouldn't put all of your eggs
Speaker 3: in one basket. It came from the farm. Yeah, and
Speaker 3: this is this, like some of these principles are just
Speaker 3: getting back to that very simple maxim which is you
Speaker 3: have to diversify, and the more you diversify, the better
Speaker 3: off you're gonna be. If something befalls, like if an
Speaker 3: avian flu wipes out your chicken flock, well, if all
Speaker 3: you do is raise chickens, you're ruined. Your family's going
Speaker 3: to starve, you're gonna lose all of your money, and
Speaker 3: the farm's gonna be taken from you. If chickens are
Speaker 3: just one part of a larger holistic farm you have
Speaker 3: going on, then you lose your chickens, and that's awful,
Speaker 3: but you still have You know, you can cut off
Speaker 3: a cow's foot and chew on that for the winter.
Speaker 1: You know where the chicken and the eggs in the
Speaker 1: basket comes from, right way that little Bobby Joe going
Speaker 1: out to get the chicken eggs one morning, taking one basket.
Speaker 1: He says, Paw, I got them, don't fret. And then
Speaker 1: he trips on the way back and breaks all his
Speaker 1: eggs and Pa says, put all the chicken eggs in
Speaker 1: one basket. Now I ain't got no eggs. Yeah, And
Speaker 1: then Bobby Joe says, well, then paw have more kids
Speaker 1: or get more baskets.
Speaker 3: That's right, and that happened in December of eighteen forty
Speaker 3: two in Georgia.
Speaker 1: That's right. Those were my relatives.
Speaker 3: That was a great way. They chalked tall.
Speaker 1: No, no, no, this is from the other side of
Speaker 1: the family.
Speaker 3: The other side. Okay, yes, that's canna say, the redneck side.
Speaker 1: Energy efficiency is a big deal using energy efficient designs,
Speaker 1: whether or not you're straight up using like wind power
Speaker 1: or solar, or you can just simply, like I said,
Speaker 1: build things in a way where you have natural wind
Speaker 1: breaks built in or places to allow the wind to
Speaker 1: come through and spread seed and stuff like that.
Speaker 3: Right, My favorite dude of all is the biological resources.
Speaker 1: Let's hear it.
Speaker 3: So it's just basically using nature to help solve the
Speaker 3: problems that you have. Right. So mollusin one of the
Speaker 3: creators of it. What is his first name begain Bill
Speaker 3: Bill Mullison. He had a saying, you don't have a
Speaker 3: snail problem, you have a duct of fish, which is
Speaker 3: to say.
Speaker 1: That that shirt too.
Speaker 3: It was for a little while it was almost outsold
Speaker 3: gas grass or you know, yeah, right, but The premise
Speaker 3: of it is that if you are over rum with stils,
Speaker 3: get more ducks, because the ducks are going to eat
Speaker 3: the snails. And it's fine. It's good to have ducks
Speaker 3: because they do other stuff too, like they walk around
Speaker 3: and poop all over your property, fertilizing it as they're
Speaker 3: doing it. Right, So the just to kind of take
Speaker 3: a take a step back and look at it like, okay,
Speaker 3: what how just say like what would nature do? That's
Speaker 3: a great way to solve your problems through permaculture. Another
Speaker 3: one is using pigs or chickens to till the ground
Speaker 3: and to actually rotate where you plant crops every year,
Speaker 3: and so this year's pig pen is next year's crop
Speaker 3: land because you can move the pigs onto another area
Speaker 3: and they'll turn it all muddy and turn it up
Speaker 3: and get it ready for planting, just like they did
Speaker 3: for this year's cropland that you're using now.
Speaker 1: Pretty great insects too, Yeah, very big thing to bring
Speaker 1: in the right kinds of plants, to attract the right
Speaker 1: kinds of insects, to take care of the wrong kinds
Speaker 1: of insects. Right, but great, I love it.
Speaker 3: This raises an issue though, too one of the criticisms
Speaker 3: of permacultures. It's like, well, where are you going to
Speaker 3: bring in those insects from? Right? So, if, for example,
Speaker 3: if you order ladybugs online, it can actually be really
Speaker 3: bad for the ladybugs that live in your area because
Speaker 3: if they are lab raised or farm raised ladybugs, they
Speaker 3: very frequently carry a parasite that you're bringing now into
Speaker 3: your neighborhood, and you can wipe out the existing native
Speaker 3: ladybug population. So what do you do?
Speaker 1: Well?
Speaker 3: The permaculture way would be to say, I need to
Speaker 3: attract more native ladybugs because I got aphids on my
Speaker 3: lemon trees. So how do I do that? Well, you
Speaker 3: just plant more high pollinating plants like sunflowers, and voila,
Speaker 3: native ladybugs parasite free love it.
Speaker 1: I didn't know people bought ladybugs online. Yeah, that's a thing.
Speaker 3: I know that because I've had aphids before I looked
Speaker 3: into it.
Speaker 1: You said, duck, I got aphids at my lemon tree.
Speaker 1: It's a come here shot. Plant succession is another design principle.
Speaker 1: If you think about how land was before people were
Speaker 1: messing around with it. In a natural scene, things would
Speaker 1: just sort of grow and develop as they as nature intended,
Speaker 1: and fields might be barren and then grow into weeds,
Speaker 1: and that that might eventually grow into plants that may
Speaker 1: eventually grow into trees, and then what do you know,
Speaker 1: you have a forest.
Speaker 3: Right, So Robert makes the case like that's apparently the
Speaker 3: natural progression of a temperate area. Yeah, if you leave
Speaker 3: it alone for long enough, it's going to into a force.
Speaker 3: I didn't realize that. I guess it makes sense. So
Speaker 3: this is basically saying, well, how can we how can
Speaker 3: we do that if that's the way the plant, if
Speaker 3: that's the way the area wants to be, how can
Speaker 3: we accommodate that while also getting you know, food staples
Speaker 3: from that too.
Speaker 1: Right.
Speaker 3: There's also nutrient recycling, which is basically composting. And I
Speaker 3: was thinking the other day I don't answer enough when
Speaker 3: asked what my favorite episode is. Composting is definitely up there.
Speaker 3: Oh yeah, that was a great one. All right, if
Speaker 3: you're digging this episode at all, go listen to composting
Speaker 3: if you haven't already, it's a good one.
Speaker 1: Yeah. And finally, diversity raising multiple crops, having different kinds
Speaker 1: of animals. Like we said, we've kind of been beaten
Speaker 1: up on corn. But that's the idea is to not
Speaker 1: have you know, a thousand acres of a thing and
Speaker 1: have many different things. So, like you said, the benefits there.
Speaker 1: If something comes along that is an illness to a crop,
Speaker 1: you're not wiped out completely, right, you know.
Speaker 3: So speaking of wiping out, let's take a break for
Speaker 3: a second. Okay, well you wiped out. I'm a little
Speaker 3: wiped I need to regenerate here. Okay, Okay, we'll be
Speaker 3: right back. Okay, we're back. I'm feeling restored.
Speaker 1: Chuck, good, Well, you took a nap on my shoulder
Speaker 1: and that always helps.
Speaker 3: I got a little jewel on your sleeve.
Speaker 1: I'm sorry, no big deal.
Speaker 3: Okay. So when when you're talking about this, like design
Speaker 3: principles are great and good and they are really interesting
Speaker 3: to me. I think ecology is incredibly fascinating. But there
Speaker 3: are to actually feed people, you have to take them
Speaker 3: into action and like do something. And people have been
Speaker 3: trying this right to varying degrees of success, and more importantly,
Speaker 3: to varying degrees of scientific study. I ran across a
Speaker 3: professor in I believe, the UK at a place called
Speaker 3: Schumacher College. Her name is Bethin Stagg, and she I
Speaker 3: get the impression Schumacher College is a little crunchy. I
Speaker 3: think they're the fighting granola, little hippiepy just a tad.
Speaker 3: But one of the things they teach is permaculture, and
Speaker 3: so beth and Stag, one of the professors there, I
Speaker 3: basically studied this permaculture next to traditional like gardening plots
Speaker 3: that are the same size, they're they're like, everything's the same,
Speaker 3: the amount of wind and rain and sun they're getting.
Speaker 3: The difference is one is one is cultivated in a
Speaker 3: through permaculture methods. The other one's more just like traditional gardening,
Speaker 3: like go buy fertilizer and stuff like that. Who won
Speaker 3: it depends on your definition of one.
Speaker 1: Well, which one was lying dead in a field afterward
Speaker 1: the regular gardener.
Speaker 3: They both got a couple of good licks in on
Speaker 3: one another. Ultimately, I think most people would say that
Speaker 3: the traditional gardening or the normal modern gardening method one.
Speaker 3: The reason why it won was because for one hundred
Speaker 3: for every hundred square meters of land, it yielded thirteen
Speaker 3: kilograms of edible food. The permaculture one yielded two point
Speaker 3: three kilograms per one hundred meters, so far, far far
Speaker 3: less food was grown. But there's a couple of things
Speaker 3: you got to point out here. There was also far,
Speaker 3: far far less time put into the permaculture plot, because
Speaker 3: that's one of the tenets of permaculture. It's just like
Speaker 3: plant this stuff and then just forget about it. You're
Speaker 3: not ever supposed to mess with it again except to
Speaker 3: harvest stuff. There's an emphasis on perennials rather than annuals.
Speaker 3: There's far less inputs that are meant to be made
Speaker 3: into it. It's just supposed to be like a little
Speaker 3: engine you build and then start and it just keeps
Speaker 3: going forever. Yeah, so far less time and far less
Speaker 3: effort on the permaculture side, so it kind of wins
Speaker 3: in that respect, right. But then also there was over
Speaker 3: this three year study there were also at least one
Speaker 3: year where the weather was really bad, and so the
Speaker 3: normal modern gardening suffered as a result, whereas the permaculture one,
Speaker 3: which was more diversified, had about the same yield as
Speaker 3: the other years. So they both won. They're all winners.
Speaker 3: It's like a soccer game.
Speaker 1: Yeah, And I think the idea too, is it's not
Speaker 1: like like that's the kind of tests that should be
Speaker 1: carried out over one hundred years.
Speaker 3: Almost yes.
Speaker 1: And the whole point is though still that permaculture is
Speaker 1: not like they're not saying we will shall create more
Speaker 1: yield than any other farm. That's not the whole point.
Speaker 3: Again, though it depends on who you talk to. There
Speaker 3: are but definitely permaculture adherents out there who think that
Speaker 3: anyone who doesn't use permaculture is an idiot who's ruining
Speaker 3: the planet and this is the way.
Speaker 1: No, I'm not saying that. But are they saying that
Speaker 1: they can they can provide more yield the conventional farming.
Speaker 3: I think if you backed them into a corner, they
Speaker 3: would probably hedge that. But I think that when they're
Speaker 3: amongst themselves they may yes.
Speaker 1: Okay, like you guys totally know we can't okay, we
Speaker 1: just won't talk about it.
Speaker 3: Shut up, Simon.
Speaker 1: So there are people doing this to varying degrees all
Speaker 1: over the world. Whether or not is if you have
Speaker 1: a full scale permaculture farm, then you are almost one
Speaker 1: likely to be a pulm permaculture activist or an educator.
Speaker 1: It's not something you're doing lightly. You may also be
Speaker 1: someone who's like, well, you know, I'm part of my
Speaker 1: part of my farm here I'm doing in such a
Speaker 1: manner part of it. I'm not. But there are things
Speaker 1: that you can do even at your own home, like
Speaker 1: a forest garden.
Speaker 3: Well that that's like what permaculture seems to really be
Speaker 3: best at is backyard gardening. Yeah, so tell them about
Speaker 3: the forest garden, because I found this fascinating. Man.
Speaker 1: Yeah, I mean, if you've got a if you have
Speaker 1: a back lawn that is just a big grass lawn.
Speaker 1: And you know, during our grass episode, we we didn't
Speaker 1: get preachy, but a lot of people will say, like,
Speaker 1: that's the worst thing you can do is just to
Speaker 1: have a huge flat thing of grass, right as far
Speaker 1: as what's good for the earth, And that's a total
Speaker 1: I mean once in that I think I remember we
Speaker 1: talked about that literally being just like an American creation
Speaker 1: in the fifties or something.
Speaker 3: No, it was even that than that. Yeah, but yeah,
Speaker 3: I'm pretty sure it was pretty American. Yeah, maybe English.
Speaker 1: So a forest garden is a food garden that you
Speaker 1: build or plant. You build it out of wood and
Speaker 1: iron in your backyard that imitates a natural forest. So
Speaker 1: you're trying to sort of replicate what you might find
Speaker 1: in that natural setting in your yard. And this is gonna,
Speaker 1: like you said, make things a little easier on you
Speaker 1: because you're not gonna have to rotate crops or till
Speaker 1: like you normally would, and everything's just sort of working together.
Speaker 1: And Robert has sort of a four part example for layers,
Speaker 1: if you will, starting with trees, which are gonna obviously
Speaker 1: the biggest thing in that forest garden. They're gonna eat
Speaker 1: most of that sunlight. But they're also gonna let dapple
Speaker 1: light through, which can be great growing conditions for certain things.
Speaker 3: Right, So there's you're gonna grow things like blackberries or
Speaker 3: leaf lettuce or strawberries, any vines that are shade loving
Speaker 3: that that produce food. But the point of this is
Speaker 3: like the tree isn't just like, well, here's a tree,
Speaker 3: isn't that great. It's like the tree also provides stability
Speaker 3: for the vine to climb up right right, like you said,
Speaker 3: it provides shade for these shade loving plants. And I
Speaker 3: guess the point And I didn't really see anywhere explained
Speaker 3: why people do this. I know it's like an ancient
Speaker 3: technique from South America, I believe, like in the Brazilian rainforest.
Speaker 3: It's used to great impact.
Speaker 1: What the trees.
Speaker 3: Yeah, agro forestry basically is what it's called. But I
Speaker 3: didn't really see what the benefits of it are, especially
Speaker 3: if it limits you to shade loving food plants, right,
Speaker 3: because there's plenty of food plants out there that don't
Speaker 3: love shade. Isn't that correct?
Speaker 1: Yeah? It will, I guess. Let me talk about what
Speaker 1: we're doing. Okay, So this lady came in and she's
Speaker 1: a company owner, and she takes a look at our
Speaker 1: yard and she's basically instead of saying, hey, let's plant
Speaker 1: a tree that will take twenty years to grow to
Speaker 1: provide whatever shade and then go, she's like, let's look
Speaker 1: at what you got now, because Atlanta is an urban
Speaker 1: forest on its own, as you know, and there are
Speaker 1: trees everywhere. So we had existing trees and stuff, and
Speaker 1: she basically just sort of looks at everything, draws up
Speaker 1: a design, and then comes back to us and said,
Speaker 1: here's what we're gonna do. And that she's working mainly
Speaker 1: with Emily because this was sort of her initiative and
Speaker 1: she knew more about it than I did, and Emily
Speaker 1: is more of the gardener in the family.
Speaker 3: Way to go, Emily.
Speaker 1: Yeah, but I was on board, you know, and I
Speaker 1: was sitting in on these meetings, going this sounds great,
Speaker 1: this sounds great. So she would say, all right, you
Speaker 1: have shade over here, so why don't we think about
Speaker 1: this here like blueberry bushes, This is where you might
Speaker 1: want to think about putting your herbs and downwind from
Speaker 1: there because of how the way the wind blows through
Speaker 1: your yard. You might want to think about this there,
Speaker 1: and we can move. Like we had certain things that
Speaker 1: we wanted to keep, like some azaleas and some roses
Speaker 1: and things, and she was like, we got to move
Speaker 1: those because they're not in the right place. So we'll
Speaker 1: put that over here, move this over there, and then
Speaker 1: before you know it, she's drawn a schematic for a
Speaker 1: sustainable backyard that all works together. And you know, the
Speaker 1: insects from the one plant are close to the where
Speaker 1: they need to be to help kill insects that affect
Speaker 1: the other plant. And you know, I wish, I, well,
Speaker 1: it's probably great to get two wonky over my yard,
Speaker 1: but it just all works together in harmony, and we're
Speaker 1: doing it in stages. The main thing, the big, big
Speaker 1: change that we've done aside from rearranging and planting new things.
Speaker 1: Is we got a cistern finally, so we have a big,
Speaker 1: huge geez. I don't even know how many gallons. I
Speaker 1: want to say, like five hundred gallon. No, it's large.
Speaker 3: Wow.
Speaker 1: I mean it's as big as.
Speaker 3: That's above ground swimming pool. I think you're describing.
Speaker 1: Is that too many gallons?
Speaker 3: Five hundred that's a lot, I don't know.
Speaker 1: Let's say this. It is as big as a it's
Speaker 1: like half as big as a Volk wagon beetle.
Speaker 3: Wow, it's large.
Speaker 1: So this is under our deck, so it's not an
Speaker 1: iore or anything. All the gutters in the house, all
Speaker 1: the water that falls onto our roof is fed into
Speaker 1: the cistern. And then that cistern has pipes that they
Speaker 1: trenched and they go all underground throughout the whole yard
Speaker 1: and just sort of leech water where it needs to be.
Speaker 1: And then there's also a couple of pumps. We didn't
Speaker 1: have spigots in our backyard. We still don't. It's been awful,
Speaker 1: you know, we haven't had We've had to run like
Speaker 1: hundreds of feet of hose every time we wanted to
Speaker 1: water anything, and it just feels wasteful anyway, And so
Speaker 1: we didn't have backyards pigots. And now we have these
Speaker 1: two posts with the little pumps and it's sort of
Speaker 1: gravity fed in a way, like if the cistern is
Speaker 1: full and you turn that pump on, it'll water will
Speaker 1: flow some. But then we have an actual pump installed
Speaker 1: on the cistern to where we can actually use a
Speaker 1: sprinkler if we want to.
Speaker 3: But but the the pump is squirrel run by a
Speaker 3: hamster whale, right which and it's it's located in the
Speaker 3: chestnut tree, so it's going to attract the squirrels anyway.
Speaker 1: No, it's sadly it does run an electricity. I wish
Speaker 1: it was hooked up to solar, but we're not that
Speaker 1: far along yet.
Speaker 3: That's pretty cool though. Man, that's a that's a neat
Speaker 3: prope plane you got there.
Speaker 1: It's pretty awesome. And guess what we have a swale?
Speaker 3: Oh? I was hoping we were going to be able
Speaker 3: to talk about swales. Yeahales.
Speaker 1: Yeah, Robert did include this in his article, but I
Speaker 1: sent you a thing on swales. And we have a swale,
Speaker 1: which is to say, in the back right corner of
Speaker 1: our yard. Now we have a tiny pond. It's only
Speaker 1: about five feet across by five feet across, and it
Speaker 1: is round and it has a like a round berm
Speaker 1: around it, so you know, it's like a little hill
Speaker 1: and a swale. The definition of a swale it is
Speaker 1: a is a level ditch that has dug across whatever
Speaker 1: site you're in with the purpose of stopping the flow
Speaker 1: of water in order to make the water slowly filter
Speaker 1: into the land instead of rushing over it. And the
Speaker 1: idea there is is that most people design their yards
Speaker 1: so water won't accumulate and it will run It's graded
Speaker 1: in such a way that rain water will just run
Speaker 1: off of it as quickly as possible, right, And that's
Speaker 1: you know, that's very wasteful, and that's not how the ground.
Speaker 1: The ground is supposed to accept the water. I know
Speaker 1: that sounds so hippy, but in an ideal situation, the
Speaker 1: ground accepts the water into it and it's not dry
Speaker 1: a day later. It is actually feeding the ground. And
Speaker 1: so this swale now has a runoff from the cistern.
Speaker 1: So when the cistern gets too full, the water will
Speaker 1: then run out into the swale and just sort of
Speaker 1: slowly leach into the ground around it, or if we
Speaker 1: get just tons of tons of rain, obviously the swale
Speaker 1: will collect it and the water will leach into the
Speaker 1: ground around it.
Speaker 3: That is very cool. That is swale.
Speaker 1: It hit a super swale, but it was an important part.
Speaker 1: Like when this lady came over, she's like, well, you
Speaker 1: got to have a swale.
Speaker 3: Yeah, it's like swales are my biggest seller.
Speaker 1: And right now it's not the most attractive thing in
Speaker 1: the world. But over time we're planning. Instead of grass
Speaker 1: in between everything, or even mault, we're doing groundcover. I
Speaker 1: can't remember the specific variety, but groundcover or malta the
Speaker 1: two most sustainable ways to treat your yard period.
Speaker 3: Yeah, that makes sense because the multual breakdown right, degrade
Speaker 3: and become nutrients.
Speaker 1: Yeah. So's it's pretty neat, Like we got a good scene.
Speaker 1: It's going to be years in the making.
Speaker 3: Well that's another thing too. I mean like you got
Speaker 3: to be very patient with this kind of stuff.
Speaker 1: Yeah, that's great man.
Speaker 3: Anywhere there are and I'm wondering you seem to have
Speaker 3: a pretty realistic approach to permaculture though, like you're not
Speaker 3: going to save the world with your backyard. It sounds
Speaker 3: like but it's certainly not hurting some of the issues
Speaker 3: that the world is facing right now.
Speaker 1: We're just trying to create our own little sustainable habitat.
Speaker 3: So there are we should mention some criticisms of permaculture.
Speaker 3: A lot of criticisms of permaculture, we should say, but
Speaker 3: they you know, we've kind of hit on a couple
Speaker 3: of them. But the big one probably is that it's
Speaker 3: not rigorously tested scientifically enough that it's just kind of
Speaker 3: taken like, oh, yeah, that would work intuitively, and then
Speaker 3: that it's just left at that in a lot of ways.
Speaker 3: So there are people like Beth and Stagg who I mentioned,
Speaker 3: and other people around the world who are starting to
Speaker 3: apply science to these things to say this one works,
Speaker 3: let's keep at it, this one works better if you
Speaker 3: do it this way, or this one doesn't work at all,
Speaker 3: don't waste your time. And as long as they're doing that,
Speaker 3: permaculture deserves any respect it can get because it really
Speaker 3: is again, intuitively, it makes a lot of sense, but
Speaker 3: that doesn't necessarily mean it's true in fact, which is
Speaker 3: why you got to study that kind of thing.
Speaker 1: Yeah, and the other thing that I saw in the
Speaker 1: Roberts article that did make sense to me. Was one
Speaker 1: of the criticisms was to Mollison himself because he apparently
Speaker 1: had a stress on bringing in exotic plants, and that
Speaker 1: goes counter to everything that our lady for her company
Speaker 1: talked about. She is all about native plants, like only
Speaker 1: native plants.
Speaker 3: And Mollison's response was, well, we've already screwed up the
Speaker 3: earth so bad that we're not trying to preserve ecosystems
Speaker 3: as they are, specifically where we're trying to make them
Speaker 3: better through management. And it's like, actually, just contradicted everything
Speaker 3: you said back in nineteen seventy eight. And I think
Speaker 3: that's a pretty good example of from what I understand
Speaker 3: of that guy. He's like, well, this is what I'm
Speaker 3: saying now, so this is true, gotcha, you know what
Speaker 3: I mean? That's just and I've never met him, never
Speaker 3: heard him speak anything like that, just from reading about him.
Speaker 3: That's the impression that I have, gotcha. So to the
Speaker 3: Mulson family, sorry, if that's all right, You anything else?
Speaker 1: Got nothing else? You'll have to come over in two years.
Speaker 3: I I'll take you upon.
Speaker 1: I want you to see it now.
Speaker 3: I've been waiting for this invitation for ten years.
Speaker 1: Well, it's going to be twelve total.
Speaker 3: Twelve total. All right, If you want to know more
Speaker 3: about permaculture, you can type that word into the search
Speaker 3: bar how stuff works. And since I said search bar,
Speaker 3: it's time for listener mail.
Speaker 1: I'm going to call this harrowing story from a fashion
Speaker 1: design intern. Yeah, it's a good one, and I got
Speaker 1: her permission. Hey, guys, listen to internships. I wanted to
Speaker 1: say thanks for addressing this issue. When I was in college,
Speaker 1: I went to work or I wanted to work in
Speaker 1: the fashion industry, and the internship process was very difficult
Speaker 1: and exploitive. I managed to somehow get an internship without
Speaker 1: any connections, which felt nearly impossible, and worked my first
Speaker 1: gig for a top designer, and she did not name
Speaker 1: the designer. In a follow up email, she did, but
Speaker 1: then said, maybe don't read it.
Speaker 3: Okay, but it's a top designer okay.
Speaker 1: Not only was the internship unpaid in one of the
Speaker 1: most expensive cities in the world, but I was also
Speaker 1: expected to wear an all black, fashionable wardrobe at all times,
Speaker 1: so I had to find housing in New York by
Speaker 1: all new clothes. Luckily, my parents were able to help
Speaker 1: me out there, but I hated how prohibitive the whole
Speaker 1: thing was. While I was with that designer, the condin
Speaker 1: Nass lawsuits were going on, and I remember people saying
Speaker 1: the lawsuit was just another example of stereotypical millennial entitlement.
Speaker 1: That's obviously not the case, because, as you mentioned, it's
Speaker 1: a social issue. Because of my internship, I was able
Speaker 1: to get more experiences in the fashion industry and eventually
Speaker 1: a full time job in New York after I graduated.
Speaker 1: Everyone I work with now had unpaid fashion internships, and
Speaker 1: almost everyone I work with as white, upper class and
Speaker 1: from a good school. Unpaid internships have led to bigger
Speaker 1: problems and diversity that I think really have hurt the
Speaker 1: fashion industry. You always hear about how retail and department
Speaker 1: stores are dying. Well, all the companies are run by old, white,
Speaker 1: straight dudes, and we lack a variety of perspectives which
Speaker 1: prevents innovation. I'm glad I had internships and I learned
Speaker 1: a lot, but I think the internship market really needs
Speaker 1: to change, So thanks again for addressing this. A lot
Speaker 1: of people listen to your podcast and reevaluate how they
Speaker 1: do things at their own companies and that is from Gail.
Speaker 3: Thanks a lot, Gail. Nice one.
Speaker 1: Yeah, well there be good one.
Speaker 3: Actually, if you want to get in touch with us,
Speaker 3: like Gail did, you can tweat to us. I'm at
Speaker 3: sysk podcast, or at Josh M. Clark, Chuck's at Charles W.
Speaker 3: Chuck Bryant on Facebook and at Stuff you Should Know
Speaker 3: on Facebook. I'm on there too somewhere, although I'm not
Speaker 3: sure where. You can send us all an email, including
Speaker 3: Jerry J. E. Ri I to Stuff podcast at HowStuffWorks
Speaker 3: dot com and in the meantime, hanging out with us
Speaker 3: at our home on the web, Stuff youshould Know dot com.
Speaker 2: For more on this and thousands of US or topics,
Speaker 2: visit HowStuffWorks dot com.
Speaker 3: M HM