Kinking Collapse, Urgent Gratitude & Future Seeds with Shane Simonsen

Reskillience! Hey, this is Katie and you're tuned into Reskillience, a podcast about the hard, soft and surprising skills that'll help us stay afloat if our modern systems don't.

I am gratefully recording in Jara country, central Victoria, where swallows are carving infinity symbols into the sky, sweeping on a sudden explosion of spring insects.

And I am back on the hose.

After reliable rainfall all winter, the skies have now cleared, the sun is out and the soil is drying.

The wind has changed too.

It's no longer an icy southerly but a spirited gale galloping in from the northwest, trampling our broad beans and withering my baby greens.

Suddenly, after months of heavenly irrigation, It's once again down to me to keep the garden hydrated.

Earlier today, as I stood there soaking rows of sprouting broccoli and garlic and broad beans that I planted way too close together in concentric circles that seemed like a cute idea at the time, but actually make basic wheelbarrow maneuvers almost impossible, I started having flashbacks to last season.

The great hand-watering of summer 2025.

All last summer and into autumn, I worked a second job as a barmaid in my very own garden, pulling pints for half an acre of unquenchably thirsty clientele.

I'd be out there first thing in the morning and last thing of an evening, as the sun set behind the mountains and the microbats fluttered at moonrise, trying to keep so many different veggie beds and flower borders alive.

All those hours of my life, not so much down the drain as lost to the soil.

I told myself that hand-watering is like a meditation.

It's a lovely way to stay connected to my plants.

It's time off social media.

But in truth, all of those hours could have been way better spent elsewhere.

And before you ask, we don't have drip irrigation because that requires executive function.

I've felt a sense of dread surfacing as I start planting and watering for another season.

And I'm thinking there has to be a better way.

In fact, I know there's a better way.

We're talking about it today on the podcast with Shane Simonson.

You may know Shane from his downright geek-tacular substack Recombination Nation.

and podcast of the same name, or the film that Geord, or Folklore Pictures, recently made with Shane called Seeds for the Future, which, as of recording this, has landed on 132,000 sets of retinas.

Shane hangs out at the intersection of evolution, ecology, and civilization, and is perhaps best known for his plant breeding experiments.

He is determined, in a thoroughly joyful way, to design crops that actually make sense for our respective environments, that are tough as nails and tasty as fuck, that don't need mollycoddling to survive, that resist pests, outcompete weeds, and offer local communities a foundation of calories for the future.

Over the next hour, Shane is gonna tell you exactly how to start tinkering around with plant genetics to conjure up your own bespoke varieties, varieties that you don't need to waste your life watering, Katie.

What I love most about this conversation is that Shane doesn't just share the info, but he also speaks to the inspo, his inner spark for pursuing this work, the impacts of which will probably land well beyond his lifetime.

Because the thing is, as demonstrated by my relentless adherence to senseless watering regimes, which deep down is just a resistance to change, all of the information in the world is useless unless we can tap into an inner wellspring of wanting to do something, our personal aquifer of motivation.

So I'm asking myself, what will it take to change my gardening habits? To accept that it's not just drip irrigation I need, but a whole new way of thinking about growing food.

A whole new and thrilling set of plants and recipes and garden experiments.

Reskillience! Hey, this is Katie and you're tuned into Reskillience, a podcast about the hard, soft and surprising skills that'll help us stay afloat if our modern systems don't.

I am gratefully recording in Jara country, central Victoria, where swallows are carving infinity symbols into the sky, sweeping on a sudden explosion of spring insects.

And I am back on the hose.

After reliable rainfall all winter, the skies have now cleared, the sun is out and the soil is drying.

The wind has changed too.

It's no longer an icy southerly but a spirited gale galloping in from the northwest, trampling our broad beans and withering my baby greens.

Suddenly, after months of heavenly irrigation, It's once again down to me to keep the garden hydrated.

Earlier today, as I stood there soaking rows of sprouting broccoli and garlic and broad beans that I planted way too close together in concentric circles that seemed like a cute idea at the time, but actually make basic wheelbarrow maneuvers almost impossible, I started having flashbacks to last season.

The great hand-watering of summer 2025.

All last summer and into autumn, I worked a second job as a barmaid in my very own garden, pulling pints for half an acre of unquenchably thirsty clientele.

I'd be out there first thing in the morning and last thing of an evening, as the sun set behind the mountains and the microbats fluttered at moonrise, trying to keep so many different veggie beds and flower borders alive.

All those hours of my life, not so much down the drain as lost to the soil.

I told myself that hand-watering is like a meditation.

It's a lovely way to stay connected to my plants.

It's time off social media.

But in truth, all of those hours could have been way better spent elsewhere.

And before you ask, we don't have drip irrigation because that requires executive function.

I've felt a sense of dread surfacing as I start planting and watering for another season.

And I'm thinking there has to be a better way.

In fact, I know there's a better way.

We're talking about it today on the podcast with Shane Simonson.

You may know Shane from his downright geek-tacular substack Recombination Nation.

and podcast of the same name, or the film that Geord, or Folklore Pictures, recently made with Shane called Seeds for the Future, which, as of recording this, has landed on 132,000 sets of retinas.

Shane hangs out at the intersection of evolution, ecology, and civilization, and is perhaps best known for his plant breeding experiments.

He is determined, in a thoroughly joyful way, to design crops that actually make sense for our respective environments, that are tough as nails and tasty as fuck, that don't need mollycoddling to survive, that resist pests, outcompete weeds, and offer local communities a foundation of calories for the future.

Over the next hour, Shane is gonna tell you exactly how to start tinkering around with plant genetics to conjure up your own bespoke varieties, varieties that you don't need to waste your life watering, Katie.

What I love most about this conversation is that Shane doesn't just share the info, but he also speaks to the inspo, his inner spark for pursuing this work, the impacts of which will probably land well beyond his lifetime.

Because the thing is, as demonstrated by my relentless adherence to senseless watering regimes, which deep down is just a resistance to change, all of the information in the world is useless unless we can tap into an inner wellspring of wanting to do something, our personal aquifer of motivation.

So I'm asking myself, what will it take to change my gardening habits? To accept that it's not just drip irrigation I need, but a whole new way of thinking about growing food.

A whole new and thrilling set of plants and recipes and garden experiments.