Abby Falik - The Flight School

Abby Falik - The Flight School

For this episode of the podcast it was my great honor to speak with Abby Falik, one of the most articulate and passionate proponents of non-traditional developmental pathways for young adults in our time. Abby is a founder and futurist re-imagining how we animate, liberate and co-create. For two decades she has been a leading advocate and architect of a re-invented "gap year." In 2008 she founded Global Citizen Year (now known as Tilting Futures) and in 2022 she joined the Emerson Collective as an Entrepreneur in Residence to design a blueprint for taking the model to scale. A globally-respected entrepreneur and thought leader, she thrives at the interface where inner growth drives societal change. Her work has been featured in The New York Times, NPR and PBS, and she serves as a Fellow at Stanford and Advisor at Harvard Business School. In this fascinating conversation, Abby problematizes the concept not only of a "gap year," but also the very notion of "education." Instead of a school in any conventional sense, the Flight School School offers a globally networked community mentors and young people engaged in a yearlong Fellowship which "reimagines the gap year as a Launch Year—a rebellious rite of passage," setting the stage for adulthood in a rapidly transforming world. In the words of the Flight School website, "Through inner work, wise accompaniment, and immersive travel, Fellows are seen, stretched, and supported in asking: * Who am I beyond my achievements? * What breaks my heart? What lights me up? * How do we build what comes next? Our campus is in the cloud. Our community spans continents. Our curriculum is rooted in relationship, ritual, retreat, and reflection. The Fellowship is our lab – and just the beginning. As a convener and catalyst, we’re taking what we learn and offering it freely—to anyone ready to fly." The Flight School - https://theflightschool.org/ [https://theflightschool.org/] Abby's Substack - "Taking Flight" - https://abbyfalik.substack.com/ [https://abbyfalik.substack.com/] Tilting Futures (Formerly known as Global Citizen Year) - https://tiltingfutures.org/ [https://tiltingfutures.org/] Thoreau College - https://thoreaucollege.org/ [https://thoreaucollege.org/]

Doomer Optimism - Ashley Fitzgerald

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 her hometown of Chicago, where she is raising her three children and continuing the work of the Rizoma Field School with high school students at the Chicago High School for Agricultural Sciences. Thank you, Ashley for a lovely conversation and for sharing it on our podcast! Rizoma Field School - https://rizomafieldschool.com/ [https://rizomafieldschool.com/] Doomer Optimism Substack - https://substack.com/@doomeroptimism [https://substack.com/@doomeroptimism] Doomer Optimism Podcast - https://doomeroptimism.substack.com/s/doomer-optimism-podcast [https://doomeroptimism.substack.com/s/doomer-optimism-podcast] Thoreau College - https://thoreaucollege.org/ [https://thoreaucollege.org/]

Pedagogies of Collapse - Ginie Servant-Miklos

On this episode we welcome back Ginie Servant-Miklos, founder and director of the Bildung Climate School in Rotterdam, the Netherlands, to check in on how this initiative has evolved and also about her recent book, Pedagogies of Collapse: A Hopeful Education for the End of the World as We Know it. The Bildung Climate School is in its third year and set to receive formal accreditation within Erasmus University Rotterdam, one of the great research universities of Europe. Deeply informed by the vision of "Bildung," the model of human development expressed in the Danish folk high schools, BCS seeks to empowers young people drawn from all sectors of post-secondary education in the Netherlands to "face sustainability challenges with resilience, creativity, and care" in the context of "an interdisciplinary learning community, combining science, hands-on skills, and personal development to prepare the next generation for a just and sustainable world." Ginie is an experienced experimental educator and a scholar with a broad range of expertise, as well as a passionate practitioner and promoter of martial arts. She pulls no punches in her book and in our conversation about the dire situation we are in as a species and about how challenging it is to be a young person coming of age today. But her message, and the mission of the Bildung Climate School, is ultimately about hope and an embrace of the most profound facets of what it means to be human. Her work and writing is deeply marked by her own life experiences and the ideas of her intellectual heroes, including Simone de Beauvoir, Paulo Freire, Viktor Frankl, and Hannah Arendt, whose work we discuss in this conversation. Ginie Servant-Miklos is an engaged environmental educator with fifteen years of experience in education practice, research, and advocacy. She currently holds an Associate Professorship with an Education Profile at the Erasmus School of Social and Behavioural Sciences in Rotterdam, The Netherlands. Her research and education work focuses on developing innovative pedagogies for societal impact. She developed the Experimental Pedagogics educational design framework, is the Director of the Bildung Climate School and the author of "Pedagogies of Collapse: A Hopeful Education for the End of the World as We Know It". She is a Leadership Fellow of the Comenius Network for educational innovators in the Netherlands. She is the founder and chair of the board of the FairFight Foundation, an organisation that provides girls and women from Zambia, Zimbabwe, and India with the mental and physical benefits of martial arts practice, as well as educational support. Ginie is a vocal activist for sustainability and gender equality, advocating for change through public engagements like TEDx talks, debates, podcasts, and other digital media outlets. Ginie obtained a Bachelor of Arts in Politics, Philosophy and Economics from the University of Kent, an LLM in International Law from Kent Law School, an MA in International Relations from Sciences Po Lille, a PhD in Education Philosophy and Psychology from Erasmus University Rotterdam, and a post-doctoral research grant in Sustainability Education from Aalborg University in Denmark. She was also a visiting professor in Experimental Pedagogics at Tyumen University in Russia. Bildung Climate School - https://www.bildungclimateschool.com/ [https://www.bildungclimateschool.com/] Pedagogies of Collapse - https://www.bloomsbury.com/uk/pedagogies-of-collapse-9781350400498/ [https://www.bloomsbury.com/uk/pedagogies-of-collapse-9781350400498/] https://thoreaucollege.org/ [https://thoreaucollege.org/]

John C. Campbell Folk School - Bethany Chaney and Annie Fain Barralon

In this episode we learn about the John C. Campbell Folk School, located in Brasstown, North Carolina. Founded just over 100 years ago in 1925, the John C. Campbell Folk School was inspired by the Danish Grundtvigian folk high school tradition and established to serve the culturally distinctive, but economically depressed mountainous region of southern Appalachia. Today, it is one of the oldest and largest folk schools in North America and the guiding inspiration for dozens of younger folk schools around the country, including the Driftless Folk School here in Viroqua, Wisconsin. In this conversation I speak with JCCFS instructor and Programming Development Manager Annie Fain Barralon and Executive Director Bethany Chaney about this inspiring history and about what it is like to participate in a multi-day course in folk arts, craft, music, or dance on their beautiful campus in far western North Carolina. We talk about who attends and teaches these courses, as well as about opportunities for young people to spend longer periods at the Folk School such as their Work Study and Student Host programs (see links below). Finally, Annie Fain talks about what it is like to work as a creative artist in the context of a living folk arts tradition, walking the fine line between original innovation, cultural exchange, and loyalty to heritage. Annie Fain Barralon is a native of the crafts and music/dance community of Brasstown, North Carolina and the John C. Campbell Folk School's Programming Development Manager. She teaches a variety of classes at the school including book arts, clawhammer banjo, and several styles of dance–Appalachian clogging/flatfooting, English waltz clog, Northwest Morris, and Bal Folk (learned when she married into a French family). Annie Fain plays banjo and banjo uke for the all-woman string band, Blue Eyed Girl, and has danced with both Loafers Glory Clog Morris and the Green Grass Cloggers. She sells her handmade books, greeting cards, and original watercolors regionally and is a member of the Southern Highland Craft Guild. Bethany Chaney is Executive Director of the John C. Campbell Folk School. Prior to joining the Folk School, Bethany served more than 25 years in a variety of non-profit and public service roles, specializing in resource development, strategic planning, and community and economic development programming. She is an award-winning writer, a former NC Arts Council Fellow, and an avid maker of pine needle baskets, a craft she first nurtured as a Folk School student. In 2025 she was named by Country Living Magazine as a Top 100 Design Influencer as an arts advocate. John C. Campbell Folk School - https://www.folkschool.org/ [https://www.folkschool.org/] JCCFS Work Study & Student Host Programs - https://www.folkschool.org/programs/student-host-and-work-study/ [https://www.folkschool.org/programs/student-host-and-work-study/] Find a Folk School near you! Folk School Alliance - https://www.folkschoolalliance.org/ [https://www.folkschoolalliance.org/] Driftless Folk School - http://www.driftlessfolkschool.org/ [http://www.driftlessfolkschool.org/] Thoreau College - http://thoreaucollege.org/ [http://thoreaucollege.org/]

Anthroposophical Youth Movement - Adeline Lyons and Gabel Cramer

On this episode of the podcast we speak with Thoreau College alumna Adeline Lyons and her collaborator Gabel Cramer about the diverse activities of the Youth Section of the Anthroposophical Society in North America, including the upcoming Youth Conference to be held August 3-7, 2026 in Fair Oaks California with theme "Courage: From Initiative to Idea to Initiative." We also discuss other conferences and gatherings organized by the Youth Section and Futuring Now, their journal of essays, poetry, and artwork published in hard copy thrice yearly (please subscribe!). We also discuss Gabel and Adeline's life and work at Free Columbia (Philmont, NY) and the Threefold Youth CoLab (Chestnut Ridge, NY), two anthroposophical artistic and life sharing organizations in New York State that have appeared previously on the podcast. Join us for a refreshing conversation with two visionary young people taking the lead on curating spaces for deep conversation and creative work around questions of vocation, meaning, spirituality, and the deep work we are called to do in our time. Adeline Lyons lives and works in the Threefold Community outside of New York City. She is involved as community organizer and event planner, a coworker of the North American Youth Section, editor, writer, and stage artist. She received a degree in Creative Writing from UW-Madison, and is also an alumna of Thoreau College! She keeps a Substack: @writingaworld Gabel Cramer is the director of development at Free Columbia, a community arts initiative that weaves together creativity, artistic practice, accessibility, and education. Along with this, he is an organizing member of the North American Youth Section, helping to run the finances, put on conferences, and collaborate with other passionate young people. He is sometimes a musician, sometimes a potter and sculptor, and often busy cooking, growing plants, and undertaking fun projects. After getting a master’s degree in community development and planning, he has found great meaning in his work in the intersection of community, art, youth, education, and spirit, though often wondering how to bring it all into balance in his own life. For North American Youth Section: nayouthsection.org [http://nayouthsection.org] For Futuring Now: https://www.nayouthsection.org/initiatives-1/futuring-now [https://www.nayouthsection.org/initiatives-1/futuring-now] For Courage conference: nayouthsection.org/courage [http://nayouthsection.org/courage] To support the Courage conference: nayouthsection.org/donate [http://nayouthsection.org/donate] Threefold Youth CoLab: threefold.org/youth [http://threefold.org/youth] Free Columbia Residency Program: https://www.freecolumbia.org/residency-program [https://www.freecolumbia.org/residency-program]