Episode 02 — Going Beyond the Nuclear Family, with Gillian Morris

Most of human history was lived in tribes and villages. Somewhere in the last century we traded that for the single-family home — and got a loneliness crisis in return. In this episode, Agartha's Jeremy Dela Rosa sits down with Gillian Morris, who writes the blog Supernuclear with her friend Phil, about how to live well together again.

Gillian traces how cars, cheap land, and a very deliberate marketing campaign pushed us into atomized living, why co-living isn't the scary thing people imagine, and what actually makes it work: do-ocracy over red tape, conflict treated as an invitation to grow, and restorative justice instead of exile. We get into her community in Puerto Rico, why a community that ends isn't a failure, Fractal's peer-to-peer university in New York, communal models for education and childcare, and a long, honest riff on whether you could ever measure care with a token — and why you might not want to. Plus the Solarpunk future she's building toward: abundance, regenerative agriculture, and interconnected villages, vertical ones included.

Hosts: Nico Shi & Jeremy Dela Rosa ·
Guest: Gillian Morris, co-author of Supernuclear
Instagram: @gillianemorris
X: @gillianim

CHAPTERS
00:00 Cold open — loneliness and the cost of living apart
00:35 Welcome to the Agartha Podcast
00:49 Meet Gillian Morris & Supernuclear
02:22 The mission: inspire and enable
03:42 The loneliness crisis
07:01 Multi-generational homes & what we lost
08:38 How we drifted apart: cars, capitalism & the 'nuclear' age
14:22 From fringe to 'tell me more'
16:57 The abundance of the commons
18:24 Forms of community living & finding them
21:51 Why a community ending isn't a failure
25:46 Nodes, not pyramids
30:25 Governance & the power of do-ocracy
33:45 Failures, safety & restorative justice
39:47 What's ahead for Gillian
42:00 The five-to-ten-year vision
44:03 Communal education: Boundless & Fractal University
48:08 The invisible economy of care
49:29 Could we measure care? Crypto, reputation & its limits
57:15 How to help + final advice
58:59 A Solarpunk vision of the future
01:00:19 Closing

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New episodes every other Tuesday.