Alex McKiernan, co-owner with his wife Chloe Diegel of Robinette Farms near Lincoln, Nebraska, invited me to join him in a field, surrounded by birds, grasses, and the occasional passing rain shower. We explored what it means to build a life connected to the land.

This is the first of two conversations, in which McKiernan talks about food, farming, and the challenges of reconciling what we value with what it takes to earn a living. In the following episode, dropping next week, our conversation takes a deeply personal turn as McKiernan describes a car accident that left him paralyzed, his long recovery, and how the experience challenged his understanding of who he was. We also discuss his extraordinary return to rock climbing, and what he has learned about loss, acceptance, and being present in the world.

Alex McKiernan of Robinette Farms returns for the second part of our conversation, recorded in a field on his farm near Lincoln, Nebraska. In part one (Lives show S3E172) we explored Alex's relationship with the land, how he and his wife Chloe came to farming, and their efforts to build a business that reflects their values. This second part of our conversation takes a different turn. In 2014, just four years into their farming enterprise and with three very young children, Alex was involved in a devastating car accident that left him paralyzed from the waist down. An accomplished rock climber, arborist, athlete, and farmer, Alex suddenly faced a future in which many of the physical abilities central to his identity were uncertain. We talk about his recovery, his remarkable return to climbing, and how his experiences have shaped his understanding of loss, identity, and the possibility of finding meaning in circumstances we cannot control.

Poet and novelist Liz Kay joins me six years after her first appearance on Lives. We spoke again as she publishes Fallout, a novel rooted in the military world of her own childhood. Our conversation moves through memory, mothers and daughters, gender and power, and what writing can reveal when we return to the past with different eyes.

Liz Kay is the author of the novel Monsters: A Love Story, the poetry collection The Witch Tells the Story and Makes It True, and other poetry and literary work. When Kay joined me on Lives in 2020, we talked about writing, poetry and publishing, as well as gender, power, and the childhood that took her from one military posting to another as the daughter of an Army officer and nuclear security expert. That childhood now provides the world for her new novel, Fallout, set among American military families in West Germany in 1985.