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.

Amanda McGill Johnson is a former journalist and Nebraska state senator, current Millard School Board member, and executive director of Nebraska Cures. She talks about entering public life at 26, learning to collaborate across differences, what we mean by the common good, and how loss and life experience have changed her understanding of expectations, control, and living well.

Amanda McGill Johnson studied broadcasting and political science at the University of Nebraska–Lincoln before beginning her career as a television reporter. Her interest in politics eventually moved her from covering public life to participating in it. At 26, she ran for Nebraska’s nonpartisan Legislature and won, serving two terms from 2007 to 2015. McGill Johnson’s work since then has included child welfare and anti-human-trafficking advocacy, congressional service, science and health policy, and public education. She is executive director of Nebraska Cures, co-director of Nebraska Women in STEM, and serves on the Millard Public Schools Board of Education. She is also the author of The Unicameral and You: Collaborating for the Common Good in Nebraska’s Capitol.

Stacy Jolley's life has taken her from theater to motherhood, community volunteering, elected office, and back to the stage as creator of Advice Night. We talk about choosing public life, being needed, changing identities, and what other people’s questions can tell us about the times in which we live and about herself.

Stacy Jolley is a longtime community volunteer and elected member of the Millard Public Schools Board of Education. She also works several part-time jobs, including as a standardized patient helping train future healthcare professionals. More recently, she has returned to another early interest—performance—as the creator and host of Advice Night, a live show mixing humor, conversation, and the dilemmas people bring from their everyday lives.

Susan Swenson's life includes being an athlete, coach, mother, Christian, entrepreneur, and wellness practitioner. She has lived through both achievement and profound physical adversity. She talks about the accident that changed her life, the long road of recovery, her faith, and who we can become when familiar roles and abilities are taken away.

Susan Swenson’s life was dramatically altered by a serious car accident. Her long recovery from traumatic brain injury, neurological damage, and cancer deepened her Christian faith and eventually led her to establish PEMF Nebraska. Swenson’s story is one of athletic discipline, family, faith, suffering, healing, and an evolving sense of purpose.

Sofia Valle is a music therapist who works with older adults and people in hospice care. She talks about the family and faith that shaped her, what music can offer when words or medicine are not enough, and how she finds connection, comfort, and moments of joy alongside illness, grief, and death. Valle also performs a couple of songs for us live in the studio.

Valle is a board-certified music therapist who uses music to create connection, comfort, and expression, particularly for older adults and people nearing the end of life. Inspired in part by her close relationship with her grandmother, she has helped expand music therapy across Omaha, developing programs for Immanuel Communities and Suncrest Hospice. She now works with the Holistic Hearts Foundation, bringing person-centered music therapy to individuals and families throughout the community.

Amy Haddad's career has crossed nursing, healthcare ethics, education, poetry, and publishing. In the show, she talks about caring for patients, navigating choices without easy answers, and finding in poetry another way to attend to the human experience. Haddad also reads some of her own poems for us.

Amy Haddad is a nurse, educator, bioethicist, poet, and publisher. She taught nurses and pharmacists at Creighton University for more than three decades and served as director of its Center for Health Policy and Ethics. A nationally recognized leader in healthcare ethics, she later completed an MFA in creative writing, has been published in various literary journals, authored two chapbooks and the poetry collection titled An Otherwise Healthy Woman, and became owner and publisher of Ex Ophidia Press. Her life and work connect care, moral inquiry, creativity, and the responsibility of helping others find their voice and grow.