Dr. Shane Simonsen is an Australian experimental farmer, author, podcaster, and thinker based in the subtropical Sunshine Coast hinterland of Queensland (on around 40 acres among the Glasshouse Mountains). He holds a PhD in biochemistry and previously worked in academia and as a teacher before leaving in his late 20s — disillusioned by institutional structures, the global financial crisis, and concerns over peak oil— to pursue independent work in biology, ecology, and sustainable systems. For the last decade he obsessively developed hardy staple crops for his little mountain village. Australia is uniquely vulnerable to energy system disruptions and totally unprepared for post-industrial agriculture.

Shane blogs weekly at Recombination Nation.  His podcast of the same name interviews amateur plant breeders, geopolitical experts and culture innovators.

His non-fiction book Taming the Apocalypse explores a post-industrial future built purely on biological technology 

He also wrote a novel under the nom-de-plume Haldane P. Doyle, Our Vitreous Womb, imagining a biotechnological civilization in the distant future. 

Alex Krainer is a Croatian-born market analyst, author, and former hedge fund manager based in Monaco. Coming of age in socialist Yugoslavia, Krainer's unconventional path took him from serving in Croatia's war of independence to becoming one of the few fund managers to generate positive returns (+27-percent) during the 2008 financial crisis. He founded his own investment management firm in 2007 and later joined Altana Wealth, where he developed systematic portfolio allocation strategies bridging technology and finance. Krainer is the author of Mastering Uncertainty in Commodities Trading"(ranked #1 by Financial-Expert.co.uk), The Grand Deception, and Alex Krainer's Trend Following Bible. A sought-after voice on geopolitics, commodities markets, and global finance, he publishes regular market analysis through TrendCompass and his Substack, offering sharp, unconventional insights shaped by his unique background navigating both socialist regimes and Western financial markets.

The KunstlerCast theme music is the beautiful Two Rivers Waltz written and performed by Larry Unger