Shared Ground

Episode 0: Shared Ground Trailer - Stories of Resilience that Emerge in Challenging Times

• Sean Knierim & Allan Marks

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What happens when everyday life collides with catastrophe? When a food delivery arrives at your doorstep just as wildfire races down the hillside toward your home? These surreal moments reveal who we truly are and how communities respond when crisis strikes.

Stream the episode here, or follow on your favorite streaming service (Apple Podcasts, Spotify, etc).

Shared Ground emerged from co-host Sean Knierim's experience losing his family's home in the Los Angeles fires this January. Surrounded by an overwhelming outpouring of community support, Sean began documenting the faces and stories of those who extended kindness during his family's darkest hours. What started as personal photography evolved into this podcast—a platform for sharing powerful narratives about resilience, recovery, and human connection.

Together with co-host Alan Marks, Sean explores conversations with guests whose backgrounds span emergency management, climate science, sustainability, and community building. Each brings their unique expertise, but more importantly, their deeply personal ties to crisis response. From the absurdity of carefully unpacking groceries into a refrigerator that would soon melt in the inferno to the profound ways communities rebuild both physically and emotionally after disaster, these stories offer both comfort and practical wisdom.

Over the coming episodes, Shared Ground will celebrate the extraordinary capacity of ordinary people to support each other when it matters most.   And from there we will explore wider concepts of resilience - how might we develop conditions necessary to help communities thrive in the face of challenging times.  

Whether you've experienced disaster firsthand or simply want to understand how communities recover and grow stronger, these conversations offer insight, inspiration, and actionable guidance. Follow us on your favorite podcast platform or visit shared-ground.com to join this journey of resilience and community.

Shared Ground is produced by Sean Knierim and Allan Marks. Thanks to Cory Grabow, Kara Poltor, Corey Walles (from The Recording Studio) for your support in launching this effort.

For more stories of resilience & rebuilding, kindness & generosity: visit shared-ground.com and subscribe to Sean's substack. We invite you to share your own stories of resilience at the Shared Ground website - whether in response to the January fires in LA or other situations.

Follow us at seanknierim.substack.com, Instagram, or wherever you listen to podcasts (Apple Podcasts, Spotify, etc).

Sean Knierim:

This is Shared Ground, a podcast about resilience and community. I'm Alan Marks and I'm Sean Knierim. Thanks so much for joining us, you know.

Allan Marks:

Sean, when you came to me after the fires in which you and your family lost your home in Los Angeles in January with the idea of doing a podcast about community and resilience and the responses to it, I had two thoughts. I mean, I was honored to be included. I was also surprised at why you would want to do that and what angle you would want to take.

Sean Knierim:

Yeah, when we came out of losing in the house, we had been surrounded by this community. That had been overwhelming and it's literally overwhelming to me in its outreach to support us, and I started taking pictures of people who were kind to my family.

Allan Marks:

Yeah.

Sean Knierim:

And then I started showing people these pictures and telling the stories and I started writing about these stories and over time it seemed that these stories meant something to people. So I wanted to find different ways to share them out and some friends suggested a podcast. When I was talking to you about it, it just seemed that that would be a nice extension and a way to kind of let the world see what people were doing for each other.

Allan Marks:

And I must say, in talking to the guests that we've been privileged to have on this podcast, it's been interesting. Many of them come from a background of emergency preparedness or climate or sustainability or community building in other ways, maybe professionally, but they all have really personal ties, that sort of speak to broader lessons.

Sean Knierim:

And all of them in their lives. Like you say, they're doing things to support communities and fight for the forces of good when faced with a crisis like what we had going, not often do we know how we're going to respond in these situations. I think there's a neat through line of the first conversations, the first talks that we've had so far, of people who have come through hard stuff in the past and have been shown by others or learned themselves how to show up for others in these kinds of times of crisis.

Allan Marks:

What's the last day that was happening before you left your house during the fire? Do you remember?

Sean Knierim:

We shared this in one of the first episodes with my wife, where my family had already gotten out of the neighborhood or were trying to get out of the neighborhood and as I was going to the car to leave, the house was locked up.

Sean Knierim:

The food delivery truck showed up with a box of ingredients for us to prepare and he handed it to me. And I remember this is the time when I'm thinking of two different parallel processing of I've got my go bag, my car's ready. B ut at the same time real life is going, and so I point out to the guy like there's fires coming down the hill at the house. And he goes this is how I get paid is by the box. So I'm delivering this stuff. So I've got a box in my hand, I've got a fire coming at me, I've got a family to go to, I go in the house. And not only did I bring the box in the house, I emptied the whole thing into the fridge because I didn't want my wife, nina, whom you'll hear from in this podcast, I didn't want her to be upset that we wasted food. So I put it all in that fridge melted.

Allan Marks:

So that's what you're worried about your soon-to-be roasted vegetables.

Sean Knierim:

Soon-to-be roasted vegetables. Exactly, they were cooked and yeah, so that was the last thing I did in the house before I left it.

Allan Marks:

That's good. Well, look, we're going to be talking to a lot of people with a lot of different things, many of them looking further afield. I need them looking further afield at recovery and rebuilding and the ways that communities come together to do that and to become more resilient.

Sean Knierim:

Yeah, I think there's a lot to learn from these stories, a lot to learn from this community and, hopefully, an invitation to others to be there for each other and with us as we continue this journey forward. Good, that's going to be fun. This has been another episode of Shared Ground, a podcast about resilience and community.

Allan Marks:

Follow us on your favorite platform or learn more at sharedgroundcom.

Sean Knierim:

That's shared-ground. com.