Introducing listeners to his way of worship and connection to the Earth, this week’s guest Erik Assadourian offers insight into the religious framing and practical applications of the Gaian way. Erik shares his spiritual path of recognizing interdependence with the Earth and shares how he dreams towards a future where we exist in a mutualistic relationship to the Earth. Ranging from topics of degrowth to tangible spiritual practices for connection to the Earth and its seasons, Erik’s wisdom and groundedness is a balm for those tired by the rhetoric of our overculture. Together, Erik and Ayana consider the value of spirituality and theology while also reckoning with the complicated and often harmful ways such ideologies have been applied throughout human history. Taking this into mind, the conversation delves into our culture of consumerism and extraction while also considering the philosophies and paradigm shifts that may guide us out of it. Using religion and connection to the sustaining force of the Earth as a guide, how might we build communities of care not just for humanity, but for the Earth itself? In a time when so many of our environmental fights feel urgent, Erik calls listeners to consider how we might build a culture and framework of environmentalism meant to propel us through to a long future. Erik Assadourian is the director of the Gaian Way, a spiritual philosophy and practicing religious community. He is also a sustainability researcher and writer. Erik was a researcher with Worldwatch Institute from 2001 until its end in 2017. At Worldwatch, he directed or codirected seven books, focusing on consumerism, eco-education, global security, sustainable communities, and economic degrowth.Music by Algorhythm.Code. Visit our website at forthewild.world for the full episode description, references, and action points.Support the show

Winding through questions of philosophy, science, and meaning making, this week’s episode brings together vital thoughts on what it means to live an embodied life in an entangled world. Guest Merlin Sheldrake shares the motivations that drew him to study fungi and the complex ways this study has shaped his life and thought. As Merlin shares, “an account of life that doesn't include fungi is an account of a living world  that doesn’t exist.” Our relationship with fungi is non-negotiable. Merlin invites listeners to pay attention to what this relationship means and how it shapes not only our lives, but the entanglement of life across the world. With this, Merlin also shares the ways fungal life offers a diversity of expressions and possibilities – offering up the perspective that the diversity and complexity of relationship and expression is what makes life fertile. Across the episode, Merlin and Ayana contemplate the history and meaning of science, and come to see life as a process and a relationship. The meaning we make does not come out of a vacuum, but rather out of relationship. Life itself, in its many forms, is improvisational. Understanding this, we are left with the provocation: How might we speak to the world, rather than about it?   Merlin is a biologist and author of Entangled Life: How Fungi Make Our Worlds, Change Our Minds, and Shape Our Futures, a New York Times and Sunday Times bestseller, and winner of the Royal Society Book Prize and the Wainwright Prize. Merlin is a research associate of the Vrije University Amsterdam, and works with the Society for the Protection of Underground Networks and the Fungi Foundation. A keen brewer and fermenter, he is fascinated by the relationships that arise between humans and more-than-human organisms. (merlinsheldrake.com)Music by Matthewdavid. Visit our website at forthewild.world for the full episode description, references, and action points.Support the show

This week, Ayana is joined by Sky Hopinka in a conversation that dives deep into the meaning of art and film and the stories and emotions we share between generations. Sky grounds the conversation in his incredible expertise and thoughtful approach to media. Touching on the very questions of who we are and how we make meaning, the questions in this conversation cut to the core of what it means to be human.  The conversation is a beautiful exploration of art, Indigeneity, intergenerational pain, and the way we make meaning in times like these. Weaving together the ephemeral worlds of emotion and identity with the grounding power of shared values and reciprocity, Sky reminds us that art is meant to provoke, inspire, and make the space needed for feeling to emerge. Sky Hopinka was born and raised in Northern Washington State and Southern California. He's a member of the Ho-Chunk Nation and descendent of the Pechanga Band of Luiseño Indians. His video, photo, and text work centers around personal positions of Indigenous homeland and landscape, designs of language as containers of culture expressed through personal, documentary, and non fiction forms of media. His work has played at various festivals including Sundance, Toronto International Film Festival, and the New York Film Festival. Music by Arushi Jain. The artwork for this episode is Sky Hopinka; Breathings (2020). Visit our website at forthewild.world for the full episode description, references, and action points.Support the show

This week we are excited to continue our collaboration with UC Berkeley's Othering and Belonging Institute to bring you a conversation from The Othering and Belonging Conference in Berlin, Germany.This conversation is introduced by Monica Jiang, is moderated by Cecilie Surasky and features the voices of Udi Raz and Yasmeen Daher. Speaking on the theme “Turning Towards Each Other, Not Against Each Other: Bridging in Times of Crisis” the panelists address what it means to build towards co-liberation in difficult times – especially in the context of the war on Gaza. Since this conversation was recorded on November 14, 2023, the genocide in Gaza has continued and worsened, and the loss of so many lives is tragic and incomprehensible. The words offered here aim to make space to honor pain and simultaneously to explore generative forms of allyship in the face of such violence.  Music by Amo Amo and Ariana Saraha. Visit our website at forthewild.world for the full episode description, references, and action points.Support the show

Tracing ancestry through the motherline, this week’s guest Sylvia V. Linsteadt introduces listeners to the world of matrilineal myth and wisdom. For Sylvia, story and myth are very much alive and can offer valuable insight especially as we consider what it means to inhabit a place. From stories of female monks, to the practical wisdom of weaving, to the veneration of The Virgin Mary, Sylvia reminds us of what it means to value the feminine. Throughout the episode, Sylvia and Ayana consider questions at the very foundation of our cultures. Winding through questions of patriarchy, religion, and violence, Ayana and Sylvia do not find singular answers, but rather a wisdom that arises from questioning the things that are deeply enmeshed in our culture. As we reckon with a violent and troubling world, how can we turn to stories that guide us to liberation? Sylvia Linsteadt is a writer and certified wildlife tracker from northern California, ancestral Coast Miwok territory. She currently lives in Devon, England. Her work—both fiction and non-fiction—is rooted in myth, ecology, ancient history, feminism & bioregionalism, and is devoted to broadening our human stories to include the voices of the living land. She is the author of the collections The Venus Year and Our Lady of the Dark Country, two novels for young readers, The Wild Folk and The Wild Folk Rising, and the post-apocalyptic folktale cycle Tatterdemalion with painter Rima Staines. Her nonfiction books include The Wonderments of the East Bay, and Lost Worlds of the San Francisco Bay Area, which won the 2018 Northern California Book Award for best general nonfiction. She is currently finishing a novel set in Bronze Age Crete, where she has lived and researched extensively. Sylvia also teaches occasional myth-oriented creative writing workshops, and shares her work out loud on her podcast Kalliope's Sanctum.Music by The New Runes. Visit our website at forthewild.world for the full episode description, references, and action points.Support the show

What beckons us, calls to us from beyond? Tuning into a magic that flows from the universe, not from an individualized self, Tyson Yunkaporta offers lucid insight into the current state of the world in this week’s episode. In maddening times of dissonance and disconnection, Tyson speaks to the need for the Right Story, for LORE. As he dives into his new book Right Story, Wrong Story, Tyson discusses rampant disinformation, the stories that prop up empire, and the need for lore that cuts through such propagandistic drivel. This convivial and expansive conversation is a brilliant exploration and critique of the  current cultural fabric, and it invites crucial questions of how we can disrupt cycles of violence, power, and greed. Throughout the conversation, Tyson contemplates how we may open ourselves up to being beckoned outside of the ego, and how we may resist the individualizing neoliberal urge. Decolonization is not just about poetry, or word, or aesthetics, and Tyson strikes at the heart of how we (the collective we) must be materially and fiscally decolonial for the real work to be done.  Tyson Yunkaporta is an Aboriginal scholar, founder of the Indigenous Knowledge Systems Lab at Deakin University in Melbourne, and author of Sand Talk and Right Story, Wrong Story. His work focuses on applying Indigenous methods of inquiry to resolve complex issues and explore global crises.Music by Leo James generously provided by Patience Records. Visit our website at forthewild.world for the full episode description, references, and action points.Support the show

In a timely and heart-wrenching episode, returning guest Layla K. Feghali shares the power and perseverance of homeland, even in the face of colonial violence. As the genocide in Palestine continues and worsens, Layla offers a powerful call to listen to our rage and take real action against empire. Layla reminds us that in urgent times, action must come before grief and before healing. You cannot heal a wound that is still actively bleeding. Remembrance is a key part of liberation from the systems that tried to force disconnection from the land. As Layla shares throughout the episode “the land is in our bones.”  You can find a full list of recommendations for action from Layla on our website (forthewild.world). Layla Feghali lives between her ancestral village in coastal Lebanon and her diasporic home in California, where she was born and raised by her immigrant family. She is an author, cultural worker, and plantcestral medicine practitioner focused on the re-membrance of baladi (land-based/folk/indigenous) lifeways and ancestral wisdoms from SWANA (SouthWest Asia and North Africa). Her dedication is to stewardship of our earth's eco-cultural integrity, sovereignty, and the many layers of relational restoration and transformation that entails. Feghali's upcoming book The Land in Our Bones, documents ethnobotanical and cultural healing knowledge from Syria to the Sinai, while interrogating colonialism and its lingering wounds on the culture of our displaced world. The book re-maps Canaan (the Levant) and the Crossroads (the "Middle East"), while engaging nuanced conversations about identity, loss, belonging, trauma, and rematriation. It features her Plantcestral Re-Membrance methodology as an emergent pathway towards cultural repair for diasporic and colonized communities, and highlights the critical importance of tending the land and life where we are to restore the fundamental integrity, dignity, and regeneration of our earth's multispecies communities.Music by Lionmilk. Episode art by mirella salamé. Visit our website at forthewild.world for the full episode description, references, and action points.Support the show

What if we started with gratitude? With love? In this episode Ayana is joined by longtime mentor Molly Young Brown in a discussion that tends to what it means to be human in times of polycrisis and unraveling.Grounding the conversation in practice of group processing, activism, and relationality, Molly speaks to the reality of our time. We simply can’t go on like this, and it is dizzying to pretend anything else. This truth is illuminating, but does not need to be wholly devastating. At the peak of crises, how might we turn towards a world that imagines things differently, a world that is not driven only by profit, a world where we might center love? Molly encourages listeners to turn to deep time – our connection to our ancestors and to all who come in the future – and to root into a relationship with humanity and the earth that recognizes our interconnectedness. Molly Brown, M.A., M.Div. lives in Mt Shasta, CA with her husband Jim. In her work as a writer, educator, workshop facilitator, and life coach, she draws on the Work That Reconnects, ecopsychology, psychosynthesis, and systems thinking, and specializes in working with activists. She co-authored with Joanna Macy both editions of Coming Back to Life (1998, 2014) , edits the online journal, Deep Times: A Journal of the Work That Reconnects, and co-directs the Spiral Journey Facilitator Development Program. She is author and co-author of several books, including Growing Whole: Self-realization for the Great Turning; Unfolding Self: The Practice ofPsychosynthesis, Held in Love: Life Stories To Inspire Us Through Times of Change (co-editor Carolyn Treadway); and Lighting A Candle: Collected Reflections on a Spiritual Life.  Website: MollyYoungBrown.comMusic by Celia Hollander provided courtesy of the artist and Patience Records.  Visit our website at forthewild.world for the full episode description, references, and action points.Support the show

In the spirit of the solstice, we are taking a pause from our regular episode schedule. We’re also taking the time to express our immense gratitude for the wonderful community that makes For The Wild possible – our lovely team, our community of guests, our Patreon community, and our listeners all over the world. The past year has been one of beautiful synthesis. We released over 40 new episodes, and it is incredible to see the conversations, actions, and connections that have been sparked by For The Wild.Tune into this update for some messages from our team, reflections from Ayana, and updates on upcoming projects! In an effort to continue this work and support our small team we would deeply appreciate your support. As a grassroots, independent media producer, listener support is one of our main funding sources. If you have found value or meaning in our offerings, please consider making a one time donation at  forthewild.world/donate or by joining us on Patreon at patreon.com/forthewild.  Music by Proxemia. Visit our website at forthewild.world for the full episode description, references, and action points.Support the show

Continuing the conversation series, “The Edges in the Middle,” presented in collaboration with UC Berkeley’s Othering and Belonging Institute, For The Wild is delighted to share this conversation between Báyò Akómoláfé, Sa’ed Atshan, and Cecilie Surasky. Starting from the premise that all people belong and all lives are grievable, Bayo, Cecilie, and Sa’ed will explore how honoring each other’s grief may allow us to reclaim each other’s humanity and perhaps shed light on a path forward to belonging in Israel-Palestine, for Muslims, Jews, and Christians, and for all people around the world. Bayo, Sa’ed, and Cecilie will journey into what it might be like to glimpse at the world through tears: what visions are possible when we postpone the compulsion to see everything clearly?“The Edges in the Middle” is a series of conversations between Báyò Akómoláfé and thought companions like john a. powell, V, Naomi Klein, and more. These limited episodes have been adapted from Báyò’s work as the Global Senior Fellow at UC Berkeley's Othering & Belonging Institute. In this role, Báyò has been holding a series of public conversations on issues of justice and belonging for the Institute's Democracy & Belonging Forum, which connects and resources civic leaders in Europe and the US who are committed to bridging across difference to strengthen democracy and advance belonging in both regions and around the world. Báyò's conversations encourage us to rethink justice, hope, and belonging by sitting amidst the noise, not trying to cover it up with pleasant rhythms. To learn more about the Democracy & Belonging Forum, visit democracyandbelongingforum.org.   Music by Sitka Sun generously provided by The Long Road Society Record Label. Visit our website at forthewild.world for the full episode description, references, and action points.Support the show

“No organism is an island.” As Sandor Katz reminds us in this delightful and informative episode, all life on earth is deeply interdependent. Though modern food systems alienate us from our environments and from the ways, we cannot totally sever ourselves from the environments and nutrients that make life possible. Sandor shows that alienation and disconnection will not free us. Rather, settling into the overlapping and diverse entwinement of the more-than-human world may bring connection and sustenance in close relation to our food production. The story of humanity is embedded in our food, embedded in the daily tasks and practical measures that sustain us. This conversation bubbles over with wisdom, as Sandor shares stories and lessons from his decades of experience experimenting with the art of fermentation. Fermentation is the manifestation of biodiversity, and as Sandor emphasizes, the study of fermentation is as much a study of our own tastes and cultural transitions as it is a study of our environments. Sandor Ellix Katz is a fermentation revivalist. He is the author of five books: Wild Fermentation; The Art of Fermentation; The Revolution Will Not Be Microwaved; Fermentation as Metaphor; and his latest, Fermentation Journeys. Sandor's books, along with the hundreds of fermentation workshops he has taught around the world, have helped to catalyze a broad revival of the fermentation arts. A self-taught experimentalist who lives in rural Tennessee, the New York Times calls him “one of the unlikely rock stars of the American food scene.” Sandor is the recipient of a James Beard award and other honors. For more information, check out his website www.wildfermentation.com.Music by Matthewdavid. Visit our website at forthewild.world for the full episode description, references, and action points.Support the show

In this week’s episode we tap deep into the trust, desire, intimacy, and vulnerability that come from relationality. Betty Martin offers her vast knowledge of bodywork, somatics, and consent to give listeners insight into what she calls “The Wheel of Consent,” a quadrant that details a practice of giving and receiving. Betty reminds us that access is a gift. No one is born with the knowledge of how to give and receive in the “perfect” way, rather we must learn and feel together – navigating boundaries and allowing ourselves to find what feels right. Intimacy is a deeply vulnerable act, and Betty discusses how we can create a sense of acceptance and safety as we root in our bodies rather than societal expectations.Throughout the conversation, Betty emphasizes that consent should be the baseline for interaction, not just in intimate relationships but in the world writ large. The questions we ask and the people we include in conversations about consent matter. Only in knowing our limits as individuals, as a society, and as a part of the more-than-human world can we find the true meaning of trusting ourselves, of tapping into generosity, and of comfort. Dr. Betty Martin has had her hands on people professionally for over 40 years, first as a Chiropractor and upon retiring from that practice, as a certified Surrogate Partner, Sacred Intimate, and Somatic Sex Educator. Her explorations in somatic-based therapy and practices informed her creation of the framework, The Wheel of Consent®. She wrote a book about it, called "The Art of Receiving and Giving: The Wheel of Consent", and travels the world teaching other practitioners how to use the practices and the model to keep their clients safe, and their sessions effective and satisfying.Music by Roehind and Vaughn Aed.Visit our website at forthewild.world for the full episode description, references, and action points.Support the show

How can a relationship with one animal open the door to the depths of humanity? In this episode, returning guest Kurt Russo shares how he came to see the world through Tokitae, a Southern Resident Orca held captive in the Miami Seaquarium for decades. As he mourns Tokitae’s recent death, Kurt reflects on the ways nature gives us signs of the greater mysteries of life. This conversation is equally rooted in the material realities of protecting the Salish Sea, the Snake River, and the more-than-human kin that call those places home, and the spiritual questions that cruelty and disregard for the more-than-human provoke. How has humanity gotten to such a point? Kurt shares guided wisdom about the realities of commodification, ecocide, and the capacity of the human soul for intentional cruelty. How we fight against such darkness matters not just for humanity, but for all with whom we share this precious earth. Kurt Russo is currently the Executive Director of the Indigenous-led nonprofit, Se’Si’Le, that is dedicated to the application of ancestral knowledge to reimagine our relationship to the nature of nature. He worked for the Lummi Nation from 1978-2020 in the area of sacred sites and treaty rights. He also served as Executive Director of the Native American Lands Conservancy in California from 1998-2016 and was Senior Advisor to the Kumeyaay-Digueno Land Conservancy of southern California. He was the co-founder and Executive Director of the Florence R. Kluckhohn Center for the Study of Values from 1987-2002. He has a BS and MS in Forestry and a PhD in History. He has worked abroad with Indigenous communities in their efforts to preserve their ancestral lands and knowledge in Mexico, Guatemala, Brazil, Ecuador, Peru, Bolivia, and Chile.For an extended version of this episode, join us at patreon.com/forthewildMusic by Francesca Heart and Julius Smack. Visit our website at forthewild.world for the full episode description, references, and action points.Support the show

Blending theory, practice, and fascinating cultural vision, this week’s conversation with Erin Manning calls into question the systems and practices that keep us stuck.   Erin’s imagination and openness seem endless as she describes how we may work to create movements for other ways of being. Crucially, Erin describes her understanding of modalities of being, explaining that neurotypicality is a system that undergirds our ways of knowing and our ways of being a body. There is no singular “neurotypical person” just as there is no singular “neurodiverse” person. Rather, we are trained into a choreography that encourages us to “practice neurotypicality well” and punishes us if we do not.Understanding the ways these systems work is vital as we untangle the hegemony and oppression that have dictated what counts as knowledge, what is valuable in a body, and even what bodies are “worth” being alive. The episode shares the resounding call that “we owe everything to each other.” How can we give into that call?  Erin Manning grounds in the interstices of philosophy, aesthetics and politics. Pedagogical experiments are central to her work, some of which occur at Concordia University in Montreal where she is a research chair in Speculative Pragmatism, Art and Pedagogy in the Faculty of Fine Arts. She is concerned, always, about alter-pedagogical and alter-economic practices. She has written The Minor Gesture, For a Pragmatics of the Useless, Out of the Clear, and The Being of Relation (forthcoming). Her artwork is textile-based, relationally-oriented, and often participatory. Her current research is focused on 3e —an exploration of the transversality of the three ecologies, the social, the environmental and the conceptual. Music by Johanna Knutsson courtesy of Patience Records. Visit our website at forthewild.world for the full episode description, references, and action points.Support the show

This week we are taking a pause from our regularly scheduled releases to rebroadcast Corrina Gould’s potent and powerful episode that originally aired in November 2020. We hope that this episode serves as a reminder of humanity and land rematriation in the face of deep colonial violence. The genocide in Palestine highlights the ways colonial forces of greed, extraction and brutal disregard for life and ties to the land are bearing their bloody teeth. We cannot return to “normal.” How can we catalyze action towards a future of reparation, responsibility, and reciprocity?In this episode of For The Wild, guest Corrina Gould reminds us that the land can sustain us in a way that would provide for our wellbeing should we choose to really re-examine what it is we need to survive. But more than a conversation on the wealth of the land, we explore responsibility and reciprocity on stolen homelands by asking what it means to be in right relationship? How can we foster integrity in conservation and land restoration work amidst a world that continues to peddle scarcity, greed, and extraction? How can folks contribute to the re-storying of the land, even if through small acts? Corrina Gould is the spokesperson for the Confederated Villages of Lisjan/Ohlone. She is an activist that has worked on preserving and protecting the ancient burial sites of her ancestors in the Bay Area for decades. She is the Co-founder and a Lead Organizer for Indian People Organizing for Change and co-founder of the Sogorea Te’ Land Trust. Music by Shayna Gladstone and Amo Amo. Visit our website at forthewild.world for the full episode description, references, and action points. Support the show

This week, Fariha Róisín offers both timely and timeless wisdom on what it means to live in a body that has experienced trauma. This is a conversation that bears witness to the deep terror and distress of the world and still charges forward with undying compassion and care – the compassion and care of wild survival. Offering both deep personal reflection and spacious contemplation about the state of the world, Fariha reminds us that our bodies guide us to what we need. This episode brings up the things that we so often don’t want to touch – trauma, abuse, global systems of disregard – and handles them with care and love. Fariha shows us what it means to take pain seriously.Throughout the episode Fariha threads in a profound relationship with god, and a type of faith that is filled with questioning, fueled by queer thought, and driven by love. In even the darkest of times we can turn to love, accountability, and community to find the care that we need. Fariha Róisín is a multidisciplinary artist, born in Ontario, Canada. She was raised in Sydney, Australia, and is based in Los Angeles. As a Muslim queer Bangladeshi, she is interested in the margins, in liminality, otherness and the mercurial nature of being. Her work has pioneered a refreshing and renewed conversation about wellness, contemporary Islam and queer identities and has been featured in The New York Times, Al Jazeera, The Guardian, and Vogue. She is the author of the poetry collection How To Cure A Ghost (2019), as well as the novel Like A Bird (2020), Who Is Wellness For? (2022) and her second book of poetry is entitled Survival Takes a Wild Imagination, due fall 2023.For an extended version of this episode join us at patreon.com/forthewildMusic by Misha Sultan (with special thanks to Patience Records), Amo Amo, Colloboh (with special thanks to Leaving Records), and Amber Rubarth. Visit our website at forthewild.world for the full episode description, references, and action points.Support the show

Invoking ancestry, magic, and a deep relationship with the Dead, this week’s guest Perdita Finn invites listeners into a world of mystery. Perdita’s work, including her new book Take Back the Magic: Conversations with the Unseen World, calls humanity to engage with a faith in the unseen world, a faith in surrender, and a faith in the other side. For Perdita, this faith is not rooted in an otherworldly abstract idea of spirituality, but rather a grounded, embodied experience. As we come to face the existential questions of our time – war, climate change, and disasters of all kinds – Perdita reminds us that we are not alone. We can lean on our ancestors, both human and more-than-human, for strength. As we live into the long story of our souls, what wisdom can we pull from lives beyond this one? Tapping into creativity, resilience and connectedness, life comes after life, comes after life, and the meaning of our cyclical lineage is ever-present.   Perdita Finn is the co-founder, with her husband Clark Strand, of the non-denominational international fellowship The Way of the Rose, which inspired their book The Way of the Rose: The Radical Path of the Divine Feminine Hidden in the Rosary. In addition to extensive study with Zen masters, priests, and healers, she apprenticed with the psychic Susan Saxman, with whom she wrote The Reluctant Psychic. Finn now teaches popular workshops on Getting to Know the Dead, in which participants are empowered to activate the magic in their own lives with the help of their ancestors. She is the author of Take Back the Magic: Conversations with the Unseen World and lives with her family in the moss-filled shadows of the Catskill Mountains.For an extended version of this episode please join us on Patreon at patreon.com/forthewildMusic by The New Runes, Left Vessel, Eliza Edens, and Arthur Moon. Visit our website at forthewild.world for the full episode description, references, and action points.Support the show

As those of us in the Northern Hemisphere enter into autumn, this week’s guest Jacqueline Suskin reminds us that the earth gives us dedicated time for reflection. In a conversation that roots deeply into seasonality and life’s rhythms, Jacqueline’s meditations and suggestions feel perfectly timed. Jacqueline uses her book A Year in Practice as a practical guide for finding inspiration and meaning throughout the seasons. Detailing her ongoing connection to the earth and the wonder she feels about humanity's place within and as a part of nature, Jacqueline details the way our rhythms are drawn from those of the earth. Even as the climate changes and we are beginning to lose the predictability of earth’s rhythms, our bodies carry the memory and significance of the seasons.Jacqueline reminds us that to find meaning in the sea of hope and hopelessness within modern movements, we must bear witness to the earth. Jacqueline Suskin is a poet and educator who has composed over forty thousand improvisational poems with her ongoing writing project, Poem Store. Suskin is the author of eight books, including the forthcoming A Year in Practice (Sounds True December 2023), with work featured in various publications including the New York Times, the Atlantic, and the Los Angeles Times. An ecstatic earth-worshiper, she lives in Detroit where she works as a teaching artist with InsideOut Literary Arts, bringing nature poetry into classrooms with her Poem Forest curriculum.Music by Green-House generously provided by Leaving Records. Visit our website at forthewild.world for the full episode description, references, and action points.Support the show

What is life at the edges of ecosystems, at the moments of convergence? In this week’s episode, guest Obi Kaufmann introduces listeners to his understanding of consilience – emphasizing the importance of art and science in sacred relationship. Obi shares in a reverie about what California has been and could be, and in doing so, he invites guests to imagine a world where we recognize nature as the undeniable truth of who we are. Obi brings rooted knowledge and esoteric inquiry to this conversation. His nuanced understandings of conservation, rewilding, and relating to the natural world, pull us into a framework for seeing a world of deep, beautiful relationality, even amidst pain and loss. Obi Kaufmann is an award-winning author of many best-selling books on California's ecology, biodiversity, and geography. Obi’s signature style is as artful as it is analytic, combining masterful renderings of wildlife, hand-painted maps, and data-driven storytelling to present a hopeful and integrated vision of California’s future. An avid conservationist, Obi Kaufmann regularly travels around the state, presenting his work and vision of ecological restoration and preservation from the Klamath-Siskiyou Wildland Center to the Mojave Desert Land Trust. Most recently, Obi was the artist-in-residence for the National Park Service at Whiskeytown National Recreation Area. You can catch him every month in conversation with author and tribal chairman Greg Sarris in their podcast called Place and Purpose. A lifelong resident of California, Obi Kaufmann makes his home base in Oakland and is currently working on Field Atlases to come.Music by Memotone,  Magnetic Vines, and Daniela Lanaia. Visit our website at forthewild.world for the full episode description, references, and action points.Support the show

Bringing us to the Wind River Reservation, this week’s guest, Jason Baldes, shares his work to bring back wild Buffalo to Wind River and to rematriate land to the Eastern Shoshone and Northern Arapaho Tribes. Jason offers his deep wisdom about the ecological, spiritual, and cultural importance of buffalo.Jason’s work with the Wind River Tribal Buffalo initiative has already had an immense effect. The physical and cultural landscape of the so-called United States is steeped in a colonial worldview, but work like Jason’s is changing the tides and aligning conservation with long-standing Indigenous values. This healing work honors those ancestors who had buffalo, land, and ritual stolen from them by the United States government. Jason, an enrolled member of the Eastern Shoshone Tribe, received both his bachelor's and master's degrees in Land Resources & Environmental Sciences from Montana State University, where he focused on the restoration of buffalo/bison to Tribal lands. In 2016 he spearheaded the successful effort to relocate a herd to the Wind River Indian Reservation and works with both the Eastern Shoshone and Northern Arapaho Tribes in buffalo management and expansion. He is an advocate, educator and speaker on Indigenous cultural revitalization and ecological restoration who has also served as director of the Wind River Native Advocacy Center, where he was instrumental in the passing of the Wyoming Indian Education for All Act. He currently splits time as executive director of the Wind River Tribal Buffalo Initiative, and Tribal Buffalo Program Senior Manager for the National Wildlife Federation's Tribal Partnerships Program. Jason sits on the board of directors of the Inter-Tribal Buffalo Council and the board of trustees for the Conservation Lands Foundation.For an extended version of this episode, please join us at patreon.com/forthewild. Music by Jayme Stone and A.R. Wilson. Visit our website at forthewild.world for the full episode description, references, and action points.Support the show

Continuing the conversation series, “The Edges in the Middle,” presented in collaboration with UC Berkeley’s Othering and Belonging Institute, For The Wild is delighted to share this conversation between Báyò Akómoláfé, Madhulika Banerjee, and Minna Salami. Speaking on the theme, “Democracy and Its Exquisite Others,” Báyò, Madhulika, and Minna delve into an exploration of what it means to truly participate in democracy, as an embodied, collective action. In this thoughtful and informed episode, they investigate the idea of “Eurocracy'' and unpack what the eurocentric definition of democracy has meant for the world as a whole. Envisioning other ways of creating democracy,  Báyò, Madhulika, and Minna describe festival democracy, democracies of contestations and dancing, and democracies of the more-than-human.“The Edges in the Middle” is a series of conversations between Báyò Akómoláfé and thought companions like john a. powell, V, Naomi Klein, and more. These limited episodes have been adapted from Báyò’s work as the Global Senior Fellow at UC Berkeley's Othering & Belonging Institute. In this role, Báyò has been holding a series of public conversations on issues of justice and belonging for the Institute's Democracy & Belonging Forum, which connects and resources civic leaders in Europe and the US who are committed to bridging across difference to strengthen democracy and advance belonging in both regions and around the world. Báyò's conversations encourage us to rethink justice, hope, and belonging by sitting amidst the noise, not trying to cover it up with pleasant rhythms. To learn more about the Democracy & Belonging Forum, visit democracyandbelongingforum.org.   Music by Sitka Sun  generously provided by The Long Road Society Record Label and by Maree Siou. Visit our website at forthewild.world for the full episode description, references, and action points.Support the show

“We’re not trying to be right. We’re trying to see if we can see clearly.” In this agile and authentic episode, returning guest Stephen Jenkinson offers a lucid view of the world. How might our understanding of the world change if we approached life with a willingness to see things as they are rather than a need to only affirm that which we desire? Ayana and Stephen journey together to consider what had brought us to this modern time – prompting vital questions about the value of tradition, the importance of strangerhood, the possibility of reckoning, and the meaning of ancestry. Stephen asks questions that disrupt and unsettle the status quo, and perhaps these questions will lead us to the lessons we so deeply need. STEPHEN JENKINSON, MTS, MSW is an author, culture activist, ceremonialist and farmer. He teaches internationally and is the creator and principal instructor of the Orphan Wisdom School, founded in 2010. With Master’s degrees from Harvard University (Theology) and the University of Toronto (Social Work), he has worked extensively with dying people and their families, is a former programme director in a major Canadian hospital and former assistant professor in a prominent Canadian medical school. He is the author of several books including 'Reckoning', 'A Generation's Worth', 'Come of Age', 'Money & the Soul's Desires' and the award-winning 'Die Wise: A Manifesto for Sanity and Soul'. Stephen is the subject of the National Film Board of Canada documentary 'Griefwalker', and 'Lost Nation Road', a behind-the-scenes glimpse into the wheelhouse of a mystery train. Nights of Grief and Mystery world tours, with singer/ songwriter Gregory Hoskins, are odes to wonder, love letters for the willingness to know endings. Music by Nights of Grief and Mystery. Visit our website at forthewild.world for the full episode description, references, and action points.Support the show

What does it mean to settle, to be in a settled place? This week’s guest, AbdouMaliq Simone has dedicated his work to investigating the specifics of urban organization as they are created by people. In this erudite and globally-positioned conversation, Ayana and AbdouMaliq meditate on how the design of our environments shapes us. AbdouMaliq talks us through the uncertain, vulnerable, and dynamic positions in the choreography of global cities, and contemplates what it means to live an urban life. From the entanglements of resistance and protest, to surveillance and governance, to the effects of climate change on the city environment, AbdouMaliq brings nuance and depth to this vital conversation.  As humanity shapes the city, it shapes us in turn, and as the world rapidly urbanizes, AbdouMaliq calls listeners to think about what an urban politics could be. AbdouMaliq Simone is Senior Professorial Fellow at the Urban Institute, University of Sheffield and co-director of the Beyond Inhabitation Lab, Polytechnic University ofTurin. https://beyondinhabitation.org/ Music by Jahawi. Visit our website at forthewild.world for the full episode description, references, and action points.Support the show

In an episode that cuts straight to the soul, this week’s guest Andrea Gibson joins Ayana in a conversation that asks what it means to truly live. Andrea contemplates the ways we cope with loneliness and the deeply rooted societal fears of disconnection and of death. Facing fear, confusion, and loss head on, Andrea reminds us that healing is a return to the self, a return to community. Andrea’s openness about their diagnosis and emotional journey, brings depth and emotion to the conversation. Through poem and spirituality, Andrea draws us to see the beauty in being alive in this particular life, in our particular bodies, at this particular time. Their presence and attention is life-giving. As Andrea shares their journey connecting to the eternal, genderless “We,” they invite listeners to contemplate their identities beyond this life alone. As we let the need to know fall away, what miracles might reveal themselves to us? Andrea Gibson is one of the most celebrated and influential spoken word poets of our time. Best known for their live performances, Gibson has changed the landscape of what it means to attend a “poetry show” altogether. To hear Gibson is like hearing songwriters play their music, their trademark honesty and vulnerability are on full display. Gibson’s poems center around LGBTQ issues, gender, feminism, mental health and the dismantling of oppressive social systems. The winner of the first Women’s World Poetry Slam, Gibson has gone on to be awarded the LGBTQ Out100 and has been featured on BBC, NPR and CSpan. Gibson is the author of seven award winning books and seven full length albums. Their live shows have become loving and supportive ecosystems for audiences to feel seen, heard, and held through Gibson’s art.Music by John Carrol Kirby (generously provided by Patience Records),  Kesia Negata, and Katie Gray. Visit our website at forthewild.world for the full episode description, references, and action points.Support the show

Death is a process of decomposition, how can we come to embrace this reality? This week, guest Katrina Spade joins Ayana for a fascinating conversation on the possibilities of burial practices, ways to connect with death, and the value in thoughtful death plans. Sharing her journey to founding Recompose, “a licensed, full-service, green funeral home in Seattle offering human composting,” Katrina shares that the way we design death rituals matters in how connected we feel to the process of death. Detailing the science, logistics, and art behind human composting, Katrina imbues the conversation with passion, concern, and a spirit of learning. Through Recompose, Katrina has witnessed the beauty that comes from watching new life blossom from death, and from the connections family members of the deceased can have with the soil created from the composting process. The intention and compassion we put into death-care matters.  As Katrina reminds us, there is so much to be gained from intimacy with death.Katrina Spade is the founder and CEO of Recompose, a public benefit corporation leading the transformation of the funeral industry. Katrina is a designer and the inventor of a system that transforms the dead into soil (aka human composting).Since founding in 2017, Katrina and Recompose have led the successful legalization of human composting in Washington State in 2019. Recompose became the first company in the world to offer the service in December of 2020. The process is now also legal in Oregon, Colorado, Vermont, California., and New York.Katrina and her team have been featured in Fast Company, NPR, the Atlantic, BBC, Harper’s Magazine, and the New York Times. She is an Echoing Green Fellow, an Ashoka fellow, and a Harvard Kennedy School Visiting Social Innovator.Music by Yesol. Visit our website at forthewild.world for the full episode description, references, and action points.Support the show

It is with a heavy heart that we share that Tokitae, a Southern Resident Orca held unjustly in captivity for 53 years, has passed away. To honor her memory, this week we are rebroadcasting our episode with Kurt Russo on the People Under the Sea, originally aired in October of 2018. This conversation explores the powerful memory held by Southern Resident orcas, the threats they face from vessel noise, chemical pollutants, and declining Chinook salmon population, the health of the Salish Sea, and the efforts of the Lummi Nation to return Sk’aliCh’elh-tenaut (also  known as Tokitae/Lolita), from where she was being held captive at Miami Seaquarium, to her natal waters in the Salish Sea. Tokitae’s life ended while in captivity, but we hope that her memory may serve to inspire the fight for right-relationship and reciprocity with our more-than-human-kin. Kurt Russo is the executive director of Se’Si’Le, an Indigenous-led nonprofit dedicated to the perpetuation and practical application of Indigenous ancestral knowledge. Kurt has worked with Indigenous communities since 1978 in the areas of sacred site protection, Indigenous treaty rights, environmental cross-cultural conflict resolution, and the intertextualization of ways of knowing nature. He was co-Founder and Executive Director of the Florence R. Kluckhohn Center for the Study of Values and the Native American Land Conservancy, helped establish the International Indigenous Exchange Program (Northwest Indian College), the Sacred Lands Conservancy, and the Foundation for Indigenous Medicine. He has a BS in Forestry from the University of Montana, an MS in Forestry from the University of Washington, and a Ph.D. in History from the University of California (Riverside). He is a veteran and served in Vietnam where he worked with Montagnard Indigenous communities.Music by Monplaisir and Amoeba. Visit our website at forthewild.world for the full episode description, references, and action points.Support the show

Introducing listeners to her fierce devotion to community and care for the animal world, Keiara Wade, the Compton Cowgirl, considers the ways care work includes the human and more-than-human. Though the connection between humans and animals is often unspoken, it is a vital tie, and Keiara emphasizes the way the specific tie between human and horse can be incredibly therapeutic, healing, and nourishing.  Keiara shares her journey with the Compton Cowboys and her experiences as a Black cowgirl. The Compton Cowboys were founded in 2017 by a group of Compton locals who had grown up riding together.  Recognizing the importance of intergenerational community and influence, Keiara hopes that this program and connection to the horses can continue for generations to come. Compton Cowboys is about so much more than just riding, and Keiara shares the significance of making spaces for young people to feel heard and valued . The respect and accountability necessary for a good relationship with a horse is also necessary for a good relationship with each other. How might animals be our guides and companions in making the world more equitable? Keiara Wade is The Compton Cowgirl of the Compton Cowboys.She is in the process of pursuing her barrel racing career and becoming the first black woman to make it to the NFR. Horses have always been her positive outlet to the traumatic world in which she grew up. She believes in giving back to our younger generations by allowing them the experience of the equine world and possibly leading them away from the streets and gang violence. She recently moved to Houston to accomplish her dream, supported by the Compton Cowboys and the Compton Junior Equestrians program. She is a mother of two children Taylor and Michael. This episode of For The Wild is brought to you by Catori Life. Music by Jess Williamson, Kaivalya, and Sarah Maricha White. Visit our website at forthewild.world for the full episode description, references, and action points.Support the show

What is intelligence beyond, preceding, and following human intelligence?  This week, Ayana is joined by guest James Bridle in a conversation that considers multiple forms of intelligence and ways of being. Bringing a rich background of research on forms of intelligence, from artificial to mycelial, James posits that it is a critical failure to use human intelligence as the benchmark for all forms of knowing. Seeing intelligence as both relational and embodied, James points out that knowing has never been an independent or alienated act. Rather, it is our specific set of modern conditions which primes us for alienation and separation – both from ourselves and from the earth. James encourages listeners to move from helplessness and fear to agency.  In the same way that human agency created these systems and methodologies, we can also harness our agency to change the way they are used, to rethink our relationships to technology itself. How we heal our relationships is how we heal the world. James Bridle is a writer, artist and technologist. Their artworks have been commissioned by galleries and institutions and exhibited worldwide and on the internet. Their writing on literature, culture and networks has appeared in magazines and newspapers including Wired, the Atlantic, the New Statesman, the Guardian, and the Financial Times. They are the author of 'New Dark Age' (2018) and 'Ways of Being' (2022), and they wrote and presented "New Ways of Seeing" for BBC Radio 4 in 2019. Their work can be found at http://jamesbridle.com.Music by Memotone. Visit our website at forthewild.world for the full episode description, references, and action points.Support the show

This week’s guest, Toko-pa Turner, invites us to consider that our dreams may serve as important guides throughout our lives. Diving into the intimately intertwined world of psyche and matter, Toko-pa considers the ways we may rehabilitate our imaginative capacities. We cannot simply dispose of that which goes beyond physical observation. Instead, centering the importance of feelings and sensing, Toko-pa encourages us to take time and pay attention to dreams. Dreams and our interior worlds, according to Toko-pa, are deeply important within our personal searches for belonging. Modern society demands that we estrange parts of ourselves in order to “belong,” but this false belonging will never satisfy. Rather, Toko-pa focuses on finding interior belonging. What is internally guiding us towards our potential?Blending the mystical teachings of Sufism in which she was raised with a Jungian approach to dreams, Toko-pa Turner is a Canadian author, teacher, and dreamworker. She founded The Dream School in 2001, from which thousands of students have since graduated. She is the author of the award-winning book, Belonging: Remembering Ourselves Home, which explores the themes of exile and belonging through the lens of dreams, mythology, and memoirs. This book has resonated for readers worldwide, and has been translated into 10 different languages as well as winning multiple awards for excellence in publishing. Her work focuses on the relationship between psyche and nature, and how to follow our inner wisdom to meet with the social, psychological, and ecological challenges of our time.Music by Magnetic Vines and Tarotplane. Visit our website at forthewild.world for the full episode description, references, and action points.Support the show

In this week’s episode, guest Amy Glenn invites listeners on a journey to consider the value in caregiving and companioning. Rooting the conversation in her experience as both a birth and death doula, Amy details the deep work of holding space for all of life’s moments. Amy points out the thresholds of everyday life, and the value in sitting with uncertainty. Companioning, storytelling, and ritual making are all vital as we come to contemplate what it means to hold space for death. Offering breathing techniques and a meditation on the breath that holds us between birth and death, Amy calls to mind the importance of making space for contemplation. How can we make space for self-care and self-regulation as we cope with the journeys of life and death? Amy Wright Glenn earned her MA in Religion and Education from Teachers College, Columbia University. She earned her BA from Reed College in the study of Religion. Amy taught for eleven years in the Religion and Philosophy Department at The Lawrenceville School in New Jersey earning the Dunbar Abston Jr. Chair for Teaching Excellence. She is a birth and death doula, hospital chaplain, Kripalu Yoga teacher, and founder of the Institute for the Study of Birth, Breath, and Death. From 2015 to 2020, Amy served as an active contributor to PhillyVoice writing on topics relating to birth, death, parenting, and spirituality. Amy is the author of Birth, Breath, and Death: Meditations on Motherhood, Chaplaincy, and Life as a Doula and Holding Space: On Loving, Dying, and Letting Go. Amy has trained thousands of professionals in the work of holding space for life’s transitions ~ and focuses specifically on grief and bereavement care. To learn more, visit: www.birthbreathanddeath.comMusic by Charlie Warren, Doe Paoro, and Amber Rubarth. Visit our website at forthewild.world for the full episode description, references, and action points.Support the show

Continuing the conversation series, “The Edges in the Middle,” presented in collaboration with UC Berkeley’s Othering and Belonging Institute, For The Wild is delighted to share this conversation between Báyò Akómoláfé, Naomi Klein and Yuria Celidwen. Speaking about climate grief and hope, Báyò, Naomi, and Yuria build together to consider the value in tapping into the depth of emotion as we feel it, not as we are told we should feel it. In a time marked by disruption, loss, and demise, grief may be an invitation into depths that demand to be listened to, and as we embody the grieving process we are called to surrender to feeling. “The Edges in the Middle” is a series of conversations between Báyò Akómoláfé and thought companions like john a. powell, V, Naomi Klein, and more. These limited episodes have been adapted from Báyò’s work as the Global Senior Fellow at UC Berkeley's Othering & Belonging Institute. In this role, Báyò has been holding a series of public conversations on issues of justice and belonging for the Institute's Democracy & Belonging Forum, which connects and resources civic leaders in Europe and the US who are committed to bridging across difference to strengthen democracy and advance belonging in both regions and around the world. Báyò's conversations encourage us to rethink justice, hope, and belonging by sitting amidst the noise, not trying to cover it up with pleasant rhythms. To learn more about the Democracy & Belonging Forum, visit democracyandbelongingforum.org.   Music by Sitka Sun, generously provided by The Long Road Society Record Label and Mikalya McVey. Visit our website at forthewild.world for the full episode description, references, and action points.To listen to the extended episode, join us on Patreon at patreon.com/forthewild.Support the show

In an increasingly unequal and precarious world, how might we come to combat disconnection and disillusionment? In this episode, guest Cuck Collins dives deeply into the world of wealth hoarding and staggering inequality. Recognizing the complexity of these issues, Ayana and Chuck engage deeply with questions of philanthrocapitalism, tax spending, the wealth defense industry, and power inequities across society.Chuck explains that as wealth concentrates in fewer and fewer hands it perpetuates and increases anti-democratic values and economic instability, leading to uncertain and uneven futures. This growing inequality is deeply intertwined with the capitalist extraction that has led to the climate crisis. As the fossil fuel industry has worked to shape public response to the climate crisis through denial, doubt, and delay, it is clear that the politics of our times are ensnared within corporate interest and greed. At the same time, the climate crisis calls us to reckon with our value systems and to question the cultural conditionings by which we have been surrounded. It is delusional to think that even the wealthiest among us will be able to escape climate crisis entirely. Instead of relying on broken and untrustworthy systems, how can we seed a new economy of solidarity as we work to live within Earth’s boundaries?  Chuck Collins, co-editor, Inequality.org at the Institute for Policy Studies and author of numerous books including Born on Third Base, The Wealth Hoarders, and Economic Apartheid in America. Altar to an Erupting Sun is his first novel.Music by Vide Geiger, Sean Smith, and The Ascent of Everest. Visit our website at forthewild.world for the full episode description, references, and action points.Support the show

Embracing the mountains, desert steppe, and islands of Patagonia, this week’s guest Diana Friedrich grounds listeners in an expansive and profound landscape. As she describes her work to protect swaths of land through Rewilding Argentina’s Patagonia Azul project, Diana and Ayana share in a love for landscapes that offer both challenge and refuge. For Diana, conservation work is a calling to enter into deep community and to build trust over a shared love for the land. This means reimagining economic systems, challenging industrial greed, and countering our current culture of consumption and exploitation. Diana brings expert insight as she talks listeners through the complexity of international biodiversity goals and declarations. Though this, Diana emphasizes the importance of creating truly protected local areas rather than just relying on regulations and declarations. The deep commitment and intentional work of rewilding is vital as we work to support and to be a part of a world teeming with biodiversity.  Diana is a naturalist and adventurer. From a very early childhood, her parents took her and her four siblings traveling to the wildest and most remote places of Argentina and Chile. Right after finishing high school, she volunteered and worked at several conservation organizations in Argentina. She received a degree in Nature Conservation in South Africa and worked in nature reserves and communities in Zimbabwe, Kenya, and Tanzania. In Argentina, Diana coordinated field activities at the hooded grebe Project for three seasons and worked as a field technician on Rewilding Argentina’s projects to reintroduce giant anteaters and red-and-green macaws. She currently lives in Patagonia and manages the Patagonia Azul project’s Parks and Communities Program.Music by Bird By Snow, Papa Bear and the Easy Love, and Aviva Le Fey. Visit our website at forthewild.world for the full episode description, references, and action points.Support the show

How are the crises of our times crises of being, crises of becoming? In this week’s conversation, Ayana is joined by returning guest Dr. Báyò Akómoláfé. Ayana and Báyò dance together through questions of crisis, identity, and rupture. As we attempt to break from the monoculture that cements us as citizen subjects of empire, Báyò suggests that we need an ontological mutiny. Pointing out the possibilities of a more generous and spacious politics, Báyò calls listeners’ attention to the duplicity of safety. Perhaps the things from which we recoil contain promise. As we try to stabilize, cracks will emerge, and Báyò invites us to nurture each other  through the ruptures. How might we descend to the crises of our times, and embrace the decay and compost that modernity has come to detest?  Bayo Akomolafe (Ph.D.), rooted with the Yoruba people in a more-than-human world, is the father to Alethea and Kyah, the grateful life-partner to Ije, son and brother. A widely celebrated international speaker, posthumanist thinker, poet, teacher, public intellectual, essayist, and author of two books, These Wilds Beyond our Fences: Letters to My Daughter on Humanity’s Search for Home (North Atlantic Books) and We Will Tell our Own Story: The Lions of Africa Speak, Bayo Akomolafe is the Founder of The Emergence Network and host of the postactivist course/festival/event, ‘We Will Dance with Mountains’. For an extended version of this episode join us on Patreon at patreon.com/forthewild.Music by  Julio Kintu (Chloe Utley), Jahnavi Veronica, Leyla McCalla, and Los Hombres Calientes. Visit our website at forthewild.world for the full episode description, references, and action points.Support the show

Engaging crucially with food as a cultural, spiritual, and generational experience, this week’s guest Abena Offeh-Gyimah highlights the connections between ancestral foods, and the soil, seeds, and people who play a part in sustaining ancestral foodways. Focusing on the ancestral foods of Africa, and specifically her home-country of Ghana, Abena shares stories of connection, trust, and community fostered by food. Abena calls listeners to pay attention to the technical and spiritual aspects of seeds that connect them to past, present, and future landscapes. Through this deep connection, Abena points out the absurdity that certain companies claim to own seeds as if they could own life itself.  Seeds carry with them the miracle of life and abundance, how might we shape our food and agricultural systems to honor this sacred reality?Abena Offeh-Gyimah is the founder of BEELA Center for Indigenous Foods in Ghana, a project that seeks to preserve indigenous African seeds, foods, and practices. Prior to this role, Abena worked as the Project Lead for the Jane Finch Community Research Partnership, with extensive experience in community engagement, ethical research, program development, partnerships & collaboration, and with previous organizations like North York Community House, Black Creek Community Farm, Jane Finch Center, and with Building Roots Toronto. Abena brings years of experience in conducting ethical community engaged research practice, work in local food systems, seed sovereignty, and collaboration in food sovereignty movements. Abena is a writer, a poet, a researcher, a naturalist, and a conservationist.For an extended version of this episode please join us on Patreon at patreon.com/forthewild. Music by Buffalo Rose, Eliza Edens, and Marian McLaughlin. Visit our website at forthewild.world for the full episode description, references, and action points.Support the show

Continuing the conversation series, “The Edges in the Middle,” presented in collaboration with UC Berkeley’s Othering and Belonging Institute, For The Wild is delighted to share Báyò Akómoláfé in conversation with scholar Keeanga-Yamahtta Taylor.  Speaking on the theme "What if justice gets in the way?,” Báyò and Keeanga engage in a lively conversation that considers how our quest for justice shapes us and is simultaneously shaped by systems of power and control. Together, they ask: how can we move justice out of the existing political paradigm and move beyond a normative sense of justice and reform? “The Edges in the Middle” is a series of conversations between Báyò Akómoláfé and thought companions like john a. powell, V, Naomi Klein, and more. These limited episodes have been adapted from Báyò’s work as the Global Senior Fellow at UC Berkeley's Othering & Belonging Institute. In this role, Báyò has been holding a series of public conversations on issues of justice and belonging for the Institute's Democracy & Belonging Forum, which connects and resources civic leaders in Europe and the US who are committed to bridging across difference to strengthen democracy and advance belonging in both regions and around the world. Báyò's conversations encourage us to rethink justice, hope, and belonging by sitting amidst the noise, not trying to cover it up with pleasant rhythms. To learn more about the Democracy & Belonging Forum, visit democracyandbelongingforum.org.   Music by Sitka Sun, generously provided by The Long Road Society Record Label. Visit our website at forthewild.world for the full episode description, references, and action points.Support the show

How might we tend to our bodies if we saw them as an ecosystem? In this week’s episode, guest Samantha Zipporah reminds us that our bodies and their cycles are a part of nature, not separate from it. Honoring the seasons of life, of the earth, and of our bodily cycles, Samantha highlights the importance of both fallow and fertile times, with particular attention to how this manifests for those with wombs. These intimate connections between body and earth inspire Smantha to dive deep into the power within cycles of menstruation and ovulation. Samantha also calls us to consider the type of culture we are cultivating surrounding body sovereignty. How can we strive towards an end to rape culture that comes from an understanding of consent that occurs in connection with others and centers power with others rather than power over others? The dominant overculture encourages an intense dissociation from our bodies, but when we tune in and are present to what is occurring within our bodies and our relationships, what might we learn?  Samantha Zipporah is a midwife, author and educator in service to healing & liberation. Sam’s path rises from an ancient lineage of midwives, witches, and wise women​ with expertise spanning the continuum of birth, sex, and death. She is devoted to breaking the spells of oppression in reproductive and sexual health by connecting people with the innate pleasure, power, and wisdom of the body. Her praxis weaves scientific and soulful inquiry that integrate modern medicine and data with ancestral practices and epistemologies. Sam's most recent publications and offerings center the radical reclamation of contraception and abortion. Her online membership, The Fruit of Knowledge Learning Community, features access to her heart & mind via books, courses, QandAs, curated resources and more.Music by Jeffrey Silverstein, Samantha Zipporah, and Yesol. Visit our website at forthewild.world for the full episode description, references, and action points.Support the show

In a profoundly informative and thought-provoking episode, returning guest Ismail Lourido Ali considers how we can create spaces for people to safely explore themselves and their consciousness. Ismail’s work to build an informed drug culture calls us to consider the ways we might prioritize balance and humility in conversations over moral judgment and cultural shame. Focusing on moving away from repression, the conversation weaves together nuanced ideas about pleasure, education, and societal structures. Ismail’s approach to drug policy centers around finding spaciousness as an advocate, and making room for the growing body of knowledge around the uses, harms, and benefits of drugs. He invites listeners to dream of a conscious, compassionate, and safe world in which justice, peace, and balance are prioritized. How might the practices of harm-reduction and substance education expand to create a society that makes space for deep emotions, for crisis support, and for holistic healing? Ismail Lourido Ali, JD (he/him or they/them) is the Director of Policy & Advocacy at the Multidisciplinary Association of Psychedelic Studies (MAPS), has been personally utilizing psychedelics and other substances in celebratory & spiritual contexts for over fifteen years. Ismail works with, is formally affiliated with, or has served in leadership or board roles for numerous organizations in the drug policy reform ecosystem, including Alchemy Community Therapy Center (formerly Sage Institute), Psychedelic Bar Association, Students for Sensible Drug Policy, Chacruna Institute, and the Ayahuasca Defense Fund.For an extended version of this episode, join our Patreon community at patreon.com/forthewildMusic by Santiago Cordoba, Public Access, and Camelia Jade. Visit our website at forthewild.world for the full episode description, references, and action points.Support the show

 Continuing the conversation series, “The Edges in the Middle,” presented in collaboration with UC Berkeley’s Othering and Belonging Institute, For The Wild is delighted to share Báyò Akómoláfé in conversation with Indy Johar of Dark Matter Labs. Speaking on the theme “A New Theory of the Self,” Báyò and Indy dive into the milieu of life forms entangled together on earth. The conversation asks listeners to reconsider the objective nature of self and the word around us that has been so deeply ingrained within the architecture of society. Rejecting these notions of completion and singularity, Báyò and Indy engage in a conversation that calls attention to the aliveness of the world, to the agency and intelligence of our entangled minds, and to life as an ongoing process. How might we move beyond constraining ideas of order, power, and control in order to recognize and take part in relational ecological emergence?“The Edges in the Middle” is a series of conversations between Báyò Akómoláfé and thought companions like john a. powell, V, Naomi Klein, and more. These limited episodes have been adapted from Báyò’s work as the Global Senior Fellow at UC Berkeley's Othering & Belonging Institute. In this role, Báyò has been holding a series of public conversations on issues of justice and belonging for the Institute's Democracy & Belonging Forum, which connects and resources civic leaders in Europe and the US who are committed to bridging across difference to strengthen democracy and advance belonging in both regions and around the world. Báyò's conversations encourage us to rethink justice, hope, and belonging by sitting amidst the noise, not trying to cover it up with pleasant rhythms. To learn more about the Democracy & Belonging Forum, visit democracyandbelongingforum.org.   Music by Sitka Sun, generously provided by The Long Road Society Record Label. Visit our website at forthewild.world for the full episode description, references, and action points.Support the show

How do we face the scope of global extraction in the name of oil and gas production? Guest Amy Westervelt joins us this week to consider the full story behind these extractive industries and the role they play in shaping global structures from shipping ports, to government policies, to media talking points. Together, Amy and Ayana consider what it might mean for these organizations to be held accountable to the local and global disasters they have wrought in pursuit of profit. Amy brings specific insight to ExxonMobil’s rapid development of oil production in Guyana, which she investigated for season eight of her podcast, Drilled. Discussing this specific case and extraction across the world, Amy details the global complications and power dynamics at play, and considers the obscene level of influence huge corporations have in perpetuating global injustice. Understanding the contours of power as it works now, this conversation also invites dreams of how we may change these systems. A world in which we hold corporations accountable and curb energy consumption in just and accessible ways is possible. How might we shift the narrative to bring visions into action?  Amy Westervelt is an award-winning investigative climate journalist. She writes regularly for The Guardian and The Intercept. Westervelt also runs the independent podcast production company and network Critical Frequency, where she reports and hosts Drilled, a true-crime podcast about climate change, and runs the company’s production team on other shows, like the Peabody-nominated This Land.Music by Jonathan Yonts, Hana Shin, and Charles Rumback and Ryley Walker. Visit our website at forthewild.world for the full episode description, references, and action points.Support the show

Adding deep nuance to conversations around herbalism and the botanicals industry, this week’s guest Ann Armbrecht shares her extensive knowledge about herbal supply chains and the effects of herbal commodification. Ann focuses much of her research on the stories behind the herbal products available to consumers, detailing the complicated and often exploitative supply chains involved in the mass production of botanical products.Ann and Ayana discuss how we might come into right relationship with the plant world. As plants invite us to imagine and create medicine, what might true health look like? Ann Armbrecht is an anthropologist (PhD, Harvard 1995) whose work explores the relationships between humans and the earth, most recently through her work with plants, herbal medicine, and the botanical industry. She is the director of the Sustainable Herbs Program, a program of the American Botanical Council, which she established in 2016 to help bridge the gaps between the values of herbal medicine and the reality of sourcing and producing herbs on a global scale.She is the author of The Business of Botanicals: Exploring the Healing Promise of Plant Medicines in a Global Industry, that documents her journey following herbs from seed to shelf. She is also the author of the award winning ethnographic memoir, Thin Places: A Pilgrimage Home, and the co-producer of the documentary on traditional western herbalism, Numen: The Healing Power of Plants. Ann was a 2017 Fulbright-Nehru Scholar documenting the supply chain of medicinal plants in India and she lives with her family in central Vermont.Music byFlo Perlin, Jeffery Silverstein, and Andy Tallent.  Visit our website at forthewild.world for the full episode description, references, and action points.Support the show

How might we honor and follow the authentic call of our purpose? This week, guest Rachel Cargle shares in a rich and enthralling conversation with Ayana that calls forth themes of rootedness, truth, and renaissance. Rachel honors a rootedness that comes from deep connection to ancestry, to Blackness, and to the earth, and she recognizes the way the earth and its cycles offer us examples of what presence and reciprocity look like. As Rachel points out in her forthcoming book A Renaissance of Our Own, we are in need of a renaissance. Attuned to years of intense work around race and racial consciousness within the United States, Rachel uses the dreams and desires from this time as the raw materials for revolution, Rachel envisions a collective renaissance that centers on intergenerational conversation. Rooted in trust, how might we reimagine this world together? Rachel Elizabeth Cargle is an activist, entrepreneur, and philanthropic innovator. She is the founder of The Loveland Group; a family of companies including Elizabeth’s Bookshop & Writing Centre, a literary space that celebrates marginalized voices and The Great Unlearn, an adult learning platform that centers the teaching of BIPOC thinkers. In 2018, she founded The Loveland Foundation, offering free access to mental health care for Black women and girls. Cargle is a regular contributor to Cultured Magazine, Atmos, and The Cut, and her work has been featured in The Washington Post, The New York Times, and The New Yorker. Her new book, A Renaissance of Our Own: A Memoir and Manifesto on Reimagining, comes out in the U.S. May 16th, 2023.Join us on Patreon at patreon.com/forthewild for an extended version of this episode.Music by Eliza Edens and Mikayla McVey (generously provided by The Long Road Society Record Label). Visit our website at forthewild.world for the full episode description, references, and action points.Support the show

Feeling into the state of our nervous systems and our relationships with each other and ourselves, this episode offers a powerful perspective on the importance of recognizing and tending to how life feels. Together, Ayana and this week’s guest Kimberly Ann Johnson discuss the depths of pleasure and the dimensions of healing. Kimberly brings deep knowledge regarding reproductive and sexual health, especially paying attention to the often untended somatic nature of sexual boundary repair and the complicated nature of what we bring into sexual relationships. This conversation is steeped in trust and intimacy. Kimberly’s focus and understanding offers a guide to the ways we might come to handle and regulate our own nervous systems in order to act in alignment with our desires, rather than with the prescribed roles we have been put into through societal conditioning. Kimberly Ann Johnson is a Sexological Bodyworker, Somatic Experiencing practitioner, yoga teacher, postpartum advocate, and single mom. Working hands-on in integrative women’s health and trauma recovery for more than a decade, she helps women heal from birth injuries, gynecological surgeries, and sexual boundary violations. Kimberly is the author of the Call of the Wild: How We Heal Trauma, Awaken Our Own Power, and Use It for Good, as well as the early mothering classic The Fourth Trimester, and is the host of the Sex Birth Trauma podcast.Join us on Patreon at patreon.com/forthewild for an extended version of this episode.Music by Lake Mary & Talk West and Katie Gray. Visit our website at forthewild.world for the full episode description, references, and action points.Support the show

Continuing the conversation series, “The Edges in the Middle,” presented in collaboration with UC Berkeley’s Othering and Belonging Institute, For The Wild is delighted to share Báyò Akómoláfé in conversation with V (formerly known as Eve Ensler, playwright, author, and founder of V-Day and One Billion Rising). Speaking on the theme “The Promise and Limits of Restitution: Returning to ‘Congo,’” Báyò and V dance together in a conversation that shows us portals of possibility that edge us towards deep change. Discussing the Congo as both place and portal, Báyò and V contemplate the persistent and fugitive glimmer of possibility within trauma and repression. As we pay slow, deep attention and care to unraveling and processing our stories, how might we create the sacred space from which movement and growth may flow?   “The Edges in the Middle” is a series of conversations between Báyò Akómoláfé and thought companions like john a. powell, V, Naomi Klein, and more. These limited episodes have been adapted from Báyò’s work as the Global Senior Fellow at UC Berkeley's Othering & Belonging Institute. In this role, Báyò has been holding a series of public conversations on issues of justice and belonging for the Institute's Democracy & Belonging Forum, which connects and resources civic leaders in Europe and the US who are committed to bridging across difference to strengthen democracy and advance belonging in both regions and around the world. Báyò's conversations encourage us to rethink justice, hope, and belonging by sitting amidst the noise, not trying to cover it up with pleasant rhythms. To learn more about the Democracy & Belonging Forum, visit democracyandbelongingforum.org.   Music by Sitka Sun, generously provided by The Long Road Society Record Label. Visit our website at forthewild.world for the full episode description, references, and action points.Support the show

This week we are rebroadcasting our interview with Jenny Odell, initially aired in February of 2021. Our attention has operated as currency for the past couple of decades, but with the invasiveness of social media and technology, our ability to exit and enter the attention economy has been severely hindered. As we feel pressure to post and comment on everything for an unknown audience, do we inherently limit our capacity for complexity and vulnerability? And what are the extended ramifications of becoming illiterate in complexity? How does this ripple out into all of our relationships? In lieu of the demanding world buzzing inside our devices, guest Jenny Odell shares the brilliance of doing “nothing”, tending to the ecological self, and growing deeper forms of attention through a commitment to bioregionalism. Jenny Odell is a writer, artist, and enthusiastic birdwatcher based in Oakland, California. She is the author of How to Do Nothing: Resisting the Attention Economy. Odell teaches digital art at Stanford University. Music by Harrison Foster, Bosques Fragmentados, Samara Jade, and Kritzkom. Visit our website at forthewild.world for the full episode description, references, and action points. Support the show

This week we are rebroadcasting our interview with john a. powell, originally aired in May 2019. If you enjoy this week’s episode, make sure you listen to the first episode in our special series The Edges in the Middle, which features a conversation between john a. powell and Báyò Akómoláfé .Now more than ever, we are reminded of the vital importance of creating practices that strengthen and recognize our shared humanity. However, in order to do so, we must examine the systems, ideologies, and actions that have emboldened us to deny humanity in the first place. At the beginning of this week’s episode, john a. powell defines any practice which denies someone’s humanity as an act of “othering.” Both at home and abroad it seems we are witnessing a surge of "othering," whether it is reflected in election cycles, the rise of ethnonationalism, or the pervasiveness of violent acts. We must wonder, how and why do societies rely on the process of othering? And more importantly, how do we move into engagement, organizing, and “bridging?”john a. powell (who spells his name in lowercase in the belief that we should be "part of the universe, not over it, as capitals signify") is an internationally recognized expert in the areas of civil rights, civil liberties, structural racism, housing, poverty, and democracy.  He is the Director of the Othering & Belonging Institute at the University of California, Berkeley, a research institute that brings together scholars, community advocates, communicators, and policymakers to identify and eliminate the barriers to an inclusive, just, and sustainable society and to create transformative change toward a more equitable world.Music by Ani DiFranco. Visit our website at forthewild.world for the full episode description, references, and action points.Support the show

For The Wild is honored to present a series of conversations entitled, “The Edges in the Middle,” in collaboration with UC Berkeley’s Othering and Belonging Institute. In the first of these conversations, Báyò Akómoláfé speaks with john a. powell, Director of the Othering & Belonging Institute. Speaking on the theme “When ‘just getting along’ isn't enough: Is belonging possible in a world rooted in othering?,” Báyò and john contemplate the ontological weight of our desire for belonging. How might we learn how to belong together? Articulating both the harsh realities of modern day division and the simultaneous reality of our connection to each other and to the earth, Báyò and john examine what it means to be “other” and to invite in the “monstrous” and the “strange.” “The Edges in the Middle” is a series of conversations between Báyò Akómoláfé and thought companions like john a. powell, V, Naomi Klein, and more. These limited episodes have been adapted from Báyò’s work as the Global Senior Fellow at UC Berkeley's Othering & Belonging Institute. In this role, Báyò has been holding a series of public conversations on issues of justice and belonging for the Institute's Democracy & Belonging Forum, which connects and resources civic leaders in Europe and the US who are committed to bridging across difference to strengthen democracy and advance belonging in both regions and around the world. Báyò's conversations encourage us to rethink justice, hope, and belonging by sitting amidst the noise, not trying to cover it up with pleasant rhythms. To learn more about the Democracy & Belonging Forum, visit democracyandbelongingforum.org.   Music by Sitka Sun, generously provided by The Long Road Society Record Label. Visit our website at forthewild.world for the full episode description, references, and action points.Support the show

This week we are rebroadcasting our interview with Tyson Yunkaporta originally aired in May of 2021. Struggling to change actual conditions, many have settled for changing the perceptions of the world around us. Tyson Yunkaporta begins by sharing the connections between perception, the branding of our identities, and the many forms of capital that become available and valuable in a perception-obsessed society. As we welcome the call to change our conditions and participate in the great “thousand-year clean-up”, we explore hybridized insight, the ramifications of clinging to dichotomous identities, and how genuine diversity is tangible preparedness and emotional resilience in motion. With this in mind, it becomes our task to figure out how we can sustain genuine diversity in our lives so we may work alongside folks with different capacities, worldviews, solutions, and thought processes in devotion to dismantling a system that necessitates abuse. Tyson Yunkaporta is an academic, an arts critic, and a researcher who belongs to the Apalech Clan in far north Queensland. He carves traditional tools and weapons and also works as a senior lecturer in Indigenous Knowledges at Deakin University in Melbourne.Music by 40 Million Feet, Marty O’Reilly & the Old Soul Orchestra, and Violet Bell. Visit our website at forthewild.world for the full episode description, references, and action points.Support the show

Rising against growing wealth inequality and resource consolidation, guest Morgan Curtis asks how we might, rather, shape our world in reciprocity, mutual aid, and intentional community. This week, Ayana and Morgan dive deep into the need for repair, healing, and acknowledgement as we face the historical roots of modern inequity. Morgan centers her work by listening deeply to the call for radical change. This heartfelt and expansive conversation calls for us to unlearn the ways racial capitalism has taught us wealth should be passed down. Perhaps the world that we are longing for is one where abundance is not wealth, but rather right relationship - with land, with ancestry, and with each other. Guided by the call to transmute the legacy of her colonizing and enslaving ancestors, Morgan is dedicated to working with her fellow people with wealth and class privilege towards redistribution, atonement, and repair. As a facilitator, money coach, organizer and ritualist, she works to catalyze the healing of relationships with self, family, ancestors, community, and the land, enabling the surrender of power and control so that resources can flow towards racial, environmental, and economic justice. She is in the process of redistributing 100% of her inherited wealth and 50% of her income to primarily Black- and Indigenous-led organizing and land projects. Morgan is a resident of Canticle Farm, a multi-racial, inter-faith, cross-class, intergenerational intentional community in Lisjan Ohlone territory (Oakland, CA). She is currently a graduate student at Harvard Divinity School, where she is studying the spiritual dimension of the reparations work required of white people.Join us on Patreon at patreon.com/forthewild for an extended version of this episode.Music by Andy Tallent, Handmade Moments, and Ela Spalding. Visit our website at forthewild.world for the full episode description, references, and action points.Support the show

Gabes Torres offers her thoughtful wisdom in this conversation that weaves through healing, interconnection, and embodiment. Focusing on holistic healing and mental health support, Gabes lucidly describes the ways our individual health and well-being are dependent upon our connections and the structures of the societies in which we reside. Together Ayana and Gabes dream of what we may be free towards (not just free from) as we divest from extractive mindsets. Reverberating on a call to expand love in deeply rooted directions, this conversation offers nourishment for body and soul. Gabes Torres was born and raised in the countryside of the Philippines. She is a psychotherapist, organizer, and artist with her work focusing on the interplay of mental health, the arts, spirituality, and justice-oriented practice. She has an MA in Theology & Culture, and Counseling Psychology; both graduate degrees were accomplished in Seattle, the city where she organized with abolitionist and anti-imperialist groups at a local, grassroots level. In her clinical practice, Gabes pays attention to healing from racial and migration trauma, while decolonizing the therapeutic space from White Western modalities. Gabes writes for Yes! Magazine, an independent publisher of solutions journalism with stories that uncover environmental, economic, and social justice intersections. She is also a poet and singer-songwriter. This episode of For The Wild is brought to you by Anima Mundi Herbals.Join us on Patreon at patreon.com/forthewild for an extended version of this episode.Music by Amaara, Blue Doll, and Annie Sumi. Visit our website at forthewild.world for the full episode description, references, and action points.Support the show

Rosemary Gladstar calls forth deep gratitude and mindfulness for the plant world as she walks with us through the world of herbalism in this precious episode. Reminding listeners of the value of connecting to the wellspring of Earth, Rosemary contemplates the ways plants shape us and make us into companions when we work with them. Woven throughout the conversation is an understanding that the Earth has a destiny of its own, one we cannot completely comprehend within our human lifespans.Rosemary Gladstar has been practicing, living, learning, teaching and writing about herbs for over 50 years. Considered a star figure in the modern herbal movement and often referred to as the ‘godmother of American herbalism’.  Rosemary is the author of twelve books including Medicinal Herbs: a Beginners Guide, Herbal Healing for Women, Rosemary Gladstar’s Herbal Recipes for Vibrant Well Being and Herbal Healing for Men.Join us on Patreon at patreon.com/forthewild for an extended version of this episode.Music by Eliza Edens, Rising Appalachia, and Lea Thomas. Visit our website at forthewild.world for the full episode description, references, and action points.This episode of For The Wild is brought to you Anima Mundi Herbals.Anima Mundi was founded by Costa Rican herbalist Adriana Ayales with the intention of bringing some of the finest plant medicines, medicinal mushrooms, vegan collagen boosters, and high-potency elixirs. Anima Mundi is made in the United States with certified organic, wild-crafted, and sustainably harvested plants and herbs that are sourced from small-scale farms around the world. Their products contain zero fillers, binders, or flow agents.We’re proud to receive the support of this woman and BIPOC-owned business that creates magic from plant allies. Our personal pick for this time of year is Anima Mundi’s Relax Tonic for Nervous System Support. To learn more visit AnimaMundiherbals.com or @animamundiherbals.Support the show

Giving listeners a glimpse into his new book, Palo Alto: A History of California, Capitalism, and the World, guest Malcolm Harris joins Ayana in a vast conversation dealing with the shape and form of Palo Alto’s specific place alongside overarching systems of capital. Cutting through the romanticization and myth that surrounds much of the allure around California as place and as metaphor, Malcolm offers well-rooted thought touching on the history of Stanford University, the internet, Palo Alto’s military connections, and more. This conversation reveals the values of understanding our material realities and the structures that support society as it stands. When we understand these intricacies, how might knowledge allow us to subvert domination? Offering his critical thought to this conversation, Malcolm reminds us that this permutation of society was not inevitable, and neither is any particular future. As examples, the practices of Land Back movements, student resistance, and collective organizing spaces, offer hope for alternatives. If specific visions of justice are impossible within this system, how do we steward a future in which they are?Malcolm Harris is a freelance writer and the author of Kids These Days, Shit is Fucked Up and Bullshit, and the new book Palo Alto: A History of California, Capitalism, and the World.Music by Little Foster Music (Harry Foster), Harrison Basch, and Ian George. Visit our website at forthewild.world for the full episode description, references, and action points.Support the show

This week, Ayana is joined by Francesca Lia Block in a heartfelt conversation recognizing the search for self and love through magic, literature, and deeply-felt presence. Francesca brings listeners into her writing practices as she navigates centering beauty in a world of intensity. Moving through the depths of empathy, pleasure, and presence, Francesca considers passion as a practice of gratitude to the world around us. As she discusses her most recent book House of Hearts, with Ayana, she emphasizes the healing and growth that comes from examining ourselves and our passions deeply. As we journey through life, what mentors, books, and practices give us the inspiration we need to keep moving forward? Francesca Lia Block, M.F.A., is the author of more than twenty-five books of fiction, non-fiction, short stories and poetry, and has written screenplay adaptations of her work. She received the Spectrum Award, the Phoenix Award, the ALA Rainbow Award and the 2005 Margaret A. Edwards Lifetime Achievement Award, as well as other citations from the American Library Association and from the New York Times Book Review, School Library Journal and Publisher’s Weekly.Music by 40 Million Feet, India Blue, and Ariana Saraha & Flight Behavior. Visit our website at forthewild.world for the full episode description, references, and action points.Support the show

For The Wild is honored to be “episode swapping” with the How to Survive the End of the World podcast, hosted by adrienne maree brown and Autumn Brown this week! Known for “learning from the apocalypse with grace, rigor, and curiosity” this episode, initially released in May 2022 is all about love.“What is it? Why does it happen? Why does it hurt so bad? Why does it feel so good? And how might it help us survive as a species? All these questions and more get introduced, and some of them start to get answers.”Autumn Brown and adrienne maree brown are two sisters who share many identities, as writers, activists, facilitators, and inheritors of multiracial diasporic lineages, as well as a particular interest in the question of survival. Together, they embark on a podcast that delves into the practices we need as a community, to move through endings and to come out whole on the other side, whatever that might be.To learn more about How to Survive the End of the World or listen to their full season on love, visit endoftheworldshow.org.Produced by Zak Rosen, music from Tunede Olaniran and Mother Cyborg.For The Wild will be back next week February 15, 2023.Support the show

Grounding this conversation within Teotitlan del Valle in Oaxaca, Mexico, guest Samuel Bautista Lazo, brings listeners into an insightful conversation on the value of craftwork that connects us to the past and plants seeds for the future. Here, Samuel outlines the weaving traditions of the Benzaa people, offering insight into a trade and lifeway shaped intimately by ancestry and the land. Through his family’s weaving business, Samuel emphasizes the importance of creating connection and meaning with the objects we need to sustain life. In an age of mass alienation and mass consumption, intimately knowing our relationship to the objects that sustain, to the skilled labor that creates, and to the land that provides is a radical act. How might we cultivate such connections within our lives? Dr. Samuel Bautista Lazo is a Benzaa (Zapotec) weaver from Teotitlan del Valle, Oaxaca, Mexico. In 2013 he obtained his PhD in Engineering from the University of Liverpool in the UK, doing research in the topic of Sustainable Manufacturing. After obtaining his PhD in the UK, Samuel decided to go back home and connect back with his community and family weaving heritage. Being back home struck a chord in his life and made him realize that his community was already practicing an ancient form of Sustainable Manufacturing that is still alive in the many craft traditions of the Central Valleys of Oaxaca and the eight regions in his state. From this place, Samuel has rooted even more within his community and family weaving business and from there and through the language of the ancient textiles he spends a great deal of time teaching, educating and planting the seeds for creating a future that heals the relationship of humans with the web of life.Join us on Patreon at patreon.com/forthewild for an extended version of this episode.Music by Mariee Siou. Visit our website at forthewild.world for the full episode description, references, and action points.Support the show

How do we sustain nourishing roots in a time of displacement? This week, guest Alynda Mariposa Segarra invites listeners to examine their relationship to place, comfort, and survival as they discuss their newest album LIFE ON EARTH. Through the art form of music, Alynda holds together the complexities that come with wanting and needing to run away from oppressive systems while simultaneously having to confront what is happening right in front of us. Tapping into these themes, Alynda discusses their work with Freedom for Immigrants, emphasizing the urgency of action and compassion as we work to end systems of detainment and punishment.Winding through the intricacies of making art under capitalism, finding humility in our purposes, and fostering the safe havens of mutual aid, Alynda reminds us of the capacious ability we have to continually queer our culture. Drawing anger and vulnerability together through love, Alynda leaves us with the resounding call to live deeply in this world and to love it hard. Alynda Mariposa Segarra is a songwriter/storyteller who performs under the name Hurray for the Riff Raff. They are a Nuyorican queer artist born and raised in the Bronx, who got much of their musical/political education from the anarcho squatter punk scene of NYC. Alynda spent years as a freight train rider and eventually learned to make music on the street in New Orleans. Alynda has used the craft of songwriting as a tool for communication and protest. They have released 8 albums of music, most recently the critically acclaimed LIFE ON EARTH in February 2022.Join us on Patreon at patreon.com/forthewild for an extended version of this episode.Music by Hurray for the Riff Raff. Visit our website at forthewild.world for the full episode description, references, and action points.Support the show

Calling listeners into a magnetic conversation about the power of photography and storytelling, guest Josué Rivas (Mexika and Otomí) opens up new ways of understanding art and creation. With so much capitalistic pressure on modern day creators, photography and content creation often slip into extractive mindsets. Josué invites us to challenge extractive and colonial lenses by embracing the overwhelming force of the creative urge. Humanity yearns to tell its stories. How might we break apart from the constant pressure of social media to envision the new modes of creation and creativity that these stories need in order to be told? Throughout the conversation, Josué taps deep into the healing and transformational power of Indigenous futurism. As we plant the seeds of resistance and growth for future generations, what stories do we want them to remember about us?   Josué Rivas (Mexika and Otomí) is an Indigenous Futurist, creative director, visual storyteller and educator working at the intersection of art, technology, journalism, and decolonization. His work aims to challenge the mainstream narrative about Indigenous peoples, co-create with the community, and serve as a vehicle for collective healing. He is a 2020 Catchlight Leadership Fellow, Magnum Foundation Photography and Social Justice Fellow, founder of INDÍGENA, co-founder of Indigenous Photograph and Curator at Indigenous TikTok. His work has appeared in National Geographic, The New York Times, Apple, Nike and Converse amongst others.Music by Gerardo Vaquero and Julio Kintu, The Mysterious They, and María José Montijo. Visit our website at forthewild.world for the full episode description, references, and action points.Support the show

Bringing us into his world of nature, awe, and magical poetry, guest Jarod K. Anderson reminds us that our human journey is worthy of just as much love and affection as the natural world around us. When we come to nature with intention, how might it guide us towards love and inspiration? In a time where so many of us are feeling lost, confused, and not connected to a purpose, we often abdicate our power to make meaning in favor of buying prepackaged narratives about who we are based on what we consume. Tapping into the beauty of telling our own stories and making our own meaning, Jarod and Ayana counter what we have been taught about worth. This episode highlights the power of the humble in the face of the grandiose and attention seeking. We are people of a place, Jarod reminds us, and the intimate, internal, and local work we do matters, just as our small bodies in this vast universe matter infinitely. Writer, Poet, and podcaster Jarod K. Anderson (creator of The CryptoNaturalist Podcast) has built a large audience of readers and listeners with his strange, vibrant appreciations of nature. Ranging from optimistic contemplations of mortality to appreciations of single-celled organisms, Jarod is forever writing love letters to the natural world. Music is “Pine Chant” by Sara Fraker and Lachlan Skipworth. “Inspired by tree-ring growth data from the University of Arizona’s Laboratory of Tree-Ring Research, Pine Chant is a sonic embodiment of twelve Arizona trees and an emotional response to climate crisis.” An extended version of this episode is available on Patreon at patron.com/forthewild. Visit our website at forthewild.world for the full episode description, references, and action points.Support the show

Guided by her new book Rest is Resistance: A Manifesto and fervent calls for real, deep rest, this week returning guest Tricia Hersey joins Ayana to unwind the complicated ties of exhaustion and exploitation. Tricia’s words serve as incantations against the brainwashing of grind culture as she and Ayana investigate the systems that benefit from keeping us operating. Drawing deep inspiration from her ancestors, histories of marronage, and long standing traditions of Black resistance, Tricia leans into the prophetic dreams that have long allowed for life outside of systems of exploitation. As Tricia reveals, these are times of spiritual crisis. We are asked how might we pray ourselves free? How might we dream ourselves free? Rest is a portal to new worlds, both inside and outside of the self. Tricia Hersey is a Chicago native with over 20 years of experience as a multidisciplinary artist, writer, theologian and community organizer. She is the founder of The Nap Ministry, an organization that examines rest as a form of resistance and reparations by curating spaces for the community to rest via community rest activations, immersive workshops, performance art installations, and social media. Her research interests include Black liberation theology, womanism, somatics, and cultural trauma. She is the author of the book Rest is Resistance: A Manifesto which was published in October 2022. You can learn more about her work and order the book at thenapministry.comJoin us on patreon at patreon.com/forthewild for an extended version of this episode.Music by Real J Wallace and Fabian Almazan Trio. Visit our website at forthewild.world for the full episode description, references, and action points. Support the show

This week, guest Veda Austin invites us to consider and grow closer to water – as both a preciously vital and often overlooked life source. Veda’s work researching and making art with water has allowed her an intimate look into water’s role on Earth and within our lives. Water is our companion, and more than just companion, it is what makes us. We are continually obliged to water, and it to us, as we are in an interdependent relationship with it. Veda calls us to investigate our liquid selves – the tears and sweat that make us human, the rituals of baptism and bathing that connect us to that which lies beyond. As Veda states, water is always in search of itself. How might understanding water begin to help us in our search for ourselves?Touching on her healing journey, art, practice, and methods of working with water as collaborator, Veda highlights curiosity, closeness, and tenderness as guiding principles. Continually on a learning journey, Veda’s work shows what is possible when water is seen as source rather than as commodity. This episode reminds us of the wisdom we inherently hold alongside the grand scale of that which we have left to learn.  Veda is a water researcher, public speaker, mother, artist and author. She has dedicated the last 8 years observing and photographing the life of water. She believes that water is fluid intelligence, observing itself through every living organism on the planet and in the Universe. Her primary area of focus is photographing water in its ‘state of creation’, the space between liquid and ice. It is through her remarkable crystallographic photos that water reveals its awareness of not only Creation, but thought and intention through imagery.Music by Strong Sun Moon/Camelia Jade and Doe Paoro. Visit our website at forthewild.world for the full episode description, references, and action points.Support the show

In spirit of the Winter Solstice and holiday season, For The Wild is taking a break this week. We hope you are taking great care of yourself as we near the end of this calendar year. We also want to share some updates about what you can expect from the Podcast and our Patreon in 2023.Since we released our first episode in September of 2014, we've been so blessed to create and curate our weekly episodes as offerings to the times in which we live. We remain in deep gratitude to our guests who have simultaneously comforted and stretched us, as well as to you, our listeners, for accompanying us on this journey. In an effort to continue this work and support our small but mighty team of four, we are enhancing our 2023 offerings...Beginning in Jan all episodes released to the public via our website, digital streaming services, and radio syndicates will be standard episodes under an hour. Episode that exceeds an hour in length will be available on Patreon. We will be organizing a series of live hangouts between guests, friends of the Podcast, and Ayana. These live hangouts will be available to our Patreon supporters. We’re excited to announce that our first hangout will be with Sophie Stand in late Jan. We're also creating a series of digital zines that will be released via Patreon.We’re adding new Patreon tiers:– Support us at $1/mo to access episodes that exceed one hour + transcripts – Join at a $5/mo for digital zines and live hangouts, + transcripts & extended episodes– Give $25/mo or more to help sustain the podcast and receive the benefits aboveSign up by the end of the year at the $5 or more level to receive the free zine, "Embodying the Revolution with brontë velez Study Guide + Resource Zine" and access to our live hangout w/ Sophie Strand. Patreon.com/forthewild.Support the show

This week For The Wild Podcast presents Part Two of a two-part conversation between guest host brontë velez and Dr. Tiffany Lethabo King. Circumferencing Dr. Tiffany Lethabo King’s book The Black Shoals: Offshore Formations of Black and Native Studies, brontë and Tiffany explore sacred laughter, Black and Indigenous feminism, sexuality, liberation, ceremony, and protocol. This week we are cradled to explore where Black and Indigenous relations can meet beyond the wound. Part Two spans further inquiry into shoals, the physical desire to belong to Earth, agency, eros, spiritual correction, the pleasure and potential of failure, and that which cannot be translated, but instead has to be experienced or co-witnessed to be understood. Research for this conversation was curated by jazmín calderón torres.Recorded in January of 2021, this interview is a companion piece to a project called Can I Get A Witness, a collaborative transmedia project between For The Wild and Lead to Life. Can I Get A Witness “traces two queer black latinx femmes, brontë velez and Stephanie Hewett, dancing before and being danced by the ecology, memory, and stories of the Tongass National Forests and Glacier Bay in southeast Alaska–unceded Haida, Tsimshian, Tlingit territories, scored by field recordings and music, interviews with Tiffany King, Wanda Kashudoha, and Kasyyahgei, with a Groundtruthing Oracle by jazmín calderón torres.Music by Jiordi Rosales and Ashia Karana. Visit our website at forthewild.world for the full episode description, references, and action points.Support the show

This week For The Wild Podcast presents Part One of a two-part conversation between brontë velez and Dr. Tiffany Lethabo King. Circumferencing Dr. Tiffany Lethabo King’s book The Black Shoals: Offshore Formations of Black and Native Studies, brontë and Tiffany explore sacred laughter, Black and Indigenous feminism, sexuality, liberation, ceremony, and protocol. This simultaneously intimate and expansive dialogue allows us to rethink the stories and structures we’ve been told regarding Black and Indigenous relations. Guided by a unquantifiable love and trust in Black and Native freedom dreams, Tiffany prompts us to explore ritual, space, and connection as antidote.Recorded in January of 2021, this interview is a companion piece to a project called Can I Get A Witness, a collaborative transmedia project between For The Wild and Lead to Life.Tiffany Lethabo King is an Associate Professor of Women's, Gender, and Sexuality Studies at Georgia State University which is located on the ancestral lands of the Mvskoke Creek. While here, she is also grateful to be able to touch the Georgia soil where her maternal and paternal ancestors survived slavery and created New Worlds of possibility. Her research is situated at intersections of slavery and indigenous genocide in the Americas. King is the author of The Black Shoals: Offshore Formations of Black and Native Studies. King is currently working on a project tentatively titled Red and Black Alchemies of Flesh: Conjuring A Decolonial and Abolitionist Now.Music by Larkhall, Stoney Creation, and MonteQarlo. Visit our website at forthewild.world for the full episode description, references, and action points.Support the show

This week, Ayana is joined by Dalit American civil rights activist Thenmozi Soundararajan in a profound conversation detailing the wounds of caste within the United States and across the world. Thenmozhi brings just conviction and soul-filled commitment to the fight to annihilate caste-based supremacy. The very involvement within systems of punishment, carcerality, and discrimination deepens a wound that separates us from each other and from the broad web of life. Speaking to the ways that carrying the trauma of caste manifests within the body, Thenmozhi emphasizes the importance of slowing down to process the grief and pain caused by mindless oppression. Thenmozhi Soundararajan is a Dalit American Civil rights artist, organizer, and theorist who has worked with organizations around the world to address the urgent issues of racial, caste, and gender equity. Her intersectional, cross-pollinating work helps to create a more generous, global, expansive, and inclusive definition of South Asian identity, along with safe spaces from which to honor the stories of these communities. She was also an inaugural fellow of the Robert Rauschenberg Artist as Activist, Atlantic Foundation for Racial Equity, and is a current fellow at Stanford Center for South Asian Studies. She is also the author of the newly released book The Trauma of Caste by North Atlantic Books.Music by Justin Crawmer, June West, and Te Martin. Visit our website at forthewild.world for the full episode description, references, and action points.Support the show

We’re taking a pause this week from our regular episodes to share a special snippet from our first Slow Study with Bayo Akomolafe. This offering originates from Bayo’s course “We Will Dance With Mountains: Into The Cracks!” and is an edited curation of recorded lectures, prayers, musical accompaniments, and practice prompts offered by Bayo and co-conspirators. This week’s preview includes a brief portion from Session One, as well as the corresponding practice prompt by Jiordi Rosales. Each session within the course includes a practice prompt for deeper exploration. To learn more about what the course entails, contributors, and cost, visit our website at forthewild.worldSupport the show

What can the forest teach us of grief, of joy, of humanity? This week, poet and scientist Maya Khosla invites listeners into the forests of Northern California to find deep reverence for the power of biodiversity. Maya’s expertise on wildfires shines through this deep and well-informed conversation as she and Ayana share a love for the forest and deep-seated awe for the complexity of forest life. Maya introduces listeners to the science behind forest fires and urges us to see fire as not simply “destructive,” but rather as one of the many cycles of earth. From practices of cultural burning to current studies on post-fire diversity, the creative and regenerative power of the forest cannot be overlooked.Maya Khosla is a wildlife biologist and writer. She served as Sonoma County Poet Laureate (2018-2020), bringing Sonoma’s communities together through poetry gatherings and field walks after the 2017 fires. Sonoma County Conservation Council (SCCC) selected her as one of the 2020 Environmentalists of the Year. Her poetry books include “All the Fires of Wind and Light” from Sixteen Rivers Press (2020 PEN Oakland/Josephine Miles Literary Award), “Keel Bone” from Bear Star Press (Dorothy Brunsman Poetry Prize), and “Web of Water: Life in Redwood Creek”. Her writing has been featured in documentary films including “Village of Dust, City of Water,” about the water crises in rural India.Music by Lake Mary, Forest Veil, and Bird By Snow. Visit our website at forthewild.world for the full episode description, references, and action points.Support the show

In this winding and lucid conversation, guest Sophie Strand invites us to investigate our relationality, to embrace rot and decay, to welcome our demons to the dinner table, and to prepare for uncertain futures with tenderness. Sophie brings to light the wisdom of the compost heap. What myths do we need for modernity, what wisdom is sedimented within our bodies? Sophie and Ayana tap into deep lines of thought and myth, weaving together conversations and concepts from thousands of years of human history. As the interview asks, “What is it to be human on our most basic level?” To be a human is to be in complicated and compromising relationships – relationships that implicate us within the other, that show us that love is a process of altering and of deep work. Purity is not an option. Sophie Strand is a writer based in the Hudson Valley who focuses on the intersection of spirituality, storytelling, and ecology. Her first book of essays The Flowering Wand: Rewilding the Sacred Masculine will be published by Inner Traditions on November 22, 2022 and is available for pre-order. Her eco-feminist historical fiction reimagining of the gospels The Madonna Secret will also be published by Inner Traditions in Spring 2023. Subscribe for her newsletter at sophiestrand.substack.com. And follow her work on Instagram: @cosmogyny and at www.sophiestrand.com.Music by Tan Cologne and Mitski. Cover image by Alexandra Levasseur. Visit our website at forthewild.world for the full episode description, references, and action points.Support the show

In this episode centered around global consciousness and rooted local action, returning guest Dr. Vandana Shiva reminds us of the power of commitment in the fight for the Earth. Reflecting on her lifetime of devotion to the land, Vandana highlights the value of paying deep attention and of bearing witness to the interconnectedness of Earth. These thoughts deeply counter the modern state of media and movements that fleetingly follow trends without deep connections to justice and connection. Together, Vandana and Ayana piece apart the threads of our culture that lead to exploitation and extraction - focusing on the policies of division and distraction that keep us from each other. As Vandana states, “Earth is alive and her expressions are diverse.” We are all anchored to each other and to the earth. The divisions that we focus so much time on are created in order to dominate and exploit the nature on which the earthly community depends. Vandana Shiva is a world-renowned environmental thinker and activist, a leader in the International Forum on Globalization, and of the Slow Food Movement. She is also the Director of Navdanya and of the Research Foundation for Science, Technology and Ecology, and a tireless crusader for farmers’, peasants’, and women’s rights. Dr. Shiva is the recipient of over twenty international awards and the author and editor of a score of influential books, including her latest book coming out Oct. 27 from Chelsea Green Publishing "Terra Viva: My Life in a Biodiversity of Movements."Music by Henry Johnson, Scinnlaece, and Doe Paoro. Visit our website at forthewild.world for the full episode description, references, and action points.Support the show

“With a prayer to imagine beyond the current structures and systems, and kind of weave ourselves into, and be wrapped inside of, the invisible cloak that is interdependence, that is mutual aid, that supports us to reach towards each other and reach towards a vision of mutually flourishing life.” This powerful vision is shared by this week’s guest, Dori Midnight. In this sweet, meaningful, and meandering conversation, Dori discusses magical and liberatory practices, ancestral Jewish healing traditions, and the necessity of reclaiming Judaism from Zionism in the name of collective liberation. She shares sweet stories of garlic and cedar, the generosity of belonging, and the blessing of our collective and intricate work as we stretch toward liberation. Dori Midnight practices intuitive healing, weaves collaborative, liberatory ritual spaces, makes potions, and writes liturgy, spells, prayers, and poems. For over 20 years, Dori has been practicing and teaching on ritual and remedies for unraveling times, reconnecting with traditions of Jewish ancestral wisdom, community care work, and queer magic and healing. Music by 40 Million Feet, Katie Gray, and Aviva Le Fey. Visit our website at forthewild.world for the full episode description, references, and action points.Support the show

It’s undeniable that right now we are in a rapidly changing and complex relationship with the consumption, production, and reality of drugs, substances, and medicines, and their usage. This week, guest Ismail Lourido Ali, J.D. guides listeners through an overview of where we are in our relationship with drugs in the American context, and how this relationship is indicative of our relationship with the Earth and with humanity broadly.We cannot move to a healthy and healing relationship with substances without acknowledging the violent realities brought about by criminalization, exploitation in drug production, and the exorbitant costs of pharmaceutical medicine. Ismail encourages us to move beyond the black and white view that some drugs are medicine while others are criminal. This expansive conversation encourages listeners to ask what deep, collective healing looks like, and to reflect on complicated relationships with consumption across substances. As we think more deeply on these issues, we must ask: what voids are we filling, what imagination do we need to tap into, what kind of reconciliation do we need? As MAPS’ Director of Policy and Advocacy, Ismail advocates to eliminate barriers to psychedelic therapy and research, develops and implements legal and policy strategy, and supports MAPS’ governance, non-profit, and ethics work. Ismail is licensed to practice law in the state of California, and is a founding board member of the Psychedelic Bar Association. He also currently serves on the board of the Sage Institute, contributes to Chacruna Institute’s Council for the Protection of Sacred Plants, and participates on the advisory council for the Ayahuasca Defense Fund. Ismail is passionate about setting sustainable groundwork for a just, equitable, and generative post-prohibition world.Music by Harrison Foster, Book of Colors, and Autumn Hawk Percival. Visit our website at forthewild.world for the full episode description, references, and action points.Support the show

This Slow Study Course is a series of lectures and practice prompts from Bayo Akomolafe's 2021 edition of "We Will Dance With Mountains: Into the Cracks!" wherein 1000+ people gathered. It is a carnivalesque course in postactivism, a matter of fissures, fault lines, cracks, openings, seismic shifts, endings, and fugitive marronage. This learning journey is available for you to explore from home at your own pleasurable pace. Visit our website at forthewild.world to learn more.Support the show

The Mountain Valley Pipeline, which runs through West Virginia to Virginia is on the verge of completion following intense legislative and legal battles. This episode reminds us of the danger in this, and amidst such battles, Appalachians Against Pipelines shows us what might be possible if we allow ourselves to imagine a world outside of extraction. Lark Elodea joins Ayana to discuss the relentless and direct activism Appalachians Against Pipelines has been doing to stop the pipeline, build community resistance, and advocate for the needs of their communities in the face of developers, oil and gas advocates, and a continued disregard for Appalachian voices. Lark roots the conversation in reverence for the land and the complex legacies of violence and oppression within it. Fighting against the pipeline is, as Lark says, “not only fighting for a world with no pipelines, but also no borders, or prisons or colonialism.” Our decisions here matter for communities and matter for the collective future we are building. Lark is a person of settler descent living in the beautiful mountains of Appalachia. They have been working with Appalachians Against Pipelines in the campaign resisting the 300+ mile Mountain Valley Pipeline for over 4 years, and have lived in the region for years longer. Lark is one of many, many pipeline fighters and water protectors and forest defenders contributing to the fight against reckless fossil fuel infrastructure and extraction (across Appalachia, across Turtle Island, and all over the world).Music by 40 Million Feet, Alexandra Blakely, Camelia Jade, and Cold Mountain Child. Visit our website at forthewild.world for the full episode description, references, and action points.Support the show

This week guest Tusha Yakovleva calls on us to remember our millennium-old relationship with weedy beings and the gifts of wild and invasive plants. It’s estimated that worldwide spending on invasive species exceeds one trillion dollars annually. But if we were to cease our violent relationship with weeds and invasive species, what might we find? Cultural cooperation between plants and people? A whole slew of plant-relatives that are thriving in increasingly challenging landscapes? We are challenged to think about our capacity, or willingness, to know invasive plants - Tusha queries listeners to ask “Do we know their reasons for making home in unfamiliar soils? Or what gifts and responsibilities they carry?” We are left with much to think about in the realm of curiosity and acceptance, two muscles that need an exceptional amount of exercise in a time where so much is rapidly changing environmentally and socially.Tusha Yakovleva is an educator, gatherer and ethnobotanist whose work revolves around generating strong, respectful relationships between plants and people. The foundations of her life-long foraging practice come from her family and first home - the Volga River watershed in Russia - where tending to uncultivated plants and mushrooms for food and medicine is common practice. Tusha is the author of Edible Weeds on Farms: Northeast Farmer’s Guide to Self-growing Vegetables. Tusha is currently completing graduate work at SUNY College of Environmental Science and Forestry on Onondaga Nation homelands. Her research is in support of cross-cultural partnerships for biocultural restoration and takes place under the guidance of the Center for Native Peoples and the Environment. Music by Ali Dineen and Violet Bell. Visit our website at forthewild.world for the full episode description, references, and action points.Support the show

This week, guest Yoalli Rodriguez brings us to the Chacahua-Pastoría Lagoons in Oaxaca, Mexico, to investigate deep connections with land, ongoing colonial violence, and the grief that comes alongside loving a place. The Chacahua-Pastoría Lagoons have long been vital spaces for Black and Indigenous communities, but continued colonial strategies have altered and quartered off the landscape in favor of nationalist and capitalist interests. The conversation dives deep into an understanding of Mestizo geographies and the politics of refusal in the face of oppressive power. Despite the institutional acts of violence that limit sensual and sensorial relationships with the land, people continue to make spaces of their own and lay claims to land that go against colonial rule. With this context, Yoalli and Ayana come to a heartening conversation about the importance of ecological grief, rage, and sadness.Yoalli’s work pays deep attention to the everyday lives of those who live around the lagoons, and she notes the care, love, and community that make grief and resistance possible. Here, hope and grief go hand in hand as strategies of resistance and fugitivity. Perhaps slow life and slow feeling can be a counter to the slow violence that has so marred life on earth. Meztli Yoalli Rodríguez Aguilera is an educator, vinyl selector, and writer born and raised in Mexico but currently based in the U.S. They are currently an Assistant Professor in Anthropology & Sociology and Latin American and Latinx Studies at Lake Forest College, Illinois. They are interested in subjects of anti-colonial, anti-racist feminist struggles, political ecology, and State violence.Music by Fabian Almazan Trio, Eliza Edens, and PALO-MAH. Visit our website at forthewild.world for the full episode description, references, and action points.Support the show

Breathing in the joy and lessons of the plant life surrounding us, Ayana and guest Antonia Estela Pérez share an enriching conversation on the power and magic of coming to know the world around us. Antonia dives into the tension that exists in living in and caring for lands that have been violently colonized, calling listeners to understand plants both in the ways that colonization has affected their legacies and within anti-colonial structures that suggest there are other ways to engage with the plants around us. The natural world is, in fact, not separated from any one of us, and in detailing her work with Herban Cura, Antonia brings her insight on connections to plants and land within urban settings expanding the horizons of intimacy between humans and plants across human-imposed boundaries. As Antonia shares more about her New York City and Chilean roots, she reminds us of the value of connection to places for spiritual, ancestral, and medicinal means. Cultural and ancestral knowledge are vital to everyone’s survival in a world marred by colonial violence. What healing can be found within our own backyards, our own lineages? Perhaps the plants will lead us home once again – as they always have. Antonia Estela Pérez is a Chilean-American clinical herbalist, gardener, educator, community organizer, co-founder, and artist born and raised in New York City. Growing up in a first generation household existing at the intersections of land stewardship, education, and social justice, their passion for herbs and plant medicine bridges the relationships between rural and urban spaces. With over 10 years of education including environmental and urban studies at Bard College, Clinical Herbalism at Arborvitae School of Traditional Herbal Medicine, and learning with herbalists and elders throughout Mexico, Chile, Peru, Colombia, Ecuador, Brazil, and Thailand, Pérez facilitates workshops and produces events as the co-founder of NY based collective, Brujas, and Herban Cura: A space centering Indigenous, Black, Queer and Trans communities in the education of land connection.  Pérez’s work is rooted in their passion for sharing knowledge that interrupts notions of individualism and separatism from nature to grow towards collaborative and symbiotic communities.Support the show

Guided by her curated work Open In Emergency (a “hybrid book project” including a Tarot Deck and a “hacked” DSM), Dr. Mimi Khúc and Ayana share in a deep conversation touching on mental health, collective unwellness, and the power of communal care. Mimi provides listeners with a reminder of joyful slowness and the vitality of finding the agency to care for self and others.Mimi’s work is grounded in the question: “How do we find new ways to talk about what hurts?” Flipping diagnosis on its head, Mimi guides us to find new ways to name what we feel and to decolonize the language of feeling itself. How is what we feel a reflection of what we have been told we must feel? How are our understandings of wellness centered around a productivity that benefits expansive capitalism over humanity? Together, Mimi and Ayana reflect on the ethical callings and commitments to care for each other and begin to unpack the systems that must be dismantled in order to truly care for one another and find vulnerability together. These are spiritual and religious questions. Perhaps connection and care in this individualized, alienating world are true magic. Mimi Khúc is a writer, scholar, and teacher of things unwell and visiting professor in Disability Studies at Georgetown University. She is the managing editor of The Asian American Literary Review and guest editor of Open in Emergency: A Special Issue on Asian American Mental Health. She is very slowly working on several book projects, including a manifesto on contingency in Asian American studies and essays on mental health, the arts, and the university. But mostly she spends her time baking, as access and care for herself and loved ones.Music by Jeffery Silverstein, Samara Jade, Grief Is A River (Sarah Knapp). Visit our website at forthewild.world for the full episode description, references, and action points.Support the show

This week, Ayana is joined by filmmaker and author Dr. Brett Story. Together, they ponder justice, accountability, and interconnection in a complex and rapidly changing world. In this intellectual and timely conversation, Brett begins by unpacking how carceral logics and conceptions of the “criminal” work, mark and dictate the world spatially, while at the same time explaining the socially-constructed nature of crime. Brett’s work examines the ways we individually and collectively metabolize our anxieties, and through this lens, she makes connections across the broad issues of our current reality from changing climates to criminal justice systems that were designed to enforce control rather than to produce true justice. At the center of the conversation is the question of interdependence– emphasizing the need for community and collective action in the face of neoliberal individualism. Mass-incarceration and climate change are not crises of the individual, but of our culture. The abolitionist imagination may be the key to a collective future– as Brett reminds listeners that our aspirations can be both practical and utiopan. Brett Story is an award-winning nonfiction filmmaker based in Toronto whose films have screened at festivals and theaters internationally. She is the director of the award winning feature documentaries The Hottest August (2019) and The Prison in Twelve Landscapes (2016), both of which were also broadcast on PBS’s Independent Lens. Brett holds a Ph.D. in geography from the University of Toronto and is currently an assistant professor in the School of Image Arts at Ryerson University. She is the author of the book, Prison Land: Mapping Carceral Power across Neoliberal America. Brett was a 2016 Sundance Institute Art of Nonfiction Fellow and a 2018 Guggenheim Fellow in film and video.Music by Jahawi Bertolli, Jahnavi Veronica, and Leyla McCalla. Visit our website at forthewild.world for the full episode description, references, and action points.Support the show

This week, guest Dr. Claudia Serrato opens our minds to the sensual, political, and vital nature of our relationship to food. Our bodies are a landscape in their own right and with Indigenous feminist theory in mind, this episode bears wittness to the cycles of gastronmies and of life that keep us tied to the earth. Claudia turns to her own landscape to remind us that there are times to dry up and times to bloom. To consume food means that we enter into a relationship with it, we physically embody it. In this conversation Claudia and Ayana dive into what that relationship could be, and how embodiment may be a spiritual quest. Honoring foodways and the gifts of the earth is about more than just changing our diets, but is rather a cultural, spiritual, and political project. How might we honor both where we came from and where we are now in ways that respect traditional foodways alongside place-based geographies/ food ways? Decolonizing the body and the landscape also means decolonizing the kitchen.Through the sacred work of food sovereignty, we can create a better kitchen, a better palate – one that resists the violence of colonization and globalization. This work is the toil of gardening, the pain of remembering, the prayers of the season. This is not easy work, but it is vital, human, and intimate. Dr. Claudia Serrato is a cultural and culinary anthropologist, an Indigenous plant-based chef, and a food justice activist scholar. Claudia has been writing, speaking, and cooking up decolonized flavors for over a decade by ReIndigenizing her diet with Mesoamerican foods and foodways, cooking traditions and nutrition, and culinary ways of knowing.Music by Justin Crawmer, Julio Kintu, and PALO-MA (Paola De La Concha). Visit our website at forthewild.world for the full episode description, references, and action points. Support the show

How might we steward relationships of generosity, see beehives beyond the human-imposed gaze? This week, guest Ang Roell leads us to better understand bees and our entangled relationship to them. Bees, from the honeybees we may be familiar with to the wide variety of bees local to areas across the globe, are a vital participant in our ecosystems in ways that go beyond pollination or agricultural production. Together, Ang and Ayana unpack the often colonial and capitalist assumptions behind the language we use to describe bees (from the “busy bee” to the assumptions Euro-centric views of hives make). The internal workings of the hive are far more complex, more collective, more wild than many have imagined.Ang introduces listeners to the magic of the beehive as a superorganism – revealing the complex relations within the hive and the multitude of lessons if we listen rather than impose. Rooting into the rich history of beekeeping and the folk traditions of their ancestors, Ang reminds us of the deeply interconnected world humans and bees share and the reciprocity inherent in right relationship. The cycles, rhythms, and rituals of the hive may offer a balm in these times, just as they have before. Ang Roell (they/them) is a beekeeper, facilitator and writer who lives and works on the East Coast of the US/Turtle Island. They are the founder and lead beekeeper at They Keep Bees, and a consultant with Mainspring Change Consultants.Ang's work with bees includes cultivating queen bees who are adaptive to ever changing climates. In their consulting work they support organizations in making lasting change by shifting power structures & creating effective collaboration. In both of these roles Ang seeks to build resilient collaborations designed to stand the test of these transitional and transformative times.Music by Anilah (Drea Drury), Alexa Wildish, and Violet Bell. Visit our website at forthewild.world for the full episode description, references, and action points.Support the show

“The fugitive is the figure of the Anthropocene, a political invitation to unlearn ‘mastery,’ to fall to the Earth, to learn how to commune with soil… In a sense, the fugitive answers the question that is hidden within the words of my Elders, when they say: ‘in order to find your way, you must become lost.’” In this week’s episode, Bayo Akomolafe guides listeners on a journey to lose oneself and leave behind the ties that bind us to world views that do not serve humanity’s wholeness. Touching on the historical roots of fugitivity, Bayo challenges us to lean into the “political un-project” that is fugitivity, blurring societally-imposed binaries, in order to better understand the human territory and to make more-than-human sanctuary through post activism. If justice is an action and not a static state, how can we embody it? Twisting and turning through the contours of human consciousness and understanding, Bayo and Ayana dive into meaningful and existential questions. Rooted in trickster philosophy and abundant spirituality, Bayo encourages mindful and playful questions. At the heart of such complex questioning, lies the vital question of our time – what does it mean to be a human in times such as this?Bayo Akomolafe (Ph.D.), rooted with the Yoruba people in a more-than-human world, is the father to Alethea and Kyah, the grateful life partner to Ije, son and brother. A widely celebrated international speaker, posthumanist thinker, poet, teacher, public intellectual, essayist, and author of two books, These Wilds Beyond our Fences: Letters to My Daughter on Humanity’s Search for Home (North Atlantic Books) and We Will Tell Our Own Story: The Lions of Africa Speak, Bayo Akomolafe is the Visionary Founder of The Emergence Network and host of the online postactivist course, ‘We Will dance with Mountains’. Music by Dzidzor and Lady Moon and the Eclipse. Visit our website at forthewild.world for the full episode description, references, and action points.Support the show

In this new episode of For The Wild podcast, Ayana and guest Dr. Clint Carroll, a citizen of the Cherokee Nation, discuss the mobility of Cherokee ethical frameworks as they are applied to environmental governance projects for Land Back. Exploring various forms of Cherokee relationality throughout time, Dr. Carroll pushes back against dominant settler histories about Cherokee migrations and relations to homeland and provides insight into what audience members ought to glean from Indigenous philosophies imparting practices of deep reciprocity, responsibility, and relationship to the land and each other. This episode shares about Cherokee Nation’s historic plant gathering agreement with Buffalo National River Cherokee Treaty Lands and details of the Cherokee Environmental Leadership program, spearheaded by Dr. Carroll. We learn of Cherokee treaty history, Cherokee relations to more than human kin encoded in origin story, Cherokee place names, and Cherokee linguistic concepts central to the Cherokee Environmental Leadership program that de-center human beings and re-center relationships and responsibilities with a community of other-than-human kin. Clint Carroll is an Associate Professor of Native American and Indigenous Studies in the Department of Ethnic Studies at the University of Colorado Boulder. A citizen of the Cherokee Nation, he works at the intersections of Indigenous studies, anthropology, and political ecology, with an emphasis on Cherokee environmental governance and land-based resurgence. Currently, he is working with Cherokee elders, students, and Cherokee Nation staff on an integrated education and research project that investigates Cherokee access to wild plants in northeastern Oklahoma amid shifting climate conditions and fractionated tribal lands. Funded by the National Science Foundation and the Indian Land Tenure Foundation, this work aims to advance methods and strategies for Indigenous land education and community-based conservation.Music by Buffalo Rose (Misra Records), Cold Mountain Child, Kendra Swanson, and Crispy Watkins and The Crack Willows.Support the show

This week we are joined by guest Alexis Shotwell to discuss how we might turn from the purity politics that govern many of our lives and this hurting world toward collective struggles for transformation and liberatory futurisms. Rather than forfeiting our complicity and implication in a world with mounting problems, we learn of a helpful heuristic for transforming inaction or the urge to be the perfect activist to a ground where we might be better- equipped to stick around for the long hall in struggles for social justice. According to Alexis, this practice calls for admitting our mistakes and centering repair. In this episode, we dive into the relationship between purity culture and white supremacism, our complicit locations and implications in violence, and the importance of showing up to repair our broken and harmed relations inherited or otherwise. Alexis elucidates that it is only through the messy process of owning up to these broken relations throughout time and seeing how we might participate in and take on culturally appropriate relations of repair, responsibility, friendship, and comradeship in the struggles for liberation that we can survive these times. We hope this episode inspires your curiosity and (re)activates your commitments to this world. Alexis Shotwell’s work focuses on complexity, complicity, and collective transformation. A professor at Carleton University, on unceded Algonquin land, she is the co-investigator for the AIDS Activist History Project (aidsactivisthistory.ca), and the author of Knowing Otherwise: Race, Gender, and Implicit Understanding and Against Purity: Living Ethically in Compromised Times.Music by Anne Carol Mitchel and Daniel Cherniske. Visit our website at forthewild.world for the full episode description, references, and action points.Support the show

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In this episode of For The Wild podcast, we plumb into racial karma and healing systemic trauma in the American context with guest Dr. Larry Ward. Covering the neuroscience of trauma, the habit of racism, and various typologies of systemic trauma, Dr. Ward provides insight into how we might consciously choose to activate our neuroplasticity toward justice rather than collectively rewarding our neuroplasticity for violence and oppression. We are reminded in this episode that we are more than our colonial traumatic memory; we are, in fact, part of the one living reality of the natural world. According to Dr. Ward, cultivating a spiritual practice of awareness of our embeddedness with the world allows us to transcend the conditioning of the colonial mind. Harkening to the potential for anima mundi, the creation of a new world soul, we are invited to lead in the direction of the positive deconstruction of the current world order and to be vigilant in putting our minds and behaviors toward creating generative possibilities for the planet and generations to come.Dr. Larry Ward (he/him) is a senior teacher in Buddhist Zen Master Thich Nhat Hanh's Plum Village tradition, author of the book America's Racial Karma, and co-author with his wife Peggy of Love's Garden, A Guide To Mindful Relationships. Dr. Ward brings twenty five years of international experience in organizational change and local community renewal to his work as director of the Lotus Institute and as an advisor/dharma teacher. He holds a PhD in Religious Studies with an emphasis on Buddhism and the neuroscience of meditation. Larry is a knowledgeable, charismatic and inspirational teacher, offering insights with personal stories and resounding clarity that express his dharma name, “True Great Sound.” Music by Daniela Lanaia, Curran Runz, Lady Moon and the Eclipse, and The New RunesVisit our website at forthewild.world for the full episode description, references, and action points.Support the show

This week we are rebroadcasting our interview with Dr. Kyle Whyte originally aired in January of 2020. The United States has more miles of pipeline than any other country in the world. Pipeline construction is one of the many ways in which the U.S. continues terraforming the land in support of ongoing settler colonialism. On this episode of For The Wild, we are joined by Kyle Whyte to discuss this very issue in connection to the vast extractive energy network that surrounds the Great Lakes area. Kyle Whyte is Professor and Timnick Chair in the Humanities in the departments of Philosophy and Community Sustainability at Michigan State University.Music by Cary Morin & Bonnie "Prince" BillyVisit our website at forthewild.world for the full episode description,references, and action pointsSupport the show

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This week we are rebroadcasting our interview with Linda Black Elk originally aired in April of 2020. On this week’s episode, we speak to Linda Black Elk on traditional medicine, community wellness and systemic transformation amidst pandemic. Our conversation begins with hands-on measures we can take to boost our wellbeing and what honorable harvest looks like during times of panic. How can we deepen our actions so that they are no tjust a response to fear, but are rooted in the promise of collective wellbeing? In addition to these questions of right now, Ayana and Linda discuss what will be left in the wake of COVID-19, how will we tend to the wounds of disposability? What systems will endure? What must we dismantle and what will we grow?Music by Matti Palonen & Chris Pureka.Visit our website at forthewild.world for the full episode description, references, and action pointsSupport the show

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This week we are rebroadcasting our interview with Rowen White originally aired in July of 2020. Across Turtle Island, seeds have long been passed down through the generations — accompanied by ceremony and prayer, reverent seed cultures, and sustainable food growing practices. Through eras of colonization and acculturation, however, we’ve seen the consolidation of seeds into a handful of corporations and the production of a soulless industrial food landscape. This system is failing us and, as centralized infrastructure strains and buckles, we turn to the embrace of our community and the nurturance of seeds at the local and village level. This episode is all about renewal and reanimation, as our guest Rowen White shares her thoughts on Indigenous food sovereignty, seed restoration as rematriation, and what it means to bring seed relatives home. Rowen White is a Seed Keeper and farmer from the Mohawk community of Akwesasne and the Educational Director and lead mentor of Sierra Seeds.Music by Madelyn Ilana.Visit our website at forthewild.world for the full episode description, references and action points.  Support the show

This week we are rebroadcasting our interview with Tiokasin Ghosthorse originally aired in June of 2021. If we need the Earth, does the Earth need us? This week on the podcast we dive deep into the relationship amongst ourselves and the Earth with guest Tiokasin Ghosthorse. We begin our conversation by talking about the savior mentality that can arise when we act to address the many issues that threaten Earth and kin at this moment. Recognizing the trickiness of interrogating this mentality that is often intertwined with emotions of loss, love, and protection, Tiokasin offers that perhaps rather than being guided by solutions and salvation, we acknowledge where we are at in this consciousness and how we can challenge ourselves to give back to the Earth without intrusion. Tiokasin Ghosthorse is a member of the Cheyenne River Lakota Nation of South Dakota and has a long history with Indigenous activism and advocacy. Tiokasin is the Founder, Host, and Executive Producer of “First Voices Radio'' for the last 28 years. In 2016 he received a Nomination for the Nobel Peace Prize.Music by Harrison Foster, Peia, and Lizabett Russo.Visit our website at forthewild.world for the full episode description, references, and action points.Support the show

This week we are rebroadcasting our interview with Giuliana Furci originally aired in June of 2021. So often fungi are pitched as being at the forefront of innovation, whether being used to create vegan leather, pharmaceuticals, or being incorporated into various biotechnology products, but this fixation on innovation can obscure our ancestral relationship to fungi and the wisdom they can share with us about decomposition. This week, we slow down to acknowledge the beauty and power of fungal decomposition with guest Giuliana Furci who shares a lesson in divine time, the transformation of energy, and the necessity of decomposition. Take a moment this week to learn about fungi’s profound interspecies companionship and the simple reality that the world cannot regenerate itself without fungi. Additionally, to learn even more about these topics, look into supporting Fungi Foundation by joining them for their Fungi Foundation Virtual Speaker Event and Fundraiser on June 26th via their profile and webpage. Giuliana Furci is foundress and CEO of the Fungi Foundation, the first international non-profit dedicated to fungi and founded in Chile. She is also the first female mycologist in Chile. For more information about her work visit www.ffungi.org.Music by Roma Ransom, Rajna Swaminathan, and Julio Kintu.Visit our website at forthewild.world for the full episode description, references, and action points.Support the show

This week we are rebroadcasting our interview with K’asheechtlaa (Louise Brady) originally aired in April of 2021. Many of us have access to more choices than we ever thought imaginable, in fact, it is quite easy to find ourselves amidst an abundance of products, eating foods cultivated across the world, or selecting from a myriad of variations of the same “thing”. But this “abundance” of choice masks ecological depletion, and as we gain access to that which is far from our homes, actual place-based abundance is often jeopardized. This week on the podcast we explore this in context to herring in Southeast Alaska with guest K’asheechtlaa (Louise Brady). Everything from chinook, seals, whales, eagles, halibut, and dolphins, all depend on herring directly or indirectly. In addition to nourishing so much of the Pacific marine ecosystem, these kin are embedded in the culture and spirit of  Sheetʼká (Sitka). But as herring have been utilized in pet food, fertilizer, fish meal for aquariums and salmon farms, and marketed as a delicacy abroad - fisheries have been mismanaged by the state of Alaska and overfished to near extinction. K’asheechtlaa is a woman of the Tlingit nation in Sheetʼká Ḵwáan, an island off the coast of Southeast Alaska. She is Raven-Frog or Kiks.ádi Clan, Kiks.ádi women are known as the herring ladies, they have a story or original instruction that connects them spiritually, culturally, and historically to herring. K’asheechtlaa is the founder of the Herring Protectors, a grassroots movement of people that share concerns that the herring population in Sheetʼká Ḵwáan, and the culture tied to it, are under threat. Music by Lake Mary, The Ascent of Everest, Alexandra Blakely, and Fountainsun. Visit our website at forthewild.world for the full episode description, references, and action points.Support the show

This week we are rebroadcasting our interview with Nuskmata (Jacinda Mack) originally aired in February of 2020. From roller coaster rides at Disney World to museums dotting the Pacific Northwest, symbols of mining and the Gold Rush remain deeply enshrined in the collective imagination of the mythic West. Hidden beneath this cultural veneer, the material realities of today’s superscale mining are often out of sight, out of mind. In this week’s In The Field episode, we trace the historical contours and material legacy of the mining industry across so-called British Columbia, unearthing stories from a region that bears an estimated 1,100 abandoned mines, 150-year-old mining laws, and more mining exploration companies than anywhere else on Earth. Guided by the raw testimony of mother, water protector, and organizer Nuskmata (Jacinda Mack), this episode braids together the history of the Gold Rush and colonization in B.C., the state of salmon, the practice of free, prior, and informed consent, dirty mining for a “clean” energy revolution, and the urgent necessity of reform.Music by Cary Morin, Compassion Gorilla, Lynx and the Servants of Song, The Mynabirds, The Melawmen Collective, and The Honey Tongues.Please visit our website at forthewild.world for the full episode description, references, and action points.Support the show

This week we are rebroadcasting our interview with ALOK, originally aired in August of 2021.“I validate the idea that survival is the ultimate act of creation in a world that has reduced us to fascist arithmetic, of being a quantitative statistic, not a human soul. So we still found a way to care, love, and create - isn't that art? I teach people to decipher the art that they’re already doing, recognize the artistry and the everyday miracles of life around them, and create from that place.” This week we immerse ourselves in the aforementioned call to recognize the myriad of creations all around us from guest ALOK, who guides us in an ever-expansive dialogue around spiritual wellbeing, the importance of creative literacy, and the tremendous freedom that awaits us when we make gender unknowable. We begin our conversation by foregrounding the importance of moving out of the paradigm of understanding trans and queer as something that is exclusive to the body. Instead, ALOK shares how challenging the gender binary is not only in service to our collective wellbeing but is a reverential offering in acknowledging our true celestial expansiveness that has been dimmed under binarism, heteronormativity, and colonialism. ALOK is a gender non-conforming writer and performance artist. Their distinctive style and poetic challenge to the gender binary have been internationally renowned. As a mixed-media artist Alok uses poetry, prose, comedy, performance, fashion design, and portraiture to explore themes of gender, race, trauma, belonging, and the human condition. They are the author of Femme in Public (2017) and Beyond the Gender Binary (2020).Music by Soda Lite, Rising Appalachia, and Lady Moon & The Eclipse. Visit our website at forthewild.world for the full episode description, references, and action points.Support the show

This week we are rebroadcasting our interview with Dr. Bayo Akomolafe, originally aired in January of 2020. Our hearts and minds are set to work by the urgent eco-social crises of this time. Caught in a cultural twitch of frenetic production and the sticky paradigms of modernity, we’ve penned vocabulary and designed technologies, manufactured frameworks and crunched numbers in an effort to diagnose and “treat” planetary collapse. We are invited by this week’s guest, Dr. Bayo Akomolafe, to pause and abandon solutionism, step back from the project of progress, and dance into a different set of questions: What does the Anthropocene teach us as a destabilizing agent that resists our taming? How can we show up in our movements of justice if “the ways we respond to crisis is part of the crisis”? What happens when we unfurl into a space of slowness and relinquish human mastery to a wider cosmic net of relations? Bayo Akomolafe (Ph.D.) considers his most sacred work to be learning how to be with his daughter and son, Alethea Aanya and Kyah Jayden—and their mother, his wife and "life-nectar,” Ijeoma. An author, speaker, renegade academic, and proud father, Bayo is Chief Curator and Director of The Emergence Network, a constellation of humans and nonhumans working together trans-locally to curate projects, rituals, conversations and events that nurture senses of the otherwise via practices that trouble the traditional boundaries of agency and possibility. Bayo is also a visiting professor at Middlebury College, Vermont, and has taught in universities around the world. He is a consultant with UNESCO, leading efforts for the Imagining Africa’s Future (IAF) project. Bayo has authored two books, We Will Tell Our Own Story! and These Wilds Beyond our Fences: Letters to My Daughter on Humanity’s Search for Home, and has penned forewords for many others.Music by Daniel HiggsVisit our website at forthewild.world for the full episode description, references, and action points.Support the show

This week we are rebroadcasting our interview with Dr. Kim TallBear originally aired in February of 2020. Intimacy and sexuality is the soil that gives rise to creativity, pleasure and regeneration of new life. As mainstream understandings of sex, marriage, and family shift, Dr. Kim TallBear highlights how the colonial project of nation-building disrupted the vitality of Indigenous kinship by imposing heteronormative monogamous marriage and the nuclear family structure. How have these constraints bred hyper-sexualized, paradoxical and fetishized beliefs that degrade relationships, wellbeing of communities and the land? Dr. Kim TallBear is Associate Professor, Faculty of Native Studies, University of Alberta, and Canada Research Chair in Indigenous Peoples, Technoscience & Environment. By unraveling the doctrines of scarcity and separation, we are challenged to shatter pervasive beliefs of boundaries, binaries, and scarcity within our relations. Music by M83, Frazey Ford & FRASE. Visit our website at forthewild.world for the full episode description, references, and action points.Support the show

This week we are rebroadcasting our interview with Ruth Łchav’aya K’isen Miller, originally aired in September of 2021. “If this new green economy continues to perpetuate the same ethos that resource extraction has, we will not find any solutions and we will see our suffering perpetuated.” Heeding this call from Ruth Łchav’aya K’isen Miller, we explore the fruitful spaces between radical imagination, public policy, and on-the-ground activism as we think about what it means to take meaningful steps towards creating a non-extractive future. In this week’s episode, Ruth shares how tending to the future must center Indigenous values and lifeways. With this in mind, we look at the totality of what a “just transition” can offer us beyond limited definitions shaped by economics, policy, and job growth. Instead, Ruth shares the ways in which a just transition can be understood as a cyclical movement inspired by kinship, care, and reciprocity. Ruth Łchav’aya K’isen Miller is a Dena'ina Athabaskan and Ashkenazi Russian Jewish woman, raised in Dgheyay Kaq (Anchorage), Alaska. She is a member of the Curyung Tribe from the Lake Clark region and also has roots in Bristol Bay. Ruth is the Climate Justice and Just Transition Director for Native Movement, a matriarchal grassroots Indigenous organization that fights for the rights of Indigenous peoples. She has worked many years towards climate justice and a regenerative economy for all on her lands and beyond, her work also includes international advocacy. She is a daughter, a granddaughter, an aunty, a language learner, a traditional beadworker, and a subsistence fisherwomxn.Music by Madelyn Ilana, Høly River, and Mariee Sioux. Visit our website at forthewild.world for the full episode description, references, and action points.Support the show

This week we are rebroadcasting our interview with Woman Stands Shining (Pat McCabe), originally aired in September of 2021. In the fast-paced movement of today’s media, it’s easy to become entangled in narratives of extinction, loss, a lack of time, and a tremendous amount of misanthropy. However, when we pause to look within the ecosystems around us we can find examples of life pushing through the most difficult of circumstances. Our more than human kin continues in defiance, refusing to cease their own lineage under the current modern paradigm of exploitation and desecration. In this week’s episode, we look into a thriving life paradigm, which places a reverences for life at the center of all action, with guest Woman Stands Shining (Pat McCabe). In this expansive conversation, Woman Stands Shining coalesces topics of Indigenous sovereignty, land back, how gender and consent behave in different paradigms, and the vital importance of moving out of modernity’s obsession with intellectualism as the primary way of knowing, into a powerful call to choose a timeless paradigm that is life-affirming for us all.  Woman Stands Shining (Pat McCabe) is a Diné grandmother, activist, artist, and international speaker. Her primary work is proposing to the Five-Fingered-Ones, that paradigm is a choice, and pointing to Indigenous cultures as examples that we have evidence that human beings can participate in paradigms in which we can become beings capable of causing all life to thrive. Music by The Range of Light Wilderness, Violet Bell, and Sea Stars. Visit our website at forthewild.world for the full episode description, references, and action points.Support the show

This week we are rebroadcasting our interview with Prentis Hemphill, originally aired in July of 2021. “There's no magical return. We're not all going to return to an unblemished time in history, and if we know that...what do we have to do? Who needs to have conversation with whom? Who needs to heal what relationship? Who needs to ask for what permission? Who needs to offer something back?” This week on the podcast, Prentis Hemphill offers us these questions in conversation about how we can be in relationship with each other at this very moment in time. In recognition of the tremendous intricacies of our experiences when it comes to our collective histories, forced severances, and the manipulation of trauma in our society, Prentis shares how embodiment is a resource that allows us to connect with the Earth, recognize grief as an entry point, and shape the impossible into possible. Prentis Hemphill is a movement facilitator, Somatics teacher, and practitioner, working at the convergence of healing, collective transformation, and political organizing. At present, Prentis is the founder and leader of The Embodiment Institute and The Black Embodiment Initiative as well as host of the Finding Our Way Podcast.Music by Tan Cologne, This Flame I Carry, and The Breath.Visit our website at forthewild.world for the full episode description, references, and action points.Support the show

In this episode of For the Wild, Ayana and returning guest Dr. Vandana Shiva discuss the crumbling of the colonial paradigm and the promise of re-commoning the commons for our collective future. Situating us in the exigency of food and seed sovereignty for our present time, Dr. Shiva reminds us that seeds and living systems are not open access systems to be privatized, patented, or exploited. Rather, the commons are central to all of life. In this multifaceted episode, we discuss threats to the commons by Big Tech; the brilliance and sophistication of Indigenous seed cultures and breeding, the toxicity of GMO crops for our bodies and the planet, the benefits of agroecological farming, and the need for diversity in our ecosystems and justice movements. Tying the green-washed quest by tech barons to digitalize the world to legacies of colonialism and imperialism under a similar “civilizing” mission, Dr. Shiva warns that the ruling class operates from a place of fear of any being alive and free on their own terms. We end this conversation with a call to a paradigm shift away from capitalism, control and fear to one of partnership with the earth. Vandana Shiva is a world-renowned environmental thinker and activist, a leader in the International Forum on Globalisation and of the Slow Food Movement. Founder of Navdanya and of the Research Foundation for Science, Technology and Ecology, and a tireless crusader for farmers’, peasants’, and women’s rights, she is author and editor of many influential books, including two from Synergetic Press, Reclaiming the Commons: Biodiversity, Indigenous Wisdom, and the Rights of Mother Earth (2020) and the forthcoming Philanthrocapitalism and the Erosion of Democracy: A Global Citizens’ Report on the Corporate Control of Technology, Health, and Agriculture, which is slated for release in February 2022.Music by Peals, Peia, and Kaivalya. Visit our website at forthewild.world for the full episode description, references, and action points.Support the show

This week we are rebroadcasting our interview with Sii-am Hamilton, originally aired in November of 2020. In this powerful conversation with land defender Sii-am Hamilton, we are invited to discuss futuristic ways forward in recognition that Indigenous communities have been practicing creative resistance against colonialism and capitalism for hundreds of years. We begin by discussing what is currently transpiring on Wet’suwet’en territories and how colonial governments are using the current pandemic (and will use future crises) to roll back regulatory measures and push development full force. Sii-am offers a holistic reflection on frontline land defense and the extent to which violence is afflicted upon land defenders, and resource extraction participants, by transnational corporations, while also reorienting us to the reality that just, dignified, and brilliant futures already exist but are not given attention, curiosity, or love because they do not serve corporate profit. Sii-am Hamilton is a land defender and traditional knowledge holder born in occupied Hupacasath territory to mother Kwitsel Tatel and father Ron Hamilton. Their experience stems from time on the land, feast culture, and living traditional law and protocol. They are a qualified hand poke tattoo artist as well as a song holder. Sii-am has been raised in political organization, land title, and grassroots activism since childhood, and now specializes in publicity/media promotion of environmental and land sovereignty movements.Music by Elisapie.Visit our website at forthewild.world for the full episode description, references and action points.Support the show

What does a just climate future look like? In this bonus episode Ayana and guest adrienne maree brown discuss Imagine 2200, Fix’s climate-fiction contest, which recognizes stories that envision the next 180 years of equitable climate progress, imagining intersectional worlds of abundance, adaptation, reform, and hope. Turning towards fueling the imagination, this episode touches on stewarding a just future and the value of presence with ourselves, each other, and the movements we dedicate ourselves to. We are in a battle for our attention and for our imaginations. The winner will determine the future of the climate and of humanity. Facing this reality, and the reality of a changing climate is not easy, but despair around this can bring us closer to the earth and to each other when it is used as a learning tool. In the shift from panic to practice, visionary fiction is vital medicine, and adrienne guides us to stretch our minds to see a future beyond what the confines of white supremacy, colonialism, heteropatriarchy, and capitalism tell us is possible. adrienne maree brown is the writer-in-residence at the Emergent Strategy Ideation Institute, and author of Grievers (the first novella in a trilogy on the Black Dawn imprint), Holding Change: The Way of Emergent Strategy Facilitation and Mediation, We Will Not Cancel Us and Other Dreams of Transformative Justice, Pleasure Activism: The Politics of Feeling Good, Emergent Strategy: Shaping Change, Changing Worlds and the co-editor of Octavia’s Brood: Science Fiction from Social Justice Movements and How to Get Stupid White Men Out of Office. She is the co-host of the How to Survive the End of the World, Octavia’s Parables, and Emergent Strategy podcasts. adrienne is rooted in Detroit.Music by Nia Simone and The Mysterious They. Visit our website at forthewild.world for the full episode description, references, and action points.Support the show

This week we are rebroadcasting our interview with Corinna Gould, originally aired in November of 2020. Prior to settler development and extraction, the landscapes and lifeways of Ohlone territory were richly abundant with acorns, grass seeds, wildflowers, elk, salmon, grizzly bears, and berries. In this week’s episode of For The Wild, guest Corrina Gould reminds us that Ohlone territory still holds tremendous abundance and that the land can sustain us in a way that would provide for our wellbeing should we choose to really re-examine what it is we need to survive. But more than a conversation on the wealth of the land, we explore responsibility and reciprocity on stolen homelands by asking what it means to be in right relationship? How can we foster integrity in conservation and land restoration work amidst a world that continues to peddle scarcity, greed, and extraction? How can folks contribute to the re-storying of the land, even if through small acts? Corrina Gould is the spokesperson for the Confederated Villages of Lisjan/Ohlone. She is an activist that has worked on preserving and protecting the ancient burial sites of her ancestors in the Bay Area for decades. She is the Co-founder and a Lead Organizer for Indian People Organizing for Change and co-founder of the Sogorea Te’ Land Trust.Music by Shayna Gladstone and Amo Amo.Visit our website at forthewild.world for the full episode description, references, and action points.Support the show

This week we are rebroadcasting our interview with Ella Noah Bancroft, originally aired in March of 2021. “We forget that so much is given freely, that this world is meant to be enjoyed.” We heed this powerful reminder by guest Ella Noah Bancroft. As our belief systems have become entwined with the dominant economic structure, we see the commodification of our wellness, intimacy, and connectivity - a phenomenon that is severely hindering our ability to connect authentically. In conversation, Ella traces the powerful connection between our ability to go against mainstream capitalist ways of being and our capacity for deep connection with ourselves and each other. With intimacy as an entrance point, our conversation explores what happens when we derive our pleasure from extraction, the kind of deep embodiment and connectivity that threatens capitalistic and colonial structures, and how we can journey back into spaces of trust through practices that don’t have to cost us a thing. Ella Noah Bancroft is a Bundjalung woman based in the Northern New South Wales, Australia. Ella identifies as mixed heritage Indigenous, gay woman. She grew up living in both worlds, her Indigenous world and the mainstream Australian world. Both challenged her identity in different ways. She is an Australian born artist, storyteller, mentor and founder of “The Returning” and Yhi Collective. Music by Harrison Foster, Lady Moon & The Eclipse, and Sucúlima. Visit our website at forthewild.world for the full episode description, references, and action points.Support the show

This week we are rebroadcasting our interview with Mike Phillips which originally aired in January of 2020. Not long ago, packs of gray wolves roamed freely across so-called North America from the grassy prairies of Florida to the snow-capped peaks of Colorado. Alongside a growing agricultural industry and settler expansion West, the U.S. government marshalled a perverse, ruthless campaign to systematically eradicate the gray wolf, a symbol of the “untamed” wild, driving this keystone species to the brink of extinction. Since the 1970s, the slow process of wolf recovery has begun, but the gray wolf remains endangered by human activity and ensnared in a dark mythic past. On this week’s episode, we speak with Mike Phillips, a conservationist and longtime ally of gray wolves, who gives voice to these great ecological engineers and their elemental place within the balance of life. Mike Phillips has served as the Executive Director of the Turner Endangered Species Fund and advisor to the Turner Biodiversity Divisions since he co-founded both with Ted Turner in June 1997. Prior to that Mike had worked for the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service and National Park Service since 1981. During his employment with the Department of Interior Mike served as the leader of historic efforts to restore red wolves to the southeastern US and gray wolves to Yellowstone National Park. He also conducted important research on the impacts of oil and gas development on grizzly bears in the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge, predation costs for gray wolves in Alaska, black bear movements in northeastern North Carolina, and dingo ecology in Australia. In 2006, Mike was elected to the Montana legislature where he served as the representative for House District 66 in Bozeman until 2012 when he was elected to the Montana Senate. Music by Mac DemarcoVisit our website at forthewild.world for the full episode description, references, and action points.Support the show

This week we are rebroadcasting part two of our interview with brontë velez (they/them), originally aired in October of 2019. We dive into the capacity for pleasure amidst times of great uncertainty and historical oppression. What does “pleasure in the apocalypse” mean? As brontë defines it, pleasure is what makes us come alive, so how can we create a culture that is deeply attuned to our senses and directs our desire towards Earth and each other? By feeding our senses, how might we confront the isolation and industrialization of our bodies, while acknowledging the limitations of grief in that “suffering is not accountable to the Earth.”brontë’s work and rest is guided by the call that “black wellness is the antithesis to state violence” (Mark Anthony Johnson). As a black-latinx transdisciplinary artist, designer, trickster, educator and wakeworker, their eco-social art praxis lives at the intersections of black feminist placemaking, abolitionist theologies, environmental regeneration and death doulaship. they embody this commitment of attending to black health/imagination, commemorative justice (Free Egunfemi) and hospicing the shit that hurts black folks and the land through serving as creative director for Lead to Life design collective and ecological educator for ancestral arts skills and nature-connection school Weaving Earth. they are currently co-conjuring a mockumentary with esperanza spalding in collaboration with the San Francisco Symphony and stewarding land with their partner in unceded Kashia Pomo territory in northern California.Mostly, brontë is up to the sweet tender rhythm of quotidian black queer-lifemaking, ever-committed to humor & liberation, ever-marked by grief at the distance made between us and all of life —"Music by Jennifer Johns and members of the Thrive Choir and Jiordi Rosales on cello.  Visit our website at forthewild.world for the full episode description, references, and action points.Support the show

This week we are rebroadcasting our interview with brontë velez, originally aired in October of 2019. brontë velez opens this week’s episode inviting us to think about how submission to Earth is an invitation into a more life affirming world. What does a future look like in which white, human, and patriarchal supremacy surrenders its power in an act of pleasure? In Part One of this expansive conversation, Ayana and brontë delve into topics surrounding authentic expression, the distortion of feminine and masculine powers, beauty and aesthetics, queerness, dominatrix energy, and power as agency. brontë velez (they/them) is guided in work and rest, by the call that “black wellness is the antithesis to state violence” (Mark Anthony Johnson). as a black-latinx transdisciplinary artist, designer, trickster, educator and wakeworker, their eco-social art praxis lives at the intersections of black feminist placemaking, abolitionist theologies, environmental regeneration and death doulaship. they embody this commitment of attending to black health/imagination, commemorative justice (Free Egunfemi) and hospicing the shit that hurts black folks and the land through serving as creative director for Lead to Life design collective and ecological educator for ancestral arts skills and nature-connection school Weaving Earth. they are currently co-conjuring a mockumentary with esperanza spalding in collaboration with the San Francisco Symphony and stewarding land with their partner in unceded Kashia Pomo territory in northern California.mostly, brontë is up to the sweet tender rhythm of quotidian black queer-lifemaking, ever-committed to humor & liberation, ever-marked by grief at the distance made between us and all of life.  At the end of this episode, listeners hear an excerpt from The Well prophecy, written by brontë velez and recited by brontë velez, Ra Malika Imhotep co-founder of the Church of Black Feminist Thought and Jazmin Calderon Torres and Liz Kennedy from Lead to Life.Music by Esperanza Spalding. Visit our website at forthewild.world for the full episode description, references, and action points.Support the show

This week we are rebroadcasting our interview with Dr. Kate Stafford, originally aired in September of 2020. The bowhead whale can live up to 200 years old, meaning that the bowhead whales of today know and remember a world that sounded, tasted, and felt very different than the one we live in. Perhaps their living memory has yet to normalize marine pollution, anthropogenic sounds, and the underwater effects of globalization and heavy industrialization. In this episode of For The Wild with Dr. Kate Stafford, we listen to the many songs the ocean body sings, asking; how does a warming climate alter the Arctic’s soundscape? Why are the waters of the Arctic becoming louder, and what does this mean for kin like the bowhead? Dr. Kate Stafford’s research focuses on using passive acoustic monitoring to examine migratory movements, geographic variation, and physical drivers of marine mammals, particularly large whales. She has worked all over the world from the tropics to the poles and is fortunate enough to have seen (and recorded) blue whales in every ocean in which they occur. Kate’s current research focuses on the changing acoustic environment of the Arctic and how changes, from sea ice declines to increasing industrial human use, may be influencing subarctic and Arctic marine mammals. Kate Stafford is a Senior Principal Oceanographer at the Applied Physics Lab and an affiliate Associate Professor in the School of Oceanography at the University of Washington in Seattle. Support the show

This week we are rebroadcasting our interview with Chris Hedges, originally aired in June of 2019. All too often our conversations around the consolidation of wealth and power in America blindly fixate on the politics of the Right and Trump as the anti-hero archetype. We must deepen our analyses and rethink our movements beyond the two-party divide in order to truly understand and hold accountable the socio-political and economic forces that have brought us to such a crisis. This week, we speak with journalist and author Chris Hedges who guides us through the history and inner workings of neoliberalism, the rise of corporate capitalism, and our descent into fascism. Chris Hedges is a Truthdig columnist, a Pulitzer Prize-winning journalist, a New York Times best-selling author, a professor in the college degree program offered to New Jersey state prisoners by Rutgers University, and an ordained Presbyterian minister. He has written 12 books and writes a weekly column for the website Truthdig and hosts a show, “On Contact,” on RT America. Hedges spent nearly two decades as a foreign correspondent in Central America, the Middle East, Africa and the Balkans. Music by Charlie Parr. Visit our website at forthewild.world for the full episode description, references, and action points.Support the show

This week we are rebroadcasting our interview with Michael Meade, originally aired in June of 2019. The crises of cosmological, mythological and psychological disconnection from nature, from ourselves, and from each other may drive us to places of darkness and suffering; and yet there is great potential in that darkness to interact with creative energy. Retracing meaning through archetypal myth offers an opportunity to understand the great challenge of our time to heal the planet from its wounds, and to refresh our dominant worldview with one based on connection and imagination. This week, journey into Michael Meade’s expansive vision of awakening ancient meaning for the individual and collective consciousness. Michael Meade, D.H.L., is a renowned storyteller, author, and scholar ofmythology, anthropology, and psychology. He combines hypnotic storytelling,street-savvy perceptiveness, and spellbinding interpretations of ancient mythswith a deep knowledge of cross-cultural rituals. He is the author of The GeniusMyth, Fate and Destiny: The Two Agreements of The Soul, Why the WorldDoesn’t End, The Water of Life: Initiation and the Tempering of the Soul andeditor, with James Hillman and Robert Bly, of Rag and Bone Shop of the Heart. Meade is the founder of Mosaic Multicultural Foundation, a nonprofit network ofartists, activists, and community builders that encourages greater understandingbetween diverse peoples.Music by Izaak Opatz.Visit our website at forthewild.world for the full episode description, references, and action points.Support the show

This week we are rebroadcasting our interview with Donna Haraway, originally aired in August of 2019. Since her 1985 essay, “A Cyborg Manifesto,” scholar Donna Haraway has transformed how theorists, academics, and artists think about humans’ deep and entangled relationships with technology, beyond-human kin, and each other. Through an ongoing practice of thoughtful and curious investigation, Donna continues to unravel the myth of human exceptionalism, the hyper individualism of capitalist culture and Western traditions, and the rigid binaries we so often construct between the self and others. Attending to the intersection of biology, culture and politics, Donna Haraway is a Distinguished Professor Emerita in the History of Consciousness Department at the University of California Santa Cruz. She earned her PhD in Biology at Yale in 1972 and writes and teaches in science and technology studies, feminist theory, and multispecies studies. Haraway’s most recent works include Staying with the Trouble: Making Kin in the Chthulucene; a feature-length film by Fabrizio Terravova, titled Donna Haraway: Story Telling for Earthly Survival; and Making Kin Not Population, a publication co-edited with Adele Clarke that addresses questions of human numbers, feminist anti-racist reproductive and environmental justice, and multispecies flourishing.Music by Jeremy Harris. Visit our website at forthewild.world for the full episode description, references, and action points.Support the show

This week we are rebroadcasting our interview with Vijay Prashad, originally aired in February of 2021. Emboldened by the rapid development of technology, a cultural ethos of rugged individualism, globalization, and the monopolization of our media, the era of efficiency in the so-called Global North has significantly altered our communal symbiosis. For many, acts of service that would have once been fulfilled by neighbors and community have now been replaced by apps and gig workers, ultimately commodifying most of our social relations in one form or another. This week on the podcast, we are joined by guest Vijay Prashad to explore how societies take care of themselves, what true public action looks like in crisis, and how movements across the world have resisted the privatization of life and the devaluation of care that we have become accustomed to. Vijay Prashad is the Director of Tricontinental: Institute for Social Research, Chief Editor at LeftWord Books and Chief Correspondent for Globetrotter. His most recent book is Washington Bullets, just out from Monthly Review Press with a preface by Evo Morales Ayma. Music by Nathan Keck, Lizabett Russo, Sidi Touré, and Jon Yonts. Visit our website at forthewild.world for the full episode description, references, and action points.Support the show

This week we are rebroadcasting our interview with Tricia Hersey of the Nap Ministry, originally aired in June of 2020. With a historical analysis of slavery and plantation labor, this week’s episode prompts us, at this critical time, to consider what is stolen from those among us who cannot rest under white supremacy and capitalism. In this incredibly rich offering, we speak with Tricia on the myths of grind culture, rest as resistance, and reclaiming our imaginative power through sleep. Capitalism and white supremacy have tricked us into believing that our self-worth is tied to our productivity. Tricia shares with us the revolutionary power of rest. Tricia Hersey is a Chicago native living in Atlanta with over 20 years of experience collaborating with communities as a performance artist, theater maker, spiritual director, and community organizer. She is the founder of The Nap Ministry, an organization that examines rest as a form of resistance by curating safe spaces for the community to rest via Collective Napping Experiences, immersive workshops and performance art installations. Her research interests include black liberation theology, womanism, somatics, and cultural trauma. She holds a Bachelor of Science in Public Health from Eastern Illinois University and a Master of Divinity from the Candler School of Theology at Emory University.Music by Seba Kaapstad, Real J Wallace, and Beautiful Chorus. Visit our website at forthewild.world for the full episode description, references, and action points.Support the show

In this week’s episode, we ground ourselves in our embodied reality with guest Chiara Francesca, who invites us to explore what it means to be aware of our bodies and the way that they feel in this world. With a deep commitment to future visioning, we unpack the significance of what it means to “heal” amidst a system that is so violently creating our perpetual states of illness. Moving beyond notions of healing as a singular, individual act, Chiara Francesca asks us to think about what it will take for care and community to thrive. In conversation, we explore the emotional experience behind acupuncture, how a disability justice framework shapes Chiara Francesca’s work, the connection between Earth and bodily experienced trauma, and how to create a conducive environment for embodiment. Chiara Francesca reminds us that “healing is a collective endeavor,” and if we truly want to co-create a healthy society, we must work to liberate one another from survival mode. Originally from Italy, and currently residing in Chicago, Chiara is a queer artist, writer, organizer, acupuncturist, immigrant, and former teen ma’ living with multiple disabilities. Their clinical focus is on mental health, trauma, CPTSD, and queer/trans health. She is committed to building collaborative spaces for community care and centering collective health in and out of movements for justice.Music by Cy X, Te Martin, and Secret Cigarette. Visit our website at forthewild.world for the full episode description, references, and action points.Support the show

In the world of fashion and design, it’s becoming increasingly common to hear about businesses that are sustainable in their use of material; using biofabricated textiles, measuring their water usage, etc. Or we see companies who have a strong ethos towards sustainable production and paying employees a “livable” wage, but rarely do we ever see both. For example, a recent report put out by Stand.Earth lauded Nike, Levis, and Puma for “shifting their supply chain away from fossil fuels,” however we know that these fashion companies are also responsible for exploiting workers across the globe through cheap labor. In this week’s episode, we explore the limitations of transformation when it comes to an inherently exploitative system, specifically looking at the ways in which brands use the term sustainable in very finite dimensions, with guest Sha’Mira Covington. Sha’Mira Covington is a Ph.D. candidate in the Department of Textiles, Merchandising and Interiors and the Institute of African American Studies at the University of Georgia. Her research explores fashion as a cultural, historical, social, and political phenomenon involved in and affected by histories of colonial domination, anti-colonial resistance, and processes of decolonization and globalization. Her dissertation, "The Revolution will be Embodied", uses archival sources to argue that despite the fashion industry's exploitation of Black activism, Black people have always used embodied practices such as dress, yoga, and dance to liberate themselves from hegemonic forces.Music by Itasca, Ley Line, and Rajna Swaminathan. Visit our website at forthewild.world for the full episode description, references, and action points.Support the show

How might a bowhead whale tell the history of the Arctic? Grounding us in a history of the Bering Strait that listens deeply to ecology and the more-than-human, Bathsheba Demuth invites us to expand our future and past visions of human society in this episode. Adding nuance to our understanding of Arctic history, Bathsheba turns our attention towards the undercurrents of resistance – from whales avoiding commercial whaling ships to whalers and miners confronting the violence of the jobs into which they were forced. Bathsheba then challenges us to move beyond the logic of the slaughterhouse, wherein we are alienated from the ways our energy and goods are produced, and to instead build towards a radically imagined future of empathetic and connected relations. With this, she considers a future outside of apocalyptic visions, rooted in the understanding that the shape of the world today is neither permanent nor pre-destined. Her writing on these subjects has appeared in publications from The American Historical Review to The New Yorker. Bathsheba Demuth is an Assistant Professor of History and Environment and Society at Brown University. An environmental historian, she writes and thinks with the lands and seas of the Russian and North American Arctic. Her interest in northern environments and cultures began when she was 18 and moved to the village of Old Crow in the Yukon. For over two years, she mushed huskies, hunted caribou, fished for salmon, and otherwise learned to survive in the taiga and tundra. Her prize-winning first book, Floating Coast: An Environmental History of the Bering Strait (W.W. Norton) was named a Nature Top Ten Book of 2019 and Best Book of 2019 by NPR, Barnes and Noble, Kirkus Reviews, and Library Journal among others. From the archive to the dog sled, she is interested in how the histories of people, ideas, places, and other-than-human species intersect. Music by Eliza Eden, Georgia Sackler, and Dana Anastasia. Visit our website at forthewild.world for the full episode description, references, and action points.Support the show

All too often that which exists beyond the realms of intellect and rationality are deemed unworthy, unreal, and even demonized by the overculture. However, there is tremendous power held by magical, intuitive practices, especially in this moment when so many of us are yearning to spin ourselves out of the reductionist, intellect-driven mindset that we find ourselves mired in. In this episode, we journey into the unseen with guest Marcella Kroll. In this expansive conversation we explore a variety of topics ranging from how we can offer tools for healing with integrity under a colonial-capitalist system, the intersections of algorithms, divination, and social media, and the legacy of ancestral healing. Marcella Kroll is a Neurodivergent Multi-Dimensional Artist, Performer, and Spiritualist. She is the creator of 3 divination decks, illustrator and author of the grimoire PRIESTESS, and host of the podcast Saved by the Spell. Through her one on one sessions, she offers her clients space and perspective to empower themselves on their own unique path. While offering classes and workshops that honor Ancestral Healing for those living in the Liminal spaces, empowered magical practices, and reclaiming your birthright as a Sovereign Being. She also is a program presenter for the Los Angeles Public Library offering divination workshops to Teens and Tweens.Music by Santiparro, Violet Bell, and Annie Sumi. Visit our website at forthewild.world for the full episode description, references, and action points.Support the show

Dr. Patricia Kaishian encourages us to think of mycology as a revolutionary and political practice. Diving into queer mycology, we see the ways that fungi challenge binaries of gender, family structure, and even traditional biological classification. Support the show

Most of us are familiar with the environmental impacts of our physical technology, like the e-waste generated from cell phones or the minerals required to run our laptops, but have you ever wondered about the connections between digital media and resource extraction? This week we are joined by guest Antonio López to explore how ICT (Information and Communications Technology), and digital media and information, have not only transformed Earth but are also contributing to our collective carbon footprint. Dr. Antonio López is a leading international expert bridging ecojustice with media literacy. He is a founding theorist and architect of ecomedia literacy. He received professional training at the Center for Investigative Reporting in San Francisco, earned his BA in Peace and Conflict Studies at UC Berkeley and MA in Media Studies at the New School for Social Research. He earned a Ph.D. in Sustainability Education from Prescott College. He has written numerous academic articles, essays and four books: Mediacology: A Multicultural Approach to Media Literacy in the 21st Century, The Media Ecosystem: What Ecology Can Teach Us About Responsible Media Practice, Greening Media Education: Bridging Media Literacy with Green Cultural Citizenship, and Ecomedia Literacy: Integrating Ecology into Media Education. He is currently Chair and Associate Professor of Communications and Media Studies at John Cabot University in Rome, Italy.Music by Justin Crawmer, Sam Sycamore, and Marty O'Reilly and the Old Soul Orchestra. Visit our website at forthewild.world for the full episode description, references, and action points.Support the show

Niria Alicia guides us to think about ancestral instruction, precious purpose, rituals for liberation, and what it means to be human in this time. Support the show

Dr. Rupa Marya and Raj Patel discuss the biological impacts of oppressive social structures. We are left with the resounding reminder that inflammation is an indicator that we must change our collective ways in order to heal, and in today’s world that requires us to dismantle oppressive systems and expand our understanding of health beyond inadequate colonial definitions.Support the show

Kerry spans the dreamiest of worlds, from the surreal and psychedelic presence of lichens to the magic of creating life post-capitalism.Support the show

As the ocean warms and grows more hostile, the icy waters of the Taku river have served as refuge for salmon and an abundance of more-than-human kin. However, threats from mining and resource extraction are posed to forever change the habitat of the watershed. The 1957 abandonment of the Tulsequah Chief Mine in British Columbia left a disastrous environmental impact. This mine still requires billions of dollars worth of clean up action and constant monitoring to ensure the protection of this river system. The Tulsequah Chief serves as just one example of threats to the vital river systems of so-called Canada and The United States. The Taku, the Unuk, and the Stikine are all transboundary rivers beginning in British Columbia, Canada, and flowing through to Alaska. They are unique both in their beauty and abundance, and in the inter-governmental action required to regulate them. The Boundary Waters Treaty of 1909 dictates relations across international borders, but the treaty alone will not protect these rivers from acid mine drainage and continued extraction. Chris Zimmer invites us to imagine what clean, healthy rivers can bring us, and to propel love for these rivers towards ethical action. Chris Zimmer is the Alaska Campaign Director of Rivers Without Borders. Based in Juneau, Chris has been with Rivers Without Borders since 2001. Chris enjoys fishing and hunting in the watersheds he helps to protect.Music by Jon Yonts, GoldenOak, and Larkhall.Visit our website at forthewild.world for the full episode description, references, and action points.Support the show

The abundance of the Klamath River has been severely restricted since the late 1700s by way of mining, logging, and damming. Once home to the third-largest salmon run in the lower 48, now Northern California is risking the collapse of its entire salmon population. After two decades of activism, the Klamath River dams will finally be removed by 2023, restoring salmon access to more than 400 miles of habitat. However, this is merely one example of the ways in which land has been chronically mismanaged across the so-called United States. This week we speak to Yurok fisherman and activist, Samuel Gensaw III, on the ways in which Northern California has served as a continuous extraction site for colonial development. This expansive conversation begins by looking at resource extraction, but moves into a larger dialogue on our collective responsibility to world renewal, bringing back balance to our relationships, how to instill new values without appropriating cultural traditions, and the Ancestral Guard’s Victorious Gardens program featured in the film Gather. Samuel Gensaw III is the founding director of the Award-winning Ancestral Guard program. Currently, he is the youngest person to serve as the vice-chairman of the Yurok tribe’s natural resources committee. He and fellow Ancestral Guard members are featured in the documentary, Gather, which focuses on the growing movement among Native Americans to reclaim their spiritual, political, and cultural identities through food sovereignty. Music by Lake Mary, All The Queen’s Ravens, Jess Williamson. Visit our website at forthewild.world for the full episode description, references, and action points.Support the show

This week we are rebroadcasting our interview with Dallas Goldtooth, originally aired in December of 2018. Dallas Goldtooth joins Ayana in a conversation around toxic masculinity, accountability, and dismantling patriarchy. So often, conversations around gender wounds quickly deteriorate into oversimplifications of, and accusations towards, one gender or another – failing to realize how we are all hurting under patriarchy. Toxic masculinity, settler colonialism, and white supremacy are impelling us to a point of no return. If you are coming to this conversation as an environmental advocate, understand that in order to shift our relationship from that of domination over “nature” to one of reciprocity and understanding of the ecosystem we are a part of, we must examine our values with one another. “Dallas Goldtooth is the Keep it in the Ground Campaign Organizer for the Indigenous Environmental Network. He is also the co-founder of the Indigenous comedy group The 1491s. Dallas is Dakota and Diné, a loving husband, dedicated father, comedian, public speaker, recovering exotic dancer, plastic shaman extraordinaire, and body double for that guy who plays Thor in them Thor Movies.”Music by Lyla June Johnston.Visit our website at forthewild.world for the full episode description, references, and action points.Support the show

When one thinks about iron, copper, and gold mining, Sweden is not the first place that comes to mind, but in the past few years the country has granted roughly 500 mining exploration permits as it positions itself to become one of the largest mining centers for all of Europe. The price of mining in Sweden has largely been paid by the Sámi, whose lifeways are permanently changed once the government and multinational corporations seek to extract so-called natural resources from their traditional territory of Sápmi. In this week’s episode, we look at extractive mining in Sápmi and how Sweden’s colonial government exploits their very limited definition of Sámi indigeneity to further land grabs and resource extraction with guest Josefina Skerk. Josefina Skerk is a Sámi politician with a background in law. She is the General Manager of Sijti Jarnge, a Sámi Language and Culture Centre in Norway. Skerk has been a member of the Sámi Parliament in Sweden since 2013, and has held office as its former Vice President. Indigenous rights, especially connecting to land and language rights, are key issues that she is passionate about. Music by Andy Tallent, Dana Anastasia, and West of Roan.Visit our website at forthewild.world for the full episode description, references, and action points.Support the show

“What might happen if we saw a migrant child at the border as our own daughter? Or George Floyd gasping for breath as our own brother? Or Brianna as sister? Or the Asian American women slaughtered in Atlanta as our own aunties? What might happen? What would we risk? What movements would we build? What would we demand? How would we harness our rage? How would we reimagine a world in which all of us are safe? What might happen if we made love the ethic that guided all of our actions?” This week we ground down in visioning our shared survival with guest Valarie Kaur, who reminds us that for millennia prophetic voices have been trying to remind us that we belong to each other, here on Earth, and if we were to recognize this simple truth, what would the world look like? Valarie shares that in recognizing this reality of inherent belonging, we might have to “love beyond what evolution requires.” A revolutionary love for each other, our opponents, and ourselves. Valarie Kaur is a seasoned civil rights activist and celebrated prophetic voice. Valarie now leads the Revolutionary Love Project to reclaim love as a force for justice in America. As a lawyer, filmmaker, and innovator, she has won policy change on multiple fronts – hate crimes, racial profiling, immigration detention, solitary confinement, Internet freedom, and more. She founded Groundswell Movement, Faithful Internet, and the Yale Visual Law Project. A daughter of Sikh farmers in California's heartland, Valarie earned degrees at Stanford University, Harvard Divinity School, and Yale Law School. Valarie's new book is See No Stranger: A Memoir and Manifesto of Revolutionary Love. Music by AMAARA and Madeleine Sophia.Visit our website at forthewild.world for the full episode description, references, and action points.Support the show

In this magnetic conversation, Ruth and Ayana consider where a politics of love can breathe, radical softness, mindsets of abundance, climate justice advocacy, and the steps we can take to create systems of wellness. In recognition of what might feel like a painful transition for many, Ruth guides us to think about what practices and acts of care we can implement with each other as a way of willing a more beautiful world back into existence. Support the show

In the fast-paced movement of today’s media, it’s easy to become entangled in narratives of extinction, loss, a lack of time, and a tremendous amount of misanthropy. However, when we pause to look within the ecosystems around us we can find examples of life pushing through the most difficult of circumstances. Our more than human kin continues in defiance, refusing to cease their own lineage under the current modern paradigm of exploitation and desecration. In this week’s episode, we look into a thriving life paradigm, which places a reverences for life at the center of all action, with guest Woman Stands Shining (Pat McCabe). In this expansive conversation, Woman Stands Shining coalesces topics of Indigenous sovereignty, land back, how gender and consent behave in different paradigms, and the vital importance of moving out of modernity’s obsession with intellectualism as the primary way of knowing, into a powerful call to choose a timeless paradigm that is life-affirming for us all. Woman Stands Shining (Pat McCabe) is a Diné grandmother, activist, artist, and international speaker. Her primary work is proposing to the Five-Fingered-Ones, that paradigm is a choice, and pointing to Indigenous cultures as examples that we have evidence that human beings can participate in paradigms in which we can become beings capable of causing all life to thrive. Music by The Range of Light Wilderness, Violet Bell, and Sea Stars. Visit our website at forthewild.world for the full episode description, references, and action points.Support the show

When we hear about the Green New Deal, it is almost always in context to policy and business within the United States. The urgent push for an energy transition away from fossil fuels often obscures the reality of extractive frontiers and the supply chains that green energy necessitates. This week, we slow down and explore the structures behind “our” energy systems, what a Green New Deal means for “resource-rich” countries in the Global South, and what a globally accountable Green New Deal could look like with guest Thea Riofrancos. As we explore what a renewable energy transition looks like from the so-called peripheries of extraction, Thea guides us to think about the relationship between solidarity and consumption, collectivity, and the vital importance of pushing for policy, systems, and organizations that empower public services, forms of sharing, and economies of care. Thea Riofrancos is an assistant professor of political science at Providence College, an Andrew Carnegie Fellow, and a Radcliffe Institute Fellow. Her research focuses on resource extraction, renewable energy, climate change, green technology, social movements, and the left in Latin America. These themes are explored in her book, Resource Radicals: From Petro-Nationalism to Post-Extractivism in Ecuador and her co-authored book, A Planet to Win: Why We Need a Green New Deal.Music by 40 Million Feet, Mitski, and Alexa Wildish. Visit our website at forthewild.world for the full episode description, references, and action points.Support the show

In order to limit global temperature from exceeding a 1.5°C increase, we need to cut global emissions by 45% in the next 10 years. However, recent reports indicate that if our current global pledges were enacted, we’d only reduce our emissions by 1%. We are living through what some might define as an ongoing climate emergency, and this will only continue for future generations. Instead of fixating on how to “stop” climate change-related disasters or putting our trust in ineffective government bodies or greedy purveyors of “green” technology to “save” us, this week, we think about how we can have community resilience, ingenuity, and wellbeing amidst unpredictable circumstances with guest Lil Milagro Henriquez-Cornejo of Mycelium Youth Network. For Mycelium Youth Network, the capacity for community resilience is inextricable from reconnecting with ancestral knowledge and reestablishing our relationships with one another and Earth. Lil Milagro Henriquez-Cornejo is the founder and Executive Director of Mycelium Youth Network, an organization dedicated to preparing and empowering young people of color for climate change. Lil Milagro is a veteran of social justice organizing with over 18+ years of experience working on a myriad of issues, including access to higher education for low-income people and communities of color, food sovereignty, environmental racism, union democracy, and labor organizing, among others. In 2017, she founded Mycelium Youth Network. Music by Harry Foster, Lea Thomas, and Ian George. Visit our website at forthewild.world for the full episode description, references, and action points.Support the show

This week we are rebroadcasting our interview with Queen Quet, originally aired in November of 2018. The Anthropocene tells the story of compounding injustice towards people and planet. It tells the story of growth for growth’s sake, living beyond boundaries sacredly assigned to us. In this episode, we are honored to be in dialogue with Queen Quet, Chieftess and Head-of-State for the Gullah/Geechee Nation, who is striving for justice on the front lines of the most pressing Anthropocentric intersections: climate change, resource extraction, corrupt and negligent government bodies, encroaching development, and exploitative tourism. Queen Quet, Marquetta L. Good-wine is a published author, computer scientist, lecturer, mathematician, historian, columnist, preservationist, environmental justice advocate, film consultant, and “The Art-ivist.” Queen Quet was selected, elected, and enstooled by her people to be the first Queen Mother, “head pun de bodee,” and official spokesperson for the Gullah/Geechee Nation. She is the founder of the premiere advocacy organization for the continuation of Gullah/Geechee culture, the Gullah/Geechee Sea Island Coalition. Music by The Gullah Singers - Live recordings from Gullah/Geechee TV Nayshun Nyews with Queen Quet and The Gullah/Geechee Nation International Music & Movement Festival. Visit our website at forthewild.world for the full episode description, references, and action points.Support the show

The ubiquity of water is demonstrated in almost everything we come into contact with. It’s responsible for everyday objects like blue jeans, bread, and coffee, it rushes through pipes below our feet, is necessary for industrial violence like fracking, mapped through watersheds, exists as a healing modality, and is also a great source of pleasure - yet most of us take water for granted as a mundane necessity, rarely stopping to look at how tightly water is woven into politics, science, and the economy. This week on the podcast we look at the power and ubiquity of water in a world where it is becoming scarce with guest Andrea Ballestero. Andrea explores the tensions that exist between a human right and a commodity, water futures, pricing mechanisms, the fallacy of rationing and block pricing, and water scarcity. Andrea Ballestero is Associate Professor of Anthropology at Rice University and she is also the founder and director of the Ethnography Studio. Her background includes a law degree, training in Natural Resource Policy, and a Ph.D. in anthropology. Her recent book, A Future History of Water, examines the daily work of implementing the human right to water in Costa Rica and in Northeast Brazil. This book is open access and available for download for free on her website. Dr. Ballestero is currently researching cultural imaginaries of the underground in Costa Rica, particularly aquifers. Her research and all of her publications can be found at https://andreaballestero.com/.Music by The Pit-Yak Aiodoi, Palo-Mah (Suculima), and Jahnavi Veronica.Visit our website at forthewild.world for the full episode description, references, and action points.Support the show

Environmental and ecological sustainability movements have often negated their complicity in white supremacy, heteronormativity, patriarchy, and capitalism, citing that their pursuits and causes are objectively positive because they are on behalf of the so-called “natural world.” This week on the podcast, we dig deeper into this topic with Guy Ritani and Toad Andrew Dell of PermaQueer. We discuss greenwashing, queering permaculture, what culturally relevant permaculture looks like, the ethics of frugality, and the importance of recognizing our responsibility in the web of things. PermaQueer is an ecological education project that focuses on accessibility to LGBTQIA and BIPOC folx. Toad and Guy who run PermaQueer, teach Permaculture through a queer lens with attention to the decolonization of its practices with more inclusion and access to marginal demographics. To them, permaculture provides a method of accessing and managing resources that care for communities needs with relatively small financial inputs. Music by Eliza Edens and India Blue and Joshu.Visit our website at forthewild.world for the full episode description, references, and action points.Support the show

“I validate the idea that survival is the ultimate act of creation in a world that has reduced us to fascist arithmetic, of being a quantitative statistic, not a human soul. So we still found a way to care, love, and create - isn't that art? I teach people to decipher the art that they’re already doing, recognize the artistry and the everyday miracles of life around them, and create from that place.” This week we immerse ourselves in the aforementioned call to recognize the myriad of creations all around us from guest ALOK, who guides us in an ever-expansive dialogue around spiritual wellbeing, the importance of creative literacy, and the tremendous freedom that awaits us when we make gender unknowable. We begin our conversation by foregrounding the importance of moving out of the paradigm of understanding trans and queer as something that is exclusive to the body. Instead, ALOK shares how challenging the gender binary is not only in service to our collective wellbeing but is a reverential offering in acknowledging our true celestial expansiveness that has been dimmed under binarism, heteronormativity, and colonialism. ALOK is a gender non-conforming writer and performance artist. Their distinctive style and poetic challenge to the gender binary have been internationally renowned. As a mixed-media artist Alok uses poetry, prose, comedy, performance, fashion design, and portraiture to explore themes of gender, race, trauma, belonging, and the human condition. They are the author of Femme in Public (2017) and Beyond the Gender Binary (2020).Music by Soda Lite, Rising Appalachia, and Lady Moon & The Eclipse. Visit our website at forthewild.world for the full episode description, references, and action points.Support the show

“There's no magical return. We're not all going to return to an unblemished time in history, and if we know that...what do we have to do? Who needs to have conversation with whom? Who needs to heal what relationship? Who needs to ask for what permission? Who needs to offer something back?” This week on the podcast, Prentis Hemphill offers us these questions in conversation about how we can be in relationship with each other at this very moment in time. In recognition of the tremendous intricacies of our experiences when it comes to our collective histories, forced severances, and the manipulation of trauma in our society, Prentis shares how embodiment is a resource that allows us to connect with the Earth, recognize grief as an entry point, and shape the impossible into possible. Prentis Hemphill is a movement facilitator, Somatics teacher, and practitioner, working at the convergence of healing, collective transformation, and political organizing. At present, Prentis is the founder and leader of The Embodiment Institute and The Black Embodiment Initiative as well as host of the Finding Our Way Podcast.Music by Tan Cologne, This Flame I Carry, and The Breath.Visit our website at forthewild.world for the full episode description, references, and action points.Support the show

This week on the podcast we begin our conversation with Dr. Michael Lujan Bevacqua by discussing Guåhan’s incredibly layered history, as well as the CHamoru history that predates any colonial narrative by thousands of years. With an understanding of how Guåhan (Guam) ended up as a “territory” of the United States, Michael shares the current efforts to decolonize Guåhan and instill strong self-governance. Within this conversation, we turn our attention towards the importance of self-governance and sovereignty amidst climate change, considering that so many U.S. territories are often left to navigate the aftermath of climate emergencies with zero support from the same government that seeks to endlessly exploit their resources. Michael Lujan Bevacqua, Ph.D. taught Guam History and Chamoru language at the University of Guam for 10 years and helped found its Chamorro Studies Program, the only one of its kind in the world. With his brother Jack, they run a creative collective called The Guam Bus which publishes Chamoru language books, comics, and learning materials. He is the co-chair for the community group Independent Guåhan, which is dedicated to educating the island of Guam on the possibilities should it decolonize and become a sovereign, independent country. He is a member of the Kabesa and Bittot clans on Guam.Music by Fabian Almazan Trio, Dumpster Full of Dragons, and I Goodfriend. Visit our website at forthewild.world for the full episode description, references, and action points.Support the show

We begin this week with reverence for sharks as kin that have inhabited Earth’s waters for 450 million years, an existence that even predates trees. These apex predators embody a deep resilience and commitment to their place in this world, however, like many of the ocean’s inhabitants, sharks cannot handle commercial exploitation at the scale of which global capitalism demands. A demand which is vastly different from subsistence fishing. In conversation with guest Stefanie Brendl, we learn how sharks regulate the ocean’s ecosystem, the ramification of dwindling shark populations, and the many reasons that the market for shark, ray, and skate meat has more than doubled since the early 1990s; ranging from the depletion of other fish stocks to the burgeoning pet food, cosmetic, and wellness industries. Additionally, we explore the United State’s complicity as the 7th largest shark-fishing country in the world and the significance of understanding our own Fisheries Act in context to multilateral treaties like the Convention on International Trade in Endangered Species of Wild Flora and Fauna. Stefanie Brendl is an advocate for sharks, and a creative and social entrepreneur that leads campaigns and projects in all corners of this planet. As founder and executive director of Shark Allies and team member of various NGO coalitions, she has dedicated her last two decades to bringing greater protection to sharks.Music by Bird by Snow, Handmade Moments, and Left Vessel. Visit our website at forthewild.world for the full episode description, references, and action points.Support the show

This week we are rebroadcasting our interview with Pádraig Ó Tuama, originally aired in September of 2019. The Isle of Éire (Ireland) is rich with stories held by the land, both ancient and modern, laden with both fierce culture and colonial violence. Pádraig Ó Tuama perceives these complex layers of history with acute insights into the lingering impacts of imperialism and sectarianism that have divided Ireland. By acknowledging deeply rooted cultural pain, Pádraig calls for Irish, English, and the rest of us to heal by reckoning with the past and embracing the creative potential held within our differences. Enter a poetic journey where the land awaits us beyond the divide of borders, history, and suffering. Ayana and Pádraig explore the language of uncommon belonging; how we must learn from our shame, the life cycle of violence, and how to confront the inheritance of privilege. Poet and theologian, Pádraig Ó Tuama’s work centers around themes of language, power, conflict, and religion. Pádraig presents Poetry Unbound with On Being Studios and in late 2019 was named Theologian in Residence for On Being, innovating in bringing art and theology into public and civic life. From 2014-2019 he was the leader of the Corrymeela Community, Ireland’s oldest peace and reconciliation community. Music by Peia.Visit our website at forthewild.world for the full episode description, references, and action points.Support the show

British Columbia’s government has claimed that over 20% of “their” forests still contain old-growth, but a recent independent study found only 2.7% could truly be classified as such. Despite the reality that such little of this ancient ecosystem remains, B.C. government and corporations continue to log across unceded forests. For this reason, in August of 2020, when it was revealed that Teal-Jones Group would begin road construction to log within the Fairy Creek Watershed, forest defenders quickly mobilized to halt logging operations throughout unceded Pacheedaht and Ditidaht territories. This week on For The Wild podcast we bring you an on the ground interview between Maia Wikler and xʷ is xʷ čaa (Kati George-Jim) that goes beyond old-growth logging and big tree activism to explore Indigenous sovereignty, the responsibility of bearing witness, the importance of distinguishing between short term actions and a long term movement-building, and the connections between land desecration and linguistic colonization. xʷ is xʷ čaa is Tsuk and W̱SÁNEĆ, “of the land, not the band nation”. The niece of Pacheedaht elder, Bill Jones, Kati has been leading the movement with Rainforest Flying Squad blockading attempts by Teal-Jones to log some of the last remaining intact ancient temperate rainforests on southern Vancouver Island within Pacheedaht territory. Maia Wikler is PhD student, climate justice organizer, and writer. Her research focuses on memory as a tool of resistance and resilience in the face of corporate abuse, specifically related to deforestation and the climate crisis.Music by Lake Mary, Forest Veil, The Range of Light Wilderness, and Ali Dineen.Visit our website at forthewild.world for the full episode description, references, and action points.Support the show

So often fungi are pitched as being at the forefront of innovation, whether being used to create vegan leather, pharmaceuticals, or being incorporated into various biotechnology products, but this fixation on innovation can obscure our ancestral relationship to fungi and the wisdom they can share with us about decomposition. This week, we slow down to acknowledge the beauty and power of fungal decomposition with guest Giuliana Furci who shares a lesson in divine time, the transformation of energy, and the necessity of decomposition. Take a moment this week to learn about fungi’s profound interspecies companionship and the simple reality that the world cannot regenerate itself without fungi. Additionally, to learn even more about these topics, look into supporting Fungi Foundation by joining them for their Fungi Foundation Virtual Speaker Event and Fundraiser on June 26th via their profile and webpage. Giuliana Furci is foundress and CEO of the Fungi Foundation, the first international non-profit dedicated to fungi and founded in Chile. She is also the first female mycologist in Chile. For more information about her work visit www.ffungi.org.Music by Roma Ransom, Rajna Swaminathan, and Julio Kinto.Visit our website at forthewild.world for the full episode description, references, and action points.Support the show

This year approximately 42 million people will experience food insecurity in the United States, a perverse number when put in context to the surplus of food many of us have access to. In this week’s episode, we look at the work of Virginia Free Farm with guest Amyrose Foll. By providing free produce, plants, seeds, chicken, and ducks Virginia Free Farm is addressing the quality of food offered to their community, while also working to strengthen their local foodshed by getting more folks involved in gardening and small-scale farming. Amyrose continues to create a powerful example of how we can make meaningful interventions within the existing food system while also working on building an alternative model where everyone's health and wellbeing is prioritized. Amyrose is an enrolled tribal member of the Abenaki, a veteran of the U.S. Army, and alumni of both Cornell University's College of Agriculture and Life Science, and S.C. Johnson Graduate School Of Management. A passion for agriculture and deep concerns about community food security led her to become a stakeholder in the Virginia Dept. of Agriculture Equitable Food Oriented Distribution Taskforce and founder of Virginia Free Farms. Music by Ian George and Edie. Visit our website at forthewild.world for the full episode description, references, and action points.Support the show

If we need the Earth, does the Earth need us? This week on the podcast we dive deep into the relationship amongst ourselves and the Earth with guest Tiokasin Ghosthorse. We begin our conversation by talking about the savior mentality that can arise when we act to address the many issues that threaten Earth and kin at this moment. Recognizing the trickiness of interrogating this mentality that is often intertwined with emotions of loss, love, and protection, Tiokasin offers that perhaps rather than being guided by solutions and salvation, we acknowledge where we are at in this consciousness and how we can challenge ourselves to give back to the Earth without intrusion. Tiokasin Ghosthorse is a member of the Cheyenne River Lakota Nation of South Dakota and has a long history with Indigenous activism and advocacy. Tiokasin is the Founder, Host, and Executive Producer of “First Voices Radio'' for the last 28 years. In 2016 he received a Nomination for the Nobel Peace Prize.Music by Harrison Foster, Peia, and Lizabett Russo.Visit our website at forthewild.world for the full episode description, references, and action points.Support the show

Through the support of ever-growing subsidies, trade deals, and taxes global corporations have ballooned, creating a highly violent, exploitative, and absurd global trade system. So absurd, that often we fixate on the hypocrisy of how it became possible that food packaged and processed on the other side of the world is somehow “cheaper” than that which is grown by our neighbors. In this week’s episode, we learn about what continues to strengthen and uphold the wastefulness of our global trade system and how global corporations decimate diversity in terms of species, livelihoods, and identities with guest Helena Norberg-Hodge. Helena Norberg-Hodge is an innovator of the new economy movement. She is author of the inspirational classic Ancient Futures, and Local is Our Future. Helena is the founder and director of Local Futures and The International Alliance for Localisation, and a founding member of the International Commission on the Future of Food and Agriculture, the International Forum on Globalization and the Global Ecovillage Network.Music by Dana Anastasia and Chloe Levaillant.Visit our website at forthewild.world for the full episode description, references, and action points.Support the show

Struggling to change actual conditions, many have settled for changing the perceptions of the world around us. On this week’s episode, guest Tyson Yunkaporta begins by sharing the connections between perception, the branding of our identities, and the many forms of capital that become available and valuable in a perception-obsessed society. As we welcome the call to change our conditions and participate in the great “thousand-year clean-up”, we explore hybridized insight, the ramifications of clinging to dichotomous identities, and how genuine diversity is tangible preparedness and emotional resilience in motion. With this in mind, it becomes our task to figure out how we can sustain genuine diversity in our lives so we may work alongside folks with different capacities, worldviews, solutions, and thought processes in devotion to dismantling a system that necessitates abuse. Tyson Yunkaporta is an academic, an arts critic, and a researcher who belongs to the Apalech Clan in far north Queensland. He carves traditional tools and weapons and also works as a senior lecturer in Indigenous Knowledges at Deakin University in Melbourne.Music by 40 Million Feet, Marty O’Reilly & the Old Soul Orchestra, and Violet Bell. Visit our website at forthewild.world for the full episode description, references, and action points.Support the show

On this week’s episode, we observe the impacts of common narratives of escape and place and how those narratives underscore exploitative tourism. Bani Amor guides us through an exploration of how travel can be viewed as an extension of the colonial project and how travel media is largely a product of the patriarchal gaze. We’re invited to critically examine how places and experiences are marketed and sold particularly for white consumption, and how we can resist, while thinking deeply about the disparate dynamics between the “visitor” and “the visited.” Bani discusses the fetishization of land and lifeways and how exploitative tourism facilitates ongoing cycles of domination creating unstable economies, and rendering local communities vulnerable to abuse. Urging us to ask questions that aren’t really encouraged in the travel space, Bani asks us to ask ourselves: how can we have a connection to place that isn’t based on escapism and dominion?Music by Juan Torregoza, Peals, and Fabian Almazan Trio. Visit our website at forthewild.world for the full episode description, references, and action points.Support the show

This week’s encore episode, originally broadcast in October of 2017, invites insight into renewed relational understanding of home, sacred rage, and protecting the breathing spaces of public lands. Terry Tempest Williams guides us to explore acts of the imagination as we shift into consciousness and expand our sense of family to both human and wild. As so many of us grapple with the omnipresent question of “what do we do?”, Terry provides us with salve through stories of the beauty and power of our gifts, and the living histories of the Great Basin and Colorado Plateau. Terry Tempest Williams has been called "a citizen writer," a writer who speaks and speaks out eloquently on behalf of an ethical stance toward life. A naturalist and fierce advocate for freedom of speech, she has consistently shown us how environmental issues are social issues that ultimately become matters of justice. Terry Tempest Williams is the author of the environmental literature classic, Refuge: An Unnatural History of Family and Place; An Unspoken Hunger: Stories from the Field; Desert Quartet; Leap; Red: Patience and Passion in the Desert; and The Open Space of Democracy. Her most recent book is The Hour of Land: A Personal Topography of America’s National Parks Music by Buffalo Rose, Kendra Swanson, and Aviva le Fey. Visit our website at forthewild.world for the full episode description, references, and action points.Support the show

Will we “undo” or “solve” climate change? Could we still create a livable world if the answer to the previous question is no? Could we create an even more just world than the one we’ve been living in so far? This week we step away from thinking about climate change at the planetary scale and reflect on how we can respond at the community level with guest Gopal Dayaneni. Gopal reminds us to think about the climate crisis as a message in which we are being asked to respond by tending to our all of relationships, not just reducing atmospheric concentrations of carbon dioxide. In this exploration of crisis, solutions, distribution of suffering, and relations - we learn about the power of changing our relationship to a problem. Gopal has been involved in fighting for social, economic, environmental, and racial justice through organizing & campaigning, teaching, writing, speaking, and direct action since the late 1980s. Gopal is a co-founder of Movement Generation: Justice and Ecology Project. Currently, Gopal supports movement building through his work with organizations including The Climate Justice Alliance, ETCgroup, and the Center for Story-based Strategy. Gopal works at the intersection of ecology, economy, and empire. He lives in an intentional community of 9 adults and a squabble of kids.Music by Skeppet, Shingai, and Yesol.Visit our website at forthewild.world for the full episode description, references, and action points.Support the show

Mainstream media has gradually begun to recognize the Missing and Murdered Indigenous Women, Girls, and Two-Spirit People (MMIWG2S) epidemic across North America, but only after constant attention and pressure from Indigenous communities, advocates, and organization - still, much needs to be addressed as there continues to be serious misrepresentation. In this week’s episode, we speak to advocate and athlete, Jordan Marie Brings Three White Horses Daniel about the tremendous ripple effects of missing relatives, where the media continues to get it wrong, and the crippling economic tolls incurred by families as they are punished during periods of urgency and loss. As a marathon runner, we also speak with Jordan about the act of running and how it can meaningfully move energy in solidarity with the MMIWG2S movement. Jordan Marie Brings Three White Horses Daniel is a citizen of Kul Wicasa Oyate (Lower Brule Sioux Tribe) as well as a passionate and devoted advocate nationally known for her grassroots organization for anti-pipelines/climate justice efforts, change the name/not your mascot, MMIWG2S and MMIP, and native youth initiatives. Jordan is the founder and organizer of Rising Hearts, an Indigenous-led grassroots group.Music by Lake Mary, Santiago Cordoba, Emily Ritz, and Arthur Moon. Visit our website at forthewild.world for the full episode description, references, and action points.Support the show

Many of us have access to more choices than we ever thought imaginable, in fact, it is quite easy to find ourselves amidst an abundance of products, eating foods cultivated across the world, or selecting from a myriad of variations of the same “thing”. But this “abundance” of choice masks ecological depletion, and as we gain access to that which is far from our homes, actual place-based abundance is often jeopardized. This week on the podcast we explore this in context to herring in Southeast Alaska with guest K’asheechtlaa (Louise Brady). Everything from chinook, seals, whales, eagles, halibut, and dolphins, all depend on herring directly or indirectly. In addition to nourishing so much of the Pacific marine ecosystem, these kin are embedded in the culture and spirit of Sheetʼká (Sitka). But as herring have been utilized in pet food, fertilizer, fish meal for aquariums and salmon farms, and marketed as a delicacy abroad - fisheries have been mismanaged by the state of Alaska and overfished to near extinction. K’asheechtlaa is a woman of the Tlingit nation in Sheetʼká Ḵwáan, an island off the coast of Southeast Alaska. She is Raven-Frog or Kiks.ádi Clan, Kiks.ádi women are known as the herring ladies, they have a story or original instruction that connects them spiritually, culturally, and historically to herring. K’asheechtlaa is the founder of the Herring Protectors, a grassroots movement of people that share concerns that the herring population in Sheetʼká Ḵwáan, and the culture tied to it, are under threat. Music by Lake Mary, The Ascent of Everest, Alexandra Blakely, and Fountainsun. Visit our website at forthewild.world for the full episode description, references, and action points.Support the show

When asked about implementing 5G in 2019, Brussels’ Environment Minister, Celine Fremault was quoted saying “the people of Brussels are not guinea pigs whose health I can sell at a profit. We cannot leave anything to doubt.” Comparatively here in the United States, we are bombarded with advertisements that boast about the speed, accessibility, and necessity of 5G. Of course, unlike other countries, the United States has also embraced the digitization of our life beyond recognition. There are more cell phones in the United States than there are people, so it comes as no surprise that 5G would be an easier sell to our public. Alongside guest Devra L. Davis, we take a deeper look at why the telecom industry is manufacturing demand for 5G, as well as the overwhelming amount of research on global 5G wireless networks and how they threaten various species and ecosystems. Dr. Davis is an internationally acclaimed award-winning scientist and author of more than 220 scientific publications and 3 popular books. She was the U.S. Senate confirmed Presidential appointee to the National Chemical Safety and Hazard Investigation Board and served as an advisor to the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change and the World Health Organization. She is currently the President of the Environmental Health Trust.Music by Jeremy Harris, Shay Roselip, and Tan Cologne. Visit our website at forthewild.world for the full episode description, references, and action points.Support the show

Humans have often turned to the night sky for both practical matters, like direction and orientation, as well as philosophical matters, like making sense of our place in the world and communicating with the ethereal. Despite this ancestral connection, many of us either know very little about the space above us and the galaxies around us, or we don’t even have the privilege of being able to develop this connection. Did you know 85% of matter in the universe is considered intangible “dark” matter? Have you ever wondered why it’s even called dark matter? Did you know some nation-states are still considering what it would take to mine the moon? Or that we are radically altering what the night sky looks like through the increasing presence of satellites? In this week’s episode, we explore these curiosities with Dr. Chanda Prescod-Weinstein. Dr. Chanda Prescod-Weinstein is an assistant professor of physics and core faculty in women’s and gender studies at the University of New Hampshire. Dr. Prescod-Weinstein’s book The Disordered Cosmos: A Journey into Dark Matter, Spacetime, and Dreams Deferred will be published in the US and Canada in March 2021. Music by Harrison Foster, Amaara, and Jahnavi Veronica. Visit our website at forthewild.world for the full episode description, references, and action points.Support the show

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In 2018 former Attorney General Jeff Sessions announced the Trump administration’s “zero-tolerance” immigration policy, what we didn’t know was that beginning in 2017 the Trump administration ran a secret pilot program that began rapidly separating children from their families in El Paso, Texas. After running this pilot program, Customs and Border Protection unequivocally told the administration that the program was a failure because they were unable to track parents and children after separation. In the face of these conclusions, the administration went forward with their policy which ultimately separated over 2,500 children, many of whom will most likely never be reunited with their parents. In this week’s episode, we speak with artist, immigration lawyer, and activist Carolina Rubio MacWright on the ongoing travesty of family separations, the inherent trauma of U.S. detention centers, and how we can begin revamping our laws, values, policies, and systems when it comes to migration. Carolina Rubio MacWright is an artist, immigration lawyer, and activist fighting for immigrant and humanitarian rights. She believes ART is the most powerful way of bringing humans together and dissolving walls and cages that separate us. She has thus mixed her law and art into a non-profit called Touching Land that uses hands-on experiential arts to empower, build bridges and decolonize food. Music by Madelyn Ilana and Samuela Akert.Visit our website at forthewild.world for the full episode description, references, and action points. Support the show

We are often reminded of the tremendous amount of loss that transpires every day on this Earth; loss of language, biodiversity, and ancestral knowledge. In response, it’s understandable that many of us may be hyper-fixated on preserving whatever we can and fighting to stave off the mass changes that have been set in motion. But what if we challenged ourselves instead to recognize the autonomy of living knowledge, land as its own entity, and the inevitability of constant change? In this week’s episode, guest Enrique Salmón uses the lens of kincentric ecology to challenge our propensity for memory banking, our difficulty grappling with a changing Earth, and our inadvertent oversimplifications of complex living relationships. Enrique Salmón is a Rarámuri. He is head of the American Indian Studies Program at Cal State University–East Bay. He holds a Ph.D. in anthropology from Arizona State University and has published many articles on Indigenous ethnobotany, agriculture, nutrition, and Traditional Ecological Knowledge. He is the author of Eating the Landscape: American Indian Stories of Food, Identity and Resilience and Iwígara. Music by Justin Crawmer, Katie Gray, and Sara Serpa. Visit our website at forthewild.world for the full episode description, references, and action points.Support the show

“We forget that so much is given freely, that this world is meant to be enjoyed.” This week, we heed this powerful reminder by guest Ella Noah Bancroft. As our belief systems have become entwined with the dominant economic structure, we see the commodification of our wellness, intimacy, and connectivity - a phenomenon that is severely hindering our ability to connect authentically. In conversation, Ella traces the powerful connection between our ability to go against mainstream capitalist ways of being and our capacity for deep connection with ourselves and each other. With intimacy as an entrance point, our conversation explores what happens when we derive our pleasure from extraction, the kind of deep embodiment and connectivity that threatens capitalistic and colonial structures, and how we can journey back into spaces of trust through practices that don’t have to cost us a thing. Ella Noah Bancroft is a Bundjalung woman based in the Northern New South Wales, Australia. Ella identifies as mixed heritage Indigenous, gay woman. She grew up living in both worlds, her Indigenous world and the mainstream Australian world. Both challenged her identity in different ways. She is an Australian born artist, storyteller, mentor and founder of “The Returning” and Yhi Collective. Music by Harrison Foster, Lady Moon & The Eclipse, and Sucúlima. Visit our website at forthewild.world for the full episode description, references, and action points.Support the show

How can queerness guide us as we move through this liminal time period? How can queer ecology radically change our way of knowing? This week’s episode, initially aired in December of 2018, acknowledges that in order to expand ourselves to our fullest capacity, we must bend beyond the cultural and gender binaries that dominant society projects amongst us, to begin this process we need not look further than what has always been. Guided by culturally informed queer ancestral futurist dreams, Pinar and So Sinopoulos-Lloyd of Queer Nature explore how queering our awareness can dismantle the supremacist, ecocidal, and genocidal story we have found ourselves in. Queer Nature is an education and social sculpture project based on Arapaho, Ute, and Cheyenne territories that actively dreams into decolonially-informed queer ‘ancestral futurism’ through mentorship in place-based skills with awareness of post-industrial/globalized/ecocidal contexts. Co-envisioned by Pinar and So Sinopoulos-Lloyd, Queer Nature designs and facilitates nature-based workshops and multi-day immersions intended to be financially, emotionally, and physically accessible to LGBTQ2+ people and QTBIPOCs. Music by Y La Bamba and Elisapie. Visit our website at forthewild.world for the full episode description, references, and action points.Support the show

Our attention has operated as currency for the past couple of decades, but with the invasiveness of social media and technology, our ability to exit and enter the attention economy has been severely hindered. As we feel pressure to post and comment on everything for an unknown audience, do we inherently limit our capacity for complexity and vulnerability? And what are the extended ramifications of becoming illiterate in complexity? How does this ripple out into all of our relationships? In lieu of the demanding world buzzing inside our devices, guest Jenny Odell shares the brilliance of doing “nothing”, tending to the ecological self, and growing deeper forms of attention through a commitment to bioregionalism. Jenny Odell is a writer, artist, and enthusiastic birdwatcher based in Oakland, California. She is the author of How to Do Nothing: Resisting the Attention Economy. Odell teaches digital art at Stanford University. Music by Harrison Foster, Bosques Fragmentados, Samara Jade, and Kritzkom. Visit our website at forthewild.world for the full episode description, references, and action points.Support the show

As so-called powerful “industrial civilizations” continue to decline into dysfunction, unable to care for the vast majority, the call to localize, reinvest in household economies, and strengthen our capacity for self-reliance is becoming emphatic. Amongst failing institutions and the remnants of exploitative wealth, this week’s guest, David Holmgren, encourages us to lean into crisis as a temporary portal that allows us to focus on the potential of all that lies around us. In conversation David explores creative reuse, salvage economies, ethical relationships, permaculture, and the intricacies of mass movements that are trying to override a system that is deeply committed to a machination of consumerism and debt. David Holmgren is the co-originator of the permaculture concept following publication of 'Permaculture One', co-authored with Bill Mollison in 1978. His most recent book, 'RetroSuburbia: The Downshifter’s Guide to a Resilient Future' shows how people can downshift and retrofit their homes, gardens, communities and above all, themselves to be more self-organised, sustainable and resilient into an uncertain future. Music by Roma Ransom and Jody Segar. Visit our website at forthewild.world for the full episode description, references, and action points.Support the show

Emboldened by the rapid development of technology, a cultural ethos of rugged individualism, globalization, and the monopolization of our media, the era of efficiency in the so-called Global North has significantly altered our communal symbiosis. For many, acts of service that would have once been fulfilled by neighbors and community have now been replaced by apps and gig workers, ultimately commodifying most of our social relations in one form or another. This week on the podcast, we are joined by guest Vijay Prashad to explore how societies take care of themselves, what true public action looks like in crisis, and how movements across the world have resisted the privatization of life and the devaluation of care that we have become accustomed to. Vijay Prashad is the Director of Tricontinental: Institute for Social Research, Chief Editor at LeftWord Books and Chief Correspondent for Globetrotter. His most recent book is Washington Bullets, just out from Monthly Review Press with a preface by Evo Morales Ayma. Music by Nathan Keck, Lizabett Russo, Sidi Touré, and Jonathan Yonts. Visit our website at forthewild.world for the full episode description, references, and action points.Support the show

In the United States, land ownership is dishonorable no matter how you frame it. For example, 60% of land in the U.S. is owned privately and 30% is owned by the federal government, comparatively tribal nations own about 2.5% of their land. Meanwhile, the Gates family recently became the largest owners of American farmland, owning a total of 260,000 acres of land across 19 states, with 242,000 acres being characterized as “farmland.” In today’s episode, we are joined by guest Dr. Cutcha Risling Baldy to explore what land ownership means across the United States, how to begin seeding the concept of land return in mainstream consciousness, and the grave injustices we perpetuate when we continue to draw upon Traditional Ecological Knowledge for climate mitigation and adaptation without working towards land rematration simultaneously. Dr. Cutcha Risling Baldy is an Associate Professor and Department Chair of Native American Studies at Humboldt State University. Her research focuses on California Indians, Indigenous feminisms, social & environmental justice, and decolonization. Dr. Risling Baldy is Hupa, Yurok, and Karuk and an enrolled member of the Hoopa Valley Tribe in Northern California. In 2007, she co-founded the Native Women's Collective, a nonprofit organization that supports the continued revitalization of Native American arts and culture. Music by Aisha Badru, Holy River, and Theresa Andersson. Visit our website at forthewild.world for the full episode description, references, and action points.Support the show

Currently, less than 15% of terrestrial land exists in some form of protected area, the percentage of marine protected areas is significantly lower. It’s undeniable that protecting some of the last vestiges of wild places from industrial decimation is a critical and worthy cause. However, large-scale land conservation projects have also historically displaced many populations and distressed communities that have relied upon pasture and forest for their livelihoods because of previous colonial impositions. In this episode, we explore the complex world of large-scale land conservation and wildlife restoration through the work of Tompkins Conservation with guest Tom Butler. A writer and conservation activist, Tom Butler is author, volume editor, or co-editor of more than a dozen books including Wildlands Philanthropy, Plundering Appalachia, and Overdevelopment, Overpopulation, Overshoot, and ENERGY: Overdevelopment and the Delusion of Endless Growth. Music by Jeffrey Silverstein and Galen Hefferman. Visit our website at forthewild.world for the full episode description, references, and action points. Support the show

Cumberland Island is one of Georgia’s most biologically diverse barrier islands, with its maritime forests, coastal beaches, and salt marshes providing a habitat for many endangered kin, in addition to being a resting point along the transatlantic migratory flyway. This wild place has been fervently loved and protected over the past couple of decades by biologist, naturalist, environmental activist, and full-time resident of the island, Carol Ruckdeschel. This week on the program we speak to Carol about the importance of places like Cumberland Island, some of the most pressing threats Cumberland currently faces, and the dangerous precedent that will be set if we continue to allow private-interest to chip away and fragment the very little bit of wilderness that is currently protected. Music by Eliza Edens, Kesia Nagata, Lauren Alegre, and I Goodfriend. Visit our website at forthewild.world for the full episode description, references, and action points.Support the show

After the 15th century, only five countries in the world had not been colonized by European empires in some form or another. Today we see how the policies, strategies, and technologies intended to “address” climate change will ultimately echo colonial pursuits under the guise of sustainable development and carbon offsets. This week, we explore climate colonialism, reparations, carbon removal, and a real “just transition” with guest Olufemi O. Taiwo. Our conversation doesn’t provide easy answers or solutions but rather reminds us that while climate colonialism is unfurling before us, there is a myriad of tangible ways countries and movements across the so-called global North could begin making reparations. Olufemi O. Taiwo is Assistant Professor of Philosophy at Georgetown University. He studies and teaches social and political philosophy, with an emphasis on the Black radical tradition and anti-colonial thought. Music by 40 Million Feet, Ulali, and Rajna Swaminathan. Visit our website at forthewild.world for the full episode description, references, and action points.Support the show

Called "the queen of canopy research," Nalini Nadkarni explores the rich, vital world found in the tops of trees. Dr. Nadkarni has spent two decades climbing the trees of Costa Rica, Papua New Guinea, the Amazon and the Pacific Northwest, exploring the world of animals and plants that live in the canopy and never come down; and how this upper layer of the forest interacts with the world on the ground. In this episode of For The Wild, initially aired in December of 2017, we journey into the canopies with Nalini to learn about the spectacular biota of the canopy. Music by Emma Tricca, Bert Jansch, and Michael Ching. Visit our website at forthewild.world for the full episode description, references and action points.Support the show

How do we navigate the settler desire to own land? How can our understanding of the commons invite us into collective commitment to caring for the land & staving of speculative land privatization? In response to these questions, Severine shares the messiness & opportunity of living amongst the prosperity of extraction in the spaces we inhabit while dedicating ourselves to a land-based livelihoodSupport the show

Camille Defrenne shares about the role of mother trees in forest regeneration, how mycorrhizal networks are faring, and the ramifications of large scale reforestation and afforestation efforts when they are not implemented thoughtfully and locally.Support the show

Dr. Vandana Shiva shares how we are being set up to become accessories to the digital world and how we can reclaim our intellectual freedom and sovereignty from the hands of digital dictatorship despite Monsanto’s targeted erasure of Traditional Ecological Knowledge. This episode is a powerful reminder that we are meant to live beautiful lives as sovereign beings, not as digital appendages.Support the show

We talk with guest Harsha Walia on why it is imperative to rid the concept of legal/illegal personhood in movements for the climate and environment.Support the show

Dr. Ramsey shares how climate change impacts the nutritional quality of pollen and how human design and development has strengthened and spread spread parasitic mites to the disadvantage of bees globally. Support the show

In this powerful conversation with land defender Sii-am Hamilton, we discuss ways forward that recognize that Indigenous communities have been practicing creative resistance against colonialism & capitalism for hundreds of years and what it means for settlers to ally with Indigenous sovereignty, exploring youth leadership, the media’s role, the necessity of abolishing colonial government and more.Support the show

Corrina Gould reminds us that Ohlone territory still holds tremendous abundance and that the land can sustain us in a way that would provide for our wellbeing should we choose to really re-examine what it is we need to survive. But more than a conversation on the wealth of the land, we explore responsibility and reciprocity on stolen homelands by asking what it means to be in right relationship.Support the show

We seek counsel from Joanna Macy on finding emotional courage, building allyship, and practicing gratitude. Joanna begins by reminding us that “the whole late capitalism project would have us distrust our feelings and privatize them” instead of succumbing to denial, complacency, or isolation we can emerge from it, and move through it...Support the show

We explore the messy and difficult endeavor that is democracy, why voter suppression has become so rampant, the anti-democratic nature of debt, and more. Astra Taylor reminds us that “elections matter, but they are not synonymous with democracy”. Support the show

It’s been almost a year since the 2019 wildfires across Australia began. We recall harrowing images of burnt orange skies, vast swaths of scorched forest, and our beloved kin searching for shelter amidst one of the most intense wildfires. It’s estimated that nearly 30 million acres caught fire, over 20% of Australia’s forests were burnt, and around one billion animals perished...Support the show

Dr. Natasha Myers cultivates a body of thought and practice that prioritizes the intertwined relationship between plants and people, aptly referred to as the Planthroposcene. She leads us to a world where magic happens as we discuss finding non-human guides, the responsibility we have to make room for plants, anthropomorphism, restoration ecology, and reconfiguring our relationship to the future.Support the show

Dr. Caldicott, discusses the environmental and health impacts of the nuclear fuel cycle We explore the health ramifications of nuclear power reactors and the “industrial vandalism” that occurs at these sites and through the transportation and storage of their waste. We also explore nuclear proliferation and global politics. Support the show

Dr. Francis shares his journey including his vow of silence that lasted 17 years, and the profound impact that silence and slowing down can have.Support the show

Investigative reporter and producer Shannon Service, joins us to discuss the cycle of abuse within the Thai fishing trade alongside the larger systemic issues that drive such exploitation. Support the show

Rebecca Burgess, shares how regional and regenerative slow fashion is possible. We explore the rise of industrialized fashion and its global impact, we learn about the history and harm of synthetic dyes and plastic-based textiles, as well as the shortsightedness of “sustainable” fashion innovations. Rebecca shares how we can begin transitioning to a bioregional textile culture and more.Support the show

This week we’ll be hearing from Stephen Jenkinson whose wisdom on the cycle of life and elderhood offers so much that makes the ancient in us sit up and listen. Support the show

Familiar with the physical changes Earth is undergoing due to climate change, we less often think about the auditory changes happening all around us. Dr. Stafford has spent years listening to the sounds of climate change in the Arctic and learning how anthropogenic sounds, like ship propellers and oil and gas exploration, are changing marine mammals’ capacity to communicate...Support the show

Gina Rae La Cerva, prompts us to think about how wild foods are a common heritage that connects us to time and place, reminding us that eating is an act of survival, love, and connectivity. We trace how colonization eradicated many wild foods, the status of wild foods in the global market, and how “feasting wild” is an opportunity for foragers to lead the way in ecological restoration ...Support the show

This week, the U.S. Department of the Interior formally opened up Alaska’s Arctic National Wildlife Refuge to oil and gas drilling, an unprecedented decision that threatens Gwich’in lifeways and sacred lands, while exacerbating both climate and extinction crises. In recognition of this, we are choosing to re-air our critically relevant conversation with Faith Gemmill and Princess Lucaj, originally aired in September of 2016. The fight to protect these life giving ground has been going on for decades and will continue to do so as the first leases to drill for oil and gas could be sold by the end of this year. As the decision to open up 1.57 million acres of the refuge’s coastal plain was only formalized this week, protectors of place are rallying to stop this move, and so we are asking you to remain vigilant for calls to action over the coming months.Faith Gemmill is a Pit River/ Wintu and Neets’aii Gwich’in Athabascan earth defender from Arctic Village, Alaska. She is a part of REDOIL (Resisting Environmental Destruction on Indigenous Lands) and has worked on behalf of the Gwich’in Nation for over a decade as a representative, public spokesperson and Gwich’in Steering Committee staff to address the potential human health and cultural impacts of proposed oil development in the birthplace and nursery of the Porcupine Caribou Herd in the coastal plain of the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge. Princess Daazhraii Johnson/Princess Lucaj is Neets’aii Gwich’in and her family is from Arctic Village, Alaska. Johnson is the former Executive Director for the Gwich’in Steering Committee and is a founding member of the Fairbanks Climate Action Coalition. She also has experience working on climate adaptation for tribes through her on-going work with the Cold Climate Housing Research Center. Johnson received a B.A. in International Relations from The George Washington University and a Masters in Education at the University of Alaska Anchorage with a focus on Environmental and Science Education. She has been a member of the SAG-AFTRA Native American Committee since 2007 and also serves on the Board of Dancing with the Spirit, a program that promotes spiritual wellness through music. In 2015 Johnson was appointed by President Obama to serve on the Board of Trustees for the Institute of American Indian Arts. She is based in Alaska and is currently creative producing an animated series for the WGBH that will premiere on PBS in 2019.. Music by Willie Dunn, Teahawk (ft. Redhawk Woman), Beau, and Kate Wolf. Visit our website at forthewild.world for the full episode description, references and action points.Support the show

Anayvette shares the inspiration and impact of the Radical Monarchs, who exemplify the difference between service and justice, the importance of bringing youth into social justice movements at an early age and what we can learn about sustainability, self-care, and avoiding burn out culture by creating with young ones in mind.Support the show

Jahawi Bertolli takes us underwater to learn about Kenya’s coastal ecosystems and biodiversity, including a tremendous seafaring culture and folklore as well as changing seascapes due to warming waters, overexploitation, and pollution. Jahawi shares how the importance of community-based conservation, traditional ecological knowledge in East Africa, and how storytelling can be a conduit...Support the show

Through eras of colonization and acculturation, we’ve seen the consolidation of seeds into a handful of corporations and the production of a soulless industrial food landscape. Rowen White shares her thoughts on Indigenous food sovereignty, seed restoration as rematriation, and what it means to bring seed relatives home. Support the show

In this heartening encore episode of For The Wild, initially recorded in November of 2015, we speak to all-around inspiration, legendary artist, educator and political activist, Buffy Sainte-Marie. Buffy shares with us her story and how we can authentically grow our creativity in contemporary times. Almost 50 years after the release of her album It’s My Way!, Buffy remains an indomitable artist...Support the show

Lama Rod Owens supports us in navigating the changing of worlds we are experiencing. In recognizing these moments of great turning - our work is to tend to our grief and massage our trauma, as tumultuous as it may be. Rather than running away from the unknown or the uncomfortable, Lama Rod reminds us that it is through experiencing hardship that we develop an emotional buoyancy and resilience....Support the show

Anjali shares how in order to truly support liberatory work and movements, we must unlearn. Beginning with how and where we should source or knowledge, we discuss the problem with passive consumption, the pervasiveness of miseducation, and the academic-industrial complex. Anjali shares how we can create community-based spaces that cultivate knowledge and honesty. Support the show

In conversation with Jackie Wang, we explore the pervasiveness of debt, our temporal and spatial understandings of prisons, and the technological dimensions of surveillance and incarceration. We discuss how we can resist the accession of predictive policing and what digital carceral infrastructure can reveal about the state’s growing surveillance apparatus.Support the show

Leah Penniman guides us through an adaptation of a Haitian prayer from her maternal lineage that honors the forces of nature and our ancestors. Leah’s gracious offering invites us to open ourselves to the elements of the Earth that shape our lives. Together we practice reverence and gratitude for the gifts that surround us and give us our strength, health and nourishment. Support the show

Mariame Kaba joins us for an expansive conversation on Transformative Justice, community accountability, criminalization of survivors, and freedom on the horizon. When we engage with these issues and shape our actions out of a commitment to removing violence at its core, we are working to transform our world...Support the show

Through their work, brontë reminds us that “Black wellness is the antithesis to state violence” (Mark Anthony Johnson) and during these times of great transformation and tension, we must prioritize Black wellness and communal care. Donations given to Lead to Life will fund their rapid response work. As inspiration for giving, we present brontë’s prophecy “The Well”.Support the show

With a historical analysis of slavery and plantation labor, this week’s episode prompts us, at this critical time, to consider what is stolen from those among us who cannot rest under white supremacy and capitalism. In this incredibly rich offering, we speak with Tricia on the myths of grind culture, rest as resistance, and reclaiming imaginative power through sleep. Support the show

brontë, a dear friend of For The Wild, poetically guides us through an expansive exploration of critical ecology, radical imagination, and decomposition as rebellion. brontë encourages us to examine our relationship to place and space, the unmaking of literacy, the decomposition of violence and the prioritization of Black wellness.Support the show

Craig shares the history of his homeland of Guåhan, a place often rendered invisible as an unincorporated territory. We ask Craig about the ongoing militarization of the Pacific and what militarism and tourism have in common when it comes to desecration of place, culture and being. Following this trajectory, we explore deep-sea mining and the impacts of production of lithium-ion batteries. Support the show

This week we’re reissuing this magical conversation with Starhawk, one of the most respected voices in modern Earth-based spirituality, that originally aired in 2017. A veteran of progressive movements, from anti-war to anti-nukes, Starhawk is deeply committed to applying the techniques and creative power of spirituality to political activism. Support the show

Marcia Bjornerud discusses the notion of “timefulness” and healing our relationship with time including events of the geologic past, and recognizing change as constant, and the brilliant complexity of Earth’s systems.Support the show

If we want to create a world where we thrive, we are going to have to get involved with our communities and come together. This is often easier said than done in a hyper-individualistic society. We need voices that can guide us through conflict and unease as we forge connection to create our vision. We discuss with Wildfire Project how we must be willing to work through these things together.Support the show

Lauren discusses the necessity defense in context to the climate crisis, as well as “critical energy infrastructure” felonies, how the oil and gas industry subverts democracy, digital surveillance and the importance of community solidarity in grassroots activism. She reminds us that cohesive and creative grassroots activism can and will overcome profit-driven corruption.Support the show

Andrew Harvey believes that we have before us the possibility of using crisis to empower ourselves, and each other. Embracing an uncertain future, he urges us to support leaders who are inspired, courageous and effective to rise up, to renew the energy of people who are burnt out and apathetic in institutions, and for us as individuals to rediscover an inner compass that renews and inspires Support the show

On this week’s episode, we explore the importance of place and placemaking with guest Teju Adisa-Farrar. We discuss how gentrification originates through the calculated and supremacist devaluation of place, its environmental impacts, and urbanization and urban futures in response to climate and economic migration and changes.Support the show

This week, Lyla June gifts us with a poem that rides with the rushing current of Creation and beckons us to wade into the ever-moving stream of life. Allow Lyla’s poem to wash over you, to uplift your capacity to find strength, forgiveness and connection in times of adversity. May Lyla’s testament to the ancient power of water and geologic time invite deep healing and love into your life. Support the show

Today we are re-listening to our conversation with Jacqui Patterson, originally aired in 2017. We’re bringing this episode back from the archives because over the past couple of weeks, we have seen far too many narratives of disposability when it comes to the communities who are already impacted the most when it comes to environmental, social, and economic injustice…Support the show

Drawing from Antonia’s extensive breadth of knowledge, this episode explores the history of our national fossil fuel sector and discusses the rise of residential drilling, the Bakken oil fields North Dakota, the global glut of oil, environmental deregulation under the Trump administration, lessons from the Exxon Valdez and BP Deepwater Horizon spills, the “separation of oil and state,” and more.Support the show

Kailea offers a this experiential reading woven with simple movements to reawaken our inseparable connection to all of Creation, honoring mothers and caregivers who give of themselves so generously, and who are so deserving of moments of rest to cultivate wellness. Support the show

This conversation with Alnoor invites us into a guided conversation on neoliberal capitalism, the global economic system and how we can work ourselves out of it. We offer this episode during a time in which many of us have witnessed the tumultuous behavior of global markets, the true price of poverty in the face of a pandemic, exorbitant corporate bailouts, and fear of impending collapse. Support the show

We are witnessing the rapid expansion of a pandemic, the decline of the global economy, the incredible power of community, and the shameful behavior that is a symptom of a capital-driven society. Linda discusses what will be left in the wake of COVID-19 and how will we tend to the wounds and offers thoughts on what systems will endure, what must we dismantle and what we must grow.Support the show

Milla Prince transports us on an embodied journey away from anxiety, and back into deeper knowledge of our ancient and integral place within the Web of Life. Milla invites us to root ourselves through the very soil, minerals, water and air of our own bodies and to shed what is old and give ourselves to the stream of life pulsing through the body of nature.Support the show

Initially aired in January of 2020, this episode reminds us that the blatant neglect for people’s wellbeing amidst this global pandemic is not coincidence or negligence, it is the result of a global system that has historically centered profit over people. Rupa reminds us that “the health of the people should be our guiding light and principle.”Support the show

Estrella Santiago Pérez discusses Borinquén grassroots action and community sovereignty amidst climate crisis. Common understanding of Puerto Rico exists in a dichotomy, either defined by lush resort colonies or the aftermath of tropical storms. The reality is, of course, much more dynamic and the vulnerabilities faced by communities are political and colonial created conditions...Support the show

brontë velez transports us through revolutionary prayer. We hope brontë’s incantation ignites your creativity and fills up your inner well with joy, strength and peace. May we learn from the mushrooms what it means to carry death into new lifeSupport the show

We’re rereleasing this potent discussion with Reverend M. Kalani Souza, a gifted storyteller, singer, songwriter, musician, performer, poet, philosopher, priest, political satirist, and peacemaker. This episode originally aired in November of 2018 but we feel that these words on preparedness are more relevant now than ever. Support the show

The Taku, Stikine, and Unuk Rivers are three of the largest salmon producing rivers that originate in so-called BC and flow into SE Alaska. In a climate of weakened environmental regulations, a gold rush continues to unfold, with new mining projects proposed every year. We speak with Jill about corporate mining and transboundary watersheds, following wild salmon in their path beyond borders.Support the show

We join Kenric in conversation to discuss the cultural genesis and impacts of machine learning and technological advancement, the implications of anthropocentrism in design. Kenric also covers topics such as relationality, more-than-human intelligence, the trappings of consumerism, personal agency, artificial intelligence, and interspecies connection. Support the show

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Kurt and Ayana’s conversation explores the powerful memory held by Southern Resident orcas, the threats they face from vessel noise, chemical pollutants, and declining Chinook salmon population, the health of the Salish Sea, and the Lummi Nation’s sacred duty to return Sk’aliCh’elh-tenaut (formerly known as Tokitae/Lolita), from where she is being held captive at Miami Seaquarium...Support the show

Jesse Wolf Hardin discusses folk herbalism as a green portal and agent of holistic wellness, the visceral personalities of place, tending unique bioregional cultures and ecologies, the potency of gratitude, and discovery within the weedy margins. We're called to the rich, dynamic ways of our earthly existence towards a reclamation of our embodied wisdom, resilience, and knowledge.Support the show

Uplifting the untold story of mining, this episode braids together the history of the Gold Rush and colonization in B.C., the state of salmon, the practice of free, prior, and informed consent, dirty mining for a “clean” energy revolution, and the urgent necessity of reform. This timely and important conversation pierces the heart of capitalism and our fossil-fuel-hungry, luxury-driven culture. Support the show

Our conversation with Eriel sheds light on what Unist’ot’en Camp represents, the ongoing history of surveillance faced by frontline protectors, how policy can be a tool of forced assimilation, and the illegality of the actions taken by Canada’s federal and provincial governments. Support the show

This discussion with Christian discusses fungal diversity, the global mushroom market, migration patterns, and invasive versus native fungi. We also look at the reality that the Earth is poised to experience a significant decrease in fungal diversity due to climate change. Support the show

Dr. TallBear and Ayana confront western science’s continued appropriation of Indigenous sexuality, ancestry, and creation while unearthing our universal desires for love and belonging. Support the show

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We are invited by this week’s guest, Dr. Bayo Akomolafe, to pause and abandon solutionism, step back from the project of progress, and dance into a different set of questions: What does the Anthropocene teach us as a destabilizing agent that resists our taming? How can we show up in our movements of justice if “the ways we respond to crisis is part of the crisis”? Support the show

Ayana and Kyle discuss Kyle’s body of work on dystopia and fantasy in climate justice, the reproduction of settler structures, Indigenous science, vulnerability discourses, and “decolonizing allyship.” Kyle concludes with the ever present reminder that our work must be rooted in consent, reciprocity, and trust. Support the show

This expansive conversation touches on Dr. Marya’s work to decolonize medicine, the pervasiveness of medical debt, the need for medical reparations, and the fruitfulness of community-based medicine. We explore how society might look like if the pursuit of health and wellbeing for all was at the foundation of our organizing. Support the show

Ayana and Mike’s conversation touches on the history of cattle ranching and grazing rights, trophic cascades and the vitality of death, the violent lineages of conservation, and ecological restoration as an antidote to species loss.Support the show

We are joined by Mariame Kaba for an expansive conversation on Transformative Justice, community accountability, criminalization of survivors, & freedom on the horizon. Mariame addresses punishment as an issue of directionality while reminding us why it is vital to have the prison abolition movement in conversation with the movement for climate & environmental justice. Support the show

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In honor of Truthsgiving, join us as we meditate upon the true spirit of giving. Lyla and Ayana unravel the great potential held within the UN Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples and well as some of its false assumptions, and propose Indigenous-led frameworks for sovereignty. Lyla reminds us that when we yearn to speak the language of life, love and healing, we must turn to poetry.Support the show

Tune into this episode to hear Ayana’s conversations with six storytellers who are shifting the landscape of conservation from behind their cameras, bold media strategies, and work in the field: Tiffany McNeil, Dr. Ayana Flewellen, Meaghan Brosnan, Rodrigo Farias, Kaitlin Yarnall and Faith Musembi.Support the show

Listen in to Part Two of this intimate conversation as Ayana and Pavini share their reflections on the forest as a teacher of wild love, the field of eros within and beyond the realm of sex, the cyclical nature of death as communion, and strategies for connecting with ancestors of blood and heart. Support the show

Join us for Part One of Ayana and Pavini’s conversation as they delve into deep dialogue on the necessity of relational repair, trans and queer belonging, navigating states of trauma, and breaking settler mentalities within healing spaces.Support the show

Last October, the IPCC reported that we must cut global emissions in half by 2030 to limit warming to 1.5 degrees Celsius. Faced with the enormous task of decarbonizing our economies and radically transforming nearly all systems of life, we must dream into new and ancient futures. At the heart of this calling for transition lies evermore urgent questions of justice.Support the show

Sefra discusses the current loss of seed diversity, the culture of seed saving, the importance of diversity in the global food supply, the grave impacts of seed relief on local agro-economic systems, undermining seed oligarchies, and the ways in which being in relationship with seeds offer us a deeper connection to all dimensions of life. Support the show

Described by many as a sacrifice zone and subsidized timber colony of the US, Prince of Wales Island is one of the most heavily logged areas of the Tongass; there are over 2,500 miles of logging roads on an island that’s only 135 miles long. Our guest this week, Elsa Sebastian, knows this region well, having grown up in the fishing village of Point Baker on northern Prince of Wales Island.Support the show

This week, in Part Two of our episode with brontë velez, we dive into the capacity for pleasure amidst times of great uncertainty and historical oppression. What does “pleasure in the apocalypse” mean? How might this conversation take on different meanings depending on whether we are talking about climate change as an abstraction versus the current lived experience of planetary uncertainty? As brontë defines it, pleasure is what makes us come alive, so how can we create a culture that is deeply attuned to our senses and directs our desire towards Earth and each other? By feeding our senses, how might we confront the isolation and industrialization of our bodies, while acknowledging the limitations of grief in that “suffering is not accountable to the Earth.”brontë velez (they/them) is guided by the call that “black wellness is the antithesis of state violence” (Mark Anthony Johnson). a black-latinx transdisciplinary artist and designer, they are currently moved and paused by the questions, “how can we allow as much room for god to flow through and between us as possible? what affirms the god of and between us? what is in the way? how can we decompose what interrupts our proximity to divinity? what ways can black feminist placemaking rooted in commemorative justice promote the memory of god, which is to say, love and freedom between us?”they relate to god as the moments of divine spacetime that remind us we are not separate, the moments that re-belong us to the earth. they encounter these questions in public theology, black prophetic tradition & environmental justice through their eco-social art praxis, serving as creative director for Lead to Life design collaborative, media director for Oakland-rooted farm and nursery Planting Justice, and quotidian black queer life ever-committed to humor & liberation, ever-marked by grief at the distance made between us and all of life.Part Two of brontë and Ayana’s ripe conversation explores topics including appropriating propaganda and memetics, reorienting ourselves away from the spectacle of terror, tending to erotic energy and sensual spaces, and the nuances around beauty and aesthetics in dominant culture. In closing, we are asked to assess our capacity and privilege and then grow ourselves to create pleasurable pathways, ensure accessibility to embodiment, and foster environments where people are in their senses.♫ Music by Jennifer Johns and members of the Thrive Choir and Jiordi Rosales on cello, recorded at the 2019 Lead to Life Oakland ceremony, a ceremony that melted weapons into the constellations above Oscar Grant the evening he was murdered. The event closed the annual Reclaim King’s Radical Legacy March, hosted by the Anti Police-Terror Project.Additional ♫ Music by Jeremy HarrisSupport the show

In Part One of this expansive conversation, Ayana and brontë delve into topics surrounding authentic expression, the distortion of feminine and masculine powers, beauty and aesthetics, queerness, dominatrix energy, and power as agency. Support the show

Heidi, Alicia and Ayana break through the limits imposed by dominant languages, and invite radical freedom of expression to enrich our unique identities, experiences, our relationships with each other and with the earth. Support the show

Raj and Ayana discuss cheapness in relation to the prison industrial complex, the invisibility of domestic labor and care work, the fallacies of fair trade, and the enclosure of the commons. As the commodification and devaluation of life plunges us deeper into ecological crisis, may we awaken to the truth that cheapness can’t last forever.Support the show

Ayana and Corey discuss the implications of southern pine beetle expansion, how forest structures will shift, the threat to native biodiversity, the importance of cold winters, and how, ultimately, forestry measures are not the solution to a transformation that is propelled by our own short-sightedness in choosing consumerism as the dominant expression of this culture.Support the show

Ayana and Pádraig explore the language of uncommon belonging; how we must learn from our shame and the danger of forgetting history, the life cycle of violence, the nature of colonial power, the poetic origins of violence embedded in policy, and how to confront the inheritance of privilege. Support the show

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This episode discusses man camps, resistance movements, the banking system and corporatocracy. Through strategy and story, we learn how to target the heart of petro-capitalism with our dollars, and reflect on how the end-goals of divestment must lead to a just transition.Support the show

Rachel and Roxanne share their experiences from the frontlines of resistance and call out the patriarchy and settler colonialism that underpins how we navigate issues of land, money, and resource extraction. Together, they discuss the complexity of jurisdictional issues on reservations, the need for free, prior, and informed consent, and potential paths towards justice, healing, and reconciliation.Support the show

Ayana and Donna’s conversation explores topics like the reclamation of truth and “situated knowledge,” the importance of mourning with others, the etymology of “Anthropocene,” the place of forgiveness in movement building, and the urgency of making non-natal kin. Support the show

This week we are rebroadcasting our interview with Pua Case, initially aired in December of 2017. In the past two and a half weeks we have seen the powerful swelling of protectors across the globe in reverence for Mauna a Wākea. Support the show

We join Cinta Kaipat to learn how the Northern Mariana Islands, a U.S. commonwealth, are impacted by militarization.Support the show

This conversation explores the nature of festival culture and our inherent desire for community. You will also hear some of our favorite presentations covering topics like creativity, collective liberation, sovereignty, and ancestral wisdom. Included in this interview are Dr. Vandana Shiva, Desirae Harp & Niria Alicia, Eve Bradford & Isis Indriya, Climbing Poetree and Paul Stamets.Support the show

Last summer, the world watched as mother Orca, Tahlequah, carried her dead calf on a “tour of grief” for more than 1,000 miles over a 17-day period. The Lummi Nation of the Salish Sea believes that Tahlequah’s display of her dead offspring was an intentional act —not only an act of grieving, but intended to stir an empathetic reaction from those who live above the water....Support the show

Lyla June retraces the origins of oppression of European women, men and earth-based cultures through to recent histories of genocide, inter-generational trauma, and the enduring forces that seek to destroy Indigenous women and the earth. Industrial activities that impact the lands and humans at local levels reverberate at an energetic level that has bred today’s crises...Support the show

Ayana speaks to these three key members of ER about creating high-priority changes through nonviolent civil disobedience and economic disruption, while working with citizen’s assembly. They explore the importance of non-violent movements for climate momentum, discussing how regenerative culture and people’s assemblies create inclusive and democratic groups which work against ecofascism and moreSupport the show

Michael and Ayana discuss topics such as the power of creative imagination and youth, the danger of hyper-individualism, pretentious heroism, and the obsession with newness. Michael explores the relationships between wounds and dreams, chaos and beauty, and meditates on his own journey of initiation and the archetypal ground of ancestors, as well as the potent nature of retelling stories.Support the show

Rob and Ayana reflec on growing food and foraging, reimagining wealth and de-monetizing your life, how to hold and move through hypocrisy, and the importance of addressing intersectionality and structural oppression in this work. Support the show

Chris discusses wealth inequality, deindustrialization and the rise of the gig economy, the birth of fascism and Christian fundamentalism, and the fusion of corporate and government power under the reigning umbrella of the security state. Candidly reflecting on his own experiences, he implores us to rise up in our power and defend our agency through civil disobedience and mass resistance.Support the show

Michael and Ayana discuss our widespread culture of disposability, the ecological services and benefits of healthy soil, the beauty of decay and decomposition, the necessity of circular economies, the importance of individual responsibility and community action, and the lessons that compost teaches us about humanity, value, and reverence for what we cannot see.Support the show

Ayana and Mary Evelyn explore how spiritual traditions can respond to environmental crisis, why it is so valuable to understand the emergence of the early universe as we navigate the Anthropocene, and how we can nourish stories of birth, inheritance, and long lineage between body and universe.Support the show

This week’s conversation between john and Ayana explores the frameworks of “othering and belonging” and "targeted universalism," as well as ideologies of supremacy, global dislocation, rethinking citizenship, and lastly, how we can co-create shared visions and practices of humanity that bring us back into belonging.Support the show

Dr. Shiva explores how systems of domination have been artificially constructed, the pervasiveness of GMOs in our food, the roots of violent agriculture, the importance of seed saving, cultures of violence, economies of care, and the role of women in changing paradigms.Support the show

James candidly speaks of the simultaneous beauty and horror of documenting the Anthropocene, the complicity of industries like the arts and entertainment in contributing to fossil fuel emissions, and the importance of language and imagery in mobilizing climate momentum. Ayana and James’ conversation reminds us that amongst the staggering statics, we cannot fall victim to despair...Support the show

Kerry and Ayana discuss the fragility of lichens in changing climates, what our understanding of lichens reveals about our value systems, the invaluable work of citizen scientists, the limitations of science as a “rational” data-driven field, and how the Anthropocene is shaping our understanding of biodiversity and extinction.Support the show

This captivating conversation explores how the denial of pleasure contributes to our own oppression, how radical honesty and kindness can transform our relationships, moving through the limitations placed on radical imagination and desire, the importance of pleasure beyond sex, and how our pain and sorrow is a measurement of our pleasure and joy. Support the show

Ayana and Dr. Wagner discuss insects as biological controls, insect decline in relation to political and economic destabilization, how cultural understandings of insects influence the field of entomology, and the main drivers behind insect decline. It is certainly true that while some people can’t live with insects, we know we can’t live without them…Support the show

Ayana and Andrea discuss a myriad of topics ranging from the importance of an intelligence-led approach to combating wildlife crime, how wildlife crime impacts local and global economies, the geography of trafficking, the socio-political realities that necessitate poaching and trafficking, and the grave danger posed by an increased militarization of conservation.Support the show

Diana Beresford-Kroeger is a one-woman force of regeneration of the biosphere! A botanist, medical biochemist and self-defined "renegade scientist," she brings together ethnobotany, horticulture, spirituality and alternative medicine to reveal a path toward better stewardship of the natural world. Her ambitious Bioplan invites ordinary people to develop a new relationship with nature...Support the show

Charles Eisenstein and Ian MacKenzie join Ayana to discuss what features are inherently built into this money system, how economics does not have to be a merciless system, the importance of universal basic income, what it looks like to step into gift giving, and how we can hold healthy boundaries in the process.Support the show

In this conversation with Ayana and Dr. Jackson, we learn how glacial retreat is impacting communities, the connection between extractive tourism, extractive science, and glaciers, why it matters that the majority of glaciology has been produced by white men, and the ways in which polar and mountain explorations have furthered colonial, capitalist, and imperialist projects. Support the show

Whether or not you are directly engaged in movement building or are an organizer, this is an episode you will not want to miss. Joshua, BJ, and Michael weave strategy on handling disappointment and harm, stepping into our power, and the politics of collapse and rebirth. Support the show

This powerful conversation spans many topics, from the deep wounds of violence and war to the pertinence of moving beyond sensational rhetoric around caravans and the border wall. Ada reminds us that food sovereignty is at the foundation of liberation and thriving communities. Support the show

In January 2019, For The Wild was honored to attend the annual Sundance Film Festival, facilitating our social justice and environmental film, press junket liaising with filmmakers and other amazing influential folks who work with visual storytelling to share about the critical issues of our time. Support the show

Eriel articulates how narratives that surround the developments at Unist’ot’en Camp show how colonization has deeply warped our perspective on who gets labeled the heroes and villains. While the state continues to prioritize the protection and expansion of infrastructure over people, we must encourage each other to see with clear vision where the true threat lies. Support the show

Dr. Nobre clarifies the complexities surrounding the driving factors of deforestation and savannization. Additionally, Ayana and Dr. Nobre discuss the margins of safety that must be implemented, the simultaneous rise of nationalism and the ramifications of climate change, and the possibility of a third way outside the realms of the preservation/consumption...Support the show

Subhankar calls us to find our connection with the Near North while clarifying many misconceptions about the current status of the Refuge and the history of extraction in Alaska.Support the show

Join Ayana this week in conversation with Camila Thorndike as we learn how the tax code can address societal ills, the difference between cap and trade and carbon tax, how policy arrangements reflect our values, and how we can create a price on carbon that is inclusive, progressive, and benefit communities that are often exploited by the so-called green market.Support the show

Join Ayana and Dr. Laurance in conversation about the future of old growth forests, the many impacts of climate destabilization and drought, the dangers of positive feedback, and how infrastructure development is both driving and worsening climate chaos.Support the show

Join us in conversation as we dedicate this week to exploring ancestral legacies around birthing, how we can invest in reproductive rights outside of the current hetero-patriarchal capitalist white supremacist system, the womb space as a place of creation, and birthing support as a human right.Support the show

Join Ayana in conversation with So and Pinar as they explore how tracking and trailing answer the call of our ancestral bodies and the land, what deep intimacy with the more than human world looks like, how place-based skills are tools of liberation, and how to heal community.Support the show

We’ve been combing through the archives and crafting this very special episode for the community that has rallied around us these past few years. Today’s episode highlights some of the many conversations we keep present in heart and mind.Support the show

Toxic masculinity, settler colonialism, and white supremacy are impelling us to a point of no return. If you are coming to this conversation as an environmental advocate, understand that in order to shift our relationship from that of domination over “nature” to one of reciprocity and understanding of the ecosystem we are apart of, we must examine our values with one another. Support the show

Join us as Ayana and John explore topics of ecological identity, embodied wisdom, moving beyond the individual, the tenets of Deep Ecology, and the Rainforest Information Centre’s recent work in Ecuador with the Los Cedros Biological Reserve.Support the show

Join us to learn about what happens in a post fire habitat, why fire is an ecological treasure, not a disaster, how significantly climate change will impact wildfires, and why both politicians and the United States Forest Service have a vested interest in spreading misinformation when it comes to forest management.Support the show

This week we interview Reverend M. Kalani Souza, a gifted storyteller, singer, songwriter, musician, performer, poet, philosopher, priest, political satirist, and peacemaker. Join us in conversation as Ayana and Kalani discuss an “all hands on deck approach” to addressing human behavior and developing personal preparedness.Support the show

Queen Quet and the Gullah/Geechee nation are an exemplary vision of resilience in an age of deterioration, holding on to spirit and hope amidst. Facing the onslaught of colonial terrorism towards both Black and Indigenous lives, Queen Quet's vision is lighting the way forward in troubled times.Support the show

Since 2013, the Nonhuman Rights Project has filed lawsuits on behalf of non-human animals in captivity – including four chimpanzees and three elephants, so far – seeking a writ of habeas corpus. The organization is fighting for the autonomy of our more than human kin as we face the need for multi species liberation.Support the show

This week we are joined by Dr. Biruté Mary Galdikas, a globally renowned anthropologist, conservationist, and orangutan researcher. She has been researching and working with wild and wild-born ex-captive orangutans for nearly half a century.Support the show

Ben Goldfarb is an independent environmental journalist based in Spokane, Washington, whose writing has appeared in publications such as Mother Jones, Science, The Guardian, and High Country News. He is the author of Eager: The Surprising, Secret Life of Beavers and Why They Matter.Support the show

Dr. Russo and the Lummi people believe that Tahlequah carried her baby on the tour of grief because she knows we are watching. The display of her dead offspring in this way was an intentional act– not only an act of grieving, but intended to stir an empathetic reaction from those who live above the water.Support the show

Elizabeth Fournier, affectionately called ‘The Green Reaper,’ is the author of The Green Burial Guidebook: Everything You Need to Plan an Affordable, Environmentally Friendly Burial. Support the show

Heather Milton-Lightening has seventeen years of organizing experience from local issues to international campaigns. Among other topics, Ayana and Heather discuss truth and reconciliation, true ally-ship, the commonality of Trump and Trudeau and reflections from Standing Rock.Support the show

This week’s conversation is with Nnimmo Bassey, an inspirationally committed Nigerian activist, who is fighting the global petrol military complex to reveal the full ecological and human horrors of oil production.Support the show

Steven and Ayana explore the ideas of co-creative integrated polyculture, living reciprocally with the land, autonomous evolution of nature, invasive species, and the origins of our food and medicine plants. Steven has more than thirty years experience living co-creatively with the Earth, practicing traditional living skills of growing food, building and healing.Support the show

This conversation between Ayana and Leah confronts us with harsh realities of injustice, simultaneously speaking of healing, possibility, and reconciliation. We must acknowledge the current state of our food system. Land and food sovereignty are essential to liberation. By re-evaluating our relationship with land and agency, we can fix the problems of our food system and heal our communities...Support the show

Ron Finley is an artist, farmer and visionary who “envisions a world where gardening is gangsta, where cool kids know their nutrition and where communities embrace the act of growing, knowing and sharing the best of the earth’s fresh-grown food.” In this episode Ron asks us to inquire about our socialization, our indoctrination into a capitalistic system of values that perpetuate unwellness...Support the show

Stephen Harrod Buhner is the earth speaking on behalf of themselves. He beautifully and scientifically challenges us to give ourselves fully and humbly in our relationships with our more than human elders and kin, he asks us to walk our talk when it comes to unlearning human supremacy and civilized consumptive conditioning through relationship to plants.Support the show

In an age of natural exploitation and capitalism, under the westward expansion of the settler colonial mindset, we have veered far off the path of right relations. Severance from seven generations thinking has left a falsehood of limitlessness, and we stand at at a critical crossroads for all life on Earth...Support the show

Dr. Robin Wall Kimmerer, an enrolled member of the Citizen Potawatomi Nation is a mother, scientist and writer, a Distinguished Teaching Professor of Environmental Biology at the SUNY College of Environmental Science and Forestry in Syracuse, NY, and the founding Director of the Center for Native Peoples and the Environment. Support the show

Dune Lankard has made a living demonstration of resource conservation over exploitation as better economics ~ to continue to catch fish means preserving what gives fish life. We cannot continue stealing from the future, and the bad economics of doing so are swiftly coming home to roost in climate change, environmental degradation, and the collapse of resources. Support the show

Favianna invites us to explore the wisdom of nature and Earth relations as a lens through which to envision an alternative to the current immigration crisis. As climate change advances, the consequence of human migration will only become more pressing, Favianna invites us to explore the freedom in recognizing this beyond the extractive economical box.Support the show

This week we are rejoined by Zayaan Khan to discuss water scarcity in South Africa. Local communities are experiencing a threshold being reached; a point of no return at which culture can change rapidly. Suddenly people become accustomed to the unthinkable —no showering! no laundry!— and they begin to ask, how could we have ever been so wasteful, so indulgent...Support the show

Through discussion with Zayaan, we trace the ways that the white colonization of South Africa not only destroyed the complexities of the human-to-land relationship, but also continues to ignore the intricacies and connectivity of the landscape, leading to today’s dire drought. Further, we learn how South Africa is still living within the echo chamber of a shockingly repressive colonial system...Support the show

We are living through a time when there are more people, more creatures, more plants, more cultures, dying than ever before. The debts of generations past have accrued to us, but not the wisdom. Our inheritance of obligation, of reciprocity, has been broken and we are left with what is dying, but without any understanding of how to be with it...Support the show

At the heart of Emergent Strategy is moving towards life and learning from the wisdom of nature to drive our social movements. Emergent Strategy asks us to think about spirituality and transformative justice as central to the resilient future we are imagining together. Support the show

Jacinda Mack, leader of First Nations Women Advocating Responsible Mining is a mother, water protector and Indigenous woman striving to promote environmentally sound mining exploration and development processes that respect First Nations rights and grant them full participation. Support the show

This week on For The Wild podcast we are joined by Tom Goldtooth, an Indigenous rights leader in the climate and environmental justice movement. He advocates for building healthy and sustainable Indigenous communities based on traditional knowledge foundations, and works within tribal governments to develop Indigenous-based environmental protection infrastructures.Support the show

This week, we speak with Ron Finley, an artist, designer and a South LA "gangsta" gardener who made the change he wanted to see in his own neighborhood. Together, we learn about how people power and community agitation can facilitate change. Support the show

This week’s episode centers around the devastating impacts of salmon farming on the Pacific coast of British Columbia. This week’s guest, Alexandra Morton, is an expert in salmon farming and the viruses perpetuated by this destructive aquaculture practice– she has written 26 papers on the topic alone and is a leader in the movement to halt salmon farming off the coast of British Columbia.Support the show

This week we’re joined by Ian McAllister, co-founder and Executive Director of Pacific Wild, a non-profit located in the heart of the Great Bear Rainforest. McAllister is committed to defending wildlife and their habitat on Canada’s Pacific Coast. Support the show

Ulrich is a German ecologist and conservationist who has been living in Vienna, Austria for 29 years. He worked for the World Wildlife Fund Austria for more than 17 years until 2007, being primarily concerned with river conservation and restoration. He has been campaigning internationally against the construction of hydropower plants, such as dams along the Danube and the Ilisu Dam project... Support the show

Malik Kenyatta Yakini is an activist and educator who is committed to freedom and justice for humanity. Yakini is co-founder and Executive Director of the Detroit Black Community Food Security Network (DBCFSN). DBCFSN operates a seven-acre urban farm and is spearheading the opening of a co-op grocery store in Detroit’s North End. Support the show

Jurek is one of the activists camped out with Camp of the Forest-a non-hierarchic, grassroots, no-logo camp based on equality. Theirs is a movement for everyone: “It’s not a movement of some radical fighters. It’s not a movement of young men or young women or any specific social, economical, age group, or gender group. It’s open for anyone, from any country around the world, who wants to come...Support the show

This week’s interview is with Jeremy Lent, an author whose writings investigate the patterns of thought that have led our civilization to its current crisis of sustainability. His book, The Patterning Instinct: A Cultural History of Humanity’s Search for Meaning, published last year, explores the way humans have made meaning from the cosmos from hunter-gatherer times to the present day.Support the show

This week we are honored to host activist, farmer and educator, Leah Penniman. Leah lives in steadfast dedication to her mission of weaving the vast and vital threads of honoring heritage, building relationship to land and ending racism and injustice in the food system.Support the show

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The advent of modern technology within deeply misguided institutions and cultures has accelerated the near-demise of the biosphere. Our guest, Dr. David Shearer, argues that coupled with a deep awareness of ecological realities, visionary technology can benefit nature and society, and perhaps even help avert a worst-case climate disaster. Support the show

Rue Mapp is pioneering a movement of equity and justice in the outdoor recreation and environmental movement. Outdoor Afro has become the nation’s leading network that celebrates and inspires African American connections and leadership in nature, letting people know that they are welcome in the outdoors to build community and find healing. Support the show

At the heart of what brown calls Emergent Strategy, is moving towards life and learning from the wisdom of nature to drive our social movements. Emergent Strategy asks us to think about spirituality and transformative justice as central to the resilient future we are imagining together, urging us to really show up, for ourselves and one another...Support the show

Drawing on groundbreaking new discoveries, Peter Wohlleben studies the social life of trees, how they rely on one another and build communities. A tree can be only as strong as the forest that surrounds it and each tree performs a specific role in the health and well being of the forest– our tree elders have so much to teach us about relationship building and community.Support the show

Miriam Horn has worked at the Environmental Defense Fund since 2004. She is the author of three books: Rebels in White Gloves, the New York Times bestselling Earth: the Sequel: The Race to Reinvent Energy and Stop Global Warming, and Rancher, Farmer, Fisherman, Conservation Heroes of the American Heartland. Support the show

This week’s journey on For The Wild is with the mesmerizing visionary leader brontë velez who poetically guides us through an exploration of critical ecology, radical imagination and decomposition as rebellion. brontë graciously encourages us to examine our relationship to place and space, the decolonization of literacy, the decomposition of violence and the prioritization of Black wellnessSupport the show

Today we join Bill Mckibben to discuss news from the frontlines of climate chaos and resistance. The discussion centers around the potential fate of modern civilization and the imperative to survive and to restore biodiversity. Bill McKibben is an author and environmentalist. His 1989 book The End of Nature is regarded as the first book written for a general audience discussing climate change...Support the show

Angelo Baca is a Navajo and Hopi filmmaker, and a PhD candidate in sociocultural anthropology at NYU. A graduate of the Native Voices Program at the University of Washington, he has created numerous documentaries and collaborative works around such subjects as Indigenous food sovereignty, and Indigenous international repatriation.Support the show

Called "the queen of canopy research," Nalini Nadkarni explores the rich, vital world found in the tops of trees. Dr. Nadkarni has spent two decades climbing the trees of Costa Rica, Papua New Guinea, the Amazon and the Pacific Northwest, exploring the world of animals and plants that live in the canopy and never come down...Support the show

Jacqueline Patterson is the Director of the NAACP Environmental and Climate Justice Program. Since 2007 Patterson has served as coordinator & co-founder of Women of Color United. Jacqui Patterson has worked as a researcher, program manager, coordinator, advocate and activist...Support the show

Pualani Case, born and raised on the Island of Hawai’i surrounded by the high mountains of Mauna Kea, Mauna Loa, Hualalai and Kohala, the fresh waters of Kohakohau and Waikoloa and the plains of Waimea. Pua’s life path and purpose has led her to become a Kumu Hula, a teacher of traditional dance and chant, and a teacher of the ways, culture and traditions of the kanaka maoli...Support the show

Today we speak with George Monbiot, who studied zoology at Oxford, and has spent his career as a journalist and environmentalist, working with others to defend the natural world. His celebrated Guardian columns are syndicated all over the world...Support the show

This week, join Ayana in conversation with organizer, facilitator, public speaker and writer on Indigenous rights and environmental & economic justice, Clayton Thomas-Müller. As a member of the Treaty #6 based Mathias Colomb Cree Nation also known as Pukatawagan located in Northern Manitoba, Canada, Clayton is the 'Stop it at the Source' campaigner with 350.org. Support the show

As the Founder and Executive Director of Honor the Earth, Winona is fighting against pipelines while simultaneously creating tangible solutions for oil independence. She is rooted in the White Earth Anishinaabe Nation located in Becker, Clearwater, and Mahnomen counties of north-central Minnesota.Support the show

This episode we speak with Dr. Sylvia A. Earle, called "Her Deepness" by the New Yorker and the New York Times, "Living Legend" by the Library of Congress, and first "Hero for the Planet" by Time magazine. Dr. Earle is an oceanographer, explorer, author, and lecturer. She has experience as a field research scientist, government official, and director for corporate and nonprofit organizations. Support the show

Today’s powerful conversation revolves around the state of our oceans, threats to marine wildlife, Sea Shepherd’s resistance through what Paul Watson calls “aggressive non-violence”, political dynamics and the tensions between subsistence hunters and conservationists...Support the show

This week on For The Wild we speak with Terry Tempest Williams. Williams is a prolific writer who speaks out on behalf of an ethical stance toward life. A naturalist and fierce advocate for freedom of speech, she has consistently shown us how environmental issues are social issues that ultimately become matters of justice.Support the show

Kandi Mossett (Mandan, Hidatsa, Arikara – North Dakota) has emerged as a leading voice in the fight to bring visibility to the impacts that climate change and environmental injustice are having on Indigenous communities across North America.Support the show

We’re joined today by two people whose mission is to realize the potential of plants and soil communities to restore our future. John Wick and Call Rose Ostrander.Support the show

The decades-long struggle over British Columbia's coastal rainforests culminated in an extraordinary conservation, social justice, and Indigenous rights victory: a historic multi-generational agreement to conserve and sustainably manage the Great Bear Rainforest, one of the largest old growth temperate rainforests on the planet. We are joined by Jody Holmes, primary architect of this agreement.Support the show

Theresa Two Bulls is an attorney, prosecutor and politician in the United States and the Oglala Sioux Tribe. Support the show

Alnoor Ladha's discusses neoliberal capitalism, the global economic system and how we can work ourselves out of it. Support the show

Jasmine Fuego is an activist, artist and permaculturist redefining the transformational festival scene by bridging the gap between art and action. Support the show

Ayana is joined by Chief Caleen Sisk, spiritual leader of the Winnemem Wintu Tribe of Northern California, to explore how the forces of industrial society have attempted to tame and exploit living waters, and how Indigenous stewards are facing the subsequent ecological predicament. Support the show

Starhawk is one of the most respected voices in modern earth-based spirituality, and a cofounder of Reclaiming, an activist branch of modern Pagan religion. She is a veteran of progressive movements, from anti-war to anti-nukes, and is deeply committed to bringing the techniques and creative power of spirituality to political activism. Support the show

In this episode we speak with activist Eriel Tchekwie Deranger about the largest industrial project in the world, the Tarsands in Alberta, Canada, and strategize about the future of the fossil fuel resistance. Support the show

Having spent his life on the seas from Newfoundland to Alaska, Bren Smith has witnessed the collapse of global fisheries. Over the last decade and a half, he has developed methods of vertical 3D ocean farming and is determined to pioneer and popularize a food system that carries marine restoration in its architecture. Support the show

Lyla June retraces the origins of oppression of European women, men and earth-based cultures through to recent histories of genocide, inter-generational trauma, and the enduring forces that seek to destroy Indigenous women and the earth. Support the show

Lyla June is a musician, public speaker and internationally recognized performance poet. Descended from Diné (Navajo) and Tsétsêhéstâhese (Cheyenne) lineages, her personal mission in life is to grow closer to Creator by learning how to love deeper.Support the show

Stephen Jenkinson is an activist, teacher, author, and farmer, with a masters degree in theology from Harvard University and a masters degree in social work from the University of Toronto. Formerly a program director at a major Canadian hospital and medical-school assistant professor, Jenkinson is now a sought-after workshop leader, speaker, and consultant to palliative care and hospice organizations. He is the founder of the Orphan Wisdom School and the subject of the documentary film Griefwalker. Support the show

Today we are joined by the co-founder and president of Bioneers, Nina Simons, an award winning social entrepreneur and visionary thinker. Support the show

Today we’re speaking Faith Gemmill, a Pit River/ Wintu and Neets’ aii Gwich’in Athabascan earth defender from Arctic Village, Alaska. Also joining us is Princess Lucaj. She is the former Executive Director of the Gwich’in Steering Committee and Alaska Director at the Indigenous Leadership Institute. Support the show

Today, the conversation with Radical Mycology’s Peter McCoy probes onward, as we invoke the powers of fungi in Earth healing and the integration of human societies into our delicate and compromised biosphere. Support the show

We welcome back Peter McCoy, who leads us through the earliest evidence of the fungal “queendom” in the development of culture and human intelligence, and shows how understanding fungal biology and mycelial webs can steer our social experiments. Support the show

We look deep into the challenges faced by frontline Indigenous activists in the Mississippi Delta with Monique Michelle Verdin, creator of the film My Louisiana Love and Cherri Foytlin, author of "Spill It! The Truth About the Deep Water Horizon Oil Rig Explosion." Support the show

Dr. Kimmerer is a mother, scientist, writer, Distinguished Teaching Professor of Environmental Biology at the SUNY College of Environmental Science and Forestry in Syracuse, NY, and the founding Director of the Center for Native Peoples and the Environment. Support the show

Jill Stein is the Green Party’s 2016 candidate for President of the United States. Support the show

Learn more about Diana's amazing upcoming film "The Call of the Forest: The Forgotten Wisdom of Trees" at http://dianasjourney.comSupport the show

Diana Beresford-Kroeger is a one-woman force of regeneration of the biosphere! A botanist, medical biochemist and self-defined "renegade scientist," she brings together ethnobotany, horticulture, spirituality and alternative medicine to reveal a path toward better stewardship of the natural world. Support the show

Rosemary Gladstar is a pioneer in the herbal movement and has been called the 'godmother of American Herbalism'.Support the show

Andrew Harvey is Founder Director of the Institute of Sacred Activism, an international organization focused on inviting concerned people to take up the challenge of our contemporary global crises by becoming inspired, effective, and practical agents of institutional and systemic change, in order to create peace and sustainability. Support the show

Musician and activist Buffy Sainte-Marie discusses creativity in an age of commodification, being indigenous in a global village, demythologizing the power elites, and more!Support the show

Elizabeth Kolbert is a staff writer for the NEW YORKER, author of Field Notes from a Catastrophe: Man, Nature and Climate Change, and most recently The Sixth Extinction: An Unnatural History, which has just won the Pulitzer Prize for Non-fiction.Support the show

Trebbe Johnson, helps people break through the walls that isolate them from the pain and healing of the Earth. She has been leading workshops, and ceremonies worldwide since 1994, is the founder of Radical Joy for Hard Times, a non-profit organization devoted to finding and making beauty in wounded places, and the author of The World Is a Waiting Lover. Support the show

Vandana Shiva is a world-renowned environmental thinker and activist. A leader in the International Forum on Globalization, Shiva won the Alternative Nobel Peace Prize (the Right Livelihood Award) in 1993. Director of the Research Foundation for Science, Technology, and Natural Resource Policy, she is the author of many books, including Stolen Harvest: The Hijacking of the Global Food Supply and Biopiracy: The Plunder of Nature and Knowledge. Before becoming an activist, she was one of India’s leading Physicists. Support the show

Curt Stager is an ecologist, paleoclimatologist, and science journalist with a Ph.D. in biology and geology from Duke University (1985). Support the show

Peter is the founder and Executive Director of Rewild Portland, a local non-profit that creates cultural and environmental resilience through the education of earth-based arts, traditions, and technologies. Support the show

Leila Darwish is a community organizer, author, permaculture designer, educator, urban gardener, and grassroots herbalist with a deep commitment to environmental justice, decolonization, food sovereignty, and to providing accessible and transformative tools for communities dealing with toxic contamination of their land and drinking water. Over the last decade, she has worked as a grassroots bioremediation instructor for different environmental organizations and community groups in Alberta, BC and the USA on campaigns such as tar sands, fracking, nuclear energy, coal, climate justice, water protection, and more. Support the show

Martín Prechtel is a leading thinker, writer and teacher whose work, both written and oral, hopes to promote the subtlety, irony and pre-modern vitality hidden in any living language. Support the show

Miles Olson, has spent the past decade deeply immersed in learning and practicing Earth Skills, while foraging, hunting, gardening and gathering for his livelihood. His experiences have given him a unique perspective on rewilding, radical self-reliance, and the impact of civilization on the natural world. Support the show

Tom Waldo is senior staff attorney with Earth Justice in Alaska, who has dedicated the last 25 years to defending Alaska’s ancient forests and other urgent causes.Support the show

Mary Ellen Hannibal is a Bay Area writer and editor focusing on science and culture. Hannibal’s book The Spine of the Continent is about a social, geographical, and scientific effort to save nature along the Rocky Mountains. Support the show