For The Wild

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 wou...

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 brie...

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....

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 line...

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 a...

“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 mean...

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...

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 explo...

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 relentle...

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 w...

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...

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 th...

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...

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-constru...

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...

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 p...

“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 l...

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 relati...

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 pe...

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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 neu...

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...

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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 dee...

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