For The Wild

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 d...

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...

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 dec...

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...

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 o...

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 epi...

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 parti...

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...

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 qu...

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 a...

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...

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...

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...

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...

Support the show

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 t...

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 l...

“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...

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 furt...

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...

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 temporar...

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 commo...

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 acre...

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 commun...

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 activis...