Last Born In The Wilderness

Author and former climate journalist Dahr Jamail returns to the podcast to discuss the 20th anniversary of the invasion and occupation of Iraq by United States-led coalition forces. Jamail began his journalistic career as an unembedded journalist documenting the war from the ground beginning in 2003, highlighting the countless war crimes committed by the occupying forces against the civilians of I...

Social critic and activist Alley Valkyrie returns to the podcast to discuss the recent wave of strikes and civil disrupt in France. As someone who has spent most of their life within the borders of the United States and a current resident of Rennes, France, Alley provides a well-rounded description of events that have led to one of the largest strikes and protests in recent memory in the nation. /...

Clark from the Atlanta Community Press Collective joins me to discuss the Stop Cop City movement, also known as the Defend the Atlanta Forest (or Defend Weelaunee Forest) movement in Atlanta, Georgia. Clark is not a representative of the movement, but through his coverage, speaks clearly to the concerns raised by activists and forest occupiers of the construction of Atlanta Public Safety Training...

Writer John Halstead returns to the podcast to discuss his widely read article, 'umping the Gap: Where Green Transphobia Leads,'published at A Beautiful Resistance. John Halstead’s article uses the ideological trajectory of Paul Kingnorth, co-founder of the Dark Mountain Project and a fierce critic of “Big Green environmentalism,” to examine trans-exclusionary politics and rhetoric in certain left...

Evolutionary epidemiologist and author Rob Wallace returns to the podcast to discuss his new collection, The Fault in Our SARS: COVID-19 in the Biden Era, published through Monthly Review. This discussion is long, but certainly worth a listen. Entering year four of the pandemic, Rob Wallace has diligently, and extensively, written two books worth of essays on the various facets of the SARS-2 outbr...

Investigative journalist and author Justin Mikulka joins me to discuss the recent train derailment in East Palestine, bomb trains, and the devastating consequences the lack of regulation of the railroad industry is having on the environment and human communities across North America. // Episode notes + transcript: https://www.lastborninthewilderness.com/episodes/justin-mikulka // Sustain + support...

Animist artist, practitioner, and facilitator Dare Carrasquillo (formerly Sohei) returns to the podcast to discuss death practice, collectivism as the politics of wholeness, trauma and the story of the self, and the proto-human matrifocal coalition and the ritual of no. // Episode notes: https://www.lastborninthewilderness.com/episodes/dare-sohei-2 // Sustain + support: https://www.patreon.com/las...

Journalist Brian Mier, co-editor at Brasil Wire and correspondent for teleSUR English, returns to the podcast to discuss the recent chaos in Brazil, days after the inauguration of popular center-left President Lula da Silva. What are the Bolsonaristas attempting to accomplish? What guides their actions? Why is this event so similar to the infamous chaos at the US Capitol on January 6th? Brian Mier...

Author and journalist Shane Burley returns to the podcast to discuss the anthology ‘No Pasaran: Antifascist Dispatches from a World in Crisis,’ published this fall through AK Press. Burley is the editor and a contributor to this collection. In catching up since our last interview, I ask Shane to clarify where the far-right stands in a "post-Trump" context. What inroads have far-right, and explicit...

Author Travis Linnemann joins me to discuss his recently released book The Horror of Police, published by University of Minnesota Press. A good amount of ink has been spilt on the subject of policing—its historical origins; the oppressive and repressive role police play in the day-to-day lives of various marginalized communities; how “copaganda” shapes our collective perceptions of police and poli...

Award-winning journalist Boyce Upholt joins me to discuss his article Will the Next Pandemic Start With Chickens? published at The New Republic. Boyce begins his report, as well as this interview, by describing the troubling conditions in chicken facilities in Butler Country, Nebraska, and, by extension, across the industrialized world. This past spring, a highly deadly and contagious strain of av...

Indigenous archeologist Dr. Paulette Steeves (Cree-Métis) joins me to discuss The Indigenous Paleolithic of the Western Hemisphere, “a reclaimed history of the deep past of Indigenous people in North and South America during the Paleolithic." There are myths we are told growing up—be it via schooling, popular media, or elsewhere—that people have lived in the Western Hemisphere for only 10-12,000 y...

Independent political analyst and CounterPunch Radio host Eric Draitser returns to the podcast to provide an update on the ongoing Russian invasion of Ukraine. The last we spoke about this subject was March 2nd, seven days into the invasion. Eight months into this war, I ask Eric: Where do the Russians and Ukrainians stand in this blatant war of aggression by Putin? Who stands to gain from prolong...

Death Panel co-host and disability justice advocate Beatrice Adler-Bolton returns to the podcast to discuss their new book Health Communism: A Surplus Manifesto, co-authored with Artie Vierkant and published through Verso Books. Health Communism “offers an overview of life and death under capitalism and argues for a new global left politics aimed at severing the ties between capital and one of its...

Dr. Mohamed Abdou joins me to discuss Islam and Anarchism: Relationships and Resonances, published this year by Pluto Press. What are the relationships and resonances between anarchism and Islam? Anarchism, through its Western manifestation, claims "no gods, no masters" as fundamental to anti-authoritarianism, both in theory and practice. Through that lens, what "relationships and resonances" then...

Anarchist writer and activist Peter Gelderloos returns to the podcast to discuss ecological revolution from below, beautifully documented in his book The Solutions are Already Here: Strategies for Ecological Revolution from Below, published this year by Pluto Press. Nothing short of revolution is required to address the global ecological crisis. The technocratic solutions presented to us by variou...

Dr. Aby Sène joins me to discuss fortress conservationism and the 30x30 plan, a proposal by Western conservation agencies and their corporate and state allies "to double the coverage of protected areas around the world by setting aside 30 percent of terrestrial cover for conservation by 2030." On the surface, the 30x30 proposal (the Post-2020 Global Biodiversity Framework) to protect biodiversity...

Michael Truscello joins me to discuss his book Infrastructural Brutalism: Art and the Necropolitics of Infrastructure, in which he “looks at the industrial infrastructure not as an invisible system of connectivity and mobility that keeps capitalism humming in the background but as a manufactured miasma of despair, toxicity, and death. Truscello terms this “infrastructural brutalism”—a formulation...

Artist, writer, and death worker Rachael Rice joins me to discuss death practice, entitlement, and honesty in our time of collapse and extinction. This is an honest conversation, between friends. Both Rachael and I have very different lived experiences, but we align in several significant ways, especially when it comes to interpreting and navigating an extraordinarily messy time. The felt sense an...

Michael Laufer of the Four Thieves Vinegar Collective returns to the podcast to reiterate the aims of the group, and update us on the collective's recent and soon to be launched projects.  As a founding member of this project, Dr. Laufer's objective has been to communicate the philosophical and material objectives of the organization, which has been described as "an anarchist biohacking group." Si...

Meteorologist and geoscientist Nicholas Humphrey returns to the podcast, sharing his insights into the various catastrophic, record-breaking heatwaves and weather events currently playing out in numerous regions across the planet. He explains how the complex dynamics of anthropogenic climate disruption is quickening the pace of these events, and in turn, how ill adapted and ill prepared we are in...

Renowned climate scientist and "ice maverick" Dr. Jason Box joins me to discuss the specific and broad implications of anthropogenic climate disruption. He cites nearly three decades worth of on-the-ground documentation of the impacts human industrial activity is having on the rapidly thawing Greenland ice sheet, written about extensively in his independently published book Faster Than Forecast: T...

Darcia Narvaez and Four Arrows join me to discuss their recently published book ‘Restoring the Kinship Worldview: Indigenous Voices Introduce 28 Precepts for Rebalancing Life on Planet Earth,’ a work that contains "selected speeches from Indigenous leaders around the world—necessary wisdom for our times, nourishment for our collective, and a path away from extinction toward a sustainable, intercon...

Journalist Arun Gupta returns to the podcast to discuss the "very corporeal ideology" of fascism, the so-called "Great Replacement Theory”, the recent mass shooting in Buffalo, New York, and how each of these subjects tie into the broader sociopolitical project of the far right in the United States. The ideological and conspiratorial framework of the “Great Replacement Theory” has motivated numero...

Atmospheric scientist Tim Garrett joins me to discuss, among other things, collapse. Contained within this hour-long interview, we cover the thermodynamics of civilizational growth and inevitable decline, the irrationality of dominant economic theory, Jevons Paradox, and his fascinating and wondrous study of clouds and snowflakes. // Episode notes: https://www.lastborninthewilderness.com/episodes/...