For The Wild

Giuliana Furci, an expert in fungal ecology and the first female mycologist in Chile, dives into the profound world of fungi and their essential role in our ecosystem. She emphasizes the beauty of decomposition and its significance for regeneration. Giuliana discusses the urgent need for fungal conservation amidst climate change and habitat destruction. The conversation also touches on challenging patriarchal biases in mycology and the lessons fungi teach us about interconnectivity and life's cycles. Discover how these organisms shape our planet.

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

In this podcast, Terry Tempest Williams discusses the importance of public lands and the threat they face. They explore the interconnectedness of abused landscapes and the need for empathy and sacrifice. The podcast also delves into the interplay between philosophical ideals and tangible restoration, the transformation of Mariposa Grove, and the significance of viewing land as a relationship.

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