Last Born In The Wilderness

Eric Draitser, independent political analyst and host of CounterPunch Radio, joins me to discuss the Russian invasion of Ukraine. We recorded this discussion March 3rd 2022 — exactly seven days into this ongoing conflict. Eric has been publishing very concise, clear, and measured analysis of the invasion of Ukraine by the Russian military almost daily since it began — mostly through 15-20 minute videos published publicly, and through his Patreon page for his supporters. He applies a principled anti-imperialist, anti-war, and leftist approach to his detailed summaries of this situation as it unfolds — pointing to the roles that both Russian leadership (primarily Russian President Vladimir Putin) and the United States and its NATO partners in Europe have played in the escalation of this conflict. What are the short-term, and long-term, aims of Russia in this invasion? What is the historical context this war sits within? What are the ideological components to this? And most importantly, who ultimately suffers from this conflagration in Eastern Europe? We discuss all this and more in this interview. // Episode notes: https://www.lastborninthewilderness.com/episodes/eric-draitser-2 // Sustain + support: https://www.patreon.com/lastborninthewilderness // Donate: https://www.paypal.me/lastbornpodcast

Lily Kay Ross, sexual violence researcher and Arts and Gender Editor at Psymposia, joins me to discuss her research and insights into the dark underbelly of psychedelic therapy — a subject expertly explored in Power Trip, a New York Magazine investigative podcast series she is the co-creator and producer of. As psychedelics become less stigmatized in the West and popularized as tools for trauma therapy and vehicles for spiritual enlightenment, Lily Kay Ross has been documenting something far more complex and nefarious under the surface of the optimistic image of the "psychedelic renaissance": sexual misconduct and abuse; pervasive ethical malfeasance. As she documents in Power Trip, there are numerous documented cases of so-called shamans and psychedelic guides taking advantage of their clients, violating bodily autonomy, and gaslighting victims into accepting abuse as "part of the healing journey." // Episode notes: https://www.lastborninthewilderness.com/episodes/lily-kay-ross // Sustain + support: https://www.patreon.com/lastborninthewilderness // Donate: https://www.paypal.me/lastbornpodcast

Andy Ciccone and Elliott Evans, hosts of The Poor Prole's Almanac, join me to discuss a variety of subjects relating to the broad subject of collapse. We expound on what the "death wobbles" of the fragmenting, and declining, society we live within means for present and near future survival. How do we prepare for what is happening? How do we orient ourselves beyond the hyper-individualist notion of "prepping" for the apocalypse, as is often conceived of in US culture? // Episode notes: https://www.lastborninthewilderness.com/episodes/poor-proles-almanac // Sustain + support: https://www.patreon.com/lastborninthewilderness // Donate: https://www.paypal.me/lastbornpodcast

Pagan author and poet Christopher Scott Thompson joins me to discuss the intersections between animism and anarchism as defined in his essays, and books, published through Gods & Radicals Press, including Pagan Anarchism, and most recently, The Book of Onei (an antinomian dream grimoire), and If In Ruins We Must Live (a collection of mystic poetry). // Episode notes: https://www.lastborninthewilderness.com/episodes/christopher-scott-thompson // Sustain + support: https://www.patreon.com/lastborninthewilderness // Donate: https://www.paypal.me/lastbornpodcast

Award-winning journalist, policy researcher, author, and historian Paul Street joins me to discuss the highly controversial and divisive Kyle Rittenhouse case and subsequent acquittal. Along with providing a substantive exploration of the broad sociopolitical context of this trial, we also touch on the case of the modern-day lynching of Ahmaud Arbery and the recent conviction of the men who murdered him in Georgia, the concerted legislative push in Republican dominated states across the U.S. to impose harsher voter restrictions and roll back reproductive rights on the national level, and what these trends mean for the upcoming elections of 2022 and 2024, and electoral politics as a whole. // Episode notes: https://www.lastborninthewilderness.com/episodes/paul-street // Sustain + support: https://www.patreon.com/lastborninthewilderness // Donate: https://www.paypal.me/lastbornpodcast

Rob Wallace—evolutionary epidemiologist, agroecologist, and author of Dead Epidemiologists: On the Origins of COVID-19—joins me to discuss the complex interplay between the increase in infectious pathogens globally, the role of epidemiology within the neoliberal capitalist project, agribusiness and ecological destruction, and Empire at the end of the "cycle of accumulation" in late-stage capitalism. We reference his large body of work, but in particular two of his most recent Patreon pieces, A Spray of Split Seconds and Vic Berger's American Public Health. Zoonotic pathogen spillover into human populations is on the upward trend. The high-speed evisceration of the last remaining intact biodiverse regions on the planet, in conjunction with agribusiness’s rapacious exploitation of biological life, meets the conditions for highly contagious viruses to evolve and leap from animal to human hosts more successfully and frequently. Regarding this epidemiological reality, Rob Wallace is an archetypal Cassandra, having predicted a pandemic emerging under current conditions as only a matter of time. As we know all know, he was right. SARS-CoV-2 emerged at the very end of 2019 in Wuhan, China, and over the course of almost two years, has killed millions of human beings as it continues to mutate and burn its way through the global population, disrupting practically every governing system of human life in the process. We have entered into an age of pandemics. Unless a massive shift occurs in the global economic order (be it systemic collapse or revolution, you pick), the idea of a global pandemic only occurring every 100 years or so, and not every one to two decades (or less), would be delusional. // Episode notes: https://www.lastborninthewilderness.com/episodes/rob-wallace // Sustain + support: https://www.patreon.com/lastborninthewilderness // Donate: https://www.paypal.me/lastbornpodcast

Michael Beyea Reagan, historian and activist, joins me to discuss his book Intersectional Class Struggle: Theory and Practice, an "innovative study [that] explores the relevance of class as a theoretical category in our world today, arguing that leading traditions of class analysis have missed major elements of what class is and how it operates." In our time of increasing wealth disparity and widespread socioeconomic precarity for the working class (dubbed the "Second Gilded Age"), how can intersectionality, as a theoretical framework and practice, help us more deeply understand and appreciate the liberatory struggles of racial, economic, and feminist movements? Reagan, through his excellent historical documentation in ‘Intersectional Class Struggle,’ has provided a more nuanced, and richer, view of class consciousness that does not fit into crude boxes. // Episode notes: https://www.lastborninthewilderness.com/episodes/michael-reagan // Sustain + support: https://www.patreon.com/lastborninthewilderness // Donate: https://www.paypal.me/lastbornpodcast

Mark Freeman, narrative psychologist and Distinguished Professor of Ethics and Society at the College of the Holy Cross, discusses his book Do I Look at You with Love?: Reimagining the Story of Dementia, documenting the final twelve years of his mother’s life of cognitive decline with dementia. This interview explores the complex reality of the narratives of the self, memory, the “tragic promise” of dementia, relationship, and the final acts of care one can provide for a dying loved one. // Episode notes: https://www.lastborninthewilderness.com/episodes/mark-freeman // Sustain + support: https://www.patreon.com/lastborninthewilderness // Donate: https://www.paypal.me/lastbornpodcast

Rune Hjarnø Rasmussen, historian of religion and founder of the Nordic Animism project, returns to the podcast to discuss animism and the Raven totem flag project he, and others, have created to define and symbolize humanity's role in the climate disrupted present we find ourselves in. Through years of in-depth research into the history and contemporary practice of animist religious/spiritual traditions the world over, Rune has unique insight into the nature of the numerous crises the world finds itself in presently. In our first discussion on this podcast, he framed the global climate crisis through the myth of Ragnarök, famously depicted in the Old Norse poem Völuspá. In this interview, I ask him to help us understand, though a mythic lens, the roots of the widespread proliferation of conspiracist thinking (endemic within the United States) in our “post-truth” era. How has modernity produced this crisis of meaning in the Western world today? What value can animism provide, not only in identifying the source of this crisis, but also in rooting ourselves in a world that is undergoing climate cataclysm and civilizational rupture? // Episode notes: https://www.lastborninthewilderness.com/episodes/rune-rasmussen-2 // Sustain + support: https://www.patreon.com/lastborninthewilderness // Donate: https://www.paypal.me/lastbornpodcast

Writer, poet, and essayist Sophie Strand joins me to discuss the "emergency of storytelling" in our climate disrupted present and future, and the subjects she explores in her upcoming book releases, The Madonna Secret and The Flowering Wand. Sophie and I entered this conversation a bit fuzzy, a little stunned. We acknowledge this from the get-go. We were processing devastating news that morning: Hurricane Ida crashed and dragged itself from south to north across the East Coast, overwhelming the infrastructure, shutting down the grid and flooding cities. We discuss how climatologically, ecologically, we can feel how things have shifted tremendously — in the Northwest where I live, and in the Hudson Valley where Sophie lives. While, personally, I tend to explore this broad subject on this podcast, Sophie writes about it. // Episode notes + transcript: https://www.lastborninthewilderness.com/episodes/sophie-strand // Sustain + support: https://www.patreon.com/lastborninthewilderness // Donate: https://www.paypal.me/lastbornpodcast