Last Born In The Wilderness

Psychedelic scholar, editor, publisher, and researcher Robert Forte joins me for this episode. For over three decades, Robert has collaborated with some of the most influential and well-known figures within the psychedelic movement, including R. Gordon Wasson, Timothy Leary, Stanislav Grof, and Alexander Shulgin, to name a few. James Fadiman, psychedelic researcher and writer, has described Robert as “a major but not well-known hero of the psychedelic movement.” // Episode notes: https://www.lastborninthewilderness.com/episodes/robert-forte // Sustain + support: https://www.patreon.com/lastborninthewilderness // Donate: https://www.paypal.me/lastbornpodcast

I speak with Ian Campbell, a community-oriented educator and co-founder of North Texas Progressive Schools (NTxPS). We discuss the fundamental principles of self-directed learning and progressive schooling, the necessity of play in childhood development, and the value of instilling democratic values and collective decision-making through education. We also discuss the potent example of collective decision-making through Ian's research into the radical social revolution in Rojava, a Kurdish-held territory in northern Syria. // Episode notes: https://www.lastborninthewilderness.com/episodes/ian-campbell // Sustain + support: https://www.patreon.com/lastborninthewilderness // Donate: https://www.paypal.me/lastbornpodcast

I speak with ecologist and evolutionary biologist Chris Thomas, author of Inheritors of the Earth: How Nature Is Thriving in an Age of Extinction. In this discussion, Chris lays out his understanding of whether we have truly entered into the Sixth Mass Extinction Event, and provides his views on whether the current rate of species extinction on this planet lives up to that dire description. Chris also discusses the difficult challenges ecologists and conservationists are currently facing in the effort to preserve species in a radically changing world, laying out the choices that lay before us when it comes to the difficult task of conserving biodiversity and preventing species loss in the face of anthropogenic climate change and other human-caused crises. // Episode notes: https://www.lastborninthewilderness.com/episodes/chris-thomas // Sustain + support: https://www.patreon.com/lastborninthewilderness // Donate: https://www.paypal.me/lastbornpodcast

Our guest for this episode is Ben Etherington, author of Literary Primitivism and the long-form essay The New Primitives, published in the Los Angeles Review of Books, the themes of which we discuss in this episode. In this discussion, Ben lays out a nuanced examination of Primitivism, a “mode of aesthetic idealization that either emulates or aspires to recreate ‘primitive’ experience.” In modern Western societies, the primitivist ideal is expressed though variously—a few examples being recent fads like the Paleo Diet, fitness regimens like barefoot/minimalist running, radical anti-civilizational and anti-technological political philosophies (e.g. the works of anarcho-primitivist John Zerzan, and more controversially, the manifesto of Theodore Kaczynski), as well its themes and affects being represented in popular media. Primitivist themes and aesthetics run through numerous popular films, most notably in James Cameron’s blockbuster film Avatar. // Episode notes: https://www.lastborninthewilderness.com/episodes/ben-etherington // Sustain + support: https://www.patreon.com/lastborninthewilderness // Donate: https://www.paypal.me/lastbornpodcast

Writer Tad Hargrave joins me in this episode to discuss his work exploring, unpacking, and addressing the concept and social reality of whiteness—more broadly the roots, or lack thereof, of “white culture” as we understand it to be today. Tad and I discuss the difficult subject of race, in particular the modern and the relatively recent—historically speaking—formation of the concept of whiteness. To be labeled and exist as a “white” person in our current era is to live with certain privileges within the dominant culture of North America, some of which are subtle, and many of which are not. // Episode notes: https://www.lastborninthewilderness.com/episodes/tad-hargrave // Sustain + support: https://www.patreon.com/lastborninthewilderness // Donate: https://www.paypal.me/lastbornpodcast

Author and integrator Jeremy Lent returns to the podcast. Jeremy is the author of The Patterning Instinct: A Cultural History of Humanity’s Search for Meaning, and the founder of the nonprofit Liology Institute, an organization “dedicated to fostering an integrated worldview, both scientifically rigorous and intrinsically meaningful, that could enable humanity to thrive sustainably on the earth.” We begin our conversation discussing Jeremy’s excellent critique of cognitive psychologist, linguist, and popular science author Steven Pinker’s recent book Enlightenment Now: The Case for Reason, Science, Humanism, and Progress. Jeremy initially presented his critique in his widely shared article, Steven Pinker’s Ideas About Progress Are Fatally Flawed. These Eight Graphs Show Why, which we delve into in this episode. Jeremy unpacks the underlying assumptions implicit in Pinker’s ideas, in particular Pinker’s defense, through cherry-picking of data, of the capitalist neoliberal economic order, and more broadly of the “progress narrative” that justifies or outright ignores the widespread ecological devastation implicit in the expansion and maintenance of industrial civilization and the institutions that uphold it. // Episode notes: https://www.lastborninthewilderness.com/episodes/jeremy-lent-2 // Sustain + support: https://www.patreon.com/lastborninthewilderness // Donate: https://www.paypal.me/lastbornpodcast

I speak with Dr. Joe Tafur—family physician, Shipibo-trained shaman, integrative medicine activist, and the author of The Fellowship of the River: A Medical Doctor's Exploration into Traditional Amazonian Plant Medicine. We discuss Dr. Tafur’s years of work integrating Western medical knowledge and practice with traditional Amazonian plant medicine, in particular the administering of the psychedelic brew ayahuasca and other plant medicines, under the traditional practice of Shipibo shamanism. // Episode notes: https://www.lastborninthewilderness.com/episodes/joe-tafur // Sustain + support: https://www.patreon.com/lastborninthewilderness // Donate: https://www.paypal.me/lastbornpodcast

Writer, documentarian, and lecturer Douglas Rushkoff joins me for this episode. Douglas has authored numerous best-selling books, and the yet-to-be-released Team Human. His lifetime of work has focused primarily on human autonomy in the digital age.  We start this episode by discussing Douglas Rushkoff’s widely shared article, published on Medium and picked up by CNBC, Survival of the Richest: The wealthy are plotting to leave us behind. In the article, Douglas describes a situation in which he was invited to a private meeting with several ultra-wealthy men to field their questions regarding technological trends in cryptocurrency, quantum computing, and artificial intelligence, as well as their deep-seated concerns regarding “The Event”—a catch-all euphemism for the portending threat of abrupt climate change, nuclear war, social unrest, and economic collapse looming on the horizon of our collective future. // Episode notes: https://www.lastborninthewilderness.com/episodes/douglas-rushkoff // Sustain + support: https://www.patreon.com/lastborninthewilderness // Donate: https://www.paypal.me/lastbornpodcast

I speak with Dr. Lise Eliot, Professor of Neuroscience at The Chicago Medical School of Rosalind Franklin University, and the author of Pink Brain, Blue Brain: How Small Differences Grow into Troublesome Gaps and What We Can Do About It.  In this interview, I tried to get to the root of what informs gender identity and its relationship to our biology, specifically regarding our neurology and brain development. The questions we explore in this episode include: What significant neurological differences exist between a “male” and “female” brain, especially at the time of birth? If differences exist, what role do these differences play in the development of individual traits—traits that may be categorized culturally as either “female” or “male” in nature?  How much is the development of an individual's gender identity associated with cultural, rather than biological, factors? // Episode notes: https://www.lastborninthewilderness.com/episodes/lise-eliot // Sustain + support: https://www.patreon.com/lastborninthewilderness // Donate: https://www.paypal.me/lastbornpodcast

In this episode, I speak with Steven Cohen—former executive director of Columbia University's Earth Institute, a professor in the practice of public affairs at Columbia's School of International and Public Affairs, and the author of The Sustainable City. Dr. Cohen provides an overview of the broader trends in sustainable technological development, especially regarding the ongoing urbanization of human life. As the United Nations has reported, “Today, 54 per cent of the world’s population lives in urban areas, a proportion that is expected to increase to 66 per cent by 2050.” Dr. Cohen provides an overview of these technological trends regarding their application in city planning within major urban areas around the world. He details the increasing efficiency of battery storage, the evolution of solar and wind power, and the rise and growing prominence of the electric automobile, and ties these evolving technologies to the ongoing development and planning of “sustainable cities.” Toward the end of the interview, Steven provides a nuanced perspective on the ongoing policy decisions by the Trump Administration, under the former Administrator of the Environmental Protection Agency Scott Pruitt, to deregulate environmental protections enforced by the EPA, and how these decisions will ultimately play out into the near future. // Episode notes: https://www.lastborninthewilderness.com/episodes/steven-cohen // Sustain + support: https://www.patreon.com/lastborninthewilderness // Donate: https://www.paypal.me/lastbornpodcast