Last Born In The Wilderness

Journalist and author Shane Burley returns to the podcast to discuss his article The Story of a Post-Holocaust Group Seeking Revenge Against Nazis is Part of the Story of Israel Itself, published by Religion Dispatches. He addresses historical traumas and contexts that underlie, in part, the dramatic escalation of violence by the State of Israel in the Palestinian territories since Hamas’s October 7th attack. This is a two-part interview. Support the podcast and listen to this interview before the public release: https://www.patreon.com/lastborninthewilderness

Historian and author Betsy Gaines Quammen returns to the podcast to discuss her new book, True West: Myth and Mending on the Far Side of America, published by Torrey House Press. Building on her previous book, American Zion, Gaines Quammen follows the historical roots and trajectories of troubling political trends in the Western United States, decoupling the myths and material realities of the landscapes and the peoples and the more-than-human lives that occupy them. Support the podcast and listen to this interview: https://www.patreon.com/lastborninthewilderness

In this expansive discussion, investigative journalist and food columnist Arun Gupta tackles the extremely online drama between "progrowth" and "degrowth" leftists about one of the cheapest fruits you can find in the supermarket: the banana. Will we have bananas under socialism? // Episode notes: https://www.lastborninthewilderness.com/episodes/arun-gupta-3 // Sustain + support: https://www.patreon.com/lastborninthewilderness // Donate: https://www.paypal.me/lastbornpodcast

In this expansive discussion, investigative journalist and food columnist Arun Gupta tackles the extremely online drama between "progrowth" and "degrowth" leftists about one of the cheapest fruits you can find in the supermarket: the banana. Will we have bananas under socialism?  Support the podcast and listen to this interview: https://www.patreon.com/lastborninthewilderness

Darcia Narvaez returns to the podcast, along with co-author G.A. Bradshaw, to discuss their new book, The Evolved Nest: Nature's Way of Raising Children and Creating Connected Communities published by North Atlantic Books. By drawing on the ancestral legacies of child-rearing and broader nesting practices and contemporary breakthroughs in neurology and developmental psychology, we can better understand how integral intergenerational cultural practices bear on the complex development of human beings. But, what of our animal kin? What are their evolved nests, and what lessons can we learn from them? How does a broken or intact human evolved nest impact and interact with the evolved nests of other animals? // Episode notes: https://www.lastborninthewilderness.com/episodes/narvaez-bradshaw // Sustain + support: https://www.patreon.com/lastborninthewilderness // Donate: https://www.paypal.me/lastbornpodcast

Darcia Narvaez returns to the podcast, along with co-author G.A. Bradshaw, to discuss their new book, The Evolved Nest: Nature's Way of Raising Children and Creating Connected Communities. Support the podcast and listen to this interview: https://www.patreon.com/lastborninthewilderness

Acclaimed author John Vaillant joins me to discuss Fire Weather: The Making of a Beast, a masterfully written chronicle of the destructive power of fire in the twenty-first century. Fire Weather is an astounding chronicle of the boreal fire that swept through Fort McMurray, Alberta in May 2016. Over the course of 24 hours, the nearly 90,000 residents of this modern-day bitumen subarctic boom town evacuated, escaping the out of control fire as it engulfed and destroyed everything in its path. Vaillant zooms in close, guiding us through the decisions made that day as the fire raced into the city, made by residents and authorities alike as catastrophe unfolded. He expands the story to situate Fort Mac as a nexus point in the larger settler colonial history of Canada and its inextricable relationship with the fossil fuel industry and extractive capitalism, all situated within our present paradigm of ecological crisis, climate change, and twenty-first century fire. // Episode notes: https://www.lastborninthewilderness.com/episodes/john-vaillant // Sustain + support: https://www.patreon.com/lastborninthewilderness // Donate: https://www.paypal.me/lastbornpodcast

Acclaimed author John Vaillant joins me to discuss 'Fire Weather: The Making of a Beast', a masterfully written chronicle of the destructive power of fire in the twenty-first century. Support the podcast and listen to this interview: https://www.patreon.com/lastborninthewilderness

Jonathan Howard MD joins me to discuss his timely book, We Want Them Infected: How the Failed Quest for Herd Immunity Led Doctors to Embrace the Anti-Vaccine Movement and Blinded Americans to the Threat of COVID, published by Redhawk Publications. As much as Jonathan Howard’s book is a scathing examination of how various very influential and contrarian doctors misled the US public about the coronavirus pandemic, it is also a historical document. By meticulously, carefully, and thoroughly quoting countless social media posts, statements, essays, op-eds, and interviews from certain highly accredited doctors, Dr. Howard compares their claims to actual reality as the virus began to rip through the population. Over and over again, these outspoken figures made bold and inaccurate claims that the pandemic was just about to end; herd immunity was just around the corner; the worst of the plague had already past; children were unaffected; and so on. Over and over again, these contrarian figures were proven wrong. And yet, despite overwhelming evidence, they still maintain their professional status and accreditation to this day, seemingly unhindered—professionally, at least—by the widespread consequences of their repeated false assumptions and claims. // Episode notes: https://www.lastborninthewilderness.com/episodes/jonathan-howard // Sustain + support: https://www.patreon.com/lastborninthewilderness // Donate: https://www.paypal.me/lastbornpodcast

Biological anthropologist Dr. Cara Wall-Scheffler joins me to discuss the evolution of human locomotion and how it dovetails into the findings and conclusions of the research article she co-authored, 'The Myth of Man the Hunter: Women’s contribution to the hunt across ethnographic contexts', published last month in PLOS ONE. The data gathered and examined across numerous foraging societies by the authors of this ethnographic review points to the incredible diversity of labor males and females typically engage in to acquire food and other resources. Simultaneously, the findings and conclusions in this study upend stereotypical and essentialist notions about what the commonly understood sexual divisions of labor are—the “man as hunter” and “woman as gatherer” myth—with implications for not only anthropology as a field of study, but for contemporary discourse on topics of gender and sex. // Episode notes: https://www.lastborninthewilderness.com/episodes/cara-wall-scheffler // Sustain + support: https://www.patreon.com/lastborninthewilderness // Donate: https://www.paypal.me/lastbornpodcast