Last Born In The Wilderness

Legal historian and author Nate Holdren joins me to discuss broken sociality, political and social loneliness, and social murder and its depoliticization during the pandemic, as elucidated in his Peste Magazine essay Broken Sociality: Isolation in the Pseudo-Return to “Pre-Pandemic Normal”. The pandemic emergency has been declared over, both here in the United States, and by the World Health Organization. That does not mean the pandemic is over, but it marks an official end to an emergency level institutional response to it. Any sort of practical and enforceable mitigatory practices to reduce the spread of the virus has been firmly relegated to the past. To add insult to injury, the trauma or discomforts incurred over the past three years are often blamed on these public health measures themselves by high-status conservative and liberal commentators and so-called experts alike. Nevermind the millions dead, the global vaccine apartheid, the tens of millions disabled and those that continue to become disabled, and what those facts mean. The virus’s plethora of variants will continue to infect and reinfect the global population into the foreseeable future—a slow burn with grim long-term consequences. // Episode notes: https://www.lastborninthewilderness.com/episodes/nate-holdren // Sustain + support: https://www.patreon.com/lastborninthewilderness // Donate: https://www.paypal.me/lastbornpodcast

Conspirituality podcast co-host and journalist Matthew Remski returns to the podcast, bringing his ongoing analysis of online cultists, grifters, and conspiritualists to a discussion that relates to the book he co-authored with co-hosts Julian Walker and Derek Beres titled Conspirituality: How New Age Conspiracy Theories Became a Health Threat, forthcoming from Public Affairs/Random House in June. We begin our discussion by delving into what Matthew describes as the “amoral attention economy” and how becoming “professionalized into the cursed news cycle” impacts one’s mental health. Matthew has taken it upon himself to jump into the fray of online “disaster spirituality” and the circles of culty health and wellness grifters—a psychologically and emotionally taxing beat to be on. Based on personal experiences he’s had, some of which he shares in this interview, along with a deep research background into cultic dynamics and abuse in spiritual movements, Matthew has developed an ability to adeptly spot, analyze, and critique the charismatic, narcissistic, self-aggrandizing public personas that contaminate public discourse. He walks us through the dynamics at play, and provides a material framework for understanding how these figures and ideas become so influential to begin with. // Episode notes: https://www.lastborninthewilderness.com/episodes/matthew-remski-2 // Sustain + support: https://www.patreon.com/lastborninthewilderness // Donate: https://www.paypal.me/lastbornpodcast

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 Iraq, superbly documented in his first book on the subject, 'Beyond the Green Zone: Dispatches from an Unembedded Journalist in Occupied Iraq’ published in 2007 by Haymarket Books. // Episode notes: https://www.lastborninthewilderness.com/episodes/dahr-jamail-6 // Sustain + support: https://www.patreon.com/lastborninthewilderness // Donate: https://www.paypal.me/lastbornpodcast

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. // Episode notes: https://www.lastborninthewilderness.com/episodes/alley-valkyrie-3 // Sustain + support: https://www.patreon.com/lastborninthewilderness // Donate: https://www.paypal.me/lastbornpodcast

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 Center (Cop City). // Episode notes + transcript: https://www.lastborninthewilderness.com/episodes/clark-acpc // Sustain + support: https://www.patreon.com/lastborninthewilderness // Donate: https://www.paypal.me/lastbornpodcast

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 leftist ecoactivist movements and spaces. John has remarked Kingsnorth was an “intellectual idol” of his, helping him form many of his own ideas about humanity’s severed relationship with the earth, with poignant ruminations on the roots of anthropogenic climate change, the dead end of techno-optimism, and industrial civilization’s inevitable collapse. But, as Halstead began to more closely examine Kingnorth’s writings since the onset of the pandemic in 2020, he, like many others who admired his perspective, was disturbed by his “benevolent green nationalism,” defense of the British monarchy, and openly derisive characterizations of “wokeness” and trans identity. // Episode notes: https://www.lastborninthewilderness.com/episodes/john-halstead-3 // Sustain + support: https://www.patreon.com/lastborninthewilderness // Donate: https://www.paypal.me/lastbornpodcast

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 outbreak, many of which are examined in this interview. Rob skewers the Biden administration’s political, institutional, and rhetorical approach to the BSL-3 [Biosafety Level 3] pathogen’s burn through the population, picking apart the scientism, employed by both the political elite and their media lackeys to rationalize and normalize the mass death and disability of millions. // Episode notes: https://www.lastborninthewilderness.com/episodes/rob-wallace-2 // Sustain + support: https://www.patreon.com/lastborninthewilderness // Donate: https://www.paypal.me/lastbornpodcast

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: https://www.patreon.com/lastborninthewilderness // Donate: https://www.paypal.me/lastbornpodcast

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/lastborninthewilderness // Donate: https://www.paypal.me/lastbornpodcast

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 answers these questions, and more, in this interview. // Episode notes: https://www.lastborninthewilderness.com/episodes/brian-mier-4 // Sustain + support: https://www.patreon.com/lastborninthewilderness // Donate: https://www.paypal.me/lastbornpodcast