Last Born In The Wilderness

Independent political analyst and CounterPunch Radio host Eric Draitser returns to the podcast to provide an update on the ongoing Russian invasion of Ukraine. The last we spoke about this subject was March 2nd, seven days into the invasion. Eight months into this war, I ask Eric: Where do the Russians and Ukrainians stand in this blatant war of aggression by Putin? Who stands to gain from prolonging this conflict? What are Russia and NATO's endgame? For all the calls for an end to the conflict through negotiation, what, in fact, could or would that even look like? As the war drags on, we look on in horror as this neocolonialist, revanchist invasion grinds more human bodies on the fields of battle. Russia, to meet the imperialist vision laid out before the world, conscript thousands of men to continue the war. Many more flee the country to escape such a dire fate. While Ukraine is reduced to rubble, Russian society is flung into numerous, cascading crises — both material and existential in scope. Geopolitical conflicts proliferate across Europe and Asia, generating new and preexisting tensions between nations. Eric, in covering this war since its first days, provides a measured and nuanced overview of events as they stand today. // Episode notes: https://www.lastborninthewilderness.com/episodes/eric-draitser-3 // Sustain + support: https://www.patreon.com/lastborninthewilderness // Donate: https://www.paypal.me/lastbornpodcast

Death Panel co-host and disability justice advocate Beatrice Adler-Bolton returns to the podcast to discuss their new book Health Communism: A Surplus Manifesto, co-authored with Artie Vierkant and published through Verso Books. Health Communism “offers an overview of life and death under capitalism and argues for a new global left politics aimed at severing the ties between capital and one of its primary tools: health.” Throughout this 90 minute interview, Beatrice and I build on our last discussion in March (during which we discussed the “sociological production of the end of the pandemic”), incorporating concepts outlined in Health Communism. Key among those is defining the “surplus” class or population(s), in which, under the economic valuation of life under capitalism, whole populations are relegated to a regime of “extractive abandonment” — “the process by which these populations are made profitable to capital”, and a “means by which the state constructs “health” culturally, politically, and institutionally.” // Episode notes: https://www.lastborninthewilderness.com/episodes/beatrice-adler-bolton-2 // Sustain + support: https://www.patreon.com/lastborninthewilderness // Donate: https://www.paypal.me/lastbornpodcast

Dr. Mohamed Abdou joins me to discuss Islam and Anarchism: Relationships and Resonances, published this year by Pluto Press. What are the relationships and resonances between anarchism and Islam? Anarchism, through its Western manifestation, claims "no gods, no masters" as fundamental to anti-authoritarianism, both in theory and practice. Through that lens, what "relationships and resonances" then exist between anarchism and a religious and spiritual system such as Islam? And, ultimately, what can self-identified anarchists in predominately non-Muslim majority Western nations, and practitioners of Islam the world-over, learn from one another? // Episode notes: https://www.lastborninthewilderness.com/episodes/mohamed-abdou // Sustain + support: https://www.patreon.com/lastborninthewilderness // Donate: https://www.paypal.me/lastbornpodcast

Anarchist writer and activist Peter Gelderloos returns to the podcast to discuss ecological revolution from below, beautifully documented in his book The Solutions are Already Here: Strategies for Ecological Revolution from Below, published this year by Pluto Press. Nothing short of revolution is required to address the global ecological crisis. The technocratic solutions presented to us by various capitalist nation-states are less than sufficient in mitigating the most dire consequences of biospheric collapse and runaway climate change. In fact, more than just merely insufficient, these top-down so-called “solutions” reimpose the dominant socioeconomic and political order producing the crisis to begin with. As Gelderloos describes and points to The Solutions are Already Here, numerous land-based movements around the world are rising to the occasion — actively protecting territories from extractive capitalist enterprises, reclaiming what has been taken and exploited for industry, and building resilient autonomous communities and networks, many of which that span the artificially imposed rural-urban divide. To really grasp the scale and scope of this ecological revolution from below, Gelderloos lets representatives of these movements speak for themselves, weaving them into a tapestry that enlivens a radical imagination of what a post-capitalist world may hold. // Episode notes: https://www.lastborninthewilderness.com/episodes/peter-gelderloos-2 // Sustain + support: https://www.patreon.com/lastborninthewilderness // Donate: https://www.paypal.me/lastbornpodcast

Dr. Aby Sène joins me to discuss fortress conservationism and the 30x30 plan, a proposal by Western conservation agencies and their corporate and state allies "to double the coverage of protected areas around the world by setting aside 30 percent of terrestrial cover for conservation by 2030." On the surface, the 30x30 proposal (the Post-2020 Global Biodiversity Framework) to protect biodiversity and wildlife seems like a promising step in halting deforestation, unfettered resource extraction, and poaching of endangered wildlife across Africa, but as Dr. Sène eloquently describes in her work, this plan is but a continuation of the colonialist dynamics that have existed between the Global North and the Global South for centuries. These conservation efforts, aptly termed "fortress conservation,” is in reality part of a “colossal land grab," displacing indigenous communities from their lands and depriving them of traditional sources of sustenance and place-based cultural practices. // Episode notes: https://www.lastborninthewilderness.com/episodes/aby-sene // Sustain + support: https://www.patreon.com/lastborninthewilderness // Donate: https://www.paypal.me/lastbornpodcast

Michael Truscello joins me to discuss his book Infrastructural Brutalism: Art and the Necropolitics of Infrastructure, in which he “looks at the industrial infrastructure not as an invisible system of connectivity and mobility that keeps capitalism humming in the background but as a manufactured miasma of despair, toxicity, and death. Truscello terms this “infrastructural brutalism”—a formulation that not only alludes to the historical nexus of infrastructure and the concrete aesthetic of Brutalist architecture but also describes the ecological, political, and psychological brutality of industrial infrastructures.” What is infrastructure? How does it shape our lives, direct our movements, and inform our worldviews? And, furthermore, what is the nature of the systems that produce the kinds of infrastructure we live our lives within and through? As Michael Truscello identifies in his book 'Infrastructural Brutalism,' there is a brutal logic that underlies the infrastructure projects of the 20th and 21st centuries. Especially in a time of mass extinction and accelerated climate catastrophe, the very fact that the largest infrastructure project in human history, the Belt and Road Initiative, is currently underway in China speaks to the suicidal urge inherent within the imperatives of the global capitalist order. Despite the present and accelerating collapse of the biosphere, nation states and their corporate beneficiaries are racing to pave more roads, lay down more rail lines and pipelines, construct more power plants, airports, and seaports, and consequentially, decimate more ecosystems in the pursuit of technological and geopolitical dominance. Truscello walks us through this predicament, as well as what a multiplicitous response to these crises may contain. And finally, he discusses his fascinating study of various art forms that grapple with the hollow promises and lived brutalities of industrial infrastructure. // Episode notes: https://www.lastborninthewilderness.com/episodes/michael-truscello // Sustain + support: https://www.patreon.com/lastborninthewilderness // Donate: https://www.paypal.me/lastbornpodcast

Artist, writer, and death worker Rachael Rice joins me to discuss death practice, entitlement, and honesty in our time of collapse and extinction. This is an honest conversation, between friends. Both Rachael and I have very different lived experiences, but we align in several significant ways, especially when it comes to interpreting and navigating an extraordinarily messy time. The felt sense and scope of loss in the midst of the ongoing pandemic is shared between us. We bear witness to the wide-spread denial and full-faced First World entitlement — the “return to normal” and “I’ve-got-mine-ism” of it all, from top to bottom. It is a lot to bear. And yet, we acknowledge the time we are living through may be remembered as the good ol’ days in the years and decades to come. // Episode notes: https://www.lastborninthewilderness.com/episodes/rachael-rice // Sustain + support: https://www.patreon.com/lastborninthewilderness // Donate: https://www.paypal.me/lastbornpodcast

Michael Laufer of the Four Thieves Vinegar Collective returns to the podcast to reiterate the aims of the group, and update us on the collective's recent and soon to be launched projects.  As a founding member of this project, Dr. Laufer's objective has been to communicate the philosophical and material objectives of the organization, which has been described as "an anarchist biohacking group." Since its founding in 2015, the collective has worked to provide the information needed to produce DIY pharmaceutical drugs safely and equitably, particularly for a population, like those that live within the borders of the United States, that do not have easy and affordable access to them. This is especially relevant when we discuss, in this interview, the recent Supreme Court decision to overturn Roe and Casey, leaving a sizable portion of the US population without access to pregnancy terminating procedures and abortifacient drugs. Dr. Laufer and the collective's response to this has been to provide, in an open and accessible manner, information on how to potentially attain and prepare the materials needed to have a safe DIY abortion, regardless of what a wholly illegitimate political and legal system may prohibit or discourage. But, this is only one facet of the broader conversation Dr. Laufer and I have in this episode. The absolute inaccessibility of the healthcare system for most US Americans is a violation of one of the most fundamental indicators of a healthy, equal, and stable society, which is access to care. Four Thieves Vinegar Collective is a response to that, giving us an inspiring alternative to the for-profit healthcare system that is impoverishing us more and more every day.  // Episode notes: https://www.lastborninthewilderness.com/episodes/michael-laufer-2 // Sustain + support: https://www.patreon.com/lastborninthewilderness // Donate: https://www.paypal.me/lastbornpodcast

Meteorologist and geoscientist Nicholas Humphrey returns to the podcast, sharing his insights into the various catastrophic, record-breaking heatwaves and weather events currently playing out in numerous regions across the planet. He explains how the complex dynamics of anthropogenic climate disruption is quickening the pace of these events, and in turn, how ill adapted and ill prepared we are in addressing the realities of this predicament. // Episode notes: https://www.lastborninthewilderness.com/episodes/nicholas-humphrey-3 // Sustain + support: https://www.patreon.com/lastborninthewilderness // Donate: https://www.paypal.me/lastbornpodcast

Renowned climate scientist and "ice maverick" Dr. Jason Box joins me to discuss the specific and broad implications of anthropogenic climate disruption. He cites nearly three decades worth of on-the-ground documentation of the impacts human industrial activity is having on the rapidly thawing Greenland ice sheet, written about extensively in his independently published book Faster Than Forecast: The Story Ice Tells Us About Climate Change. // Episode notes: https://www.lastborninthewilderness.com/episodes/jason-box // Sustain + support: https://www.patreon.com/lastborninthewilderness // Donate: https://www.paypal.me/lastbornpodcast