Last Born In The Wilderness

Let's proceed to part two. From December 2019 to February 2020, I was in Brazil. Without full comprehension, I (we) stood on the edge of a pandemic. The global scope of the crisis had yet to be fully felt and realized. Before "normal" ended. Before lockdowns, mask burnings, social isolation, uprising—I was in Brazil, with its complexities, beauties, intensities, realities. My time there left its mark on me, and is still felt to this day a year plus since—having informed almost every aspect of my life and work. It is certainly not lost on me that I had these experiences on the cusp of this pandemic. The importance of the work done there needed to be represented in this long episode; this is my attempt at doing so. In collaboration with Brazilian political theorist and journalist Mirna Wabi-Sabi, five interviews were conducted during my time there: two radical organizers (one an infamous political prisoner) of the More Love, Less Capital (Mais Amor, Menos Capital) event; a scholar, historian, and daughter o

Bear with me on this. I wanted to do something different, original, for this episode, this milestone of 300. As you will hear in my introduction, I will be releasing seven parts for this, covering numerous themes that I've explored over the past 100 episodes of Last Born In The Wilderness. This first part is quite substantial, in and of itself. Weaving together fifteen carefully selected interviews, I present a narrative that conveys one of the most persistent themes of my work: ecological catastrophe, climatological disruption, near-term extinction, ruptures in the life-destroying industrial model, and humanity’s capacity to reclaim our regenerative role—in spite of the outcome. Timeline and sources: https://www.lastborninthewilderness.com/episodes/300-1 Featuring: - Nicholas Humphrey - Timothy Lenton - Brian Mier - Melissa Troutman - Joshua Pribanic - Will Falk - Jeff Gibbs - Richard Heinberg - Roy Scranton - Stephen Pyne - Khalil Avi - Max Paschall - Steven Elliot Martyn - Peter Michael Bauer - Stan

[Intro: 10:22] Ian MacKenzie — visionary filmmaker, storyteller, and host of The Mythic Masculine podcast — returns to discuss manhood, mythology, and emerging masculinities in the wake of calamity.  This conversation runs deep. Ian and I attempt to navigate the complexities and shadows of men's work in our time of emerging inquiries and contemplation about gender identity and expression. We wholeheartedly acknowledge that as necessary as those discussions around these subjects are, as vital as they may be, we must ask: Where do men fit in this? Ian and I are both what can be described as cisgendered and fairly heteronormative in our relationship styles — situated on a spectrum that has, traditionally, benefited folks such as ourselves in very concrete and obvious ways. That reality is not contested by either of us. But, as we expand upon in this discussion, the patterns of behavior and the beliefs that accompany men through their lives extremely limit them in their relationships — both with others and with

Acausal heathen poet and author Ramon Elani joins me to discuss his new book, Wyrd Against the Modern World, published through Night Forest Press. This audio interview is actually a reading of a written interview I conducted with him, originally published at the Gods&Radicals Press supporter-only blog Another World. // Episode notes + transcript: https://www.lastborninthewilderness.com/episodes/ramon-elani-2 // Sustain + support: https://www.patreon.com/lastborninthewilderness // Donate: https://www.paypal.me/lastbornpodcast

[Intro: 9:38 | Transcript: http://bit.ly/LBWbeast] Liz Oliva Fernández, Cuban journalist and lead protagonist of ‘The War on Cuba’ documentary series, joins me to discuss her work with Belly of the Beast Cuba — a Havana-based media project made up of Cubans and foreigners that highlight the daily lives and experiences of the Cuban people from the ground level. The United States has been engaging in a multipronged war with Cuba ever since their revolution in 1959. Whether that is through economic pressures in the form of sanctions, embargoes, and what Fernández bluntly describes as a blockade, or through direct military incursions and threats, the U.S. has imposed an artificial scarcity on the people of Cuba. The U.S. attempts to justify its genocidal policies toward Cuba through extreme media bias, propaganda, and lies. Some of the most dramatic examples of this, lately, has been under the administration of former President Trump. Cuba has some of the best doctors in the world, and for decades, thousands o

World-renowned environmental and reproductive epidemiologist Dr. Shanna Swan joins me to discuss her groundbreaking research identifying the causes and rate of rapid decline of fertility in the Western world, documented in her new book Count Down: How Our Modern World Is Threatening Sperm Counts, Altering Male and Female Reproductive Development, and Imperiling the Future of the Human Race. // Episode notes: https://www.lastborninthewilderness.com/episodes/shanna-swan // Sustain + support: https://www.patreon.com/lastborninthewilderness // Donate: https://www.paypal.me/lastbornpodcast

[Intro: 9:46] Anthropologist, experimental archaeologist, and historian Peter Michael Bauer joins me to discuss several major subjects of his work, including rewilding, collapse, and humanity's place within these frameworks. This discussion begins with Peter elaborating on the now often decontextualized and widely misrepresented concept of "rewilding." He contrasts the common, and popular, misunderstanding of this concept to his work with rewilding and its original intended meaning, and whether the term itself should now be abandoned in light of this trend. I then ask Peter to define his understanding of collapse, comparing his earlier understanding of that process to how he conceptualizes it currently — not as an event, but as an iterative, often gradual, process. His interest lies not in “weathering the storm” of collapse, but to allow this ecocidal civilization to recede and decline into irrelevance, and then foster the growth of ways of living and being that place humanity within its proper ecological r

[Intro: 8:31] Roy Scranton, bestselling author of ‘We're Doomed. Now What?’ and ‘Learning to Die in the Anthropocene,’ joins me to discuss his recent op-ed in the New York Times, ‘I’ve Said Goodbye to ‘Normal.’ You Should, Too.’ We begin this interview with Roy discussing the connections he draws between two of the major subjects he has written extensively about over the course of his career as an author: war and climate change. Having been deployed to Iraq while serving in the US Army during the US invasion and occupation of that nation in 2003, Roy provides some insights into the reasons why he volunteered to participate in that horrific conflict, and how that experience ultimately led him to write extensively on anthropogenic climate change, both from the hard scientific perspective, and from the deeper philosophical perspective as well. I then ask him to respond to scientist and author Michael Mann's characterization of Scranton and his work ("Scranton is the ultimate doomist" (https://bit.ly/3dwHRG1)),

Brian Mier, co-editor at Brasil Wire and correspondent at teleSUR English, returns to the podcast to detail some of the most prominent and pressing issues facing Brazil today, much of which was documented in the recently released Redfish documentary Dismantling Brazil: Bolsonaro's Neoliberal Agenda, which he co-produced. // Episode notes: https://www.lastborninthewilderness.com/episodes/brian-mier-3 // Sustain + support: https://www.patreon.com/lastborninthewilderness // Donate: https://www.paypal.me/lastbornpodcast

Emma Kathryn, author of Reclaiming Ourselves from Gods&Radicals Press, joins me to discuss her writings exploring the practical steps we all can take to reclaim basic skill sets, such as foraging, cooking, folk medicine, and witchcraft. // Episode notes: https://www.lastborninthewilderness.com/episodes/emma-kathryn // Sustain + support: https://www.patreon.com/lastborninthewilderness // Donate: https://www.paypal.me/lastbornpodcast

Kristen Ghodsee, professor of Russian and East European Studies at the University of Pennsylvania, joins me to discuss her work and lived experience researching the collapse of the Soviet Union and state socialism in Eastern Europe, the immediate and long-term impacts this event had on those that previously lived under those regimes, and how the rapid privatization and the imposition of capitalism impacted their lives in the decades thereafter. // Episode notes: https://www.lastborninthewilderness.com/episodes/kristen-ghodsee // Sustain + support: https://www.patreon.com/lastborninthewilderness // Donate: https://www.paypal.me/lastbornpodcast

[Intro: 13:14] Richard Heinberg, Senior Fellow-in-Residence of the Post Carbon Institute, returns to the podcast to discuss the massive power outages several regions of the United States, in particular Texas, have experienced over several weeks in February, leaving millions of people without electric power and potable water. He explains the increasingly precarious situation we find ourselves in as fossil fuel energy production meets numerous intersecting crises, including, but not limited to: an aging and outdated energy grid, abrupt climate disruption-related weather events, rapidly depleting cheap fossil fuel reserves, and the fracturing of consensus reality.   We discuss the viability and, in his view, the necessity of undertaking the massive shifts needed to address these mounting problems with more sustainable energy production and distribution models. In addressing this subject, I ask Richard to discuss his thoughts on Jeff Gibbs' and Michael Moore's documentary film Planet of the Humans, which he was

Stephen Jenkinson, author of Die Wise and Come of Age, returns to the podcast to discuss what he and musical collaborator Gregory Hoskins have been up to since their Nights of Grief and Mystery global tour was cancelled when coronavirus lockdowns began last year. Released in November, they put together two albums, DARK ROAD and ROUGH GODS. // Episode notes: https://www.lastborninthewilderness.com/episodes/stephen-jenkinson-3 // Sustain + support: https://www.patreon.com/lastborninthewilderness // Donate: https://www.paypal.me/lastbornpodcast

[Intro: 11:04] Political strategist and organizer Akin Olla joins me to discuss the history of the FBI’s assault on left-wing activists over the decades and the absolute necessity for organizers to have operational security in today’s political climate as Big Tech companies “depoliticize” their platforms in the wake of the Capitol siege last month. We address several of his recent articles published at The Guardian, including ‘The FBI can't investigate white extremism until it first investigates itself,’ ‘Facebook is banning leftwing users like me – and it's going largely unnoticed,’ and ‘The US Capitol riot risks supercharging a new age of political repression.’ In this interview, Akin dives into the Federal Bureau of Investigation's long and violent history of surveilling, attacking, and undermining leftist organizing in the United States since the agency’s inception in the early 20th century. Since the Capitol siege on January 6th, the FBI has turned its attention and resources toward identifying and det

[Intro: 11:50] David Nickles — Managing Editor of Psymposia, underground researcher, and harm reduction advocate — joins me to discuss the ongoing commodification, medicalization, and corporatization of psychedelics and the intersections between the far right, conspirituality, and psychedelia.  Psychedelics have gone mainstream. With major corporate interests now pushing for the legalization and commodification of psychedelic compounds in the US and abroad, David, along with his colleagues at Psymposia, have been critiquing the various claims these well-funded groups have been making in their effort to profit off the normalization and broader public acceptance of these controlled substances. In this interview, I ask him to elaborate on the various issues he has raised in his work, including the various forms of misinformation that have been presented to the public about the efficacy of psychedelic therapy in treating metal health disorders, particularly within the broader socioeconomic context we currently

[Intro: 8:08] Award-winning writer, poet, and scholar Frank B. Wilderson III joins me to discuss his book ‘Afropessimism,’ a "seminal work on the philosophy of Blackness" that, through a combination of profound personal reflection and meta-critical theory, peers deeply into the heart of the Black experience in the world today. “Why does a perpetual cycle of slavery—in all its political, intellectual, and cultural forms—continue to define the Black experience? And why is anti-Black violence such a predominant feature not only in the United States but around the world? “Combining trenchant philosophy with lyrical memoir, Wilderson presents the tenets of an increasingly prominent intellectual movement (Afropessimism) that sees Blackness through the lens of perpetual slavery. Drawing on works of philosophy, literature, film, and critical theory, he shows that the social construct of slavery, as seen through pervasive anti-Black subjugation and violence, is hardly a relic of the past but the very engine that po

[Intro: 10:27] Professor Alex Vitale, sociologist and author of ‘The End of Policing,’ joins me to discuss the Capitol siege on January 6th, the role the Capitol police played in the event, and the deeply political reasons the police were under-resourced, under-staffed, and completely overwhelmed in the face of the mob.  Prof. Vitale steps outside the narratives that have inevitably emerged in the wake of this event: 1) That the failure to secure the Capitol is due to a lack of police funding and training (meaning we need to beef up policing in a general sense, leading to more legislation to "combat domestic terror" by expanding the surveillance and police state in the US). 2) That the police were "letting" the rioters into the Capitol building and actively cooperating with them (which there are isolated examples of, no doubt, but not in a general sense). These narrow interpretations exclude the true complexities of the event. Prof. Vitale provides deeper context into the ongoing efforts to scale back an

[Intro: 10:47] Journalist, activist, and researcher of far right movements Spencer Sunshine returns to the podcast to discuss the MAGA siege on the Capitol on January 6th, what led up to it, and what to expect from the far right as we transition into Joe Biden’s presidency.  This discussion begins by addressing the years-long harassment Spencer has experienced by far right actors, such as being labeled the "leader of Antifa," and most recently as the "QAnon Shaman” (who famously participated in the Capital riot) — an accusation make by Lin Wood, Trump's attorney who worked on the Kraken election fraud lawsuit. “So how did I come to be the face—or, rather, the name behind somebody else’s face—of a right-wing campaign to deny crimes committed by other right-wingers? What unfolds is a decade-long tale of an ever-morphing conspiracy theory about me, originally forged in the crucible of neo-Nazi anti-Semitism and developed by a variety of small-time far-right figures before a Trumpist grifter injected it onto a

[Intro: 14:13 | AMA 1/15: https://www.reddit.com/r/collapse] Joe Brewer — change strategist, complexity researcher, and cognitive scientist — returns to the podcast to update us on the regenerative land restoration work he and his family have been engaged in since we spoke early last year. This discussion includes themes elaborated on in his new book ‘The Design Pathway’ published on the Earth Regenerators website, as well as what it means to be "future indigenous" in our time of biospheric collapse, and the near and long-term goals of the Barichara Regeneration Fund.  Joe has a background in physics, math, philosophy, atmospheric science, complexity research, and cognitive linguistics. Awakened to the threat of human-induced climate disruption while pursuing a Ph.D. in atmospheric science, he switched fields and began to work with scholars in the behavioral and cognitive sciences with the hope of helping create large-scale behavior change at the level of global civilization. Joe and his family currently li

[Intro: 12:57] Duncan Tarr, prison abolitionist and researcher for Perilous: A Chronicle of Prisoner Unrest Across the US and Canada, joins me to discuss their recent report on the wave of strikes, rebellions, and general acts of civil disobedience — organized by detainees in prisons, jails and ICE detention centers — that have occurred since the coronavirus pandemic began early last year.  “At Perilous: A Chronicle of Prisoner Unrest we track all instances of prisoner protest across the US and Canada since 2010 that involve multiple prisoners. In early 2020 we were paying close attention to the outbreak of prisoner rebellions, escapes, riots, and resistance in other parts of the world in response to the coronavirus, most notably in Italy. As COVID breached the shores of the U.S. (where we live) we prepared ourselves as best we could to document what we anticipated would be a huge uptick in prisoner organizing and action. That wave did in fact crash, and we subsequently counted 119 instances of prisoner