Last Born In The Wilderness

Eliot Jacobson—climate science communicator and “know-it-all doomer”—joins me to discuss his eclectic background, why climate change data in 2023 was off the charts, and what it means to be a doomer at his stage of climate and ecological breakdown. Eliot Jacobson, PhD is a retired professor of mathematics and computer science, retired casino consultant, now a full-time volunteer, husband and grandfather. Episode Notes: - Learn more about Eliot and his work at his website: https://climatecasino.net - Follow him on Twitter/X: https://twitter.com/EliotJacobson - Music by Waxie: https://www.waxiemusiclibrary.com WEBSITE: https://www.lastborninthewilderness.com PATREON: https://www.patreon.com/lastborninthewilderness DONATE: https://www.paypal.me/lastbornpodcast SUBSTACK: https://lastborninthewilderness.substack.com BOOK LIST: https://bookshop.org/shop/lastbornpodcast DROP ME A LINE: Call (208) 918-2837 or http://bit.ly/LBWfiledrop EVERYTHING ELSE: https://linktr.ee/patterns.of.behavior

UNLOCKED: Anarchist writer, musician, and podcaster Margaret Killjoy returns to the podcast to discuss the political act of writing fiction and imagining the “ambiguous utopia”—à la Ursula LeGuin’s The Dispossessed and Killjoy’s A Country of Ghosts. I ask Margaret to define what hope is or can be, and how her work communicating the stories of radical individuals and movements during pivotal moments throughout history on her podcast, Cool People Who Did Cool Stuff, can help us (re-)frame contemporary struggles for liberation, justice, and peace in the world today. Listen to the full interview: https://www.patreon.com/lastborninthewilderness

Professor and historian Rashid Khalidi joins me to discuss his book The Hundred Years’ War on Palestine: A History of Settler Colonialism and Resistance, 1917-2017. Professor Khalidi weaves his multigenerational familial roots to historic Palestine with decades of academic scholarship to present a narrative that plainly addresses the so-called Israel-Palestine conflict for what it is. He addresses how Palestinian identity was catalyzed and formed over the past century, as well as the responsibility foreign interests have—historically and presently—in perpetuating the ongoing genocidal campaign in Gaza. Rashid Khalidi is the Edward Said Professor of Arab Studies. He received his B.A. from Yale University in 1970, and his D.Phil. from Oxford University in 1974. He has taught at the Lebanese University, the American University of Beirut, Georgetown University, and at the University of Chicago. He is past President of the Middle East Studies Association, and the co-editor of the Journal of Palestine Studies. Kh

Professor and historian Rashid Khalidi joins me to discuss his book The Hundred Years’ War on Palestine: A History of Settler Colonialism and Resistance, 1917-2017. Professor Khalidi weaves his multigenerational familial roots to historic Palestine with decades of academic scholarship to present a narrative that plainly addresses the so-called Israel-Palestine conflict for what it is. He addresses how Palestinian identity was catalyzed and formed over the past century, as well as the responsibility foreign interests have—historically and presently—in perpetuating the ongoing genocidal campaign in Gaza. 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. Betsy Gaines Quammen is a historian and writer. She received a PhD from Montana State University where she studied religion, history and the philosophy of science. Her dissertation focused on Mormon history and the roots of armed public land conflicts occurring in the United States. She is fascinated at how religious views shape relationships to landscape. Her work has appeared in the New York Times, New York Daily News, and the History News Network. She is the author of American Zion: Cliven Bundy, God, and Public Lands in the West and True Wes

Eliot Jacobson—climate science communicator and “know-it-all doomer”—joins me to discuss his eclectic background, climate change data, how and why 2023 was off the charts, and what it means to be a doomer. Support the podcast and listen to this interview before the public release: https://www.patreon.com/lastborninthewilderness

In the second part of my two-part interview with author and journalist Shane Burley, we continue our discussion about the contexts that underlie the dramatic escalation of violence by the State of Israel in the Palestinian territories since Hamas’s October 7th attack. We focus on the validity of claims made by pro-Israel Zionists of antisemitism on the part of Palestinian liberation activists in demanding not only a ceasefire, but the ending of apartheid and continual expansion of Israeli Jewish settlements into Palestinian territories. Shane examines the Christian Right's Zionist antisemitism, Israeli Leftism, the internal political tensions in Israel before and since the events on October 7th, and how "Jewish safety has always been in the hands of solidarity with other marginalized people." Shane Burley is known for his work on the far-right and left-wing social movements. He is the author of Fascism Today: What It Is and How to End It (AK Press, 2017) and Why We Fight: Essays on Fascism, Resistance, and S

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 part one of a two-part interview. Shane Burley is known for his work on the far-right and left-wing social movements. He is the author of Fascism Today: What It Is and How to End It (AK Press, 2017) and Why We Fight: Essays on Fascism, Resistance, and Surviving the Apocalypse (AK Press, 2021), and editor of the anthology ¡No pasarán!: Readings on Antifascism (AK Press, 2022). His work has been featured in places like NBC News, Al Jazeera, The Baffler, Jacobin, The Daily Beast, Truthout, In These Times, Roar Magazine, Jewish Currents, and others. He provides expert analysis and commentary on thes

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? Arun Gupta is an investigative reporter who has written for the Guardian, the Daily Beast, the Intercept, The Washington Post, and other publications. He is a graduate of the French Culinary Institute, cooked professionally in New York City, and is author of the forthcoming, Apocalypse Chow: A Junk-Food Loving Chef Explains How America Created the Most Revolutionary Food System in History (The New Press). Episode Notes: - Read Arun’s article Bananas for Socialism at Dissent Magazine, part of his Apocalypse Chow column: https://www.dissentmagazine.org/online_articles/bananas-for-socialism/ - Subscribe to his Substack: https://arunnews.substack.com - Music produced by Epik The Dawn: https://epikbeats.net WEBSITE: https://www.last

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. G. A. Bradshaw, PhD, is the founder and director of The Kerulos Center for Nonviolence. Her diagnosis of post-traumatic stress disorder in free-living elephants launched the field of trans-species psychology. She holds doctorate degrees in ecology and psychology and a master’s in geophysics and was a Fellow at the National Science Foundation National Center for Ecological Analysis and Synthesis. Darcia Narvaez, PhD, MDiv, is Professor Emerita of Psychology at the University of Notre Dame. Her earlier careers include professional musician, business owner, classroom music teacher, classroom Spanish teacher and seminarian, among others. She is a fellow of the American Psychological Association and the American Educational Research Association and former editor of the Journal of Moral Educati

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 eviscerated 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 21st century fire.    John Vaiilant's acclaimed, award-winning nonfiction books, The G

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. An

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. A major takeaway from this dialogue with Dr. Wall-Scheffler is the Euro- and male-centric conceptions of the origins of Hom

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 disable

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, analy