Last Born In The Wilderness

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. Nicholas Humphrey is a meteorologist and geoscientist, with the focus on extreme weather events and their connection to our destabilizing climate. Nick’s goal is to communicate, in an interdisciplinary fashion, the serious risks from climate tipping points, extreme weather events, and ecological collapse. He graduated with a BS in Interdisciplinary Studies with a focus in societal impacts of extreme weather from South Dakota State University in 2013, and earned a MS in Geosciences - Applied Meteorology from Mississippi State University in 2016. He is a second year PhD st

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.’ Jason Box is a professor in Glaciology and Climate at the Geologic Survey of Denmark and Greenland (GEUS). Since 1994, he has made 30 expeditions to Greenland to install and maintain measurement networks on Greenland ice. He is a lead author for Arctic Monitoring and Assessment Program (AMAP) and a contributing author to the most recent three Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) assessment reports. He is an outspoken advocate for climate change risk management, including having joined panels to evaluate climate altering technologies. Jason specializes in sate

Darcia Narvaez and Four Arrows join me to discuss their recently published book ‘Restoring the Kinship Worldview: Indigenous Voices Introduce 28 Precepts for Rebalancing Life on Planet Earth,’ a work that contains "selected speeches from Indigenous leaders around the world—necessary wisdom for our times, nourishment for our collective, and a path away from extinction toward a sustainable, interconnected future." As I comment in the beginning of this discussion, reading this book has been a necessary balm to the various subjects I've explored on the podcast of late. This work has reminded me that our civilization's capacity for mass violence, systemic oppression, exploitation, and the destruction of life-systems of the earth is not representative of human nature, nor the human condition, as a whole. The dominant worldview that pervades all facets of modern, industrial human life is the outcome of centuries, if not millennia, of bad habits and intergenerational trauma. The kinship worldview, highlighted in thi

Journalist Arun Gupta returns to the podcast to discuss the "very corporeal ideology" of fascism, the so-called "Great Replacement Theory,” the recent mass shooting in Buffalo, New York, and how each of these subjects tie into the broader sociopolitical project of the far right in the United States. The ideological and conspiratorial framework of the “Great Replacement Theory” has motivated numerous individuals to commit racist mass violence over the years, with one of the most prominent examples being the recent massacre in Buffalo, New York by an 18-year-old white man on May 14th. It also, as Gupta lucidly articulates in this interview, informs the underlying white grievance politics and goals of the conservative right in the United States, informing the rhetoric of the most popular political commentators in the country, namely Fox News star pundit Tucker Carlson. With the stated aims and motivations laid bare in the manifesto of the mass shooter in Buffalo, and Carlson mainstreaming these ideas in more di

Atmospheric scientist Tim Garrett joins me to discuss, among other things, collapse. Contained within this hour-long interview, we cover the thermodynamics of civilizational growth and inevitable decline, the irrationality of dominant economic theory, Jevons Paradox, and his fascinating and wondrous study of clouds and snowflakes. Tim Garrett is Professor of Atmospheric Sciences at the University of Utah, and his research mostly focuses on the complex interplay between aerosols, clouds, precipitation, radiation and climate. Episode Notes: - Learn more about Tim’s work and follow him on Twitter: https://www.inscc.utah.edu/~tgarrett / https://twitter.com/nephologue - Song featured is “Bells Buzzes and Bows for Breen” by Scott Farkas. Used with permission: https://youtu.be/NU92uyOU9-w WEBSITE: https://www.lastborninthewilderness.com PATREON: https://www.patreon.com/lastborninthewilderness DONATE: https://www.paypal.me/lastbornpodcast / https://venmo.com/LastBornPodcast BOOK LIST: https://bookshop.org/sho

Author, teacher, and editor Max Haiven joins me to discuss his book ‘Palm Oil: The Grease of Empire,’ published through Pluto Books. As Silvia Federici states, this book "powerfully demonstrates how, by following the history of a key commodity, we can reconstruct the logic of imperial capitalism: its destruction of land and bodies, its drive to constantly reduce the means of our reproduction, its relentless production of oppressive regimes." In this discussion, Haiven details the contours of such subjects as commodity fetishism and human sacrifice, as well as points to the straight line that shoots through the heinous histories of chattel slavery and Western imperialism to the formation of the modern global capitalist order, by focusing on one primary and ubiquitous product we all, throughout the course of lives, have consumed countless times and in countless ways: palm oil. // Episode notes: https://www.lastborninthewilderness.com/episodes/max-haiven // Sustain + support: https://www.patreon.com/lastborni

Activist, analyst, and author Brynn Tannehill joins me to discuss the recent leak of the Supreme Court's drafted majority opinion to overturn Roe v. Wade and Casey. Having extensively documented the factors leading to the fascist turn the United States is taking in her book ‘American Fascism: How the GOP Is Subverting Democracy’ and elsewhere, Tannehill predicted a conservative stacked Supreme Court would, in due time, overturn several sweeping decisions the Court has made over the decades, including: the expansion and protection of reproductive rights, same-sex marriage, interracial marriage, and more. As the Republican Party openly moves into fascist territory and the Democratic Party fecklessly concedes to the GOP's sweeping agenda, whatever rights and protections that have been granted by the federal government for marginalized groups will be effectively rescinded. Overturning Roe v. Wade is just the beginning. A far-right autocracy is on the horizon. Brynn Tannehill is a leading trans activist and essa

Political theorist, anti-capitalist activist, and translator Sabu Kohso joins me to discuss his book ‘Radiation and Revolution,’ a text that "uses the 2011 Fukushima nuclear disaster to illuminate the relationship between nuclear power, capitalism, and the nation-state." This interview was recorded in the Gray Coast Guildhall in Quilcene, WA, for the Communal Life & Planetary Relations at the End of This World event, held on March 12, 2022. In ‘Radiation and Revolution,’ Sabu Kohso argues that “nuclear power is not a mere source of energy—it has become the organizing principle of the global order and the most effective way to simultaneously accumulate profit and govern the populace.” The 2011 Fukushima-Daiichi nuclear disaster and its effects live with us today. “The year 2011 was,” as he writes in his article ‘Radiation, Pandemic, Insurrection’ published in The New Inquiry, “the beginning of the present: an age of endless disasters and struggles against ruling powers under the catastrophic conditions thereb

Award-winning investigative journalist, media critic, and activist Barrett Brown joins me to discuss Silicon Valley billionaire and venture capitalist Peter Thiel. He describes the complex web of media outlets and personalities, hackers, and intelligence community assets connected directly or indirectly with Thiel — a powerful, enormously well-resourced figure aiming to undermine the last remnants of democracy and the open society. Barrett Brown is a writer and activist. His work has appeared in Vanity Fair, The Guardian, The Intercept, Huffington Post, New York Press, Skeptic, The Daily Beast, Al Jazeera, and other outlets. In 2009, he founded Project PM, a “distributed think tank” later repurposed to oversee a crowdsourced investigation into private intelligence contractors and little-known surveillance/disinformation methodologies. In 2011 and 2012, he worked with Anonymous on campaigns involving the Tunisian revolution, state misconduct, and other issues. In 2012, Brown was arrested and later sentenced t

Charlie Angus, MP for the riding of Timmins-James Bay in Ontario, Canada, joins me to discuss his new book ‘Cobalt: Cradle of the Demon Metals, Birth of a Mining Superpower,’ published through House of Anansi Press. He shines a light on how the fascinating, and disturbing, history of a small mining town in Ontario, aptly named Cobalt, is tied up in the genocidal, and ecocidal, history of the nation-state of Canada, and its outsized role in the global mining industry today. What does a small town in northern Ontario have to with Canada's rise to becoming the world's reigning mining superpower? How is cobalt, this "demonic" metal, tied to some of the most horrific crimes of settler-colonialism and financial, extractive capitalism in the modern era? “The tale of the early-twentieth-century mining rush at Cobalt has been told as a settler's adventure, but Indigenous people had already been trading in metals from the region for two thousand years. And the events that happened here — the theft of Indigenous land

Beatrice Adler-Bolton, disability justice advocate and co-host of the Death Panel podcast, joins me to discuss the sociological production of the "end of the pandemic," and what that means for the "surplus" populations made most vulnerable by the economic demands of capital. She is the author of the upcoming book ‘Health Communism: A Surplus Manifesto,’ co-authored with Artie Vierkant, which "argues for a new global left politics aimed at severing the ties between capital and health." As the hosts of the Death Panel podcast have documented, discussed, and warned, the declarations made by the political and economic elites that we have entered into a "post-Covid" reality — where any and all public health measures meant to mitigate the spread of the virus are effectively lifted, and deemed unnecessary moving forward — is but a sociological construct, not based in epidemiological reality and sound public health policy. We have entered into the "let it rip" phase of the pandemic, it seems. What does this means fo

Eric Draitser, independent political analyst and host of CounterPunch Radio, joins me to discuss the Russian invasion of Ukraine. We recorded this discussion March 3rd 2022 — exactly seven days into this ongoing conflict. Eric has been publishing very concise, clear, and measured analysis of the invasion of Ukraine by the Russian military almost daily since it began — mostly through 15-20 minute videos published publicly, and through his Patreon page for his supporters. He applies a principled anti-imperialist, anti-war, and leftist approach to his detailed summaries of this situation as it unfolds — pointing to the roles that both Russian leadership (primarily Russian President Vladimir Putin) and the United States and its NATO partners in Europe have played in the escalation of this conflict. What are the short-term, and long-term, aims of Russia in this invasion? What is the historical context this war sits within? What are the ideological components to this? And most importantly, who ultimately suffers f

Lily Kay Ross, sexual violence researcher and Arts and Gender Editor at Psymposia, joins me to discuss her research and insights into the dark underbelly of psychedelic therapy — a subject expertly explored in Power Trip, a New York Magazine investigative podcast series she is the co-creator and producer of. As psychedelics become less stigmatized in the West and popularized as tools for trauma therapy and vehicles for spiritual enlightenment, Lily Kay Ross has been documenting something far more complex and nefarious under the surface of the optimistic image of the "psychedelic renaissance": sexual misconduct and abuse; pervasive ethical malfeasance. As she documents in Power Trip, there are numerous documented cases of so-called shamans and psychedelic guides taking advantage of their clients, violating bodily autonomy, and gaslighting victims into accepting abuse as "part of the healing journey." This issue has been raised numerous times over the years, and Lily has observed, and personally experienced,

Andy Ciccone and Elliott Evans, hosts of The Poor Prole's Almanac, join me to discuss a variety of subjects relating to the broad subject of collapse. We expound on what the "death wobbles" of the fragmenting, and declining, society we live within means for present and near future survival. How do we prepare for what is happening? How do we orient ourselves beyond the hyper-individualist notion of "prepping" for the apocalypse, as is often conceived of in US culture? The Poor Prole's Almanac is a podcast that provides a leftist perspective on prepping, foraging, homesteading, weapons, community-building, and global warming during late-stage capitalism. Episode Notes: - Subscribe to The Poor Prole’s Almanac: https://thepoorprolesalamanac.podbean.com / - Support on Patreon: https://www.patreon.com/PoorProlesAlmanac - Links to everything else: https://linktr.ee/PoorProles - Andy mentions Earthbound, a “cooperative channel designed to be a resource of skill-sharing and strengthen community-wide autonomy”:

Pagan author and poet Christopher Scott Thompson joins me to discuss the intersections between animism and anarchism as defined in his essays, and books, published through Gods & Radicals Press, including Pagan Anarchism, and most recently, The Book of Onei (an antinomian dream grimoire), and If In Ruins We Must Live (a collection of mystic poetry). Christopher Scott Thompson is an anarchist, martial arts instructor, and devotee of Brighid and Macha. Episode Notes: - Read Christopher’s work at Gods & Radicals Press: https://abeautifulresistance.org - Learn more about and purchase Pagan Anarchism, The Book of One, and If In Ruins We Must Live: https://bit.ly/3KEUcaA / https://bit.ly/3KxD9HL / https://bit.ly/3GQSaC2 - His personal blog: https://noctiviganti.wordpress.com - The music featured is by Waxie: https://waxiemusiclibrary.com WEBSITE: https://www.lastborninthewilderness.com PATREON: https://www.patreon.com/lastborninthewilderness DONATE: https://www.paypal.me/lastbornpodcast / https://venmo.c

[Intro: 7:46] Award-winning journalist, policy researcher, author, and historian Paul Street joins me to discuss the highly controversial and divisive Kyle Rittenhouse case and subsequent acquittal. Along with providing a substantive exploration of the broad sociopolitical context of this trial, we also touch on the case of the modern day lynching of Ahmaud Arbery and the recent conviction of the men that murdered him in Georgia, the concerted legislative push in Republican dominated states across the U.S. to impose harsher voter restrictions and roll back reproductive rights on the national level, and what these trends mean for the upcoming elections of 2022 and 2024, and electoral politics as a whole. In this interview, Paul Street and I don’t so much as dwell on the gruesome, and often tedious, details of the trial of Rittenhouse (such as whether the act of shooting three protestors could be justified as self-defense or not), but rather the broader context these events fit within. Specifically, how the v

[Intro: 8:34] Rob Wallace — evolutionary epidemiologist, agroecologist, and author of ‘Dead Epidemiologists: On the Origins of COVID-19’ — joins me to discuss the complex interplay between the increase of infectious pathogens globally, the role of epidemiology within the neoliberal capitalist project, agribusiness and ecological destruction, and Empire at the end of the "cycle of accumulation" in late stage capitalism. We reference his large body of work, but in particular two of his most recent Patreon pieces, ‘A Spray of Split Seconds’ and ‘Vic Berger's American Public Health.’ Zootonic pathogen spillover into human populations is on the upward trend. The high-speed evisceration of the last remaining intact biodiverse regions on the planet, in conjunction with agribusiness’s rapacious exploitation of biological life, meets the conditions for highly contagious viruses to evolve and leap from animal to human hosts more successfully and frequently. Regarding this epidemiological reality, Rob Wallace is an ar

[Intro: 12:12] Michael Beyea Reagan, historian and activist, joins me to discuss his book ‘Intersectional Class Struggle: Theory and Practice,’ an "innovative study [that] explores the relevance of class as a theoretical category in our world today, arguing that leading traditions of class analysis have missed major elements of what class is and how it operates." In our time of increasing wealth disparity and widespread socioeconomic precarity for the working class (dubbed the "Second Gilded Age"), how can intersectionality, as a theoretical framework and practice, help us more deeply understand and appreciate the liberatory struggles of racial, economic, and feminist movements? Reagan, through his excellent historical documentation in ‘Intersectional Class Struggle,’ has provided a more nuanced, and richer, view of class consciousness that does not fit into crude boxes.  "Using a historical lens, it studies the experiences of working class peoples, from migrant farm workers in California’s central valley,

[Intro: 8:43] Mark Freeman, narrative psychologist and Distinguished Professor of Ethics and Society at the College of the Holy Cross, discusses his book 'Do I Look at You with Love?: Reimagining the Story of Dementia' — documenting the final twelve years of his mother’s life of cognitive decline with dementia. This interview explores the complex reality of the narratives of the self, memory, the “tragic promise” of dementia, relationship, and the final acts of care one can provide for a dying loved one. “'Do I Look at You with Love?' were the words uttered by Mark Freeman’s mother when she learned, once again, that he was her son. This book explores the experience of dementia as it transpired during the course of the final twelve years of her life, from the time of her diagnosis until her death in 2016 at age 93. As a longtime student of memory, identity, and narrative, as well as the son of a woman with dementia, he had a remarkable opportunity to try to understand and tell her story. Much of the story is

[Intro: 12:50] Rune Hjarnø Rasmussen, historian of religion and founder of the Nordic Animism project, returns to the podcast to discuss animism and the Raven totem flag project he, and others, have created to define and symbolize humanity's role in the climate disrupted present we find ourselves in. Through years of in-depth research into the history and contemporary practice of animist religious/spiritual traditions the world over, Rune has unique insight into the nature of the numerous crises the world finds itself in presently. In our first discussion on this podcast, he framed the global climate crisis through the myth of Ragnarök, famously depicted in the Old Norse poem Völuspá. In this interview, I ask him to help us understand, though a mythic lens, the roots of the widespread proliferation of conspiracist thinking (endemic within the United States) in our “post-truth” era. How has modernity produced this crisis of meaning in the Western world today? What value can animism provide, not only in ident