For The Wild

For The Wild is honored to present a series of conversations entitled, “The Edges in the Middle,” in collaboration with UC Berkeley’s Othering and Belonging Institute. In the first of these conversations, Báyò Akómoláfé speaks with john a. powell, Director of the Othering & Belonging Institute.

Speaking on the theme “When ‘just getting along’ isn't enough: Is belonging possible in a world rooted in othering?,” Báyò and john contemplate the ontological weight of our desire for belonging. How might we learn how to belong together ? Articulating both the harsh realities of modern day division and the simultaneous reality of our connection to each other and to the earth, Báyò and john examine what it means to be “other” and to invite in the “monstrous” and the “strange.”

“The Edges in the Middle” is a series of conversations between Báyò Akómoláfé and thought companions like john a. powell, V, Naomi Klein, and more. These limited episodes have been adapted from Báyò’s work as the Global Senior Fellow at UC Berkeley's Othering & Belonging Institute. In this role, Báyò has been holding a series of public conversations on issues of justice and belonging for the Institute's Democracy & Belonging Forum, which connects and resources civic leaders in Europe and the US who are committed to bridging across difference to strengthen democracy and advance belonging in both regions and around the world. Báyò's conversations encourage us to rethink justice, hope, and belonging by sitting amidst the noise, not trying to cover it up with pleasant rhythms. To learn more about the Democracy & Belonging Forum, visit democracyandbelongingforum.org.

Music by Sitka Sun, generously provided by The Long Road Society Record Label. Visit our website at forthewild.world for the full episode description, references, and action points.

Support the show

Embracing the mountains, desert steppe, and islands of Patagonia, this week’s guest Diana Friedrich grounds listeners in an expansive and profound landscape. As she describes her work to protect swaths of land through Rewilding Argentina’s Patagonia Azul project, Diana and Ayana share in a love for landscapes that offer both challenge and refuge.

For Diana, conservation work is a calling to enter into deep community and to build trust over a shared love for the land. This means reimagining economic systems, challenging industrial greed, and countering our current culture of consumption and exploitation. Diana brings expert insight as she talks listeners through the complexity of international biodiversity goals and declarations. Though this, Diana emphasizes the importance of creating truly protected local areas rather than just relying on regulations and declarations. The deep commitment and intentional work of rewilding is vital as we work to support and to be a part of a world teeming with biodiversity.

Diana is a naturalist and adventurer. From a very early childhood, her parents took her and her four siblings traveling to the wildest and most remote places of Argentina and Chile. Right after finishing high school, she volunteered and worked at several conservation organizations in Argentina. She received a degree in Nature Conservation in South Africa and worked in nature reserves and communities in Zimbabwe, Kenya, and Tanzania. In Argentina, Diana coordinated field activities at the hooded grebe Project for three seasons and worked as a field technician on Rewilding Argentina’s projects to reintroduce giant anteaters and red-and-green macaws. She currently lives in Patagonia and manages the Patagonia Azul project’s Parks and Communities Program.

Music by Bird By Snow, Papa Bear and the Easy Love, and Aviva Le Fey. Visit our website at forthewild.world for the full episode description, references, and action points.

Support the show

This week, guest Veda Austin invites us to consider and grow closer to water – as both a preciously vital and often overlooked life source. Veda’s work researching and making art with water has allowed her an intimate look into water’s role on Earth and within our lives. Water is our companion, and more than just companion, it is what makes us. We are continually obliged to water, and it to us, as we are in an interdependent relationship with it. Veda calls us to investigate our liquid selves – the tears and sweat that make us human, the rituals of baptism and bathing that connect us to that which lies beyond. As Veda states, water is always in search of itself. How might understanding water begin to help us in our search for ourselves?

Touching on her healing journey, art, practice, and methods of working with water as collaborator, Veda highlights curiosity, closeness, and tenderness as guiding principles. Continually on a learning journey, Veda’s work shows what is possible when water is seen as source rather than as commodity. This episode reminds us of the wisdom we inherently hold alongside the grand scale of that which we have left to learn.

Veda is a water researcher, public speaker, mother, artist and author. She has dedicated the last 8 years observing and photographing the life of water. She believes that water is fluid intelligence, observing itself through every living organism on the planet and in the Universe. Her primary area of focus is photographing water in its ‘state of creation’, the space between liquid and ice. It is through her remarkable crystallographic photos that water reveals its awareness of not only Creation, but thought and intention through imagery.

Music by Strong Sun Moon/Camelia Jade and Doe Paoro. Visit our website at forthewild.world for the full episode description, references, and action points.

Support the show

This week we are rebroadcasting our interview with Tyson Yunkaporta originally aired in May of 2021. Struggling to change actual conditions, many have settled for changing the perceptions of the world around us. Tyson Yunkaporta begins by sharing the connections between perception, the branding of our identities, and the many forms of capital that become available and valuable in a perception-obsessed society. As we welcome the call to change our conditions and participate in the great “thousand-year clean-up”, we explore hybridized insight, the ramifications of clinging to dichotomous identities, and how genuine diversity is tangible preparedness and emotional resilience in motion. With this in mind, it becomes our task to figure out how we can sustain genuine diversity in our lives so we may work alongside folks with different capacities, worldviews, solutions, and thought processes in devotion to dismantling a system that necessitates abuse. Tyson Yunkaporta is an academic, an arts critic, and a researcher who belongs to the Apalech Clan in far north Queensland. He carves traditional tools and weapons and also works as a senior lecturer in Indigenous Knowledges at Deakin University in Melbourne.

Music by 40 Million Feet, Marty O’Reilly & the Old Soul Orchestra, and Violet Bell.

Visit our website at forthewild.world for the full episode description, references, and action points.

Support the show

This week we are rebroadcasting our interview with Jenny Odell, initially aired in February of 2021. Our attention has operated as currency for the past couple of decades, but with the invasiveness of social media and technology, our ability to exit and enter the attention economy has been severely hindered. As we feel pressure to post and comment on everything for an unknown audience, do we inherently limit our capacity for complexity and vulnerability? And what are the extended ramifications of becoming illiterate in complexity? How does this ripple out into all of our relationships? In lieu of the demanding world buzzing inside our devices, guest Jenny Odell shares the brilliance of doing “nothing”, tending to the ecological self, and growing deeper forms of attention through a commitment to bioregionalism. Jenny Odell is a writer, artist, and enthusiastic birdwatcher based in Oakland, California. She is the author of How to Do Nothing: Resisting the Attention Economy. Odell teaches digital art at Stanford University.

Music by Harrison Foster, Bosques Fragmentados, Samara Jade, and Kritzkom. Visit our website at forthewild.world for the full episode description, references, and action points.

Support the show