Green Dreamer: Seeding change towards collective healing, sustainability, regeneration

What does it mean to remember ourselves as representatives of our rivers, oceans, and other earthly bodies of water? Why is it vital to recognize the failed logic underpinning regulatory systems that take on an “innocent until proven guilty” approach to water pollution? And how can we leverage our tools as artists, storytellers, and creatives to co-create felt change?In this episode, we dialogue with Tzintzun Aguilar-Izzo and Blake Lavia of Talking Wings Collective for a synergistic conversation — where they invite us to think and dream with water.Join us as the artist-activist duo expands on how the legal frameworks surrounding pollution often exist in “grey areas”; why we need to problematize such “bureaucracies of death” as maintaining worldviews of separation between people and our waterful world; and what it means to replace extractivist modes of relating with our ecosystems that better align with the Indigenous framing of “Water is Life.”Tune in and subscribe to Green Dreamer via any podcast app; get our show notes at greendreamer.com; and join us on Patreon for the extended version of this episode.www.patreon.com/greendreamer

In this conversation with Dr. Juanita Sundberg, we explore how our relationships with the more-than-human world are often shaped by our institutions and knowledge systems — which don’t always honor the diverse cosmologies and relationalities of life. Juanita draws on her work with Indigenous communities and organizations as she highlights how our existence is determined not only by political and societal constructs of borders and boundaries, but by some of the most overlooked elements of the living world.What is the significance of unraveling colonial modes of relating? What does it mean to nuance the concept of “human exceptionalism"? And how do we collectively re-enliven and heal such senses of dissociation?Tune in and subscribe to Green Dreamer via any podcast app, and read our episode transcript and show notes at greendreamer.com.

How do we recalibrate the metrics of mainstream politics, such as Gross Domestic Product (GDP) often used to define a nation's “success” — and recenter them on our collective and planetary wellbeing? What could a truly regenerative economy encompass, and what might that mean for our immediate and long-term activism?In this episode, we welcome Amanda Janoo, who feels called to help build just and sustainable economies through goal-oriented and participatory design policies.Join us as Amanda shares about the limitations of mainstream economics; what the “Wellbeing Economy” is all about; how it relates to other models such as circular economy or degrowth economy; and more.Tune in and subscribe to Green Dreamer via any podcast app, and get our show notes at greendreamer.com.

In this episode, Sophy Banks shares her rich wealth of knowledge, teachings, and experiences about what it means to truly support ourselves and others through both collective and personal traumas. Cultures of individualism often lead us to navigate trauma on our own— without rituals of shared and collective space holding. For some, particularly those who have been victims of oppression, colonialism, and dispossession, the rivers and oceans of grief held within are often too vast and too deep to be carried alone.Join us in this episode as Sophy offers medicine for our souls, asking vital questions about collective grief tending. How do we notice trauma? How do we disrupt ways of managing grief that possibly reinforce systems and cultures of destruction? And what does it mean to truly care for and hold one another through times of darkness and despair?Tune in and subscribe to Green Dreamer via any podcast app, and join us on Patreon for the extended version of this episode.

What do the terminologies we often use to describe plants reveal about human and human-plant relations? How is the current landscape of the plant world entangled with human histories of desire, power, and imperialism?Drawing from her experience living across various countries and continents as a third-generation migrant, Jessica J. Lee delves into the nuances of shifting attitudes towards both plant and human migration stories throughout time. Join us as we explore how terms such as “weeds,” “naturalized” or “invasive” are defined and used to describe the plant world, how we might expand our understandings of belonging through recognizing the movement, as well as rootedness, of plants, and more.Subscribe to Green Dreamer and support our show at Patreon.com/GreenDreamer.

How do we show up as sensitive, creative and intuitive beings in a system that does not honor the uniqueness of our spirits? How can we stay true to our calling when we’re so busy simply trying to survive?In this episode, Niharika Sanyal shares sweet fruits of wisdom on the radical act of honoring our unique gifts as offerings during times of darkness. In guiding us towards the deepest desires and whispers of our hearts, Sanyal draws from her personal experiences, yoga philosophy, and Vedic myths. Her teachings shine a light on the collective pathways that can lead us towards more divine ways of being, feeling and co-existing through tuning into our innate inner wisdom, knowledge and unconditional love.Get our transcript and episode show notes at greendreamer.com; support our show at patreon.com/greendreamer.

“We consume not only stuff but also knowledge, experiences, critique. And this consumption, many times, is not even digested. It is the consumption for consumption’s sake so that we can feel better.”What might it mean for humanity to reach a level of maturation to be able to confront the multilayered crises we now face—calling upon us to “grow up and show up” for ourselves and our planet? And how might recognizing the differing historical contexts that we were raised within help us to have more empathy when navigating our generational differences?In this episode, we revisit our past conversation with Vanessa de Oliveira Andreotti, a Brazilian educator and Indigenous and Land Rights advocate. She is a professor and Canada Research Chair in Race, Inequalities, and Global Change at the University of British Columbia. She is one of the founders of the Gesturing Towards Decolonial Futures Arts/Research Collective and part of the coordination team of the "Last Warning" campaign.Vanessa is also the author of Hospicing Modernity: Facing Humanity's Wrongs and Implications for Social Activism.

What could it mean to heal our relationship with the dead, the decaying, and the dark in order to move towards more liveable futures? What possibilities might arise when we shift from cultural narratives of fear, discomfort, and disgust with these unseen worlds — to ones which honor the wisdoms that they may be able to offer?In this episode, Perdita Finn draws on her book Take Back the Magic to invite us to find kinship and guidance from beings that have passed.Through a renewal of ancient practices and rituals, Finn invokes the reclamation of our bodies, inner wisdom, and personal mantras that keep us whole and grounded during the troubled times of modernity.Subscribe and listen to Green Dreamer via any podcast app and read on for our episode transcript.

In this episode, geographer, writer, and sound artist AM Kanngieser invites us to reconsider the diverse ways in which we register both sound and silence — pushing back against the idea that listening itself is a virtuous act with universality in experience.Through their own journey as a geographer and sound artist, Kanngieser sheds light on the colonial repercussions of extracting sound, knowledge, and information from landscapes and communities that have historically been taken from without consent. What are the moral considerations for using recording technologies initially developed for military surveillance? How do we ask for permission to capture sounds—not just from the people of a place but also from the land themselves? And what does it mean to blur the boundaries of our various senses as we become more attuned and responsive to the world?

Why is the North Africa and Middle East region so vital to center in discourses on climate justice? How does the current global energy transition reinforce colonial, extractivist power dynamics? And what is the meaning of “eco-normalization” in the context of the Arab world?Join us in this episode as Algerian researcher and activist Hamza Hamouchene dissects crucial narratives surrounding the notion of “green energy colonialism.” Posing critical questions about the current beneficiaries of renewable energy projects, Hamouchene offers thought-provoking perspectives that empower listeners to unpack the systemic injustices of “green colonialism.”Listen via our website or any podcast app, and find the transcript below.

Who does “fair trade” as a certification program speaking to conscious consumers really serve? How might it fall short of what it promises—supporting farmers and producers from falling into the deepest pits of poverty while paradoxically also keeping them at a certain level? What does the process of rebuilding power entail for communities who are grappling with local inequalities within a larger global corporate agricultural chain?In this episode, we converse with author and geography Lindsay Naylor as she delves into the daily acts of resistance and agricultural practices by the campesinos/as of Chiapas, Mexico, in their pursuit of dignified livelihoods and self-declared autonomous communities. Drawing from her fieldwork, Naylor explores interaction with fair trade markets and state violence within the context of the radical history of coffee production.

What does it mean to recognize the limitations of “biodiversity” as a gauge of planetary wellbeing? How do we make sense of the heads of big corporations like Shell being major patrons of the largest conservation organizations? And how might a politics of disability justice shape diverse futures beyond an exclusive framework of Western-Scientific conservation?In this episode, we converse with scholar and anti-oppression activist Audra Mitchell on how intersecting forms of systemic violence work to extract, eliminate, and conceal cultural and ecological plurality—and how the survival, preservation, and organization of oppressed and marginalized communities alone resist such violence.Extended episode: patreon.com/greendreamer

“What we’re talking about are plants that people desire for ornamental collection and will oftentimes go to great lengths to get them. Sometimes, that desire leads to conservation problems, and sadly… in the worst-case scenario, the extinction of an entire species.”Where does cacti and succulent life fit within the realm of illegal/illicit wildlife trade? What conversations might arise when we include them in a wider picture of political ecology and colonial histories? And how might the entanglement of desire, care, and conservation complicate trends of in-vogue succulent and cacti collecting?Join us in this episode with our guest Jared Margulies, author of The Cactus Hunters, as we delve into prickly themes of globalized trade networks, desire, and preservation.

What can grief teach us about being truly alive? And how might seeds, and the compassionate acts of tending to them, be the “helpers and teachers” of mediating our collective grief?In this episode, we are honored to welcome Vivien Sansour, founder of the Palestinian Heirloom Seed Project—an initiative centered on caring for and preserving seeds as keepers of ancestral connection and models of subversive advocacy.Join us as Vivien shares about the systemic violence of disconnection and relational severance, the socio-economic pressures turning many historically food-centered farms into monocultural plantations of commercial tobacco for export, how Palestinian agriculturalists are standing up to reclaim food sovereignty, and more.

What might the histories of human and gray whale relations show us in terms of how the stories we tell shape the texture of our relationships to our more-than-human kin? How can adopting a plurality of narratives and cultural perspectives in and around a particular species disrupt the kinds of binaries that so often underly academic research methods? And what might a more diverse, accessible, and context-specific approach to field research look like with humility and deep-listening at its core? Tune in to this episode with our guest, Anna Guasco, to explore these questions and more.

This is a behind-the-scenes conversation with Gabes Torres, a contributor and the program advisor of alchemize, and Green Dreamer's team members Anisa Sima Hawley and Kamea Chayne. We explore the themes of imagination, escapism, dissociation, and discomfort when it comes to dreaming, sensing, relating, and becoming otherwise.Enroll in alchemize through January 12th, 2024: www.greendreamer.com/alchemize

“One in four bites of our food is pollinated by honeybees, but at what cost in the system that we are in now? How could that look different if our agriculture was more localized, regionalized, and sustainable?”In this episode, we warmly welcome Ang Roell—founder of They Keep Bees—to discuss their practice of working and learning with honeybees as models of resilience, care, and responsiveness. Ang’s work, which demystifies bees to decenter logics of power-over relations and consumer-driven work culture, frames a conversation around how we might learn from hive-lives in times of collapse.Join us in this invitation to re-member our webs of interdependence—to slow down, swarm together, and work within rhythmic fields of collective care. And join us in alchemize: radical imagination for collective transformation, to experience two practices led by Ang: “You are a honeybee” and “Pollinating networks of collective care.”

In Green Dreamer's episode 413, we welcome Dr. Hilding Neilson, who shares with us his knowledge of the night skies and expertise as an astronomer traced by his Mi’kmaw lineage. Trained in the Western-scientific sphere of astrophysics and shaped by Mi'kmaq methodologies, Dr. Neilson aims to disrupt the Euro-centric claim on the night sky as codified through historical and modern Astro-colonial pursuits of objectivity, discovery, nomenclature. In demanding that Indigenous stories and systems of knowledge not only be heard but given a leading role on the stage of public policy making, Hilding invites us to reflect upon the value of night sky knowledge and ponder how it reflects and shapes life on earth, as well as how we choose to ethically engage with this knowledge moving forward.

In this episode, we are joined by A. Laurie Palmer: a writer, artist, and author of the book The Lichen Museum. In paying attention to lichen, Laurie looks to these symbiotic organisms as a template for enriching human and multi-species relationality. How might lichen, and their refusal to be scientifically categorized, offer a model of living that nurtures slowness, adaptability, and diversity? In what ways do they remind us how to practice mutual aid, and reconfigure narratives of dominance? Join us in conversation with Laurie as she invites us to dream and play with lichen through artistic explorations of multiplicity and prosperity. And join us in alchemize to be invited into imagination practices inspired by lichen ways of worlds.

In this episode, we welcome our guest Dekila Chungyalpa, who reminds us of our intra-dependant existence with all of life. Traced by a lineage of Tibetan Buddhist practitioners, Dekila weaves together teachings from her cultural and religious upbringing with her work as an environmental program director—from which she invites us to reflect on the ways in which Western conservation efforts fall short. In her work with faith-based organizations, Dekila prompts a dialogue around binary paradigms that persist even within environmental and activist movements.Join us as we dive further into Dekila’s world and unravel the intricacies of interdependence, deep time, and more.Episode song feature: Scissor-tailed Flycatcher by Ben White via Spirit House RecordsSupport our podcast: patreon.com/greendreamer

“My life goal is to get our governments to understand that Indigenous sovereignty and freshwater fish futures are completely linked.”In this episode, we welcome Dr. Zoe Todd, who invites us to think alongside a critical lens of Indigenous fish philosophy and examine relationships between Indigenous sovereignty and fish well-being in Canada. By asking how we can learn with fish as they “listen with their whole being,” Zoe prompts discussions on compassionate listening, the fundamental link between the future of fish wellbeing and Indigenous sovereignty worldwide, and their relationship with art as research practice.Tune in as we swim in waters of critical attunement to our wider ecological entanglements, as inspired by Zoe’s devotion to fish as companions of care.Music credit: Spirit House RecordsSupport our work: Patreon.com/greendreamer

In this episode, we welcome our guest Charlotte Wrigley, who invites us to contemplate the upheaval of extinction as a discontinuous process—a becoming, rather than an end. Charlotte’s inquiry into this matter straddles the edges of human relations, geography, climate science, and ethics against the backdrop of permafrost and its changing form. Unveiling the intra-connected worlds of thawing permafrost and de-extinction efforts, Charlotte waltzes with sticky tensions of a rapidly heating planet and the need to “cool down” expeditious techno-races. How might we learn from permafrost itself, as well as Arctic communities / biomes, and stay with the trouble of the unfixed and unpredictable? Support our show: patreon.com/greendreamerGet the transcript and episode references: greendreamer.comSong feature: Concept of Love by Cheery via Spirit House Records

“Once folks start to pick away at that scab of understanding how much of a role microbes play in the lives of other things in good ways and bad ways temporally, spatially, physically, and spiritually, it really does open up a rich vein of a new dimension — to start considering the world around us and how we fit in that world.”In this episode we are joined by Siv Watkins, founder of the platform “Microanimism”. Inviting us to deepen our intimacy with the complex, multi-faceted microbial world, Siv deploys the lenses of science, mysticism, and animism to advocate for some of the smallest, and most mysterious, beings on the planet.We glimpse into the depth of entanglement between microbes (also referred to as “the smalls”) and their ancient relationship with cycles of life and death; sink into a purview of deep time; and explore questions of “what makes us human?”. Are “our” micro-biomes even “ours”?Join us as we “shrink down” to expand cosmic perspectives in relation to the reverent, and sometimes terrifying, microbial kin.(The musical offering featured in this episode is Scissor-tailed Flycatcher by Ben White.)Enjoying our podcast and want to see it continue? Join us on Patreon today starting at $2/mo: www.greendreamer.com/support

In this episode, we are joined by Dr. Patricia Kaishian, a mycologist, writer, and educator who gestures to mycology as a queer discipline. Situated as a queer member of Armenian diaspora, Patricia threads connections between the often misunderstood and mis/under-represented displacement of mycelial bodes and her own. Offering a glimpse of the complex, fascinating, taxonomy-defying world of fungi, Patricia invokes reflections on how we can learn from, dream with, and reclaim queer existence with our fungal kin.What stories of diversity, fluidity, and resilience do they sporulate? What lessons can they inspire in an age of ecological collapse? And what narratives can they invite us to decompose and re-birth?(The musical offering featured in this episode is When You Carried Me by Oropendola.)This episode was brought to you by our supporting listeners. Join us on Patreon to help us keep our show alive: www.greendreamer.com/support

In the episode, we welcome Dr. Eshe Lewis to discuss her life and learnings as an activist, anthropologist, and storyteller. Eshe walks us through glimpses of her time with Afro-Peruvian women as part of her doctoral research and how this experience transfigured beyond the siloed parameters of academic study into personal, historical, and political realms.Eshe’s conscious intent of questioning, complicating, and re-positioning anthropology not only as an academic discipline, but a field of ethical practice, casts an inspirational light on the role and reachability of storytelling. Join us as she voices this critical exposure of in-between, multi/cross-lingual modes of communicating—not only as a means of empowerment but as an invitation to lean into joy and awe.(The musical offering featured in this episode is Scissor-tailed Flycatcher by Ben White. The episode-inspired artwork is by Taylor Tinkham.)This episode was brought to you by our supporting listeners. Join us on Patreon to help us keep our show alive: www.greendreamer.com/support

“[...] The United States started to heavily invest in subsidizing growing wheat for exporting purposes. That resulted in flooding international markets, including Jordan’s markets. Cheap American wheat left many of the small-scale farmers unable to compete under record prices.”In this episode, we welcome Lama Khatieb, co-founder of Zikra for Popular Learning: a Jordan-based collective that aims to empower community members to revalue their identity and culture, through the cultivation and sharing of their local and traditional knowledge. We visit themes of agricultural interdependence in relation to Jordan’s history of wheat and bread production, how small grassroots initiatives are taking matters of food sovereignty into their own (literal) hands, and more.Lama endeavors to draw the richness of village life and local harvesting practices to our attention. Through the efforts of the Al-Barakeh Wheat Project (whose name also entails the practice of blessing and abundance), Lama and fellow participants respond not only to Jordan’s current dependence on imported wheat but aim to tap into the wider cultural and ecological ramifications of losing local practices.Join us as we dive into what the spirit and practice of “Barakeh” teaches in terms of cultural reclamation, small-scale initiatives, food interdependence, and relationships with the land.(The musical offering featured in this episode Concept of Love by Cheery. The episode-inspired artwork is by Lucy Halsam.)This episode was brought to you by our supporting listeners. Join us on Patreon to help us keep our show alive: www.greendreamer.com/support

In this episode, we welcome anthropologist Daniel Ruiz-Serna, whose work, situated in the Choco region of Colombia, aims to expose the entanglement of political and ecological violence whereby echoes of conflict/healing reverberate through place. In light of the enmeshment between war and land, Daniel welcomes a framework of living territories, as traced by his life/work with the diversity of human and more-than-human communities of Bajo Atrato, Choco.Tune in as Daniel invokes questions around: What stories do the land and its respective guardians cry out in the face of ongoing damage—that which exceeds designated categories of violence, and thus, so-called systems of repair? Accordingly, when it comes to human and more-than-human rights, what are the shortcomings of legal justice systems insofar as they fail to consider the life and spirit of territory, as well as those who are inextricably tied to the life of such territory? How might the legal language of “justice” and “repair” be limited by, even tethered to, the roots of oppression? And what kinds of schisms, shifts, and stories are needed to reframe these concepts?The musical offering featured in this episode When You Carried Me by Oropendola.Support Green Dreamer: GreenDreamer.com/support

“I think the bigger question is not necessarily specifically about physics, but generally speaking, about how we culturally engage with science and the role of science in our communities and how it shapes our mindset and what our mindset about science is. ”Joining us in this episode is theoretical physicist Dr. Chanda Prescod-Weinstein, whose research on small-scale particles points us to a large, cosmic picture. From particle physics and astrophysics to astronomy and Black feminist science studies, Chanda’s work spans a wide range of disciplines, practices, and texts.Named as one of 10 people who helped shape science in 2020 as part of Nature’s 10, Chanda also leads in expanding awareness of and unpacking racism, sexism, and other forms of oppression that continue to govern scientific scholarship, particularly the field of physics. Through her deep love of math and physics as a form of storytelling, Chanda is committed, in her own words to “understanding the biggest story there is: the origin and history of the universe”—histories stemming from pluri-cultural lenses.Tune in to this episode as Chanda talks through some of the themes explored in her latest award-winning book, The Disordered Cosmos: A Journey into Dark Matter, Spacetime, and Dreams Deferred, pointing to the entanglement of Western scientific institutions tethered to specific cultural and historical hegemonies. Shining a light on the political nature of technology, she problematizes supremacist ways of knowledge-seeking and questions universalized visions of advancement—including the idea that expanding the accessibility of broadband internet connection to every community on Earth is a shared and necessary goal of inclusivity.(The musical offering featured in this episode is Trust The Sun by Oropendola. The episode-inspired artwork is by Fernanda Peralta)This episode was brought to you by our supporting listeners. Join us on Patreon to help us keep our show alive: www.greendreamer.com/support

“The legacy of Earth colonization… is still [in its] early days. We can protect this shared environment and also what I see as the intangible heritage of humanity. Space belongs to us all.”In this episode, we are joined in conversation with Dr. Aparna Venkatesan, a cosmologist working on studies of “first-light” sources in the universe. She also works actively in cultural astronomy and space policy, is recognized internationally for her research and DEI leadership, featured widely in the media, and received numerous prizes and awards. Dr. Venkatesan is deeply committed to increasing the participation and retention of underrepresented groups in astronomy and the sciences and is active in developing co-created scientific partnerships with Indigenous communities worldwide.Invoking us to think deeply about the ‘culture of science,’ Dr. Venkatesan offers an invitation to examine tapestries of life in relation to the more-than-earth world. Through joyful rhetoric and a love for the language of science, she calls for reflective examination deemed necessary to preserve the heritage of our ancestral global commons—space—that is currently under threat by extractive and colonial interests. In response to the growing privatization of the cosmos, Dr. Venkatesan urges for the immediacy of un-rooting these legacies by inviting other ways of knowing and engaging in communal practices of interplanetary justice as luminous as the night sky itself.(The musical offering featured in this episode Carolina by Mother Juniper. The episode-inspired artwork is by Lucy Haslam.)This episode was brought to you by our supporting listeners. Join us on Patreon to help us keep our show alive: www.greendreamer.com/support

“It’s very important that we translate how different knowledge systems have been privileged and others have been marginalized and repressed and erased. To have true knowledge symbiosis, where there is harmony and balance and inter-relationality and each contributing respectfully with care, thoughtfulness, humility, that is a process and it’s a messy and tangled process.”In this episode, we welcome Melissa K. Nelson, an Indigenous ecologist, writer, editor, media-maker and scholar-activist. Expanding on her years of community based work as well as mixed background and heritage, Melissa reflects on climate change as a symptom, rather than a cause, of disharmonious imbalance with the earth. She invites us to ask: how might acts of ‘balance’ be more dynamic than we may perceive? And how might we re-examine, re-situate, and even re-claim the word “sustainability” to invoke more than maintaining stasis, or keeping a status quo? In staying with these questions, Melissa reminds us of the importance of death, decay and composting; concepts so often eschewed under the house that modernity built. In composting that which needs to change, Melissa gestures towards practices of embodied story-ing that is relational, place-based, and ancestral. Ultimately, Melissa asks of herself and us: what does it mean to become, or be in the process of becoming, a good ancestor?(The musical offering featured in this episode Carolina by Mother Juniper. The episode-inspired artwork is by Lauren Rosenfelt.)This episode was brought to you by our supporting listeners. Join us on Patreon to help us keep our show alive: www.greendreamer.com/support

For Green Dreamer’s 400th episode, we welcome Anand Giridhardas, a writer and journalist whose books include The Persuaders: At the Front Lines of the Fight for Hearts, Minds, and Democracy (2022), Winners Take All: The Elite Charade of Changing the World (2018), The True American: Murder and Mercy in Texas (2014), and India Calling: An Intimate Portrait of a Nation’s Remaking (2011). A former foreign correspondent and columnist for The New York Times for more than a decade, Anand has also written for The New Yorker, The Atlantic, and Time, and is the publisher of the newsletter The Ink. Spanning themes of philanthropy, political change, and social media, Anand unsettles the assumptions of “win-win” social change. How does the rise of elite philanthropy and plutocratic “do-gooding” coincide with the hoarding of power? We look at how in an age of bifurcated American politics, many people fighting for social change face burnout or have given up. Accordingly, Anand calls for the need to stay with the art of persuasion and simultaneous calling-in and calling-out—digging deeper into the political spectrum rather than simplifying people’s complex humanity into binaries. This episode was brought to you by our supporting listeners. Join us on Patreon to help us keep our show alive: www.greendreamer.com/support //The musical offering featured in this episode Drop The Stone by Oropendola.//

“Hundreds of people have been murdered over sand in the last few years. Even though most of us barely ever think about it, sand is actually the most used natural resource in the world after air and water.” In this episode, we welcome journalist Vince Beiser, the author of The World in a Grain: The Story of Sand and How It Transformed Civilization. Vince guides us in an exploration of sand as a natural resource and the ways in which its extraction and exploitation, quite literally, upholds structures of modern civilization. Exposing the multi-layered histories, uses of, and even violence that ensues around sand as a resource, Vince calls for an exploration of diverse, plural models that include but are not solely dependent on sand as an infrastructural material. How does unveiling the economy of sand, in turn, speak to landscapes of injustice, where the clearness of glass as end products juxtaposes the outsourced pollution that exits their factories? And how might our questioning of “how and why” sand is culled into our lives turn our attention to the literal and metaphorical cracks that splinter the seemingly indestructible foundations of the project of modernity? This episode was brought to you by our supporting listeners. Join us on Patreon to help us keep our show alive: www.greendreamer.com/support (The musical offering featured in this episode At the Edge of It by Oropendola.)

“Once you start rebuilding more localized systems, they are almost without exception, going to be kinder to the environment and kinder to people structurally. ” In this episode, we are honored to welcome back our guest Helena Norberg-Hodge, a linguist, author, and filmmaker, and the founder of the Local Futures. As a pioneer and proponent of localization (decentralization), as well as her experience living in deep relation with the people of Ladakh over a 40-year period, Helena encourages “locality” grounded in community accountability, slowness, and (bio)diversity. Join Helena and our host Kamea as we explore the systemic barriers surrounding notions of philanthropy and investment, gift economies, and re-structuring community fabric from the bottom up. Throughout the conversation, Helena urges us to sit with the complexities of modern economic and agricultural practices that extract, monopolize, and homogenize cultures and lifeforms. Ultimately she asks: how might we avoid falling into the pit of “shame and blame” responses to these atrocities, and rather, shed light on historical matrices that have shaped where we are today? In doing so, how can we encourage and learn from existing practices and cultural paradigms that embody localization at its core? (The musical offering featured in this episode Drop the Stone by Oropendola. The episode-inspired artwork is by Art Twink.) This episode was brought to you by our supporting listeners. Join us on Patreon to help us keep our show alive: www.greendreamer.com/support

“When I talk about extinction as a bio-cultural process, what I’m seeing or what I’m talking about is the fact that there’s lots of different species who are alive and who are working within a cultural entanglement which is shaping their capacity to either thrive or perhaps become endangered and go into decline... I see art as giving people a way to engage with that grief, and to engage with that emotional connection with the subject, but also to engage with a sense of agency over it.” In this episode, we welcome Rosamund Portus, an artist, writer and researcher of environmental humanities. Drawn to bees at an early age, by way of her exposure to gardening, Rosamund conducted her undergraduate dissertation on humans’ understanding of bee culture. She later pursued a Ph.D. in the social and cultural dimensions of bee population declines. In turn, Rosamund has gone on to complicate black and white “whodunit” narratives around species extinction, while advocating for creativity and art as pathways of relational becoming. Speaking from her context of living in the U.K., and through a lens of “bio-culturalism,” Rosamund is interested in how modern, consumerist, human culture (at least in the West) have become entangled with a perception of bee culture, particularly the trope and role honeybees in agricultural systems. She invites us to challenge what renders a “meaningful” life and death, which species get to matter within mainstream extinction dialogues, and how storytelling plays an important role in enriching our capacities of engagement with bees, other species, and ourselves. (The musical offering featured in this episode At the Edge of It by Oropendola. The episode-inspired artwork is by Cherie Kwok.) This episode was brought to you by our supporting listeners. Join us on Patreon to help us keep our show alive: www.greendreamer.com/support

“If we’re soaking in all these default practices that are power-over practices that are reflected to us through the media, through our families and communities, through how the economy works, it means we’re embodying things that we might not even agree with that might not at all align with our values, but we’re embodying them anyway.” Staci K. Haines is a somatics innovator and the author of The Politics of Trauma. In her decades of working and teaching in the field of somatics, Staci has grown fascinated with the “how” rather than the “why.” She invokes questions such as how we are shaped, how we cultivate resilience, how we practice, and how we transform. Observing somatics as a holistic paradigm shift, Staci offers insight into the body as a form of place—a place where the personal meets the collective. With this in mind, she invites us to explore how working with embodied somatic practices in safe and accessible ways can shape the ways in which we want to respond to, act on, and heal cycles of trauma. By leaning on the phrase “we become what we practice,” Staci poses somatics as a relational space where social justice, collective aliveness, and personal healing align in untangling the knots of exploitative power. Ultimately, she expresses the urgent need for collective resourcefulness as guided by somatic awareness. (The musical offering featured in this episode is Trust The Sun by Oropendola. The episode-inspired artwork is by Nano Février.) This episode was brought to you by our supporting listeners. Join us on Patreon to help us keep our show alive: www.greendreamer.com/support

Dr. Andreas Weber is a biologist, philosopher, and writer, whose work focuses on re-evaluating our understanding of the living and dying. Andreas proposes understanding organisms as subjects, and hence the biosphere, as a meaning-creating and poetic reality. Accordingly, he holds that an economy inspired by nature should not be designed as a mechanistic optimisation machine, but rather as an ecosystem which transforms the mutual sharing of matter and energy into deeper meaning. Reflecting on his former education in biology and marine science, Andreas enriches a discourse on the limitations of objectivity under a strictly scientific lens. Through a “both-and” perspective, Andreas walks us through what he calls “poetic ecology,” as he navigates the nuance of ecological Eros of tapping into the aliveness of being. This aliveness, he proposes, emerges from a sense of desire, which within a Western worldview tends to exclude more-than-human relationships. However, by respectfully acknowledging other worldviews of dividuality, rather than just individuality, Andreas signals the attention given to our inner experiences of Eros that inevitably enhance the aliveness of the whole. (The musical offering featured in this episode is Over It by RVBY MY DEAR.) This episode was brought to you by our supporting listeners. Join us on Patreon to help us keep our show alive: www.greendreamer.com/support

“Where is the space for a collective life? If you yell at the planet and say, ‘Why aren’t you acting collectively?’ You don’t understand this social system. This economic system has stolen collectivity from people.” In this episode, we welcome Vijay Prashad, an Indian historian, editor, and journalist. Vijay begins by sharing about the turning points in his life that led him to focus his work on unraveling the various atrocities visited upon people in the world. With a recognition of the power of media narratives, he goes on to address how both mainstream and independent media perpetuates the limiting view that democracies are driven primarily by participation in electoral politics. Offering alternative inspirations, Vijay shines a light on examples of grassroots movements in Brazil, India, and China, where ordinary people have taken matters into their own hands to occupy unused lands to grow food and practice small gestures of community care. Rather than asserting blame for the numerous challenges everyday people face when trying to become more engaged members of society, however, Vijay points out the various systemic factors making organized action more difficult. Ultimately, Vijay calls for reviving our collective lives through rebuilding confidence and capacity—leaving us with an empowering invitation to start creating the future, now. (The musical offering featured in this episode Don’t Ask Me by RVBY MY DEAR. The episode-inspired artwork is by Luci Pina.) Green Dreamer is a community-powered podcast. Thank you for sharing and supporting our work: GreenDreamer.com/support

In this episode, we welcome writer, artist, and technologist, James Bridle. James’s artworks have been commissioned by galleries and institutions and exhibited worldwide and on the internet. They are the author of New Dark Age (2018) and Ways of Being (2022), and they wrote and presented the radio series "New Ways of Seeing" for BBC Radio 4 in 2019. Join us as James investigates and complicates modernity’s entanglement with contemporary technology. Ever careful not to throw the baby out with the bath water, they urge us to think critically about the impact of technological advances particularly as they are embedded within dynamics of power, systems of complexity, and definitions of “intelligence”. In breaking down the fallacy of the earth as a computational model, James places emphasis on the process of cultivating relationships which is at the heart of thinking and feeling—processes that call on us to activate technologies of relationality. (The musical offering featured in this episode Lullaby by RVBY MY DEAR. The episode-inspired artwork is by Tinuke Fagborun.) Green Dreamer is a community-supported podcast. Join our Patreon and contribute a gift of any amount today to help keep our platform alive: greendreamer.com/support

“I like thinking with viruses because they’re constantly infecting us, changing our nature. Some of them are even changing our genome. We’re constantly in relation with the world around us even though we can barely perceive and understand all of this complexity.” In this episode, we are joined by anthropologist Eben Kirksey, who invites us to think and feel through a new wave of viral theory through a lens of multi-species entanglement. Through his insatiable curiosity about nature-culture, Eben humbly approaches the viral world as one that reflects the limitations of fixed or reductive categorization. Ultimately, he leaves us with an invitation to explore how radically re-thinking viral systems can offer alternative ways of approaching contemporary socio-political predicaments. He asks: how can we sit with the complexities of symbiotic assemblages amongst species, and what novel relationships are imperative to uplift in an age of extinction? About the guest: Eben Kirksey is an Associate Professor of Anthropology at the University of Oxford where he teaches Medical Anthropology and Human Ecology. He earned his PhD at the University of California, Santa Cruz, and helped found one of the world's first Environmental Humanities programs at UNSW Sydney in Australia. Investigating some of the most important stories of our time—related to biotechnology, the environment, and social justice—led him to Asia, the Pacific, and the Americas. His books include Freedom in Entangled Worlds (2012) and Emergent Ecologies (2015)–plus The Multispecies Salon (2014), and The Mutant Project (2020), a book that follows some of the world’s first genetically modified people. (The musical offering featured in this episode Lose My Mind by RVBY MY DEAR. The episode-inspired artwork is by Luci Pina.) Green Dreamer is a community-supported podcast. Join our Patreon and contribute a gift of any amount today to help keep our platform alive: greendreamer.com/support

"I came up with the idea of ‘Eating the Landscape’ because I was thinking about our Indigenous ancestral foodways. It’s not just about food. It’s not just about nutrition. ‘Eating the Landscape’ is about this large, interconnected matrix of our relationship to place." In this episode, Enrique Salmón, Ph.D. guides us to see Indigenous foodways as parts of an interconnected matrix of our relationship to place. Introducing the concept of “kincentric ecology,” Enrique problematizes one-size-fits-all approaches to caring for the land. He also elaborates on why many Native peoples are opposed to memory banking as a way to preserve Indigenous knowledge. Having completed his dissertation on how the bioregion of his Rarámuri people of the Sierra Madres of Chihuahua, Mexico influences their language and thought, Enrique invites us to understand the layered meanings behind the phrase “Eating the Landscape”—looking at food not just as sources of nourishment but as avenues of growing one’s kinship. Ultimately, as opposed to the doom and gloom perspectives prevalent in mainstream environmentalism in regards to the role of humankind, Enrique leaves us with a calling of recognizing humans as a keystone species—where creation is not only a matter of what came before but an act of relational responsibility. About the guest: Enrique Salmón is the author of Iwígara: The Kinship of Plants and People and Eating The Landscape, a book focused on small-scale Native farmers of the Greater Southwest and their role in maintaining biocultural diversity. With a PhD. in anthropology from Arizona State University, he has been a Scholar in Residence at the Heard Museum and on the Board of Directors of the Society of Ethnobiology. Enrique has published several articles and chapters on Indigenous ethnobotany, agriculture, nutrition, and traditional ecological knowledge, and he teaches American Indian Studies in the Department of Ethnic Studies at Cal State University East Bay. also serving as their Tribal Liaison. The musical offering featured in this episode is Flute Dance by Enrique Salmón. The episode-inspired artwork is by Cherie Kwok. Green Dreamer is a community-supported podcast. Join our Patreon and contribute a gift of any amount today to help keep our platform alive: greendreamer.com/support

“What we might want to do is learn where the word desertification comes from and when it should be used and when it is ill-used, at least to move forward into a more hopeful, more informed, more generous future that I think we all want.” Why should we challenge mass tree-planting projects as being politically neutral—as something that ought to garner universal support? What is the significance of reorienting our goals towards growing trees rather than planting trees? And what could it mean to love drylands as they are, troubling perspectives that problematize their existence? In this episode, we welcome Rosetta S. Elkin, the Principle of Practice Landscape, academic director of Pratt Institute’s School of Architecture Master’s in Landscape Architecture (MLA) program, and an Associate of The Arnold Arboretum at Harvard University. Rosetta’s work considers living environments with a particular focus on plant life and climate change. Rosetta teaches planting design, fieldwork, and seminars that advance a theory of plant life between ecology and horticulture. She is the author of books, articles, book chapters, and monographs including Plant Life: The Entangled Politics of Afforestation. Green Dreamer is a community-supported podcast. Join our Patreon and contribute a gift of any amount today to help keep our platform alive: greendreamer.com/support // The musical offering featured in this episode Lose My Mind by RVBY MY DEAR. //

“I use the language of entanglement rather than interdependence because entanglement implies that what’s fundamental is relationships.” What are some of the limitations of human rights frameworks and the institutions that uphold them? What does it mean to go beyond recognizing our interdependence to seeing our deep entanglements with our more-than-human world? And how is the much more holistic framing of “multispecies justice” still reductive in terms of the forms of beings that they recognize? In this episode, we welcome Professor Dany Celermajer, Deputy Director of the Sydney Environment Institute at the University of Sydney who leads the Multispecies Justice project. Through the experience of living through the black summer bushfires with a multispecies community, she began writing about a new crime of our age, Omnicide and subsequently Summertime. Green Dreamer is a community-supported podcast. Join our Patreon and contribute a gift of any amount today to help keep our platform alive: greendreamer.com/support // The musical offering featured in this episode Don't Ask Me by RVBY MY DEAR. //

“One thing that the United States got really good at doing was basically replacing all colonial products with synthetic ones—swapping technology in for territory and replacing colonies with chemistry.” How have synthetic chemistry and technology allowed the United States as an empire to cease its reliance on colonies? And what is the significance of recognizing the greater history of the empire—beyond the borders of its symbolic “logo map”? In this episode, we welcome Daniel Immerwahr, a historian and the Bergen Evans Professor in the Humanities at Northwestern University. His most recent book is How to Hide an Empire. Green Dreamer is a community-supported podcast. Join our Patreon and contribute a gift of any amount today to help keep our platform alive: greendreamer.com/support // The musical offering featured in this episode is Lullaby by RVBY MY DEAR. //

“We often forget that Black farmers were the foundation of the civil rights movement. Actually, a lot of Black agrarian scholars and organizers, and even some policy advocates that have been doing this work for a long time, would say that there’d be no civil rights movement if it wasn’t for Black farmers.” In this episode, we welcome dr. shakara tyler, a returning-generation farmer, educator and organizer who engages in Black agrarianism, agroecology, food sovereignty and environmental justice as commitments of abolition and decolonization. She serves as Board President at the Detroit Black Community Food Security Network (DBCFSN), board member of the Detroit People’s Food Co-op (DPFC) and co-founder of the Detroit Black Farmer Land Fund (DBFLF) and a member of the Black Dirt Farm Collective (BDFC). Green Dreamer is a community-supported podcast. Join our Patreon and contribute a gift of any amount today to help keep our platform alive: greendreamer.com/support // The musical offering featured in this episode Over It by RVBY MY DEAR. //

“What I find worth remarking upon is the fact that the vast majority of people are so alienated from the Bluefin’s life world that they don’t know what an extraordinary creature she is—and instead just widely see her as a foodstuff, trafficked on the global market. It’s imperative for that worldview to change.” In this episode, we welcome Jennifer E. Telesca, Associate Professor of Environmental Governance in the Department of Geography, Planning, and Environment at the Nijmegen School of Management, Radboud University, the Netherlands. Her work takes a critical approach to ocean studies, spanning the interests of environmental diplomacy, ethnographies of international law in society, the human–animal relationship, political economy, the politics of extinction, and science and technology in policymaking. She conducts fieldwork at the United Nations and in treaty bodies, diplomatic missions, and other sites scaled supranationally. Red Gold: The Managed Extinction of the Giant Bluefin Tuna (University of Minnesota Press, 2020) is Telesca’s first single-authored book. Its on-the-ground, first-person research has shown just how damned the lives of fishes are in the very world entrusted to care for them in ocean governance. Her second book on hydrothermal vents, tentatively titled, The Midnight Zone, invites readers to honor creatures in all their mysterious and seemingly impossible forms at sites in the deep dark sea—open to regulatory oversight—where scientists believe life on Earth began. Some of the topics we explore in this conversation include how the Giant Bluefin tuna went from being food for the poor to becoming a global delicacy symbolic of luxury, how fish have long been "an object through which global empires have been mediated," Jen's concerns with the scams and blue-washing of eco certifications in seafood, and more. (The musical offering featured in this episode Over It by RVBY MY DEAR. The episode-inspired artwork is by Mi Young.) Green Dreamer would not be possible without direct support from our listeners. Help us keep the show alive by reciprocating a gift of any amount today! GreenDreamer.com/support

In this episode, we welcome Thom van Dooren, a field philosopher and writer. Thom is Deputy Director at the Sydney Environment Institute and teaches at the University of Sydney and the University of Oslo. His current research and writing focus on some of the many philosophical, ethical, cultural, and political issues that arise in the context of species extinctions and human entanglements with threatened species and places. This research works across the disciplines of cultural studies, philosophy, science and technology studies, and related fields. He has explored these themes in depth in three books: Flight Ways: Life and Loss at the Edge of Extinction (Columbia University Press, 2014), The Wake of Crows: Living and Dying in Shared Worlds (Columbia University Press, 2019), and A World in a Shell: Snail Stories for a Time of Extinctions (MIT Press, 2022). (The musical offering featured in this episode Hummingbird by Lea Thomas. The episode-inspired artwork is by Haruka Aoki.) Green Dreamer would not be possible without direct support from our listeners. Help us keep the show alive by reciprocating a gift of any amount today! GreenDreamer.com/support

In this episode, we welcome Rebecca Giggs, an award-winning author from Perth, Australia. Her work has appeared in The Atlantic, Emergence, the New York Times Magazine, Granta, and in anthologies including Best Australian Essays, and Best Australian Science Writing. Rebecca’s nonfiction focuses on how people feel towards animals in a time of technological and ecological change. Rebecca’s debut book is Fathoms: The World in the Whale. Some of the topics we explore include how whaling accelerated and shaped the historical process of industrialization, what impacts various industrial activities have had on whale songs and cultures, the critical role of migratory species, such as the Bogong moth, on enriching the habitats that they pass through, and more. (The musical offering featured in this episode is Eye of The Storm by Ali Dineen. The episode-inspired artwork is by Lucy Haslam.) Green Dreamer would not be possible without direct support from our listeners. Help us keep the show alive by reciprocating a gift of any amount today! GreenDreamer.com/support

“One of the introductions to Counseling Psychology teaches the Freudian concept of neutrality—when the patient’s social identity, when politics leave the door and you start treatment. But if we leave out identity, if we leave out the very sources as to why my client is sick in the first place, then I don’t see why this is not a cycle.” In this episode, we welcome Gabes Torres, a therapist, organizer, and artist who was born and raised in the Philippines. Her work focuses on imperialism and its vast impact our collective mental health. She has an MA in Theology & Culture, and Counseling Psychology; both graduate degrees were accomplished in Seattle, the city where she organized with abolitionist and anti-imperialist groups at a local, grassroots level. In her clinical practice, Gabes works primarily with women, femmes, and/or trans patients of the global majority, and she is a mentor to therapists, organizers, artists, and culture workers around the world. Some of the topics we explore include the lasting impacts of intergenerational trauma, the troubles of over-pathologizing and arbitrary pathologizing, dreams of a world where therapy is no longer needed, and more. (The musical offering featured in this episode is The Witness by Rowan Rain. The episode-inspired artwork is by Fernanda Peralta.) Green Dreamer would not be possible without direct support from our listeners. Help us keep the show alive by reciprocating a gift of any amount today! GreenDreamer.com/support

“Where our power comes from actually is in that space between the 'I' and the 'you'—that shared space. If we could tap into that, if we can find ways of working together, to form what I called 'shared agency,' then we can actually gain a lot of power to affect change.” In this episode, we welcome Min Hyoung Song, a Professor of English and the Director of the Asian American Studies Program at Boston College, as well as a steering committee member of Environmental Studies and an affiliated faculty member of African and African Diaspora Studies. He is the author of three books: Climate Lyricism (Duke, 2022), The Children of 1965: On Writing, and Not Writing, as an Asian American (Duke, 2013) and Strange Future: Pessimism and the 1992 Los Angeles Riots (Duke, 2005). (The musical offering featured in this episode Power by India Blue. The episode-inspired artwork is by Mi Young.) Green Dreamer would not be possible without direct support from our listeners. Help us keep the show alive by reciprocating a gift of any amount today! GreenDreamer.com/support

“All of these imaginings visually, as if we were in a spaceship and looking down on the Earth—whoever that we is, which is super problematic with the notion of the Anthropocene—safely above, looking at the mess we’ve created... And no. With Trans-corporeality, our bodies are already the Anthropocene.” In this episode, we welcome Professor Stacy Alaimo, Professor of English and Core Faculty Member in Environmental Studies at the University of Oregon. She is the author of Undomesticated Ground: Recasting Nature as Feminist Space (2000); Bodily Natures: Science, Environment, and the Material Self (2010); and Exposed: Environmental Politics and Pleasures in Posthuman Times (2016). Alaimo is currently writing a book entitled Deep Blue Ecologies: Science, Aesthetics, and the Creatures of the Abyss. Her work explores the intersections between literary, artistic, political, and philosophical approaches to environmentalism along with the practices and experiences of everyday life. She loves diving and snorkeling, hiking, paddling, and creating habitat gardens with native plants. (The musical offering featured in this episode Eye of The Storm by Ali Dineen. The episode-inspired artwork is by Lucy Haslam.) Green Dreamer would not be possible without direct support from our listeners. Help us keep the show alive by reciprocating a gift of any amount today! GreenDreamer.com/support