Evolutionary epidemiologist and author Rob Wallace returns to the podcast to discuss his new collection, The Fault in Our SARS: COVID-19 in the Biden Era, published through Monthly Review. 

This discussion is long, but certainly worth a listen. Entering year four of the pandemic, Rob Wallace has diligently, and extensively, written two books worth of essays on the various facets of the SARS-2 outbreak, many of which are examined in this interview. Rob skewers the Biden administration’s political, institutional, and rhetorical approach to the BSL-3 [Biosafety Level 3] pathogen’s burn through the population, picking apart the scientism, employed by both the political elite and their media lackeys to rationalize and normalize the mass death and disability of millions.

// Episode notes: https://www.lastborninthewilderness.com/episodes/rob-wallace-2

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// Donate: https://www.paypal.me/lastbornpodcast

341 / The Fault In Our SARS / Rob Wallace

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 engulfed and destroyed 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 twenty-first century fire.

// Episode notes: https://www.lastborninthewilderness.com/episodes/john-vaillant

// Sustain + support: https://www.patreon.com/lastborninthewilderness 

// Donate: https://www.paypal.me/lastbornpodcast

350 / Fire Weather / John Vaillant

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.

// Episode notes: https://www.lastborninthewilderness.com/episodes/shane-burley-7

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// Donate: https://www.paypal.me/lastbornpodcast

353 Part One / A Nation For A Nation: Full-Scale Revenge / Shane Burley

Independent journalist and documentarian Abby Martin joins me to discuss Earth's Greatest Enemy, a feature length documentary that examines one of the largest polluters and contributors to global climate change in the world: the United States military. I ask Abby what the seeds of this massive project were, and why the military-industrial complex is the "elephant in the room" in the political discourse on human-caused climate change. Also, we connect this subject to the horrific mass violence in Gaza being enacted by the State of Israel—with full US complicity—to the ecocide implicit in the maintenance of US hegemonic interests globally.

// Episode notes: https://www.lastborninthewilderness.com/episodes/abby-martin

// Sustain + support: https://www.patreon.com/lastborninthewilderness 

// Donate: https://www.paypal.me/lastbornpodcast

359 / Earth’s Greatest Enemy / Abby Martin

Chris Christou joins me in this winding discussion to explore the subjects and themes raised in his phenomenal podcast, The End of Tourism, described as “a project about the deep causes and consequences of tourism, wanderlust, spectacle, exile,” and “an invitation into the local resistance and resilience movements in the face of each of these things.” In my discussion with him, Chris reflects on the historical moment he chose to begin this project: during the earliest waves of the global pandemic, at a time when global tourism effectively collapsed.

// Episode notes: https://www.lastborninthewilderness.com/episodes/chris-christou

// Sustain + support: https://www.patreon.com/lastborninthewilderness 

// Donate: https://www.paypal.me/lastbornpodcast

362 / Tourism Is A Prism / Chris Christou

Author and journalist John Washington returns to the podcast to discuss The Case for Open Borders, the name and subject of his new book from Haymarket Press.

John Washington places the current political rhetoric and policy fixated on the "border crisis" many Western nations are seemingly facing, particularly the United States, within the historical and material context of what the modern nation-state actually is. Borders are as much about building the infrastructure to prohibit and deter migrants and refugees from entering a territory, as it is a rhetorical weapon deployed by cynical politicians and nativist settlers to reify artificial differences among the human species. Stripping down the hyperbolic and nativist language exemplified across political parties, John makes clear what borders really are, and the violent realities this ever expanding infrastructure imposes on human and non-human life. 

// Episode notes: https://www.lastborninthewilderness.com/episodes/john-washington-2

// Sustain + support: https://www.patreon.com/lastborninthewilderness 

// Donate: https://www.paypal.me/lastbornpodcast

366 / The Case for Open Borders / John Washington

Author and scholar Dr. Mohamed Abdou returns to the podcast, one year after October 7, 2023.

Our discussion flows across various subjects: Al-Aqsa Flood and the US-Israel genocide of Palestinians in Gaza; Islam and the crusading Euro-American imperial project; anti-colonial struggle as resistance, decolonization as "creating the world of many belows"; and Abdou's participation in the Palestine  solidarity encampment at Columbia University, where he was targeted, threatened, and slandered by Zionists in the university administration, United States Congress, and by prominent media figures.

// Episode notes: https://www.lastborninthewilderness.com/episodes/mohamed-abdou-2

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// Donate: https://www.paypal.me/lastbornpodcast

375 / October Seventh Fourteen Ninety Two / Mohamed Abdou

Anarchist writer Peter Gelderloos returns to the podcast to discuss his new book, They Will Beat the Memory Out of Us: Forcing Nonviolence on Forgetful Movements, published through Pluto Press. We dialogue on topics such as movement heartbreak, memory as relationship, how enclosure produces memory loss, and how ruptures in generational continuity in liberatory struggles have brought us to where we are today.

// Episode notes: https://www.lastborninthewilderness.com/episodes/peter-gelderloos-3

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// Donate: https://www.paypal.me/lastbornpodcast

379 / Memory and Enclosure / Peter Gelderloos

Dr. Jonathan Howard returns to the podcast to discuss the collapse of public health in the United States. After coming on the podcast in 2023 to discuss his book, We Want Them Infected, Dr. Howard provides an update on some of the contrarian doctors and anti-vaccine influencers he has been following before and since the onset of the Covid-19 pandemic.

// Episode notes: https://www.lastborninthewilderness.com/episodes/jonathan-howard-2

// Sustain + support: https://www.patreon.com/lastborninthewilderness 

// Donate: https://www.paypal.me/lastbornpodcast

383 / The Collapse of Public Health / Jonathan Howard

Long Covid Action Project (LCAP) founder and journalist Joshua Pribanic returns to the podcast, along with artist and LCAP researcher Amy Mitchell, to discuss their groundbreaking new book, A National Treatment and Research Agenda for Long Covid. They detail the evidence of how this virus persists in the body after infection, and how the HIV-AIDS epidemic is relevant to understanding what Long Covid is and what a comprehensive treatment and research agenda for it looks like.

// Episode notes: https://www.lastborninthewilderness.com/episodes/lcap-activists-3

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// Donate: https://www.paypal.me/lastbornpodcast


385 / Viral Persistence / Long Covid Action Project

I’m joined by Lyle Lewis, former endangered species biologist and author of Racing to Extinction: Why Humanity Will Soon Vanish. We discuss his decades long career working under the US Department of the Interior, the various bureaucratic hurdles that stood in the way of protecting and preserving endangered species, and why Lewis holds a unique position to describe why, and how, the human species will, in a relatively short time, face extinction.

// Support the work + listen to the full interview: https://www.patreon.com/lastborninthewilderness

Preview / Humanity’s Final Chapter / Lyle Lewis

I’m joined by Lyle Lewis, former endangered species biologist and author of Racing to Extinction: Why Humanity Will Soon Vanish. We discuss his decades long career working under the US Department of the Interior, and the various bureaucratic hurdles that stood in the way of protecting and preserving endangered species in the various roles he served there. Lewis holds a unique position, and describes why, and how, the human species will, in a relatively short time, face extinction.

// Episode notes + transcript: https://www.lastborninthewilderness.com/episodes/lyle-lewis

// Sustain + support: https://www.patreon.com/lastborninthewilderness 

// Donate: https://www.paypal.me/lastbornpodcast

386 / Humanity’s Final Chapter / Lyle Lewis

Anti-zionist writer and agitator Amanda Gelender joins me to discuss what she describes as the Jewish community's widespread fascism problem.

I ask Amanda about her upbringing in a Jewish community and what role Zionism had in her perceptions of the State of Israel and Occupied Palestine, including stepping back from the question itself and interrogating the often unexamined contexts and built-in assumptions the question contains. We converse on how "Jewish feelings" are weaponized in the discourse on the Israel-US genocide of Palestinians in Gaza as an attempt to label any calls for its end and support for resistance to it as antisemitic. And lastly, another thread we pull on is the question of what fascism is and how, in our view, Zionism contained the seeds of fascism since its inception and nascent colonization efforts in Palestine.

// Episode notes: https://www.lastborninthewilderness.com/episodes/amanda-gelender

// Sustain + support: https://www.patreon.com/lastborninthewilderness 

// Donate: https://www.paypal.me/lastbornpodcast

387 / Judaism of the Below / Amanda Gelender

I am joined by returning guest John Feffer, director of Foreign Policy in Focus and author, to discuss the dramatic shifts and fissures in the global "rules-based order."

Since our last interview in March 2020, successive crises have challenged the underlying basis of international law and the coherence of the global economic system. Taking our previous interview into account—an examination of the first months of the Covid-19 pandemic, situating it historically—I asked John to help us make sense of the first six months of the second Trump administration.

// Episode notes: https://www.lastborninthewilderness.com/episodes/john-feffer-3

// Sustain + support: https://www.patreon.com/lastborninthewilderness 

// Donate: https://www.paypal.me/lastbornpodcast

388 / The Shifting Global Order / John Feffer

Counterculture author and artist Stewart Home joined me in a discussion about his new book, Fascist Yoga: Grifters, Occultists, White Supremacists, and the New Order In Wellness, recently published by Pluto Press.

// Episode notes: https://www.lastborninthewilderness.com/episodes/stewart-home

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// Donate: https://www.paypal.me/lastbornpodcast


389 / Fascist Yoga / Stewart Home

Roy Scranton returns to the podcast to discuss his new book, Impasse: Climate Change and the Limits of Progress, recently published by Stanford University Press.

Scranton describes our moment as an impasse. We struggle to narrativize and imagine our path through. The vision of our collective horizons is muddied by the sheer unknowability of what the near and distant future holds. Narratives of progress have brought us to this confluence of crises as complex global systems collapse and shift under the weight of material limits on a hotter, more chaotic world.

// Episode notes: https://www.lastborninthewilderness.com/episodes/roy-scranton-2

// Sustain + support: https://www.patreon.com/lastborninthewilderness 

// Donate: https://www.paypal.me/lastbornpodcast

390 / Impasse / Roy Scranton

Thea Riofrancos joined me to discuss her new book, Extraction: The Frontiers of Green Capitalism, just released through W.W. Norton.

// Support the work + listen to the full interview: https://www.patreon.com/lastborninthewilderness

Preview / Extraction / Thea Riofrancos

Thea Riofrancos joined me to discuss her new book, Extraction: The Frontiers of Green Capitalism, released through W.W. Norton.

The green capitalist energy transition is underway. In what ways does alternative energy—so-called sustainable or green energy—differ from the fossil fuel extraction, distribution, and consumption that has underlain the global capitalist system since the beginning of the Industrial Revolution? Where are these sites of extraction? What critical minerals are being sought? Who stands to benefit and lose? What are the ecological impacts? And finally, how have various iterations of the left and the right embraced or rejected this emerging paradigm?

// Episode notes: https://www.lastborninthewilderness.com/episodes/thea-riofrancos

// Sustain + support: https://www.patreon.com/lastborninthewilderness 

// Donate: https://www.paypal.me/lastbornpodcast

391 / Extraction / Thea Riofrancos

Christopher B. Zeichmann, scholar of religion and antiquity, joined me in an enlightening discussion about his new book, Radical Antiquity: Free Love Zoroastrians, Farming Pirates, and Ancient Uprisings, released through Pluto Press.

// Support the work + listen to the full interview: https://www.patreon.com/lastborninthewilderness

Preview / Radical Antiquity / Christopher B. Zeichmann

Journalist and author Shane Burley joined me to discuss the specter of political violence in the United States, remarking on the recent assassination of Turning Point USA (TPUSA) founder and right-wing activist Charlie Kirk and the fallout of that event.

// Support the work + listen to the full interview: https://www.patreon.com/lastborninthewilderness

Preview / Political Violence / Shane Burley

Journalist and author Shane Burley joined me to discuss the specter of political violence in the United States, remarking on the recent assassination of Turning Point USA (TPUSA) founder and right-wing activist Charlie Kirk and the fallout of that event.

// Episode notes: https://www.lastborninthewilderness.com/episodes/shane-burley-8

// Sustain + support: https://www.patreon.com/lastborninthewilderness 

// Donate: https://www.paypal.me/lastbornpodcast

393 / Political Violence / Shane Burley

Christopher B. Zeichmann, scholar of religion and antiquity, joined me in an enlightening discussion about his new book, Radical Antiquity: Free Love Zoroastrians, Farming Pirates, and Ancient Uprisings, released through Pluto Press. 

We take an uncommon ground-level tour through the ancient Graeco-Roman world. Instead of viewing this period and place through the myopic lens of the elites of these societies—the so-called Great Men of History—Zeichmann impresses upon us the radical forms of democracy that were being practiced and the peoples that were practicing them during this period. 

// Episode notes: https://www.lastborninthewilderness.com/episodes/christopher-zeichmann

// Sustain + support: https://www.patreon.com/lastborninthewilderness 

// Donate: https://www.paypal.me/lastbornpodcast

392 / Radical Antiquity / Christopher B. Zeichmann

Author and journalist John H. Richardson joins me to ruminate on his new book, Luigi: The Making and the Meaning, published by Simon & Schuster.

// Support the work + listen to the full interview: https://www.patreon.com/lastborninthewilderness

Preview / Luigi / John H. Richardson

Author and journalist John H. Richardson joins me to ruminate on his new book, Luigi: The Making and the Meaning, published by Simon & Schuster. In line with the book’s title, we discuss the making and the meaning of Luigi Mangione, currently on trial for the alleged killing of UnitedHealthcare CEO Brian Thompson. In his full book treatment of the case, Richardson follows the breadcrumbs Mangione left behind, painting a vivid picture of his influences and thinking, situating this violent act within our revolutionary moment.

// Episode notes: https://www.lastborninthewilderness.com/episodes/john-richardson-2

// Sustain + support: https://www.patreon.com/lastborninthewilderness 

// Donate: https://www.paypal.me/lastbornpodcast


394 / Luigi / John H. Richardson

I speak to the enormously successful campaign of Zorhan Mamdani, his charisma, the very practical policy goals set by his run for mayor of New York City, and how you will be disappointed.

"I just want to be really transparent and honest about the fact that I, too, feel many of the feelings that people have about this, while also having this other part of myself, which I don't want to describe as pessimistic as much as just realistic."

// Become a free or paid Patreon supporter and listen to the full post: https://www.patreon.com/lastborninthewilderness

Preview / You will be disappointed, and that's okay.

Max Perry Mueller, professor of religious studies and author, joined me in this sweeping interview to discuss his new book, Wakara's America: The Life and Legacy of a Native Founder of the American West, published by Basic Books.

Our discussion covers some of the thematic sweeps and details of Mueller’s incredibly well-written and rich history of the American West and one of its central, oft-forgotten, and overlooked founders, Wakara, intersecting with ecological knowledge and management systems, settler-colonialism, and Mormonism.  

// Support the work + listen to the full interview: https://www.patreon.com/lastborninthewilderness

Preview / Wakara's America / Max Perry Mueller

Max Perry Mueller, professor of religious studies and author, joined me in this sweeping interview to discuss his new book, Wakara's America: The Life and Legacy of a Native Founder of the American West, published by Basic Books.

Our discussion covers some of the thematic sweeps and details of Mueller’s incredibly well-written and rich history of the American West and one of its central, oft-forgotten, and overlooked founders, Wakara—intersecting with indigenous ecological knowledge and management systems, settler-colonialism, and Mormonism.

// Episode notes: https://www.lastborninthewilderness.com/episodes/max-perry-mueller

// Sustain + support: https://www.patreon.com/lastborninthewilderness 

// Donate: https://www.paypal.me/lastbornpodcast


395 / Wakara’s America / Max Perry Mueller

Investigative journalist and pediatrician Eli Cahan joined me to discuss the magnitude of the long Covid crisis in the youth population of the United States, addressed in his October Rolling Stone piece, Long Covid Is Real—And It’s Changing an Entire Generation.

// Support the work + listen to the full interview: https://www.patreon.com/lastborninthewilderness

Preview / Long Covid Is Changing an Entire Generation / Eli Cahan

Investigative journalist and pediatrician Eli Cahan joined me to discuss the magnitude of the long Covid crisis in the youth population of the United States, addressed in his October Rolling Stone piece, Long Covid Is Real—And It’s Changing an Entire Generation. 

Eli Cahan takes the time to speak to his dual position as a pediatrician and investigative journalist and how they intersect. He takes us through the struggles many families are dealing with, the human-level hardships that are unique to each child and their families, indicative of a much wider and pervasive long Covid crisis. This kind of journalism is as humanizing as it is deeply informed—a call to action against a generational injustice that will continue to cascade unless we improve the conditions not just for long Covid sufferers, but for everyone. We are all vulnerable to this pandemic.

// Episode notes: https://www.lastborninthewilderness.com/episodes/eli-cahan

// Sustain + support: https://www.patreon.com/lastborninthewilderness 

// Donate: https://www.paypal.me/lastbornpodcast

396 / Long Covid Is Changing an Entire Generation / Eli Cahan

Journalist and author Omar Zahzah joined me to discuss digital settler colonialism, hegemony, and the Palestinian liberation struggle in the digital age. Zahzah is the author of Terms of Servitude: Zionism, Silicon Valley, and Digital Settler Colonialism in the Palestinian Liberation Struggle, published by Seven Stories Press.

// Support the work + listen to the full interview: https://www.patreon.com/lastborninthewilderness

Preview / Digital Settler Colonialism / Omar Zahzah

Journalist and author Omar Zahzah joined me to discuss digital settler colonialism, hegemony, and the Palestinian liberation struggle in the digital age. Zahzah is the author of Terms of Servitude: Zionism, Silicon Valley, and Digital Settler Colonialism in the Palestinian Liberation Struggle, published by Seven Stories Press.

// Episode notes: https://www.lastborninthewilderness.com/episodes/omar-zahzah

// Sustain + support: https://www.patreon.com/lastborninthewilderness 

// Donate: https://www.paypal.me/lastbornpodcast

397 / Digital Settler Colonialism / Omar Zahzah

In this episode, I speak with Barbara Cecil and Dahr Jamail, co-authors of the How Then Shall We Live? series published at Truthout.

// Episode notes + transcript: https://www.lastborninthewilderness.com/episodes/cecil-jamail

// Sustain + support: https://www.patreon.com/lastborninthewilderness 

// Donate: https://www.paypal.me/lastbornpodcast

215 / Transitions / Barbara Cecil + Dahr Jamail

A podcast about transitions, death, the ruptures of life in between.

Last Born In The Wilderness

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