On July 19th, Joanna Macy, beloved teacher and past guest, passed away peacefully at home in Berkeley, California. In honor of her legacy, we are rebroadcasting her episode “The World as Lover and Self,” originally released in 2015 when the show was titled Unlearn and Rewild.

In this deeply resonant conversation, Ayana speaks with Joanna on grief, change, and connection – themes that remain ever-relevant. Joanna offers wisdom on emotional courage, allyship, and gratitude, inviting us to see the world as our larger living body. Her words are a balm for those navigating despair, helping us move through paralysis toward collective transformation and action.

A renowned scholar and activist, Joanna Macy created Work That Reconnects, a transformative framework for facing ecological and social crises. Her legacy lives on through decades of writing, teaching, and deep spiritual and ecological insight.

We invite you to listen again as we honor her enduring guidance and presence.

Learn more at https://forthewild.world/listen/joanna-macy-on-the-world-as-lover-and-self-homage

Credits

Music by Anne Carol Mitchell, Roberta Flack, Pharoah Sanders, and Roy Harper

This episode was created by Ayana Young, Erica Ekrem, Julia Jackson, and Victoria Pham.

Cover art: Vintage National Geographic

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We are rebroadcasting our extended conversation with Andrea Gibson as we honor their death on July 14th, 2025. The conversation, originally aired In September of 2023, was entitled “The Blessings of the Wound.” 

For so many of us who have been touched by Andrea’s work, their death is a deep wound, one that will stretch and expand our hearts in accordance with its depth.   In the episode, Andrea contemplates the deeply rooted societal fears of disconnection and of death. Facing fear, confusion, and loss head on, Andrea reminds us that healing is a return to the self, a return to community. 

Through poem and spirituality, Andrea draws us to see the beauty in being alive in this particular life, in our particular bodies, at this particular time. Their presence and attention is life-giving. As Andrea shares their journey connecting to the eternal, genderless “We,” they invite listeners to contemplate their identities beyond this life alone. As we let the need to know fall away, what miracles might reveal themselves to us?

While you listen to this episode, we invite you to consider their words in the poem “Love Letter from the Afterlife.” Andrea writes, “ I know that to be human is to be farsighted. But feel me now, walking the chambers of your heart, pressing my palms to the soft walls of your living. Why did no one tell us that to die is to be reincarnated in those we love while they are still alive?” Learn more at https://forthewild.world/listen/andrea-gibson-on-the-blessings-of-the-wound-homage

As tribute to Andrea, we will be offering a free download of our zine, Grief, in our Friday, July 24th newsletter. The digital zine includes practice, ritual, and an extended reading of Andrea’s conversation with For The Wild. Sign up for the newsletter on our website.

Credits

Music by Katie Gray, John Carrol Kirby (Patience Records), and Kesia Negata. 

This episode was created by Ayana Young, Erica Ekrem, Julia Jackson, and José Alejandro Rivera with special thanks to Victoria Pham for the July 22, 2025 version 

Cover art by William Baxter Closson, titled "Night Moths" 

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Hey For The Wild community, it’s Ayana.

It’s been a minute. Life has been moving—fast, deep, and full. I’ve grown, and with that growth, a clearer sense of what I want to share with you has come into focus.

After nearly a decade of digital episodes, I felt a longing—an ache to be in person, on the land, and heart to heart with our guests. That’s why you may have noticed we’ve slowed down on weekly releases. Instead, we’ve been on the road, spending sacred, unhurried time with people we love—tending to conversations that are raw, intimate, funny, beautiful, edgy, and alive.

We were hoping to keep it under wraps a little longer, but we’re just too excited: the first season of our new walking series will be released soon, and it features the luminous Sophie Strand. This series is an in-person, land-based conversation that is intimate, weird, raw, beautiful exploration of land, grief, myth, pleasure, and more. These aren’t studio-perfect interviews, they’re alive.

But there’s more. We’re also creating an anthology—a wild and tender book featuring Sophie and 20 other contributors like Tyson Yunkaporta, Sylvia Linsteadt, adrienne maree brown, Dori Midnight, and Stephen Jenkinson. It’s an archive, an altar, a trail companion—a distillation of 10 years of For The Wild with essays, art, poetry, rituals, and deep questions. It asks us what it means to live in fragmentary times and still root deeply. We hope to print it later this year.

To bring these projects to life, we need your support.

We’re looking for funding partners, sponsors, and publishers—and we’re dreaming of a book tour from the West Coast to the East, and across the pond to Europe.

If you’re an individual, foundation, or aligned company that wants to support the Sophie Strand series, reach out.

If you’re a publisher or lit world comrade, I’d love to connect.

If you’d like to host a live gathering for the book tour, let’s talk—we’d love to share good food, real talk, and tender moments with your community.

Email us at [email protected]

Thank you for walking with us—whether you’ve been here since the beginning or just arrived. My heart is racing as I share this with you. It feels risky, but right. Vulnerable, but true. And I’m so grateful.

In the meantime, you can spend some deep time with us through our Earthly Reads Series and Book Study or Bayo Akomolafe's We Will Dance with Mountains: Vunja! course—both on our website.

And of course, we’ve got over 350 episodes waiting for you on your favorite platform.

Here’s to what comes next. With love,
Ayana

♫ The music featured in this update is “Das Nuvens (Live)” by Fabiano do Nascimento, courtesy of Leaving Records.

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In the sixth and final episode of our Earthly Reads series, we are honored to welcome back Prentis Hemphill, author of What It Takes to Heal: How Transforming Ourselves Can Change the World. This episode offers a preview of the live Earthly Reads Book Study, join us there to access the full 75 minute episode.

Offering embodied insight into the ways in which healing manifests in our personal and collective lives, Prentis Hemphill brings a thoughtful and empathetic perspective to this crucial conversation. Exploring what the process of healing looks like within movements and the trouble with only focusing on the individual, Ayana and Prentis bring much-needed nuance and humanity to the dialogue. Dive right in for a conversation that invites us all to imagine new possibilities for justice, community care, and wholeness—one that fosters deeper belonging with each other and the Earth. 

About the guest
Prentis Hemphill is the bestselling author of What It Takes to Heal, a groundbreaking exploration of healing, justice, and transformation. A therapist, somatics teacher, facilitator, political organizer, and writer, Prentis is also the founder of The Embodiment Institute and a leading voice in embodied leadership and collective healing.

About the series
Earthly Reads is a podcast series and online book study featuring conversations with some of our favorite authors including adrienne maree brown, Marcia Bjornerud, Alexis Pauline Gumbs, Prentis Hemphill, Tricia Hersey, and Céline Semaan. This episode is just a small glimpse into some of the incredible live conversations that take place throughout the book study. For more details about the series and to purchase access to the full study, visit forthewild.world/bookstudy.  

♫  The music featured in this series is “Nucleo (Live)” by John Caroll Kirby (featuring Logan Hone, Benny Bock, Paul Maramba, and Tamir Barzilay), “Joyous Dance” by Laraaji, and “The Rite Way” by Muwosi and Lionmilk from the compilation Staying: Leaving Records Aid to Artists Impacted by the Los Angeles Wildfires courtesy of our partner Leaving Records. Compilation proceeds are directed back into the community of artists and families impacted by the fires. Learn more at staying.bandcamp.com.

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In the fifth episode of our Earthly Reads series, we dive into a conversation with the renowned Alexis Pauline Gumbs, author of Survival Is a Promise: The Eternal Life of Audre Lorde. This episode offers a preview of the live Earthly Reads Book Study, now available for purchase at forthewild.world/bookstudy.

Throughout the conversation, Gumbs threads together her thoroughly-researched and deeply-felt knowledge of Audre Lorde with her own personal wit, observation, and openness. She also speaks to her understanding of Lorde’s work as “geological,” following the connection Lorde draws between Blackness and our existence at every layer of Earth’s interior. Reminding us of the value of the collective, Gumbs shares lessons for reciprocity, earthly embodiment, and the poetry of living. 

Earthly Reads is a podcast series and online book study featuring conversations with some of our favorite authors including adrienne maree brown, Marcia Bjornerud, Alexis Pauline Gumbs, Prentis Hemphill, Tricia Hersey, and Céline Semaan.

This episode is just a small glimpse into some of the incredible live conversations that will take place throughout the book study. For more details about the series and how to purchase access to the full study, visit forthewild.world/bookstudy.  

Alexis Pauline Gumbs is a Queer Black Troublemaker and Black Feminist Love Evangelist and an aspirational cousin to all sentient beings. Her work in this lifetime is to facilitate infinite, unstoppable ancestral love in practice. Her poetic work in response to the needs of her cherished communities has held space for multitudes in mourning and movement. Alexis’s co-edited volume Revolutionary Mothering: Love on the Front Lines (PM Press, 2016) has shifted the conversation on mothering, parenting and queer transformation. Alexis has transformed the scope of intellectual, creative and oracular writing with her triptych of experimental works published by Duke University Press (Spill: Scenes of Black Feminist Fugitivity in 2016, M Archive: After the End of the World  in 2018 and Dub: Finding Ceremony, 2020.) Unlike most academic texts, Alexis’s work has inspired artists across form to create dance works, installation work, paintings, processionals, divination practices, operas, quilts and more.  

♫  The music featured in this series is by Cool Maritime, Matt Baldwin, and Sharada Shashidhar and Caleb Buchanan from the compilation Staying: Leaving Records Aid to Artists Impacted by the Los Angeles Wildfires courtesy of our partner Leaving Records. Compilation proceeds are directed back into the community of artists and families impacted by the fires. Learn more at staying.bandcamp.com.

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Join us for the fourth episode of our new Earthly Reads series. In this episode, we are joined by the incredible Céline Semaan, founder of Slow Factory and author of A Woman is a School. 

Sharing stories from her childhood in Lebanon and across her lifelong work towards justice, Céline gives us a look at what it means to be a hakawati (storyteller). Céline asks listeners what it means to have faith in times of crisis, how to commit to your morals in the face of suppression, and what it can mean to use learning as a tool for liberation. This conversation is a reminder of the role that reflection and memoir play in service to creating systemic change.

Earthly Reads is a podcast series and online book study featuring conversations with some of our favorite authors including adrienne maree brown, Marcia Bjornerud, Alexis Pauline Gumbs, Prentis Hemphill, Tricia Hersey, and Céline Semaan. This episode offers a taste into some of the incredible live conversations that will take place throughout the book study. For more details about the series and to purchase access to the full study, visit forthewild.world/bookstudy.  

Céline Semaan is a Lebanese-American designer, writer, artist, speaker, and advocate working at the intersection of environmental and social justice. Céline, is the founder of Slow Factory, a 501c3 public service organization addressing the intersecting crises of climate justice and social inequity — filling the gap for climate adaptation and preparedness, building community power through open education, narrative change, and regenerative design.

The music featured in this series is by More Eaze, Ohma, Cole Pulice and Maylee Todd from the compilation Staying: Leaving Records Aid to Artists Impacted by the Los Angeles Wildfires courtesy of our partner Leaving Records.

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Join us with Marcia Bjornerud for a brilliant conversation on a life dedicated to the physical Earth. This conversation is the third episode for our new Earthly Reads series.

Together, Ayana and Marcia discuss Marcia’s new book, Turning to Stone: Discovering the Subtle Wisdom of Rocks, and contemplate a life lived in conversation with the very Earth that holds us. Marcia offers us her grounding presence and her awareness of geologic time cycles that churn beyond human perception.

Earthly Reads is a podcast series and online book study featuring conversations with some of our favorite authors including adrienne maree brown, Marcia Bjornerud, Alexis Pauline Gumbs, Prentis Hemphill, Tricia Hersey, and Céline Semaan. 

This episode is just a small glimpse into some of the incredible live conversations that will take place throughout the book study. For more details about the series and to purchase access to the full study, visit forthewild.world/bookstudy.  

Marcia Bjornerud is a Professor of Geosciences and Environmental Studies at Lawrence University in Wisconsin. Her research focuses on the physics of earthquakes and mountain building, and she combines field-based studies of bedrock geology with quantitative models of rock mechanics. She has done research in high arctic Norway and Canada as well as mainland Norway, Italy, New Zealand, and the Lake Superior region. A contributing writer to The New Yorker, Wired, the Wall Street Journal and the Los Angeles Times, she is also the author of several books for popular audiences: Reading the Rocks, Timefulness, Geopedia and the recently published Turning to Stone: Discovering the Subtle Wisdom of Rocks. 

The music featured in this series is from the compilation Staying: Leaving Records Aid to Artists Impacted by the Los Angeles Wildfires courtesy of our partner Leaving Records. The songs are by Xyla, Mizu, Marine Eyes, and David Moses x Tristan de Liege. 

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Continuing the first season of our Earthly Reads series, we are thrilled to share a new conversation with beloved guest Tricia Hersey. 

Sharing sweet balm from her new book WE WILL REST! The Art of Escape, Tricia reminds us of the art of being alive. In this meditative episode, Tricia asks listeners what it might mean to have faith in mystery and to begin without knowing the full course. Throughout the episode, she shares wisdom about the power of attempt and what it means to try without the fear of being wrong. 

WE WILL REST! The Art of Escape is both book and sacred object, and Tricia shares with us her process of dreaming and creating the piece.  Her book offers serene moments of reflection and decisive calls to action, just as this episode does. Inspired by Tricia’s words, we "thank you for living" and for listening along with us. 

Tricia Hersey is a multidisciplinary artist, theologian, escape artist and founder of The Nap Ministry. She is the global pioneer and originator of the “rest as resistance” and “rest as reparations” frameworks, and collaborates with communities all over the world to create sacred spaces where the liberatory, restorative, and disruptive power of rest can take hold. Tricia’s work is seeded within the soils of Black radical thought, somatics, Afrofuturism, womanism, and liberation theology. She is a Chicago native who believes in daydreaming, porch sitting, and poetry.

Earthly Reads is a podcast series and online book study featuring conversations with some of our favorite authors including adrienne maree brown, Marcia Bjornerud, Alexis Pauline Gumbs, Prentis Hemphill Tricia Hersey, and Céline Semaan. This podcast is just a small sample of the incredible wisdom of the full book study. For more details about the series and to purchase access to the full study, visit forthewild.world/bookstudy.  

The music featured in this episode is by Nailah Hunter, Aisha Mars, and V.C.R. from the compilation Staying: Leaving Records Aid to Artists Impacted by the Los Angeles Wildfires courtesy of our partner Leaving Records. 

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We are excited to announce the first season of our Earthly Reads series featuring conversations with some of our favorite authors including adrienne maree brown, Marcia Bjornerud, Alexis Pauline Gumbs, Prentis Hemphill Tricia Hersey, and Céline Semaan. 

This collection of books is meant to encourage grounded conversation that roots justice, imagination, and transformation within the soil and substance of the Earth. The series will focus on themes of resistance, embodiment, and connection to self and others in an era of alienation and isolation. Together, we will explore what it means to create compassionate community that is deeply attuned to our positions as human members of ecosystems.

For more details about the series and to purchase access to the full study, visit forthewild.world/bookstudy.   

We’re kicking off this series with our beloved returning guest, adrienne maree brown. In this heartfelt episode, adrienne shares more about her new book Loving Corrections and reminds us of what it means to value relationships and reflection across humanity.

Access the full episode (65min.) by joining us on Patreon or the Earthly Reads Book Study.

adrienne maree brown (she/they) is growing a garden of healing ideas. Informed by decades of movement facilitation, somatics, science fiction scholarship and doula work, adrienne has nurtured Emergent Strategy, Pleasure Activism, Radical Imagination and Loving Correction as ideas and practices for transformation. adrienne is the NYT-bestselling author/editor of several published texts, a ritual singer-songwriter, co-generator of the Lineages of Change Tarot Deck, and co-creator/host of How to Survive the End of the World podcast with Autumn Brown. adrienne's latest book Loving Corrections is now available from AK Press.

♫  The music featured in this series is from the compilation Staying: Leaving Records Aid to Artists Impacted by the Los Angeles Wildfires courtesy of our partner Leaving Records. Compilation proceeds are directed back into the community of artists and families impacted by the fires. Learn more at staying.bandcamp.com. The artists featured in this episode are M.A. Tiesenga, Hundred Waters, Alia Mohamed, and Arushi Jain. Visit our website at forthewild.world for the full episode description, references, and action points.

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For The Wild is sending our deepest wishes for abundance and slowness as we enter 2025! 

Now especially, the future of independent media and critical, thought provoking content seems uncertain. In times like these, the For The Wild team is even more dedicated to providing our listeners with meaningful listening experiences and media that embraces slow, deep learning. We are only able to do this with your generous support. We are so grateful to you! 

This year, we are looking forward to offering new forms of media, conversations that dive deeper than ever before, and moments for vital pause, contemplation, and intentionality in our fast-paced world. 

Tune into this quick update for more information about what’s coming up for For The Wild.  Learn more about how to support us and to access exclusive content at forthewild.world/patreon. 

Music by Surya Botofasina, Nate Mercereau, and Carlos Niño. Visit our website at forthewild.world for the full episode description, references, and action points.

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