"There is an uncanniness, a way in which [fungi] were not behaving perfectly, in which it's hard to study them in a petri dish… They upset that wish that everything would fall into binaries and categories that have made sense." – Maria Pinto
This episode features Maria Pinto, an author and educator who teaches for the literary nonprofit GrubStreet. Her book of lyric essays about mushrooms, Fearless, Sleepless, Deathless: What Fungi Taught Me about Nourishment, Poison, Ecology, Hidden Histories, Zombies, and Black Survival, was published by Great Circle Books at UNC Press.
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• tune in and subscribe to Green Dreamer via any podcast app;
• tap into our bonus extended and video version of this conversation on Patreon here;
• and read highlights from these conversations via Kaméa’s newsletter here.

Episode artwork: Paul Lewin

Song features: “If You Want To, You Will” by Lemon Myrtle

What does belonging mean within a fractured world? How do we liberate ourselves from systems that attempt to turn us into mere cogs in a machine? What can sitting with the paradoxes of being human teach us?

In this episode, Green Dreamer’s Kaméa Chayne speaks with Sophia Kai of Journey of the Soul, whose work lives at the crossroads of world, folk, and medicine music — blending languages, poetry and healing into musical journeys that transcend borders and open the heart of humanity.

Join us as we unravel the messiness of being human in these troubled times, and contemplate where journeying toward a collective remembrance may lead us.

We invite you to…

• tune in and subscribe to Green Dreamer via any podcast app;
• tap into our bonus extended and video version of this conversation on Patreon here;
• and read highlights from these conversations via Kaméa’s newsletter here.

Musical features: “Touchée” (Live in Corfu) and “Ultima Luz” by Sophia Kai

What is the role of language in shaping our worldviews and webs of relations — beyond simply serving as tools of communication? How can the revitalization of Indigenous languages “disrupt the glue for colonial thinking”? And what does it mean to navigate tensions around cultural change and cultural continuity?

In this episode, Green Dreamer’s Kaméa Chayne speaks with Anton Treuer, an Ojibwe author, professor, and public speaker dedicated to Indigenous language revitalization, education, and cultural understanding.

Join us as we explore collective healing through working with land-based languages, deepening dialogue between the oppressor and the oppressed, and more.

We invite you to…

• tune in and subscribe to Green Dreamer via any podcast app;
• tap into our bonus extended and video version of this conversation on Patreon here;
• and read highlights from these conversations via Kaméa’s newsletter here.

Song feature: “Let it Shine” by Adrian Sutherland

How do we navigate questions around staying to resist, versus relocating to find home — in a time when certain places may no longer feel safe for certain bodies? What might it look like to push back against gentrification as a community? And how do we confront the complicity of our entanglement in systems of oppression, extraction, and displacement?

In this episode, Green Dreamer’s Kaméa Chayne speaks with Solaris J. Capehart, a Liberian poet who works alongside their neighbors to nurture The Garden Abolitionist Bookstore & Community Well.

Join us as we explore how gentrification is wrapped up in particular ideals of advancement and particular visions of quality of life that are not neutral; how we can continue showing up for ourselves and our communities during precarious times; and more.

We invite you to…

• tune in and subscribe to Green Dreamer via any podcast app;
• tap into our bonus extended and video version of this conversation on Patreon here;
• and read highlights from these conversations via Kaméa’s newsletter here.

Song feature: “I Am” ft. India Arie by Beautiful Chorus

What is the “watershed death spiral” that has led to the vicious cycle of more droughts and floods at the same time? How might learning about the water cycle expand our perspectives on climate change? And how can restoring watersheds support the sovereignty of land-based communities?

In this episode, Green Dreamer’s Kaméa Chayne speaks with Zach Weiss, who founded Water Stories to help empower as many people as possible to revive their local waters and lands.

Join us in this conversation as we explore the humility of working with ecosystems that resist formulas and master plans, how people can support the revitalization of their own local water cycles, and more.

We invite you to…

• tune in and subscribe to Green Dreamer via any podcast app;
• tap into our bonus extended and video version of this conversation on Patreon here;
• and read highlights from these conversations via Kaméa’s newsletter here.

Song feature: “Honor the Water” by Ayla Schafer

 How do we sit with our fears and discomforts around collapse? What might we miss when we demand quick fixes, takeaways, and summaries — without allowing our bodies to ferment and feel through the practices and experiences that could move us more deeply? And what does it mean to retune our literacy of the languages of the Earth?

In this episode, Green Dreamer’s Kaméa Chayne speaks with Vanessa Machado de Oliveira, whose latest book is Outgrowing Modernity: Navigating Complexity, Complicity, and Collapse with Accountability and Compassion.

Join us as we hold up a mirror to reflect on questions of complicity and collapse — while sensing into what these fractured times may be asking of us.

We invite you to…

• tune in and subscribe to Green Dreamer via any podcast app;
• tap into our bonus extended and video version of this conversation on Patreon here;
• and read highlights from these conversations via Kaméa’s newsletter here.

Song feature: Goodnight Moon Child by Beautiful Chorus

Where do our senses of disgust come from? What does it mean to interrogate and unsettle the ways that our senses of disgust may have been shaped? And how has the Standard American Diet limited curiosity while reinforcing certain social hierarchies?

In this episode, we welcome Matthew Wolf-Meyer, the author of American Disgust: Racism, Microbial Medicine, and the Colony Within.

Join us as we explore the social and biological histories of our most visceral emotion, how disgust has been used as a tool of settler colonialism, and more.

We invite you to…

• tune in and subscribe to Green Dreamer via any podcast app;
• tap into our bonus extended and video version of this conversation on Patreon here;
• and read highlights from these conversations via Kaméa’s newsletter here.

Song feature: “Peaches” by Isla Greenwood (@islagreenwood on Instagram)

Why have the majority of coconut trees across the Hawaiian islands not been allowed to bring coconut fruit into maturity? What does it mean to nurture communities of sharing and caring that are more relational, less transactional, and therefore less taxable? And how do Hawaiian ways of knowing — situating the intellectual and sensorial in the biocultural — fundamentally differ from Western epistemologies?

In this conversation, Green Dreamer’s kaméa chayne is joined by Dr. Manulani Aluli Meyer, the author of Hoʻopono: Mutual emergence, and co-director of NiU Now!, a community cultural agroforestry movement emerging to affirm the importance of niu (coconut) and uluniu (coconut groves).

Tune in as we explore the biocultural significance of coconut groves in Native Hawaiian culture, how the ongoing work of revitalizing uluniu supports community food sovereignty in Hawaiʻi, and more.

We invite you to…

• tune in and subscribe to Green Dreamer via any podcast app;
• tap into our bonus extended and video version of this conversation on Patreon here;
• and read highlights from these conversations via Kaméa’s newsletter here.

Song feature: “E ʻOlu” by Pohai (ft. Pulama), via Ohana Records

Today, we are doing an episode swap with Dean Spade's podcast, Love in a F*cked Up World, featuring his conversation with adrienne maree brown!

Dean’s show rests on this acknowledgment that social and resistance movements are rooted in relationships and are only as strong as they are — so he explores what it means to build the skills we need for creating and sustaining strong relationships.

If you enjoy this episode, please go check out his podcast, book of the same title, and Patreon as well where they do live events and some bonus content not shared on other more hostile platforms. You can learn more at patreon.com/deanspade

Thanks for tuning in, and I’ll look forward to catching you again next week with our regular programming!

What does it mean to bypass formalized structures of change-making and to engage in mutual aid? How does the philanthropy-nonprofit-industrial complex itself discourage systemic change? And how do we balance participation in immediate care response with the less visible, longer term, more mycelial work of rewiring community power?

In this episode, Green Dreamer’s kaméa chayne speaks with Dean Spade of Mutual Aid and Love in a Fucked Up World: How to Build Relationships, Hook Up and Raise Hell Together.

Join us as we explore what it means to honor difference and expertise in activism without replicating oppressive hierarchy, reflect on lateral conflicts within the messy terrains of movement building, and more.

We invite you to…

• tune in and subscribe to Green Dreamer via any podcast app;
• tap into our bonus extended and video version of this conversation on Patreon here;
• and read highlights from these conversations via Kaméa’s newsletter here.

Song features: “Earth Dog” and “Peaches” by Isla Greenwood (@islagreenwood on Instagram)