This week For The Wild Podcast presents Part Two of a two-part conversation between guest host brontë velez and Dr. Tiffany Lethabo King. Circumferencing Dr. Tiffany Lethabo King’s book The Black Shoals: Offshore Formations of Black and Native Studies, brontë and Tiffany explore sacred laughter, Black and Indigenous feminism, sexuality, liberation, ceremony, and protocol. This week we are cradled to explore where Black and Indigenous relations can meet beyond the wound. Part Two spans further inquiry into shoals, the physical desire to belong to Earth, agency, eros, spiritual correction, the pleasure and potential of failure, and that which cannot be translated, but instead has to be experienced or co-witnessed to be understood. Research for this conversation was curated by jazmín calderón torres. Recorded in January of 2021, this interview is a companion piece to a project called Can I Get A Witness, a collaborative transmedia project between For The Wild and Lead to Life. Can I Get A Witness “traces two queer black latinx femmes, brontë velez and Stephanie Hewett, dancing before and being danced by the ecology, memory, and stories of the Tongass National Forests and Glacier Bay in southeast Alaska–unceded Haida, Tsimshian, Tlingit territories, scored by field recordings and music, interviews with Tiffany King, Wanda Kashudoha, and Kasyyahgei, with a Groundtruthing Oracle by jazmín calderón torres. Music by Jiordi Rosales and Ashia Karana. Visit our website at forthewild.world for the full episode description, references, and action points. 

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TIFFANY LETHABO KING on The Black Shoals [with brontë velez], Part Two /316

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This week we are rebroadcasting our episode with Kimberly Ann Johnson originally aired in April 2023.  
 Feeling into the state of our nervous systems and our relationships with each other and ourselves, this episode offers a powerful perspective on the importance of recognizing and tending to how life feels. Together, Ayana and this week’s guest Kimberly Ann Johnson discuss the depths of pleasure and the dimensions of healing. Kimberly brings deep knowledge regarding reproductive and sexual health, especially paying attention to the often untended somatic nature of sexual boundary repair and the complicated nature of what we bring into sexual relationships.  
 This conversation is steeped in trust and intimacy. Kimberly’s focus and understanding offers a guide to the ways we might come to handle and regulate our own nervous systems in order to act in alignment with our desires, rather than with the prescribed roles we have been put into through societal conditioning.  
 Kimberly Ann Johnson is a Sexological Bodyworker, Somatic Experiencing practitioner, yoga teacher, postpartum advocate, and single mom. Working hands-on in integrative women’s health and trauma recovery for more than a decade, she helps women heal from birth injuries, gynecological surgeries, and sexual boundary violations. Kimberly is the author of the Call of the Wild: How We Heal Trauma, Awaken Our Own Power, and Use It for Good, as well as the early mothering classic The Fourth Trimester, and is the host of the Sex Birth Trauma podcast. 
 Join us on Patreon at patreon.com/forthewild for an extended version of this episode. 
 Music by Lake Mary & Talk West and Katie Gray. Visit our website at forthewild.world for the full episode description, references, and action points. 


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KIMBERLY ANN JOHNSON on Pleasure as Pathway [ENCORE]

This week we are rebroadcasting our episode with Sophie Strand which originally aired in November 2022.  In this winding and lucid conversation, guest Sophie Strand invites us to investigate our relationality, to embrace rot and decay, to welcome our demons to the dinner table, and to prepare for uncertain futures with tenderness. Sophie brings to light the wisdom of the compost heap. What myths do we need for modernity, what wisdom is sedimented within our bodies? Sophie and Ayana tap into deep lines of thought and myth, weaving together conversations and concepts from thousands of years of human history. As the interview asks, “What is it to be human on our most basic level?” To be a human is to be in complicated and compromising relationships – relationships that implicate us within the other, that show us that love is a process of altering and of deep work. Purity is not an option. Sophie Strand is a writer based in the Hudson Valley who focuses on the intersection of spirituality, storytelling, and ecology. Her first book of essays The Flowering Wand: Rewilding the Sacred Masculine will be published by Inner Traditions on November 22, 2022 and is available for pre-order. Her eco-feminist historical fiction reimagining of the gospels The Madonna Secret will also be published by Inner Traditions in Spring 2023. Subscribe for her newsletter at sophiestrand.substack.com. And follow her work on Instagram: @cosmogyny and at www.sophiestrand.com. Music by Tan Cologne and Mitski. Cover image by Alexandra Levasseur. Visit our website at forthewild.world for the full episode description, references, and action points.Support the show

SOPHIE STRAND on Myths as Maps [ENCORE]

This week we are rebroadcasting our interview with Maya Khosla which originally aired in November 2022.

What can the forest teach us of grief, of joy, of humanity? This week, poet and scientist Maya Khosla invites listeners into the forests of Northern California to find deep reverence for the power of biodiversity. Maya’s expertise on wildfires shines through this deep and well-informed conversation as she and Ayana share a love for the forest and deep-seated awe for the complexity of forest life. Maya introduces listeners to the science behind forest fires and urges us to see fire as not simply “destructive,” but rather as one of the many cycles of earth. From practices of cultural burning to current studies on post-fire diversity, the creative and regenerative power of the forest cannot be overlooked. 
 Maya Khosla is a wildlife biologist and writer. She served as Sonoma County Poet Laureate (2018-2020), bringing Sonoma’s communities together through poetry gatherings and field walks after the 2017 fires. Sonoma County Conservation Council (SCCC) selected her as one of the 2020 Environmentalists of the Year. Her poetry books include “All the Fires of Wind and Light” from Sixteen Rivers Press (2020 PEN Oakland/Josephine Miles Literary Award), “Keel Bone” from Bear Star Press (Dorothy Brunsman Poetry Prize), and “Web of Water: Life in Redwood Creek”. Her writing has been featured in documentary films including “Village of Dust, City of Water,” about the water crises in rural India. 
 Music by Lake Mary, Forest Veil, and Bird By Snow. Visit our website at forthewild.world for the full episode description, references, and action points. 

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MAYA KHOSLA on What the Forest Holds [ENCORE]

Inviting listeners into his deep connection with the forest and the natural world, Ross Reid brings an inspirational energy and commitment to this interview. Connecting around their shared love for old growth and wild places, Ross and Ayana consider what it means to get people interested in protecting the places that sustain us. How can we inspire the connection with the land that brings people to defend it?  
 Ross shares the journey behind his work as “Nerdy About Nature,” and the passion for education, science, and the outdoors that drives the project. Breaking down what he wants people to get from his content, he considers how to get people to pay attention to the issues that matter without feeding into the seemingly endless loop of the attention economy. Ross and Ayana delve into critical questions about advocacy and activism in times of social media, and consider what it would truly mean to engage in action that connects and protects. 
 This conversation brings together rooted optimism, an understanding of the importance of education and knowledge sharing, and a dream of better systems that protect both people and the land. Ross leaves listeners to investigate their own connections to the land and to consider the many ways it is mediated by cultural and political intervention.   
 Based in the Cascadian bioregion, Ross runs a passion project called Nerdy About Nature in which he shares fast-paced, fun, informative videos about nature and the world around us as a means of breaking down barriers to access factual science-based education, while providing critical insight and constructive conversation on environmental and social issues to encourage positive changes in this world to create a more diverse, inclusive, equitable and just future for us all. 
 Music by Green-House courtesy of Leaving Records. Visit our website at forthewild.world for the full episode description, references, and action points. 

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ROSS REID How We Talk About What Matters /369

This week we are rebroadcasting our interview with Jarod K Anderson, originally aired in January 2023. 

Bringing us into his world of nature, awe, and magical poetry, guest Jarod K. Anderson reminds us that our human journey is worthy of just as much love and affection as the natural world around us. When we come to nature with intention, how might it guide us towards love and inspiration? In a time where so many of us are feeling lost, confused, and not connected to a purpose, we often abdicate our power to make meaning in favor of buying prepackaged narratives about who we are based on what we consume. Tapping into the beauty of telling our own stories and making our own meaning, Jarod and Ayana counter what we have been taught about worth. This episode highlights the power of the humble in the face of the grandiose and attention seeking. We are people of a place, Jarod reminds us, and the intimate, internal, and local work we do matters, just as our small bodies in this vast universe matter infinitely.  
 Writer, Poet, and podcaster Jarod K. Anderson (creator of The CryptoNaturalist Podcast) has built a large audience of readers and listeners with his strange, vibrant appreciations of nature. Ranging from optimistic contemplations of mortality to appreciations of single-celled organisms, Jarod is forever writing love letters to the natural world.  
 Music is “Pine Chant” by Sara Fraker and Lachlan Skipworth. “Inspired by tree-ring growth data from the University of Arizona’s Laboratory of Tree-Ring Research, Pine Chant is a sonic embodiment of twelve Arizona trees and an emotional response to climate crisis.” Visit our website at forthewild.world for the full episode description, references, and action points. 

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TIFFANY LETHABO KING on The Black Shoals [with brontë velez], Part Two /316

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