Last Born In The Wilderness

Samra Culum is Student Development Coordinator at the College of Southern Idaho (CSI) and a refugee. As a child, she fled with her family from war-torn Bosnia, and through the CSI Refugee Resettlement Program, settled in Twin Falls, Idaho, with her family. In this episode, Samra discusses what she and her family experienced in their community in Bosnia as underlying tensions and divisions broke out into war and ethnic cleansing and what the process of escaping and eventually resettling in the United States was like. Culum then goes over her feelings and thoughts about the recent surge of anti-refugee sentiment that has emerged in the Twin Falls area surrounding the CSI Refugee Resettlement Program lately and how difficult, painful, and important it is to revisit traumatic memories and experiences and process them in a meaningful way. // Episode notes: https://www.lastborninthewilderness.com/episodes/samra-culum // Sustain + support: https://www.patreon.com/lastborninthewilderness // Donate: https://www.paypal.me/lastbornpodcast [ EP 95 / REC 12.12.2017 / REL 01.02.2018 / RMST 12.10.2024 ]

Carne Ross is a former British diplomat, Middle East and WMD expert, who resigned in 2004 after giving what was then secret information to a British inquiry into the Iraq War. This year, Ross was featured in the documentary Accidental Anarchist, a film that follows his path from British diplomat to an advocate for anarchism. This film follows his journey to find and eventually witness anarchist principles in action during the Occupy movement, the Spanish Civil War in the late 1930s in Catalonia, and contemporarily by the Kurds in Rojava. Rojava is a region in northern Syria that, during the chaotic Syrian Civil War, was able, and continues to this day, to practice a form of anarchism effectively while simultaneously fighting off ISIS as well as maintaining autonomy in that region. // Episode notes: https://www.lastborninthewilderness.com/episodes/carne-ross // Sustain + support: https://www.patreon.com/lastborninthewilderness // Donate: https://www.paypal.me/lastbornpodcast [ EP 93 / REC 11.20.2017 / REL 12.15.2017 / RMST 12.10.2024 ]

Riccardo Manzotti is the author of The Spread Mind: Why Consciousness and the World Are One. He teaches Psychology of Perception at IULM University, Milan (Italy), and has specialized in AI, artificial vision, perception, and the philosophy and science of consciousness.  The discussion you will hear in this episode deals with a few different subjects brought up in Manzotti’s work, namely what the Spread Mind hypothesis is, what its underlying premise means regarding our understanding of what the "mind" really is, and how scientific exploration into the brain and neurological functioning will not lead to any answers about where our conscious experience comes from. Manzotti’s new book, The Spread Mind, delves into this fascinating subject and radically shifts our understanding of consciousness and points to another much-needed and necessary way to frame our understanding of this subject. // Episode notes: https://www.lastborninthewilderness.com/episodes/riccardo-manzotti // Sustain + support: https://www.patreon.com/lastborninthewilderness // Donate: https://www.paypal.me/lastbornpodcast [ EP 92 / REC 11.10.2017 / REL 12.07.2017 / RMST 12.09.2024 ]

Ian MacKenzie is an award-winning filmmaker and media activist, and co-director of the film Amplify Her, a documentary that follows the powerful and emerging female producers in the electronic music scene. I sought out Ian MacKenzie to have this conversation with me because I had become familiar with his work regarding gender and the sacred roles of men and women can embody, and I have come to recognize that the work he is doing is entirely necessary in this time of great calamity and confusion. More than ever, people are discussing gender identity and gender roles, sexuality and relationships, and what this all means for us as individuals and as a society. I felt ready to have this discussion, and Ian was gracious enough to accept my invitation and hash out these ideas with me, and I thank him for that. // Episode notes: https://www.lastborninthewilderness.com/episodes/ian-mackenzie // Sustain + support: https://www.patreon.com/lastborninthewilderness // Donate: https://www.paypal.me/lastbornpodcast [ EP 90 / REC 11.08.2017 / REL 11.27.2017 / RMST 12.09.2024 ]

Bayo Akomolafe is a researcher, lecturer, and author, born and raised in Nigeria. He is an international speaker, poet, and activist for a radical paradigm shift in consciousness and current ways of living. He is globally recognized for his poetic, unconventional, counterintuitive, and indigenous take on global crisis, civic action, and social change. Akomolafe discusses some of the themes raised in his essay, Homo Icarus: The Depreciating Value of Whiteness and the Place of Healing. The essay attempts to discuss a few difficult topics, triggered, in part, by the events in Charlottesville during the Unite The Right rally this year, which highlighted some of the more vile and racist elements of American culture. // Episode notes: https://www.lastborninthewilderness.com/episodes/bayo-akomolafe // Sustain + support: https://www.patreon.com/lastborninthewilderness // Donate: https://www.paypal.me/lastbornpodcast [ EP 89 / REC 10.26.2017 / REL 11.20.2017 / RMST 12.09.2024 ]

Alex S. Vitale is Professor of Sociology at Brooklyn College and author of The End of Policing. In this discussion, Prof. Vitale describes the current state of policing in the US and provides a historical and sociological context as to why policing functions as it currently does. // Episode notes: https://www.lastborninthewilderness.com/episodes/alex-vitale // Sustain + support: https://www.patreon.com/lastborninthewilderness // Donate: https://www.paypal.me/lastbornpodcast [ EP 88 / REC 11.02.2017 / REL 11.12.2017 / RMST 12.05.2024 ]

Tom Aiello is the founder, owner, and lead instructor of the Snake River BASE Academy, based in Twin Falls, Idaho. Twin Falls is nestled up against the Snake River Canyon, and spanning the canyon is the Perrine Bridge. Due to the lack of legal restrictions and its location, the Perrine Bridge is an optimal fixed structure for BASE jumping, attracting countless people from all over the world to this small city in Southern Idaho. "BASE" is an acronym that stands for four categories of fixed objects from which one can jump: building, antenna, span, and Earth (cliff). Tom is the first in the world to provide a detailed and rigorous multi-level educational course for those that wish to get into BASE jumping and learn more than just the basics. // Episode notes: https://www.lastborninthewilderness.com/episodes/tom-aiello // Sustain + support: https://www.patreon.com/lastborninthewilderness // Donate: https://www.paypal.me/lastbornpodcast [ EP 87 / REC 11.01.2017 / REL 11.04.2017 / RMST 12.05.2024 ]

John Perkins is the best-selling author of several books, including the well-known Confessions of an Economic Hitman, and his follow-up book, The New Confessions of an Economic Hitman, released last year. Perkins spent the 1970s working for the strategic consulting firm Chas. T. Main as Chief Economist, where he and his staff advised the World Bank, United Nations, IMF, U.S. Treasury Department, Fortune 500 corporations, as well as countries in Africa, Asia, Latin America, and the Middle East. In this episode, we discuss his role in the paradigm of economic exploitation—globalization—and his insight into the political and economic turmoil currently being experienced in South and Central American nations, and more specifically in Venezuela. // Episode notes: https://www.lastborninthewilderness.com/episodes/john-perkins // Sustain + support: https://www.patreon.com/lastborninthewilderness // Donate: https://www.paypal.me/lastbornpodcast [ EP 86 / REC 08.27.2017 / REL 10.23.2017 / RMST 12.05.2024 ]

Sean McFate is an author, novelist, and expert in foreign policy and national security strategy. He is deeply critical of the ongoing privatization of military operations by the US government, as well as Erik Prince, former president and founder of Blackwater, and his proposals to dramatically privatize military operations in Afghanistan. These types of grandiose plans Prince proposed to the Trump Administration have not been implemented, but there is still much to be concerned with regarding the rise of mercenary armies and how they fit into the ever-changing face of war in the 21st century. Sean McFate goes over this and much more in this episode. // Episode notes: https://www.lastborninthewilderness.com/episodes/sean-mcfate // Sustain + support: https://www.patreon.com/lastborninthewilderness // Donate: https://www.paypal.me/lastbornpodcast [ EP 82 / REC 09.07.2017 / REL 09.22.2017 / RMST 12.02.2024 ]

Just like David O'Hara's book Downstream, this episode is about so much more than fly-fishing. O'Hara imbues the conversation with great knowledge and wisdom, and speaking with him was a great pleasure in and of itself. The topics touched on in this episode are broad: fishing the rivers of Appalachia; empathizing with other creatures; studying and observing reef ecology in Belize; enduring and recovering from a major head injury; the wonder of it all. // Episode notes: https://www.lastborninthewilderness.com/episodes/david-ohara // Sustain + support: https://www.patreon.com/lastborninthewilderness // Donate: https://www.paypal.me/lastbornpodcast [ EP 81 / REC 08.06.2017 / REL 09.19.2017 / RMST 12.02.2024 ]