“If we’re soaking in all these default practices that are power-over practices that are reflected to us through the media, through our families and communities, through how the economy works, it means we’re embodying things that we might not even agree with that might not at all align with our values, but we’re embodying them anyway.”

Staci K. Haines is a somatics innovator and the author of The Politics of Trauma. In her decades of working and teaching in the field of somatics, Staci has grown fascinated with the “how” rather than the “why.” She invokes questions such as how we are shaped, how we cultivate resilience, how we practice, and how we transform.

Observing somatics as a holistic paradigm shift, Staci offers insight into the body as a form of place—a place where the personal meets the collective. With this in mind, she invites us to explore how working with embodied somatic practices in safe and accessible ways can shape the ways in which we want to respond to, act on, and heal cycles of trauma. By leaning on the phrase “we become what we practice,” Staci poses somatics as a relational space where social justice, collective aliveness, and personal healing align in untangling the knots of exploitative power. Ultimately, she expresses the urgent need for collective resourcefulness as guided by somatic awareness. 

(The musical offering featured in this episode is Trust The Sun by Oropendola. The episode-inspired artwork is by Nano Février.)

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Dr. Andreas Weber is a biologist, philosopher, and writer, whose work focuses on re-evaluating our understanding of the living and dying. Andreas proposes understanding organisms as subjects, and hence the biosphere, as a meaning-creating and poetic reality. Accordingly, he holds that an economy inspired by nature should not be designed as a mechanistic optimisation machine, but rather as an ecosystem which transforms the mutual sharing of matter and energy into deeper meaning.

Reflecting on his former education in biology and marine science, Andreas enriches a discourse on the limitations of objectivity under a strictly scientific lens. Through a “both-and” perspective, Andreas walks us through what he calls “poetic ecology,” as he navigates the nuance of ecological Eros of tapping into the aliveness of being. This aliveness, he proposes, emerges from a sense of desire, which within a Western worldview tends to exclude more-than-human relationships. However, by respectfully acknowledging other worldviews of dividuality, rather than just individuality, Andreas signals the attention given to our inner experiences of Eros that inevitably enhance the aliveness of the whole.

(The musical offering featured in this episode is Over It by RVBY MY DEAR.)

This episode was brought to you by our supporting listeners. Join us on Patreon to help us keep our show alive: www.greendreamer.com/support

“Where is the space for a collective life? If you yell at the planet and say, ‘Why aren’t you acting collectively?’ You don’t understand this social system. This economic system has stolen collectivity from people.”

In this episode, we welcome Vijay Prashad, an Indian historian, editor, and journalist. Vijay begins by sharing about the turning points in his life that led him to focus his work on unraveling the various atrocities visited upon people in the world. With a recognition of the power of media narratives, he goes on to address how both mainstream and independent media perpetuates the limiting view that democracies are driven primarily by participation in electoral politics. Offering alternative inspirations, Vijay shines a light on examples of grassroots movements in Brazil, India, and China, where ordinary people have taken matters into their own hands to occupy unused lands to grow food and practice small gestures of community care.

Rather than asserting blame for the numerous challenges everyday people face when trying to become more engaged members of society,  however, Vijay points out the various systemic factors making organized action more difficult. Ultimately, Vijay calls for reviving our collective lives through rebuilding confidence and capacity—leaving us with an empowering invitation to start creating the future, now.

(The musical offering featured in this episode Don’t Ask Me by RVBY MY DEAR. The episode-inspired artwork is by Luci Pina.)

Green Dreamer is a community-powered podcast. Thank you for sharing and supporting our work: GreenDreamer.com/support

In this episode, we welcome writer, artist, and technologist, James Bridle. James’s artworks have been commissioned by galleries and institutions and exhibited worldwide and on the internet. They are the author of New Dark Age (2018) and Ways of Being (2022), and they wrote and presented the radio series "New Ways of Seeing" for BBC Radio 4 in 2019.

Join us as James investigates and complicates modernity’s entanglement with contemporary technology. Ever careful not to throw the baby out with the bath water, they urge us to think critically about the impact of technological advances particularly as they are embedded within dynamics of power, systems of complexity, and definitions of “intelligence”. In breaking down the fallacy of the earth as a computational model, James places emphasis on the process of cultivating relationships which is at the heart of thinking and feeling—processes that call on us to activate technologies of relationality.

(The musical offering featured in this episode Lullaby by RVBY MY DEAR. The episode-inspired artwork is by Tinuke Fagborun.)

Green Dreamer is a community-supported podcast. Join our Patreon and contribute a gift of any amount today to help keep our platform alive: greendreamer.com/support

“I like thinking with viruses because they’re constantly infecting us, changing our nature. Some of them are even changing our genome. We’re constantly in relation with the world around us even though we can barely perceive and understand all of this complexity.”

In this episode, we are joined by anthropologist Eben Kirksey, who invites us to think and feel through a new wave of viral theory through a lens of multi-species entanglement. Through his insatiable curiosity about nature-culture, Eben humbly approaches the viral world as one that reflects the limitations of fixed or reductive categorization. Ultimately, he leaves us with an invitation to explore how radically re-thinking viral systems can offer alternative ways of approaching contemporary socio-political predicaments. He asks: how can we sit with the complexities of symbiotic assemblages amongst species, and what novel relationships are imperative to uplift in an age of extinction?

About the guest:

Eben Kirksey is an Associate Professor of Anthropology at the University of Oxford where he teaches Medical Anthropology and Human Ecology. He earned his PhD at the University of California, Santa Cruz, and helped found one of the world's first Environmental Humanities programs at UNSW Sydney in Australia. Investigating some of the most important stories of our time—related to biotechnology, the environment, and social justice—led him to Asia, the Pacific, and the Americas. His books include Freedom in Entangled Worlds (2012) and Emergent Ecologies (2015)–plus The Multispecies Salon (2014), and The Mutant Project (2020), a book that follows some of the world’s first genetically modified people.

(The musical offering featured in this episode Lose My Mind by RVBY MY DEAR. The episode-inspired artwork is by Luci Pina.)

Green Dreamer is a community-supported podcast. Join our Patreon and contribute a gift of any amount today to help keep our platform alive: greendreamer.com/support

"I came up with the idea of ‘Eating the Landscape’ because I was thinking about our Indigenous ancestral foodways. It’s not just about food. It’s not just about nutrition. ‘Eating the Landscape’ is about this large, interconnected matrix of our relationship to place."

In this episode, Enrique Salmón, Ph.D. guides us to see Indigenous foodways as parts of an interconnected matrix of our relationship to place. Introducing the concept of “kincentric ecology,” Enrique problematizes one-size-fits-all approaches to caring for the land. He also elaborates on why many Native peoples are opposed to memory banking as a way to preserve Indigenous knowledge.

Having completed his dissertation on how the bioregion of his Rarámuri people of the Sierra Madres of Chihuahua, Mexico influences their language and thought, Enrique invites us to understand the layered meanings behind the phrase “Eating the Landscape”—looking at food not just as sources of nourishment but as avenues of growing one’s kinship. Ultimately, as opposed to the doom and gloom perspectives prevalent in mainstream environmentalism in regards to the role of humankind, Enrique leaves us with a calling of recognizing humans as a keystone species—where creation is not only a matter of what came before but an act of relational responsibility.

About the guest:

Enrique Salmón is the author of Iwígara: The Kinship of Plants and People and Eating The Landscape, a book focused on small-scale Native farmers of the Greater Southwest and their role in maintaining biocultural diversity. With a PhD. in anthropology from Arizona State University, he has been a Scholar in Residence at the Heard Museum and on the Board of Directors of the Society of Ethnobiology. Enrique has published several articles and chapters on Indigenous ethnobotany, agriculture, nutrition, and traditional ecological knowledge, and he teaches American Indian Studies in the Department of Ethnic Studies at Cal State University East Bay. also serving as their Tribal Liaison.

The musical offering featured in this episode is Flute Dance by Enrique Salmón. The episode-inspired artwork is by Cherie Kwok.

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“What we might want to do is learn where the word desertification comes from and when it should be used and when it is ill-used, at least to move forward into a more hopeful, more informed, more generous future that I think we all want.”

Why should we challenge mass tree-planting projects as being politically neutral—as something that ought to garner universal support? What is the significance of reorienting our goals towards growing trees rather than planting trees? And what could it mean to love drylands as they are, troubling perspectives that problematize their existence?

In this episode, we welcome Rosetta S. Elkin, the Principle of Practice Landscape, academic director of Pratt Institute’s School of Architecture Master’s in Landscape Architecture (MLA) program, and an Associate of The Arnold Arboretum at Harvard University. 

Rosetta’s work considers living environments with a particular focus on plant life and climate change. Rosetta teaches planting design, fieldwork, and seminars that advance a theory of plant life between ecology and horticulture. She is the author of books, articles, book chapters, and monographs including Plant Life: The Entangled Politics of Afforestation.

Green Dreamer is a community-supported podcast. Join our Patreon and contribute a gift of any amount today to help keep our platform alive: greendreamer.com/support

// The musical offering featured in this episode Lose My Mind by RVBY MY DEAR. //

“I use the language of entanglement rather than interdependence because entanglement implies that what’s fundamental is relationships.”

What are some of the limitations of human rights frameworks and the institutions that uphold them? What does it mean to go beyond recognizing our interdependence to seeing our deep entanglements with our more-than-human world? And how is the much more holistic framing of “multispecies justice” still reductive in terms of the forms of beings that they recognize?

In this episode, we welcome Professor Dany Celermajer, Deputy Director of the Sydney Environment Institute at the University of Sydney who leads the Multispecies Justice project. Through the experience of living through the black summer bushfires with a multispecies community, she began writing about a new crime of our age, Omnicide and subsequently Summertime.

Green Dreamer is a community-supported podcast. Join our Patreon and contribute a gift of any amount today to help keep our platform alive: greendreamer.com/support

// The musical offering featured in this episode Don't Ask Me by RVBY MY DEAR. //

“One thing that the United States got really good at doing was basically replacing all colonial products with synthetic ones—swapping technology in for territory and replacing colonies with chemistry.”

How have synthetic chemistry and technology allowed the United States as an empire to cease its reliance on colonies? And what is the significance of recognizing the greater history of the empire—beyond the borders of its symbolic “logo map”?

In this episode, we welcome Daniel Immerwahr, a historian and the Bergen Evans Professor in the Humanities at Northwestern University. His most recent book is How to Hide an Empire.

Green Dreamer is a community-supported podcast. Join our Patreon and contribute a gift of any amount today to help keep our platform alive: greendreamer.com/support

“We often forget that Black farmers were the foundation of the civil rights movement. Actually, a lot of Black agrarian scholars and organizers, and even some policy advocates that have been doing this work for a long time, would say that there’d be no civil rights movement if it wasn’t for Black farmers.”

In this episode, we welcome dr. shakara tyler, a returning-generation farmer, educator and organizer who engages in Black agrarianism, agroecology, food sovereignty and environmental justice as commitments of abolition and decolonization. She serves as Board President at the Detroit Black Community Food Security Network (DBCFSN), board member of the Detroit People’s Food Co-op (DPFC) and co-founder of the Detroit Black Farmer Land Fund (DBFLF) and a member of the Black Dirt Farm Collective (BDFC).

Green Dreamer is a community-supported podcast. Join our Patreon and contribute a gift of any amount today to help keep our platform alive: greendreamer.com/support

// The musical offering featured in this episode Over It by RVBY MY DEAR. //