Podcasts about queer ecology

Today I am joined by Aspen Ellis and Allison Payne from the University of California, Santa Cruz! We are talking about sea birds, wind farms, elephant seals and the importance of teaching Queer Ecology! If you don't know what Queer Ecology is, don't worry, this incredible duo explain it all!Useful LinksDon't forget to subscribe to the podcast and follow us on ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠Twitter⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠, ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠Facebook⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠, ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠LinkedIn⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠, ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠TikTok⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠ & ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠Instagram⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠! We are @PangolinPodcast

What happens when a voice emerges? What happens when one is lost? Is something gained? A couple months ago, Lulu guest edited an issue of the nature magazine Orion. She called the issue “Queer Planet: A Celebration of Biodiversity,” and it was a wide-ranging celebration of queerness in nature. It featured work by amazing writers like Ocean Vuong, Kristen Arnett, Carmen Maria Machado and adrienne maree brown, among many others. But one piece in particular struck Lulu as something that was really meant to be made into audio, an essay called “Key Changes,” by the writer Sabrina Imbler. If their name sounds familiar, it might be because they've been on the show before. In this episode, we bring you Sabrina's essay – which takes us from the beginning of time, to a field of crickets, to a karaoke bar – read by the phenomenal actor Becca Blackwell, and scored by our director of sound design Dylan Keefe. Stay to the end for a special surprise … from Amy Ray of the Indigo Girls!Special thanks to Jay Gallagher from UC Davis.EPISODE CREDITS: Reported by - Sabrina ImblerProduced by - Annie McEwen and Pat Walterswith help from - Maria Paz GutiérrezOriginal music from - Dylan KeefeFact-checking by - Kim Schmidtand Edited by  - Tajja Isen and Pat WaltersEPISODE CITATIONS:Articles - Check out Queer Planet: A Celebration of Biodiversity, Orion Magazine (Spring 2025)Read Sabrina Imbler's original essay, “Key Changes,” Orion Magazine (Spring 2025)Read Lulu Miller's mini-essay, “Astonishing Immobility,” Orion Magazine (Spring 2025)Check out Sabrina Imbler's Defector column Creaturefector all about animalsAudio - Listen to Amy Ray's song “Chuck Will's Widow” from her solo album If It All Goes SouthBooks - How Far the Light Reaches: A Life in Ten Sea Creatures, by Sabrina ImblerSignup for our newsletter!! It includes short essays, recommendations, and details about other ways to interact with the show. Sign up (https://radiolab.org/newsletter)!Radiolab is supported by listeners like you. Support Radiolab by becoming a member of The Lab (https://members.radiolab.org/) today.Follow our show on Instagram, Twitter and Facebook @radiolab, and share your thoughts with us by emailing radiolab@wnyc.org.Leadership support for Radiolab's science programming is provided by the Simons Foundation and the John Templeton Foundation. Foundational support for Radiolab was provided by the Alfred P. Sloan Foundation.

Oppressive governments like the Trump administration may try to erase queer identities and histories, but California Naturalist and educator Jason “Journeyman” Wise reveals how science is recognizing that the rigid, patriarchal, binary view of the natural world is no match for the true fluid, diverse and interdependent reality (interviewed by Jason Jenn). And in NewsWrap: hundreds of thousands of protesters filled the streets of London and other cities to denounce the U.K. Supreme Court‘s trans-exclusive definition of “woman,” the deceased Roman Catholic Pope Francis changed the tenor of the Church's relationship with the LGBTQ+ community, the Trump administration is asking the U.S. Supreme Court to allow its ban on transgender military service to continue while its constitutionality is being challenged, federal judge enjoins Trump administration order demanding that passport and visa applicants be limited to only male or female gender markers, the Mississippi Supreme Court tells a transgender teenage boy he must wait until he turns 21 to legally change his name to reflect his gender identity, and more international LGBTQ+ news reported this week by Tanya Kane-Parry and Nathalie Munoz (produced by Brian DeShazor). All this on the April 28, 2025 edition of This Way Out! Join our family of listener-donors today at http://thiswayout.org/donate/

There were a number of pieces at SXSW that were centered around embodied interactions including HONEY FUNGUS, which is a series of interactive embodied experiments telling a broader story of cultivating intimacy with ecology. This piece leans more into embodied dream logic rather than clearly articulating a narrative journey, and I had a fascinating conversation with Johan King who decoded the underlying symbolism. King's first step of his creative process was to go down a rabbit hole researching queer ecology and the latest research on fungi, and he wrote an essay titled "Unfathomable Intimacies" that lays out his original inspirations. One thing that really stuck with me from the experience was this intriguing AI mash-up of Smithsonian Field Research and amateur erotica designed in order to cultivate a new form of ecological intimacy with the world around us. I appreciated this experience a lot more after having a chance to learn more about additional context provided on the website as well as insights gained from my conversation with King. To me the dream logic in this piece leans a little bit more into personal symbols that need some decoding rather than more universal archetypes that are easier to project the intended meaning upon. But I always love learning more about Fungi since they represent so many paradigm-shattering insights. This is a listener-supported podcast through the Voices of VR Patreon. Music: Fatality

Join us for an eye-opening conversation with K9 Jenns, a PhD candidate at the University of Sydney's Bat One Health Research Team, who brings a transformative perspective to the study of flying foxes and their viruses. Through the lens of queer ecology,  K9 reveals how their personal journey has enriched their understanding of the complex relationships between bats and viruses, challenging traditional binary thinking in both science and society.Discover how their team's collection of over 60,000 biological samples is unveiling new insights into virus ecology, including the discovery of 24 previously unknown Hendra Virus relatives. Learn why these findings matter for both bat conservation and public health, and how embracing complexity – whether in virus-host relationships or gender identity – leads to richer scientific insights and a more inclusive understanding of the natural world.LinkBat One Health research groupWe'd love to hear from you ... share your thoughts, feedback and ideas.

What is our relationship to the land, to its other-than-human inhabitants, and to the rest of humanity? These are fundamental questions for thinking through how we can transform ourselves in ways that allow a multiplicity of ecologies and human communities to thrive alongside one another. And these questions are not just fundamental to us as individuals—they are essential to how we view our cultures, traditions, institutions, and ways of knowing.Layel Camargo lives at the vibrant intersection of ecological justice, queer liberation, and indigenous culture—a cultural space that offers a distinctive vantage point on how our societies work, while holding enormous potential to both see and reorient our relationships to the land and to one another.Layel Camargo is an organizer and artist who advocates for the better health of the planet and its people by restoring land, healing communities, and promoting low-waste and low-impact lifestyles. Layel is a transgender and gender non-conforming person who is an indigenous descendant of the Yaqui and Mayo tribes of the Sonoran Desert.I met Layel at a climate storytelling retreat in New York City in 2019, where I became a huge fan of their work and of their way of being in the world.Layel is a founder of the Shelterwood Collective, a Black, Indigenous, and LGBTQ-led community forest and retreat center, healing people and ecosystems through active stewardship and community engagement.Our conversation explores the idea of culture as strategy in confronting the climate crisis, diving into Layel's work in video, podcasting, and poetry and the origins of their approach to this work of healing people and planet.You can listen on Substack, Apple Podcasts, and other podcast platforms.Please rate, review, and share to help us spread the word!Layel CamargoLayel Camargo is a cultural strategist, land steward, filmmaker, artist, and a descendant of the Yaqui tribe and Mayo tribes of the Sonoran Desert. Layel is also transgender and non-binary. They graduated from UC Santa Cruz with dual degrees in Feminist Studies and Legal Studies. Layel was the Impact Producer for “The North Pole Show” Season Two. They currently produce and host ‘Did We Go Too Far' in conjunction with Movement Generation. Alongside Favianna Rodriguez and at the Center for Cultural Power, they created ‘Climate Woke,' a national campaign to center BIPOC voices in climate justice. Wanting to shape a new world, they co-founded ‘Shelterwood Collective'. The collective is a land-based organization that teaches land stewardship, fosters inventive ideation, and encourages healing for long-term survival. Layel was a Transformative Justice practitioner for 6 years and still looks to achieve change to the carceral system in all of their work. Most recently, Layel was named on the Grist 2020 Fixers List, and named in the 2019 Yerba Buena Center of the Arts list of ‘People to Watch Out For.'Quotation Read by Layel Camargo“You wanna fly, you got to give up the s**t that weighs you down.” - Toni Morrison, Song of SolomonRecommended Readings & MediaTranscriptIntroJohn Fiege  What is our relationship to the land, to its other-than-human inhabitants, and to the rest of humanity? These are fundamental questions for thinking through how we can transform ourselves in ways that allow a multiplicity of ecologies and human communities to thrive alongside one another. And these questions are not just fundamental to us as individuals—they are essential to how we view our cultures, traditions, institutions, and ways of knowing.Layel Camargo lives at the vibrant intersection of ecological justice, queer liberation, and indigenous culture—a cultural space that offers a distinctive vantage point on how our societies work while holding enormous potential to both see and reorient our relationships to the land and to one another.And besides that, Layel is hilarious.Layel Camargo My passion for humor has come from has been maintained by a lot of data and information that I've gotten around just the importance of people being able to process things through laughter. And that the climate crisis is nothing to make mockery and or to laugh, there's this is very serious. The ways in which our species is kind of being at threat of extinction, and right before our eyes. But I think that as humans, we're so complex and layered, and we're so beautiful in the sense that we get to feel so intensely, and feeling is what motivates us to take action. And laughter helps you process so much data quicker, it helps you be able to take something in, embrace it, release, and then have it make an impression.John Fiege  I'm John Fiege, and this is Chrysalis.Layel Camargo is an organizer and artist who advocates for the better health of the planet and its people by restoring land, healing communities, and promoting low-waste, low-impact lifestyles. Layel is a transgender and gender non-conforming person who is an indigenous descendant of the Yaqui and Mayo tribes of the Sonoran Desert.I met Layel at a climate storytelling retreat in New York City in 2019, where I became a huge fan of their work and of their way of being in the world.Layel is a founder of the Shelterwood Collective, a Black, Indigenous, and LGBTQ-led community forest and retreat center, healing people and ecosystems through active stewardship and community engagement.Our conversation explores the idea of culture as strategy in confronting the climate crisis, diving into Layel's work in video, podcasting, and poetry and the origins of their approach to this work of healing people and planet.Here is Layel Camargo.ConversationJohn FiegeHow you doing?Layel Camargo I'm doing pretty good. How are you doing?John Fiege I'm doing well. I've got this thing in my throat. I, so I'm going to be drinking a lot of tea. And I might have to have a bathroom break. Know, I have forgotten to take my allergy medicine. And here we are. Great. Yeah. So can you start out by telling me where you grew up? And how you viewed your relationship to the rest of nature when you were a kid?Layel Camargo Yeah. Um, I can start off by Yeah. talking a little bit about where I grew up. Yeah, so I grew up on the Mexican border between Tijuana and San Diego. And my upbringing was in this very highly dense migrant community from Latinx to Philippines, because of the proximity to the military base. It was very military towns, pretty much the professions. They're like you're either work for Homeland Security, the military or police. And I didn't really notice what my upbringing was like till I left. But I grew up crossing the border back and forth. My grandmother migrated from the Sonoran Desert, to Tijuana. And that's basically where my mother was born. And she grew. She went to high school in San Diego, which is why I can say I'm an American citizen, but I'm a descendant of the Maya or the uremic tribes, my grandmother said, and then my grandfather said, The yucky tribes of the Sonoran Desert so I think for me, my connection ecologically was like the ocean Because I grew up in a beach city, and then it was also the desert, because of all the stories and my grandmother's connection to sanada. So high, I never felt like I was at home because as a queer person paid never really fit into the conservative nature of San Diego due to how militarized it is, and all this stuff. But it was through a drive, which I took from Northern California, down to Sonora, where my grandmother's family lives, when I drove through the saguaros and Arizona that I remember seeing the Saguaro forests and just like needing to pull over and just like, take them in. And I had this a visceral feeling that I don't think I've ever had before of just like being home. And I think this, this experience was like in 2016 2017. And that's when I realized that, in theory, I was a climate activist, I cared about the planet. But it wasn't until that moment that I was like, oh, what I'm actually doing is like actually fighting for us to return to be in better relationship with the planet. And this is where I belong, this is my source of my route, these trees and this desert. So because of that, and growing up in proximity to the beach, water conservation has always been an area of like passion for me and caring about the ocean, which pushed me to a practice of lowering my plastic consumption and being more mindful of oil consumption. And the desert has always been a source of like grounding in regards to like place and knowing that I come from the earth. So it's kind of like I was gonna say, it's kind of like, I'm from a lot of places, I moved to Northern California in 2006. So I love the forest. But nothing speaks to my heart, like the beach in the desert.John Fiege Well, they have sand in common. Is there? Is there a tension between the ocean pulling you in the desert pulling you or is it? Is it a beautiful harmony?Layel Camargo It's a bit of a tension. But I would say that in my body, it feels the same. They both dehydrate me and over, over like it's just a lot of heat, typically. So yeah, that it's different for Northern California beaches, because they're a little bit more Rocky and more cold. You have to wear more layers. Right? definitely like to where I grew up, it's it is warm, the sandy ness. That's a great connection, I definitely need to make that a little bit more concrete.TotallyJohn Fiege cool. Well, can you tell me more about the path you took from the neighborhood where you grew up in San Diego, to studying at UC Santa Cruz and what that experience was like for you?Layel Camargo Yeah, I, I went. So I grew up in a home where there was a lot of violence, which is very common in a lot of migrant-specific and indigenous communities. And I kind of came into my teenage years, like really realizing that I was different, but I didn't know how when it kind of got summarized in college around my queerness my sexuality and my gender, but just feeling this need of like needing to leave. It just didn't make sense for me to be there. And with that being said, I had a wonderful community. I still have quite a few friends in San Diego that I keep in touch with my sisters live there. And I was actually just started last weekend. So I, when I was in San Diego, I think a lot of my trauma responses of like, just ignore what doesn't make sense and just keep moving forward was how I kind of functioned. And that race. And I loved it, I succeeded at it. I've actually realized that I'm a performance artist because of that upbringing. Like I, you know, was captain of the water polo team. I was president of my senior class, I was featured in newspapers for my swimming. I was a competitive swimmer for 10 years. I I did, I did a you know, a good job. I had advanced placement classes and honors classes and I was well rounded but in the inside, I just didn't feel like I belonged. So I picked UC Santa Cruz to go to college because it was the farthest University and the University of California system that had accepted me. And they went and I didn't know what I was getting myself into. I visited the campus like two to three weeks before I had to actually be there to live on campus. Bass. And when my dad drove me, drove me up with my whole family drove me up and they left me they were like, are you sure you want to say I'm like, I got this, like, it was all redwoods. So it was definitely like, we went down to the local store. And it was like all these like hippie dreadlock, folks. And I was like, I don't even know what I got myself into. But I'm getting this degree, so we're good. And it was a big culture shock, I think for a lot of black and brown and indigenous youth when they have to leave their communities to attend. What is like better economic opportunities outside of them it is it's, it's more than just having to adjust, it's having to really like, Oh, I had to let go of everything I knew. And in order for me to take the most out of college, and I was fortunate enough that I had a container a university is like a container for young folks that I wasn't having to leave for work or opportunities. And so I fully immersed myself, and it allowed me to be able to identify myself sexually and through my gender, and a gave me solace, when you know, my family rejected me for coming out. And I think that I'm so fortunate that I had that experience. And then I also was able to gain double bachelor's when feminist studies and legal studies which allowed me to have some upward mobility that my family hadn't had, traditionally I was, I am the first person in my whole family to attend a four year university after high school. So I'm definitely very grateful that that path took me there. And at this point, I feel like it was not only good for me, but it was good for my whole family for me to have taken that journey.John Fiege And did you come out to them? In college or before college?Layel Camargo in college? Yeah, I was my second year, I had my first girlfriend. And I was a Resident Advisor, always I'm always trying to be the overachiever. So I was like Resident Advisor of my college, I was like, involved in every club, I was part of the dance team. And, you know, my mom called me, I just decided to actually move in with my girlfriend the following quarter. And she was like, What are you doing? I was like, Oh, my girlfriend's house. And she was like, why do you have to tell me those things. And I'm just like, because I'm not gonna lie to you. And she was like, I know, you're gay, but I just don't need you to rub it in my face. And I was like, then I guess we can't talk. And so we didn't talk for three months. And then she called me It's, it's, it's hard, you know, like, going to college is hard, especially when I went to very marginalized public schools before that. So I was struggling academically. And my solace was, like, being involved on campus, like to meet some social needs. And I was in, I was in a retention program for black and brown youth from urban communities. So that helped a lot. But I, I, my mom kind of rupturing that, really. I didn't realize what the impact was until probably a quarter the quarter into after that. And she called me three months later, and was like, so are you not gonna talk to me? And I was like, you're the one that doesn't talk to me. And she was like, well, let's just let's just try to make this work. And so we, you know, it took probably five to six years for my family to kind of fully integrate my, you know, my, my lifestyle as they, as they call it. The magic word of magic word. Yeah.John Fiege Yeah, wow. Well, you know, that's just what you need, right in the middle of college trying to adapt to, you know, crazy new culture and world is for your family to reject you.Layel Camargo Yeah, yeah. It's definitely one of those things that like a lot of queer LGBTQ folks. I, I feel like it's so normalized to us, right? And it's just like, well, when you come up, just expect to lose everything. And I think it is it now until I'm like, in my 30s, that I realized how painful that is, and how, like, it's just like, you know, one of the core things I think, as a human species is to know that you belong somewhere. And if you don't belong at home, then where do you belong? And I think for many of us, we've had to go through that unconsciously, without really thinking through that we're seeking to belong. And this theme of belonging has been something that's been coming up as I'm I navigate like, my professional career now is that like, I really do want people to feel like they belong somewhere. And the only thing I feel like makes sense as we all belong to the planet. We all belong to the same descendants and how we got here as a species and that I think that's being rejected from my family allowed me to be like weird do I belong? And so I fortunate that I had a best friend who was also queer. I had my queer community I had student governments and students social organizing. And then when I graduated, I was like, wait, like, Where else do I belong? So I went to my natural habitats like to the beach, and I picked up surfing again and scuba diving. And then it was like, Oh, I actually like I belong to the earth. Like, that's where I belong.John Fiege That's beautiful. Yeah. I love that. Oh, I am hearing some background noise.Layel Camargo Is it audio? Or is it just like,John Fiege people laughing?Layel Camargo It's my partner's on an Akai here, I'm going to shoot her a quick text. She like gets really loud because she gets so excited. Just going to share a quick text.John Fiege So before coming to climate justice work, you worked as an organizer with the Bay Area transformative justice collective. Can you tell me how your work in transformative justice informed your understanding of the climate crisis and how you approach ecological concerns?Layel Camargo Yeah, so I I organized with transformative justice for about six years. And then I you know, for folks who don't know, transformative justice is an alternative response model to violence, harm and hurt. And so similar to restorative justice, which works with the carceral system, so police, judicial systems, etc. to reform in order to help alleviate some of the biases that exists in the systems, transformative justice, as there's those systems actually don't serve certain communities like migrants, folks like that are trans, just the way that those systems just inherently violate certain people who are not included in our society fairly, was like, transparent justice exists to serve folks who cannot access or choose not to access or use the carceral system. So if you will, if you believe in defunding the police, and let's say you're sexually assaulted, you're probably not going to call the police for a rape kit, because there's probably ways that you've experienced those systems as harmful or violent. So when I started organizing were transferred to justice the spoke to me as somebody who had just come out as trans, somebody who grew up in a mixed status family, have relatives who have been deported. And I realized, like, Oh, it's actually worth investing in alternative models, besides the police. In order for us to get our needs met when crisises do happen, because they happen to all of us. And I was in it for six years, you know, we had built up, I had built a great capacity to work with people who had caused harm people who are caused domestic violence, sexual assaults and transforming their behavior and working towards reparation of relationships and or just like helping victims be able to move on after something like that happens. And it's it wasn't an easy task. And what we would come back to is we would spend like the first front of the months, trying to make sure that people's basic needs were met in order for them to slow down enough to process what had just happened. And basic needs included food included shelter, if they lived near, you know, a toxic site, what was infringing on their health, making sure that they had access to health coverage or health benefits. And that was about 60% of what we're doing was making sure that we could get the basics kind of stable so that they could jump into really honoring what it was a justice look like for them. And in doing this a handful of times, not too many, I will say I didn't think thankfully, we had a team. And so I did wasn't always having to handle everything. And we, the experiences that I did have, I was like, man, if people just had, like, a healthy environment where having to fight for housing wasn't a thing. Like we could just actually say, this is where I was born, this is where I belong, and I'm in relationship with the land. And that's how I feed myself, I clothe myself, like all these things that are kind of like indigenous traditional ways, then people could actually solve a lot of their crisis. He's in the moment without having it to be delayed years or having to rely on for it to get outsourced through the carceral system in order for them to feel like they get a minuscule amount of justice. And so I started to just be more cognizant of the way that we interact with the planet and how are everything from our legal structures to our economic structures are just completely devastating. Our environment that have led for us not to have good air quality for us not to have good clean water for us not to feel like we've belong to the earth that is right beneath us that we like, are in relationship with, with the rest of you know, most of our lives. And I, at the time I was living in West Oakland and I had just looked into the air quality report in the area I lived in, and I had the worst air quality in the whole Bay Area. And I started noticing my dog started developing like little spots on her skin, I started having like a lot of chronic coughing. And I was looking at how much money I was making. And so at the time, I was doing a lot of our pop ups, I was really passionate about zero waste, I cared about veganism, a lot of it was through the planet, and it just slowly started shifting away from Yes, I care about how we respond to violence and harm and all of that. And I want us to have alternatives that meet the needs of folks who fall through the waistline of certain systems. And at the same time, we don't even have clean water to come home to to drink when something violent happens, like we have to go buy it from, you know, a grocery store. Most of us don't even test our tap water anymore, because it's just consistently, we just grew up thinking that it doesn't, it's dirty, it's gross, it's non potable, so Right, right. I think at that moment, my heart just completely was like, I want to dive into this work 100% I want to fight for people to have clean air, like if you can't breathe, then you can't, you can't even do a lot, a lot of things. And so many black and brown people who grew up in rural communities have high rates of asthma have like low life expectancy because of air pollution, to you know, the logistics industry etc. And I just kind of fell in with all my heart in like, if I'm, if I'm against plastic put which at the time I was, like vegan for the planet and vegan for my health. And I was also really passionate about reducing plastic use. And I was like, if these are two things that I care about, I want to do it at a larger scale. So it meant that I had to really make those connections of if I want to end gender based violence, if I want to end large forms of violence, I have to start with the one common thing we have that we're constantly extracting and violating, which is the earth. And I think that that led me towards climate justice, because that is the most critical environmental crisis that we're in at this moment.John Fiege So what is the climate crisis? What what what causes is how do you how do you think about culture as a source of power and strategy for climate crisis?Layel Camargo Yeah, I mean, I this is this is really, you know, this, that this is what I do for my life is I spent the last 7 to 8 years really strategizing around what are the cultural shifts that are needed in order for us to be able to be in right relationship with the planet where things like the climate crisis are not happening, so that we can have an economic system and a political system that is serves the planet and the needs of our of us living and thriving, not surviving, which is I think, what we're stuck in as a global society now. And the, we have like quite a few things to kind of look at historically. And I think that there is a dominance of, which is we now know, it is like white supremacy, which is the idea that one group of human is like better than another group of human, and that because of that, everybody else needs to conform to the languages, the culture, the food, the clothes, the housing structures, that are pervasive, and that in, you know, the Euro centric way of living, and that has created a monoculture that is now spread at a global scale. And it's even because it's an economic sister in their economic system. Now we have global stock markets. Now we have the extraction at a global scale, for the sourcing of consumer goods that are all homogenous, and there. There's just one kind of how we do things. And I think the crisis that we're in is the ways that human have removed ourselves from our natural biodiversity relationships with our ecological systems. And then as removing ourselves we have are allowed for the rupture of a relationship that is very needed, which is if we're not integrated into the trees that are natural in our environment into trimming certain invasive species and supporting other biodiverse relationships around us, then we're crippling the ability of the soil to be healthy of the air to have the most amount of oxygen Have you Now we know that we need to be trapping carbon at such high rates. And I think that with a crisis that we're in is that we've allowed and have fallen victims to white supremacy, which was facilitated by colonization, that I, you know, that dominance of one group of people in the way of existing, and I think that's where we're at. I mean, if you look at the kelp forests, the kelp forest needs the otters, they need the, the sea urchins. But when you remove the otters and the sea urchins, you know, are not being preyed upon at a normal scale. And that's, you know, we're connecting it to white supremacy, let's assume that the sea urchins are like the dominant and because they're, they're the ones that ruled the kelp species are starting to be eradicated, and some of them are becoming a threat of extinction. And without a healthy kelp forests, you don't have healthy oxygen and maintenance of the acidification in the ocean, which, you know, couple that with global warming, and you basically have the rapid eradication of so many other natural ecosystems in the ocean that we need to survive. And so when you have one species dominating over another, it leads towards a crisis. So I think we're in a imbalance of relationships because of, of white supremacy. And that's what's causing the climate crisis we have. We have a monoculture. And so just as you look at mono cropping, as you look at anything that eradicates the health of the soil, because it doesn't have the reciprocal relationships that it needs from other crops, and are the resting in order for the soil to be healthy. This might not be speaking to everybody who's listening. But it makes sense that like, Yeah, definitely. The environment crisis is a symptom of Yes. Oh, the climate crisis is a symptom of a larger systemic problem.John Fiege Yeah. And in so many ways, white supremacy was created by colonialism, like, white supremacy is the cultural system that in some ways had to emerge to justify the political and economic brutality of colonialism. You know, it was a it was it was a way of organizing and understanding the world that justified these terrible things that were happening. And they're so it goes so much hand in hand.Layel Camargo Yeah, definitely. Yeah, I mean, I feel like I could talk about this for hours, because there's just so many ways in which we can break it down to the minute level. And then there's so many ways that we can think about solutions. And a lot of my my work and my passion is really bringing as much power as I can to black, indigenous and people of color. Because the retention of culture, language, and different ways of engaging with the world, everything from how we grow our food to how we dress and what we celebrate. And where we honor is what's going to help us be more resilient towards the impending and the realism of what the climate crisis means to a lot of our communities.John Fiege Yeah, totally. Yeah. And you're you're living and working at this really interesting intersection between ecological justice, queer liberation and indigenous culture. Can Can you talk a bit about the intersections of your identity and cultural background and their importance to you and how you orient yourself to this work?Layel Camargo Yeah, definitely. So as I mentioned, I'm a descendant of the Yaki and the Mio tribes in the Sonoran Desert. And I didn't really realize how much this matter to me, I think till about like five to six years ago, because I grew up because of the borders. Technically, I'm Mexican descent, and Mexican American salesperson in this country. But the Mexican government is similar to what we're talking about white supremacy was created by European settlers and, and a hybrid of mixture of stealing of indigenous cultures. And there are so many subgroups of different indigenous cultures. And my heritage is that both my grandfather and my grandmother's tribe as they were nomadic, and they used to migrate up and down the Sonoran Desert, before the border was there from seasonally for survival. And there's so many ways that like food that we eat, how we dress, how we talk that I didn't realize like, Oh, that makes me so much more than just Mexican American. It makes me more than just Latinx. And I think my background and being in such close proximity to immigration and the necessity of immigration or to survive because my grandmother came to Tijuana because it was industrialized and she needed work. And so when they migrated, they like left everything behind. And they never went back. Like, I think so many people leave their home, thinking that they're going to go back and they don't, their children are born in different places. And eventually, that led me to be born in a different country. And so because of that background, I am so keen to issues around native sovereignty and land back here in the United States is like the retention of keeping people in the place of their origin is a climate solution. It's a way of keeping that ancestral knowledge in the place that is needed. I mean, here in Northern California, we look at the wildfire crisis, and it's due to climate change. And it's also due to the lack of forest management, that our indigenous relatives that are native to that area have been robbed of the opportunity to maintain those forests at the scale, which is needed in order to adapt and prepare for wildfires. Yeah,John Fiege yeah, with with the prescribed burning, and all that maintenance that used to happen. That was invisible in so many ways to the European colonists, they didn't even understand that that was going on, or how it worked.Layel Camargo Yeah, and I feel like, you know, it goes back to the monoculture. And I think, because I have indigenous ancestry, because I understand the nature of needing to migrate. And the realities of migrant experience, I think I feel so passionate about keeping people in their place of origin as much as possible, and allowing for people to move freely when they have to. And I think as as the climate crisis gets worse, I started to realize just what a disservice we have made by instilling borders by having governments that have been so gatekeeping and operating off of scarcity, that we've kind of mandated a world where people can move freely people, and people have to leave their place of origin. And that these two paradox that we exist in, is creating the dehumanization of a group of people that if you cannot sustain yourself in your place of origin, because of global extraction, by the way, because of environmental degradation and the economic viability of your area, and how that creates wars and mass extraction, that that is why people migrate. But yet those same people who are creating those systems that make it difficult for you to stay in your place of origin have also created borders to not let you move freely. That paradox to me is also part of this climate crisis as because many of us are going to have to leave john, at some point, there's going to be floods, there's going to be hot water, we're experiencing a drought prices in California, I'm actually living between northern California and Southern California already. And a lot of it is because of the wildfires and my family's down here. And my family's at threat of sea level rise by living in San Diego, which San Diego filed a lawsuit against Exxon and Chevron. And I think one or two other oil companies is we're all we're all existing now in this global climate crisis, that it's not quite in our face every day, but we feel it seasonally now, so we're gonna have to be able to move. Right? So yeah, and last to say is like similar to my cultures I have I lived with an end an endocrine illness. And so air pollution is something that could severely impede my ability to reproduce my ability to function. At this point, I spend about four to five days a month in bed, working from bed, and I'm fortunate enough that I get to work remotely. But for a lot of people, we're going to see more and more ways in which the mass destruction of the planet which has led to the climate crisis is how we become to adopt ways of having different abilities or not being able to live our day to day function. So yeah, the intersecting points are just, they're overwhelming. And I think a lot of us are starting to feel that more as things start to kind of get a little worse.John Fiege Right, right. Yeah, I was talking to, to my partner the other day, she was she was talking to a fellow activist about this idea of ableism. And how, you know, so much of the discourse around it is you know, what are your abilities and, and this, this person was talking about how it it's how unstable that is. Like you can be able bodied today and tomorrow, you can be not able bodied in the same way. Because of, you know, like you say the changing air quality or something happens, or you just you're getting old, or you get sick. And it's one of those things that we've so ignored as a culture of what, what ableism really means about our assumptions about the world.Layel Camargo And like the economic viability and how our economic system is just so dependent on us being fully productive 24 seven, which I made a video on this called The Big Sea, which talks about the intersecting points of labor and how the labor crisis is actually the root of our climate crisis. Because if we can have people have a bigger imagination around how they can use their bodies, to serve their own needs, instead of serving the needs of corporate interests, how that would actually alleviate a lot of pressure on the planet. And that that would potentially lead to our most successful outcomes in regards to the climate crisis.John Fiege Yeah, totally, totally. Well, can you tell me about decolonizing conservation in the environmental movement and what that looks like to you?Layel Camargo Yeah, so I, I started during the beginning of the pandemic, I started a nonprofit called shelterwood collective, which is black and brown and indigenous queer folks who are aiming to steward land at the time, I was aiming to sort of land a month ago, we acquired a 900 acre camp in cassada, California, and Northern California and our team is about conservation efforts, specifically with forest resiliency against wildfires. Taking Western Western practices of conservation, mixing them with indigenous practices that are similarly to conservation. And I feel like when we think about conservation efforts, a lot of them have been dictated by European ways of thinking through conserving natural environments, which a lot of it is like humans are bad, nature must be left uncared for. And this does such a disservice because our indigenous ancestors knew that in order for a forest to be thriving, we needed to be in relationship with it, we needed to monitor monitor it, if there was a fun guy or a virus that was spreading their disease, that we could actually help it, he'll help trees, he'll help it spread less, if there was fires that were coming that we could trim, and tend and do controlled burns, if there was, you know, sucks anything happening where a species was struggling, that we could help support its growth and its population by you know, hunting its predators. And so I think that, that is the challenge between indigenous conservation efforts are traditional ways of just being in relationship with the natural environment and conservation is the western conservation is that we have been so removed from what it means to protect water systems, what it means to protect forests, that now we have a crisis of mismanagement we have and that more and more countries are adopting European Western perspectives because of the dominance that white supremacy has instilled that there are certain group of people that know more than we do. And that's just that's created, at least for me feels very heavy on when it comes to wildfires. There is certain areas in Northern California where there have been residential communities that have been built on wildfire lines that we know now, indigenous people knew that like every 30 years, for every 50 years, there would be a wildfire that would run through that area. And now that we're not that it's getting hotter, the gap of that time is getting shortened. And also that we're realizing that the years, hundreds of years of mismanagement, and lack of tending has led to also these extreme wildfires, that's now causing casualties outside of wildlife. And I feel like conservation needs to evolve. I think that there needs to be more understanding around the harm that Western conservation has done to not only the ecosystems but to the people who have traditionally been keeping those ecosystems. And I do feel like it's like it's evolving. I just think that it's not evolving as fast as we need. And unfortunately, with the climate climate crisis, we're gonna have to really come to recognize what do we need to move really fast on on what can wait because it just feels like Everything's urgent, we need to save the oceans as much as we need to save the forest as much as we need to Save the Redwoods as much as we need to take the rain forests and it just feels like and and that is like the natural environment, then we have like the growing list of extinction, threats of extinction for certain animals. And I think that I don't know why just came to my head. And then you have people like Bill Gates who want to eradicate a whole mosquito species. So it just feels like we're gonna have to pick and choose our battles here. And I do feel like coming to reckoning around the harm that this pervasiveness in western conservation, which isn't the idea that sometimes we are harmful to, you know, our natural ecosystems isn't a bad one. Yeah, we are. But how we got here was by completely removing ourselves and not knowing how to take care of those ecosystems, had we been in a relationship with them for the last 100 years, maybe we wouldn't be so wasteful, maybe we would have caught air pollution sooner than then our body is telling us, hey, we don't like this, this is bad, we're gonna die sooner if you keep doing this. And I think that that is a disservice. So it's beautiful to see more forest schools popping up for young people. It's beautiful to see more conservation groups trying to bring in indigenous leaders into the conversations. But I do feel like that overall idea needs to shift. And I also think that the land back movement, which is returning national parks back to indigenous hands, is going to help alleviate some of those major tensions that do not honor that certain people have been doing this for hundreds of years. And if we don't return it in this generation, we just run the risk of losing more language, more culture and more practices that we need at a larger scale.John Fiege Yeah, in protecting ecosystems is just not a complete picture of everything that's needed. Like as you say, it's important on some level, but it's it's not it's not a whole, it's not a whole understanding of of the problem or how to address it. There reminds me I was I was just reading or rereading a bit of Robin wall kimmerer book braiding sweetgrass, and she talks, she talks about this very issue a bunch about, you know, sweet grass in particulars is something where there's this, this back and forth relationship between humans and nature. And she talks about teaching one of her University classes up here in New York, and asking them at the beginning of the semester, you know, whether people are bad for the environment, and almost everybody says yes. And we alsoLayel Camargo have this this perception of we are bad. Right?John Fiege Yeah. Yeah, this Western guilt is pervasive in that as well. Which is,Layel Camargo which is facilitated by religion? Yes, religion has a very good job of making us feel like we are horrible for everything that we have sent us that we need to repent for our whole existence as like, going from embryo to sperm is actually a sin itself. So we're born with so much already on our shoulders.John Fiege I was gonna say Catholic guilt, but I feel like at this point, it's so much broader than that. Yeah, it is. So you work with the Center for cultural power. And, and one of the main projects you've done with them is climate woke. And I'd like to start by saying how much i'd love the artwork of the logo. It says climate woke. And it's in, in the style of this fabulous flashback 1980s airbrushed t shirts, with, you know, rainbow colors and sparkles. And it feels like there's so much meaning embedded in the artwork. And I wondered if you could tell me about climate woke, how the project emerge, but also like how this logo artwork reflects what this project is.Layel Camargo Yeah, so we when we started thinking about what climate woke would be, we didn't know what's going to be called climate woke it was through several meetings with different community partners, different funders and other stakeholders, where we kind of discussed that we wanted a unifying symbol for all the communities that we had been meeting and we kind of landed that we wanted something to look good to represent black Dan Brown young people between the ages of 16 to 25, something that was appealing that somebody would wear with pride. And, you know, at the time, there was a lot of like, different stuff coming up around the importance of wokeness. The it wasn't used as how we use it now, which is like political correctness. It's, it's, it's not where it is now. And so we decided to kind of ride on the, the term itself climate woke, which talks about uses black vernacular very intentionally that this is a racialized issue. And we spoke with several leaders in the black community, and at the time, it felt like it made sense. And, and so we kind of quickly were like, this makes sense kind of work. We want people to wake up to a climate crisis, but also be like down and enjoy it. And that it's different than this doom and gloom narrative that we constantly see when it comes to the environment. As it is kind of depressing when you think about it. But so we wanted it to feel like inviting. And at the time, which I think was like 2017 2018. All these like 90s was like coming back. So we sat with like two or three potential designers, and we didn't really like what we saw. And then it was heavy and agile that he Guess who is kind of a co creator of this. Also, like a globally recognized artist who was like, hold on, I got this and just like hopped on her computer through some colors, did some and we were like, We love it. Like we just love it. We wanted it to be bright. We wanted it to be inviting. And I feel like we've been successful just two weeks ago actually got a text from my executive producer who works on the planet. Well, content, it was like to send a photo of like, I believe it was a young male of color about 21 or 22 years old wearing a climate woke t shirt. And she was like, do you know where that's from? And he was like, No, I have no idea. And I was like, that's how, you know, we succeeded. Because we popularize something, we made it look so good. People don't necessarily need to make the connections, but they'll be promoting our work. And I'm sure and I get so many compliments when I wear t shirts and sweaters. And so she she told him to look up the videos. And you know, she sent me the photo. And she's like, we've I think we've succeeded. And I was like, I think we succeeded, I think we have you know. But at this moment, we are considering evolving the terminology because it doesn't feel as honoring. And we definitely are very sensitive to the fact that we use black vernacular intentionally. And it's time to kind of give it back and think through like what other ways can we popularize other terms to kind of help. It's about it's about to help kind of build the community because it was about building a group of people kind of drawing in a certain community that wouldn't necessarily be about it. And I feel like that to me was like a, we did it. We did it.John Fiege Yeah, it's it's it's definitely one of those terms that the the right has co opted and really done a number on they. Yeah, they're they're good at stealing those terms and turning them on their head. And usually, honestly, as a as a weapon back the other direction. Can you turn down your volume just to hear again, just noticing when you get excited? I get excited so much. Alright, how's that? Right? Great. Yes. So in a couple of your videos, you talk about what being climate milk means to you. And you say it means one, standing up for communities of color and communities most impacted by climate change, to complicating the conversations on climate in the environment. And three, doing something about it. Can you take me through each of these and break them down a bit?Layel Camargo Yeah, so the first one is, can you repeat it again, that's the firstJohn Fiege standing up for communities of color and communities most impacted by climate change,Layel Camargo right? That's right. Yeah, I've said it so much. And we actually haven't even recorded anything because of the pandemic. So I'm like, I haven't said it in a while. Yeah, standing up for communities of color. I think that that one to me specifically spoke to that. We need black, brown and indigenous people to feel protected and seen when it comes to the climate and environmental crisis. And that's everything from activating people in positions of power to empowering the people who come from those communities to know that this is an intersectional issue. I think that the climate crisis traditionally was like a lot of visuals of melting ice caps, a lot of visuals of the polar bears and you It's interesting because as we're getting more people narrative, I feel like the, we need to get a little bit more people narrative. And we need to return those images a little bit back, because the IPCC report has just been highlighting the rapid rates in which we were losing ice. And I think that when I initially thought of this at the time, there wasn't highlights of how indigenous people were protecting the large scale biodiversity that we have on the planet. There wasn't stories of, you know, urban, black or brown youth trying to make a difference around solutions towards climate change. And so I kind of made it my purpose that climate woke represent those demographics that we that I was important for me that black, brown and indigenous people of color were at the center of the solutions. And the complicated conversations and do something about it was that I actually feel like we have a crisis of binary versus complexity in our society. And I think that how we've gotten into this climate crisis is because everything's been painted. So black and white for us, that if you want a job, you have to be harming the planet, if you want to be unemployed, then. And then like all these hippies that are fighting to save the trees, they're taking away your job, you know. So I feel like there's so many ways in which our trauma responses just look for the patterns have been used against us. And it just felt really important for me, that people feel comfortable to complicate as much as possible, where we're gonna need different angles and different ways of looking at solutions that we need to embrace experimentation, where we need to embrace failures, and we need to really let go of these ideas that technology is going to come in and save us technology is a big reason why we got into this mess. And so I think that complicating the conversation to me was about this is like, if you are black, brown, indigenous, and you want to be a part of the climate crisis, but you have no way of integrating yourself besides talking about gender oppression, go for it, look at look at the leaders in this movement, and look at how many women are fighting and protecting, you know, at a larger global scale that don't get the visibility that they deserve. So I feel like that was my aim is to really invite that complexity. And then let's do something about it is that I don't want things to get stuck on the dialog. One of the biggest failures of the United Nations when addressing these crisises is that they don't have global jurisdiction. So they cannot actually mandate and or enforce a lot of these, it's usually done through economic influence, or like if one if we can get a first world to sign on to a certain agreement, then hopefully, they'll all do it. But then who ends up in implementing it, usually it's not the United States and Europe is not the first one to do it. And yet, we are the biggest global polluters on almost every sector you can think of. And I think that the do something about it is, for me a call to action, that we can talk about this, we can try to understand carbon emissions, methane emissions, global greenhouse, carbon markets, carbon, sequestering drawdown methods, we can talk about it. But if we're not doing it, putting it to practice while integrating these other two points, which is centering communities of color, and embracing the complexity of that, then it's nothing, it's pointless. We're just we're just allowing corporations to keep exploiting the planet and governments can keep, you know, sitting back and saying that they're doing something because they're convening people without actually regulating and putting down their foot for us. So, yeah, I think it was trying to summarize just my general feelings of this movement and the ways that there's been just lack of opportunities by not centering certain other people or allowing there to be more complexity.John Fiege Yeah, there's, I find, watching how those un meetings go down. So frustrating. Yes, just, you know, Time after time. It's just maddening. I'd have a hard time working in that space.Layel Camargo Yeah, I think I was fortunate enough to take I voluntarily took like a law class at pace, Pace University, pace law University, and one of the classes was United Nations policy, and so I got to witness the sub All meetings before that big meeting where Leonardo DiCaprio came out and said that we had a climate crisis, which everybody googled what the climate crisis was, I think it was called climate change. It was like the most time climate change was googled in the history of mankind. And I was sitting in those meetings and just seeing how it really is just a lot of countries just try not to step on each other's toes, because relationships translate into the economic sector, that I'm like, wow, y'all, like legit, don't care about the people you're representing?John Fiege Yeah. Yep. Yeah, it's crazy. Well, I wanted to talk a bit about what environmental justice means to you. And I thought we could start with your video called a power to rely on. And in your crudest, you include a statistic in the video that says in the US 75% of all houses without electricity, are on Navajo land. And, and then one of the people you interview in the video with Leah, John's with a group called native renewables, says, whoever controls your water and your power controls your destiny. And that's really powerful statement. Can Can you talk a bit about your experience working on this video, and how it impacted your thinking about environmental justice?Layel Camargo Yeah, so I, I realized that I'm really passionate about renewable energy and alternatives to energy capturing, probably through working on this video. And when we were first thinking about what themes we were going to cover, that's usually how I approached most of the climate world videos as I tried to talk to a few community partners. But mostly, I just do a lot of like, cultural observation, just like what are some of the themes that feel that are kind of resonating for people outside of the sector. So what's resonating for folks outside of the environmental justice world, and, you know, land back native sovereignty is something that's been popularized, especially after the Standing Rock camp, the no dapple camp, and I was noticing that it was kind of dwindling down. But a lot of data was coming up around the fact that a lot of indigenous communities are either sitting around and or holding and protecting 80% of the global biodiversity. And so something that how I approached this video was I wanted to show the native sovereignty piece with the land back as well as my passion for alternatives to our current energy use. And what Haley Johns is somebody who was recommended to me by Jade bug guy who's also featured in the videos, a dear close, like cultural strategist, filmmaker, co conspire in the sector. And she would I had initially approached her and said, I want ndn collective, which is what she works to kind of help us think through the script. And she said, Yeah, we're down and like, we trust you, like, we know you're gonna get the story, right, but we're down. And so it was, it was very easy for us to start with that. And then when I was like, Who do I talk to? They're like, you need to talk to a hayleigh. And I was like, Alright, let's talk to a healer. And so I flew out to Arizona, just to have a scout meeting with her, which I felt like I was chasing her down, because we didn't know she was going to be in Flagstaff, or if she was going to be near Phoenix, like we didn't know. So we were flying in. And we were like, Where are you today? She's like, I'm at my mom's house. I'm with my mom at this hotel. And we're like, Alright, we're coming through. So it felt very, like family off the bat, which now she has been nominated for I forget the position, but it's the internal affairs of Indian energy, energy efforts and some sort. So she's she's doing it at a federal level now. And when I was when I was working on this video, and I had talked to her and I interviewed her as she was giving me a lot of these numbers, and I just realized that, you know, the irony of this country is just beyond what we could imagine. You have a lot of these coal mines that help fuel some of the larger energy consuming cities and in the United States, like Vegas, like la that just consume energy at such high rates that are being powered by coal mines in Navajo or near Navajo Denae reservations. And yet, I was hearing about what halos program and her efforts were just trying to get funding and or subsidies from the government in order to put solar panels on folks his house because the infrastructure doesn't exist. And she was running she's letting me know about that. cost, she's like at $75,000 per house. And then we in order to like run the lines, and that's not even including the solar panel infrastructure. And then if they can't, we can't run the lines, and we're talking about batteries. And she was breaking this all down, I'm like, that is a lot of money. We need to get you that money. And then she started just educating us more through that. So I think I went into this video just knowing that I was going to try to make those connections. But what I realized was that I was actually going in to learn myself, just how much I need to humble myself with the realities that communities who have had less to nothing in certain things, everything from food, to energy to water, have made alternatives that they are, they've already created the solutions like we found one of the elders who had put up one of the first solar panels and Hopi reservation, which I highlighted in my video, she got it 30 years ago, like I, I was flabbergasted that she had the foresight, and the way that she articulated was everything from comfort to entertainment. But at the end of the was she knew she needed power. And she runs a business, the local business won a very few on the reservation that she was passionate enough to keep alive. And so this video just showed me that like, wherever you go, where there has been disenfranchisement, that's where you will find solutions. Because a lot of people have just making do for a long time, it just hasn't been seen, it hasn't been highlighted. Those are the people that like the UN should be talking to the you know, our federal government should be listening to.John Fiege Yeah, and I actually wanted to talk to you about Janice de who's the Hopi elder that you mentioned. And, you know, in particular, how it relates to how depth and skillful you are communicating with people from a wide range of backgrounds. in you, you you use humor a lot. And in this power to rely on video, you're sitting down with Janice day. And talking about how she's one of the first people to get solar power 30 years ago. And you asked her whether the first thing she charged with solar power would be a vibrator. And that was that was that was really funny. And all of a sudden, I'm watching with anticipation, asking myself, how is this woman going to react to that question? And you seem to have such a good read on the people you're speaking with. And I was hoping you could talk a bit more about how you communicate so many, so well and so many in so many different spaces and how you consciously or unconsciously lubricate the relationships with humor.Layel Camargo Yeah, I've been I I think a lot of it is my passion for humor has come from has been maintained by a lot of data and information that I've gotten around just the importance of people being able to process things through laughter. And that the climate crisis is nothing to make mockery and or to laugh, there's this is very serious. The ways in which our species is kind of being at threat of extinction, and right before our eyes. But I think that as humans, we're so complex and layered, and we're so beautiful in the sense that we get to feel so intensely and feeling is what motivates us to take action. And laughter helps you process so much data quicker, it helps you be able to take something in, embrace it, release, and then have it make an impression that is the one line that everybody brings up with that video. So I made the impression. And I hope that people watched it and then wanted to show it to other people. And so I think that, that that knowledge has retained my passion for humor. And then like I said, You know, I grew up in an abusive home where we had to process things fairly quickly in order to be able to function in the world to go to school to go to work. And growing up in a home where there was a lot of violence. I learned how to read people very keenly everything from anticipating when something was going to happen tonight, and I speak about that pretty like nonchalantly because I think a lot of us have a lot of strategies and skills that we've developed because of our traumas and our negative experiences that we've had in the world. And I think they don't often get seen as that we'll just say like, Well, I was just really I'm just really good at reading people and we'll leave it at that and it's like, but what is your learn that from like, there have been many chronic situations where you had to be really good at reading people in order for you to like practice it so clearly in it skillfully. And so I think I honor my experience in that in order for me to do that. And then I think cultural relativity and cultural content petencies is another thing like, Janice de actually reminds me a lot of my grandmother and my grandmother was somebody who was very religious. And at the same time, I always loved pushing her buttons. I would just like try to say things to get her activated. And I knew at the end of the day, she loved me. And that was about it. I didn't have to question whether she loved me because she was upset that I asked her something and appropriately. So I think it's a combination of that. And I'm grateful that I can embody that and be able to offer it to people who are curious about climate change and and feel more invited through laughter than they would about doom and gloom or heavy statistic videos and our ways of gathering information.John Fiege Awesome. Well, another kind of video you made is called consumerism, cancelled prime. And the first shot is you waiting while the camera crew sets up the shot and you're putting items in your Amazon cart on your phone. And then the quote unquote real video begins. And and you say 80% of California's cargo goes through the Inland Empire. And then you yell along expletive that's beeped out. And you ask emphatically his climate, wrote, his climate woke about to ruin amazon prime for me. And and I love how rather than just saying Amazon, or Amazon customers are bad. You're starting by implicating yourself in this system that leads to serious environmental justice issues. And again, it's really funny. Can you talk more about the situation with Amazon and other real retailers? And and how you went about positioning yourself in this story, and using humor again, and self criticism to connect to the audience?Layel Camargo Yeah, I mean, when we first started working on this video, we explore different avenues of that opening scene, when we wanted to highlight community members, I kind of at this point, have a pretty good like tempo of what it is that I want. I want a community member I want somebody who's like academic or scientifically based, and then somebody else who kind of comes in allows her to be more of a creative flow. So we have a pretty good structure at this point of the voices that we seek, we just didn't know how we wanted to hook the audience. And we went back and forth quite a bit on this, the thing that kept coming up was amazon prime memberships are very common. Most people have them most people buy on e commerce and this is pre COVID. And I was keenly aware of that I also knew that Amazon was growing as a franchise to now own Whole Foods that were just like expanding in regards to what it is that they offer people online. And as I mentioned, I, through my passion for reduction of plastic usage and plastic consumption, and plastic waste, I understand the ways that ecommerce has really hurt the planet. So I myself am not an Amazon Prime member, I I don't actually buy online and I allow myself when needed one Amazon thing a purchase a year. And it's like kind of more of a values align thing. So in order for me to reach connecting with somebody who's kind of a little bit more normal in regards to needing to rely on buying online, is I just had to exaggerate what I think happens when you're shopping, which is you look at a lot of stuff, you add them to cart, you get really excited, and then you kind of mindlessly click Buy without knowing what's going to happen. But you're excited when it arrives, surprisingly, because maybe you bought it in the middle of the night while drinking some wine and watching some Hulu. So that's like what I was trying to embody. And then what I was really trying to highlight in this video was I wanted to invite audiences to not feel shame about what they do, like we are we've all been indoctrinated by the system through what our education has taught us. Like we have values of individualism and patriotism and all these things, because that's what we were taught in schools. And that's been used and co opted by corporations in order for us to continue exploiting other humans and the planet. And that's by no fault of our own. That's a design that's an economic model that was designed since the Great Depression. It's just the way that it's been exaggerated and has scaled so quickly is beyond our control where our governments don't even regulate it anymore at the ways in which they should be. And I think that I wanted this to feel like it's not just on you as an individual, but it's specifically if you live in Europe or in the United States. You need to know that we are The biggest consumers on the planet, we have the most economic resources. We actually, if even a fraction of the United States decided to stop shopping at Amazon, we could significantly bring that Empire down. I say Empire pretty intentionally. And we could I mean, I feel like you. And that's and how I understand economics is that all you need to do is impact 10 to 20%. of supply and demand chain in order for a whole corporation to collapse. The problem is, is that our governments always come in to aid these large corporations that are hurting us on the planet by saying that they want to maintain jobs and maintain a GDP are going stock market, which they're reliant on. So this video was meant for audiences. And for people to feel like this is not just on you. But if you live

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 This Monday on KPFA Radio's Women's Magazine, Kim Anno and Lisa Dettmer talk to queer ecology activists who are courageously  fighting the climate crisis in Florida These inspiring and creative Queer activists  are represented in the new film “Cant Stop Change: Queer Climate Stories from the Florida Frontline”, that is now available to see online at Kinema for the month of July.   “Can't Stop Change” weaves together interviews with fourteen trans, queer, and Two-Spirit collaborators across Florida, bravely fighting for change in one of the most anti Queer states and a state  that has been battered by natural and political storms: climate gentrification and displacement. These activists target the  disproportionate affect natural disasters have  oppressed communities based on race, class, and gender and link the environmental disasters with the  political disasters of  anti-abortion and ani-trans bills,  permitless concealed carry laws; and white patriarchal corporate power that militarizes the police.  Unlike many mainstream environmental groups these Queer ecology activists recognizes that we need deep structural change that challenges Cis Heterosexual white Capitalist patriarchy and doesn't just treat symptoms.  In the face of all of this devastation, these queer and trans ecology activists in Florida are courageously imagining a better future and tackling the issues head-on through mutual aid, building queer communities, and standing up to corporations and bad politics. In this stirring  documentary they  follow  these inspirational activists as they tour the state, meet with mutual aid providers to uncover the challenges of each area, and learn about the passionate work being done to combat them.  We talk to Vanessa Raditz, the Co-Director of Can't Stop Change who is also a queer climate justice/queer ecology  activist in the Southeast and Bay Area  And we talk to Florida Native, Barbara Perez , who is PhD student at Florida Atlantic University where she  is doing her dissertation on climate gentrification    And lastly we talk to Rebecca Wood who is an  Environmental Educator and Miami resident who is currently involved in local climate activism/community disaster preparedness The post Queer Ecology in Florida- “Can't Stop Change” appeared first on KPFA.

Themen u.a.: Moyland wagt Neuland: Ausstellung mit dem "Institute of Queer Ecology" ; Tiemanns Wortgeflecht: Wörthersee; Kulturvermittlung auf digitalen Plattformen;Musik statt Feldarbeit: ein Kinderorchester in der Elfenbeinküste; Moderation: Sebastian Wellendorf Von WDR 5.

It is the final episode of Pangolin Pride! This time, Jack is joined by the incredible Christine Wilkinson to discuss how being Queer is Natural!  Christine is a researcher, advocate and science communicator with a passion for Queer Ecology. So, Jack and Christine talk about their journey into this world, what queer ecology is and why it matters, and some examples of queerness from the natural world!  That means they get to discuss... Lizards that reproduce all on their own! Fish who can change sex! Lesbian Seagulls which helped change the law! Same Sex sexual behaviour in cattle! Rats! Fossa! Hyenas being absolute queens! Whales doing what whales do! Thank you so much for another brilliant series! Make sure to share your thoughts on social media using #PangolinPride

CW: This episode contains talk of sex and genital touching.In this episode, Dr. T and Truth Fairy welcome guest Caffyn Jesse to the show. Caffyn is an author, queer elder, and teacher of somatic sexual wellness. In their latest book, Caffyn describes an ongoing inquiry into somatics, the erotic, and psychedelic medicine. Caffyn refers to themselves as an outlaw who cherishes other outlaws. They are a queer person who was born in the days when “it was illegal to be one,” who is involved in the outlaw realms of sex work and psychedelic medicine. They find belonging in intimacies outside the rules and expectations of the ordinary world.The conversation around sex and sex education explores the sacred contract between a client's voice and the practitioner. Understanding the neuroendocrine system helps the world of somatic sex education and opens the door to empowering the client to request wanted touch rather than submitting to touch they think the practitioner requires. Caffyn feels called to bring a more sophisticated understanding of ethical practices involving the erotic and sexual body touch to practitioners.Dr. T and Truth Fairy both discuss the concept of slowing down and welcoming asking for something over demanding it while exploring the openness of Caffyn's work. Caffyn encourages bodies to manifest superpowers and for a deeper connection to the soma, the body, by way of sensation, breath, and massage. The themes of somatic sexual understanding that Caffyn studies and teaches lean towards the natural and ecstatic, they can encompass psychedelic work and trauma healing, and focus on alignment of being. There is so much queer exploration, sexual navigation, and ecstatic understanding touched on and talked about with openness and care in this episode. Caffyn provides a caring and studied perspective on topics not often discussed openly enough. “... this rhythm of going, like going for ecstasy, going for the ecstatic, finding that place that's as far as possible from equilibrium and then experiencing the orgasmic return to equilibrium, that is actually a practice that we're constantly doing. We can tune in to doing it with every breath where we go into this arousal, this aliveness.” - Caffyn Jesse__About Caffyn Jesse:Caffyn Jesse is a queer elder, sacred intimate, teacher and writer who revels in the power and pleasures of the erotic. They are a renowned teacher of sex, intimacy and healing trauma with pleasure. Encouraging neuroplastic change to support sexual healing and expanded pleasure, unwinding sexual trauma, exploring the intersection of sex and spirit, creating erotic community are all core to their work and play. Caffyn is a tireless advocate of embodied love.Caffyn offers an online program on The Art and Science of Sacred Intimacy. They host regular “office hours” where you can meet, connect and ask questions. They also offer a program on psychedelic medicine integration.Caffyn explores a weave of Psychedelic Medicine, Somatic Sexual Wellness, Queer Ecology and Transformative Justice. Their many books include Ecstatic Belonging, Love and Death in a Queer Universe, Elements of Intimacy, Sensual Man, Science for Sexual Happiness, Intimacy Educator: Teaching with Touch,  Orientation: Mapping Queer Meanings and Pelvic Pain Clinic.Caffyn taught for many years at the Institute for the Study of Somatic Sex Education, as well as offering workshops on topics ranging from pelvic pain to sex in long-term relationships, and a trauma training for professionals who touch.__Contact Punk Therapy:Patreon: Patreon.com/PunkTherapyWebsite: PunkTherapy.comEmail: info@punktherapy.comContact Caffyn Jesse:Website: EcstaticBelonging.com“Ecstatic Belonging: A Year on the Medicine Path” by Caffyn Jesse

Jonny, on his own this week, reflects on Earth Day and the queer leadership behind the All Species Puppet Parade as an entry into a broader consideration of Queer Ecology. Queer and trans folks, as it turns out, have a lot to offer to environmental advocacy and policy.

In January, the University of Michigan Faculty Senate passed a resolution  calling for “the University's leadership, including the Board of Regents, to divest from its financial holdings in companies that invest in Israel's ongoing military campaign in Gaza.” The statement highlighted the unprecedented rate of civilian deaths in Gaza, and that American financial sources are central to Israel's ongoing genocide. Working with Students Allied for Freedom and Equality (SAFE), the TAHRIR Coalition, and Faculty and Staff for Justice in Palestine, and others, the resolution drew on the tradition of activism against South Africa's apartheid regime, and ongoing anti-racist work.Today we speak with members of the UM faculty, who tell us about the background of the resolution, the work they did to pass it, and the campaigns on campus that are building off its success. Our conversation offers a range of insights that will be useful to campus activists elsewhere.Charlotte Karem Albrecht is an Associate Professor of American Culture and Women's and Gender Studies at the University of Michigan – Ann Arbor, where she is also core faculty in the Arab and Muslim American Studies program and affiliated faculty for the Center for Middle Eastern and North African Studies and the Race, Law, and History Program. Her research interests include Arab American history, histories of gender and sexuality, women of color feminist theory, queer of color critique, and interdisciplinary historicist methods. Her first book, Possible Histories: Arab Americans and the Queer Ecology of Peddling, was published open access with University of California Press. Karem Albrecht holds a Ph.D. in Feminist Studies from the University of Minnesota. Her work has also been published in Arab Studies Quarterly, Gender & History, the Journal of American Ethnic History, and multiple edited collections.Leila Kawar is Associate Professor at the University of Michigan in Ann Arbor where she holds appointments in the Department of American Culture and in the Social Theory and Practice Program. Kawar's research examines the cultural dimensions of legal practice, focusing on how legal advocacy intersects with the politics of migration, citizenship, and labor. Her first book, Contesting Immigration Policy in Court: Legal Activism and Its Radiating Effects in the United States and France (Cambridge University Press 2015) asks what difference law has made in immigration policymaking in the U.S. and France since the 1970s. Challenging the conventional wisdom that “cause litigation” has little long-term impact unless it produces broad rights-protective principles, the book shows that legal contestation can have important radiating effects by reshaping how political actors approach immigration issues. Her current book project, Conditioning Human Mobility: Rights, Regulation, and the Transnational Construction of the Migrant Worker, is an empirically-grounded study that critically examines international law's historical and contemporary entanglements with migrant labor recruitment. Kawar is a regular contributor to the Detroit-based socialist journal Against the Current. Derek R. Peterson is Ali Mazrui Professor of History and African Studies at the University of Michigan, and an elected member of the Faculty Senate Assembly. 

Many of the hundreds of thousands of Syrians who immigrated to the US beginning in the 1870s worked as peddlers. Men were able to transgress Syrian norms related to marriage practices while they were traveling, while Syrian women accessed more economic autonomy though their participation in peddling networks.  In Possible Histories: Arab Americans and the Queer Ecology of Peddling (U California Press, 2023), Charlotte Karem Albrecht explores this peddling economy of the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries as a site for revealing how dominant ideas about sexuality are imbricated in Arab American racial histories. Karem Albrecht marshals a queer affective approach to community and family history to show how Syrian immigrant peddlers and their interdependent networks of labor and care appeared in interconnected discourses of modernity, sexuality, gender, class, and race. Possible Histories conceptualizes this profession, and its place in narratives of Arab American history, as a "queer ecology" of laboring practices, intimacies, and knowledge production. This book ultimately proposes a new understanding of the long arm of Arab American history that puts sexuality and gender at the heart of ways of navigating US racial systems. Charlotte Karem Albrecht is Associate Professor of American Culture and Women's and Gender Studies at the University of Michigan, Ann Arbor, where she is also a core faculty member for the Arab and Muslim American Studies program. You can find her on Twitter: @ckaremalbrecht Najwa Mayer is an interdisciplinary cultural scholar of race, gender, sexuality, and Islam in/and the United States, working at the intersections of politics, aesthetics, and critical theory. She is currently a Society of Fellows Postdoctoral Scholar at Boston University. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/new-books-network

Many of the hundreds of thousands of Syrians who immigrated to the US beginning in the 1870s worked as peddlers. Men were able to transgress Syrian norms related to marriage practices while they were traveling, while Syrian women accessed more economic autonomy though their participation in peddling networks.  In Possible Histories: Arab Americans and the Queer Ecology of Peddling (U California Press, 2023), Charlotte Karem Albrecht explores this peddling economy of the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries as a site for revealing how dominant ideas about sexuality are imbricated in Arab American racial histories. Karem Albrecht marshals a queer affective approach to community and family history to show how Syrian immigrant peddlers and their interdependent networks of labor and care appeared in interconnected discourses of modernity, sexuality, gender, class, and race. Possible Histories conceptualizes this profession, and its place in narratives of Arab American history, as a "queer ecology" of laboring practices, intimacies, and knowledge production. This book ultimately proposes a new understanding of the long arm of Arab American history that puts sexuality and gender at the heart of ways of navigating US racial systems. Charlotte Karem Albrecht is Associate Professor of American Culture and Women's and Gender Studies at the University of Michigan, Ann Arbor, where she is also a core faculty member for the Arab and Muslim American Studies program. You can find her on Twitter: @ckaremalbrecht Najwa Mayer is an interdisciplinary cultural scholar of race, gender, sexuality, and Islam in/and the United States, working at the intersections of politics, aesthetics, and critical theory. She is currently a Society of Fellows Postdoctoral Scholar at Boston University. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/history

Many of the hundreds of thousands of Syrians who immigrated to the US beginning in the 1870s worked as peddlers. Men were able to transgress Syrian norms related to marriage practices while they were traveling, while Syrian women accessed more economic autonomy though their participation in peddling networks.  In Possible Histories: Arab Americans and the Queer Ecology of Peddling (U California Press, 2023), Charlotte Karem Albrecht explores this peddling economy of the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries as a site for revealing how dominant ideas about sexuality are imbricated in Arab American racial histories. Karem Albrecht marshals a queer affective approach to community and family history to show how Syrian immigrant peddlers and their interdependent networks of labor and care appeared in interconnected discourses of modernity, sexuality, gender, class, and race. Possible Histories conceptualizes this profession, and its place in narratives of Arab American history, as a "queer ecology" of laboring practices, intimacies, and knowledge production. This book ultimately proposes a new understanding of the long arm of Arab American history that puts sexuality and gender at the heart of ways of navigating US racial systems. Charlotte Karem Albrecht is Associate Professor of American Culture and Women's and Gender Studies at the University of Michigan, Ann Arbor, where she is also a core faculty member for the Arab and Muslim American Studies program. You can find her on Twitter: @ckaremalbrecht Najwa Mayer is an interdisciplinary cultural scholar of race, gender, sexuality, and Islam in/and the United States, working at the intersections of politics, aesthetics, and critical theory. She is currently a Society of Fellows Postdoctoral Scholar at Boston University. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/asian-american-studies

Many of the hundreds of thousands of Syrians who immigrated to the US beginning in the 1870s worked as peddlers. Men were able to transgress Syrian norms related to marriage practices while they were traveling, while Syrian women accessed more economic autonomy though their participation in peddling networks.  In Possible Histories: Arab Americans and the Queer Ecology of Peddling (U California Press, 2023), Charlotte Karem Albrecht explores this peddling economy of the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries as a site for revealing how dominant ideas about sexuality are imbricated in Arab American racial histories. Karem Albrecht marshals a queer affective approach to community and family history to show how Syrian immigrant peddlers and their interdependent networks of labor and care appeared in interconnected discourses of modernity, sexuality, gender, class, and race. Possible Histories conceptualizes this profession, and its place in narratives of Arab American history, as a "queer ecology" of laboring practices, intimacies, and knowledge production. This book ultimately proposes a new understanding of the long arm of Arab American history that puts sexuality and gender at the heart of ways of navigating US racial systems. Charlotte Karem Albrecht is Associate Professor of American Culture and Women's and Gender Studies at the University of Michigan, Ann Arbor, where she is also a core faculty member for the Arab and Muslim American Studies program. You can find her on Twitter: @ckaremalbrecht Najwa Mayer is an interdisciplinary cultural scholar of race, gender, sexuality, and Islam in/and the United States, working at the intersections of politics, aesthetics, and critical theory. She is currently a Society of Fellows Postdoctoral Scholar at Boston University. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/gender-studies

Many of the hundreds of thousands of Syrians who immigrated to the US beginning in the 1870s worked as peddlers. Men were able to transgress Syrian norms related to marriage practices while they were traveling, while Syrian women accessed more economic autonomy though their participation in peddling networks.  In Possible Histories: Arab Americans and the Queer Ecology of Peddling (U California Press, 2023), Charlotte Karem Albrecht explores this peddling economy of the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries as a site for revealing how dominant ideas about sexuality are imbricated in Arab American racial histories. Karem Albrecht marshals a queer affective approach to community and family history to show how Syrian immigrant peddlers and their interdependent networks of labor and care appeared in interconnected discourses of modernity, sexuality, gender, class, and race. Possible Histories conceptualizes this profession, and its place in narratives of Arab American history, as a "queer ecology" of laboring practices, intimacies, and knowledge production. This book ultimately proposes a new understanding of the long arm of Arab American history that puts sexuality and gender at the heart of ways of navigating US racial systems. Charlotte Karem Albrecht is Associate Professor of American Culture and Women's and Gender Studies at the University of Michigan, Ann Arbor, where she is also a core faculty member for the Arab and Muslim American Studies program. You can find her on Twitter: @ckaremalbrecht Najwa Mayer is an interdisciplinary cultural scholar of race, gender, sexuality, and Islam in/and the United States, working at the intersections of politics, aesthetics, and critical theory. She is currently a Society of Fellows Postdoctoral Scholar at Boston University. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/american-studies

Many of the hundreds of thousands of Syrians who immigrated to the US beginning in the 1870s worked as peddlers. Men were able to transgress Syrian norms related to marriage practices while they were traveling, while Syrian women accessed more economic autonomy though their participation in peddling networks.  In Possible Histories: Arab Americans and the Queer Ecology of Peddling (U California Press, 2023), Charlotte Karem Albrecht explores this peddling economy of the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries as a site for revealing how dominant ideas about sexuality are imbricated in Arab American racial histories. Karem Albrecht marshals a queer affective approach to community and family history to show how Syrian immigrant peddlers and their interdependent networks of labor and care appeared in interconnected discourses of modernity, sexuality, gender, class, and race. Possible Histories conceptualizes this profession, and its place in narratives of Arab American history, as a "queer ecology" of laboring practices, intimacies, and knowledge production. This book ultimately proposes a new understanding of the long arm of Arab American history that puts sexuality and gender at the heart of ways of navigating US racial systems. Charlotte Karem Albrecht is Associate Professor of American Culture and Women's and Gender Studies at the University of Michigan, Ann Arbor, where she is also a core faculty member for the Arab and Muslim American Studies program. You can find her on Twitter: @ckaremalbrecht Najwa Mayer is an interdisciplinary cultural scholar of race, gender, sexuality, and Islam in/and the United States, working at the intersections of politics, aesthetics, and critical theory. She is currently a Society of Fellows Postdoctoral Scholar at Boston University. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/lgbtq-studies

Many of the hundreds of thousands of Syrians who immigrated to the US beginning in the 1870s worked as peddlers. Men were able to transgress Syrian norms related to marriage practices while they were traveling, while Syrian women accessed more economic autonomy though their participation in peddling networks.  In Possible Histories: Arab Americans and the Queer Ecology of Peddling (U California Press, 2023), Charlotte Karem Albrecht explores this peddling economy of the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries as a site for revealing how dominant ideas about sexuality are imbricated in Arab American racial histories. Karem Albrecht marshals a queer affective approach to community and family history to show how Syrian immigrant peddlers and their interdependent networks of labor and care appeared in interconnected discourses of modernity, sexuality, gender, class, and race. Possible Histories conceptualizes this profession, and its place in narratives of Arab American history, as a "queer ecology" of laboring practices, intimacies, and knowledge production. This book ultimately proposes a new understanding of the long arm of Arab American history that puts sexuality and gender at the heart of ways of navigating US racial systems. Charlotte Karem Albrecht is Associate Professor of American Culture and Women's and Gender Studies at the University of Michigan, Ann Arbor, where she is also a core faculty member for the Arab and Muslim American Studies program. You can find her on Twitter: @ckaremalbrecht Najwa Mayer is an interdisciplinary cultural scholar of race, gender, sexuality, and Islam in/and the United States, working at the intersections of politics, aesthetics, and critical theory. She is currently a Society of Fellows Postdoctoral Scholar at Boston University. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Many of the hundreds of thousands of Syrians who immigrated to the US beginning in the 1870s worked as peddlers. Men were able to transgress Syrian norms related to marriage practices while they were traveling, while Syrian women accessed more economic autonomy though their participation in peddling networks.  In Possible Histories: Arab Americans and the Queer Ecology of Peddling (U California Press, 2023), Charlotte Karem Albrecht explores this peddling economy of the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries as a site for revealing how dominant ideas about sexuality are imbricated in Arab American racial histories. Karem Albrecht marshals a queer affective approach to community and family history to show how Syrian immigrant peddlers and their interdependent networks of labor and care appeared in interconnected discourses of modernity, sexuality, gender, class, and race. Possible Histories conceptualizes this profession, and its place in narratives of Arab American history, as a "queer ecology" of laboring practices, intimacies, and knowledge production. This book ultimately proposes a new understanding of the long arm of Arab American history that puts sexuality and gender at the heart of ways of navigating US racial systems. Charlotte Karem Albrecht is Associate Professor of American Culture and Women's and Gender Studies at the University of Michigan, Ann Arbor, where she is also a core faculty member for the Arab and Muslim American Studies program. You can find her on Twitter: @ckaremalbrecht Najwa Mayer is an interdisciplinary cultural scholar of race, gender, sexuality, and Islam in/and the United States, working at the intersections of politics, aesthetics, and critical theory. She is currently a Society of Fellows Postdoctoral Scholar at Boston University. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Pride month may be over, but  The Birdy Bunch Podcast is back!! On our kick-off to Season 4, we're taking another look at one of our favorite topics - Queer Ecology! CJ is joined by Dani Abboud (they/them) and Jenna John (she/her), who spoke at the Wild Things Conference about Queer Ecology back in February 2023. In addition to thinking about how we can reframe conservation through a new lens, we also discuss the May edition of the Parks Stewardship Forum, and feature our first creature of season four - the lesbian lizard! Thanks again to Dani and Jenna for guesting on this special queer episode!   Season 4 of The Birdy Bunch Podcast will be posted on the first and the final Mondays of each month! Thanks for listening, nature lovers!   For more information, visit our website: www.TheBirdyBunchPodcast.com   Thank you to our Patrons for supporting Season 4 of The Birdy Bunch Podcast; visit www.Patreon.com/TheBirdyBunchPodcast to sign up. The Birdy Bunch Podcast was created by Matt Valiga & CJ Greco. Season 4 is hosted, edited, and produced by CJ Greco. Thank you to Matt Valiga and Brittany Busleta-Lewandowski for their contributions on previous seasons.    Special thank you to Sarah Dunlap - for designing our logo, and Conner Wittman - for producing our music.    The mission of The Birdy Bunch Podcast is to inspire an inclusive community for conservation by using education to promote fascination.

How Fungi Are Breaking The Binary: A Queer Approach To Ecology As Pride month comes to a close, many people are reflecting on the past, present, and future of the LGBTQIA+ community. An interdisciplinary group of scientists, researchers, and artists are using queerness as a lens to better understand the natural world, too. It's a burgeoning field called queer ecology, which aims to break down binaries and question our assumptions of the natural world based on heterosexuality. For example, there are plenty of examples of same-sex animal pairings in the wild, like penguins, chimps, and axolotls. There are also plants that change sexes, or have a combination of male and female parts, like the mulberry tree. But perhaps the most queer kingdom of all is fungi. Mushrooms are not easily forced into any type of binary. For example, the Schizophyllum commune, or the split gill mushroom, has 23,000 sexes, making it somewhat of a queer icon in the field of mycology. SciFri producer Kathleen Davis talks with Patty Kaishian, incoming curator of mycology at the New York State Museum, about how fungi might help us expand our understandings of sexuality, identity, and hierarchy. They also discuss how queer ecology can help people of all sexualities reconnect with the natural world.   Scientists Think Cloning Could Help Save Endangered Species Earlier this year, a baby Przewalski's horse was born at the San Diego Zoo. But this foal isn't any ordinary foal, he's a clone. He's the product of scientists aiming to save his dwindling species using genetics. This endangered horse species once roamed Europe and Asia, but by the 1960, threats like poaching, capture, and military presence drove the horses to extinction in the wild. Conservationists raced to save this wild horse through captive breeding programs, but with a population so small, there just wasn't enough genetic diversity to grow a healthy herd. But with careful genetic management, the Przewalski's horse's population is now nearly 2,000 horses strong, and this new foal will one day help boost his species' genetic diversity even more. Producer Kathleen Davis talks with Dr. Oliver Ryder, conservation geneticist at the San Diego Zoo Wildlife Alliance, about cloning Przewalski's horse, and how doing so will infuse genetic diversity into the small population. Then Davis talks with Dr. Sam Wisely, professor of wildlife ecology and conservation at the University of Florida, about how cloning can help other endangered species, like the black-footed ferret, and the ethics involved in cloning.   Twenty Years On, The Little CubeSat Is Bigger Than Ever The story of the CubeSat started with a big problem for one Cal Poly professor. “It was actually a critical problem for us, but it was a problem that nobody else cared about,” said Jordi Puig-Suari, an Emeritus Professor from Cal Poly San Luis Obispo. He co-invented the CubeSat with Bob Twiggs from Stanford. Puig-Suari is now retired and has spent the last four years sailing around the world with his wife. I talked to him over Zoom from somewhere along that journey. He takes me back two decades to his time as a professor at Cal Poly where he was hired to develop their aerospace engineering department. Read the rest of this article at sciencefriday.com.   Remembering Engineer And Author Henry Petroski Last week the world watched as rescuers from across the globe searched for a tiny experimental submersible that had disappeared, carrying five people on a dive to the wreck of the R.M.S. Titanic. That search turned out, sadly, to be in vain. The Titan submersible is believed to have imploded in the North Atlantic, killing all aboard. The intersection of design, engineering, and human risk-taking is a recurring theme throughout modern history. One of the finest chroniclers of those tales was Henry Petroski, who died earlier this month at the age of 81. He was a professor of engineering and history at Duke University, and author of many books. Petroski was known for his critical eye and insightful view of various missteps and faults in pursuit of progress—from improving bridge designs for safety to the tragic loss of the space shuttles Challenger and Columbia. Some called Petroski the “poet laureate of technology” for his prolific writings on everything from the design of bridges to the fabrication of pencils. In this recording from 2012, Ira Flatow spoke with the late professor Petroski about engineering failures, and humanity's follies.   To stay updated on all-things-science, sign up for Science Friday's newsletters. Transcripts for each segment will be available the week after the show airs on sciencefriday.com.  

The European Union's new deforestation-free regulation blocks certain products made from cattle, cocoa, coffee, palm oil, soya, and wood, from entering the European market if they have been produced on land deforested after 2020. In honor of pride month we look into the academic discipline known as “queer ecology” which looks at environmental politics through a queer lens, rejecting heterosexual and cisgender identities as the only norms.  Also, author Kate Beacon shares her story of austerity and trauma when working in Canada's oil sands in her 2022 graphic memoir Ducks: Two Years in the Oil Sands. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Queer Ecology can be a tool for illumination, or as one of our guests puts it -'a lifting of the veil'. It can also help us explore grief, vulnerability, what is 'natural', how we interact with and inter-depend on the world around us, and within us. Can this apocalypse bring us back in touch with the expanse of life that is 'wild, weird and deeply and intimately familiar'?

Starting in the late 1800s, a group of Syrian immigrants settled in America. Many of them took up peddling as a career. When American newspapers described these peddlers, it was often in derogatory ways—and through terms of queerness. This week, Dr. Charlotte Karem Albrecht joins Jonathan to explore this moment in Arab American history, how it's been remembered, and what it reveals about “the sexual, racial, and gender machinery of American society.” A note from Team JVN: In this episode, Dr. Karem Albrecht and Jonathan discuss how Arabs and Arab Americans were understood by white Americans. As part of that discussion, we reference various historical documents that include anti-Arab and anti-Semitic language. If you'd like to pre-screen those moments, you can find them in the transcript at jonathanvanness.com. Charlotte Karem Albrecht is an Assistant Professor of American Culture and Women's and Gender Studies at the University of Michigan, Ann Arbor, where she is also a core faculty member in the Arab and Muslim American Studies program. She is also an avid lover of plants and mushrooms and her five fur babies. You can follow Charlotte on Twitter and Instagram @CKaremAlbrecht. You can learn more about her work at www.charlotteka.com.  Make sure to check out her new book Possible Histories: Arab Americans and the Queer Ecology of Peddling, published by University of California Press. A free ebook version is available through Luminos, University of California Press's Open Access publishing program. Head to www.luminosoa.org for details. And if you're curious for more, Dr. Karem Albrecht recommends: Alixa Naff's Becoming American: The Early Arab Immigrant ExperienceMejdulene Shomali's Between Banat: Queer Arab Critique and Transnational Arab ArchivesSusan Schweik's The Ugly Laws: Disability in PublicSarah Gualtieri's Between Arab and WhiteRanda Tawil's work on Syrian interpretersVivek Bald's work on Bengali migrants Follow us on Instagram and Twitter @CuriousWithJVN to join the conversation. Jonathan is on Instagram and Twitter @JVN and @Jonathan.Vanness on Facebook. Transcripts for each episode are available at JonathanVanNess.com. Our executive producer is Erica Getto. Our associate producer is Zahra Crim. Our editor is Andrew Carson. Our theme music is “Freak” by QUIÑ; for more, head to TheQuinCat.com.

The fifth episode of the intergenerational podcast series from Cumberland Lodge. In this episode we are joined by Andy Marks, a PhD student at the Edinburgh School of Architecture and Landscape Architecture at the University of Edinburgh, and Professor Catriona (Cate) Sandilands, writer, teacher and Professor of Environmental Studies at York University. The intro and outro music is 'A Storm at Eilean Mor' by Jon Luc Hefferman.

Joining me this week is activist, actress and supermodel Lily Cole. She was one of the earliest advocates for sustainability in the fashion industry and since then, has been at the forefront of climate activism. This was a fascinating conversation that took so many brilliant twists and turns - from discovering queerness later in life, to queer artists that have been forgotten in history, to the best self-help books you can buy.We have linked Lily's brilliant reading suggestions below. Hilma af Klint: Paintings for the Future - https://www.waterstones.com/book/hilma-af-klint/tracey-bashkoff/9780892075430 Queer Ecology, TIMOTHY MORTONThe Five Minute Journal The Argonauts - Maggie NelsonThe Wizard And The Prophet- Charles C Mann You can donate to Daniel's London Marathon fundraising page for Micro Rainbow here- https://www.justgiving.com/crowdfunding/daniel-groom

Joining me this week is activist, actress and supermodel Lily Cole. She was one of the earliest advocates for sustainability in the fashion industry and since then, has been at the forefront of climate activism. This was a fascinating conversation that took so many brilliant twists and turns - from discovering queerness later in life, to queer artists that have been forgotten in history, to the best self-help books you can buy.We have linked Lily's brilliant reading suggestions below. Hilma af Klint: Paintings for the Future - https://www.waterstones.com/book/hilma-af-klint/tracey-bashkoff/9780892075430 Queer Ecology, TIMOTHY MORTONThe Five Minute Journal The Argonauts - Maggie NelsonThe Wizard And The Prophet- Charles C Mann You can donate to Daniel's London Marathon fundraising page for Micro Rainbow here- https://www.justgiving.com/crowdfunding/daniel-groom

Welcome to “HORROR!”, a podcast by the researchers of the charity University of the Underground's Horror Programme. This tuition free programme was led by speculative designer Agi Haines from November 2021 to March 2022, as a critical exploration into illicit societal fears and a dive into horror as a complex tool and genre. In every episode of this series we will explore research topics from our projects, with the help of experts, practitioners, artists, and much more. Our host throughout this podcast series will be Necro, our cheeky demonic guide on a nightly journey full of ghosts, shadows, and inexplicable monsters…but no need to worry, as all our guests, human and non-human, have promised to stay in the studio. Be prepared, though: these encounters might easily transport into your homes some uncanny perspectives on our present. In this episode, Agi Haines gives us some suggestions about plant horror and vegetal otherness. Our researcher Ludovica Battista sits down with the researcher Jye O'Sullivan and Elizabeth Parker, to talk about commodification of plants, interspecies ethics, and dive into the EcoGothic framework. Our host Necro is joined for an exclusive interview by Dr Mexia & Monstera Perspicua. Our tracklist complements this experience with songs about houseplants, nature and interspecies dark sides. Featuring: Ludovica Battista, architect, writer and researcher with a transdisciplinary approach, based in Southern Italy. Her work explores the present territorial and urban condition, and their interspecies living flesh. Agi Haines, speculative designer. Her work is focused on the design of the human body as a malleable object through which she explores how far we can push our living flesh while still being accepted by society. Jye O'Sullivan is a lecturer and researcher at the TUDublin School of Creative Arts specialized in History of Art and Visual Cultures. His research interests include Cybernetics, Queer Ecology, Post-Colonial Art and Art Historiography. Elizabeth Parker, founder editor of Gothic Nature Journal: New Directions in Ecohorror and the EcoGothic and author of The Forest and the EcoGothic: The Deep Dark Woods in the Popular Imagination. Ludovica Battista as Dr Mexia, a botanist who discovered a dreadful truth about Etsy's coolest tropical plant Monstera Perspicua, that might lead you into a nightmarish interspecies tragedy. James Nola as Necromantique or Necro, our demonic host who pays homage to 80s cult horror, that will get your bones giggling. Thank you for listening. We hope that this series will contribute to inspire, to communicate powerful messages, to expose enduring dynamics of the contemporary world and to challenge our understanding of its structures and taboos. If we didn't scare you enough, and you want to know more about our projects, join us for more episodes or visit https://universityoftheunderground.org! Coordination, proof-listening, scripting: Veronika Hanáková, Ludovica Battista Production, editing, music selection: Ludovica Battista Hosting: James Nola, Ludovica Battista TRACKLIST: CNN Predicts a Monster Storm - Laurie Anderson & Kronos Quartet Reverie for Fragile Houseplants - Tomaga Houseplants - Squid Vegetation Flesh - Nocturnal Emissions Intro - Gorillaz Nature - Tuxedomoon Back to Nature - Tuxedomoon Plant People - Ben Salisbury & Geoff barrow, from Annihilation soundtrack Nature is not created in the image of man's compassion - Tzusing

Happy Pride, nature lovers! We're continuing with our Birdy Bunch #Pride festivities with a revisiting to one of our favorite topics—queer ecology—that we touched upon in season 1! CJ hosts a round table discussion with all of us about what queer ecology is, and it's importance. In addition, we have a special guest current event: Judy Pollock of Chicago Audubon! Judy brings us some awesome current data surrounding birds in Chicago. If you thought that wasn't enough, we also feature the mantis shrimp! Make sure to check out this latest installment in the Birdy Bunch #Pride, and use code PRIDE for 15% off all our merch!   Timestamps: 00:00 - Intro        03:07 - Creature Feature             09:55 - Current Events             25:46 - Queer Ecology II    01:05:05 - Outro   For more information about The Birdy Bunch Podcast, visit TheBirdyBunchPodcast.com.  Special thank you to Sarah Dunlap - for designing our logo and Conner Wittman - for producing our music. 

This Pride, we're revisiting a Quickie with iconic environmental and intersectional drag queen, Pattie Gonia. They give us a quick introduction to queer ecology – we're talking gender shifting fish, intersex birds, and even how trees can impregnate themselves. Yep – queerness is natural! Tune in to discover why queer ecology is so much more than "gay dolphins in the ocean". Instead, "queerness is just the oddity in this world to problem solve, no matter what, to almost be different, and to bring beauty and brilliance to that ", they say. If you enjoyed this quickie, why not listen to Pattie's full episode on Climate Curious – Why Mother Nature is a Drag Queen: https://tedxlondon.com/podcast/climate-curious-why-mother-nature-is-a-drag-queen/

Queer Ecology looks at the biases and limitations that exist in environmental studies. To learn more, we spoke with Nicole Seymour, an associate professor of English and Graduate Advisor of Environmental Studies at Cal State Fullerton. She is author of several books including: "Strange Natures: Futurity, Empathy, and the Queer Ecological Imagination."

Queer Ecology looks at the biases and limitations that exist in environmental studies. To learn more, we spoke with Nicole Seymour, an associate professor of English and Graduate Advisor of Environmental Studies at Cal State Fullerton. She is author of several books including: "Strange Natures: Futurity, Empathy, and the Queer Ecological Imagination."

Jonny promotes local upcoming Earth Day events and explains Queer Ecology and Intersectional Environmentalism. Along the way, he explores why LGBTQ folks have a set of very specific stakes in sustainability and environmental advocacy. Topics range from social justice concerns to queer theology.

One theme for the whole episode. This week's theme? The planet! Queer people exist and are human too, and we are therefore part of this beautiful planet. If we don't have a planet, we can't have pride. Queer people have unique perspectives and a lot to add to the conversation, and so we thought we would help bring part of that conversation to you! Check it out! ... This week on HTBQ: S1: Life Update! 0:20 S2: Queer-ent Events! 5:53 This week, the panel talks about Jojo Siwa (as always, our queen), Canada's National LGBTQ+ monument, and the Don't Say Gay bill in Florida (boo)! S3: In Queer Terms! 18:23 This week, the panel explores the expansive definition of queer ecology! S4: Guest Q&A! No guest this week, but there will be on the very next episode!!! And we think you are gonna love our first RETURNING GUEST! S5: Panel Discussion! 32:58 The panel discussion this week dives into the ways and reasons that queer and other marginalized people will feel the worst of the effects of climate change (also boo)! ... Enjoy this beautiful episode friends! Hit us up on Instagram, that's the best place to find us. We respond to all messages :) Hope you enjoy the episode! OMIGOSH and Happy April!! And for those celebrating, Ramadan Mubarak, Happy Easter, Happy Sikh New Year and also Happy Anishinaabe New Year, Happy Passover, Happy Earth Day, and Happy Lesbian Visibility Day! PS: We will be attempting a biweekly schedule, so you can look for us again in your podcast feeds every other Tuesday, with the next episode scheduled for April 26th! Our theme next episode: First Panel Guest Episode Realness! C U Next Time on HTBQ!!!!!!!! ... follow Sam!! @gh0stbr3ath follow Chris!! @mx.fee follow us!! @howtobequeerpodcast visit our website howtobequeer.ca!! ... Sources: Queer Ecology. Wikipedia. Queer Ecology. NYU Press. Solidarity for a Brighter Future: The Intersectionality of LGBTQ+ and Environmental Justice Movements. Clearloop. How to Queer Ecology: One Goose at a Time. Alex Johnson. Orion Magazine. @mattxiv Revealed: Here's what the LGBTQ2S+ national monument will look like. Rachel Aiello. CTV News. --- Send in a voice message: https://anchor.fm/how-to-be-queer/message

torrin a. greathouse Jericho Brown Beth Ann's website Kate Leland's website 

Today on Mushroom Hour we are joined by freethinker, activist and mycologist Dr. Patricia Kaishian. Dr. Kaishian received a B.A in Biology with a concentration in Environmental Studies in 2013 from Wheaton College, MA. In August 2020, she defended her Ph.D. in Forest Pathology & Mycology from SUNY College of Environmental Science & Forestry. She is broadly trained in the taxonomy of macro and micro fungi, with considerable field experience in the Neotropics. Currently, she is working as a postdoctoral researcher in the Aime Lab at Purdue University where she is serving as curator of fungi at the Arthur Fungarium & Kriebel Herbarium. Beyond more traditional scientific work, Dr. Kaishian also works in the realms like the philosophy of science, feminist bioscience, ecofeminism and queer theory, exploring how mycology and other scientific disciplines are situated in and informed by our sociopolitical landscape. She is a founding member of the International Congress of Armenian Mycologists, a research organization comprised of ethnically Armenian mycologists who seek to simultaneously advance mycological science and Armenian sovereignty and liberation.   TOPICS COVERED:   Childhood Embracing Nature in NY State  Activism & Science Intertwined  The Practice of Science & the Institution of Science  Western Eurocentric Perspectives Embedding into Modern Institutions  Historical Dynamics Between Institutional Science, Institutional Christianity, Agriculture & Colonization  Agro-Heterosexuality  Queer Theory & Queer Ecology  Mycology as a Queer Science  Upliftment of Marginalized People & Organisms  Influence of Dr. Robin Kimmerer  Armenian Advocacy  Link Between Biodiversity & Indigenous Sovereignty  Dr. Kaishan's Research on Laboulbeniales & Rust Fungi  EPISODE RESOURCES:   Dr. Kaishian Twitter: https://twitter.com/queendom_fungiDr. Kaishian ResearchGate: https://www.researchgate.net/profile/Patricia-Kaishian  "Mycology as a Queer Discipline" Paper: https://catalystjournal.org/index.php/catalyst/article/view/33523  Dr. George Hudler “Magical Mushrooms Mischievous Molds”: https://www.amazon.com/Magical-Mushrooms-Mischievous-George-Hudler/dp/0691070164  "Queer Ecologies": https://www.amazon.com/Queer-Ecologies-Nature-Politics-Desire/dp/0253222036  "The Mushroom at the End of the World": https://www.amazon.com/Mushroom-End-World-Possibility-Capitalist/dp/0691178321/  "Braiding Sweetgrass": https://www.amazon.com/Braiding-Sweetgrass-Indigenous-Scientific-Knowledge/dp/1571313567/  Tiokasin Ghosthorse: https://www.humansandnature.org/tiokasin-ghosthorseInternational Congress of Aremenian Mycologists: https://icarmenian-mycologists.github.io/  Entoloma salmoneum: https://www.mushroomexpert.com/entoloma_quadratum.html

In this episode of Queer Science! the co-hosts sit down with “The Queer Biologist,” a.k.a Ren Weinstock, for a chat about queer ecology, reproductive centrism, and those pesky gay penguins! Follow Ren on Instagram (thequeerbiologist) You can access a transcript of this episode here: https://www.queerscience.show/podcasts/7/queer-ecology-when-nature-said-gay-rights Follow us (Queer Science!) on: Twitter: queer_science Instagram: queer_sci Facebook: Queer Science Anchor: https://anchor.fm/queerscience Support us on: Patreon: https://www.patreon.com/queerscience GoFundMe: https://www.gofundme.com/f/queer-science-podcast Things mentioned in this episode: Quote at 5:00 minute mark in this episode: https://orionmagazine.org/article/how-to-queer-ecology-once-goose-at-a-time/ Extensive Wikipedia list of homosexual behaviors found in nature: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Homosexual_behavior_in_animals#Bottlenose_dolphins Incredible article synthesizing how academics have / should talk about same-sex behavior in nature: https://blogs.scientificamerican.com/observations/why-is-same-sex-sexual-behavior-so-common-in-animals/ Queer Eco-Justice Project - Has an extensive reading list on queer ecology!: https://www.queerecoproject.org/ --- Support this podcast: https://anchor.fm/queerscience/support

A queer farmer of color, Edgar Xochitl is the Farm Manager at Hummingbird Farm a collective farm in the Excelsior, San Francisco. Edgar focuses on cross-polinating traditional ecological knowledge. In this episode we talk about:   What is Queer Ecology? What does it mean to decolonize the flower? How to apply principles of queer ecology How to challenges the gender binary mindset? Follow Edgar: IG - @ecoxicano Twitter: @ecoxicano Watch/Learn More: YouTube - Breaking Green Ceilings Podcast IG - @breaking_green_ceilings Website: breakinggreenceilings.com

Our latest feature Climate Quickies gives you bitesize nuggets of climate goodies – in under 5 minutes! This week, we're talking queer ecology – gender shifting fish, intersex birds, and how trees can impregnate themselves – with iconic environmental and intersectional drag queen, Pattie Gonia. If you enjoyed this quickie, why not listen to Pattie's full episode on Climate Curious – Why Mother Nature is a Drag Queen: https://tedxlondon.com/podcast/climate-curious-why-mother-nature-is-a-drag-queen/ We hope you enjoy this new format we're sprinkling in as an extra to our standard 30 minute episodes. Let us know what other interesting facts, digestible explainers and practical tips from former guests you'd like to hear info@tedxlondon.com

This episode I highlight how multiple genders exists within bird species. I introduce asexual reproduction and the story of lesbian lizards, before we end on urban encounter with a Karen.

It's #PRIDE Month! Come and celebrate Pride month with The Birdy Bunch Podcast as we get into our first episode themed around the LGBTQIA+ Community! This week we talk about examples of Gender and Sexuality Expression in Nature, looking at things through the lens of Queer Ecology! If you enjoy this one, stay tuned for all the LGBTQIA+ Themed content for the whale month of June! Make sure to use the code ‘PRIDE' at our Merch store for 10% off! Follow us on Instagram @thebirdybunchpodcast for more info!   Timestamps: 00:00 - Intro        03:11 - Creature Feature             08:03 - Current Events             21:50 - Gender & Sexuality Expression in Nature 44:34 - Outro         Thank you to Sarah Dunlap - for designing our logo, Elliot Heye - for being our Writing and Production Assistant, and Conner Wittman - for producing our music. Visit thebirdybunchpodcast.com for more information.

On our 100th episode, we discuss how adopting queer ecology principles can assist in the healing of relations with people and planet, uniting of movements, and solving the climate emergency facing us today. In order to solve social and ecological problems, environmentalists (et al) must disrupt heterosexist notions and reimagine nature, biology, and sexuality. Queering ecology is the act of broadening our understanding of and re-evaluate our relationships with the larger world – a world that is more than human and an ecology that is not binary or dualistic. However, current narratives within the environmental movements can be restrictive, create divides, and stunt our ability to move forward. Tune in to Episode 100 with guest Miles Lewis (public artist, organizer, and educator) [http://mileslewisstudio.com] as we dive into why Queer Ecology is vital to climate and social justice movements. More Info: https://theyearsproject.com/learn/news/queer-ecology/ Podcast Website: http://ecojusticeradio.org/ Podcast Blog: https://www.wilderutopia.com/category/ecojustice-radio/ Support the Podcast: https://socal350.org/contribute-to-socal-350-climate-action/ Host and Producer: Jessica Aldridge Engineer: Blake Lampkin Executive Producer: Jack Eidt Show Created by Mark and JP Morris Music: Javier Kadry Episode 100 Image: Miles Lewis art

What does queer ecology, fierce fashion and our relationship to the living world have in common? On this episode, we will have you saying ‘I Love That' when you hear and explore with us the intricate details of how our world got to be so fucked up and complex yet stay so amazingly gay. We'll hear from our guests how queer and trans communities have been a consistent force in pushing the margins in the fashion world and beyond. We'll get into how pushing margins in relationship to binaries and boxes also connects to our responsibility to liberation for frontlines communities and the Earth (divesting from exploitative industries, sweatshops, ecological impacts of waste, shifting cultures of body policing & Euro-centric beauty standards) and that above all else expression and identity are essential to our liberation. Guests: Deseree Fontenot, Curly V & Zero Waste Daniel Transcript: http://bit.ly/DWGTF-S1-Ep5

Dr. Catriona Sandilands and Dr. Sherilyn McGregor share with us the ways in which ecofeminism, and queer ecology, serve to diversify and deepen how we look at the policies and day-to-day practices of environmental politics.

With the third Symposium "Women on Earth" we were seeking to understand the relations between feminism and species coexistence. The issue of nature—and of all that is naturalized or deemed unnatural by hegemonic discourses and policy—is of particular importance to gender issues, as is science. But a scientific and technical approach to the climate emergency cannot be accurate without taking into consideration how gender, racial, and economic violence foster our emergent ecocides, nor by how women—often poor and Indigenous women—are overwhelmingly at the forefront of this violence as the very first recipients of. What kind of political and cultural transformation must occur to make these entanglements obvious and of vital concern? How to counter this violence in all its manifold forms?Our guests were: Rossella Biscotti, Neha Choksi, Ingela Ihrman, Institute of Queer Ecology, Sophie Jung, Lysann König, Thomas Lempertz, Agnes Meyer-Brandis, New Mineral Collective (Tanya Busse and Emilija Škarnulytė), Katrin Niedermeier, Heather Phillipson, Mathilde Rosier, Lena Maria Thüring.In this episode artist Rossella Biscotti presents her body of works dealing with ancient storytelling and both biological and psychological phenomena like growth and resilience.Artist Rossella Biscotti's (born in Molfetta, Italy, lives and works in Brussels and Rotterdam) artistic oeuvre encompasses videos, photographs and sculptural work. She uses montage as a gesture to reveal individual narratives and their relation to society. In her cross-media practice, cutting across filmmaking, performance and sculpture, she explores and reconstructs obscured moments from recent times, often against the backdrop of state institutions. In the process of composing her personal encounters and oral interrogations into new stories, the site of investigation tends to leave its mark on her sculptures and installations. By examining the relevance of the recovered material from a contemporary perspective, Biscotti sensibly weaves a link to the present.

With the third Symposium "Women on Earth" we were seeking to understand the relations between feminism and species coexistence. The issue of nature—and of all that is naturalized or deemed unnatural by hegemonic discourses and policy—is of particular importance to gender issues, as is science. But a scientific and technical approach to the climate emergency cannot be accurate without taking into consideration how gender, racial, and economic violence foster our emergent ecocides, nor by how women—often poor and Indigenous women—are overwhelmingly at the forefront of this violence as the very first recipients of. What kind of political and cultural transformation must occur to make these entanglements obvious and of vital concern? How to counter this violence in all its manifold forms?Our guests were: Rossella Biscotti, Neha Choksi, Ingela Ihrman, Institute of Queer Ecology, Sophie Jung, Lysann König, Thomas Lempertz, Agnes Meyer-Brandis, New Mineral Collective (Tanya Busse and Emilija Škarnulytė), Katrin Niedermeier, Heather Phillipson, Mathilde Rosier, Lena Maria Thüring.In this episode Neha Choksi, Sophie Jung and Tanya Busse and Emilija Škarnulytė (New Mineral Collective) are in conversation with Quinn Latimer and Chus Martínez about ways of dealing with violence and aggression both on artistic and institutional level.Artist Sophie Jung (lives in London and Basel) works across text, sculpture and performance, navigating the politics of representation and challenging the selective silencing that happens by concluding. Her focus is on disrupting dominant scripts through subversively introduced tremors. She employs humor, shame, the absurd, raw anger, rhythm and rhyme, slapstick, hardship, friendship and a constant stream of slippages. Her sculptural work consists of bodies made up of both found and haphazardly produced attributes and defines itself against the dogma of an Original Idea or a Universal Significance. Her writing is done in an intersectional-feminist spirit of écriture feminine.Artist Neha Choksi lives and works in Los Angeles and Bombay, India. Working in performance, video, installation, sculpture, and other formats, she disrupts logic by setting up poetic and absurd interventions in the lives of everything—from stone to plant, animal to self, friends to institutions. Involving a confluence of disciplines, in various formats, often collaboratively and in unconventional settings, she allows in strands of her intellectual, cultural and social contexts to revisit the entanglements of time, consciousness, and socialization.Artists Tanya Busse (born in Moncton, NB, Canada, lives in Tromsø, Norway) and Emilija Škarnulytė (born in Vilinus, Lithuania, lives in Tromsø, Norway) are New Mineral Collective (NMC), a platform that looks at contemporary landscape politics to better understand the nature and extent of human interaction with the Earth's surface. As an organism, NMC infiltrates the extractive industry with alternative forces such as desire, body mining, and acts of counter prospecting.

With the third Symposium "Women on Earth" we were seeking to understand the relations between feminism and species coexistence. The issue of nature—and of all that is naturalized or deemed unnatural by hegemonic discourses and policy—is of particular importance to gender issues, as is science. But a scientific and technical approach to the climate emergency cannot be accurate without taking into consideration how gender, racial, and economic violence foster our emergent ecocides, nor by how women—often poor and Indigenous women—are overwhelmingly at the forefront of this violence as the very first recipients of. What kind of political and cultural transformation must occur to make these entanglements obvious and of vital concern? How to counter this violence in all its manifold forms?Our guests were: Rossella Biscotti, Neha Choksi, Ingela Ihrman, Institute of Queer Ecology, Sophie Jung, Lysann König, Thomas Lempertz, Agnes Meyer-Brandis, New Mineral Collective (Tanya Busse and Emilija Škarnulytė), Katrin Niedermeier, Heather Phillipson, Mathilde Rosier, Lena Maria Thüring.In this episode Neha Choksi and Tanya Busse and Emilija Škarnulytė (New Mineral Collective) are introducing their artistic practices and presenting alternative ways of engaging with environmental and social questions.Artist Neha Choksi lives and works in Los Angeles and Bombay, India. Working in performance, video, installation, sculpture, and other formats, she disrupts logic by setting up poetic and absurd interventions in the lives of everything—from stone to plant, animal to self, friends to institutions. Involving a confluence of disciplines, in various formats, often collaboratively and in unconventional settings, she allows in strands of her intellectual, cultural and social contexts to revisit the entanglements of time, consciousness, and socialization.Artists Tanya Busse (born in Moncton, NB, Canada, lives in Tromsø, Norway) and Emilija Škarnulytė (born in Vilinus, Lithuania, lives in Tromsø, Norway) are New Mineral Collective (NMC), a platform that looks at contemporary landscape politics to better understand the nature and extent of human interaction with the Earth's surface. As an organism, NMC infiltrates the extractive industry with alternative forces such as desire, body mining, and acts of counter prospecting.