We are so excited to share Fat of the Land , a new five part series unfolding over the next five weeks. This series began with a kind of romantic impulse. I traveled to Italy with a longing to be among people whose relationships to land and food have been tended over generations, particularly within the traditions of Slow Food. As a settler of North America, I carry big questions around land and lineage and memory and loss... I imagine meeting grandmothers making ravioli, sitting with elders, ab...
Apr 22, 2026•2 min
"The more I learn, the less I know. Sometimes learning more means accepting that we don’t really know." – Rachel Meade In the third episode of In The Company of Humpbacks , Rachel Meade joins Ayana to rethink what we mean by study, communication, and the goals of biology and conservation. What might change if we were more honest about our uncertainties and willing to admit what we don’t know? Could that openness lead to stronger relationships and better science? Rachel guides us into the vast, l...
Apr 09, 2026•34 min
In the second episode of In the Company of Humpbacks , take a walk with Dr. Fred Sharpe and Ayana as we get to know him and his research team more intimately. Together, they reflect on grounding scientific work in awareness and relationality, offering insight into the deeper purpose behind conservation. The episode explores how our pursuit of knowledge shapes and is shaped by our relationships with the more-than-human world, while also embracing the sensory, emotional pull of curiosity about nat...
Apr 02, 2026•31 min
“Learning whale language is about being in right relationship.” In the first episode of For The Wild’s In the Company of Humpbacks , we hear from Joe Olson and Dr. Fred Sharpe about their approaches to analyzing whale sound. When we desire to understand whales, what more than human impulse are we activating? Immersing the listener in a world of exploration and investigation, this episode leaves us with the spirit of questioning and a hope for deeper relationality in our pursuit of understanding....
Mar 26, 2026•33 min
Hey, friends. Ayana, here. We are so excited to announce our brand new audio documentary series in the company of humpbacks. Three episodes. One goal to take you into the quiet the thrums and the wild rhythms of Southeast Alaska. How it started. Fred Sharpe, old friend, longtime explorer of these waters, and we're always running into each other at his field station in Chichagof Island. Now, every time I see him, he brings a smile and usually a little giggle because of his very Dr. Seuss like spi...
Mar 19, 2026•3 min
“Connection to the land and knowing the plants that surround you and knowing what food your ancestor ate and trying to go back there is probably one of the most important things that we can do as resistance today.” - Aya Gazawi Faour In For The Wild’s series in collaboration with Olive Oddessey, we hear from their co-founder, Aya Gazawi Faour, who shares about plants indigenous to the Palestinian landscape and their deep ties to culture, resistance, and enduring lifeways. In this concluding epis...
Dec 25, 2025•19 min
“If you don't forage for Za’atar, how are you going to feel connected to the land? How are you going to understand what your ancestors have been doing for thousands of years here?” - Aya Gazawi Faour In For The Wild’s series in collaboration with Olive Odyssey, we hear from Aya Gazawi Faour, their co-founder, who shares about plants indigenous to the Palestinian landscape and their deep ties to culture, resistance, and enduring lifeways. In this episode, Aya shares about the herb Za’atar and its...
Dec 18, 2025•30 min•Season 1Ep. 2
“The moment people are disconnected from their land and from the plants around them, it's easier to control them because they don't feel the spiritual connection to the land.” —Aya Gazawi Faour, Olive Odyssey Co-Founder In For The Wild’s new series in collaboration with Olive Odyssey , we hear from their co-founder, Aya Gazawi Faour, who shares about plants indigenous to the Palestinian landscape and their deep ties to culture, resistance, and enduring lifeways. In this opening episode, Aya shar...
Dec 08, 2025•39 min•Season 1Ep. 1
ILLUMINATING WORLDVIEWS on The Art That Reclaims Us S1:4 In this resounding end to our Illuminating Worldviews series, Ayana speaks with artists Dr. Aubyn O’Grady and Jackie Olson about collective art and creative processes. Aubyn and Jackie share about their work on The Willow Basket Project at the Yukon School of Visual Arts and explore the ways that art can root us in place, support mining reclamation work, and even build bridges with unlikely allies. Through this project, they invite dialogu...
Oct 23, 2025•57 min
ILLUMINATING WORLDVIEWS on AI and Courting the Otherwise S1:3 How might we face the end? Continuing our Illuminating Worldviews series, Vanessa Andreotti and Ayana delve into questions of what it means to live well during this fractured end of modernity. How can we best visualize the systems that have brought us to this point, and how might we bring ourselves out of them? Speaking to the complexity of birth and death in this moment, Vanessa sheds light on what she calls hospicing modernity – the...
Oct 16, 2025•1 hr
Continuing our Illuminating Worldviews series, we hear from X̱ʼunei Lance Twitchell in conversation with Guná Jensen exploring the vital work of Tlingít language revitalization. Together, they reflect on the deep emotional resonance of speaking in one’s ancestral language, and how this practice opens an anti-colonial lens in which to see and feel the world. Set within the lands of the Yukon, this episode is a moving tribute to the power and significance of Indigenous language learning that honor...
Oct 09, 2025•58 min
Over the past months, For The Wild has journeyed to the Yukon in partnership with Illuminating Worldviews. Illuminating Worldviews is a space for examining the worldviews in which we find ourselves and to learn how they actively shape the material realities of our lives. This project, rooted and colored by the land of the Yukon invites questioning, examination, and future visioning centered in Indigenous ideology and the sentiment of journeying. In this conversation, Ayana is joined by Dr. Lee B...
Oct 02, 2025•1 hr
On July 19th, Joanna Macy, beloved teacher and past guest, passed away peacefully at home in Berkeley, California. In honor of her legacy, we are rebroadcasting her episode “The World as Lover and Self,” originally released in 2015 when the show was titled Unlearn and Rewild . In this deeply resonant conversation, Ayana speaks with Joanna on grief, change, and connection – themes that remain ever-relevant. Joanna offers wisdom on emotional courage, allyship, and gratitude, inviting us to see the...
Aug 05, 2025•1 hr•Ep. 371
We are rebroadcasting our extended conversation with Andrea Gibson as we honor their death on July 14th, 2025. The conversation, originally aired In September of 2023, was entitled “The Blessings of the Wound.” For so many of us who have been touched by Andrea’s work, their death is a deep wound, one that will stretch and expand our hearts in accordance with its depth. In the episode, Andrea contemplates the deeply rooted societal fears of disconnection and of death. Facing fear, confusion, and ...
Jul 22, 2025•1 hr 11 min
Hey For The Wild community, it’s Ayana. It’s been a minute. Life has been moving—fast, deep, and full. I’ve grown, and with that growth, a clearer sense of what I want to share with you has come into focus. After nearly a decade of digital episodes, I felt a longing—an ache to be in person, on the land, and heart to heart with our guests. That’s why you may have noticed we’ve slowed down on weekly releases. Instead, we’ve been on the road, spending sacred, unhurried time with people we love—tend...
May 14, 2025•5 min
In the sixth and final episode of our Earthly Reads series, we are honored to welcome back Prentis Hemphill, author of What It Takes to Heal : How Transforming Ourselves Can Change the World . This episode offers a preview of the live Earthly Reads Book Study , join us there to access the full 75 minute episode. Offering embodied insight into the ways in which healing manifests in our personal and collective lives, Prentis Hemphill brings a thoughtful and empathetic perspective to this crucial c...
Mar 25, 2025•43 min•Season 1Ep. 6
In the fifth episode of our Earthly Reads series, we dive into a conversation with the renowned Alexis Pauline Gumbs, author of Survival Is a Promise: The Eternal Life of Audre Lorde . This episode offers a preview of the live Earthly Reads Book Study, now available for purchase at forthewild.world/bookstudy . Throughout the conversation, Gumbs threads together her thoroughly-researched and deeply-felt knowledge of Audre Lorde with her own personal wit, observation, and openness. She also speaks...
Feb 25, 2025•35 min•Season 1Ep. 5
Join us for the fourth episode of our new Earthly Reads series. In this episode, we are joined by the incredible Céline Semaan, founder of Slow Factory and author of A Woman is a School . Sharing stories from her childhood in Lebanon and across her lifelong work towards justice, Céline gives us a look at what it means to be a hakawati (storyteller). Céline asks listeners what it means to have faith in times of crisis, how to commit to your morals in the face of suppression, and what it can mean ...
Feb 18, 2025•29 min•Season 1Ep. 4
Join us with Marcia Bjornerud for a brilliant conversation on a life dedicated to the physical Earth. This conversation is the third episode for our new Earthly Reads series. Together, Ayana and Marcia discuss Marcia’s new book, Turning to Stone: Discovering the Subtle Wisdom of Rocks, and contemplate a life lived in conversation with the very Earth that holds us. Marcia offers us her grounding presence and her awareness of geologic time cycles that churn beyond human perception. Earthly Reads i...
Feb 10, 2025•31 min•Season 1Ep. 3
Continuing the first season of our Earthly Reads series, we are thrilled to share a new conversation with beloved guest Tricia Hersey. Sharing sweet balm from her new book WE WILL REST! The Art of Escape , Tricia reminds us of the art of being alive. In this meditative episode, Tricia asks listeners what it might mean to have faith in mystery and to begin without knowing the full course. Throughout the episode, she shares wisdom about the power of attempt and what it means to try without the fea...
Jan 31, 2025•34 min•Season 1Ep. 2
We are excited to announce the first season of our Earthly Reads series featuring conversations with some of our favorite authors including adrienne maree brown, Marcia Bjornerud, Alexis Pauline Gumbs, Prentis Hemphill Tricia Hersey, and Céline Semaan. This collection of books is meant to encourage grounded conversation that roots justice, imagination, and transformation within the soil and substance of the Earth. The series will focus on themes of resistance, embodiment, and connection to self ...
Jan 25, 2025•34 min•Season 1Ep. 1
For The Wild is sending our deepest wishes for abundance and slowness as we enter 2025! Now especially, the future of independent media and critical, thought provoking content seems uncertain. In times like these, the For The Wild team is even more dedicated to providing our listeners with meaningful listening experiences and media that embraces slow, deep learning. We are only able to do this with your generous support. We are so grateful to you! This year, we are looking forward to offering ne...
Jan 09, 2025•4 min
For The Wild is thrilled to share that we’re launching our second Slow Study with Bayo Akomolafe and The Emergence Network. These slow studies are a unique collaboration between The Emergence Network and For The Wild focused on making the We Will Dance With Mountains course accessible in an asynchronous, self-paced manner so you can embrace slowness and integration in your study. The segments featured in this Slow Study were recorded in 2023 as part of the We Will Dance With Mountains: Vunja! li...
Dec 20, 2024•6 min
We’re calling in slow media. Feeling into the need for slow, emotionally grounded, and resonant content, we’ll be pausing weekly episodes to fully embody a slow media approach. The past ten years of interviews have shown us how media should be slow, rooted, and steadying, and this shift to slow media will honor all that we have learned from years of beautiful conversations. Over the coming months, we will be bringing you print, film, long form media, deeply focused podcast series, and in-person ...
Apr 24, 2024•6 min
This week we are rebroadcasting our episode with Dori Midnight, originally aired in October 2022. “With a prayer to imagine beyond the current structures and systems, and kind of weave ourselves into, and be wrapped inside of, the invisible cloak that is interdependence, that is mutual aid, that supports us to reach towards each other and reach towards a vision of mutually flourishing life.” This powerful vision is shared by this week’s guest, Dori Midnight. In this sweet, meaningful, and meande...
Apr 17, 2024•1 hr 17 min
This week we are rebroadcasting our episode with Kimberly Ann Johnson originally aired in April 2023. Feeling into the state of our nervous systems and our relationships with each other and ourselves, this episode offers a powerful perspective on the importance of recognizing and tending to how life feels. Together, Ayana and this week’s guest Kimberly Ann Johnson discuss the depths of pleasure and the dimensions of healing. Kimberly brings deep knowledge regarding reproductive and sexual health...
Apr 10, 2024•59 min
This week we are rebroadcasting our episode with Sophie Strand which originally aired in November 2022. In this winding and lucid conversation, guest Sophie Strand invites us to investigate our relationality, to embrace rot and decay, to welcome our demons to the dinner table, and to prepare for uncertain futures with tenderness. Sophie brings to light the wisdom of the compost heap. What myths do we need for modernity, what wisdom is sedimented within our bodies? Sophie and Ayana tap into deep ...
Apr 03, 2024•1 hr 7 min
This week we are rebroadcasting our interview with Maya Khosla which originally aired in November 2022. What can the forest teach us of grief, of joy, of humanity? This week, poet and scientist Maya Khosla invites listeners into the forests of Northern California to find deep reverence for the power of biodiversity. Maya’s expertise on wildfires shines through this deep and well-informed conversation as she and Ayana share a love for the forest and deep-seated awe for the complexity of forest li...
Mar 27, 2024•1 hr 7 min
Inviting listeners into his deep connection with the forest and the natural world, Ross Reid brings an inspirational energy and commitment to this interview. Connecting around their shared love for old growth and wild places, Ross and Ayana consider what it means to get people interested in protecting the places that sustain us. How can we inspire the connection with the land that brings people to defend it? Ross shares the journey behind his work as “Nerdy About Nature,” and the passion for edu...
Mar 20, 2024•1 hr 1 min•Ep. 369
This week we are rebroadcasting our interview with Jarod K Anderson, originally aired in January 2023. Bringing us into his world of nature, awe, and magical poetry, guest Jarod K. Anderson reminds us that our human journey is worthy of just as much love and affection as the natural world around us. When we come to nature with intention, how might it guide us towards love and inspiration? In a time where so many of us are feeling lost, confused, and not connected to a purpose, we often abdicate ...
Mar 13, 2024•58 min
