How does the outdoor industry profit off of “the wilderness” as an extractive, consumable experience? How have outdoor apparel companies benefited from sanitizing the history of national parks and public lands? And what does it mean to recognize the colonial mentality behind certain forms of exploration — bagging peaks, checking off trails, and securing photographs of scenic spots without going any deeper?

In this episode, Green Dreamer’s Kaméa Chayne speaks with Joseph Whitson, a political ecologist and the author of Marketing the Wilderness.

Join us as we peel back the layers of the recreation-industrial complex — politicizing the idea of “protecting the wilderness” often portrayed as a bipartisan interest — and sit with what it means to travel, hike, and recreate in the “great outdoors” while confronting questions of complicity.
Episode musical feature: “Eden” by Ryne Meadow

"There is an uncanniness, a way in which [fungi] were not behaving perfectly, in which it's hard to study them in a petri dish… They upset that wish that everything would fall into binaries and categories that have made sense." – Maria Pinto
This episode features Maria Pinto, an author and educator who teaches for the literary nonprofit GrubStreet. Her book of lyric essays about mushrooms, Fearless, Sleepless, Deathless: What Fungi Taught Me about Nourishment, Poison, Ecology, Hidden Histories, Zombies, and Black Survival, was published by Great Circle Books at UNC Press.
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• tune in and subscribe to Green Dreamer via any podcast app;
• tap into our bonus extended and video version of this conversation on Patreon here;
• and read highlights from these conversations via Kaméa’s newsletter here.

Episode artwork: Paul Lewin

Song features: “If You Want To, You Will” by Lemon Myrtle

What does belonging mean within a fractured world? How do we liberate ourselves from systems that attempt to turn us into mere cogs in a machine? What can sitting with the paradoxes of being human teach us?

In this episode, Green Dreamer’s Kaméa Chayne speaks with Sophia Kai of Journey of the Soul, whose work lives at the crossroads of world, folk, and medicine music — blending languages, poetry and healing into musical journeys that transcend borders and open the heart of humanity.

Join us as we unravel the messiness of being human in these troubled times, and contemplate where journeying toward a collective remembrance may lead us.

We invite you to…

• tune in and subscribe to Green Dreamer via any podcast app;
• tap into our bonus extended and video version of this conversation on Patreon here;
• and read highlights from these conversations via Kaméa’s newsletter here.

Musical features: “Touchée” (Live in Corfu) and “Ultima Luz” by Sophia Kai

What is the role of language in shaping our worldviews and webs of relations — beyond simply serving as tools of communication? How can the revitalization of Indigenous languages “disrupt the glue for colonial thinking”? And what does it mean to navigate tensions around cultural change and cultural continuity?

In this episode, Green Dreamer’s Kaméa Chayne speaks with Anton Treuer, an Ojibwe author, professor, and public speaker dedicated to Indigenous language revitalization, education, and cultural understanding.

Join us as we explore collective healing through working with land-based languages, deepening dialogue between the oppressor and the oppressed, and more.

We invite you to…

• tune in and subscribe to Green Dreamer via any podcast app;
• tap into our bonus extended and video version of this conversation on Patreon here;
• and read highlights from these conversations via Kaméa’s newsletter here.

Song feature: “Let it Shine” by Adrian Sutherland

How do we navigate questions around staying to resist, versus relocating to find home — in a time when certain places may no longer feel safe for certain bodies? What might it look like to push back against gentrification as a community? And how do we confront the complicity of our entanglement in systems of oppression, extraction, and displacement?

In this episode, Green Dreamer’s Kaméa Chayne speaks with Solaris J. Capehart, a Liberian poet who works alongside their neighbors to nurture The Garden Abolitionist Bookstore & Community Well.

Join us as we explore how gentrification is wrapped up in particular ideals of advancement and particular visions of quality of life that are not neutral; how we can continue showing up for ourselves and our communities during precarious times; and more.

We invite you to…

• tune in and subscribe to Green Dreamer via any podcast app;
• tap into our bonus extended and video version of this conversation on Patreon here;
• and read highlights from these conversations via Kaméa’s newsletter here.

Song feature: “I Am” ft. India Arie by Beautiful Chorus

What is the “watershed death spiral” that has led to the vicious cycle of more droughts and floods at the same time? How might learning about the water cycle expand our perspectives on climate change? And how can restoring watersheds support the sovereignty of land-based communities?

In this episode, Green Dreamer’s Kaméa Chayne speaks with Zach Weiss, who founded Water Stories to help empower as many people as possible to revive their local waters and lands.

Join us in this conversation as we explore the humility of working with ecosystems that resist formulas and master plans, how people can support the revitalization of their own local water cycles, and more.

We invite you to…

• tune in and subscribe to Green Dreamer via any podcast app;
• tap into our bonus extended and video version of this conversation on Patreon here;
• and read highlights from these conversations via Kaméa’s newsletter here.

Song feature: “Honor the Water” by Ayla Schafer

How do we sit with our fears and discomforts around collapse? What might we miss when we demand quick fixes, takeaways, and summaries — without allowing our bodies to ferment and feel through the practices and experiences that could move us more deeply? And what does it mean to retune our literacy of the languages of the Earth?

In this episode, Green Dreamer’s Kaméa Chayne speaks with Vanessa Machado de Oliveira, whose latest book is Outgrowing Modernity: Navigating Complexity, Complicity, and Collapse with Accountability and Compassion.

Join us as we hold up a mirror to reflect on questions of complicity and collapse — while sensing into what these fractured times may be asking of us.

We invite you to…

• tune in and subscribe to Green Dreamer via any podcast app;
• tap into our bonus extended and video version of this conversation on Patreon here;
• and read highlights from these conversations via Kaméa’s newsletter here.

Song feature: Goodnight Moon Child by Beautiful Chorus

Where do our senses of disgust come from? What does it mean to interrogate and unsettle the ways that our senses of disgust may have been shaped? And how has the Standard American Diet limited curiosity while reinforcing certain social hierarchies?

In this episode, we welcome Matthew Wolf-Meyer, the author of American Disgust: Racism, Microbial Medicine, and the Colony Within.

Join us as we explore the social and biological histories of our most visceral emotion, how disgust has been used as a tool of settler colonialism, and more.

We invite you to…

• tune in and subscribe to Green Dreamer via any podcast app;
• tap into our bonus extended and video version of this conversation on Patreon here;
• and read highlights from these conversations via Kaméa’s newsletter here.

Song feature: “Peaches” by Isla Greenwood (@islagreenwood on Instagram)