The Rewilding Podcast w/ Peter Michael Bauer
by Peter Michael Bauer
Are you looking at our society racked with disconnection, poor mental and physical health, social injustice, and the wanton destruction of the natural world and asking yourself, “What can I do?” Join experimental anthropologist Peter Michael Bauer as he converses with experts from many converging fields that help us craft cultures of resilience. Weaving together a range of topics from ecology to wilderness survival skills to permaculture, each episode deepens and expands your understanding of how to rewild yourself and your community.
Episodes
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Rewilding in New York City
Rewilding can happen anywhere, and take shape in various ways. My friend Jamal grew up and lives in New York City. He is a martial arts practitioner, a hiphop artist, and an outdoor educator that works for various organizations, including as a head instructor at Boulder Outdoor Survival School...
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Minimalism in Rewilding
Rewilding, in essence, is about existing in the congress of all wild things. This requires minimizing our disturbances to our ecosystems and maximizing the potential of their regrowth after. Minimalism is one form of limiting consumption, which is a form of minimizing our disturbance to the...
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Regenerative Agriculture & Pastoralism in Ireland w/ Future Oak Farms
Hunter-gatherers relied on megafauna for their subsistence. Those material conditions no longer exist: most land is under the control of state or private individuals and most of the megafauna are extinct. Rewilding looks to hunter-gatherers as an inspiration for adapting modern subsistence...
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Everyday Anarchism and the Rewilding Podcast
This episode is a crossover with Graham from Everyday Anarchism and Peter from The Rewilding Podcast. We conversed about rewilding, everyday anarchism, and a few of the connections between rewilding and anarchy. Everyday Anarchism https://www.everydayanarchism.com/ The Rewilding Podcast...
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Hierarchy & Collapse w/ Luke Kemp
How hierarchy forms and gets stuck in a feedback loop is something that many people have a hard time grasping. Today I’m speaking with Luke Kemp, author of the book Goliath’s Curse: The History and Future of Societal Collapse. The book does an incredible job of outlining aspects of rewilding that…
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Accessible Anthropology w/ Andie From Ancestral Habits
If you’ve been looking for ways to engage with anthropology that are fun and easy to grasp, this is the podcast episode for you. Rewilding requires learning from humanity’s diverse past in order to shape our present and future in a way that is reciprocal with the land and each other. Anthropology...
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Rewilding 101 Documentary Film Series w/ Calen Kennett
You often hear me speak about my rewilding 101 classes on the podcast. In this episode I’m speaking with my long time friend Calen Kennett, about our current project, which involves turning my class into an 8 part documentary film series and online companion course. We launched a kickstarter on...
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How to Start a Friction Fire the Communal Way w/ Ian Walton Larner & Aoife Ni Lodainn
Rewilding is a community effort. Many ancestral skills today are created with an individualist mindset, friction fire being one of them. But in older times, people worked together to create fire, understanding that community and togetherness was an important part of their survival. Such methods...
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Running an Outdoor Youth Program w/ Neal Ritter
Every once and a while I am happy and stunned to find an educational organization that makes me feel envious at the clear impact they are making on kids' lives, and the fun they are having along the way. For me, finding inspiration in other organizations that are keeping ancestral skills alive is...
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Solar Punk and Rewilding w/ Andrew Sage
Rewilding reconnects people to a regenerative relationship with the lands where we dwell. Many people live lives that are dramatically linked to technological modernity. A return to a less technologically dependent life is not possible (for them). Solar Punk offers a potential “transition” type…
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Am I Rewilder Enough? w/ Sheila Henson
Am I Rewilder Enough? w/ Sheila Henson Do you feel like a poseur when it comes to rewilding? Do you have guilty pleasures you can’t give up? Are you too overwhelmed to start rewilding? You’re not alone. In this episode I chat with my friend and Rewild Portland board member Sheila Henson about the...
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How Hunter-Gatherers Learn w/ Dr. Gul Deniz Salali
For millions of years, and in some places still today, hunter-gatherers raise competent and capable children. They do this while navigating challenging environments, with predators, dangerous tools, and most notably: without any school. Contemporary societies have created learning environments…
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Maintaining Peaceful Societies w/ Douglas Fry
For millions of years, evidence suggests that humans lived in relatively equal societies, where food acquisition and child raising were shared activities among community members both men and women, together. It is apparent that our environments of evolutionary adaptation, selected for humans with...
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Rekindling Ancestral Lifeways in Ireland w/ Lucy O’Hagan
Creating ancestral skills communities is central to rewilding. We need people sharing skills together, we need people tending land together. These communities don’t form over night. It takes time to build them. I spoke with Lucy O’Hagan in February of 2020, in one of my first episodes of the...
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Surviving Multiple Environments w/ Tom McElroy
One of the key aspects of wildness is adaptation. Being able to change and adapt to different needs, in different environments, is a cornerstone of resilience. While a large part of this involves getting to know the land where you dwell, it helps to know multiple landscapes. It can teach you how…
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The Wrong Way to Rewild
I’m fond of saying, “There’s no one right way to rewild.” A friend once asked me, “Sure, Peter. But is there a wrong way?” I wanted to do something fun for this episode that I haven’t delved into much before in this space, so I invited my friend on to talk about the “wrong” ways to rewild. Don’t…
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Why We Need Wild Foods w/ Monica Wilde
When some human societies made the shift from wild, procured foods to domesticated, produced foods there is a corresponding decline in the health of those people in the archaeological record. Today, the majority of people eat domesticated staples, and our health has taken a huge decline on a…
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Community as the Primary Survival Skill w/ Luke McLaughlin
Humans evolved in social, cooperative bands, using this cooperation as an evolutionary advantage. These days, rugged individualism still seems to dominate many outdoor activities from regular camping to bushcraft and even to rewilding. When people think of ancestral skills, they think mostly of…
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What is a Subsistence Economy and What Makes Them So Resilient w/ Dr. Helga Vierich
To attain the level of resilience that cultural rewilding calls for, requires moving away from an economy based on extraction for profit that lays waste to local ecosystems and destroys ancient ways that people have lived from the land. To move away we need alternatives, and examples of how other...
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The Reality of Hunter-Gatherers w/ Dr. Robert Kelly
Rewilding is about seeking a reciprocal relationship to the environment and to one another. Material and cultural conditions kept humans in relative check with their ecologies for potentially millions of years, so what were they? If we are to understand this, we must hold up a lens and look at…
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Rewilding Cities Through Place-making Permaculture w/ Mark Lakeman
City landscapes are perhaps the most decimated and human centric habitats in today’s world. These landscapes are in need of thoughtful rewilding. Cities are some of the most domesticated places, but also positioned in some of the most historically fertile places. Cities were built where they are,...
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Rewilding Your Connection to the Land Through Stories w/ Jason Godesky
The longer a culture exists in a place, the more stories they have of that place. These stories act a way for people to interact with the land where they live and also act as social filters for how to perceive the land as well. Stories also engage people with the landscape through their…
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Hunting and Gathering Like a BOSS w/ Randy Champagne
There are few opportunities for people living in modern contexts to experience what life would be like living in a band of hunter-gatherers. While there are still several cultures in the world living this way, most are protected from outsiders through organizations like Survival International....
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Rewilding as Anti-Fascism w/ Cara Delia Schwab
Fascist ideology has been on the rise, with a calculated effort on the part of fascists, to infiltrate environmental movements. Rewilding has seen its fair share of this over the years. As a return to our egalitarian roots, rewilding is the political opposite of fascism. And yet, there are foot...
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Community Rewilding in the City w/ Sharon Kallis
In this episode I’m talking shop with my friend and colleague Sharon Kallis. Sharon facilitates a community organization similar to Rewild Portland in Vancouver BC called Earthand Gleaners Society. She is an award winning artist who focuses on fiber arts through a locavore lens, by growing,...
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Never Alone w/ Woniya Thibeault
On this episode I am once again chatting with my friend and colleague Woniya Thibeault. This episode contains spoilers for the television series ALONE, of which Woniya has been a contestant on twice. If you haven’t watched season 6 or Alone Frozen, I recommend doing so before listening. Woniya…
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Rewilding in Eastern Australia w/ Eva Angophora
Rewilding looks different in places all around the world, but also shares many similarities: from settler-colonialism to mainstream co-option. In this episode we’ll be looking at Rewilding in Eastern Australia. My guest is Eva Angophora. Founder of Wild Beings, barefoot wanderer Eva has spent the...
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Subsistence Challenges w/ James V Morgan
Subsistence–the way we acquire our food–is a central aspect of rewilding. To talk with me both about the anthropology of subsistence but also the challenges and practicality of it is James V. Morgan. James is a former professional anthropologist who has spent nearly two decades studying and…
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Social Forestry w/ Hazel
Permaculture is a design science for creating regenerative landscapes. In rewilding, we often perceive it as a kind of technology based on ancient hunter-gatherer-horticultural subsistence strategies from around the world. While there are many valuable criticisms about permaculture (just as there...
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Rewilding in Britain w/ Scott Baine
For regular listeners to the podcast, and those entrenched in the rewilding movement, we know that rewilding looks different in various places, and has different meanings (sometimes often leading to conflict). While human, anarchic rewilding has been around just as long as conservation rewilding,...
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Animist Re-Engagement w/ Rune Hjarnø Rasmussen
I first learned about animism in the book The Story of B by Daniel Quinn. While the term animism was initially invented by anthropologists as a way of classifying place-based, indigenous religions the world over, it has taken on a much deeper and expansive meaning in recent years. In many ways it...
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The Fascist Threat w/ Alexander Reid Ross
Rewilding means a return to living in reciprocity with the ecologies in which we dwell, and with each other. It is a movement that critiques and rejects social hierarchies and authoritarianism as the “natural” state of humanity. Through contemporary anthropology, paleoanthropology, and…
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Living in a Material World w/ Daniel of WHAT IS POLITICS
Anthropology is at the core of rewilding. Understanding the various ways in which humans act and why, helps us draw a picture of what is possible for humanity. Rewilding pulls its inspiration from the millions of years that humans lived in relative harmony with our environments–without causing…
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Challenges with "Rewilding" w/ Kara Moses
In this episode I’m chatting with Kara Moses. Kara is a biologist and educator teaching nature connection, rewilding, wild living skills and woodland management. She is a writer, a climate activist, chair of the Cambrian Wildwood project in west Wales, she created Radical Nature Connection at the...
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Invasive Species in Rewilding w/ Tao Orion
In this episode I chat with Tao Orion. Tao holds a degree in Agroecology and Sustainable Agriculture from UC Santa Cruz and a MSc degree in Climate Change, Agriculture, and Food Security from the National University of Ireland, Galway. She is the author of Beyond the War on Invasive Species: A...
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Rewilding Contraception w/ Samantha Zipporah
My guest for this episode is Samantha Zipporah. Samantha is devoted to breaking the spells of oppression in reproductive & sexual health through education, healing & liberation. She has over 20 years of experience honing her craft as an educator, guide & caregiver tending to fertility, sex, &...
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Art, Storytelling, and Survival Skills in Rewilding w/ Hannes Wingate
Hannes Wingate is an artist, builder, designer, and outdoor survival-skills instructor. He was educated at Central St. Martins College of Art in London. He is known internationally for constructing giant, human sized nests from natural materials found within close range of the build site. He has...
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Death Work and Collapse w/ Rachael Rice
In this episode I talk with my friend, Rachael Rice. Rachael is an artist, writer, death worker and certified weirdo who crafts scroll-stopping content for people who want to shape change. Her work centers collapse-informed learnings about grief, death, myth, magic and meaning-making in pale…
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Dogs in Rewilding w/ David Ian Howe
In this episode of the Rewild Podcast I talk with David Ian Howe about dogs and rewilding. David is a professional archaeologist trying to popularize the science of anthropology, most often through comedic videos. He is known for his interest and expertise in understanding ethnocynology–the study...
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Collapse Care w/ Carmen Spagnola
On this episode of the Rewilding Podcast, I converse with Carmen Spagnola about the necessary self and community care that comes with the realization that we are living in a collapse. Carmen works at the intersection of somatics, trauma recovery, attachment, and mysticism. Her approach to…
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Rewilding Christianity
Seven in ten Americans identify as Christian. For a movement like rewilding to gain more traction, it must intersect with the belief systems of the culture at large on some level. I am not a Christian, though I am interested in the intersection of rewilding and christianity. Since I live in the...
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Rewilding Myth w/ Sophie Strand
In this episode I converse with writer Sophie Strand. I've found her writing to be particularly inspiring to my rewilding journey in terms of understanding and thinking about masculinity. However, we cover much more than that. Our conversation branches off in many directions, though the main…
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Day to Day Rewilding
Recently one of my patrons asked me what my day to day rewilding looked like. This is a glimpse into some of that, but also with perspective on what it might look like for others. Support the show
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The Overpopulation Problem w/ Jason Godesky
My guest today is Jason Godesky. Jason is an old friend and colleague of mine. We met in the early 2000’s on an internet chat board called “Ish Con” short for Ishmael Conference. It was a place to discuss the ideas presented in the books by Daniel Quinn. It was here that I gave Jason the…
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What is Rewilding?
In this episode I return to the theme of this podcast: rewilding. It's used in so many contexts now, from video games to outdoor clothing to lifestyle branding. But what does it really mean? Where did it emerge? How can we stay authentic to the meaning as it gets absorbed by mainstream…
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Depression & Rewilding w/ Sheila Henson
I’ve lived with depression for most of my life. I’ve learned to manage my symptoms in order to function and live a more fulfilling life. I’ve dedicated this episode to working through some of the areas of overlap between depression and rewilding. This is a very personal topic that lives close to…
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A Conversation w/ Author Lisa Wells
Lisa Wells is the author of Believers: Making a Life at the End of the World, The Fix, and winner of the Iowa Poetry Prize. Her essays have been published by The New York Times, Harper’s Magazine, Granta, The Believer, n+1 and others. She lives in Seattle and writes a column for Orion Magazine...
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Living the Handmade Life w/ Delia Ann Turner
In this episode I converse with someone who has greatly inspired me, Delia Ann Turner. Delia co-owns and operates The School of the Greenwood: For Creative Rewilding. Delia is an amazing craftsperson and educator. Our topics wandered from making hand crafts, living off the grid, traveling to…
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5 Ways to Start Rewilding
In this episode, I answer three questions from my patrons on patreon: 1. What is your advice for people just beginning on their rewilding journeys? 2. What is your favorite part of rewilding? 3. What are your favorite books for rewilders to use for help rewilding? Support the show
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Exploring "Cancel Culture" w/ Clementine Morrigan
Today I’m chatting with Clementine Morrigan, a prolific writer and podcaster covering a range of topics. In this conversation we talk about “cancel and call out culture” and the challenges of transcending punishment and imprisonment, in order to move toward a more egalitarian, transformative...
About this show
Are you looking at our society racked with disconnection, poor mental and physical health, social injustice, and the wanton destruction of the natural world and asking yourself, “What can I do?” Join experimental anthropologist Peter Michael Bauer as he converses with experts from many converging fields that help us craft cultures of resilience. Weaving together a range of topics from ecology to wilderness survival skills to permaculture, each episode deepens and expands your understanding of how to rewild yourself and your community.
Hosted by
Peter Michael Bauer