“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 episode, Aya shares about both the symbols and material history of watermelon and prickly pear in Palestine, emphasizing the history of the plants as integral to their current uses. From reminders of resilience and patience to subtle efforts of resistance, plants can be helpful teachers on our paths towards liberation, and this episode leaves us with the sweet promise of freedom and liberation to come.

Let this conversation be an invitation to look more closely at the lands and living beings of Palestine. If Aya’s stories moved you, take the next step: learn from the farmers and stewards keeping these lifeways alive. Explore the work of Palestinian growers, deepen your understanding of their traditions, and support their harvests through Olive Odyssey. Every gesture of connection helps nourish a culture, a landscape, and a people rooted in resilience.

Olive Odyssey brings together farmers from across Palestine with a shared purpose: to tell the story of the Palestinian people through the food they produce. Their mission is simple yet powerful — each bottle reflects a deep connection to the land and a commitment to sustainable, community-centered practices. To learn more about the farmers, their methods, and to source olive oil and recipes, visit https://oliveodyssey.com.

Learn more about this episode by visiting https://www.forthewild.world

Plants Are Political is based on Olive Odyssey’s series by the same name.

Learn more at https://www.forthewild.world

Credits
Music for this episode was composed by Doe Paoro from her album “Living Through Collapse.” For The Wild is created by Ayana Young, Erica, Ekrem, Julia Jackson, and Victoria Pham.

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“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 role in Palestinian kitchens. Aya details the ban placed on foraging Za’atar by Israel and its selective enforcement against Palestinians. Despite encroachments on their land and these restrictive practices, Aya emphasizes connection to the land down to the very flavor of Palestinian food and the scent of Palestinian kitchens. Colonizing forces try to separate people and the land, but as Aya speaks, it is clear that this separation is neither sustainable nor wholly possible.

Let this conversation be an invitation to look more closely at the lands and living beings of Palestine. If Aya’s stories moved you, take the next step: learn from the farmers and stewards keeping these lifeways alive. Explore the work of Palestinian growers, deepen your understanding of their traditions, and support their harvests through Olive Odyssey. Every gesture of connection helps nourish a culture, a landscape, and a people rooted in resilience.

Olive Odyssey brings together farmers from across Palestine with a shared purpose: to tell the story of the Palestinian people through olive oil. Their mission is simple yet powerful — each bottle reflects a deep connection to the land and a commitment to sustainable, community-centered practices. To learn more about the farmers, their methods, and to source olive oil, za’atar, recipes, and more, visit https://oliveodyssey.com.

Plants Are Political is based on Olive Odyssey’s series by the same name.

Credits
Music for this episode is “Rosa” and “Anima” composed by Doe Paoro from her album “Living Through Collapse.” For The Wild is created by Ayana Young, Erica, Ekrem, Julia Jackson, and Victoria Pham.

Learn more at https://www.forthewild.world

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“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 shares how olive trees shape Palestinian life through everyday routines and long-held traditions. Families structure their seasons around trips to the groves and the olive press, gathering to harvest, share meals, and pass down knowledge. Even in dense urban areas, many keep a single olive tree on a crowded balcony as a living reminder of home. Olives are rooted in memory, community, and resilience and remain deeply defining across the region. This powerful aspect of culture goes far beyond the material. It is a sacred connection to the land and its abundance, a means of making community both with neighbors and with the world, and a crucial reminder of resistance and resilience.

Let this conversation be an invitation to look more closely at the lands and living beings of Palestine. If Aya’s stories moved you, take the next step: learn from the farmers and stewards keeping these lifeways alive. Explore the work of Palestinian growers, deepen your understanding of their traditions, and support their harvests through Olive Odyssey. Every gesture of connection helps nourish a culture, a landscape, and a people rooted in resilience.

Olive Odyssey brings together farmers from across Palestine with a shared purpose: to tell the story of the Palestinian people through olive oil. Their mission is simple yet powerful — each bottle reflects a deep connection to the land and a commitment to sustainable, community-centered practices. To learn more about the farmers, their methods, and to source olive oil and recipes, visit https://oliveodyssey.com.

Plants Are Political is based on Olive Odyssey’s series by the same name.

Learn more at https://www.forthewild.world

Credits
Music for this episode was composed by Doe Paoro from her album “Living Through Collapse.” For The Wild is created by Ayana Young, Erica, Ekrem, Julia Jackson, and Victoria Pham.

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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 dialogue between artists, miners, and community members, reimagining mined landscapes as spaces of regeneration and cultural reconnection. This episode serves as a homage to how creative work can support healing for the land and open new pathways of relationship and understanding.

As we conclude this series, we sit in deep gratitude for the land that made this series possible and for all of the guests, community members, and team members with Illuminating Worldviews who brought it to life. This episode, and the series as whole, stand as a testament to the importance of this vital collective work.

Learn more at https://forthewild.world.

Credits
This series was produced thanks to the generous support of the team at Illuminating Worldviews, held by the RIVER collective and Northern Council for Global Cooperation.

♫ The music from this episode is “After the Rain” by Cole Pulice courtesy of Leaving Records, “So Long Favorite” by Chaz Prymek, and “Spinning Sphere” by Lior Holzman.

This episode was created by Ayana Young, Erica Ekrem, Julia Jackson, and Victoria Pham.

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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 act of bearing witness to a system that is unraveling.

Vanessa and Ayana then explore the tools that may accompany us on our way towards existing differently. From efforts of grounding, to AI, to relationality, they consider how we may grow to think and move into the beyond. We have been conditioned to forget our belonging to Earth, to one another, to death itself. What thread might pull us back together?

Learn more at https://forthewild.world.

Credits
This series was produced thanks to the generous support of the team at Illuminating Worldviews, held by the RIVER collective and Northern Council for Global Cooperation.

The music from this episode is “After the Rain” and “In a Hidden Nook Between Worlds I” by Cole Pulice courtesy of Leaving Records and “I Believe in Being Ready” by Rising Appalachia.

This episode was created by Ayana Young, Erica Ekrem, Julia Jackson, and Victoria Pham.

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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 honors the autonomy, expression, and sense of belonging it nurtures within the community.

This episode includes an excerpt from the premiere of the powerful short film The River That Untangles One’s Mind by Skaydu.û Jules, Guná Jensen, and X̱’unei Lance Twitchell, produced by Douglas Joe/Creative Crow Media.

Learn more at https://forthewild.world.

Credits
This series was produced thanks to the generous support of the team at Illuminating Worldviews, held by the RIVER collective and Northern Council for Global Cooperation.

The music from this episode is “After the Rain” by Cole Pulice courtesy of Leaving Records, “Apple with Honey” by Cory Feder, and “Oro” and “ Voces que Ven” by Palo-Mah.

This episode was created by Ayana Young, Erica Ekrem, Julia Jackson, and Victoria Pham.

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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 Brown and Elder Mark Wedge to discuss emotional competency and how we can regulate ourselves amidst all that this world brings. What does it mean to have a colonized heart? Is it to separate ourselves from our emotions? Touching upon the role of feeling in our overall wellbeing, they highlight how emotional regulation and connection are essential to the work of decolonization. This episode is a resounding testament to the healing that comes from embodiment and fully felt experience.

Learn more at https://forthewild.world.

Credits
This series was produced thanks to the generous support of the team at Illuminating Worldviews, held by the RIVER collective and Northern Council for Global Cooperation.

The music from this episode is “After the Rain” by Cole Pulice courtesy of Leaving Records, “Hyacinth and Apollo” by Carlisle Evans Peck, and “Marakaté” by Palo-Mah.

This episode was created by Ayana Young, Erica Ekrem, Julia Jackson, and Victoria Pham.

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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 world as our larger living body. Her words are a balm for those navigating despair, helping us move through paralysis toward collective transformation and action.

A renowned scholar and activist, Joanna Macy created Work That Reconnects, a transformative framework for facing ecological and social crises. Her legacy lives on through decades of writing, teaching, and deep spiritual and ecological insight.

We invite you to listen again as we honor her enduring guidance and presence.

Learn more at https://forthewild.world/listen/joanna-macy-on-the-world-as-lover-and-self-homage

Credits

Music by Anne Carol Mitchell, Roberta Flack, Pharoah Sanders, and Roy Harper

This episode was created by Ayana Young, Erica Ekrem, Julia Jackson, and Victoria Pham.

Cover art: Vintage National Geographic

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