“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 PintoWhat can we learn from looking toward the margins of fungal histories? How do fungi resist dominant ways of thinking and knowing? And how does the trickster figure of Anansi relate to mycology?In this podcast episode, I’m honored to be speaking with Maria Pinto, an educator and the author of Fearless, Sleepless, Deathless: What Fungi Taught Me about Nourishment, Poison, Ecology, Hidden Histories, Zombies, and Black Survival.Join us as we dive into the past and present of mycophile worlds, then dream into our shared fungal futures ~ This is a public episode. If you'd like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit kamea.substack.com/subscribe

In this episode, I speak with Sophia Kai of Journal 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. This is a public episode. If you'd like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit kamea.substack.com/subscribe

“Indigenous cultures, languages have a lot to teach the world about a really different way to look at things.” – Anton TreuerI'm back this weekend to share with you my latest conversation with Anton Treuer, an Ojibwe author, professor public speaker dedicated to Indigenous language revitalization, education, and cultural understanding.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?Join us as we explore collective healing through working with land-based languages, deepening dialogue between the oppressor and the oppressed, and more! :) This is a public episode. If you'd like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit kamea.substack.com/subscribe

“When we turn towards one another, when we take care of one another, things can change. People can change.” — Solaris J. CapehartHow 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, I speak 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 and visions of advancement that are not neutral; how we can continue showing up for ourselves and our communities during precarious times; and more! This is a public episode. If you'd like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit kamea.substack.com/subscribe

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, I speak 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. This is a public episode. If you'd like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit kamea.substack.com/subscribe

“From 2021 to 2024, many people would be asking me, what evidence do you have that modernity is in decline? From January 2025, nobody asks me again this question specifically, because it’s so in your face now.” — Vanessa Machado de OliveiraThis week, I'm honored to bring you my round-two conversation with Vanessa Machado de Oliveira, whose latest book is Outgrowing Modernity: Navigating Complexity, Complicity, and Collapse with Accountability and Compassion.How do we sit with our fears and discomforts around collapse — and what does “collapse” even refer to? What might we miss when we demand quick fixes, takeaways, and condensed summaries — without allowing our bodies to ferment and feel through the experiences that could move us more deeply? And what does it mean to re-tune our literacy of the languages of the Earth?This was a really stimulating discussion. I feel like I'm still picking up on new things each time that I re-engage. So I highly recommend carving out a mindful hour for this potent offering!Enjoy!x kaméaP.S. Putting this here in case it reaches the right hands — I’m currently seeking literary representation for my forthcoming braided work of literary nonfiction on reorienting growth and staying human amid landscapes of fracture. If you are an agent (or know someone aligned), I’d be grateful for a connection! You can reach me at [email protected] I’m still reflecting on…There weren’t many parts of this conversation that felt caramelize-able into previews — which is interesting as that was part of the point. I loved how the conversation unfolded in a way that enacted meaning through form.This part of our conversation, for example, start touching on the limitations of seeking summaries, concepts, and frameworks to short-circuit deeper, more embodied learnings ~Green Dreamer Kaméa: “[…] All of the embodied and experiential unlearnings and relearnings that I’ve been through over the last 10 plus years — if I were to just simmer that down into like a verbal summary and had that delivered to the me from 10 years ago, it would not have landed.So I want to invite you to share more about this desire to ask for condensed summaries — and that stay at this level of the intellect and thinking mode that refuses to open itself up to all the experiential learnings that cannot be short-circuited.”Vanessa Machado de Oliveira: “Yeah, that is one of the greatest spells of modernity, right? That if we could contain reality in language, we can control and we can engineer based on it. And that then creates this desire for eloquence to solve the problems.We’ve been saying in my research collective that this is not an informational problem. It’s a relational one. And the expectation we place on language for getting things done, basically, we see that in academia, for example — if the next article could just describe and prescribe more eloquently or accessibly or whatever, things would change. And we know already it’s not the case.And I think in that case, AI can help us to saturate this desire for eloquent language because it gives us one version and then you say refresh it gives us another one and another one. It doesn’t matter how many times you say it or how beautifully you say it. We still have the relational problem.So in that sense, that pedestal of reason, which is the pedestal that expects eloquence to be what creates hierarchies of intelligence as well… That idea of intelligence is what got us into the mess we’re in as well, because we don’t then understand language first as something that weaves reality, but doesn’t represent reality and that has many meanings at the same time. It moves. It’s an entity. And it’s an entity that is not just verbal. It’s an entity that operates through embodiment as well. And it’s an entity that connects.So if you’re thinking about intelligence that way, intelligence is not a possession of an individual. Intelligence is what happens when there is the coupling. It happens in the field. It emerges from an assemblage. And then the measure of good intelligence or not very intelligent intelligence would be how connected it is, or whether there is or not a gap between what it wants to do and what’s metabolically possible.And I think that’s where we also got into a pickle here because more and more in modernity, especially at this stage, we want our framings of reality or our idealizations to contain the complexity of reality we’re facing. That gap between the ideal and the real is extremely far right now…”Then I had this question — how do we navigate needing to do the longer term, quieter, deeper work, while tending to crises that demand great urgency?Green Dreamer Kaméa: “I’m thinking of this metaphor of composting. There are all these [kitchen devices] nowadays designed for urban households to compost their food scraps. What they do is they mechanically grind up the food scraps, maybe in like an hour or two. Sometimes they’ll heat it up to a certain temperature. I'm not judging if that’s the best that people have access to in their context. But the quality and configuration of life within that resulting mechanically turned up shreds of food scraps, I don’t think can be [equated with] a pile of compost that is allowed the proper slow time for the microbes to slowly populate and dance with each other and process everything in the ways that they would.And at the same time, I’m thinking about how when there are crises that feel so dire and urgent, like genocides in Palestine, Sudan, Congo, and so forth, how do we understand this sort of slower work that requires time, and a level of depth and intimacy and embodied presence — in relation to that fabric of urgency?So how do we deal with the fact that these very important and necessary shifts that we need to make cannot happen fast enough for us to be able to immediately apply them to tend to some of these acute wounds that are literally bleeding entire peoples out right now?”Vanessa Machado de Oliveira: “Yeah, no, you said it very well. It’s the different layers of reality, and the floods are affecting different people differently.So in Portuguese, we have this saying that in a situation of a flood it’s only when the water reaches your bum that it’s even possible for you to swim, but depending on the current you even can’t, right? And some people have been swimming for a long time. And they cannot teach us how to swim.Lots of people want to go to Indigenous communities and say, okay, you have the knowledge. They have survival strategies, having to survive collapse for a long time. […] But it’s not a curriculum of things to be done because as you said, too, in different contexts, composting will need to be done differently. […]So back to your question. Yes, there is urgency for people who are experiencing collapse at different points differently. It’s not going to be a uniform process. It’s going to be very difficult to find universal values that can be applicable across the contexts especially for trying to do this through articulated language.But I do believe that underneath the language there’s another language that is not worded but it’s felt. And I do believe that because of the indeterminacy of our bodies, especially bodies that go through cycles, and I’m opening this to all bodies that go through cycles. If people are connected with that cyclical literacy of bodies, they have more access to the texture of that language…”And this part on the calling of this time ~Vanessa Machado de Oliveira: “Part of the job I think that we have right now is to actually sit with what's difficult and figuring out a way to do it without throwing up on ourselves or each other. But holding the bucket for each other is actually quite good. So without throwing up, without throwing a tantrum, without throwing in the towel, and without turning away.”Cozy up and tap in ~* Tune into our full audio discussion with the embedded audio player on Substack or via Green Dreamer EP469;* And join as a supporting subscriber to watch the full video version here!About our guest ~Vanessa Machado de Oliveira Andreotti is the former Dean of the Faculty of Education at the University of Victoria. She is the author of Hospicing Modernity: Facing humanity’s wrongs and the implications for social activism and Outgrowing Modernity: Navigating complexity, complicity and collapse (August 2025), and one of the founders of the Gesturing Towards Decolonial Futures Arts/Research Collective. Her latest work, Burnout From Humans: A Little Book About AI That is Not Really About AI, explores AI as a mirror and metaphor for human systems and invites readers to rethink relationality amidst planetary crises.Artistic credits ~(B/c we cherish art from real humans!!)* Follow and browse more from our episode artwork’s illustrator: Fernanda Peralta (Instagram @fernandaperalta_fbmp)* Jive to this episode’s musical offering: “Goodnight Moon Child” by Beautiful ChorusSink in deeper ~* Hospicing Modernity, a book by Vanessa Machado de Oliveira* Outgrowing Modernity, a book by Vanessa Machado de Oliveira* Check out the arts/research collective Gesturing Towards Decolonial Futures* Learn more about the Huni Kuin and Tremembé communities* The Spell of the Sensuous, a book by David Abram* Learn more about Māori philosopher Carl Mika* “A Speculative Inquiry Into Meta-Relational AI,” a report by Vanessa Machado de Oliveira and Aiden Cinnamon Tea* Check out my essay on AI, which engaged Vanessa’s work and experimentation with meta-relational AIRhizome out further ~* Vanessa Machado de Oliveira Andreotti: Allowing earth to dream through us (Ep338)* Tiokasin Ghosthorse: Learning from the Earth as an Elder (Ep460)* Farmer Rishi: How regenerative language can light the way towards planetary healing (Ep232)Imagine, embody, alchemize ~To support Green Dreamer and to translate our intellectual explorations into more embodied practice, I welcome you to join alchemize, our 12-week, audio-based program of daily imagination and creative practices — an experimental invitation to sit with the mess, stretch comforts and alternatives, and disrupt status quo ways of thinking, sensing, being, and relating. Learn more here.What’s next?Coming soon are my interviews with:* Zach Weiss of Water Stories — whose course on water cycle restoration is currently open for enrollment. Check it out here!* Liberian poet Solaris J. Capehart; and more…Stay tuned, and thank you so much for supporting our interviews and this reader-powered newsletter!! x This is a public episode. If you'd like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit kamea.substack.com/subscribe

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?Join Matthew Wolf-Meyer and me as we explore the social and cultural histories of our most visceral emotion, how disgust has been used as a tool of settler colonialism, and more.“Disgust is a barrier between people, fundamentally, or between people and substances. And I think it’s important for us to really confront those barriers in ways that unsettle our disgust.” – Matthew Wolf-MeyerCozy up and tap in ~Tune into our full audio discussion with the embedded audio player on Substack or via Green Dreamer EP468About our guest ~Matthew Wolf-Meyer is Professor of Science and Technology Studies at Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute in Troy, New York. His work focuses on medicine, science, and media in the United States, and draws on history, contemporary experiences, and popular representations of health and illness. Across his research, he focuses on how personhood and subjectivity are produced and transformed over the life course. This includes concerns about how the care of children and the elderly reflect cultural expectations of what it means to be normal, how the structure of families and other institutions reflect social concerns, and how attention to experiences of disability and illness can help build more inclusive societies.His first book, The Slumbering Masses: Sleep, Medicine, and Modern American Life (2012), is the first book-length social scientific study of sleep in the United States, and offers insight into the complex lived realities of disorderly sleepers, the long history of sleep science, and the global impacts of the exportation of American sleep.Artistic credits ~(B/c we cherish art from real humans!!)* Follow and browse more from our episode artwork’s illustrator: Katia Ostermayer Carneiro* Jive to this episode’s musical offering: “Peaches” by Isla Greenwood (@islagreenwood on Instagram) This is a public episode. If you'd like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit kamea.substack.com/subscribe

Why have the majority of coconut trees across the Hawaiian islands not been allowed to bring coconuts into fruition and maturity? What does it mean to nurture communities of sharing that are more relational, less transactional, and therefore less taxable? And how do Hawaiian ways of knowing — situating the intellectual and sensorial in the biocultural — fundamentally differ from Western epistemologies?In this conversation, I’m honored to be joined by Dr. Manulani Aluli Meyer (Manu), the author of Hoʻopono: Mutual emergence, and co-director of NiU Now!, a community cultural agroforestry movement emerging to affirm the importance of niu (coconut) and uluniu (coconut groves).Tune in as we explore the biocultural significance of coconut groves in Native Hawaiian culture, how the ongoing work of revitalizing uluniu supports community food sovereignty in Hawaiʻi, and more. This is a public episode. If you'd like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit kamea.substack.com/subscribe

What does it mean to bypass formalized structures of change-making and to engage in mutual aid? How does the philanthropy-nonprofit-industrial complex itself discourage systemic change? And how do we balance participation in immediate care response with the less visible, longer term, more mycelial work of rewiring community power?In this episode, I’m honored to speak with Dean Spade of Mutual Aid and Love in a F*cked Up World: How to Build Relationships, Hook Up and Raise Hell Together.Join us as we explore what it means to honor difference and expertise in activism without replicating oppressive hierarchy, reflect on lateral conflicts within the messy terrains of movement building, and more. This is a public episode. If you'd like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit kamea.substack.com/subscribe

This is a free preview of a paid episode. To hear more, visit kamea.substack.comWhat does it mean to bypass formalized structures of change-making and to engage in mutual aid? How does the philanthropy-nonprofit-industrial complex itself discourage systemic change? And how do we balance participation in immediate care response with the less visible, longer term, more mycelial work of rewiring community power?In this episode, I’m honored to speak with Dean Spade of Mutual Aid and Love in a F*cked Up World: How to Build Relationships, Hook Up and Raise Hell Together.Join us as we explore what it means to honor difference and expertise in activism without replicating oppressive hierarchy, reflect on lateral conflicts within the messy terrains of movement building, and more.