Missing Witches - October 23, 2022


MW+ Vandana Shiva： In Nature's Economy The Currency Is Not Money, It Is Life.

Topics
seed saving
WF Carol Gigliotti： The Creative Lives Of Animals WF Shabina Lafleur-Ganji： Plants Are Smarter Than We Think

Episode Stats


Length

35 minutes

Words per minute

133.57

Word count

4,800

Sentence count

147

Harmful content

Misogyny

15

sentences flagged

Toxicity

25

sentences flagged

Hate speech

21

sentences flagged


Transcript

Transcript generated with Whisper (turbo).
Misogyny classifications generated with MilaNLProc/bert-base-uncased-ear-misogyny .
Toxicity classifications generated with s-nlp/roberta_toxicity_classifier .
Hate speech classifications generated with facebook/roberta-hate-speech-dynabench-r4-target .
Topics generated with Qwen2.5-3B-Instruct.
00:00:00.000 The Missing Witches Project is entirely listener-supported, and listener, we want you to join us.
00:00:06.940 Do you want to be part of a community that helps make public research into marginalized ideas?
00:00:12.540 Do you want to join in interviews with all these magical people and meet other anti-racist,
00:00:18.660 trans-inclusive, neuroqueer feminist practitioners of different kinds from all over the world
00:00:24.080 in our monthly circles? Or are you maybe just down to send a little money magic 0.98
00:00:29.660 towards these stories and ideas and the causes we support?
00:00:34.680 Anyway, either way, check out MissingWitches.com to learn more about us.
00:00:39.840 And please know, we've been missing you.
00:00:44.020 And one last thing before we start.
00:00:46.680 The stories we tell require a general content warning.
00:00:49.660 It's just a fact of this terrain of interrogating what is missing.
00:00:54.880 We promise to hold those moments with care. 1.00
00:00:57.940 You aren't being a proper woman. 1.00
00:00:59.660 therefore you must be a witch. You must be a witch. The Bader-Meinhof phenomenon, otherwise 1.00
00:01:10.620 known as the frequency illusion or recency bias, is a situation where something you recently
00:01:17.560 learned about suddenly seems to appear everywhere. It's an illusion. It was always there, but when
00:01:25.220 you know, you notice. When you know, you see, and what is seen cannot be unseen. For us witches,
00:01:34.260 unconcerned with the lines people place on their realities, it's not a matter of dismissing
00:01:40.340 illusions, but rather digging into them to think on synchronicity and examine why this message
00:01:48.340 is suddenly being delivered again and again.
00:01:53.020 Such is my story of Vandana Shiva,
00:01:56.160 tree hugger,
00:01:57.540 seed freedom activist,
00:01:59.560 author of 20 books,
00:02:01.560 an eco-feminist who will never be overcome by hopelessness,
00:02:05.260 no matter how tough the situation, 1.00
00:02:07.840 and who directs our attention to a tiny speck
00:02:11.500 that is the first link in the food chain,
00:02:14.800 seeding all life.
00:02:16.520 I was looking for books about ecofeminism.
00:02:20.360 I was looking for co-authored books with an ingrained sense of collaboration.
00:02:25.520 So when I found a book called Ecofeminism, co-authored by two women, it felt like cosmic validation.
00:02:33.520 Maybe that validation is an illusion.
00:02:37.760 Bader Meinhof.
00:02:39.800 Or maybe, just maybe,
00:02:43.120 It's the universe, telling me where to look and when to look there
00:02:48.380 I had never heard of Vandana Shiva
00:02:51.060 And now I see her everywhere
00:02:54.580 She's in conversation with Jane Goodall and on podcasts with Russell Brand
00:02:59.740 There's a new documentary about her
00:03:02.160 And we are connected
00:03:04.220 Born in India in 1952
00:03:08.880 Vandana moved to Ontario, Canada, where I'm from
00:03:13.120 year I was born. And we share a publishing house, North Atlantic Books. And, more interestingly for
00:03:20.720 our purposes, we are connected because Vandana was inspired, as Risa was in episode 71 of this
00:03:28.360 Missing Witches podcast, as we all were and are, by Gora Devi and the Chipko movement, to hug trees
00:03:36.220 and protect them. But before we go much farther, let's take a moment to define for ourselves what
00:03:43.920 it means to be a witch. In my way of thinking, we aren't so much calling these visionaries,
00:03:49.760 these dissidents, witches, but rather adding them to a pantheon of role models in an attempt to
00:03:57.060 find the witchness we've been missing and define that word for ourselves. If you can't or won't
00:04:03.740 call yourself a witch, what words might you use? Eco-feminist? Vanguard? Spiritual politico?
00:04:12.820 Plant punk? Sacred community builder? Earth activist? Tree hugger? Vandana Shiva is all
00:04:20.580 these things and more. So while we continue our investigation into that missing part of ourselves,
00:04:27.720 Vandana can help us to seed our sovereignty and fruit our freedom.
00:04:33.540 We place the witch at the intersection of art and science, knowledge and imagination,
00:04:39.640 the bizarre and the holy, emotion and logic, physics and philosophy, the head and the heart.
00:04:49.000 At this crossroad we find Vandana Shiva, waiting impatiently for the world to meet her there and go to seed.
00:04:57.720 She wrote,
00:04:58.540 Physics was my passion, and my chosen profession.
00:05:02.940 In school, I received the Science Talent Scholarship,
00:05:06.140 which gave me the opportunity to train in India's leading scientific institutions.
00:05:11.940 I trained to be a nuclear physicist in the Baba Atomic Research Center,
00:05:17.680 but moved to theoretical physics when my sister, Mira, a medical doctor,
00:05:22.760 made me aware of nuclear hazards.
00:05:24.960 I realized then that most science is partial.
00:05:30.540 I wanted to practice a holistic science and was drawn to quantum theory for its non-reductionist, non-mechanist paradigm.
00:05:39.140 Before leaving for Canada to do my PhD in the foundations of quantum theory,
00:05:44.220 I wanted to visit my favorite places in the Himalaya where I had grown up.
00:05:48.440 But the forest and streams had disappeared.
00:05:50.860 The rich oak forests, which absorb the monsoon rains to release the water slowly as streams
00:05:59.840 Has been cut down in the insane rush to build dams and roads and to grow apples
00:06:06.580 In looking for a new way to deal with this personally experienced loss 0.97
00:06:12.360 I became a volunteer for the Chipko movement
00:06:14.920 The movement to embrace trees to prevent their being cut
00:06:18.160 Every vacation from 1974 to 1981 found me back in the Himalayan village of Terigarwal,
00:06:27.040 and often in the ashram of Bimla and Sunderlal Bahaguna,
00:06:32.540 Gandhians who played a leading role in supporting the women who had spontaneously started the movement. 0.99
00:06:37.880 By 1981, the government was forced to recognize the wisdom of the Chipko,
00:06:42.740 That the primary products of the forest are soil, water, and pure air 1.00
00:06:49.140 Not timber, resin, and revenues
00:06:52.580 Logging was banned in the Himalaya above 1,000 meters
00:06:56.600 Though I had grown up in the forests of the Himalaya 0.53
00:06:59.980 It was the Chipko movement that awakened my ecological consciousness 1.00
00:07:03.620 And made me deeply aware of the relationship between ecological destruction and the creation of poverty 0.60
00:07:10.400 I often say that I have learned my ecology in Chipko University, with ordinary peasant women as my teachers. 0.55
00:07:19.340 One of the slogans that emerged from the Chipko was that forestry should shift from commercial forestry to social forestry, 1.00
00:07:27.320 in service of nature and society.
00:07:30.320 Vandana took what she calls the difficult and challenging path of trying to combine scientific research with social and ecological responsibility.
00:07:42.640 Her master's degree is in the philosophy of science, a branch of philosophy concerned with the foundations, methods, and implications of science.
00:07:51.420 The implications of science.
00:07:55.880 Not just the can we, but the should we.
00:08:00.320 Every ecological problem, she says, comes from this illusion that we are separate from nature.
00:08:07.020 And once again, we see how even illusions can and do shape our material lives.
00:08:17.080 Vandana ties biodiversity to the diversity of thought,
00:08:21.760 rallying against what she calls a monoculture of the mind.
00:08:25.780 Agricultural monocultures are nutritionally impoverished, and similarly, a singularly focused monoculture of the mind is spiritually and intellectually impoverished.
00:08:40.780 For plants and humans, collaboration works against monoculture.
00:08:46.480 Vandana co-wrote the book Ecofeminism in 1993 with German anarchist and radical feminist sociologist Maria Mize, combining Western and Southern feminism with environmental, technological, and feminist issues, all incorporated under the term ecofeminism, to make sure that this work had a diversity of thought.
00:09:11.080 We can see that knowledge as old as science itself is being dismissed, destroyed for its lack of profitability, in the same way that we have decided what is weed and what is not weed, what is desirable or not, what is useful or not.
00:09:32.000 Who and what should be uprooted and who and what can stay.
00:09:37.600 Vandana wrote,
00:10:07.600 is thus destroyed in plant communities and forest and peasant communities because in commercial
00:10:14.640 logic it is not useful. And, as Cotton Mather, the famous witch hunter of Salem, Massachusetts,
00:10:22.020 has stated, what is not useful is vicious. We witches are weeds, tagged as undesirable,
00:10:32.340 threatening, vitally erased because we're not useful to capitalism, growing where we're not 0.97
00:10:39.500 wanted to grow. We witches are weeds, invasive, rewilding, and as such we are vicious and must 0.88
00:10:50.080 be destroyed. In her essay Empowering Women, Vandana quotes Gandhi, the earth has enough for 0.99
00:10:57.000 everyone's needs, but not for some people's greed. She herself has been called the Gandhi of grain.
00:11:05.720 The Green Revolution in India was initiated in the 1960s by introducing high-yielding varieties
00:11:12.080 of rice and wheat to increase food production in order to alleviate hunger and poverty.
00:11:19.500 That sounds great, right? Alleviate hunger and poverty, but much like we saw when wolves were
00:11:25.680 reintroduced into Yellowstone? Biodiversity, or lack thereof, has a massive exponential
00:11:33.780 and cascading effect through the whole ecosystem. Vandana wrote, the biodiversity of Punjab has
00:11:40.780 disappeared and been replaced by monocultures of wheat and rice. Diseases and pests have exploded
00:11:48.160 and with them, the use of pesticides. Chemicals also need massive inputs of water, overuse of
00:11:54.840 water for chemical farming has led to desertification. In terms of health or farmers'
00:12:00.480 incomes, the Green Revolution has not created growth. It has created poverty and underdevelopment.
00:12:08.640 The creation of seed monopolies, the destruction of alternatives, the collection of super-profits
00:12:14.980 in the form of royalties from seed patents, and the increasing vulnerability of monocultures
00:12:20.760 has created a context for debt, suicides, and farms in distress in India. Vandana supports the
00:12:30.300 idea of seed freedom, or the rejection of patents on new plant lines or cultivars. She has campaigned
00:12:37.240 against the implementation of the WTO 1994 trade-related intellectual property rights,
00:12:45.020 which broadens the scope of patents to include life forms.
00:12:49.940 She calls the patenting of life biopiracy
00:12:52.540 and has fought against attempted patents of several indigenous plants,
00:12:57.020 such as basmati rice.
00:12:59.660 Food production must once again be an issue of sustainability, she says.
00:13:04.160 Taking care of the earth and the human right to food
00:13:07.300 must be an inalienable right.
00:13:10.820 In a video on YouTube called How to Decolonize the Global Economy, no small task, Vandana asks,
00:13:19.080 Where is the dividing line between civilization and the wild? These concepts are rooted in
00:13:26.320 colonialism. She goes on, It's in our hands. If we turn to the earth and her biodiversity,
00:13:33.420 We turn to the forests as our teachers, to the plants as our teachers, and we can turn to all of humanity as one family, and all biodiversity as one family.
00:13:47.940 We can move from greed to care.
00:13:52.180 Say it with me now, witches.
00:13:54.540 We can move from greed to care.
00:13:57.660 We can move from greed to care.
00:14:00.540 We can move from greed to care
00:14:05.700 In Earth Democracy, Justice, Sustainability, and Peace
00:14:10.280 She wrote, the fight for truth is not just our right as free citizens of free societies
00:14:16.960 It is our duty as citizens of the earth
00:14:20.540 Whenever we engage in consumption or production patterns which take more than we need
00:14:27.100 We are engaging in violence
00:14:30.220 In nature's economy, the currency is not money, it is life.
00:14:37.280 So how do we change? How do we value life over money?
00:14:41.780 How do we re-establish for ourselves that link between us and literally everything else,
00:14:48.820 the air, water, and earth?
00:14:50.940 When we look around our 21st century, we see famine, corruption, war that feels unstoppable,
00:14:56.560 and it's overwhelming to be tiny seeds poking our heads out of the soil to be met with such horrors.
00:15:04.320 But despite the complexity of the issues we face, Vandana has simple advice.
00:15:10.860 Seed saving is the most important thing to do in our times, she said.
00:15:16.560 The nature of seed is to go to seed, to multiply, to be shared.
00:15:22.180 And all the new laws are designed to prevent us from saving seed.
00:15:28.300 To make seed uniform rather than diverse.
00:15:32.400 You're a scientist when you start saving seeds.
00:15:37.560 Seed saving is remarkably easy.
00:15:41.760 Cut open a ripe fruit, remove the seeds, save them, plant them.
00:15:47.780 How often can we say that the most important thing to do in our times is actually pretty simple?
00:15:55.980 So I'd love for this missing witch's coven to try something today that is that rare combination of important and easy.
00:16:05.400 Even if you don't have a place to plant, I'd love if, the next time you eat an apple, to remove a seed. 0.96
00:16:13.880 Examine it.
00:16:15.500 Thank it.
00:16:17.040 And marvel at the miracles held within the genetic data that keeps us all alive.
00:16:23.860 Or celebrate Samhain by lovingly separating the pumpkin guts from seeds as you carve your jack-o'-lantern.
00:16:31.700 Roasting them with herbs and spices.
00:16:34.080 And as you chew, be amazed, thoughtful, and grateful.
00:16:40.520 feel connected. Vandana says that there has been a severing of the link, not just the link,
00:16:49.360 the understanding between human beings and the planet they live on. They scramble the
00:16:54.580 intelligence that connects eggs to hens, milk to cows, food to forests, water to rivers,
00:17:05.200 air to life and the earth to human existence.
00:17:10.740 It's strange to me that during those two world wars,
00:17:15.440 citizens were encouraged to plant and tend what they called victory gardens,
00:17:21.500 encouraged to create their own food sources during times of scarcity.
00:17:25.740 Meanwhile, in the 21st century, a full 2% of land in the United States
00:17:32.660 is taken up with residential lawns, and homeowners associations and increasing urbanization make it
00:17:39.000 difficult or impossible to grow food at home. We are discouraged from creating our own food sources,
00:17:46.920 discouraged from sharing. Lawns and their maintenance produce more greenhouse gases than
00:17:52.460 they absorb. Suburban biodiversity deserts have contributed to vanishing insect populations.
00:17:59.360 Residential lawns require more irrigation than any agricultural crop grown in the country.
00:18:06.440 And all they give us in return is a false sense of control and uniformity.
00:18:12.400 And this is what capitalism wants to see happen with our food.
00:18:16.420 For seeds to be classified as intellectual property.
00:18:19.840 For sharing and providing for ourselves and our community to be criminalized.
00:18:24.760 It's overwhelming to battle against this monoculture of both food and mind.
00:18:31.180 And this story, too, could have taken us to dark and confusing places.
00:18:35.600 Conspiracy theories and the depths to which greed will sink.
00:18:40.740 But Vandana has been fighting this battle for decades. 0.99
00:18:43.960 She doesn't tire, and she doesn't give up.
00:18:46.540 So instead of spiraling through depressing and terrifying projections and statistics,
00:18:51.380 let's end this segment like seeds.
00:18:53.540 Reaching up out of the darkness and into the light
00:18:57.840 With a rallying cry from Vandana herself
00:19:01.380 And whether this validation is an illusion or not
00:19:06.200 May her words seed something real in you today
00:19:10.840 I do not allow myself to be overcome by hopelessness
00:19:14.820 No matter how tough the situation
00:19:17.040 I believe that if you just do your little bit
00:19:20.600 without thinking of the bigness of what you stand against,
00:19:23.960 if you turn to the enlargement of your own capacities.
00:19:29.180 Just that itself creates new potential.
00:19:32.320 And I've learned from the Bhagavad Gita and other teachings from our culture
00:19:36.100 to detach myself from the results of what I do.
00:19:39.880 Because those are not in my hands.
00:19:42.680 The context is not in your control, but your commitment is yours to make.
00:19:48.620 And you can make the deepest commitment with a total detachment about where it will take you.
00:19:54.780 You want it to lead to a better world, and you shape your actions and take full responsibility for them,
00:20:00.100 but then you have detachment.
00:20:02.200 And that combination of deep passion and deep detachment allows me to take on the next challenge.
00:20:09.580 Because I don't cripple myself, I don't tie myself in knots.
00:20:13.580 I function like a free being.
00:20:16.200 I think getting that freedom is a social duty
00:20:20.440 Because I think we owe each other
00:20:22.420 Because I think we owe it to each other
00:20:24.680 Not to burden each other with prescription and demands
00:20:28.940 I think that what we owe each other is a celebration of life
00:20:34.060 And to replace fear and hopelessness
00:20:37.460 With fearlessness and joy
00:20:41.000 hi Risa
00:20:47.420 I thought um you might want to talk a bit about Amrita Devi and Gora Devi
00:20:56.800 oh oh yeah I mean what a tradition what an inspiring tradition to think about right like 0.99
00:21:07.200 i think it's like 1600s that this first bishnoi act of trying to protect a tree with your fucking 0.93
00:21:18.800 life and being murdered for it like triggers what then becomes the chipco yeah yeah so we've written
00:21:30.800 about those women before that tradition um those sort of heroes of the chipco movement this idea 1.00
00:21:38.080 of tree huggers that actually comes from these real women like low income low education women 0.98
00:21:44.800 understanding what these like as sophie strand says these like monologuing pathogens don't 0.95
00:21:52.600 understand you know that that the idea of social forestry or like the idea that the biodiversity
00:21:58.680 is crucial we can't just have one crop we can't just have one perspective we'll all die i mean
00:22:06.060 they're literally they're watching mudslides take out their communities because the trees
00:22:11.700 have been cut down so it's this very lived experience and very like localized experience
00:22:19.920 it's like very specific the insights that are available to a specific place and to
00:22:25.600 perceptions that are tied to the animals and species in that place you know that those those
00:22:33.080 are the real insights those are the and and it's like those are the that's why we need like an
00:22:37.740 open source culture or an open source seed culture you know um we need that that diversity of
00:22:45.380 perspectives because that monologuing pathogen that it's like the ego out of control it's like
00:22:51.420 that one perspective that just kind of in a terror of replication just wants to like 0.99
00:22:59.460 eat everything until it just lives in a universe of its own shit I think that's a good description 0.96
00:23:05.540 of capitalism but it's it's so interesting to me that we see this like mirroring of like 0.98
00:23:13.240 you know what Vandana calls like monoculture and then monoculture of the mind you know there's like
00:23:18.080 biodiversity and then there's like cultural diversity and this is this is what we're aiming
00:23:22.700 toward and this is what our current system is aiming against right and I think we see this in
00:23:28.800 like the the I'll say defamation of of the the term tree hugger you know when I was growing up
00:23:37.340 like tree hugger was like a navel gazer like you know a pothead like someone you know a flanner
00:23:45.060 as we we say in French like someone who just kind of you know ditzy like that was the that was the 0.98
00:23:53.840 painting the ditzy hippie for sure exactly but like the actual movement was like very fucking 0.92
00:24:01.320 real and you know there was nothing ditzy about it no no I mean like a couple hundred women and 0.96
00:24:09.000 children were murdered the first time as they tried to protect their trees and then the second
00:24:14.560 you know went for um i have it mixed up in my head
00:24:19.620 which one was gora and which one was amrita because amrita definitely got her head chopped 0.99
00:24:28.080 off okay while her children watched yeah so yeah and then when gora devi comes and she's been like 1.00
00:24:36.300 you know part of the chipco movement hearing about she i think she ran or she was often a guest on 0.97
00:24:42.040 like a a local radio station and so she would kind of she was this organizer leader single mom 0.98
00:24:49.640 um so she's the one they came to find kids came to find when uh the workers came to cut down the 0.99
00:24:57.880 trees after the men in the village had been like tricked out of the village to get a payment or
00:25:01.800 whatever and so she's the one and she and her and the women and children hugged the trees again and
00:25:07.540 this time you know I like that idea too that like you know a couple hundred years later inspired by
00:25:14.500 the same gesture and knowing what the result of that gesture was that it was murder that they
00:25:21.120 chose that same gesture and this time it worked like this time it stopped them this time like it
00:25:29.360 resonated differently with them it gives me a little bit of hope a seed of hope can we say
00:25:36.320 I'll take it you know the seed stuff is so interesting and so complicated like
00:25:42.620 um I think you know we do a disservice to the complexity of the question by just being like
00:25:51.500 everything genetically modified is bad because farmers have been genetically modifying crops
00:26:00.400 by like interbreeding or whatever crops on their land like making low hyper local hyper specific
00:26:08.680 variants on their land and the balance of their land for thousands and thousands of years so but
00:26:15.400 I think you know Vandana Shiva she's really specific I think she gets summarized sometimes
00:26:20.680 in speeches as being just like anti-GMO which maybe she is and I'm I'm like over interpreting
00:26:25.620 but it seems to me like what she's talking about is more subtle it's like it's patenting
00:26:30.140 seeds it's the closed sourcing yeah of the the like shared life of this earth that's super
00:26:39.640 fucked up you know it's like it's like people holding a patent for the first mapping of the 0.99
00:26:45.100 human genome like that shouldn't be fucking allowed that shit's backwards yeah and i think 0.99
00:26:51.960 what what we need to do is maybe like think more specifically in our terminology we use these 0.99
00:26:57.620 umbrella terms like genetically modified but like that's what evolution does yeah evolution
00:27:03.460 genetically modifies this is perfectly natural to have some kind of genetic modification but again
00:27:09.300 when we seed capitalism into our seed mixture like can we call it like you know terrifying
00:27:16.920 dystopian genetic modification that's it yeah like making these these versions of rice
00:27:25.780 like the golden rice you know that address the vitamin a deficiency that could save
00:27:31.420 230 000 children's lives a year like that's a very noble cause but then saying that that
00:27:41.340 is you know that we have to accept a patented closed source rice as a solution to a problem
00:27:51.420 caused by colonialism and inequality and the stripping of the land like I understand why
00:27:57.840 Vandana Shiva is like this is a bit of a Trojan horse right like in this particular instance you
00:28:04.140 know they're saying these corporations aren't involved and we don't make money on the patent
00:28:08.200 and Monsanto's like you know you can have the golden rice seed for free as long as you don't 0.99
00:28:14.120 make more than ten thousand dollars like she's right it is a Trojan horse it is a fucking slippery 0.98
00:28:19.780 like accept this thing that will cure that will save your children's lives and it means accepting 0.96
00:28:26.820 like privatized seeds that with that don't enter that don't know how to interact in your local
00:28:34.500 ecosystem and that can that we've seen in other instances can just generate even worse relationships
00:28:41.220 with local fungus or another you know another bacteria or whatever decimate the whole area like
00:28:48.260 it's just not that it's not as we say like it's not it's not obvious how to do it but thinking
00:28:54.340 that like one closed source corporation that profits massively from owning the intellectual
00:29:03.380 property to do it is gonna save the day for the starving kids who are over by colonialism 0.59
00:29:09.540 i don't think that's right i i think i think she's right to resist it i think she's a badass
00:29:14.180 who's right to resist it yeah and it rings of that like you know horrible again the the depths
00:29:21.780 to which greed will sink are always mind-blowing to me but the nestle bringing formula into certain
00:29:30.120 places um because you know again they were trying to feed children and help people and that was this
00:29:36.760 trojan horse you know right and also selling the bottled water and also like undermining clean
00:29:42.520 water regulations you know and unlike and then also like bullying women who needed to use formula
00:29:50.940 like i don't know that they're trying to have it every every way yeah yeah so i think that that's
00:29:58.840 the scary thing about like yeah we're going to you know solve vitamin a deficiency with this thing
00:30:04.900 that you have to buy that you can know can't get from anywhere else and sooner or later this is
00:30:10.000 going to be the only option because it's the only crop that's allowed to grow in this country like
00:30:15.160 yeah you know a lot of Vandana's critics are like do you know how many people would starve if
00:30:20.340 you know we didn't have these like wheat fields and these rice fields and again
00:30:25.000 but it's like it's a little more complicated than that yeah and I mean I do think there's room for
00:30:31.000 that critique like it is it is complicated you know like it's the staying with the trouble
00:30:37.740 idea you know like we can't we can't we can't escape the fact that we are here right now
00:30:44.540 where like you know billions of people are going blind and are dying from billions people are going
00:30:52.360 blind hundreds of thousands of people are dying from this vitamin a deficiency that can be
00:30:57.360 successfully helped with this rice crop like i think i just i wonder i don't know what the like
00:31:03.800 visionary middle is the the like staying with the trouble i think it has to do with open source um
00:31:11.800 because i think it has to do with the commons so open source is like an idea of common like
00:31:16.440 intellectual property as commons which is related to the land as common so i think those two
00:31:22.040 movements really need each other um and the more that like we can protect and
00:31:30.520 yeah like advocate for public land and public ownership of land and public you know benefiting
00:31:40.240 from the bounty of the earth with systems like you know housing first and basic income that like
00:31:47.920 if we can own those things tax the billionaires share that wealth then and then also like raise
00:31:55.480 up our you know um programming knowledge so our access to the the digital commons so that there's
00:32:03.640 more insights on and more complex perspectives in building those sort of like open source governance
00:32:11.000 or like what does what does open source the open source version of monsanto look like right where
00:32:16.260 like when we share like and i know there are people have been working on this for decades but
00:32:19.940 i don't i'm not up to date on where it's at but i think it's so exciting is like where we share
00:32:24.920 um what is unique in our seeds where we understand what is complex in our in our local biodiversity
00:32:31.700 and we become like champions of those like hyper local kinship relationships um
00:32:40.600 I don't know I I think that there's something exciting in that that part of staying in the
00:32:45.500 trouble yeah especially because like uh we live in this time of open source we're talking about
00:32:53.940 software we're talking about technology but also people are using those things to either rediscover
00:33:00.500 or you know germinate and spread um traditional knowledge um indigenous knowledge and we see
00:33:09.040 how much overlap there is in these things and that's so exciting to me you know when our web
00:33:15.580 becomes like a three-dimensional fractal it expands in every day because you know it's like
00:33:22.860 again maybe it's a tree hugger phrase but to think that everything is connected
00:33:26.760 from our open source software to the genetic information in our seeds like
00:33:33.580 again listeners you know me I'm just sometimes I'll just be like
00:33:37.560 it's like that feeling of being on a rock hurtling through space yeah I remember you being like
00:33:44.820 there are wheels like guys let's just stop and appreciate how fucking cool yeah I think about
00:33:52.840 that all the time fire you guys but like you know seeds are open source software
00:34:03.040 you know seeds are open source software certainly like
00:34:09.860 yeah it's like open source software that we don't totally understand yet oh my goodness
00:34:17.100 oh at no point did i say i totally understand no i don't mean just you and i like obviously
00:34:22.280 we don't understand it whatever bunch of joe schmoes but like but like you know it's like
00:34:30.160 open source that like we can't like um we can't read the code yet exactly yeah so to be privatizing 0.98
00:34:42.860 shit we don't understand um it's just such stupid hubris yes it's not privatized things 0.95
00:34:52.100 we don't understand for one thing but again like the the nature of seed is to go to seed 1.00
00:34:57.720 is to multiply and spread and be taken on by many various different interpretations and then have
00:35:04.920 those interpretations come back together and in informing our understanding of the whole you know 0.99
00:35:10.260 yeah yeah yeah me too let's all think on that tell us what you think bless the fucking beat 1.00
00:35:22.100 You must be a witch. 1.00
00:35:26.820 The Missing Witches podcast is created by Risa Dickens and Amy Turok
00:35:30.960 with insight and support from The Coven at patreon.com slash missingwitches.
00:35:37.580 Amy and Risa are the co-authors of Missing Witches,
00:35:40.560 Reclaiming True Histories of Feminist Magic,
00:35:43.460 which is available now wherever you get your books or audiobooks.
00:35:46.740 And of New Moon Magic, 13 Anti-Capitalist Tools for Resistance and Re-enchantment, coming Fall 2023.