10 episodes
Burn Wild BBC Radio 5 Live
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- Society & Culture
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4.8 • 18 Ratings
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For more than a decade two mugshots of fugitive environmentalists have sat amongst airplane hijackers, bombers and murders on the FBI’s Most Wanted Domestic Terrorists list.
One of the photos is of a tall, hipster looking engineer from Seattle. He’s wearing a red shirt, has a light shadowy beard.
His name: Joseph Mahmoud Dibee.
The other photo is of a young white woman with thick eyebrows, piercing brown eyes and long brown hair. Across her back is a large tattoo: a bird with its wings outstretched, soaring.
Her name: Josephine Sunshine Overaker.
To the authorities, Joseph Mahmoud Dibee and Josephine Sunshine Overaker are dangerous, violent extremists, part of an eco-terrorist movement that in 2005 the then Deputy Assistant Director of the FBI called the number one domestic terror threat in America.
And now one of them - Joseph Dibee - has been caught.
For the past eighteen months journalist Leah Sottile has been recording with Joe Dibee as his case progresses through the courts and as she works to understand the truth behind the mugshots and how they ended up here.
Burn Wild is a story of radical environmentalism and morality that journeys into one of the most thorny and murky questions of our time: How far is too far to go to stop the planet burning?
Answering this will take Leah and producer Georgia Catt into radical activist communities past and present on both sides of the Atlantic, amongst people who’ve spent their lives running from the authorities, and those who carry the weight of that word - terrorist - on their shoulders.
In this story people will take away very different things on what they hear, but where you sit isn’t a question of the past. It’s a question of right now.
CREDITS
Presenter: Leah Sottile
Producer: Georgia Catt
Written by: Leah Sottile and Georgia Catt
Fact Checking: Rob Byrne
Music and Sound Design: Phil Channell
Music including theme music by Echo Collective, composed performed and produced by Neil Leiter & Margaret Hermant; recorded, mixed and produced by Fabien Leseure
Artwork by Danny Crossley with Art Direction by Amy Fullalove
Script recorded and mixed by Slater Swan at Anjuna Recording Studio
Series Mixing and Studio Engineer: Sarah Hockley
Editor: Philip Sellars
Assistant Commissioner: Natasha Johansson
Commissioner: Dylan Haskins
Burn Wild is a BBC Audio Documentaries Production for BBC Sounds and BBC Radio 5 Live.
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Episode 8-and-a-half: Extraordinary collateral consequences
An update on Joseph Mahmoud Dibee, who on November 1st 2022 was sentenced.
CREDITS
Presenter: Leah Sottile
Producer: Georgia Catt
Written by: Leah Sottile and Georgia Catt
Music and Sound Design: Phil Channell
Music including theme music by Echo Collective, composed performed and produced by Neil Leiter & Margaret Hermant; recorded, mixed and produced by Fabien Leseure
Voiceover actor: Chloe Beeney
Artwork by Danny Crossley with Art Direction by Amy Fullalove
Script recorded and mixed by Slater Swan at Anjuna Recording Studio
Series Mixing and Studio Engineers: Sarah Hockley
Series Editor: Philip Sellars
Assistant Commissioner: Natasha Johansson
Commissioner: Dylan Haskins
Burn Wild is a BBC Audio Documentaries Production for BBC Sounds and Radio 5 Live -
Episode 8: Just like the rest of us
The mother of Josephine Sunshine Overaker - the remaining fugitive environmentalist - tells her story.
And a change of plea from Joseph Dibee means he’s able to talk in a way he hasn’t before, including about a night he said he'd never speak of.
CREDITS
Presenter: Leah Sottile
Producer: Georgia Catt
Written by: Leah Sottile and Georgia Catt
Fact Checking: Rob Byrne
Music and Sound Design: Phil Channell
Music including theme music by Echo Collective, composed performed and produced by Neil Leiter & Margaret Hermant; recorded, mixed and produced by Fabien Leseure
Artwork by Danny Crossley with Art Direction by Amy Fullalove
Script recorded and mixed by Slater Swan at Anjuna Recording Studio
Series Mixing and Studio Engineers: Sarah Hockley and Giles Aspen
Assistant Commissioner: Natasha Johansson
Commissioner: Dylan Haskins
Series Editor: Philip Sellars
Featuring footage from the FBI.
Burn Wild is a BBC Audio Documentaries Production for BBC Sounds and Radio 5 Live. -
Episode 7: When the Fed met the Radical. Again.
Jane Quimby was one of the FBI agents on Operation Backfire, the investigation that busted the Earth Liberation Front and so-called Family. One of those she put behind bars was Chelsea Gerlach – sentenced to nine years and now living with the weight of that word ‘terrorist’.
Now, they’re ready to talk in a way they couldn’t before.
CREDITS
Presenter: Leah Sottile
Producer: Georgia Catt
Written by: Leah Sottile and Georgia Catt
Fact Checking: Rob Byrne
Music and Sound Design: Phil Channell
Music including theme music by Echo Collective, composed performed and produced by Neil Leiter & Margaret Hermant; recorded, mixed and produced by Fabien Leseure
Artwork by Danny Crossley with Art Direction by Amy Fullalove
Script recorded and mixed by Slater Swan at Anjuna Recording Studio
Series Mixing and Studio Engineers: Sarah Hockley and Giles Aspen
Series Editor: Philip Sellars
Assistant Commissioner: Natasha Johansson
Commissioner: Dylan Haskins
Burn Wild is a BBC Audio Documentaries Production for BBC Sounds and Radio 5 Live -
Episode 6: The Line
As they visit the site of an ELF arson twenty-five years ago, Leah and Georgia meet inhabitants of a town that two years ago was lost to forest fire.
The Earth Liberation Front had a clear line they wouldn’t cross: they would never cause any physical harm. And they never did.
As climate change bears down they ask - where is the line now? A time when the stakes have gotten higher, the consequences sharper.
Leah and Georgia hear from those who spent years behind bars as a result of their actions in the name of the ELF, and environmental activists today - including the founders of mass civil disobedience movement Extinction Rebellion.
CREDITS
Presenter: Leah Sottile
Producer: Georgia Catt
Written by: Leah Sottile and Georgia Catt
Fact Checking: Rob Byrne
Music and Sound Design: Phil Channell
Music including theme music by Echo Collective, composed performed and produced by Neil Leiter & Margaret Hermant; recorded, mixed and produced by Fabien Leseure
Artwork by Danny Crossley with Art Direction by Amy Fullalove
Script recorded and mixed by Slater Swan at Anjuna Recording Studio
Series Mixing and Studio Engineer: Sarah Hockley and Giles Aspen
Series Editor: Philip Sellars
Assistant Commissioner: Natasha Johansson
Commissioner: Dylan Haskins
Burn Wild is a BBC Audio Documentaries Production for BBC Sounds and Radio 5 Live -
Episode 5: The centre of the story
During a visit to Eugene, Oregon - a city that brought key people and ideas in this story together - Leah and Georgia find something unexpected.
CREDITS
Presenter: Leah Sottile
Producer: Georgia Catt
Written by: Leah Sottile and Georgia Catt
Fact Checking: Rob Byrne
Music and Sound Design: Phil Channell
Music including theme music by Echo Collective, composed performed and produced by Neil Leiter & Margaret Hermant; recorded, mixed and produced by Fabien Leseure
Artwork by Danny Crossley with Art Direction by Amy Fullalove
Script recorded and mixed by Slater Swan at Anjuna Recording Studio
Series Mixing and Studio Engineer: Sarah Hockley
Series Editor: Philip Sellars
Assistant Commissioner: Natasha Johansson
Commissioner: Dylan Haskins
Burn Wild is a BBC Audio Documentaries Production for BBC Sounds and Radio 5 Live. -
Episode 4: Ghosts and myths
In 2005 Joe Dibee fled America – leaving everything behind.
Speaking in Summer 2021, as he awaits what he hopes will be a trial date, Joe tells Leah and Georgia about life out of reach of the FBI, and his eventual capture in Cuba.
As they faced - or face - years behind bars, Leah Sottile explores what that word, terrorist, meant for the environmentalists who had become a ‘domestic terror priority’.
CREDITS
Presenter: Leah Sottile
Producer: Georgia Catt
Written by: Leah Sottile and Georgia Catt
Fact Checking: Rob Byrne
Music and Sound Design: Phil Channell
Music including theme music by Echo Collective, composed performed and produced by Neil Leiter & Margaret Hermant; recorded, mixed and produced by Fabien Leseure
Artwork by Danny Crossley with Art Direction by Amy Fullalove
Script recorded and mixed by Slater Swan at Anjuna Recording Studio
Series Mixing and Studio Engineer: Sarah Hockley
Series Editor: Philip Sellars
Assistant Commissioner: Natasha Johansson
Commissioner: Dylan Haskins
Includes archive from GB News, The Hill, America’s Most Wanted
Burn Wild is a BBC Audio Documentaries Production for BBC Sounds and Radio 5 Live.
Customer Reviews
If you're an activist for the environment this is essential listening
I enjoyed every moment but more importantly it gave me motivation and some sense of meaning behind all the craziness of activism we are seeing now. For me as an activist it has given me new resolve but also clarity on how to be an activist in the current times. Worth listening in every way- gripping and creatively written. Thank you for the tireless work putting this together. I sincerely wish for everyone to listen to this.
Forward thinking
Hi Leah and Georgia, One star deducted for missing the role of artists in the struggle. Read Ed, not Ted. If George Hayduke lives, he will lead you to Sunshine. Peace
Thoughtful
Such a good podcast. I was sad when it ended. So much food for thought.