The Oh, Hello and

I'm going to behind the news my name is Doug Henwood.

Two guests today will hear first from the

geographer journalist and activist Melissa Figaroa on the Amazon fires

and at the bottom of the hour Anton Anton Yeager, we'll talk about the history and ideology of

populism and its relevance today.

Sad to say the fires in the Amazon have fallen out of the news somewhat, partially eclipsed

by another sign of the climate crisis, Hurricane

Dorian. But there still were some attention. My first guest, Melissa Figueroa, spent a lot of time

in the Amazon, studying its ecology and the people who live there.

She's a PhD candidate in geography at UC Berkeley,

a fellow with the Liberty Tree Foundation for Democratic Revolution,

and a long-time political journalist, educator, and organizer.

In her academic life, she worked with Susanna Hecht. time political journalist, educator, and organizer.

In her academic life, she worked with Susanna Hecht, a geographer who studied the Amazon,

helped create the field of political ecology, which is part of the reason the interview opens

with a discussion of her work, Melissa Figueroa.

To prepare for this I pulled the Fate of the Forest that book by Susanna Heck and Alexander

Coburn off the shelf. I have the old edition from 1989, the newer one and the first two sentences

the dust jacket copier why is the Amazon rainforest burning how much forest is

left and how can it be saved. Now this was 30 years ago people

are asking these questions. What about this history? To start with, fires have been a

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