When I was foraging in Japan, I was minutes away from a run-in with a bear.

And that bear had just pooped a ton of ginkgo nuts.

Okay, you got to tell that story, Alexis.

You said the magic word.

You said bear.

I'm Dr. Ray Wyn Grant, and this is a different kind of nature show, a podcast about the human drama of saving animals.

This season, we're talking to all kinds of nature advocates.

From a paleoanthropologist who hunts fossils in conflict zones, to someone who helped save an endangered species while in prison.

We're going to hear from real-life heroes with widely different expertise and life experiences about what led them to be champions for the natural world.

What transformation did they go through to create change within themselves, their community, and the world?

Together, we'll find out how these ordinary people fell in love with nature and became their most extraordinary selves. This is Going Wild.

Today I'm talking to the Internet's favorite forager and my new friend, Alexis Nicole Nelson,

also known as Black Forager. If you're not one of the millions

of people who follow her on the internet, Alexis is a James Beard Award-winning forager,

vegan food concocter, environmental science enthusiast, and a soon-to-be cookbook author. As Black Forager, Alexis has over six million followers

on TikTok and Instagram, where she regularly posts videos teaching people how to identify,

harvest, and cook all kinds of edible wild plants, from common backyard weeds like dandelions

to interesting mushrooms. Don't these fungi look delicious?

And people think there's nothing to forage in the winter.

Puff balls should honestly be called tofu of the wood.

Here's one that I sliced open so you can see that it is beautiful and white all the way through.

Happy snacking. Happy mushroom hunting. Don't die.

...