Burn Wild

Nov 10 2022 10 ep. 1.3k
Burn Wild Podcast artwork

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.

  Society & Culture
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Episode 8-and-a-half: Extraordinary collateral consequences

Nov 10 2022 20 mins  
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

Episode 8: Just like the rest of us

Oct 25 2022 53 mins  
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 So

Episode 7: When the Fed met the Radical. Again.

Oct 18 2022 40 mins  
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:

Episode 6: The Line

Oct 11 2022 50 mins  
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,

Episode 5: The centre of the story

Oct 04 2022 41 mins  
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

Episode 4: Ghosts and myths

Sep 27 2022 58 mins  
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 ‘domest

Episode 3: The case of Sunshine

Sep 19 2022 50 mins  
More than fifteen years ago a woman, authorities call an eco-terrorist, slipped through the fingers of the FBI and vanished. Leah Sottile meets the agent she evaded, who’s made it his mission to see her caught before he retires.CREDITS Presenter: Leah Sottile Producer: Georgia Catt Written by: Leah Sottile and Georgia Catt Fact Checking: Rob Byrne Music and Sound Design: Phil Cha

Episode 2: The Family

Sep 12 2022 50 mins  
For over a decade, Joseph Dibee’s mugshot stared out from the FBI’s Most Wanted Domestic Terrorists list. He’s charged with crimes in connection to an underground cell that was known as The Family, whose actions committed in the name of the Animal Liberation Front and Earth Liberation Front would see them called terrorists. In 2005 the then Deputy Assistant Director of t

Episode 1: The Elves are watching

Sep 05 2022 46 mins  
An underground group of radical environmentalists become a domestic terror priority. Then two go on the run. And this series goes in an unexpected direction.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

Introducing: Burn Wild

Aug 30 2022 4 mins  
For over a decade, a pair of mugshots have lived side by side on the FBI’s website, on its list of America’s Most Wanted Domestic Terrorists. The government says these fugitives were part of an eco-terrorist movement that in 2005 the then Deputy Assistant Director of the FBI called the number one domestic terrorism threat in America.And now one of them has been caught. For the