Here's the thing about the Amazon basin. There's a number scientists use when they talk about it — the number of species living there that we haven't discovered yet. And here's what's strange about that number: we don't know what it is. We can't know what it is. We only know it's enormous. That somewhere in that forest right now, creatures are going about their lives, doing whatever it is they do — and not a single human being on earth knows their name.

Water doesn’t begin at the tap. It begins in the dark—underground, in aquifers older than memory. As snow in mountain air. As vapor. As storm. Something that refuses to stay still. By the time it reaches us, it has already lived many lives.

This is the third episode. The last in a three-part series. My Place, My Sovereignty. Recorded at the Eco Nomic Futures Summit. A gathering about systems—but really about people. About land. About new economies.

This story starts at Arbor Day Farm in Nebraska City, Nebraska. At the HATCH Summit. A gathering about world-building and cultivating relationships—set in a town with a long memory, including its role in the Underground Railroad. And from there, it moves to music. To Gangstagrass. They’re Emmy-nominated. Billboard-charting. And they’re also the soundtrack for Dispatch from the Heartland.

This is episode two, recorded at Eco Nomic Futures in San Francisco. Not a conference exactly—more a meeting point. Where conversations crossed paths around food, land, economics, and what happens when systems lose their connection to life.

Today, we’re somewhere that feels both familiar and overlooked at the same time—Arbor Day Farm in Nebraska City, Nebraska. The kind of place people call flyover country, a place many don’t think twice about, even as the people who live here are quietly shaping a future the rest of us will eventually feel.

Turtle Island. Before there were countries—before anyone called this land the United States, or Canada, or Mexico—this was Turtle Island. A continent of nations, overlapping territories, trade routes stretching farther than modern highways, and relationships thousands of years old. Today, that history is being carried forward by contemporary Indigenous leaders at Fort Mason—San Francisco’s skyline in the backdrop, summit banners hanging over a conversation that reaches far beyond the city around it. This is the First Nations Economic Compact.

In this episode, we talk with Nora Latorre, R.C. Carter, and Katie Stebbins — people working to shift the food system from the inside out. From how we feed our kids to how we nourish entire communities. Because we are what we eat. And maybe the way we feed our children is the clearest reflection of the future we’re willing to build.

In this episode, we talk with “Sleevs” Emily Messner, Joey Young, and Chris Denson about the evolution of journalism—from editorial boards and ad sales to freelancers, podcasts, and algorithms. How we depict what’s true, and whether journalism can still sustain itself.