Weaving Voices
Episode 4
Andean Pastoralist Livelihood Initiative
[00:00:00] Rebecca Burgess: The time honored livelihoods of Andes mountain range herding communities are being threatened by socioeconomic and climactic conditions. And yet the efforts of Mauricio Nunez and the Andian pastoral livelihood initiative are working to preserve alpaca and llama herding and restore an appreciation for the long health, cultural and environmental values that have underpinned this civilization for thousands of years.
[00:00:28] Mauricio Nunez: We really need to recognize that these people are one of the most climate change, vulnerable groups in the planet, and it's necessary to increase the resilience to protect livelihoods in the short term.
[00:00:54] Rebecca Burgess: This is Weaving Voices, a podcast that stitches textile traditions, economic [00:01:00] philosophy, and climate science into a quilt of understanding, designed to transform our thinking and actions, both as citizens and material culture makers and users. I'm Rebecca Burgess, your host of this Whetstone radio collective series, which aims to explore the nexus of modern day economic design and the history of textiles.
[00:01:22] Rebecca Burgess: My guest on this episode of weaving voices is restoration ecologist, Mauricio Nunez, who comes from the sacred valley in Peru. His work focuses on providing expertise to a range of local and global programs focused on mostly the intersection of regenerative agriculture and fiber systems, community governance, conservation, finance, and ecological restoration.
[00:01:49] Rebecca Burgess: Nunez has developed a new project called the Andien Pastoral Livelihood Initiative or APLI. Through this work with grassroots [00:02:00] organizations and different implementation partners, development NGOs, and local regional governments, he works to find intersectional ways to uplift this traditional culture. And of course, all of this work centers on the herders, which are at the heart of the initiative.
[00:02:19] Mauricio Nunez: Equity and justice for this livelihood are basically at the core. It's been so undervalued, so underserved so under-heard that with the tools and instruments we're engaging is providing a platform assistance, technical advisory for them to thrive.
[00:02:36] Rebecca Burgess: There's a deep ecological and cultural history of the pastoralist ways of the Andes. And there's a long arc of textile history in this region.
[00:02:46] Rebecca Burgess: And for a bit of context here, in an earlier interview, I spoke with economic anthropologist, Jason Hickel and I thought it might be helpful to understand what these Andien communities rather recent economic history has been. [00:03:00] Hickel writes in his book, "Less is More," "from the early 15 hundreds through the early 18 hundreds, colonizer siphoned 100 million kilograms of silver out of the Andes and into European ports. To get a sense of the scale of this wealth, consider this through a thought experiment. If invested in 1800 at the historical average rate of interest that quantity of silver would today be worth $165 trillion, more than double the world's GDP. And that's on top of the gold that was extracted from the Andes during that same period."
[00:03:48] Rebecca Burgess: Nunez says there are cultural values that are shared by the alpaca herder community in Peru. And he shared with me some terms that are used to describe these values. The [00:04:00] first is “Ayni” which he explains as reciprocity through mutuality and compensation. This, he says refers to specific forms of morally grounded, cultural, economic reciprocity within the context of the Andien rural community.
[00:04:17] Rebecca Burgess: It implies that all elements of nature give and receive to contribute to the harmony of the world. Nunez has another term which is used to describe social collective and unit organizing is “Ayllu” which describes common duties and obligations to achieve equality for members. More than just a construct
[00:04:39] Rebecca Burgess: it underpins collective land stewardship and social relations within the communities that do the work. And then there's “Chanincha” which means solidarity through unity and fellowship.
[00:04:53] Mauricio Nunez: These arises in communities in the face of common interests, needs and responsibilities, and at the core [00:05:00] it's profound respect.
[00:05:02] Mauricio Nunez: So grounding on that and that fascinating way of, of engaging with each other as human being.
[00:05:12] Rebecca Burgess: They're looking to revitalize these cultural values, which have been around for 3000 years. APLI builds and strengthens these guiding principles. He calls it a fascinating way of engaging with each other as human beings.
[00:05:29] Rebecca Burgess: The textile history and current practice is an expression of these cultural values. The intricacy and complexity of the woven structures reflects the nuance, depth and complexity of the communities themselves.
[00:05:44] Mauricio Nunez: Each community had a particular style of weaving and even through that, each particular weaving made a hierarchical
[00:05:54] Mauricio Nunez: visual of how you are on the social scale there. So it was a [00:06:00] beautiful, colorful of different textiles and ways of engaging with weaving and mending, these ways of engaging with the land.
[00:06:10] Rebecca Burgess: Not to mention the fact that you could pay your taxes with weavings. In fact that was the highest form of paying your taxes.
[00:06:19] Mauricio Nunez: It's like high level textile people that there were super specifically developing textile for when the Incas reach across. That was the textiles that were exchanged with that was the offering. This history spans for more than 3000 years, and that is still present vividly in our culture. Like women carry babies in beautiful womens and meaning that you carry in the future there.
[00:06:49] Mauricio Nunez: And men use ponchos still, and this textile make your identity emblematic for some communities still. And we're losing that somehow, somewhat, but when there's deep roots, [00:07:00] you see that sense of identity.
[00:07:03] Rebecca Burgess: Beyond just textiles, camelids are a source of identity with the people here. They were a pillar of the ink and empire and economy.
[00:07:11] Rebecca Burgess: He says the Andian world is one of the seven places of animal domestication in the world, but the least understood and known. When it comes to domestication. It's about creating ties. Imagine being 4,000 meters above sea level, it's remote. It was a natural evolution to form a social contract with the animals.
[00:07:32] Rebecca Burgess: And that contract is at the heart of the human identity. If we fast forward to today and look at the current economic value that the alpaca fiber holds and what this means for the herding communities, Nunez describes that there are some very serious economic pressures creating cracks in the system.
[00:07:51] Mauricio Nunez: We really need to recognize. That these people are one of the most climate change, vulnerable groups in the planet, and it's [00:08:00] necessary to increase their resilient, to protect livelihoods in the short term. And it's really crazy because everyone talks about the Amazon and not much on mountain landscapes or mountain people.
[00:08:12] Mauricio Nunez: And that's where the water security from cities come from.
[00:08:16] Rebecca Burgess: In Peru, 120,000 families are dependent on all alpaca herding and 1 million families across the Andes are dependent on grasslands. 80% of them live in extreme poverty. As Nunez explained earlier, textiles in Incan history were used to pay for taxes and used as currency.
[00:08:38] Rebecca Burgess: This precipitous drop in value is very disturbing. He says it's such a beautiful culture that has seen a downward spiral. He points to climate change and problems such as solar erosion.
[00:08:51] Mauricio Nunez: One really interesting and it's as well in woo. But it's the genetic diversity like with pressure by selection, whitening [00:09:00] of the herd has been 90% white.
[00:09:02] Mauricio Nunez: So we're looking at the monoculture there. And it's really interesting that genetic diversity and colored animals have stronger adaptive capacities. So drought resilience cope to heat fluctuations with this change in climate
[00:09:21] Rebecca Burgess: Nunez says another issue that he's watching unfold is that the grassland soils are losing water infiltration capacity.
[00:09:29] Rebecca Burgess: Unless the communities are becoming less water secure, human wellbeing is completely dependent on ecosystem function. All real wealth comes from functioning ecologies.
[00:09:41] Mauricio Nunez: Fiber is seen as a commodity, you know, the fiber and the meat of camelids across llama, alpaca is really undervalued in the market. I think that now live economy and capitalism is missing big with this vision.
[00:09:55] Mauricio Nunez: We can't get to cope with products from industrial animals [00:10:00] or even synthetic fibers that it's the hype now, but it's a nonsense across.
[00:10:06] Rebecca Burgess: The challenges facing small flock hurdles, as they try to establish and retain any position within the markets has led to migration out of rural communities. And the abandonment from the fields is a real and present issue.
[00:10:20] Rebecca Burgess: He says, they're focusing on the youth with their initiative.
[00:10:25] Mauricio Nunez: The wisdom keepers cannot go into beyond the earth without transmitting their knowledge to the next generation. So there is an intergenerational transfer of knowledge and ways of knowing and as well, one that goes at the heart of this is like livestock is not just as equity, but a source of identity.
[00:10:48] Mauricio Nunez: You know, like people talk about alpaca as a resource and don't look at the livelihood as a whole. Like when you talk alpaca, you talk families that enable the alpaca to thrive. [00:11:00] And I think that's at the core of your question on what really happened there. Like yeah. Big hype from Englishman buying fiber, but then like what about the families that stored, the industry depends on them,
[00:11:13] Mauricio Nunez: they haven't realized yet.
[00:11:15] Rebecca Burgess: If we look at the economic situation for today's herders, you can trace the issues back to the export economy and the effect of selling alpaca into western countries. It has meant that Westerners have for centuries defined the value of the fiber. And then you fast forward, Western countries have very recently begun to develop their own concepts of animal welfare.
[00:11:39] Rebecca Burgess: These concepts are just that, concepts. They're very detached from pastoralist ways of life, and also very detached from landscapes and the function of landscapes. Still to this day, we have not seen the voices of the pastoralist community centered in a textile sustainability conversation. [00:12:00] And until that occurs, Western markets and concepts will continue to dictate the economic wellbeing of pastoralist communities.
[00:12:10] Rebecca Burgess: Prior to Western influence in colonization, the textile systems were integrated from the stewarded landscapes, fiber procurement, dying, weaving, all of these processes were done for and by the community. When the selling of the fiber went to communities divorced from the creation of the fiber, it seems that a big door opened for economic issues.
[00:12:35] Rebecca Burgess: So some of Nunez' work focuses on repairing that.
[00:12:40] Mauricio Nunez: First and foremost, this needs to be a viable livelihood in and of itself. If not the succession is going to be over with young ING, as well as the poverty degradation spiral continues, if we don't address it with the bottom line. So I heard this from [00:13:00] a Costa Rica conservationist, we need to engage in conservation with a full stomach.
[00:13:06] Mauricio Nunez: The whole conservation community has well, they've been evolving so far and so forth. Look at now at the intersection of livelihoods, but what we are doing to get into the economy, wellbeing of the people we're engaging, like super simple. Really, we engage with paying a premium 20, 25% more of the market price.
[00:13:26] Mauricio Nunez: Sometimes they sell fiber for less than the production cost, and that's insane. So we are engaging with some covenants and notes for impact and outcomes. So you have a management plan. What are the indicator for landscape function, perhaps, you know, and we have been showing as well, how ecosystem function with the economic metrics for livestock production?
[00:13:51] Rebecca Burgess: Nunez says that way we get to the bottom align of the grower. Let's say the pregnancy rates were low and the mortality rates were high. [00:14:00] When those indicators are off and you can point to those indicators as being off, you start to get the grower's attention. Then you can value the perceived loss and put a monetary value there.
[00:14:12] Rebecca Burgess: If the pregnancy rate is 70% and you increase that to 85% and you have 100 alpacas total, that's a big number. They're able to support a feedback loop of information around the mortality rates in alpaca herds, back to grassland health. He's seeing that these pregnancy and mortality rates are very much directly tied to the kinds of ecological outcomes, but they're also trying to see progress forward.
[00:14:37] Mauricio Nunez: We talk their language. We don't go with the landscape function, but it's like, Hey, what do you measure, intended user at the core? So, yeah, that's our work mostly on land perhaps, but for the sector as a whole, because remember I come from like the deep ecological restoration scene, you know, so that's really what drives me
[00:14:59] Mauricio Nunez: [00:15:00] behind on seen landscape function, uplift, and this and that, what I need to engage at the core. But for the sector as a whole we're mapping, engaging and developing and strengthening capacities on the fiber value add-in side.
[00:15:14] Rebecca Burgess: That got me thinking about other ways in which incentives can be developed for ecological outcomes.
[00:15:20] Rebecca Burgess: And I naturally, as I do, began to think about the role of regional manufacturing and how that could bring more value to the herder's raw fiber. I was curious as to whether there are specific pieces of infrastructure that Nunez would like to see.
[00:15:35] Mauricio Nunez: Yeah, we're looking at the different verticals. We have like three scales perhaps of processing plans.
[00:15:40] Mauricio Nunez: There's additional scale. And we're working with public financing instruments, you know, small tickets and producer associations that are already strong to apply for those. And you get small processing plan. We're looking to meet ahead of where they are if, and always engaging with the agency [00:16:00] and determination on hand to realize their cultures.
[00:16:04] Mauricio Nunez: So if you are growing, we want you to classify, perhaps, is that what you're looking for? And then you get market value. If you're classifying, we can help develop the project proposal for a processing plan, perhaps a small one.
[00:16:19] Rebecca Burgess: If the herding community is classifying based on quality color. If that work is being done, then the mill can do its job.
[00:16:27] Rebecca Burgess: There's more of an impetus to build a mill if you have the alpaca pooled in different colors.
[00:16:34] Mauricio Nunez: We're buying different baby royale and this and that into different pools, perhaps. And that gives a sense to the producer. And by that, I mean, as well, like before they are selling, let's turn this into dollars, but they are selling at $2 a pound. Classified, they are selling at $4. So it's double the economic just by classifying.
[00:16:57] Rebecca Burgess: He says the initiative is mobilizing the [00:17:00] community and they are articulating this work in the development plans being produced by regional local governments. They also have a for-profit that's starting to engage with aligned partners who share the vision. When asked about whether the initiative is looking for any partnerships for the milling infrastructure,
[00:17:18] Rebecca Burgess: Nunez said that this last year there were four small processing plants that began to be financed through public finance, through government. They're building upon that and looking at capacity gaps that still exist. They have been talking with the ministry of agriculture and he says, those plans are there, but they need more demand established, which means they need more market access.
[00:17:42] Rebecca Burgess: It's promising to see new Nunez's organization asking for capacity building and financial support. And to be able to take the time to organize themselves as a business collective. There's a lot of agreement setting and education. All of this takes time. There is support at [00:18:00] some level by way of government and sustainable economic funds for technical assistance and capacity building.
[00:18:06] Rebecca Burgess: And he says that government used to have a couple of big processing plants approved, but somehow they just haven't gone through yet.
[00:18:14] Mauricio Nunez: What we're doing with articulating with government now. Well, in Cusco there's second alpaca program and we are providing monitoring evaluation and learning outsourced advisory that weaves with other sectorial finance programs as enabling infrastructure.
[00:18:34] Mauricio Nunez: So that's where the small ticket sizes artisanal and same industrial plan are coming from this year and are going to keep coming from if this gets outcome. Closing gaps on wellbeing and economic development and so forth. The really interesting part now it's how we're partnering with them on, and this is really [00:19:00] exciting for us because we're talking with the directors of livestock across the finance four different brand finance competitism business structures and technical advisory facility,
[00:19:12] Mauricio Nunez: and what they've been mapping is like, you know, there's 52 associations in Cusco producer associations. For one, the ticket for the processing plans. But there's huge capacity gaps that the government is not implementing set. They provide assistance facility once a month, but people need an up to date resident in house, in their landscape to get ahold of different things and provide that sharing perspective because it's not like extension is come and go, but it's like, Hey, how you invite these people that goes into dialogue with the next group that has perhaps implemented this plan before.
[00:19:55] Rebecca Burgess: His plans around governance of grasslands are thoughtful. He says the [00:20:00] grazing plans are community managed and watershed plans that are in place by law
[00:20:05] Rebecca Burgess: also tie into this, as do other planning processes. They're also working on what he calls community life plans for embodying indigenous development. He says, it's beautiful because it's a reflection process that comes from the people. This refers to any indigenous communities. He mentions those in the Amazon are also participating in these community planning processes.
[00:20:32] Rebecca Burgess: Nunez works and helps to facilitate these planning process which lays a foundational strategy, but at the core, the work is based on how the community defines wealth and how they see development. So what is this starting to look like in the grassland community?
[00:20:51] Mauricio Nunez: It gives a source of identity because at the end of the process, you have like different projects, perhaps education and [00:21:00] sanitation and on the livelihood aspect you have like, perhaps strengthening the pastoral garden in Manak community with this and this and that. So we get this plan and articulate that at multi-scale at the local government and say like, Hey, these people went through this self-reflection process so please include this in the development agenda and that's public finance.
[00:21:27] Mauricio Nunez: So it's really enabling a lot because infrastructure's big cost for grazing and land management. So we're looking at moving fencing and water reticulation systems for those people. And that enables a whole different game.
[00:21:43] Rebecca Burgess: I really like the directionality where input is coming from the community and informing plans that then inform how finance is used as a tool to support people.
[00:21:53] Rebecca Burgess: What are some critical next steps for obtaining this vision of the good life? At least for the 20,000 [00:22:00] families in Peru who are alpaca herders who are culturally rich, pastoralists and traditional livelihood people. For a number of years, there have been numerous alpaca working groups and round tables. But they come and they go, and the bottom line is nothing has fundamentally changed. At the pastoral initiative
[00:22:19] Rebecca Burgess: he says they're starting to organize landscape level partnerships based in culturally relevant context, specific dialogue.
[00:22:28] Mauricio Nunez: So we sit different people on the table from grassroots leaders, women that are in charge of social water governance boards, development organizations, local governments. And we get that landscape development agenda forth and that weaves with a bit of the community life plans, but that's more of the articulation multi-scale this is a cross sectors.
[00:22:52] Mauricio Nunez: So with that, and that's the beauty of this is that we make sure that participation from local communities is [00:23:00] transversal. And we really work to strengthen the power of these local communities and provide them in those tables with opportunities to participate in equitable decision making. Provide accountability for integrated landscape planning efforts
[00:23:16] Mauricio Nunez: that discuss, negotiate and develop collaborative action.
[00:23:22] Rebecca Burgess: Nunez says this work is a bit more unique in terms of grasslands. He mentioned there are examples of partnerships in the Amazon. He says, it's really interesting when you focus on an aligned agenda to make sure you provide decision making power, accountability, support, voice equity, to the people that depend on these livelihoods. They're determining what they will be accountable to in terms of ecological outcomes
[00:23:49] Rebecca Burgess: and they are determining their goals and they are accountable to their goals.
[00:23:54] Mauricio Nunez: With my plan that perhaps my agenda is pastoralism. So it really is at the core of [00:24:00] not duplicating efforts. If you have a technical advisory facility I can use, get on board. If you are accessing public finance and you have the data I need to write my proposal, share it with me.
[00:24:14] Mauricio Nunez: If you engage with local leaders at social water governance level that are having problems with irrigation, come forth. It's across an integrated landscape plan and management.
[00:24:28] Rebecca Burgess: Across sectors, the community is weaving all of these pieces together. He mentions incentives like paying premiums, depending on how people are upholding their management plans.
[00:24:39] Rebecca Burgess: He describes this inflection point in the process where the premiums for outcomes kick in and people start to see real benefit from meeting their goals.
[00:24:48] Mauricio Nunez: What it's really interesting is we see both process and outcomes. So the enabling conditions shape the pathway for change or transformation [00:25:00] to happen.
[00:25:00] Mauricio Nunez: So if you have land management plan, you can go and when we talk, get fancy and this and that, and that will allow you to have perhaps outcomes easier. So if you don't have a management plan, how on earth can you perhaps it's it's by lack, you know, or it's by really good sense. So that's on the first level on some levels that we're looking as well as now with the whole payment for ecosystem services, jargon thing
[00:25:25] Mauricio Nunez: and I was explaining before it's policy here for those provisioning service and this communities that tour, those places provision this, you know, like water purification, quantity, quality, security, sediment, retention, and climate adaptation as a whole, there's a whole potential to engage, I think, with living wage for these communities that provide water for downstream cities and I'm talking metropolis as Lima or big cities as Cusco.
[00:25:56] Rebecca Burgess: So there will be a price premium for the fiber. And then [00:26:00] there will be an entity who will pay the community for their ability to enhance the volume of clean water that is provided to neighboring cities.
[00:26:09] Mauricio Nunez: A lot of these communities that happen to run upstream don't have more than a hundred alpacas and it's really not their livelihood.
[00:26:17] Mauricio Nunez: It's their second stream. They are in tourism, another stream. So how can you strengthen that and provide a living wage and say like, Hey, you keep stewarding this. I know you manage 30 animals. Doesn't make the living, but we know that with your management, you provide water and that's accounted into the sanitation and we can provide quantity and quality into the water service providers. The challenge there is that these mechanisms need to embody really a bottom up approach with a strong equity and justice lens for the ecosystem services. It is really not for the sanitation sector is for the irrigation of those communities.
[00:26:58] Rebecca Burgess: Taking a strong equity and justice [00:27:00] lens for ecosystem services is not easy.
[00:27:04] Rebecca Burgess: I see in the United States that farmers will get very excited about the idea of receiving money for a metric ton of carbon, but the cost to produce the credit are quite high. And the cost that the person auditing the credit receives is quite high. I've yet to see how the credit development process with all of the costs associated with it actually center the grower themselves.
[00:27:26] Rebecca Burgess: It's going to take some real innovation and probably some public funding to pool, to support growers, to do this work.. To be able to receive appropriate value directly to the people managing the animals and not a third party auditor.
[00:27:42] Mauricio Nunez: What is really interesting is the additionality piece. There's been couple dialogues about, like people want to provide fencing and water reticulation systems as a process to enable outcomes.
[00:27:53] Mauricio Nunez: And that's interesting. My take is like you take your 5% carbon finance project developer [00:28:00] cost, and 95% is for communities. If not, I'm not engaging in the dialogue and it's over for me, period. There's no way that investors are looking at carbon. It's the next land grab. Like people are buying land for carbon pathways and it's like insane.
[00:28:14] Mauricio Nunez: It's the land grab of the 21st century.
[00:28:17] Rebecca Burgess: It's scary in fact, for carbon, for biofuel, there's definitely a huge risk in this quote, unquote green growth economy. You can't just keep growing a system and expect that it's going to be able to meet its ecological goals. Carbon credits are just this way for people to extend the growth model and continue business as usual
[00:28:37] Rebecca Burgess: in most cases. It's not often that you see it associated with a company, making a drastic cap on their emissions and a drastic reduction in their overall footprint. It tends to be more of a leverage point to keep growing. And that's where the land grab risk exists. This risk is high because they'll be looking for more places to sink carbon.[00:29:00]
[00:29:00] Rebecca Burgess: They really need to address the resource use across their business and see their business as a whole system that needs to scale back its impact within the confines of its own supply network.
[00:29:12] Mauricio Nunez: Building upon this kind of like another lever with his land rights, like this is a major bottleneck across Peru and specifically the Andian communities. We need to avoid land from the fragmentation. And as I mentioned with land tightline and tenure, these producer associations communities can engage in finance pathways with microfinance institution development, or agrarian banks, for their development plans. And that's a big lever for them to develop their agency and self-determination, and it's a sense of identity as well. Big time.
[00:29:49] Rebecca Burgess: Nunez says that those are the levers that will establish the founding building blocks. And then there's investing in infrastructure, which we previously talked about and how that can [00:30:00] add value to raw material and support more income for those producing raw fiber. He says, we're not just looking at sourcing partners,
[00:30:07] Rebecca Burgess: we wanna build these programs from the bottom up through public and private finance. The kinds of capital needed to serve the system would be funding focused on justice as a primary goal of the use of the capital.
[00:30:20] Mauricio Nunez: I'm talking here about like self liquidating equity structures for work around or competitives, convertible note, perhaps, or other instruments that on equity at the end of the farmers, how can the farmers own the infrastructure you're building or the process you're building and any other depth instrument that aligns with revenue based bacause lots of the financial structure in needs, like traditional.
[00:30:47] Rebecca Burgess: In our region, some of our wool has been pooled and there has been some patient capital provided from both private philanthropy and the USDA and others to help our community establish value added [00:31:00] goods from the wool we grow. We're still missing the grower owned, worker owned cooperative milling infrastructure to wash our wool and to add other forms of value locally.
[00:31:11] Rebecca Burgess: We don't have that yet. But we're at this stage where we can pool the wall at least and add some level of value to get it into the hands of strategic design community members. Nunez describes that for his community, there is far more investment needed, and this is a global issue across fiber producing communities.
[00:31:31] Rebecca Burgess: When we reflect on the amount of wealth extracted from the Andes mountains, that fueled nation states across the ocean, we can recall that European ports received what would today be valued at 165 trillion worth of silver. It's a very fair question to ask those countries that led the raid on these mountains,
[00:31:51] Rebecca Burgess: what kind of return is due and what kind of investment are Andien pastoralists themselves wanting? How would taking [00:32:00] this vantage point impact the sustainable fashion conversation on alpaca fiber? I could see how the current model of penalizing communities based on Western environmental auditing processes, which are also expensive, could completely shift.
[00:32:16] Rebecca Burgess: And how refreshing would that be? A new approach could emerge where brands are asking questions to the alpaca herding community, about what vision they themselves have for their own future, and really investigating what a co-investment in that shared fiber future could look. A system of textiles that supports both through relationships, questions, and a commitment to each other.
[00:32:53] Rebecca Burgess: This episode is made possible because of all the people who work behind the scenes on it. I'd like to thank my producer, [00:33:00] Jennifer O'Neill, audio editor, Bethany Sands, and intern, Maha Sanad. I'd also like to thank Whetstone founder, Stephen Satterfield, Whetstone head of podcasts, Celine Glasier, sound engineer, Max Kotelchuck, music director, Catherine Yang, associate producer, Quentin Lebeau, production assistant Shabnam Ferdowsi, and sound intern, Simon Lavendar.
[00:33:26] Rebecca Burgess: The cover art by Whetstone art director, Alex Bowman. You can learn more about this podcast at WhetstoneRadio.com, on Instagram and Twitter @WhetstoneRadio, and subscribe to our YouTube channel, Whetstone Radio Collective for more podcast video content. You can learn more about all things happening at Whetstone at WhetstoneMagazine.com.