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Pina Soul Podcast

Pina Soul Podcast

Written by: Jessica Hernandez
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Piña Soul SPC is an Indigenous‑led Social Purpose Corporation dedicated to uplifting environmental protectors and community knowledge‑keepers across our homelands. Our podcast honors those working on the frontlines of climate justice, conservation, and cultural resurgence, sharing their stories, science, and spirit with the world.


​​Through this podcast, we uplift the voices, stories, and lived knowledge of all people doing environmental and community‑led climate justice work across our homelands. As a podcast held in the spirit of Earth Daughters, we center Indigenous women and youth while also welcoming the broader circle of land protectors and knowledge‑keepers who are caring for wildlife, waters, and the living Earth through ancestral teachings and grounded, place‑based science.

© 2026 Pina Soul Podcast
Biological Sciences Science
Episodes
  • Pretty: A Memoir
    May 13 2026

    In this episode, we explore Pretty by KB Brookins, a powerful, award-winning memoir that confronts identity at the intersections of race, gender, and perception. Drawing from personal experience and Black queer studies, Brookins reflects on what it means to navigate the world as a Black trans masculine person in a society that is quick to define others.

    Pretty moves between tenderness and critique, examining both the beauty and the harm embedded within traditional ideas of Black masculinity. Through deeply personal storytelling, Brookins reveals the tension between how we see ourselves and how we are seen, and the emotional labor of resisting imposed identities.

    Join us as we discuss themes of self-definition, belonging, and the ongoing process of unlearning. This episode highlights how Pretty is not only a memoir, but also a call for recognition, understanding, and change.

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    32 mins
  • Poppy State: A Labyrinth of Plants and a Story of Beginnings
    May 13 2026

    In this episode, we step into the winding, layered world of Poppy State: A Labyrinth of Plants and a Story of Beginnings by Myriam Gurba. Blending memoir, botany, and sharp cultural critique, Gurba invites us to reconsider California not just as a place, but as a living archive shaped by language, power, and ancestry.

    Structured like a labyrinth, the book moves through stories of plants, personal history, and colonial legacies, revealing how landscapes carry memory and resistance. We explore how Gurba reclaims narrative authority, using ecology as a lens to examine identity, belonging, and survival.

    Join us as we unpack how Poppy State challenges traditional storytelling and redefines what it means to root yourself in place. This isn’t just a story about plants, it’s a story about who gets to name them, who gets to belong, and how we find our way back.

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    32 mins
  • When Trees Testify: Science, Wisdom, History, and America's Black Botanical Legacy
    May 1 2026

    In this powerful episode, Dr. Beronda Montgomery invites us to reimagine the relationship between science, history, and the living world. Drawing from her book When Trees Testify, she reveals how trees are not just part of the landscape, but witnesses to history—holding stories of resilience, survival, and resistance within Black communities.

    Through a unique blend of plant biology, personal narrative, and historical reflection, this conversation traces the deep connections between Black botanical knowledge and the lived experiences of enslaved people and their descendants. From pecans to sycamores to oaks, these trees become archives of memory, revealing how plants were used for food, medicine, and liberation.

    This episode challenges dominant narratives of science by centering Black ecological knowledge as both rigorous and transformative. It asks us to consider what it means to heal from land-based trauma, and how reconnecting with the natural world can be an act of remembrance and justice.

    This is not just about plants—it is about history, survival, and the knowledge systems that have always sustained communities, even when they were erased.

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    34 mins
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