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.
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 actor: Chloe Beeney
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 Engineers: Sarah Hockley
Series Editor: Philip Sellars
Assistant Commissioner: Natasha Johansson
Commissioner: Dylan Haskins
Burn Wild is a BBC Audio Documentaries Production for BBC Sounds and Radio 5 Live
25 Oct 2022
Episode 8: Just like the rest of us
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 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 Engineers: Sarah Hockley and Giles Aspen
Assistant Commissioner: Natasha Johansson
Commissioner: Dylan Haskins
Series Editor: Philip Sellars
Featuring footage from the FBI.
Burn Wild is a BBC Audio Documentaries Production for BBC Sounds and Radio 5 Live.
18 Oct 2022
Episode 7: When the Fed met the Radical. Again.
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: 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 Engineers: Sarah Hockley and Giles Aspen
Series Editor: Philip Sellars
Assistant Commissioner: Natasha Johansson
Commissioner: Dylan Haskins
Burn Wild is a BBC Audio Documentaries Production for BBC Sounds and Radio 5 Live
11 Oct 2022
Episode 6: The Line
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, the consequences sharper.
Leah and Georgia hear from those who spent years behind bars as a result of their actions in the name of the ELF, and environmental activists today - including the founders of mass civil disobedience movement Extinction Rebellion.
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 and Giles Aspen
Series Editor: Philip Sellars
Assistant Commissioner: Natasha Johansson
Commissioner: Dylan Haskins
Burn Wild is a BBC Audio Documentaries Production for BBC Sounds and Radio 5 Live
4 Oct 2022
Episode 5: The centre of the story
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 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
Series Editor: Philip Sellars
Assistant Commissioner: Natasha Johansson
Commissioner: Dylan Haskins
Burn Wild is a BBC Audio Documentaries Production for BBC Sounds and Radio 5 Live.
27 Sept 2022
Episode 4: Ghosts and myths
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 ‘domestic terror priority’.
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
Series Editor: Philip Sellars
Assistant Commissioner: Natasha Johansson
Commissioner: Dylan Haskins
Includes archive from GB News, The Hill, America’s Most Wanted
Burn Wild is a BBC Audio Documentaries Production for BBC Sounds and Radio 5 Live.
20 Sept 2022
Episode 3: The case of Sunshine
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 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
Featuring footage from the FBI
Burn Wild is a BBC Audio Documentaries Production for BBC Sounds and Radio 5 Live.
13 Sept 2022
Episode 2: The Family
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 the FBI called the eco-terrorist movement they were said to be a part of the number one domestic terror threat in America.
And since that year, Joseph Dibee has been a fugitive.
Now, he’s been caught.
For the first time in what would be more than eighteen months of recording, journalist Leah Sottile and producer Georgia Catt get to talk to him.
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
Featuring footage from the FBI.
Burn Wild is a BBC Audio Documentaries Production for BBC Sounds and Radio 5 Live.
6 Sept 2022
Episode 1: The Elves are watching
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 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
Featuring footage from the FBI. Plus news footage from KGW News, 4 News Now, GB News, Energy GOP, The Hill.
Burn Wild is a BBC Audio Documentaries Production for BBC Sounds and Radio 5 Live.
30 Aug 2022
Introducing: Burn Wild
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 past eighteen months journalist Leah Sottile and producer Georgia Catt have been recording with him across a case that ventures into some of the thorniest questions of our time:
What is the most effective way to bring about change?
How far is too far to go to stop the planet burning?
What happens when you step over that line?
Burn Wild. An eight-part podcast series. Starting September 6th.
Reach and audience
Public platform figures. Ratings count people who left a rating, not total listeners.
Apple Podcasts (US)
4.3 / 5
169 ratings
Contact Burn Wild
Guest appearances
Books guests
Based on episode analysis; this does not confirm that the show is currently accepting guests.
Pod Engine is an independent podcast discovery and analytics service and is not affiliated with or endorsed by this podcast. Artwork and show content belong to their owners. Full legal notice.
Explore this show Podcast research with Pod Engine
