The Illicit Gin Institute Podcast: SPIRIT LED.

“SPIRIT LED” is a journey, shared as a podcast, where artist and host Zina Saro-Wiwa explores the areas where food, spirituality, and environmentalism intersect. The meditative jumping off point is African palm wine spirit production, a culture and commodity that hosts multiple stories about secret epistemologies, plant medicine, invisible ecologies, ancestor worship and much more. In “SPIRIT LED” we cover these issues but also take these lessons out onto the open road and explore corollaries around the world and across history, constructing a radical thesis of spiritual ecology along the way. Saro-Wiwa, whose background is in producing and reporting at BBC Radio and TV says:

“I experience the spirit of palm wine as a sentient force, a being in itself. One that has been taking me on a journey to discover more about the nature of human connection with the earth. Revealing a truer ecology. A spiritual ecology. I think of “illicit gin” as a lens and a portal to a different way of seeing and understanding the world because the story of palm wine spirit production sits on a powerfully unique cultural, spiritual, scientific, economic and philosophical nexus.”

SPIRIT LED will feature encounters with scientists, chefs, farmers, environmental philosophers, artists, shamans, theologians and distillers. Join Zina Saro-Wiwa in this unique journey to learn about the surprising ways in which the meditation on spirit production in the Niger Delta teaches us about humanity's relationship with the environment. Launching in May 2022.