Outside/In: Where The Wild Things Grow

Sign up for Nature's newsletter: Growing up, Kiese Laymon thought of himself as a city kid. But he spent his childhood with a foot in two worlds: his mom’s house in the capital city of Jackson, Mississippi and his grandma’s house in a rural country town. It wasn’t until Kiese left Mississippi that he came to understand that this question of city vs. country meant a lot more. It carries a lot of baggage: the tensions between north and south, tectonic historical forces, and the contradictions of life in Mississippi. In this episode from Outside/In, a podcast where curiosity and the natural world collide, producer Justine Paradis sits down with author Kiese Laymon, for a conversation on this question of country versus city, what that has to do with the history of Black life in this country, and the story of Kiese’s first children’s picture book, his latest in a lifelong exploration of a complicated love of Mississippi. To hear more episodes from Outside/In, follow them on Apple Podcasts, Spotify or wherever you get your podcasts.

You can listen to Outside/In: Where The Wild Things Grow online on Radio and Podcast. Open the player on this page to stream the available audio.

Outside/In: Where The Wild Things Grow is an episode from Going Wild with Dr. Rae Wynn-Grant by WNET.

This episode is 29:16 long.

This episode was published on Apr 3, 2025.

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