Anthony Brogno, an avid adventurer, snowboarder, hiker, and climber, joins Tatiana Berindei to explain about inspiring action with empathy. He loves anything involving the outdoors. He currently works as an expeditions coordinator in Massachusetts and is always searching for his next adventure. Having been to Patagonia before, Anthony brought his experience and wilderness skills to aid the crew in fighting against the unpredictable conditions throughout Chile. Listen in as he shares his thoughts about inspiring action with empathy.
Hello everyone, welcome to the Sex, Love and SuperPowers Podcast Show. I’m your host Tatiana Berindei, and today I have a very special interview. It’s a unique and slightly different interview with Anthony Brogno. Anthony Brogno is a wilderness guide. He’s a primitive skills instructor, writer, photographer, conservationist and adventure-seeker based in Massachusetts, my home state.
He has been fortunate enough, as I have, to spend time with native and local people in many of the regions around the world where he has traveled extensively. He’s gotten to learn about their unique ecosystems, customs, and relationships with the environment. Recently, he returned from guiding a four-month-long expedition in the Chilean Andes as part of an unaided crew of four making a feature-length documentary. The film Unbounded follows their journey into Patagonia and focuses on the environmental issues and achievements for conservation currently happening in Chile.
He and his crew spent time with and interviewed many people with relationships to the environment including native elders and Nobel prize-winning environmentalists. So, I am very excited to have you on this show, Anthony and some people might be asking why am I having a filmmaker talking about environmental conservation on a show about sex, love, and superpowers? But, in my work with indigenous elders, I have seen a direct correlation between how we relate to one another and how we relate to mothers, as having an effect to how we treat this mother earth. I’m just really looking forward to having you here and to diving into this conversation together. Welcome, thank you so much for saying yes to being here with us today.
Thank you so much, Tatiana for having me. I’m honored to be here and speak with you today.
Absolutely. And you know just for fun, we’ll throw you into the mix and ask you the signature question that we ask everybody, which is what are your superpowers, Anthony?
My superpower is the ability to guide people to the starting point or the launch pad, if you will, from which they can embark upon the quest that they need in their life at this moment. I can bring people to a state or a scenario where they can really get in touch with that inner flame that burns within them and is able to stop and hear and listen to the source, the spark of that flame. Because, I believe that we all have superpowers, and we all have this good that we were sent here to do in the world.
At different points in our lives, there are always these things that have been concealed to us, or that we’ve been sleeping on. To be able to awaken to those things, or to get clear on what our superpowers are, or, the mission that we’re meant to be on right now, I think almost all the time there’s a quest involved in that, and there’s some kind of journey that we have to go on. That can change throughout our lives. There can be different journeys at different times in our lives. I see myself as someone who is able to spend time with people, and then help lead them to that point where they can embark on that journey to make those discoveries.
So beautiful, and so needed. I haven’t had my direct experience of doing that with you, but I have no doubt that you are excellent in that and the space that you create for people in an incredibly safe one. You’re one of the gentlest humans I’ve ever met in my life, and I’ve had the good fortune to in ceremony alongside you, and have a solstice ceremony we’re gonna be doing together coming up here for the winter solstice. I feel really honored to have you in my court so to speak. You’re very a high integrity individual, and thank you for showing up that way and for carrying that work into the world. It’s so needed right now.
Thank you so much.
I want to talk about this film. I want to talk about how it came about, and why did you want to be a part of making this movie?
My involvement with this movie was very much due to a very kismet set of events, and just really a burning desire to get involved. It started out, I had seen … It’s actually funny too because this week is actually one year, it’ll be this week that we left for the expedition.
Oh cool. There were no accidents so perfect timing.
Yeah. It’s a very interesting time right now. I’ve been doing a lot of reflecting on what’s happened over the year and everything. It’s been one year since we set out. It started out a little bit before this time of year, a month or two … about November or October, I saw this thing online somewhere. I think on social media. It looked incredible. It was everything that I’m into, and interested in, and rolled into one. It was this project that these four people were gonna be doing where they’d be traveling. They’d be hiking and packrafting for four months along this little-known trail called the Greater Patagonian Trail, which I had actually never heard of at the time.
But, I had spent time down there on my own in 2014 a couple years prior, and so I had this connection to that place, and the project was largely focused on conservation of land down there. Because there are really some amazing conservation efforts happening in Chile right now. It was Patagonia, and conservation, and adventure, and the quest, and the journey. It was all things that I really resonated with. I reached out, and said, “Hey, if there’s any way I can get involved, I would absolutely love to help in whatever way possible.”
I formed a little bit of a relationship with the producer and director of the film and I was going initially, to be helping them with logistics, and PR, and helping them run their social media, and do all these kinds of things, and using the connections that I had made during my first travels through Patagonia. Then, the wilderness guide that they had slated for the trip, and just a few weeks before they were going to leave, wasn’t able to make the trip anymore. I was helping them scramble to find another person, but, of course, it was always in the back of my mind from the very beginning that it would be a dream to be on this thing, and to be a part of it more intimately, and in person.
I was like, “Hey, I’m available.” It worked out that I had the skills necessary, and the previous experience down there, so it was a really great fit for me to be the wilderness guide for the expedition.
Cool. I love it when things magically happen like that. Like I said, there are no accidents. Now, when we were first talking about having this interview, the topic that we settled down was inspiring action with empathy. I would love to dive into that topic a little bit with you of how you see that relationship with action and empathy taking place through some of the conservation methods that are happening down in Chile. How we might apply some of that up here. Let’s talk about this. It’s a very intriguing topic to me.
Absolutely. That’s what’s so beautiful about the film, and that’s why I love film as a medium for inspiring empathy. Because, short of actually going to a place and spending time there, I think it’s one of the most effective ways of really conveying the feeling, and that intimacy of knowing a place and understanding what it’s about. Sorry.
It’s okay. What did you get to know about that place when you went down there? What was the depth of your interaction with the people? With the place? How did you tap into that empathy inside of yourself through this experience?
Going out into the wild, which is what we did a lot of the time, it really has a way of pushing everything else in your life aside, and you are nowhere else but where you are. It keeps you so incredibly present. That’s part of what I love about travel, in general, is that I think it’s one of the most effective ways to keep us present in our lives, and everything is new, and it’s really an amazing avenue of keeping us in the space that we are. Really getting onto the land, and having to navigate everything to keep ourselves going on this long trail where a lot of the comforts of everyday life are not there, and it really brought us very close to the land, and also the people. Because, a lot of the journey, we were passing through these remote landscapes that the only people living out there were either native people or settlers of the region. They lived these incredible lives, pretty isolated from the rest of society and the outside world.
To really spend time with them, and connect in a way that really couldn’t be done by any other means other than by foot, and really just getting out there. Being able to take that and try to share it with others back here in the US and other parts of the world. To try to capture what it was that we were experiencing and going through, and witnessing out there is how I see us inspiring this empathy, and really getting close, and forming these relationships with these people out there, and this relationship with the natural world there is really what enabled us, and I hope will enable the viewers of the film to want to stand up for these places. Because, there’s some kind of relationship that’s built, and that’s where everything comes from I believe. When you really get to know a place, or know people.
Absolutely. Absolutely. What a beautiful gift that you and your crew have given to us in bringing us into this remote part of the world that the majority of people aren’t going to be able to access. That you got to bring us in there with you and to hear the voices of these people. We have to take a quick break. But, when we get back, I really want to roll the conversation more towards what those voices were saying, and the importance of the message that you heard from the voices of these people who lived so closely in alignment and attuned with nature, and attuned with your … But, before we go to break, would you please just let everybody know where they can find out more about the film? The documentary is called Unbounded. Where can they go to learn more about it?
Absolutely. You can go right to our website which is, unboundedthefilm.com. We’re also on social media @unboundedthefilm. We love to connect with people and hear about what this project sparks within our followers.
Awesome, awesome. Find them on Facebook, find them on social media. Unboundedthefilm.com. We’re talking to Anthony Brogno about inspiring action with empathy, and when we get back, we’re gonna dive deep into some of the messages of those native voices that he had the good fortune to tap into. Stay tuned.
To listen to the entire show click on the player above or go to the SuperPower Up! podcast on iTunes.
Music Credit: All instruments played by Amanda Turk. Engineered and produced by Tatiana Berindei and Daniel Plane reelcello.com
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