Emergence Magazine Podcast
Emergence Magazine is an award winning magazine exploring the threads connecting ecology, culture and spirituality. Our podcast features exclusive interviews, author-narrated essays, fiction, multipart series, and more. We feature new podcast episodes weekly on Tuesdays.
1
The Serviceberry: An Economy of Abundance – Rob...
As Robin Wall Kimmerer harvests serviceberries alongside the birds, she considers the ethic of reciprocity that lies at the heart of the gift economy.
47 min
2
Coming into Being: Reflections on Mothering in ...
As her daughter learns to speak, Chelsea Steinauer-Scudder meditates on how to listen for a language of mothering that is in service to all of life’s beings.
35 min
3
Finding the Mother Tree – a conversation with S...
In this in-depth interview, Suzanne Simard, the renowned scientist who discovered the “wood-wide web,” speaks about Mother Trees and how to heal our separation from the living world.
64 min
4
The Spirit of the Wetlands – Julian Hoffman
Julian Hoffman witnesses the drastic decline of Dalmatian pelicans as they succumb to avian influenza. As the wetlands fall strangely quiet, he senses the porous boundaries between our health and that of the ecologies we inhabit.
52 min
5
Joy Is the Justice We Give Ourselves – J. Drew ...
In this poem, J. Drew Lanham celebrates radical acts of joy by lifting up liberation, reparations, justice, and deep connection to ancestors and the living world.
12 min
6
Coming Home to the Cove: A Story of Family, Mem...
As the Point Reyes National Seashore deliberates the fate of Theresa Harlan’s family homestead, she continues her grassroots efforts to involve the wider community in protecting the last standing Coast Miwok structures on Tomales Bay.
64 min
7
Coming Home to the Cove: A Story of Family, Mem...
Episode Two traces thousands of years of Indigenous presence and history in the greater San Francisco Bay area, all the way through the oppressive colonial systems that have become today’s mainstream culture, and asks: Who gets to define history?
63 min
8
Coming Home to the Cove: A Story of Family, Mem...
Theresa Harlan shares the story of her Coast Miwok family’s eviction from their homestead on a cove in Tomales Bay—an uprooting which ended her family’s time there but did not sever their connection to the ancestral lands and waters of Tamal-liwa.
48 min
9
Beings Seen and Unseen – a conversation with Am...
In this wide-ranging conversation, Amitav Ghosh calls on storytellers to lead us in the necessary work of collective reimagining: decentering human narratives and re-centering stories of the land.
41 min
10
My Wild-Like Refuge – J. Drew Lanham
During the pandemic lockdown, J. Drew Lanham’s backyard, a newly sanctioned “wild-like refuge,” comes to life as he notices the wildlife that inhabits the nearby faraway.
19 min
11
My Name Is Beauty – Jake Skeets
As a Native scholar and poet, Jake Skeets considers the necessary interrogation of colonial naming and narratives, and how the Indigenous application of writing as a technology can reshape our world.
33 min
12
When the Earth Started to Sing – David G. Haskell
This sonic journey written and narrated by David G. Haskell brings us to the beginning of sound and song on planet Earth.
41 min
13
Of Wandering Angels and Lost Landmarks – Daegan...
Daegan Miller considers how our historical landmarks have shifted in meaning, leaving us adrift and disoriented in the Anthropocene.
35 min
14
They Carry Us With Them: The Great Tree Migrati...
Around the world, scores of species of trees are moving north, or west, or upslope. What is at stake as the forests change around us? Experience four stories of tree migration.
59 min
15
Gianstone – Andri Snær Magnason
In this short story by Andri Snær Magnason, time expands and collapses as an architect in Reykjavík struggles against the soulless design of urban landscapes in the Anthropocene.
49 min
16
Sanctuary – Camille T. Dungy
In an encounter between a man and an elephant, poet Camille T. Dungy bears witness to a moment in which past harm gives way to an expansive recognition of love.
3 min
17
War on the Air: Ecologies of Disaster – Daisy H...
Daisy Hildyard examines three stories of atrocity that demonstrate how whiteness has inscribed itself onto the land through violence and how human history blurs into the nonhuman world.
49 min
18
To See Beyond: A Hoping in Three Pictures – Ann...
Recalling histories of imperial collapse, Anna Badkhen wonders how we come to terms with the world we have made and how to make space for hope and sanctuary.
22 min
19
Noiseless Messengers – Rebecca Giggs
Very small beings are often responsible for vast surges of life. Rebecca Giggs follows the mass migration of the bogong moth in alpine Australia: a story of superabundance and apocalypse.
60 min
20
The Vagrants: Butterfly Land Grabs and Other Cl...
As plants and animals migrate northwards on an unprecedented scale, Cal Flyn observes new species of butterflies arriving in Scotland's Orkney Islands and faces the haunting knowledge that some voices are rising as others fade away.
24 min
21
Living with the Unknown Soundtrack – Volker Ber...
This week, we’re excited to share the soundtrack of Living with the Unknown. Sit back and enjoy this contemplative sonic experience.
25 min
22
Chasing Cicadas – Anisa George
Amid the cacophony of a cicada emergence, Anisa George reflects on her choice to leave the Bahá’í faith. Following her own rhythms of becoming, she seeks unity in a new chorus of voices.
36 min
23
Where the Horses Sing – Llewellyn Vaughan-Lee
Witnessing a growing wasteland, Llewellyn Vaughan-Lee seeks the threshold that could bring us back to the place where the land sings—to a deep ecology of consciousness that returns our awareness to a fully animate world.
20 min
24
Widening Circles – a conversation with Joanna Macy
Joanna Macy discusses her personal journey into the worlds of activism, Buddhism, and deep ecology.
34 min
25
The Creatures of the World Have Not Been Chaste...
As she bears witness to the decomposing body of a deer, Lia Purpura considers the forces of restoration at play: the processes which transform bodies from one state to another and the beginnings that emerge from endings.
17 min
26
Navigating the Mysteries – Martin Shaw
As we walk our questions into a troubled future, storyteller and mythologist Martin Shaw invites us to subvert today's voices of certainty and do the hard work of opening to mystery.
29 min
27
The Nightingale's Song – a conversation with Sa...
Singer Sam Lee speaks about the transformative experience of creating songs in collaboration with nightingales and the space for communion that is opened with silence.
52 min
28
Ancient Green: Moss, Climate, and Deep Time – R...
Taking a long view of life on Earth, Robin Wall Kimmerer explores how mosses—ancient beings who transformed the world—teach us strategies for persisting amid a changing climate.
36 min
29
Finding the Mother Tree – a conversation with S...
64 min
30
Watering the Dead and the Unseen – Sumana Roy
At her home in Siliguri, India, Sumana Roy and her nephew reflect on the continuance of all that has vanished from our sight.
29 min
31
Saguaro, Free of the Earth – Boyce Upholt
In this essay from Boyce Upholt, a coalition of Indigenous voices speak on behalf of the rooted beings of the desert as legal protections for the saguaro cactus come up against the push to build a border wall.
39 min
32
The Eternal Tree – Jori Lewis
Jori Lewis is drawn to the wisdom and resiliency of Africa’s baobab trees—ancient arks of biodiversity that have endured for millennia—and bears witness to these elders in a rapidly changing world.
38 min
33
False Passives – Anna Badkhen
Anna Badkhen considers failed migrations and the impossibility of escape as the forces of climate catastrophe and colonial greed combine to trap the world's most vulnerable populations.
30 min
34
On Death and Love – Melanie Challenger
As Melanie Challenger examines the belief in human exceptionalism that has devastated life on this planet, she wonders if our desire to outrun death is hindering our capacity to love.
26 min
35
Birder to Birder – J. Drew Lanham
Through an imagined exchange of letters between two pillars of conservation, J. Drew Lanham asks: In the ongoing response to racism, how might reckoning with history help us weave better futures?
30 min
36
When the Earth Started to Sing – David G. Haskell
This sonic journey narrated by David G. Haskell brings us to the beginning of sound and song on planet Earth.
41 min
37
Becoming Water: Black Memory in Slavery’s After...
Navigating Black lineages of thinking and practice, Makshya Tolbert wades into the liminal space that exists between water and Black memory.
21 min
38
Ten Love Letters to the Earth – Thich Nhat Hanh...
In honor of the passing of Zen Master Thich Nhat Hanh, we are sharing his Ten Love Letters to the Earth. These meditations are an invitation to engage in a living dialogue with our Earth.
50 min
39
Coming Home to the Cove: A Story of Family, Mem...
As the Point Reyes National Seashore deliberates the fate of Theresa Harlan’s family homestead, she continues her grassroots efforts to involve the wider community in protecting the last standing Coast Miwok structures on Tomales Bay.
64 min
40
Coming Home to the Cove: A Story of Family, Mem...
Episode Two traces thousands of years of Indigenous presence and history in the greater San Francisco Bay area, all the way through the oppressive colonial systems that have become today’s mainstream culture, and asks: Who gets to define history?
63 min
41
Coming Home to the Cove: A Story of Family, Mem...
Theresa Harlan shares the story of her Coast Miwok family’s eviction from their homestead on a cove in Tomales Bay—an uprooting which ended her family’s time there but did not sever their connection to the ancestral lands and waters of Tamal-liwa.
48 min
42
From Dirt – Camille T. Dungy
Camille T. Dungy reflects on the legacy and journey, triumph and trauma, of seeds.
16 min
43
The Ecology of Perception – a conversation with...
In this interview, David Abram discusses our current moment of ecological and societal instability and calls on us to remember the animacy of our bodily senses and our participation in the collective, embodied flesh of the Earth.
49 min
44
An Unbroken Grace – Fred Bahnson
Fred Bahnson reflects on the life of Barry Lopez, a storyteller whose encounters with mystery and the more-than-human informed his practice of writing stories that illuminate and heal.
35 min
45
A Whale in the Desert: Tracing Paths of Migrati...
Tristan McConnell journeys across Turkana in Kenya’s Rift Valley, a place whose long story is still being written by a shape-shifting landscape and changing patterns of human and nonhuman migration.
51 min
46
Be Earth Now – Rainer Maria Rilke recited by Jo...
Anita Barrows and Joanna Macy read a selection of poems from Rainer Maria Rilke’s "Book of Hours: Love Poems to God," reminding us of our role in loving the world.
21 min
47
Beings Seen and Unseen – a conversation with Am...
In this wide-ranging conversation, Amitav Ghosh calls on storytellers to lead us in the necessary work of collective reimagining: decentering human narratives and re-centering stories of the land.
42 min
48
Reseeding the Food System – a conversation with...
In this in-depth interview, Rowen White discusses how seeds—her greatest teachers—hold the link between cultural revitalization and the restoration of traditional foodways.
48 min
49
They Carry Us With Them – Pt. 2: Sugar Maple, P...
The migrations of sugar maple, paper birch, and red spruce are shared here as short vignettes, each offering a glimpse of just one facet of tree migration.
19 min
50
They Carry Us With Them – Pt.1: Introduction an...
Around the world, scores of species of trees are moving north, or west, or upslope. What is at stake as the forests change around us? Experience four stories of tree migration.
59 min
51
Making Relatives – Diane Wilson
Endeavoring to restore balance between the native and invasive plants around her home, Diane Wilson makes a relationship with the most aggressive species, asking: what does it mean to be a good relative to the land?
29 min
52
Finding Joy in the Unknown – a conversation wit...
In this interview 17 year-old Dara McAnulty—author and naturalist—speaks about his identity as an autistic person, his award-winning book, and the necessity of staying rooted in joy.
42 min
53
A Little More Than Kin – Richard Powers
Reflecting on whether there is a genetic basis for altruism, Richard Powers looks at how human beings find kinship with other creatures.
19 min
54
Invasives: Unknitting Despair in a Tangled Land...
As invasive plants proliferate around her home in Toronto, Catherine Bush considers her family’s own history as transplanted immigrants and how acts of reciprocity and care for the land might unknit despair.
30 min
55
Language Keepers, Episode 4: Wukchumni
In honor of Marie Wilcox, the last fluent speaker of the Wukchumni language.
28 min
56
Atascosa Borderlands – Jack Dash and Luke Swenson
In the Atascosa Highlands, the silverleaf oak and saguaros have no sense that the land around them is divided between the US and Mexico. But as the border wall imposes a hard boundary, this ecological crossroads faces an increasingly fragmented future.
23 min
57
Living in the Bones – Bathsheba Demuth
On a moose hunt north of the Arctic Circle, Bathsheba Demuth observes two contrasting narratives manifest along the banks of the Ch’izhìn Nji: one of conquest, another of quiet knowing and restraint.
26 min
58
Speaking the Anthropocene – a conversation with...
In this interview, Robert Macfarlane articulates the consequence and responsibility, as well as the pleasure, of naming the living world.
76 min
59
Against Nature Writing – Charles Foster
Seeking to express communion with the more-than-human world, Charles Foster begins to wonder if language can do anything other than constrain and tame the tangled wild.
31 min
60
Paradise Extended – Natalie Rose Richardson
As Natalie Rose Richardson searches for her great-grandfather’s grave in a historically segregated cemetery, she confronts the American notion of paradise and the walls erected to protect it.
36 min
61
Joy is the Justice We Give Ourselves – J. Drew ...
In this poem, J. Drew Lanham celebrates radical acts of joy by lifting up liberation, reparations, justice, and deep connection to ancestors and the living world.
12 min
62
Meltwater: A Timepiece for the Arctic – Stephen...
As Stephen Lezak explores the paradoxical human narratives that overlay the Arctic landscape, he bears witness to a place that is teetering in an uneasy balance between eternity and loss.
34 min
63
A Forest Walk – a guided practice by Kimberly R...
This guided practice by Kimberly Ruffin offers ways to connect to the living world through a walk in the forest.
47 min
64
The Life Story of a Recipe – Gina Rae La Cerva
Through legacies of wild food gathering and feasting, Gina Rae La Cerva traces the traditions that have brought her family joy and sustenance, even in times of grief, conquest, and migration.
35 min
65
Return of the Foreigners – Nick Hunt
Nick Hunt ventures into the Forest of Dean seeking the unruly, twilight realm of the boar—a creature who brings him to the boundary between wildness and civilization, history and myth.
32 min
66
The Forest of Orchids – Heather Swan
As Colombia continues to suffer violence and unrest, one family is cultivating resiliency and healing by planting thousands of native orchids across a restored mountainside.
34 min
67
The Nightingale's Song – a conversation with Sa...
Singer Sam Lee speaks about the transformative experience of creating songs in collaboration with nightingales and the space for communion that is opened with silence.
51 min
68
Where the Horses Sing – Llewellyn Vaughan-Lee
Witnessing a growing wasteland, Llewellyn Vaughan-Lee seeks the threshold that could bring us back to the place where the land sings—to a deep ecology of consciousness that returns our awareness to a fully animate world.
20 min
69
We’re Gonna Carry That Weight a Long Time – Dav...
David Farrier reflects on the immense burden of materials that mark our place on Earth.
25 min
70
Turn Towards the Dark – Hala Alyan
In reckoning with a precarious world, Hala Alyan reluctantly steps into the realm of fear.
41 min
71
Ravens and Doves – Jeffrey Jerome Cohen and Jul...
In the face of present-day environmental catastrophe and social injustice, Jeffrey Jerome Cohen and Julian Yates examine the opposing narratives of survival in the story of Noah’s Ark.
39 min
72
Finding the Mother Tree – a conversation with S...
Suzanne Simard, the renowned scientist who discovered the “wood-wide web,” speaks about mother trees and how to heal our separation from the living world.
64 min
73
The Voices of Birds and the Language of Belongi...
David G. Haskell enters the intricate and generative soundscape of the world of birds, inviting us to join in a practice of cross-species listening as a bridge to kinship.
24 min
74
Sanctuaries of Silence
In celebration of Earth Day, we are resharing the podcast adaptation of our award-winning virtual reality experience, Sanctuaries of Silence, an immersive listening journey into the Hoh Rainforest, one of the quietest places left in North America.
14 min
75
QIKIQTAĠRUK: Almost an Island – Lauren Oakes
As she reflects on what will be needed to build resilience in the face of an uncertain future, Lauren Oakes considers the meeting place of scientific knowledge and Indigenous ways of knowing.
27 min
76
Be Earth Now – Rainer Maria Rilke recited by Jo...
Anita Barrows and Joanna Macy read a selection of poems from Rainer Maria Rilke’s "Book of Hours: Love Poems to God," reminding us of our role in loving the world.
21 min
77
River at the Heart of the World – Arati Kumar-Rao
Arati Kumar-Rao ventures into a forested river gorge in the hidden land of Pemakö, which exists deep within the heart of the Tibetan Buddhist belief system. Long considered impenetrable, the grind of industry now threatens this prophesied “promised land.”
27 min
78
On Time and Water – a conversation with Andri S...
In this interview, Icelandic writer and documentary filmmaker Andri Snær Magnason discusses our relationship to time in an age of ecological crisis.
60 min
79
The Stories I Haven’t Been Told – Jamie Figueroa
Jamie Figueroa navigates generational trauma and lost ancestral stories in order to reveal and reclaim her cultural and familial inheritance.
49 min
80
Once I Took a Weeklong Walk in the Sahara – Ann...
On a weeklong journey across the Sahara Desert, Anna Badkhen contemplates human movement across shifting landscapes and what remains eternal in the face of erasure.
43 min
81
Keeping the World in Being: Meditations on Long...
In pursuit of a contemplative inner life amid a world in upheaval, Fred Bahnson meditates on longing and maintaining an attentive heart.
29 min
82
Thirteen to One: New Stories for an Age of Disa...
Recalling the myth of the giant catfish Ōnamazu—said to reside beneath the Japanese archipelago and cause earthquakes—Marie Mutsuki Mockett considers stories that could change our relationship with what we call “nature.”
24 min
83
A Convergent Imagining – J. Drew Lanham
What if Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. and Rachel Carson had met? Imagining an exchange in the year 1964, J. Drew Lanham explores the power and necessity of convergence.
24 min
84
The Inward Migration in Apocalyptic Times – Ale...
Australian Aboriginal author Alexis Wright turns inward to the dwelling place of ancestral story.
40 min
85
Unraveling the Stitches – Kalyanee Mam
Tracing her father’s struggle for acceptance in the US after her family fled the Khmer Rouge regime in Cambodia, Kalyanee Mam reflects on the false promise of the American Dream and the deep belonging she finds in the wisdom of her ancestors.
47 min
86
The Druid Renaissance – Lucy Jones
Seeking a way to honor the earth amid a culture of ecological destruction, British author Lucy Jones arrives at Druidry, a mysterious and ancient tradition that speaks clearly to the essential problems of our time.
45 min
87
Illuminating Kirinyaga – Tristan McConnell
Meaning and Knowing in Mount Kenya’s Forests
34 min
88
The Coronavirus Pandemic and the Invisibility o...
As urbanization increasingly severs humanity from the living world, naturalist Michael McCarthy explores the ways in which the “anthropause” ushered in by the coronavirus has made nature visible again.
29 min
89
The Serviceberry: An Economy of Abundance – Rob...
As Robin Wall Kimmerer harvests serviceberries alongside the birds, she considers the ethic of reciprocity that lies at the heart of the gift economy.
47 min
90
Radical Dharma – a conversation with angel Kyod...
In this interview, Rev. angel Kyodo williams reflects on our crisis of story, the failure of institutional religion, and Radical Dharma.
39 min
91
The Meaning of Air – Boyce Upholt
Boyce Upholt forges into a deep inquiry of air, searching for meaning in the delicate balance of elements that allows life on Earth to flourish.
26 min
92
The Memory Field – Jake Skeets
Musing on the Diné perspective of time, memory, and land.
30 min
93
Reseeding the Food System – an Interview with R...
Rowen White discusses how seeds hold the link between cultural revitalization and the restoration of traditional foodways.
48 min
94
Coyote Story – CMarie Fuhrman
CMarie Fuhrman encounters a coyote whose leg is caught in a trap in the Montana prairie. As she decides what to do, she considers what it means to be trapped and what it means to be free.
22 min
95
Reindeer at the End of the World – Bathsheba De...
Bathsheba Demuth observes the rise and ruin of the Soviet ideology that sought to impose its utopian vision on the Native Chukchi people, their herds of reindeer, and the natural cycles of the Russian tundra.
30 min
96
Fermentation as Metaphor – a conversation with ...
In this interview, Sandor Katz, an expert in fermented foods, considers the liberating and connective experience that engagement with microbial communities offers.
45 min
97
East to Eden – Roger Deakin with Robert Macfarlane
Robert Macfarlane narrates a chapter from Roger Deakin’s book Wildwood: A Journey Through Trees.
57 min
98
My Mother’s Hands – Gina Rae La Cerva
As she collects wild foods during the pandemic, Gina Rae La Cerva considers the widespread loss of traditional feminine knowledge and how an ancient understanding of wild medicine could serve today’s fragmented world.
14 min
99
Desire Paths – David Farrier
As the coronavirus sets us on an uncertain and increasingly narrow path, David Farrier finds inspiration in the meandering imprints left by the tracks of animals.
18 min
100
Language Keepers, Episode 6: The Power of Revit...
Hear from speakers of endangered languages who are increasingly resisting predictions of extinction.
34 min