Emergence Magazine Podcast

By Emergence Magazine

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What's Emergence Magazine Podcast about?

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.

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Hidden Bayou – Nathaniel Rich.

06.06.2023

“Did Nieux Swamp resemble the original deltaic marsh, before it had been ruined by sea level rise, shipping canals, and pipelines? Or had the Foundation’s engineers created an alien landscape?” This week, acclaimed author Nathaniel Rich invites us to step ...

Emergence Magazine Podcast episodes:

06.06.2023 Hidden Bayou – Nathaniel Rich. “Did Nieux Swamp resemble the original deltaic marsh, before it had been ruined by sea level rise, shipping canals, and pipelines? Or had the Foundation’s engineers created an alien landscape?” This week, acclaimed author Nathaniel Rich invites us to step ...
05.30.2023 Becoming Water: Black Memory in Slavery’s Afterlives – Makshya Tolbert As our physical and cultural landscapes transform around us, what memories remain held by water? What histories of pain and destruction, what hallowed moments are carried in its currents, taken into its body like shards of glass, and resurface to ...
05.23.2023 Saguaro, Free of the Earth – Boyce Upholt Imagine a world where the mountains and glaciers, trees and waterways and animals—everything comprising our living, breathing planet—had as much a right to exist, legally, as humans. In this narrated essay, author Boyce Upholt travels to meet with the O’odham ...
05.16.2023 In the Shifting Embrace of the Ganga – Arati Kumar-Rao Visiting West Bengal during monsoon season, writer and photographer Arati Kumar-Rao bears witness to all that is formed and all that is destroyed in the swell and retreat of the Ganga. Struck by the immense power of the ancient river—a ...
05.09.2023 Dwelling on Earth – Jay Griffiths Soil has been described as the skin of the living world—vital, reactive, fragile and thin. Like our own skin, soil contains and protects a living, interdependent ecosystem that breathes, digests, and is finite in its ability to revitalize itself when ...
05.02.2023 The Inward Migration in Apocalyptic Times – Alexis Wright With native ecosystems and Indigenous lifeways perpetually under threat, acclaimed Australian Aboriginal author Alexis Wright considers how her enduring culture has responded to ongoing destruction. She turns inward to the dwelling place of ancestral story, to a space where the ...
04.25.2023 Another Kind of Time – a conversation with Jenny Odell How we experience time is, ultimately, how we experience our lives. In this conversation with Jenny Odell, artist and author of Saving Time: Discovering a Life Beyond the Clock, she describes the social and cultural ideas that underpin our sense ...
04.18.2023 The Nightingale's Song – a conversation with Sam Lee To mark the beginning of England’s nightingale season, we revisit our conversation with acclaimed folk singer, conservationist, and song collector Sam Lee, who steps into the forest each spring to sing with these beloved birds. In this interview, Sam reflects ...
04.11.2023 A Woman Meets an Owl, a Rattlesnake, and a Hummingbird – Greg Sarris In this week’s podcast, Tribal Chairman and award-winning author Greg Sarris introduces us to the Crow Sisters, who tell of a young woman drawn on a mysterious journey to the lost village of Kobe·cha, near Sonoma Mountain in Northern California. ...
04.04.2023 Reindeer at the End of the World – Bathsheba Demuth In this narrated essay from our archive, ecological historian Bathsheba Demuth explores the allure of the apocalyptic arc—the ending of an “old” world and the promise of a new, “perfect” one. As she crosses the easternmost edge of northern Russia, ...
03.28.2023 Monuments Upon the Tumultuous Earth – Boyce Upholt For thousands of years, the southern Mississippi River has been shaping the land it traverses—and the structures humans have built along it. Over vast stretches of time, Indigenous societies were building hundred-foot pyramids, fifty-acre plazas, and intricate clusters of hillocks ...
03.21.2023 Valemon The Bear: Myth in the Age of the Anthropocene – featuring Martin Shaw This week’s episode is an audio adaptation of our multimedia experience “Valemon the Bear: Myth in the Age of the Anthropocene,” featuring mythologist Martin Shaw. Martin’s vivid telling summons the ancient tale of a wild daughter falling in love with ...
03.14.2023 What Survives – Lacy M. Johnson In this narrated essay, author Lacy M. Johnson reflects on what can be rebuilt and what must be mourned as our environments shift, fracture, and sometimes disappear. Walking through a wetlands that was once an upscale neighborhood in Houston, Lacy ...
03.07.2023 When You Meet the Monster, Anoint Its Feet – Bayo Akomolafe In this narrated essay from our archive, Nigerian writer Bayo Akomolafe deconstructs old stories of colorism and puts forward “monstrosity”—that which upends the familiar, that which challenges and resists the order of things—as a site to truly meet ourselves. He ...
02.28.2023 The Fallout: Voices from Ukraine – Anna Badkhen et al. One year has passed since Russia launched a full-scale invasion of Ukraine. The conflict has unleashed unspeakable violence, killing hundreds of thousands of people, displacing millions from their homes, and inflicting untold suffering. And the war’s impact on Ukraine’s more-than-human ...
02.21.2023 Creatures That Don’t Conform – Lucy Jones In this essay, author Lucy Jones brims with awe upon discovering slime molds in the woods near her home. As she is increasingly drawn down to the forest floor and into their world of nonconformity, she explores what might happen ...
02.14.2023 Sanctuaries of Silence – A Listening Journey In this immersive listening journey from our archive, acoustic ecologist Gordon Hempton guides us into the Hoh Rain Forest—one of the quietest places in North America. In a world drowned out by the din of modern life, Hempton offers a ...
02.07.2023 An Ethics of Wild Mind – a conversation with David Hinton David Hinton is a poet, translator, and author whose works are informed by ancient Chinese philosophy and deep ecological thought. In this interview, David discusses his latest book Wild Mind, Wild Earth, which looks to ancient modes of seeing and ...
01.31.2023 Kinship, Community, and Consciousness – a conversation with Richard Powers This week we revisit our conversation with Richard Powers, author of the Pulitzer Prize–winning novel The Overstory, a story that reweaves the fabric of our reality by entangling us within “plant consciousness.” Richard discusses the kind of storytelling that acknowledges ...
01.24.2023 Finding Joy in the Unknown – a conversation with Dara McAnulty This week we’re re-sharing our interview with Irish teenage author, naturalist, and conservationist Dara McAnulty. His debut book, Diary of a Young Naturalist—which he wrote at the age of fourteen, and which is in part an intimate portrait of his ...
01.17.2023 Prophecies of Possibility: A Ripening of the Next World – Jamie Figueroa Jamie Figueroa is Boricua (Afro-Taíno) by way of Ohio and a long-time resident of northern New Mexico. She is the author of the novel Brother, Sister, Mother, Explorer. In this narrated essay, Jamie considers the kind of world she wants ...
01.10.2023 Ten Love Letters to the Earth – Thich Nhat Hanh read by Emmanuel Vaughan-Lee The Vietnamese Buddhist monk and Zen master Thich Nhat Hanh died nearly one year ago, on January 22, 2022. To honor his passing, we are re-sharing his “Ten Love Letters to the Earth,” a series of meditations that engage us ...
12.20.2022 A Primordial Covenant of Relationship – An Evening in London with Emmanuel Vaughan-Lee In this talk given at St. Ethelburga's Centre for Reconciliation and Peace in London, Sufi teacher and Emergence Executive Editor Emmanuel Vaughan-Lee speaks about what it looks like to live in an unfolding apocalyptic reality and the creative possibilities that ...
12.13.2022 After the End – Ben Okri read by Colin Salmon As we come to the end of Living with the Unknown, we begin again at the beginning. For the final story of our third volume, we journey into the fictional, post-apocalyptic landscape of acclaimed Nigerian poet and novelist Ben Okri. ...
12.06.2022 An Ecological Technology – a conversation with James Bridle In this expansive interview, writer, artist, and technologist James Bridle seeks to widen our thinking beyond humancentric ways of knowing. In questioning our fundamental assumptions about intelligence, they explore how radical technological models can decentralize power and become portals into ...
11.29.2022 The Inward Migration in Apocalyptic Times – Alexis Wright Alexis Wright is an Australian Aboriginal author and member of the Waanji people from the southern Gulf of Carpentaria. As the world falters, threatening native ecosystems and Indigenous lifeways, Alexis turns inward to the dwelling place of ancestral story. Emergence ...
11.22.2022 The Serviceberry: An Economy of Abundance – Robin Wall Kimmerer As we look to an uncertain future, what systems of exchange might we embrace that support and deepen our interdependence? In this essay, Potawatomi scientist and author Robin Wall Kimmerer harvests serviceberries alongside the birds, considering the ethic of reciprocity ...
11.15.2022 Coming into Being: Reflections on Mothering in the Apocalypse – Chelsea Steinauer-Scudder In this meditative exploration, Chelsea Steinauer-Scudder witnesses her daughter learning to speak and wonders how to listen for a language of mothering that is in service to all of life’s beings. Emergence Magazine, Vol 3: Living with the Unknown explores ...
11.08.2022 Finding the Mother Tree – a conversation with Suzanne Simard Suzanne Simard is known for her groundbreaking research on the belowground fungal networks that connect trees and facilitate inter-tree communication and interaction. We continue to explore Futures this week with another story on motherhood—this time within the world of trees. ...
11.01.2022 The Spirit of the Wetlands – Julian Hoffman Julian Hoffman lives in a mountain village beside the Prespa lakes in northwestern Greece. He is the author of The Small Heart of Things and Irreplaceable: The Fight to Save Our Wild Places. In this piece, Julian witnesses the drastic ...
10.25.2022 Joy Is the Justice We Give Ourselves – J. Drew Lanham We close our exploration of the theme of Roots by taking a step into joy. This week, we bring you another piece by birder and writer J. Drew Lanham. In this powerfully recited poem, Drew celebrates the radical act of ...
10.18.2022 Coming Home to the Cove: A Story of Family, Memory, and Stolen Land – Episode 3 This three-part series is the multigenerational story of a Coast Miwok family’s eviction from their home and one woman’s determination to bring the living history of her family back to the land. This final episode traces the Spanish missions, boarding ...
10.11.2022 Coming Home to the Cove: A Story of Family, Memory, and Stolen Land – Episode 2 This three-part series is the multigenerational story of a Coast Miwok family's eviction from their ancestral home—on a cove in Tomales Bay in Northern California—and one woman's effort to bring the living history of her family back to the land. ...
10.04.2022 Coming Home to the Cove: A Story of Family, Memory, and Stolen Land – Episode 1 Across the United States, Indigenous communities are calling for sweeping revisions to stories commonly told as “history”—stories that, even today, neglect and erase Indigenous peoples and serve as justification for continued ownership of stolen Indigenous lands. This three-part series is ...
09.27.2022 Beings Seen and Unseen – a conversation with Amitav Ghosh How can stories return us to what is essential as we navigate an uncertain future? In this conversation with Amitav Ghosh, author of The Nutmeg’s Curse: Parables for a Planet in Crisis, he calls on storytellers to lead us in ...
09.20.2022 My Wild-Like Refuge – J. Drew Lanham How do we root ourselves in times of isolation and disorientation? As birder and writer J. Drew Lanham encounters his backyard during the pandemic lockdown, he designates it as a newly sanctioned “wild-like refuge”—a place that is brimming with life ...
09.13.2022 My Name Is Beauty – Jake Skeets We begin Chapter Three with a story that explores language as a technology capable of transforming our lived realities. As a Native scholar and poet, Jake Skeets considers the necessary interrogation of colonial naming and narratives, and how the Indigenous ...
09.06.2022 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. The experience is made entirely of tiny trembling waves in air, the fugitive, ephemeral energy that we call ...
08.30.2022 Of Wandering Angels and Lost Landmarks – Daegan Miller Daegan Miller is the author of This Radical Land: A Natural History of American Dissent. In this essay, Daegan visits the tree that marks the thousandth westward mile of the Transcontinental Railroad and considers how our historical landmarks have shifted ...
08.23.2022 They Carry Us With Them: The Great Tree Migration – Chelsea Steinauer-Scudder Around the world, trees are on the move. Last year we published a special multimedia story, told from the perspectives of four native tree species, that explores what is at stake for both ecological and human communities as forests migrate. ...
08.16.2022 Giantstone – Andri Snær Magnason In our final installment on the theme of Ashes from Chapter Two of Living with the Unknown, we enter a fictional world dominated by the monotony and tireless momentum of greed. In this short story from Icelandic author Andri Snær ...
08.09.2022 Sanctuary – Camille T. Dungy Acclaimed poet Camille T. Dungy bears witness to an encounter between a man and an elephant. In an effort to make sense of a world in which so much has been lost, this poem offers us the opportunity to step ...
08.02.2022 War on the Air: Ecologies of Disaster – Daisy Hildyard In this narrated essay, Daisy Hildyard, a scholar of the history of science, examines three stories of atrocity and considers how whiteness has inscribed itself onto the land through violence. In what ways, she asks, does human history blur into ...
07.26.2022 To See Beyond: A Hoping in Three Pictures – Anna Badkhen In this narrated essay, writer and journalist Anna Badkhen brings us into histories of imperial collapse. As we continue our exploration of the theme of Ashes and what it means to live in a moment of unraveling, she asks: How ...
07.12.2022 Noiseless Messengers – Rebecca Giggs This month we move from Initiation into Ashes with five stories from Chapter Two. When so much has been stripped away, how do we bear witness to ruin? How do we continue to be present with that which remains? We ...
07.05.2022 The Vagrants: Butterfly Land Grabs and Other Climate Migrations – Cal Flyn In this narrated essay, Cal Flyn observes new species of butterflies arriving in Scotland's Orkney Islands. As plants and animals migrate northwards on an unprecedented scale, she faces the haunting knowledge that some voices are rising as others fade away. ...
06.28.2022 Living with the Unknown Soundtrack – Volker Bertelmann We invited Oscar-nominated composer Volker Bertelmann, also known as Hauschka, to create a unique companion to the stories in our third volume, Living with the Unknown. The resulting four-part score is a cinematic and introspective experience, and a compelling counterpart ...
06.21.2022 Chasing Cicadas – Anisa George Amid the cacophony of a cicada emergence, our final narrated essay on the theme of Initiation follows a movement into new rhythms and patterns of becoming. While immersed in a unified chorus of insect voices, playwright and director Anisa George ...
06.14.2022 Where the Horses Sing – Llewellyn Vaughan-Lee This week, as our journey into Initiation continues, Sufi teacher and author Llewellyn Vaughan-Lee invites us to cross a threshold. Witnessing how humanity is tearing apart the web of life, he calls us to return our awareness to a fully ...
06.07.2022 Widening Circles – a conversation with Joanna Macy In this interview from our archive, Buddhist eco-philosopher and author Joanna Macy discusses her life and work. From her anti-nuclear activism in the late 1960s to her work with deep ecology, Joanna expresses the need to live within an ethic ...

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