What do you call it when a population of podcasts mysteriously drop episodes on the same topic at the same time? It's Critical Mast!

We're so proud to present this nutty experiment in community podcasting, with its roots going back to the very beginning of our show (and the beginning of our dedication to silly puns).

Thanks to help from our pals at Jumpstart Nature, Golden State Naturalist, Learning from Nature: The Biomimicry Podcast, Nature’s Archive, and Outside/In, it's time for a bumper crop of podcasts about (or inspired by) the perplexing phenomenon known as masting: where plants somehow synchronize their seed production across staggering distances.

Give all these pods all a follow, & check out this Spotify playlist (to which episodes will be added as they drop).

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🌱 💖 Thanks to all our supporters for making this show possible (and keeping it ad-free and independent)

Join our community for as little as $1/month for access to early episode releases, a bonus podcast feed, merch, our discord server, book club, and more!

We've got another edition of our intermittent interview show for you, this one featuring Sadie Couture in conversation with Hannah Tollefson.

You'll remember Sadie as co-producer and reporter of FE3.4 — Dama Drama. Since then, she’s become a PhD student in Communication Studies at McGill University pursuing research at the intersection of media history, sound studies, and feminist science and technology studies.

Hannah's work is situated at the intersection of environmental, media, and infrastructure studies. She researches the role of socio-technical systems in land, water, and labour struggles, infrastructures of energy transition, and the politics of green capitalism.

This episode focusses on Hannah’s writing on the Port of Vancouver, the concept of "tidewater", the nature of logistics, and the supply chain in which we’re all entangled. Don't miss it.

(Hannah's dissertation, the main subject of this discussion, is under University embargo until Dec 14, 2025. Check back here after then for a link. Until then, one chapter is available below).

Hannah kindly compiled the following citations:

References

• KD Derickson, The Annihilation of Time by Space: https://www.researchgate.net/publication/335733261_The_annihilation_of_time_by_space
• Deborah Cowen, The Deadly Life of Logistics: https://www.upress.umn.edu/9780816680887/the-deadly-life-of-logistics/
• Reconstructing Pre-contact Shoreline (UBC article): https://open.library.ubc.ca/soa/cIRcle/collections/facultyresearchandpublications/52383/items/1.0407075
• Hannah Tollefson, on the ECHO program in The Journal of Environmental Media  https://www.researchgate.net/publication/383972463_On_synchronicity_Green_shipping's_logistical_and_real-time_media

Related news & links

• Future Ecologies episode “Terminal”: https://www.futureecologies.net/listen/fe-4-2-terminal
• On plans to dredge Burrard Inlet: https://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/british-columbia/dredge-burrard-inlet-vancouver-fraser-port-authority-tsleil-waututh-nation-1.7545465
• On tanker traffic impacts of TMX: https://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/british-columbia/tanker-traffic-trans-mountain-pipeline-expansion-1.7305702
• Report on effectiveness of habitat compensation in the Fraser : https://www.cmnbc.ca/wp-content/uploads/2018/11/Assessing-Habitat-Compensation_2016Appendix-I-IV.pdf

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✨ Get Hyphaedelity episodes (and all other Future Ecologies output) early on our Bonus Feed

We’ve got a great guest episode for you today, coming courtesy of our friends over at the podcast Cited.

They’ve got a new series out called “Green Dreams” — covering stories of radical environmentalist thought leaders, and the ripples they’ve left on the present day. We wanted to share with you the very first episode from this series, called “The Green Cosmos”, covering Gerard O’Neil’s 1970s vision for humanity’s passage to the stars.

Find the rest of Green Dreams and much more from Cited wherever you're listening.

We’ve got something a little different for you: something a little less in the sciences, and a little more in the humanities — in the realm of language and human experience.

Today, through a series of conversations, we’re exploring the notion of what it means to have a relationship to land, to be or not be of a place (in other words, to belong or not) and how the intrinsic tensions in all that may be metabolized through the practice of art, and more importantly, that of life.

Our co-producer and interlocutor for this episode is Darby Minott Bradford: poet, editor, translator, and the author of Bottom Rail on Top.

Our guests are author Jordan Abel (Nishga, Empty Spaces), multi-disciplinary artist S F Ho (Green Lines), and poet Cecily Nicholson (Wayside Sang, Harrowings)

Music by Thumbug

It's a double feature!

With help from recordist/anthropologist/podcaster Louise Romain and musician/conservationist Javan Hunt, we're visiting the Caribbean. First, off the coast of Colombia, on the islands of San Andrés, Providencia and Santa Catalina, and next a musical excursion to Grand Bahama.

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From Reef to Ridge is an audio documentary love story with the Ocean, the reef, and its guardians; an invitation to travel to Caribbean shores to immerse yourself in the lived experiences of coastal communities, and in the sounds of the local ecosystems: the coral reefs and the mangroves.

You will hear stories from Raizal fishermen, turning their ignorance for corals into love, respect and admiration, and learn about the work of the female marine biologists of the Blue Indigo Foundation to restore and heal corals.

Together, they share about their dreams for the future of the reef, the challenges they face with global warming, climate change and extreme weather events, and the hopes of marine and coastal ecosystem regeneration after the recent hurricanes.

Featuring the voices of Laura Valderrama Ballesteros, Yanelys Cantillo Villa, Pedro Livingston, Ruben Azcarate, Camilo Leche, Casimiro Newball Hyman, Josselyn Bryan Arboleda, plus original music by Marc Blandel.

Find more from Louise at Circle of Voices, wherever you get podcasts, or at tuneintotheworld.com

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As Waterkeepers Bahamas' Mangrove Nursery Coordinator, as a public educator, and as a musician, Javan Hunt has introduced folks of all ages to the joy of taking an active role in ecological flourishing.

Javan's dedication to environmental stewardship is rooted in his love for The Bahamas — a place of stunning beauty. Its ecosystems, particularly its mangroves, are the lifeblood of coastal resilience. But after Hurricane Dorian, vast swaths of these critical habitats were destroyed, leaving communities vulnerable. both ecologically and culturally. The crisis wasn't just environmental — it was spiritual, a loss of identity tied to the land and sea. He has used his artistry and environmental work to create a movement that restores more than just mangroves — it restores connection, culture, and a sense of home.

Find more from Javan on all music platforms, or at javanhunt.com

Hello! As you know well, we're not the news. The news is generally bad, and we prefer to not be bad news. So, it's a funny thing for us to release an episode about politics.

In this edition of Hyphaedelity, our interlocutor Adam Davis (EIP, FE5.6) and his guest Tim Male (EPIC) discuss going from working at an environmental NGO to within the White House, the role of executive orders, the state of environmental regulation, effecting change, the voting age, and much more (from a vantage point of January 30, 2025).

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*Where you'll find lots of impassioned conversation about this episode.

The Miyawaki Method of micro-forestry is a viral sensation: sprouting tiny, dense, native tree cover in neighbourhoods all around the world. With the promise of afforestation at a revolutionary speed, this planting technique has become the darling of green-space enthusiasts, industry, and governments alike — yet few professional or academic ecologists have commented on its efficacy, or even seem to have heard of it!

In this episode, we debate the legacy of Dr. Akira Miyawaki: the man, the myth, and the method.

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Visit futureecologies.net for photos, a transcript, and citations for this episode

If you appreciate the existence of independent, ad-free podcasting, you can support us — at patreon.com/futureecologies

Mendel here with an exciting announcement:

I'm producing a new video podcast for a local environmental advocacy organization: the False Creek Friends Society.

False Creek, as the name suggests, is not a creek. It’s a tidal slough, and it’s one of the most visible waterways here in Vancouver, where I live. It’s right next to downtown, and it’s always bustling with life. It also has a reputation for being highly polluted, thanks to bygone industry and present day civic infrastructure. Despite that, a recent bioblitz survey revealed that it’s home to more than 500 different species.

The goal of the False Creek Friends Society is to see this waterway become a focal point of healing the intersection of ecology and urban society, and have it serve as a living lab for us to better understand our relationship with these waters. More specifically, the proposal is for False Creek to be designated as Canada’s first Urban Marine Park, with Indigenous co-governance, under the 30 x 30 conservation goals.

Of course, getting there is going to take work, and a lot of learning — lessons which I think will be relevant not just for me and my neighbours, but anybody living near water. The story of False Creek’s future is about public health, climate resilience, Indigenous reconciliation, more-than-human beings, and environmental justice. Because after all, we’re all waterbodies. If you’re as excited about this project as I am, you can learn more and get involved at falsecreekfriends.org

Waterbodies is recorded on location on False Creek. The first episodes will arrive this September, but the trailer is out now. So I hope you’ll get subscribed to the Waterbodies feed anywhere — YouTube, Spotify, Apple Podcasts, etcetera. Here's the video trailer.

(Just in case you were wondering, Future Ecologies is not going away. But it’s also still not sustainable as a full time job for me or anyone else. If you want, you can help us out at Patreon.com/futureecologies, but in the meantime I think this makes for a pretty cool balance.)

We're excited to introduce our brand new spin-off format: Hyphaedelity (which will ironically be somewhat lower-fi than our usual output).

Here’s the deal: Hyphaedelity is our experiment in chatcasting, but with a twist. On each episode, we’re inviting a past guest from Future Ecologies to conduct their own interview, and bring us all along to sit in on their conversation.

We wanted to see what would happen if we chased some of threads outwards from the dense tangle of ideas usually on display in our main episodes, and to be a little looser with it — not having to worry about pesky things like narrative clarity, or scoring, or sound design.

This inaugural episode brings together Sarah Jim (of Scales of Change, Chapter 6) and Lucas Glenn, to discuss Lucas's ecologically engaged art practice as the former artist-in-residence for the city of Kelowna.

Let us know what you think about this new format! We've got a wide array of conversations heading your way, and we hope you enjoy going a little off-trail with us.

Works mentioned:

• Seed Bomb Recipe and 9 Statements
• Pepaken Hautw
• M.A.S.S.I.V.E.
• Compost Cycles for Island X
• The Wild Ride

Want to catch Hyphaedelity (and all episodes of Future Ecologies) early? futureecologies.net/join

When is it ethical to kill one thing to save another? Lethal intervention is a common practice in the field of wildlife management, especially when the survival of a species hangs in the balance

For as long as we’ve existed, human beings have employed killing as one of our primary responses to adversity. We seem to believe at some deep level that if we have a problem, killing the manifestation of that problem might just make it go away. This is the logic of political assassinations, revenge plots, and the endings of most Hollywood blockbusters. But when we actually apply this logic to the more-than-human world, what does it mean for the species and ecosystems we’re impacting? And what does it mean for us?

In this episode, we're facing this essential moral dilemma as we learn a way to navigate the tension between collective and individual well-being.

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Find credits, a transcript, and citations at futureecologies.net/listen/fe-6-4-humane-being

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