We're borrowing an episode from one of our all-time favourite shows: Threshold, a Peabody Award-winning documentary podcast about our place in the natural world.

Now in their 5th Season, "Hark", Threshold producer Amy Martin is exploring sound itself: investigating what it means to listen to the nonhuman voices on our planet — and the cost if we don’t. With mounting social and ecological crises, what happens when we tune into the life all around us?

Other episodes from Hark cover the sounds of the primordial microbial ooze, of insects, of fish, and of plants. Today, we're featuring episode 3: on the sounds of coral reefs, and how listening to them may help them survive a warming world.

Find Threshold (and the rest of Hark) wherever you get podcasts, or at thresholdpodcast.org

Food security, climate adaptation, and vibrant biodiversity all in one place — welcome to the ancient and diverse technologies of Sea Gardening.

These widespread (but often overlooked) monumental rock features are proof positive of thriving Indigenous maricultural systems all around the Pacific Rim, since time immemorial. These spaces are not only simply stunningly beautiful spots to hang out, they're also a powerful symbol of ecocultural restoration; of Indigenous sovereignty, self-determination, and internationalism; of relationship building; and of the kind of future that is possible as we adapt to a changing climate and rising sea levels. We hope you find them as inspiring as we do.

Join us as we visit a sea garden, learn about how they work, and meet a few of the people bringing them back to life.

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Visit futureecologies.net/listen/fe-6-2-sea-garden for full credits, links, citations, photos, a transcript, and more.

Support the making of this independent, ad-free podcast at futureecologies.net/join for as little as $1 each month, and get early episode releases and exclusive bonus content. Chip in a little more and we'll send you stickers, an embroidered patch, and a cozy hat.

Season 6 kicks off in the deep dark woods: the simplified, post-industrial forests of the world — the only forests that many of us have ever known.

Join us as we meet foresters in British Columbia, Vermont, and Scotland, all working to embrace the messy art of ecological forestry. Because if we want our forests to be old growth-ier, we might not be able to just wait and leave them alone. It might mean challenging some assumptions and getting out of our comfort zone, but that's what it'll take to see the forest for the trees.

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With the voices of Ethan Tapper, Brian Duff, Keith Erickson, and Herb Hammond

Music by Thumbug, Spencer W Stuart, Nathan Shubert, and Sunfish Moon Light

See also:

• FE3.4 - Dama Drama
• Galiano Conservancy Association
• NNRG's "A Forest of Your Own"
• FernGully: The Last Rainforest

For photos from our time in the ancient old growth, citations, a transcript, and more, click here.

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Hey y’all. Did you miss us? We’re back!

Well, almost. Check your podcast feed tomorrow for the first episode of Season 6.

[EDIT FROM THE FUTURE] it's here: futureecologies.net/listen/fe-6-1-forest-tree (or in your favourite app)

Or, if you’re one of our dear supporters on Patreon or Apple podcasts (or if you’d like to become one at futureecologies.net/join), you can find episode 6.1 already waiting for you on the bonus feed.

As is tradition, we're releasing all the original music we composed for the latest season of Future Ecologies as a set of soundtracks. For the first time ever, they are also available on all major music streaming services. Enjoy!

Auditory Compost by Sunfish Moon Light

Bandcamp, Spotify, Apple Music

Convergence by Thumbug

Bandcamp, Spotify (Side A | Side B), Apple Music (Side A | Side B)

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Find all of our seasonal soundtracks at futureecologies.net/albums

And get free download codes on our Patreon ✨

We're excited to share another beautiful guest episode with you today.

In this piece, originally broadcast in 2 parts on The Wind (one of our favourite podcasts), producer Eleanor Qull is taking us on a pilgrimage in honour of, and in tribute to that most collective monarch — the monarch butterfly. Through those lepidopteran migrants, it’s a story of scale, agency, and spiritual offering in a changing world.

Eleanor cooked up a special ~1 hour version just for us. It's spacious, equal parts silly and deadpan, with a big scoop of mono no aware.

If you’d like to see pictures of the pilgrimage offerings from each stop, you can find them at thewind.org/episodes/the-merry-monarchs, along with complete list of citations, plus the original unabridged 2-part version — where the tour makes an additional stop (in space).

Future Ecologies presents "The Right to Feel," a two episode mini-series on the emotional realities of the climate crisis.

The second and final episode, “Eulogies,” is based on fictional writing from the class. Students imagine and eulogize something that could be harmed by the climate emergency, and then imagine a speculative future in which action was taken to mitigate that harm.

Over a two-year period, associate professor of climate justice and co-director of the UBC Centre for Climate Justice Naomi Klein taught a small graduate seminar designed to help young scholars put the emotions of the climate and extinction crises into words. The students came from a range of disciplines, ranging from zoology to political science, and they wrote eulogies for predators and pollinators, alongside love letters to paddling and destroyed docks. Across these diverse methods of scholarship, the students uncovered layers of emotion far too often left out of scholarly approaches to the climate emergency. They put these emotions into words, both personal reflections and fictional stories.

“The Right to Feel” was produced on the unceded and asserted territories of the Sḵwx̱wú7mesh (Squamish), xʷməθkʷəy̓əm (Musqueam), and Səl̓ílwətaʔ (Tsleil-Waututh) peoples.

Find a transcript, citations, credits, and more at www.futureecologies.net/listen/the-right-to-feel

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Part 2: Eulogies

02:15 – Clione by Annika Ord

12:49 –The Abundance Will Be Forever by Judith Burr

24:03 – A Eulogy for Wolves by Niki

33:33 – Return of the Hidden Worlds by Sadie Rittman

44:59 — Eulogy for the Bees by Rhonda Thygesen

Future Ecologies presents "The Right to Feel," a two episode mini-series on the emotional realities of the climate crisis.

This first episode, “Climate Feelings,” is a collection of students’ non-fiction essays and reflections on their personal realities of living with and researching the climate crisis. The first episode opens with an introductory conversation between Naomi Klein and series producer Judee Burr that contextualizes how this class was structured and the writings it evoked.

Over a two-year period, associate professor of climate justice and co-director of the UBC Centre for Climate Justice Naomi Klein taught a small graduate seminar designed to help young scholars put the emotions of the climate and extinction crises into words. The students came from a range of disciplines, ranging from zoology to political science, and they wrote eulogies for predators and pollinators, alongside love letters to paddling and destroyed docks. Across these diverse methods of scholarship, the students uncovered layers of emotion far too often left out of scholarly approaches to the climate emergency. They put these emotions into words, both personal reflections and fictional stories.

“The Right to Feel” was produced on the unceded and asserted territories of the Sḵwx̱wú7mesh (Squamish), xʷməθkʷəy̓əm (Musqueam), and Səl̓ílwətaʔ (Tsleil-Waututh) peoples.

Find a transcript, citations, credits, and more at www.futureecologies.net/listen/the-right-to-feel

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Part 1: Climate Feelings

2:38 — Introduction by Judee Burr and Naomi Klein

19:05 — Connection to Jericho Willows by Ali Tafreshi

22:27 — Connection to the Water by Foster Salpeter

27:06 — Connection to Family and Land by Sara Savino

31:01 — Scientists and Feelings by Annika Ord

36:00 — Biking away from the Smoke by Ruth Moore

39:32 — Climate Sensitivity on the Bus by Nina Robertson

43:13 — Grief and Climate Change Economics by Felix Giroux

46:36 — The Age of Sanctuary by Melissa Plisic

52:04 — Age of Tehom by Maggie O’Donnell

Vision without eyes? Intelligence without a brain? Are plants more akin to us than we have been prepared to acknowledge? Or are they different in ways we will forever strain to imagine? One way or another, a vine with some unusual abilities is shaking the field of botany to its foundations.

On this episode: Zoë Schlanger (author of the newly-released, New York Times bestselling book The Light Eaters: How the Unseen World of Plant Intelligence Offers a New Understanding of Life on Earth) takes us to the misty rainforests of Chile and back to report on what might just be the world’s most extraordinary plant — hidden in plain sight.

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With music by Modern Biology, Mort Garson, Hotspring, Thumbug, and Sunfish Moon Light.

For credits, citations, transcript, and more, visit futureecologies.net/listen/fe-5-10-everything-will-be-vine

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In this conclusion to our trilogy, we're looking at a proposal to move beyond the concept of "rangelands" through the rewilding of the American west — meaning, the return of forgotten landscapes, species, and ecologies not commonly seen in generations (not to mention improved water and carbon storage). But at least one thing isn't compatible with this vision: grazing cattle on public lands.

Catch up with Part 1 and Part 2

And find citations, a transcript, and credits on our website

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