Future Ecologies

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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🌱 Future Ecologies is an independent, ad-free, listener-supported podcast.

Be the first to hear new episodes, and get exclusive bonus content, behind the scenes updates, and access to our discord server, plus stickers, patches, and toques @ futureecologies.net/join

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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This ad-free podcast is supported by listeners just like you! Join our Patreon to get early episode releases, bonus content, merch, discord server access, and now toques! Head to futureecologies.net/join and choose whatever option works best for you.

Our series on cows and rangelands continues in the weeds and in the thorns, looking at a specific piece of public land where livestock are being employed to give some endangered species a new lease on life.

In this 3-part series, we're hearing from impassioned scientists and land managers with diametrically opposed opinions on the concept of "rangelands" — by some estimates, accounting for 50-70% of the earth's surface. Missed Part 1? Catch up here

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Find credits, citations, a transcript and more at futureecologies.net/listen/fe-5-8-home-on-the-rangelands-part-2

This ad-free podcast is supported by listeners just like you! Join our Patreon to get early episode releases, bonus content, merch, discord server access, and more. Head to futureecologies.net/join and choose whatever option works best for you.

The introduction of cattle to western North America has undeniably contributed to massive ecosystem change. But could cows be as much a part of the solutions as they are the problem?

In this 3-part series, we're hearing from all sides of this issue: impassioned scientists and land managers with diametrically opposed opinions on the concept of "rangelands" — by some estimates, accounting for 50-70% of the earth's surface.

Part 1 kicks things off with a look at the special case of California, and a challenge to the conventional environmentalist perspective that cattle are always a destructive force for biodiversity and ecosystem health.

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Find credits, citations, a transcript and more at futureecologies.net/listen/fe-5-7-home-on-the-rangelands-part-1

This ad-free podcast is supported by listeners just like you! Join our Patreon to get early episode releases, bonus content, merch, discord server access, and more. Head to futureecologies.net/join to meet everyone who makes this podcast possible.

Future Ecologies is an independent podcast about the living world and its interrelations. The show varies in format, but this is a taste of what you can expect.

New to the show? Find our whole back catalogue and subscribe for new episodes — right here in your podcast app, or at futureecologies.net

Been with us for a while? Send this trailer with someone who shares the planet with you.

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This ad-free podcast is supported by our listeners on Patreon. Join our community for as little as $1/month for early episode releases, bonus content, merch, discord server access, and more.

We’re slowing down for the holidays, and we hope you are too.

But we didn’t want to leave you without something great to listen to, so we’re borrowing an episode from one of our favourite podcasters: Ashley Ahearn is the independent science and environmental journalist behind several series covering life in the rural American West. If you haven’t already listened to Grouse, on sage grouse, or Mustang (her latest), on wild horses, you’re missing out.

The episode we picked for you today is kind of a teaser for our own next series. It’s a look at livestock, the regenerative ranching movement, and the women who are leading it.

From Ashley Ahearn, Boise State Public Radio, and the Mountain West News Bureau, this is Women’s Work, Episode 5: Keep them Doggies Rollin’

Go find the rest of Women’s Work wherever you get your podcasts. And while you’re at it, go find Grouse and Mustang too.

You’ll be hearing from us soon. ‘Til next year — happy holidays, and take care.