Muse Ecology

Bugs are foundational to life on Earth, and their numbers are plummeting due to human activity.  In this conversation with Vicki Hird, author of Rebugging the Planet, we explore the wonders of bugs and how we can restore our relationship with them. You can find more information about rebugging, and purchase the book, at . Here's the two papers referenced in Vicki's book that came up in our discussion, on the potential effects of new higher frequency radiation on invertebrates: Arno Thielens et al., Exposure of Insects to Radio-Frequency Electromagnetic Fields from 2 to 120 GHz, Science Reports 8, no. 3924 (2018), Arno Thielens et al., Radio-Frequency Electromagnetic Field Exposure of Western Honey Bees, Science Reports 10, no. 461 (2020), Many thanks to for welcoming the use of her song The Old Ways Restored in the intro. The banjo bird jam in the outro was recorded in the woods by the talented nature artist Michael DiGiorgio.  If you'd like to order a CD of this album he says to email him at the contact on his website,

"Water begets water, soil is the womb, and vegetation is the midwife." -Prof. Millan M. Millan This last episode, for now, in the Water, Life, Climate, and Civilization series, was a great panel conversation with 6 people from 3 different organizations, each working from distinct approaches  to restore weather and climate through restoring natural processes.  It was a lovely example of the diversity of backgrounds that are beginning to come together around this idea. Juliette Kool and Ties van der Hoeven, Maya Dutta and Jim Laurie, Marcel de Berg and Pieter-Paul de Kluvier, Here is the Here is the And here again is the link to . And as always, many thanks to for the use of her song The Old Ways Restored in the introduction.

The understanding that we can restore weather and climate systems by protecting and restoring the living surface of the Earth is an idea whose time has come.  In these final two episodes in this Water, Life, Climate, and Civilization series, we'll hear discussions of how this understanding is beginning to guide our response to climate change, from grassroots to international levels. In this first of the two panels, I met with three  friends from previous episodes who have had a big influence on how I think about our relation to water, life, and climate:  , mesometeorologist Li An Phoa, founder of , filmmaker and ecologist Here are the linked references for the three of Millan's papers that I said in the discussion I'd include here in the show notes.

This episode is a diverse panel discussion on the implications of renewable energy supply chains on life, water, and local communities, and how we might address them. Saad Youssefi has a background in finance and economics and works in the renewable energy sector, consulting governments and international corporations on energy production projects.  He's also coauthored . Mary Gibson is Western Shoshone, and has experienced devastation of life, land, and culture by the mining industry and the colonizing process in general.  She is on the board of . Derrick Jensen is a long time activist and advocate for the living Earth, and has written dozens of books on the subject.  Most recently he coauthored a book called , about the negative effects of the renewables industry on the biosphere. Thanks again to for the use of her song The Old Ways Restored in the introduction to each episode. You can support the Muse Ecology Podcast at with a much appreciated donation .  Thanks for listening. Here's a link to the .

In this episode in the Water, Life, Climate, and Civilization series, we hear diverse voices from the resistance to the proposed lithium mine at Thacker Pass in northern Nevada, on Paiute and Shoshone ancestral lands. To learn more about and support the blockade camp at Thacker Pass, you can go to . To follow the legal process, you can visit the Great Basin Resource Watch's website at . In our next episode, we'll continue exploring the complexities involved in the renewables industry with a civil panel discussion including expert perspectives from both the renewable energy industry and it's opposition.

In this conversation with author Judith Schwartz and scientist Walter Jehne, we discuss the importance of the shift from seeing the Earth as a resource base to seeing ourselves as enmeshed in a web of life that both manages and depends on natural processes.  In particular, we focus on how this perspective shift affects how we understand and are empowered to address anthropogenic climate change. Judy:   Walter:   The banjo bird jam in the intro and outro was recorded in the woods by nature artist Michael DiGiorgio.  If you'd like to order a CD of this album he says to email him at the contact on his website,  , where you can also find his exquisite nature art.

In this conversation with Paul Cereghino, we discuss some of the challenges of collaborating in groups and groups of groups to protect and restore the Earth, including such topics as the role of online interactions, the importance of place-based reality, benefits and pitfalls of systems like sociocracy, Covid complications, and much more. You can check out the to read more about Paul and friends' biocultural restoration experiment in the Puget Sound of Washington State .  And here's a link to the Paul and others are creating to share ecological restoration knowledge of their bioregion. And thanks to for allowing the use of her song The Old Ways Restored in the intro.

In this episode in the Water, Life, Climate, and Civilization series, we explore one of the great challenges on our way back to harmony:  humans.  Through the lens of his Ecosystem Guild and Restoration Camping project in western Washington State, Paul Cereghino and I discuss some of the interhuman and intergroup complexities of grassroots ecological restoration efforts. And as always, many thanks to for giving the use of her song The Old Ways Restored in the intro to each episode.

In this episode we continue the Water, Life, Climate, and Civilization series with Alfredo Quarto, co-founder and international program director of the Mangrove Action Project.  In our conversation with Alfredo, we discuss the importance of mangrove ecologies, their devastation by the shrimp farming industry, and how the mangrove action project uses an approach called Community Based Ecological Mangrove Restoration to facilitate their natural regeneration. Mangrove Action Project website contains further information about mangrove ecology and their important restoration work. You can support their work by purchasing a beautiful 2021 calendar feature mangrove-inspired art from children around the world. And as always, thank you to for donating the use of her song The Old Ways Restored for the podcast intro. Financial support of the Muse Ecology Podcast is much appreciate.  You can find links to the Patreon page and the Paypal donate button at

In this episode, we continue the Water, Life, Climate, and Civilization series with Neal Spackman, ecological restoration designer, regenerative entrepreneur, and bold visionary. In previous episodes in this series, we’ve heard how agriculture and development having long been destroying ecology and hydrology, directly causing desertification and disruptions of weather and climate systems, and leading to the fall of empires. As cofounder and former director of the Al Baydha project in Saudi Arabia and as Founder and CEO of Regenerative Resources Corporation, Neal Spackman is working to change that ancient dynamic. His projects restore ecological function to desertified and degraded landscapes in a way that also integrates the restoration of the area’s economy, hydrology, and atmospheric interactions. The scholar that Neal refers to who came up with the term "precipitationshed" is Patrick W. Keys, and here are some of his papers on the topic:   Here is an inspiring video that Neal made about the amazing success of the Al Baydha restoration project. And here is the link to the website for Regenerative Resources Corporation:   And as always, many thanks to Peia for granting the use of her beautiful song, The Old Ways Restored, as the introduction song.  You can find her beautiful music at