COVID-19 has uprooted our lives, causing devastation for millions. It’s also forced us to slow down, pause and consider how we might learn to live healthily and sustainably on this planet.

Let’s use this time to rediscover some fundamental truths about our place on Earth: fire, air, water, earth — the basic elements of life — and spirit. Without them, there is no life. When our relationships with them are unbalanced, we put our very existence at risk.

In this podcast, David Suzuki explores how the pandemic can help us refocus on what’s most important, and what a green and just recovery from COVID-19 could look like.

Friends including Jane Fonda and Neil Young, as well as leading experts, join David as he returns to the fundamentals to help us seize this unique opportunity to rediscover our place on this beautiful living planet.

From anti-racism protests to wildfires, summer 2020 was marked by fire in the streets and the sky. Taming fire was an enormous step for our species, providing warmth, light, protection against animals, cooking and companionship. In fact, we even have fire in us, in every cell in our body. Perhaps that’s why we often refer to highly motivated people who call for change as having “fire in the belly.” 

In Season 1 of The David Suzuki Podcast, “COVID-19 and the Basic Elements of Life,” David and guests explore how the pandemic can help us refocus on what’s most important, and what a green and just recovery from COVID-19 could look like. They return to the fundamentals to help us seize this unique opportunity to rediscover our place on this beautiful living planet. 

The season’s first episode explores the theme “Fire” and features conversations with legendary actor, activist and author Jane Fonda, the David Suzuki Foundation’s Sherry Yano and the University of Winnipeg’s Ian Mauro. 

You can help make sure we seize this unprecedented opportunity to build back a better world by urging Ottawa to advance a green and just recovery from COVID-19. Visit davidsuzuki.org/green-and-just-recovery/

Safe, clean air is something many of us have long taken for granted. With new immediacy, we’re suddenly aware that everything — right down to the air we breathe — is shared by all life on Earth. Scientifically, there is no line between us and air. It is in us and flowing through our bodies. We are air. 

In Season 1 of The David Suzuki Podcast, “COVID-19 and the Basic Elements of Life,” David and guests explore how the pandemic can help us refocus on what’s most important, and what a green and just recovery from COVID-19 could look like. They return to the fundamentals to help us seize this unique opportunity to rediscover our place on this beautiful living planet. 

The season’s second episode explores the theme “Air” and features conversations with Wellesley Institute CEO Kwame McKenzie, former Toronto chief city planner Jennifer Keesmaat and the David Suzuki Foundation’s Gideon Forman. 

You can help make sure we seize this unprecedented opportunity to build back a better world by urging Ottawa to advance a green and just recovery from COVID-19. Visit davidsuzuki.org/green-and-just-recovery/

Our bodies are more than 70 per cent water. The coronavirus also exists in water, carried in tiny droplets before it makes its way into our lungs. Without water, there would be no pandemic, but there would also be no us. Water makes life possible. Fresh water should be considered a priceless “rare Earth substance.” Instead, we pollute and waste it at astonishing rates. The world’s oceans, too, are at risk. 

In Season 1 of The David Suzuki Podcast, “COVID-19 and the Basic Elements of Life,” David and guests explore how the pandemic can help us refocus on what’s most important, and what a green and just recovery from COVID-19 could look like. They return to the fundamentals to help us seize this unique opportunity to rediscover our place on this beautiful living planet. 

The season’s third episode explores the theme “Water” and features conversations with Jeannette Armstrong of the Penticton Indian Band, youth activists Autumn Peltier and Allie Rougeot and the David Suzuki Foundation’s Jay Ritchlin. 

You can help make sure we seize this unprecedented opportunity to build back a better world by urging Ottawa to advance a green and just recovery from COVID-19. Visit davidsuzuki.org/green-and-just-recovery/ 

For thousands of years, Indigenous cultures have understood that we and Earth are one. What happens to the planet happens to us, and there are natural limits to what we can take from it. COVID-19 has confronted us with those limits. Sixty per cent of all diseases that afflict humankind have leapt from other animals. The pandemic reminds us that it is a delusion to think we are separate from the natural world. 

In Season 1 of The David Suzuki Podcast, “COVID-19 and the Basic Elements of Life,” David and guests explore how the pandemic can help us refocus on what’s most important, and what a green and just recovery from COVID-19 could look like. They return to the fundamentals to help us seize this unique opportunity to rediscover our place on this beautiful living planet. 

The season’s fourth episode explores the theme “Earth” and features conversations with renowned activist, author and farmer Winona LaDuke, financial journalist Attracta Mooney and the David Suzuki Foundation’s Melissa Mollen Dupuis. 

You can help make sure we seize this unprecedented opportunity to build back a better world by urging Ottawa to advance a green and just recovery from COVID-19. Visit davidsuzuki.org/green-and-just-recovery/

We have the potential to heal not just from the COVID-19 virus but also from the many interconnected problems that plague us. Though the months since the pandemic began have been a time of disconnect for many, they have shown that we can come together to solve a common problem and mobilize massive resources at a moment’s notice. We can make vast public investments in our shared well-being, and even change the way we live. But it takes the will to do it. We are the heart of the crisis, and the solution is in us. 

In Season 1 of The David Suzuki Podcast, “COVID-19 and the Basic Elements of Life,” David and guests explore how the pandemic can help us refocus on what’s most important, and what a green and just recovery from COVID-19 could look like. They return to the fundamentals to help us seize this unique opportunity to rediscover our place on this beautiful living planet. 

The season’s fifth and final episode explores the theme “Spirit” and features conversations with iconic activist and musician Neil Young and David Suzuki Foundation co-founder Tara Cullis. 

You can help make sure we seize this unprecedented opportunity to build back a better world by urging Ottawa to advance a green and just recovery from COVID-19. Visit davidsuzuki.org/green-and-just-recovery/