As winter gathers and the days shorten, in this final episode of the season, Marina reflects on the Rowan tree, the act of wintering, and the hidden life beneath stillness. 

Here are some of her reflections:

• The Rowan as a winter guardian, its bright berries offering sustenance and protection in the dark months.
• The solstice as a time of descent, when we enter the heart’s cave and tend the inner fire that keeps us alive through uncertainty.
• How stillness and retreat restore our capacity to listen, dream, and notice what truly matters.
• The importance of reworking our stories — how memory, identity, and imagination can evolve with the seasons.
• The denials that shape our modern crisis: of planetary limits, of our entanglement with the living world, and of our own vulnerability.
• How fear and defensiveness rise in turbulent times, and the invitation to find gentler, more connected ways forward.

Shownotes: https://theoutdoorteacher.com/podcasts/episode-80-tending-the-embers

Music by Geoff Robb: www.geoffrobb.com 

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Today I’m speaking with Nick Stoop, founder of Pangea Impact Investments - a company that’s trying to change something most of us rarely think about.

Where our pensions are invested, and what that money is actually doing in the world.

In this episode we get practical and brave about money — banks, pensions, and the difference between light green labels and deep green impact — so our savings can serve the living world as well as our future selves.

• What happens to our money inside banks and pensions.
• Why pensions can outweigh everyday “green” habits in impact.
• Agency in an opaque system and how to start using it.
• Light green screening versus deep green positive impact.
• Ethics, risk, return and the futures we’re funding.
• The problem with labels and why “ethical” often isn’t.
• Transparency as reconnection to place and consequence.
• The role of workplace pensions and scope 3 emissions.
• Third-party verification, B Corps and better metrics.
• Moving money without sacrificing performance over time.
• Imagining local, regenerative investments we can visit.
• Small first steps that build a values-aligned portfolio.

Shownotes:

https://theoutdoorteacher.com/podcasts/money-with-a-conscience-with-nick-stoop/

Music by Geoff Robb: www.geoffrobb.com 

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In this solo episode, Marina explores what Linda Buzzell calls “level two ecotherapy” - a shift from using nature as a tool for human wellbeing to recognising our reciprocal relationship with the living world.

Moving from “me” to “we,” she reflects on how our practices, systems, and mindsets can evolve toward a more ethical, embodied, and relational way of belonging.

Key Ideas Explored

• The move from extraction to relationship — recognising nature as a living partner, not a service.
• From “me” to “we” — human development as a journey toward community and interconnection.
• The many meanings of ecotherapy and why values and worldview matter more than labels.
• The power of shared outdoor activity — fire, craft, and stillness as natural therapy.
• Reclaiming the roots of eco and therapy — caring for our shared home and one another.
• Nature-centric models that place humans within the circle of life, not above it.
• The need to move beyond individual healing to include the health of the Earth.
• Western culture’s mindset of extraction and the call for reciprocity and re-education.
• Bringing nature-based practice into health and education systems despite structural barriers.
• Seeing bullying and domination as symptoms of fear and disconnection from relationship.
• The importance of moral courage, ethical conduct, and grounded self-worth in our work.
• Community ecotherapy and deep ecology as ways to restore belonging and collective care.

Shownotes:

https://theoutdoorteacher.com/podcasts/episode-78-level-2-ecotherapy-from-me-to-we/

Music by Geoff Robb: www.geoffrobb.com 

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This week, I am in conversation with Linda Buzzell who is a psychotherapist, ecotherapist, author, and pioneer in the field of ecopsychology, working at the intersection of psychology, ecology, and culture since the late 1990s.

Linda co-edited 'Ecotherapy: Healing with Nature in Mind' with Craig Chalquist and has written widely on the ecological crisis as both a psychological and spiritual challenge.

In this episode, we explore what ecotherapy truly means - not as a treatment or technique, but as a way of healing our relationship with the living Earth.

We talk about nature as therapist, community as medicine, and what it means to move from a culture of domination to one of partnership and reciprocity.

Topics include:

• Ecotherapy as healing our relationship with our home world.
• Level one vs level two ecotherapy from personal benefit to reciprocal, culture-shifting practice.
• Nature as the ultimate therapist practitioner as catalyst, guide, witness.
• Eco-psychotherapy within clinical practice and the wider, community-facing field of ecotherapy.
• Zookosis in animals as a mirror for human nature-deficit and why habitats matter for sanity.
• Evidence beyond exercise research showing green and blue contact improves mood and health.
• Caution on “nature prescriptions” moving beyond individual fixes to place, community, and systems.
• Rooting in place bioregionalism, terra psychology, and rebuilding bonds with land.
• Decolonising therapy learning from Indigenous wisdom without appropriation and with repair.
• From dominator culture to partnership Riane Eisler’s lens and McGilchrist’s hemispheres.
• Eco-spirituality reclaiming the sacred through seasons, ceremony, bodies, and relational awe.
• The path of hope small groups, community ecotherapy, and standing together for the living world.

Shownotes:

https://theoutdoorteacher.com/podcasts/episode-77-the-deeper-work-of-ecotherapy-with-linda-buzzell/

Music by Geoff Robb: www.geoffrobb.com 

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In this episode, Marina reflects on power, responsibility, and duty of care. As November marks a season of endings and beginnings, she looks beneath the surface of our systems — from education to environment, and asks what happens when we stop paying attention, and what it costs us when we do.

This conversation traces the threads between integrity and innocence, corruption and accountability, and how our personal and professional ethics shape the wider ecology we live within.

Key ideas explored

• The uneasy link between wealth, power, and moral compromise
• November as a time for renewal
• How concentrated power in health, education, and business leads us to protect ourselves instead of our purpose
• Teachers and leaders navigating the “topside world” while tending what lies beneath — our own psychology and hidden systems
• Moving beyond naïveté without losing hope or care
• Reclaiming duty of care — asking whether our systems live up to the ethics we teach
• Practicing stewardship: leaving no trace, enhancing biodiversity, and restoring the flow of responsibility

Shownotes:

https://theoutdoorteacher.com/podcasts/episode-76-the-cost-of-looking-away/

Music by Geoff Robb: www.geoffrobb.com 

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In this episode, I’m speaking with Ash Smith, the founder of Windrush Against Sewage Pollution. A retired Detective Superintendent, former angler and scuba diver, Ash has spent the last eight years investigating the truth about what’s happening in our rivers.

His love for the natural world, combined with a deep sense of justice, led him to gather a team of committed people from different disciplines to form one of the most effective groups holding water companies and regulators to account.

In our conversation, Ash shares what’s really going on with our rivers, the scale of sewage pollution, and the failures of government and regulatory bodies to protect our waterways.

This is a passionate, evidence-based discussion, grounded in data that you can find on the WASP website. The Windrush itself flows for 65 kilometers from Gloucestershire into the Thames - but this story reaches far beyond one river. It speaks to the health of our ecosystems, and to our own health as well.

Topics include:

• A vivid picture of what a living, healthy river once was — and how the “new normal” hides a quiet collapse.
• How WASP (Windrush Against Sewage Pollution) turns citizen science and data analysis into undeniable proof of illegal pollution.
• The shocking reality of regulators who no longer investigate — and water companies marking their own homework.
• What happens when public services are sold off and profit replaces purpose.
• The money trail — how customers fund dividends while private shareholders drain the system.
• Why some water companies are now in “special measures” and what real accountability could look like
• Ash’s journey from detective superintendent to river defender — following the evidence wherever it leads.
• The quiet power of ordinary people who refuse to look away.
• How anger can become fuel for change rather than despair.
• Practical ways to take action — join with others, use local data, and make enough noise to tip the balance

Shownotes:

https://theoutdoorteacher.com/podcasts/episode-75-the-river-of-truth-with-ash-smith/

Music by Geoff Robb: www.geoffrobb.com 

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In this reflective solo episode, Marina explores how the changing seasons, our ancestral roots, and the social history of education help us question what learning really means today.

We journey from postwar Britain to the present classroom, asking how we can reimagine education as something alive, relational, and grounded in nature.

Topics include:

• Gratitude for autumn, the changing light, and small comforts that sustain us.
• Reflection on the natural cycle of endings and beginnings and what it teaches us about renewal.
• The symbolism of the elder and birch trees as reminders of wisdom, letting go, and new growth.
• Honouring ancestors and recognising what we’ve inherited through culture and family.
• The importance of doing inner work that leads to outer change in our communities and classrooms.
• Revisiting postwar Britain to understand how education emerged as a social contract for fairness and democracy.
• The 1944 Butler Act and its vision for universal education and rebuilding society after the war.
• Remembering that education is a system, while learning is an organic, lifelong process that transforms who we are.
• The tension between authority and shared power in schools and what that means for children’s voices.
• A call to reimagine education as something rooted in wellbeing, curiosity, and connection to the living world.

Shownotes:

https://theoutdoorteacher.com/podcasts/episode-74-what-is-education-for-now

Music by Geoff Robb: www.geoffrobb.com 

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My guest today is Suzanne Welch, Education Partnership Manager at the RSPB, the UK’s largest nature conservation charity with over a million members, and in this episode she explores what it would mean to make nature a right in education and why it’s time to rethink the purpose.

Suzanne has spent decades in outdoor learning - from taking inner-city children to the Thames foreshore, where subjects like science, history and geography came alive, to now convening national partnerships and influencing education policy. Her work is driven by a vision that every child should have access to high-quality learning in, with and for nature.

In this episode Suzanne Welch...

• Challenges the outdated knowledge-based model and invites a shift toward enquiry and relational learning.
• Reflects on her early work taking inner-city children to the River Thames and witnessing their transformation outdoors.
• Emphasises joy, curiosity and presence as the foundations of meaningful learning.
• Highlights how outdoor experiences naturally connect subjects like science, history, art and geography.
• Argues that learning shouldn’t be siloed because our minds don’t operate in compartments.
• Points to the early years sector as an example of where outdoor and child-led learning already works well.
• Questions about why these principles fade as children move through the education system.
• Explains how assessment and measurement culture have narrowed what counts as learning.
• Calls for systemic rather than incremental change and a national conversation about the true purpose of education.
• Advocates for a statutory right for every child to learn in with and for nature.
• Notes that equitable access currently depends on postcode school leadership and teacher enthusiasm.
• Ends with a simple invitation start with one outdoor lesson listen to young people and let hope lead change.

Shownotes: https://theoutdoorteacher.com/podcasts/making-nature-a-right-in-education-suzanne-welch/

Music by Geoff Robb: www.geoffrobb.com 

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In this closing episode of Season 9, I’m exploring something that feels urgent in our times: the difference between education and learning.

Education is often about systems, metrics, and tests — but learning is about life itself. It happens in forests, green spaces, kitchens, and communities. It’s experiential, embodied, relational, and remembered because we live it.

With the rise of AI, increasing mental health challenges, and the fast pace of our lives, we need to ask: what skills truly matter now, and how can we reimagine learning so every young person leaves not just with knowledge, but with self-worth, connection, and a sense of agency?

Topics include:

• The urgent difference between education and learning, and why it matters now more than ever.
• Why formal schooling often leaves young people without confidence, agency, or self-worth.
• The danger of convergent thinking and the value of divergent, creative, and adaptive skills.
• Experiential learning: Why we remember fire-lighting, foraging, and play more than worksheets.
• The principles of autism-informed, trauma-informed, and consent-based practice as foundations for real learning.
• The Outdoor Teacher Approach: Play-based, body-led, and relational rather than hierarchical.
• The opportunity (and risk) of the UK’s new climate curriculum, and why connection, not just knowledge, is key.
• The Children’s Fire principle and what it means to educate with future generations — all children, human and more-than-human, at the heart.

Shownotes:

https://theoutdoorteacher.com/podcasts/episode-72-learning-for-life

Music by Geoff Robb: www.geoffrobb.com 

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In this episode of the Wild Minds Podcast, I’m in conversation with Mac Macartney, a storyteller, leader, and founder of Embercombe, exploring what it means to live and lead in service to life.

In this far-reaching conversation, we explore The Children’s Fire — an ancient principle that no law, decision, or action should harm the young of any species, and how it might transform leadership, education, and our relationship with the natural world.

We talk about education rooted in the simple yet radical commitment that no child should leave school without feeling good about who they are, and the power of play as an antidote to a culture that leaves so many children, and adults, masking their pain and feeling worthless beneath the surface.

Topics include:

• Exploring The Children’s Fire — the ancient principle that no decision should harm the young of any species.
• Reimagining education so no child leaves school without feeling good about themselves.
• Unpacking the hubris of superiority — how our systems consistently enforce it.
• The power of play and nature connection as antidotes to hopelessness and masking how we truly feel.
• Insights from Mac’s leadership company on redefining the purpose of business — beyond profit and growth — and valuing well-rounded human beings.
• Reflections on indigenous wisdom, community ownership, and leadership rooted in service rather than self-interest.
• A call to rethink wealth, power, and responsibility so that resources and decisions serve the many, not the few.
• An invitation to imagine a more joyful, courageous, and humane society.

Shownotes:

https://theoutdoorteacher.com/podcasts/episode-71-mac-macartney-interview

Music by Geoff Robb: www.geoffrobb.com 

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