The most played episodes among Podcast App listeners.

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   Number 1: Tree Thinking with Robert Moor

   Can you imagine being a tree? Robert Moor has spent years trying—climbing into their canopies, studying their biology and learning to see trees in ways most of us don’t. He considers himself a “tree person.” Moor believes that when you spend a lot of time in trees, time slows down—and branching and pruning can become life lessons. He’s interested not just in how trees grow, but in what they might teach us about ourselves. In his book In Trees, he says his goal isn’t to anthropomorphize trees but to “arborize” humanity. Moor has taken his obsession with trees to unusual places: climbing to the tops of giant sequoias; traveling to Tokyo to meet master bonsai artists; becoming a “tree sitter” to protest an oil pipeline. He’s fascinated by “family trees” and Darwin’s Tree of Life, and by our own evolutionary history in the trees of Africa. He traveled to Ethiopia to see Lucy, the famous 3-million-year-old fossil skeleton, and to Tanzania to sleep in a chimpanzee nest. (It was a miserable experience.) He knows something about living among trees: 13 years ago, he and his husband moved from New York City to a cabin in the woods of British Columbia—and never left. — 00:00:00 Introduction 00:07:20 Climbers and Bonsai Masters 00:22:15 Environmentalism's Shadow History 00:28:45 Sleeping in a Chimpanzee Nest 00:37:20 Tree Sitters and Hope — Website Book: In Trees Italo Calvino’s The Baron in the Trees Bonsai artist Masahiko Kimura Julia Butterfly Hill Tree climber Tim Kovar Wonder Cabinet is hosted by Anne Strainchamps and Steve Paulson. Find out more about the show at https://wondercabinetproductions.com, where you can subscribe to the podcast and our newsletter.

   August 29, 2026·51min
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   Number 2: The Ecowomanist Theology of Rev. Dr. Melanie L. Harris

   Rev. Dr. Melanie Harris is a professor of Black Feminist and Womanist Theologies at Wake Forest University, an ordained minister in the African Methodist Episcopal Church and one of the founders of ecowomanism — a theology and environmental philosophy centering the voices, wisdom, and spiritual practices of Black women and women of color. In this conversation, Harris traces her own eco-memories back to Dearfield, Colorado, one of the historic Black-owned farming settlements founded by families who migrated west during the Great Migration — including her own grandparents. She reflects on growing up with a rare and precious connection to land and growing things, even as her family navigated the very real dangers racism posed to simply being outdoors in rural America. Harris speaks candidly about how, in many African American communities, painful histories tied to slavery and cotton have led families to intentionally distance children from the land — a protective severing that ecowomanism seeks to gently repair. Drawing on her mother's practice of singing and humming to plants, she describes music, spirituality and land stewardship as deeply entwined threads of Black religious life. She also talks about the hidden ecological history of Black women and why it matters to see women like Harriet Tubman and Fannie Lou Hamer not just as liberators and Civil Rights leaders, but as environmentalists who understood the connection between racial justice and earth justice. The episode closes with a meditation on the high desert of New Mexico, where the conversation was recorded – a portrait of land, memory, grief and grace held together. This episode was produced in partnership with the Center for Humans and Nature and with support from the Kalliopeia Foundation. — 00:00:00 Introduction 00:03:00 Roots, Roses and Ecowomanism 00:10:55 Harriet Tubman, Environmentalist 00:17:30 The Lynching Tree and What Needs Repair 00:27:10 The Divine Feminine and the Desert — Melanie Harris academic bio Book: “Ecowomanism: African American Women and Earth-Honoring Faiths” Book: “Preaching Black Earth” Wonder Cabinet is hosted by Anne Strainchamps and Steve Paulson. Find out more about the show at https://wondercabinetproductions.com, where you can subscribe to the podcast and our newsletter.

   August 22, 2026·36min
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   Number 3: Poetry Against Despair with Christian Wiman

   How do you find joy in suffering? That’s one of the questions Christian Wiman explores in his poetry and his life. The former editor of Poetry magazine, Wiman is the author of seven books of poetry, including his latest, The Dance. He also teaches at Yale Divinity School. He’s been called “the most important Christian writer in America,” though his relationship with God is marked by uncertainty as much as faith. That tension runs through his poetry, where mystical experience, doubt, suffering, and joy continually collide. His understanding of mortality is also shaped by a 20-year battle with cancer. Diagnosed with a rare form of lymphoma and initially given only a few years to live, Wiman has come close to death several times. Yet he speaks about suffering not simply as something to endure, but as a strange territory in which beauty and wonder can sometimes be found. Wiman craves direct experiences of the world, but he finds that writing poetry helps him fully appreciate these fleeting moments of awe and wonder. A frosted hosta, an old candlestick, the trills of a red-winged blackbird—small encounters like these can open onto deeper questions about meaning, eternity, and what Wordsworth called “seeing into the life of things.” — 00:00:00 Intro 00:02:40 Poetry, Awe and Wonder 00:15:10 Twenty Years Battling Cancer 00:21:55 Joy in Suffering 00:30:45 Seeing Into the Life of Things 00:39:40 A Last Poem and Farewell — Links: Book: The Dance Book: Glimmerings: Letters on Faith Between a Poet and a Theologian Book: Zero at the Bone: Fifty Entries Against Despair Yale Divinity School website Profile of sculptor Lee Bontecou Wonder Cabinet is hosted by Anne Strainchamps and Steve Paulson. Find out more about the show at https://wondercabinetproductions.com, where you can subscribe to the podcast and our newsletter.

   August 15, 2026·46min
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   Number 4: Chasing Wilderness with Cal Flyn (and Gary Snyder)

   For thousands of years, people have dreamed of walking off the map — lighting out for the remote unknown, into landscapes untouched and untamed. The classic wilderness quest is as old as literature itself: you go into the wild, and you come out changed. It's woven into ancient spiritual texts, medieval myths, and European accounts of the so-called "New World." But wilderness is an idea as slippery as it is powerful — and wilderness preservation is a complicated and often costly ideal. That's the territory Cal Flyn explores in her new book, The Savage Landscape: How We Made the Wilderness. An award-winning writer, Flyn has traveled — often alone — into some of the most remote and forbidding places on Earth: a desert monastery on Mount Sinai, deep into the Amazon rainforest, up a Tibetan mountain pass, and inside an erupting Icelandic volcano. She gets there by river skiff, deep-sea submersible, helicopter, and horseback, and along the way she finds moments of sheer wonder — and real danger. We talk with Flyn about the history of this ancient idea and why humans keep chasing it. With nearly 8 billion people on the planet, almost no place is truly untouched. So what IS wilderness? Why do we keep seeking it? And who pays the price? Plus: Steve talks with legendary poet and environmental writer Gary Snyder — now 96, once a friend of the Beats and a Zen apprentice in 1950s Japan — about his classic book The Practice of the Wild. Snyder also reads two poems. This is an excerpt from an archival conversation. The original aired on Wisconsin Public Radio’s To The Best Of Our Knowledge. This Wonder Cabinet episode was not funded, endorsed or affiliated with Wisconsin Public Media or the University of Wisconsin-Madison. — 00:00:00 In Search of Wilderness 00:03:00 Cal Flyn on The Savage Landscape 00:32:40 The Sublime, Taboos and Sacred Groves 00:49:55 From the TTBOOK Archive: Gary Snyder 01:00:15 Credits and Farewell — Cal Flyn’s website Cal Flyn on Insta Book: “The Savage Landscape: How We Made the Wilderness” Book: “Islands of Abandonment” Read more about Gary Snyder at The Poetry Foundation Read “Piute Creek” by Gary Snyder Read “Ripples on the Surface” by Gary Snyder Uncut Gary Snyder interview from TTBOOK Wonder Cabinet is hosted by Anne Strainchamps and Steve Paulson. Find out more about the show at https://wondercabinetproductions.com, where you can subscribe to the podcast and our newsletter.

   August 08, 2026·1h 1min
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   Number 5: The Power of Ritual with Rabbi Geoff Mitelman

   What kind of truth can a sacred text offer about the world? Rabbi Geoff Mitelman reads the Torah as poetry — open to multiple interpretations and evoking a sense of transcendence, even magic. Mitelman is a Reform rabbi and the founding director of Sinai and Synapses, an organization building bridges between science and religion, particularly Judaism. He reads the creation story in Genesis as a profoundly mysterious text — complementary to the scientific account of the Big Bang. Mitelman doesn’t dwell on big metaphysical questions such as the nature of God or ultimate reality. Instead, he turns toward age-old rituals — the songs, stories and ceremonies that have been practiced within Jewish communities for centuries. Why do we return to these rituals year after year? At a time when many people have abandoned organized religion, often describing themselves as “spiritual but not religious,” Mitelman says Judaism is more akin to being “religious but not spiritual.” In this conversation, we explore the power of ritual — and how shared practices can create meaning and build community. This interview was recorded at the Island of Knowledge think tank in Tuscany, a project supported by Dartmouth College and the John Templeton Foundation. —— Website Podcast: "Sinai and Synapses" Writing Orbiter contributions —— 00:00:00 A Shabbat Ritual in Tuscany 00:04:10 Torah as Poetry, Not Science 00:09:15 Genesis and the Big Bang 00:19:57 God, Ritual, and Community Wonder Cabinet is hosted by Anne Strainchamps and Steve Paulson. Find out more about the show at https://wondercabinetproductions.com, where you can subscribe to the podcast and our newsletter.

   September 26, 2026·38min
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