Unfolding Maps

Over a two-year period, storyteller and National Geographic photographer Erika Larsen travelled to many locations in the western United States to learn about the significance of the horse in Native American tribes - culturally, spiritually, and economically. ⁠

⁠

Along her journey she met many Native Americans who shared their profound stories and experiences about the unique bond that exists between the horse and their culture. In this episode we discuss her photographic work documenting this exceptional connection, as well as the insights she was able to gain - insights into how this connection transformed the indigenous relationship to the landscape they live(d) in. Erika also tells us about her own relationship with horses, what she has learned about how to bond with a horse best and what she has taken from this far-reaching project personally.⁠

⁠

Furthermore, we talk about the powerful impressions she gained when attending the Dakota Access Pipeline protest in 2016/2017 - which is considered to be one of the largest gatherings of Native Americans in modern times. ⁠

If you want to learn more about Erika’s very inspiring and outstanding stories and her impressive photographs, we also recommend episode 18 of Unfolding Maps to you - it's about Erika’s experiences in the Scandinavian Arctic: "Living with Sami Reindeer Herders"!⁠

Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

She was a successful CEO of the clothing manufacturer Patagonia and played a decisive role in building the company. And then left everything behind to move to the wilderness of the actual Patagonia in Chile. For nature conservation – and for love.

Our guest in this episode is Kristine Tompkins, an environmentalist and the president of Tompkins Conservation. She has been working tirelessly for three decades to protect the environment. And what she and her late husband Doug Tompkins have achieved is truly amazing.

Like Kristine, Doug himself was very successful in the outdoor clothing market in his first life, co-founding the brands "The North Face" and "Esprit".

When Kristine and him eventually sold their shares, they began to buy up private land in Chile and Argentina, to restore it at great effort, to combine it into protected areas, and to finally hand it over to the government as national parks to protect this land forever.

Thanks to the work of Kristine and Doug, new national parks with an area larger than that of the whole of Switzerland have been established in Chile alone. The couple is considered as some of the most successful national park-oriented philanthropists in history.

Currently, Kristine – as President of Tompkins Conservation – is overseeing a number of projects in Chile and Argentina aimed at creating even more national parks and reserves and halting the extinction of species by reintroducing native species that are threatened or locally extinct – such as the jaguar.

Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

"Fathoms - The World in the Whale": That is the title of Australian author Rebecca Giggs' first book (published by SCRIBE and Simon Schuster in April 2020) – and it is, indeed, the gate to a large world...

In it, Rebecca blends natural history, philosophy and science to reveal an unexpected world in a stranded whale – with more cross-connections to our “human world” than we might have ever thought about.⁠

In Australia, "Fathoms" won the Mark and Evette Moran Nib Literary Prize, and the Royal Society's Whitley Award for Popular Zoology. The book has also recently been shortlisted for the prestigious ALA Andrew Carnegie Medal for Excellence in Nonfiction, and the Kirkus Prize in the US. Rebecca's essays and articles have appeared in Best Australian Science Writing and Best Australian Essays, as well as in The Atlantic, Granta, The New York Times Magazine, and Griffith Review.⁠

Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Sitting in a snow-covered tent, surrounded by a pretty harsh environment where no horizon can be seen, in the arctic circle. Cooking with reindeer blood and learning the fascinating Sami language.

Photographer Erika Larsen experienced all this when she lived with the Sami people in Scandinavia for a total of four years. She had been looking for people who lived in unity with nature and were able to interpret “their” landscapes for the rest of the world. Erika was able to gain unprecedented access into the lives, work and culture of the Sami community.

Her monograph ‘Sami-Walking with Reindeer’, a reflection of her time living in the Scandinavian Arctic, was published in 2013.

Erikas work has been shown all over the world, for instance in the National Geographic magazine, the Smithsonian National Portrait Gallery in Washington and the United States Embassy in Oslo. In 2020 she was the Eliza Scidmore Award recipient for immersive storytelling.

What did she learn about Sami culture? And what does the oldest tradition in the world - storytelling - mean to her? That's what she talks about in this episode.

Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

For many years Sierra Leone and Liberia have been too dangerous to travel through. They were places of terrible violence – associated with child soldiers, prisoner mutilation and blood diamonds.

With their wars officially over, Tim Butcher set out on a journey across both countries. In this episode, he remembers this journey. It is his second appearance on Unfolding Maps. In episode 13, he talked about his book “Blood River” and his explorations through Congo, following the historic tracks of Henry Morton Stanley. This time, in Sierra Leone and Liberia, Tim followed the trail blazed by Graham Greene in 1935 and immortalized in the travel classic Journey Without Maps. Greene took 26 porters, a case of scotch, and hammocks in which he and his cousin Barbara were carried. Tim walked every blistering inch to gain an extraordinary ground-level view of a troubled and overlooked region, and he wrote a great book about it: “Chasing the Devil: The Search for Africa's Fighting Spirit”.

In this conversation, he talks about what kind of devil he chased and whether he has found the Fighting Spirit of Africa in these two war torn countries.

Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

(Rerelease of previously published Weltwach episode.) Eric Adams is world famous as the singer of the legendary American heavy metal band Manowar. Besides music however, another passion shapes his life: his love for nature, wildlife and hunting.

This is what this episode of Weltwach is about: Eric Adams tells how his father once showed him the wilderness for the very first time, remembers his most curious hunting experiences and talks about the quiet magic of a dawning day in the forest. He also discusses with Erik Lorenz what he understands as responsible hunting – and which memories are most dear to him when thinking back to his four decades-long career with Manowar.

Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

An author that hiked the Appalachian Trail and then got obsessed with the history and creation of trails. This is how the book “On Trails” by Robert Moor could be summarized. Sounds a bit, boring, doesn’t it?

Well, it isn’t. Instead, “On Trails” is one of the most fascinating “outdoor books” of the past years. In it, Robert explores how trails help us to understand the world. From ants to elephants to hiking paths that span continents, from interstate highways to the Internet, Moor discusses how the wisdom of trails link together all species. 

It is a fascinating read, because it covers a seemingly simple topic – trails – , but spans an arc from the dawn of animal life to the digital era, and from science to history, philosophy and nature writing … to mention just a few of the captivating topics of the book – and of this conversation.

https://www.robertmoor.com/

https://twitter.com/robertmoor_

https://www.facebook.com/robert.moor

Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Imagine you are sitting in a telephone booth-sized bubble hundreds of meters deep in the ocean surrounded by darkness, in an environment where nobody has ever been before. Many of the things you see here no one has ever seen before. Every now and then shining deep sea creatures appear. Most of them are completely new to science.

As a deep-sea biologist, this scenario may still be very exciting but it's nothing new to Dr. Diva Amon, our guest in this episode. Grown up in Trinidad and Tobago and currently based in London, she participated in several deep-sea expeditions around the world to explore and study previously unknown deep-sea habitats. Her work has been featured on CNN International, National Geographic, BBC World, ABC Australia, NHK, Los Angeles Times and more.

In this episode, she sheds some light onto some of the last remaining white spaces on the map of our world.

Links:

https://divaamon.com/

https://www.instagram.com/diva_amon

https://twitter.com/DivaAmon?lang=en

In the conversation, Diva mentions a couple of vessels that provide livestreams of their deep-sea explorations:

R/V Falkor: https://schmidtocean.org/technology/live-from-rv-falkor/

E/V Nautilus: https://nautiluslive.org/

NOAA Ship Okeanos Explorer: https://oceanexplorer.noaa.gov/livestreams/welcome.html

Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

As a war correspondent for the Daily Telegraph Tim Butcher quickly became obsessed with one of the world’s most war-ravaged countries – the Congo. Its rich and multi-layered history triggered him to dig deeper in his attempt to better understand “the heart of Africa”. After discovering a personal and direct link to a famous historical expedition, Tim took on an adventurous journey and set off down a jungle track from Eastern to Western Congo. In his 2007 published book “Blood River – A Journey to Africa’s Broken Heart”, which topped several bestseller lists, he reveals the story of the Congo and its troubles, which still remain up to date.

In this episode of Unfolding Maps, he tells a part of this story – and of his own explorations of the Congo.

You want to support Unfolding Maps? Then please leave a review and rating in the Apple Podcast App HERE. That way you can help our show to be found by other travelers. Thanks a lot!

Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

To musically capture the essence of a solo journey over around the world is a tremendous creative challenge. Musician, director and photographer Jim Kroft, our guest in this episode, has tackled it.

His journey took him through the endless expanses of the Russian winter, but also into the loneliness of Chinese mega-cities. On the way, he saw with his own eyes how people fleeing terror in their home countries were washed up on the coasts of Europe.

He processed the impressions of this journey in his project "Journeys", which culminated in the album "Love on the Face of Fear" at the end of 2019.

In this conversation he talks about his journeys, but also about how the creative process took place, how he transformed his experiences and the inspiration they provided into music.

You want to support Unfolding Maps? Then please leave a review and rating in the Apple Podcast App HERE. That way you can help our show to be found by other travelers. Thanks a lot!

Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.