Heat! Camera! Action!

It’s early morning in late summer, and I’m with turtle dove expert Mark Nowers of the RSPB. We’re sitting in a wild field margin at Braxted Hall estate, location for wilding and nature recovery through Biodiversity Net Gain (BNG), and site for the rare turtle dove. In the UK, there were 135,000 pairs in the 1960s, today just 2000. Just recently, he watched a pair on the hill behind us, purring at...

In the walled garden at Braxted Hall Estate, Duncan Clark talks about 30 years of rewilding of the family farm, and how it is beginning to connect up with other efforts across the landscapes of Essex. He describes developing multiple strands of business, including as a wedding venue. Farming has benefitted hugely from public support for the transition to sustainability and nature restoration. Now...

We’re sitting on the banks of the River Stour in “Constable Country.” It’s the home territory of the painter 250 years after his birth. Susan Owens is acclaimed author, art historian and curator: her most recent book is “Constable’s Year.” She was curator of paintings at the V&A Museum, and told on arrival she’d have to take on John Constable. What she found was a painter brave enough to inven...

So – this is that sort of trailer that comes in part after the vehicle. Looking back as well as forward. Series 1: 40 shows to Dec 23rd this year. In all 20 women guests, 20 men Series 2 will begin around the end of March 2027. About the time that my new book, Bamboo and Butterfly is published. It’s wonderful, isn’t it! Walking in the woods and wilds created by each guest. Transformational. Creati...

We’re at the home of Rob Hopkins close to Totnes in south Devon, and we’re talking time travel. Rob is the co-founder of the Transition Movement, and we chat about the revelatory moment when he saw a T-shirt saying, “I’ve been to the future. We won.” He says of the climate movement, “We are losing this at the moment really badly.” He observes there sometimes comes a moment in life that just wants...

I’m chatting with historian, translator and author Moudhy al-Rashid in Wolfson College in Oxford, overlooking the gardens and pond. Moudhy works with the extraordinary record of cuneiform languages written on clay tablets with reed styluses. These open and period of deep history of some 3500 years between the two rivers of the Tigris and Euphrates. Most of the tablets records of daily life; some a...

I’m chatting with Jenny Tolhurst in her Danbury garden. She is the first female Lord Lieutenant of Essex, and has been in post for nine years. It is a multi-dimensional role across counties of the UK, representing and serving the monarch of the day. The man duties including organising royal visits, giving out King’s Awards for Volunteers and for Enterprise, and celebrating local action. She commen...

In the churchyard of Great Henny church, I’m chatting in the breezy sunshine with Roger Morris, the Bishop of Colchester. He’s brought his purple hard hat. We’re at St Mary the Virgin church, one of six churches in the diocese of Chelmsford that has had to be closed because of the effects of climate change. Soils and ground experiencing severe wetting and then summer drying are moving, and 1000-ye...

In his home in Stroud, oral storyteller and author Anthony Nanson chats about story and the current polycrises. We hear about the three essential ingredients for narrative story: progression of events in time, characters embodied, the imagery of place. Anthony talks of the vulnerability of storytelling, and yet its limitless possibility too. He talks of the Bath Storytelling Circle and storytellin...

We’re in a flower-rich meadow in Warwickshire to hear from award-winning playwright Sarah Woods. Sarah works on story across a range of media. She says, story is a way of being. It’s always co-created, including in our minds as we read or listen, changing the “dappled light of the now.” She has written 30+ plays and dramatisations, and an original opera. Her dramatisations for BBC radio, such as o...

We’re on location in Yadvinder Malhi’s office in Oxford, professor and director of the Leverhulme Centre for Nature Recovery. Yadvinder’s work-origin story begins when he first climbs sampling towers in the Amazon to look out on 1000 miles of rainforest in every direction. “I was absolutely bewitched. I felt it viscerally.” We talk about culture and nature, the wild force of nature, and the sense...

In Mann Woods in central Essex, therapist and outdoor leader Jo Roberts chats about the work of the Wilderness Foundation and the transformative power of being in nature. We sit around the fire as winter sun falls. She talks about the value of learning small competencies for young people, and how nature interferes to remind us of something greater. Just look up, count the stars. There’s a surprisi...

I’m chatting with author, academic and former double UN Special Rapporteur Olivier De Schutter at a street table in the heat of an Oxford summer. Olivier is professor at the University of Louvain in Belgium, and says, “We have not made the economy inclusive by design; we have allowed it to operate in another way." The new Roadmap for Eradicating of Poverty Beyond Growth goes beyond 20 new met...

I’m talking online with Charlotte Hollins who with brother Ben are the farmers and business leaders of the Fordhall Community Land Initiative in Shropshire. Their father Arthur was an early adopter of organic methods in the 1940s, also of inviting the community in. over the years, natural and social assets accumulated. But their landlord sought to evict them after he died. They were in a deep hole...

In his farmhouse kitchen in central Essex, Simon Lyster chats about local nature recovery. He is Chair of the Essex Local Nature Partnership that comprises 40 organisations. Like all counties there is now an obligation to produce a statutory Local Nature Recovery Strategy (LNRS). This is a spatial map of the whole county, where the aim is to protect and conserve 30% of the land and sea are by 2030...

I’m sitting with Hattie Phillips in the OWLS community garden in Maldon during one of the summer heatwaves. She was one of the first WWF Youth Ambassadors, and is currently studying at Black Mountains College in Wales. She is a very fine communicator, and already has great experience of speaking in public, performing in theatre, engaging with community action and national climate events. She says,...

In this online chat, award winning actress, director, producer and writer Aria Mckenna talks from her north Florida home on building bridges between climate scientists, policy makers and the media. She talks of efforts to get positive climate and nature narratives inside TV and films, and how to go beyond the tendency to think drama can only be created around apocalypses. “Climate disinformation,”...

In his wildlife-friendly garden in East Sussex, I’m chatting with author and scientist Dave Goulson about insects, and especially bees. “They’re clinging on in little fragments of habitat.” Across the world, there are one million species of insect, and perhaps another 4 million awaiting identification. But they’re in severe decline. The land has become hostile to insects, particularly from the use...

I’m sitting with the award-winning oral storyteller and author, Danyah Miller, in her West Sussex garden to hear about “swimming in the sea of story.” Danyah tells of vision and method – how story works best and what we might do to create story. She’s the first person to sing on the podcast, showing how young children can come to see how beautiful is the world. “Sharing stories in the seasons open...

In his Field at Maplestead in north Essex, author and nature restorer James Canton chats about the transformation by renaturing of small spaces in the landscape. “I evolved,” he says, “the field evolved.” From barren land to cricket pitch to abundant patch of wildflower meadow, scrub, trees and pond. We talk about how life recognises life, and how when you create the conditions, nature comes fast....

In our online chat in her Southampton studio, we hear from activist, author and creator Denise Baden about the power of positive story. She is Professor of Sustainable Business, and came to realise that teaching business ethics does not make students more ethical. She switched to good role models in story, finding these created a different kind of motivation. “We remember stuff embedded in story,”...

We’re talking online about rewilding, Ben Goldsmith at his London home. Ben is activist, rewilding advocate, financier, farm owner and host of the podcast Rewilding the World. Ben talks about rewilding cities, and the work for the Mayor of London’s taskforce, and how access to open spaces brought him close to nature as a child. Less tidiness is needed, he says. He describes the rewilding of his So...

We’re sitting at the edge of land and sea on Mersea Island, the tide is out. There are terns and gulls, bees flying, a perfect place to hear from Leanne Hepburn, director of the Ocean Literacy Project. All is dependent on a healthy ocean. It absorbs heat, pollution, plastic; it influences us in return. Leanne talks of her step away from academic security, the sense of freedom and scary vulnerabili...

In her Somerset home in Wiveliscombe, Nicky Saunter chats about her life as author, poet, mask maker and activist. On the table is a large mask of Frog, and in the kitchen are masks of Octopus, Beaver and Ant. She says, “You wear a mask at an outdoor event, and it frees you up. You become a more extreme version of yourself.” People also instantly smile, put on a mask, become a frog. Everyone’s imm...

In this online conversation, I’m chatting with an old friend and radical agricultural and development educator, Richard Bawden. He’s on the Sunshine Coast in Queensland, I’m in Suffolk. This is a longer pod than usual. Richard is dying from cancer (he’s not living with it). It’s metastasised, it’s now untreatable. The phases are coming fast. And yet. We laugh, tell stories, wander over a life of 8...