Emergence Magazine Podcast

As we come to the end of Living with the Unknown , we begin again at the beginning. For the final story of our third volume, we journey into the fictional, post-apocalyptic landscape of acclaimed Nigerian poet and novelist Ben Okri. In this short story, superbly narrated by British actor Colin Salmon, a man and a woman inhabit a world abandoned by humans, grappling with what is at stake in beginni...

In this expansive interview, writer, artist, and technologist James Bridle seeks to widen our thinking beyond humancentric ways of knowing. In questioning our fundamental assumptions about intelligence, they explore how radical technological models can decentralize power and become portals into deeper relationship with the living world. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoice...

Alexis Wright is an Australian Aboriginal author and member of the Waanji people from the southern Gulf of Carpentaria. As the world falters, threatening native ecosystems and Indigenous lifeways, Alexis turns inward to the dwelling place of ancestral story. Emergence Magazine, Vol 3: Living with the Unknown explores what living in an apocalyptic reality looks like through four themes: Initiation,...

As we look to an uncertain future, what systems of exchange might we embrace that support and deepen our interdependence? In this essay, Potawatomi scientist and author Robin Wall Kimmerer harvests serviceberries alongside the birds, considering the ethic of reciprocity that lies at the heart of the gift economy. Emergence Magazine, Vol 3: Living with the Unknown explores what living in an apocaly...

In this meditative exploration, Chelsea Steinauer-Scudder witnesses her daughter learning to speak and wonders how to listen for a language of mothering that is in service to all of life’s beings. Emergence Magazine, Vol 3: Living with the Unknown explores what living in an apocalyptic reality looks like through four themes: Initiation, Ashes, Roots, and Futures. Experience “ Chapter Four: Futures...

Suzanne Simard is known for her groundbreaking research on the belowground fungal networks that connect trees and facilitate inter-tree communication and interaction. We continue to explore Futures this week with another story on motherhood—this time within the world of trees. In this interview, Suzanne discusses her book Finding the Mother Tree: Discovering the Wisdom of the Forest and shares her...

Julian Hoffman lives in a mountain village beside the Prespa lakes in northwestern Greece. He is the author of The Small Heart of Things and Irreplaceable: The Fight to Save Our Wild Places . In this piece, Julian witnesses the drastic decline of Dalmatian pelicans nesting on the Prespa lakes as they succumb to the recent outbreak of avian influenza. As the wetlands fall strangely quiet, he senses...

We close our exploration of the theme of Roots by taking a step into joy. This week, we bring you another piece by birder and writer J. Drew Lanham. In this powerfully recited poem, Drew celebrates the radical act of joy through lifting up liberation, reparations, justice, and deep connection to ancestors and the living world.  Emergence Magazine, Vol 3: Living with the Unknown explores what livin...

This three-part series is the multigenerational story of a Coast Miwok family’s eviction from their home and one woman’s determination to bring the living history of her family back to the land. This final episode traces the Spanish missions, boarding schools, and ranching empires that drove many Coast Miwok people from their ancestral land in Northern California and shares Theresa Harlan’s contin...

This three-part series is the multigenerational story of a Coast Miwok family's eviction from their ancestral home—on a cove in Tomales Bay in Northern California—and one woman's effort to bring the living history of her family back to the land. In Episode Two we learn that the Coast Miwok culture predates the geological formation of the San Francisco Bay. In tracing thousands of years of Indigeno...

Across the United States, Indigenous communities are calling for sweeping revisions to stories commonly told as “history”—stories that, even today, neglect and erase Indigenous peoples and serve as justification for continued ownership of stolen Indigenous lands. This three-part series is the multigenerational story of a Coast Miwok family’s eviction from their ancestral home in Northern Californi...

How can stories return us to what is essential as we navigate an uncertain future? In this conversation with Amitav Ghosh, author of The Nutmeg’s Curse: Parables for a Planet in Crisis , he calls on storytellers to lead us in the necessary work of collective reimagining—decentering human narratives and re-centering stories of the land. Emergence Magazine, Vol 3: Living with the Unknown explores wh...

How do we root ourselves in times of isolation and disorientation? As birder and writer J. Drew Lanham encounters his backyard during the pandemic lockdown, he designates it as a newly sanctioned “wild-like refuge”—a place that is brimming with life as he notices the wildlife that inhabits the nearby faraway. Emergence Magazine, Vol 3: Living with the Unknown explores what living in an apocalyptic...

We begin Chapter Three with a story that explores language as a technology capable of transforming our lived realities. As a Native scholar and poet, Jake Skeets considers the necessary interrogation of colonial naming and narratives, and how the Indigenous application of writing as a technology can reshape our world as we move into an unknown future. Emergence Magazine, Vol 3: Living with the Unk...

This sonic journey written and narrated by David G. Haskell brings us to the beginning of sound and song on planet Earth. The experience is made entirely of tiny trembling waves in air, the fugitive, ephemeral energy that we call sound. Spoken words combined with terrestrial sounds invite our senses and imaginations to go outward into an experience of the living Earth and its history. How did the...

Daegan Miller is the author of This Radical Land: A Natural History of American Dissent . In this essay, Daegan visits the tree that marks the thousandth westward mile of the Transcontinental Railroad and considers how our historical landmarks have shifted in meaning, leaving us adrift and disoriented in the Anthropocene.  Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Around the world, trees are on the move. Last year we published a special multimedia story, told from the perspectives of four native tree species, that explores what is at stake for both ecological and human communities as forests migrate. In this re-release of “They Carry Us With Them,” Chelsea Steinauer-Scudder narrates the feature story, chronicling the possible disappearance of the black ash...

In our final installment on the theme of Ashes from Chapter Two of Living with the Unknown , we enter a fictional world dominated by the monotony and tireless momentum of greed. In this short story from Icelandic author Andri Snær Magnason, time expands and collapses as an architect in Reykjavíik struggles against the soulless design of urban landscapes in the Anthropocene. Emergence Magazine, Vol...

Acclaimed poet Camille T. Dungy bears witness to an encounter between a man and an elephant. In an effort to make sense of a world in which so much has been lost, this poem offers us the opportunity to step into a moment where past harm gives way to an expansive recognition of love. Emergence Magazine, Vol 3: Living with the Unknown explores what living in an apocalyptic reality looks like through...

In this narrated essay, Daisy Hildyard, a scholar of the history of science, examines three stories of atrocity and considers how whiteness has inscribed itself onto the land through violence. In what ways, she asks, does human history blur into the nonhuman world and into the present moment? Emergence Magazine, Vol 3: Living with the Unknown explores what living in an apocalyptic reality looks li...

In this narrated essay, writer and journalist Anna Badkhen brings us into histories of imperial collapse. As we continue our exploration of the theme of Ashes and what it means to live in a moment of unraveling, she asks: How do we come to terms with the world we have made? How do we make space for hope and sanctuary? Emergence Magazine, Vol 3: Living with the Unknown explores what living in an ap...

This month we move from Initiation into Ashes with five stories from Chapter Two. When so much has been stripped away, how do we bear witness to ruin? How do we continue to be present with that which remains? We begin with the sudden disappearance of the bogong moth in alpine Australia. As writer Rebecca Giggs traces the moths journey from superabundance to apocalypse, she considers how very small...

In this narrated essay, Cal Flyn observes new species of butterflies arriving in Scotland's Orkney Islands. As plants and animals migrate northwards on an unprecedented scale, she faces the haunting knowledge that some voices are rising as others fade away. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

We invited Oscar-nominated composer Volker Bertelmann, also known as Hauschka, to create a unique companion to the stories in our third volume, Living with the Unknown . The resulting four-part score is a cinematic and introspective experience, and a compelling counterpart for the journey into the unknown.  When we first spoke to Volker about the issue’s themes—Initiation, Ashes, Roots, and Future...

Amid the cacophony of a cicada emergence, our final narrated essay on the theme of Initiation follows a movement into new rhythms and patterns of becoming. While immersed in a unified chorus of insect voices, playwright and director Anisa George reflects on her departure from the Bahá’í faith and its promise of a new civilization, choosing instead to embark on her own path. Sounds provided by Davi...