Heat! Camera! Action!

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...

In this online chat, author, poet and community activist Mandy Haggith talks from her Assynt croft in the north-west of Scotland. She is using poetry to create a sense of agency when so much seems bleak. We hear of community development in Scotland, how policy has enabled local people to but estates, islands and urban plots. It’s hard, though, to create the income streams for local people. Mandy t...

At Abbotts Hall by the Blackwater Estuary, chief executive of Essex Wildlife Trust, Rich Yates, chats about the 67 years of county wildlife action. We sit in sunshine by a pond, and hear about the Trus’s many reserves and visitor centres. And how the focus on nature has shifted from protecting and conserving to improving. This puts people at the heart of it all. The Trust relies on a dense network...

In her home in central Suffolk, First Light Festival director Genevieve Christie chats about the reinvention of Lowestoft around the free festival held at the summer solstice. Once famed fishing town, then seaside resort, like many coastal places Lowestoft had struggled to invent a third way for contemporary times. It is the place in the UK where first light appears, and the idea of first light le...

In our online discussion, Jacquie McGlade chats about her unique perspective on environmental harms and solutions. She’s Professor at UCL in London and Strathmore in Kenya, is former Director of the European Environment Agency, Chief Scientist at UNEP (the UN Environment Programme), and is a resident of Kenya.  She talks of hope in the Global South, and how the young of Africa will be future world...

In the garden at Bottengoms, on an early spring morning, biographer and art curator Ian Collins chats about the 100-year-life of Ronnie Blythe.  We talk about how Ronnie was hyper-local to the landscapes of south Suffolk and north Essex, yet wrote in a way that told of the whole world. His life was hard. He lived in the shadow of the workhouse, and yet he found great contentment. Visitors were alw...

In his garden in the Norfolk Broads, philosopher, author and climate activist Rupert Read talks to me about climate movements and action.  We hear of the formation of Extinction Rebellion, thrutopian ideas and transformative adaptation. And how too the declaration of climate emergencies moved thinking and local policies. We hear about the need to focus on a climate majority: the middle 60-70% of t...

I’m chatting online with prize-winning global change scientist and film-maker Phoebe Barnard in her borrowed home in Ireland, as the sun breaks through on her and her happy dog.  We talk about Phoebe’s life as a climate scientist, about international negotiations and processes that bring countries together, about film making for positive stories. She describes having to leave beautiful Washington...

In his brim-full office at the British Antarctic Survey in Cambridge, I chat with Lloyd Peck just after his return from a spell at Rothera Research Station. We talk about how fast things are changing. He’s a veteran of some 800 cold water dives, often under the ice. The Antarctic is the site of enormous aquatic biodiversity, much completely unique. We talk of great sea spiders and fish with no hae...

In a borrowed room at local Tone Dale House, author and activist Anita Roy chats to me about personal and community transformation. We are in Wellington in Somerset, winner of the national prize for best transition town, and we hear how the people did it. They created a new commons, a 65-acre woodland-orchard that all are free to use. Anita talks about the up-down down-up arc of writing and how it...