Reseed

As children, we have our own hidden worlds. This beautiful conversation with children’s author Jon-Erik Lappano looks at being our innate selves, while finding pockets of wildness, writing, and wonder.  We talk about unmitigated and imaginative play in nature. We look at the joy of the creative process, and what it feels like to make something (like a beautiful book) that you can hold in your hand...

We can be helpers, we can be witnesses, we can refuse to give up.  While the fragile ceasefire is cause for some timid relief, we can’t look away. Action needs to be sustained. To mark the 50th episode of Reseed, this episode will be a bit different: here are 50 actions for Gaza.  Here are 50 actions to take—but the intent is to start with one action. This is meant to be helpful, afterall, not ove...

This is a conversation about discovering sacredness and deconstructing empire. Sacredness can be found in our forests, streams, parks, and backyards, rather than building walls around religion and isolating human beings from creation. That is why Church of the Wild brings nature, spirituality, and reverence together, regardless of specific religion. But many of us, despite feeling a spirituality i...

We are witnessing revolution, and that’s what this episode is about: witnessing, in the form of journalism, and revolution, in the form of climate justice that is interconnected with social justice.  Guest Eric Holthaus is a meteorologist, a climate journalist, and the author of The Future Earth: A Radical Vision for What's Possible in the Age of Warming . Rolling Stone called him the rebel n...

Collective action can lead to real, tangible victories, like halting an offshore oil project proposed by Big Oil, reminding us that collectives of people have the power to challenge destructive and powerful forces. Instead of the individualistic, lonely, consumerism-heavy environmentalism that claimed centre stage in the past — telling us we are guilty for the worsening climate impact and we need...

Democracy is under threat—an erosion that is deeply connected to the breakdown of a shared truth, of civility, of conversation. The ruptures feel permanent and impossible to repair. When we deeply disagree with people over the high stakes issues we face, courageous conversations can be a powerful way to find common ground. Prioritizing relationships and connection can potentially prevent pushing p...

We are midwives of a transformation, in a time of crisis and grief. Now is a moment to find our most expansive definitions of motherhood, nature, and ancestry in order to equip us for this moment. This episode of Reseed explores mothering in these times of ours, writing through emergency, a ceasefire in Palestine, and the power of togetherness.    Kerri ní Dochartaigh is an Irish mother, writer, a...

Fire, food, and the future come together in this conversation about relearning forgotten skills we need in the modern world. We explore permaculture, regenerative farming, seeds, and cycles, as well as six seasons of activities that people can do to nourish, create, feast, ritualize, and localize.  Jade Miles is a regenerative heritage fruit farmer. Together with her husband and three kids, Jade r...

Modernity lets us be comfortable in isolation, and can make it difficult for us to turn towards nature and community. Many of us struggle with mental health challenges like anxiety and depression—and nature can help us heal. It can be helpful to see how our brains and internal worlds are a worthy part of the natural world.  Guest Jarod K. Anderson is the Ohio-based author of Something in the Woods...

Watershed moments call for big changes. One of these shifts has been underway for some time: the righteous, individualistic, and exclusive environmentalism of the past is being steadily reimagined with an environmental movement that is characterized by joy, creativity, and authenticity. People are welcomed for being themselves and are invited to join where they are at, whether or not sustainabilit...

What does wildness mean to us when it is defined not by a few people, but rewritten for all of us? This episode of Reseed revisits the history of conservation to explore its dark corners, going beyond nipping off the buds and leaves to dig at its roots, unearthing information about those who are credited with founding Western conservation. A new conservation can be inclusive and accessible to all...

Times are dark. It is hard to imagine beauty, peace, or even the future. But we need to dig deep into our imaginations, and remind ourselves that expansive ideas and abundant dreams abound: rethinking climate activism, reorienting economic growth, climate reparations, rethinking conservation, and repairing place-based relationships. These themes are all explored in this thought-provoking conversat...

Consuming stuff is embedded into our identities and our culture. We are told that we deserve to buy things, and that ownership defines our worth. For the sake of our planet’s health and our own freedom, it is well worth the hard work of dismantling our addiction to stuff and asking ourselves questions about who we want to be.  Aja Barber joins Reseed for a fascinating and frank conversation that d...

How do we courageously face our eco anxiety and grief, and find the resources we need to cope with the climate crisis? How do we cultivate the emotional resilience that we need to weather ecological crises? How do we take care of our own mental health, so we can take care of each other and our Earth?  Britt Wray joins Reseed for a conversation about climate change, emotions, and mental health. Bri...

Parents have the formidable task of providing care for their own children while also caring for a planet in crisis - all while questioning how to raise the next generation to be caretakers. This episode of Reseed looks at the unique role that parents, aunts and uncles, grandparents, and other guardians can play, with specific actions that we can take as people who are raising children at an exhaus...

Music can help us make sense of, and deeply feel, our climate grief. Tamara Lindeman’s acclaimed album Ignorance about climate grief struck a chord with citizens and critics. Performing as The Weather Station, Lindeman’s 2021 poetic, thoughtful, and highly danceable album was named album of the year by The New Yorker and Uncut. Tamara joins Alice Irene Whittaker, the host of Reseed, for a conversa...

How do we find freedom from the relentless demands of capitalism? How do we cultivate rest as a radical act of resistance and revolution? How do we learn from, centre, and support Indigenous sovereignty? How do we learn from Black organizing and resistance, and see Indigenous and Black liberation as coexisting side-by-side? How do we avoid the co-opting of grassroots movements, and stay clear head...

How do we redefine environmentalism so that it includes everyone? How do we embed justice and belonging into our relationship to the natural world? How can we include cities and modernity in our definition of nature? What is the role of our ancestors in environmentalism and activism? These questions are explored in a conversation between Reseed host Alice Irene Whittaker and Chúk Odenigbo, an expe...

Economic models can operate in support of life on earth, rather than at the expense of the living world. Listeners of this episode can dip their toes into a variety of economic approaches that are available to us, from doughnut economics to the circular economy to the well-being economy to the regenerative economy to degrowth. Don't worry if economics is not your thing. This really is about o...

A small hummingbird flew over 1,900 kilometres, and ended up in a Saskatchewan backyard before a cold winter. The hummingbird – later called Yosemite Sam in national news stories – had performed something called reverse migration, a phenomenon where a bird migrates in the wrong direction. Sam ended up in the care of today’s guest, who protected the Californian bird through a Canadian winter, while...

Each of us is deeply connected to soil, whether we see or feel soil directly. It is the source of our food, medicine, and clothing, and is critical to the liveability of our ecosystems and to our lives. Healthy soil can also help us rise to meet biodiversity loss and climate change. We can grow soil, and sequester carbon, feed ourselves, and strengthen local communities and economies in the proces...

We are midwives of a transformation, in a time of crises and grief. Now is a moment to find our most expansive definitions of motherhood, nature, and ancestry in order to equip us for this moment. This episode of Reseed explores mothering in these times of ours, writing through emergency, a ceasefire in Palestine, and the power of togetherness.    Kerri ní Dochartaigh is an Irish mother, writer, a...

We all have times of silence — when momentum slows down, we turn inwards, or we cannot rush and produce. These wintering times, as Katherine May calls them, can allow us to rest and heal, but they can also lead to big changes. Taking times of silence can be one essential tool for restoring our energy and then changing how we are directing that energy: to confront a machine of oppression and extrac...

In the darkness of solstice season, a slim and nourishing light begins to return, imperceptibly, like the small and steady reconnections we are making to the earth and each other.  This conversation explores how we can reconnect with land and improve our relationship with the environment through natural dye and slow fashion.  These practices allow us to express creativity and connect with our spec...

A journey to track giants - the biggest old growth trees in British Columbia - teaches us about the relationships we have with forests, and the threats our trees face, from runaway wildfire to old growth logging to climate change. This journey also sheds light on the harms of a checklist approach to life where we search for the biggest and best acquisitions at a recklessly fast pace.  Guest Amanda...