Heat! Camera! Action!

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...

A 5 minute trailer for Heat! Camera! Action! Heat – too much in the air and oceans Camera – for focus and attention Action – what we need   We’re in a hole. The planet’s losing. This is how we get out. Story with a swerve, slantwise. More hope, more agency. In the pod, we hear from culture leaders and wanderers, the crossers of boundaries, the story-tellers.  Good story is not just a hiding place....