The Positive Fantastic

Welcome to the 75th episode of The Positive Fantastic podcast. I’m Mori Natura, and I’m really grateful that you have all been taking this journey with me for the past four years and four seasons of uplifting interviews with farmers, musicians, poets, ecologists, and other creatives. When I set out to make a podcast, I had absolutely no idea what I was doing except that I was clear that there was...

Laurie Bella is a human being who never ceases to impress me with her readiness to engage beauty in spontaneous ritual, with deep presence, and informed by immense gratitude. She founded Colibri Journeys to help support people in having truly meaningful cultural exchanges. In February 2025, I am going to be joining Laurie Bella's next Colibri Journeys in Peru! She is opening the call to one and al...

There's an amazing program that has been designed to teach you about California's unique ecosystems. Offered statewide, and held regionally, these classes combine the interdisciplinary studies from hydrology, botany, geology, and more to learn about a particular ecosystem. Dive in with Jen Riddell and Hannah Bird as we discuss the California Naturalist Program & why everyone is welcome...

Greta de la Montagne is a Holistic Health Practitioner and Herbalist living in Humboldt County, California. She has created MASHH (Medicine for ALL Seeking Health & Healing) as a pop-up mobile clinic to bring herbs to people during festivals, after emergencies, and for activist support. In this episode Greta (Grizz) shares her recipe for Fire Cyder, describes what herbs are essential to a first ai...

Author Rachel Kaplan wrote "Urban Homesteading Heirloom Skills for Sustainable Living" with K. Ruby Blume to help people living in cities to dive into the world of growing, foraging, and finding access through networking to good, local food, medicine, and natural beauty. I sat down with Rachel in Sonoma County over a bowl of freshly picked blackberries to discuss her journey as a permaculture teac...

Miguel Elliot, also known for his natural building "accoblishments" as Sir Cobalot, joins the podcast to discuss the wonderful capacities of cob. He explains how cob is not just a tool for natural construction with durable craftsmanship that is easy on the budget, but also a tool for social justice in support of unsheltered persons. Over the years Miguel has developed some amazing innova...

Stephane Barile joined me to discuss the "Descriptive Inquiry" process, which is a non-evaluative approach to working with learners. As an educator of many years, Stephane has found the work with the Institute of Descriptive Inquiry to be incredibly helpful to her and her teaching career. For more information about the Institute and resources to learn the process yourself, you can visit:...

Featured musical guest for Season 4 of the podcast, Jessi Lea shares about the evolution of her musical journey and artistry.

The Mendo Lake Food Hub is a network that connects farmers and the goods they produce with grateful consumers who want to partake in fresh, local, and nutritious food.

Artist and art collector Gaetan Caron, founder of “The Lost Art Salon,” joined me to discuss his journey in becoming an artist and realizing his dreams. We discussed his gallery in San Francisco, California, as well as his studio in the wilderness of Northern California. Listen in while we share about what it means to embody one's life as an artist. You may even hear the occasional chicken serenad...

Gwen Jensen joins the podcast again! In season one she shared about “Navigating Kundalini,” and she’s returned for part 2, to inspire you with tales from, for, and about the gathering of Kundalini Awakened journeyers she founded that she lovingly named Medicine Basket.

Molly Rinaldi is a breast cancer survivor. Closing out October 2023 breast cancer awareness month, with this interview, we offer up this personal, educational, and thoughtful podcast for your consideration. We want women to know about their options in the event of mastectomy, including "aesthetic flat closure." Rinaldi shares about her personal journey with breast cancer, and explains wh...

My guest specialist, Loretta Breuning PhD, founded the Inner Mammal Institute. She has spent the last decade really looking at the ways that our brains are wired. She’s created a podcast of her own to help support folks on their journeys to rewiring. The good news is that we are capable of making big, profound changes in our lives. The harder news is that it takes time, commitment, and discipline....

A special edition memorial about my life partner Daniel Treadwell Frey who passed on May 2, 2023. This episode, released on the Summer Solstice (the longest day of the year) is extra long in honor of this extraordinary human.

Hope Anderson tends to several hives at her home on the Big Island of Hawaii. We sat down while the honey bees buzzed us all around us to talk about these amazing bee-ings and they ways that we can support them through our tending. I hope that our interview will help shed light on why bees are so fundamentally important and what we can do to bring more consciousness to how they are tended for opti...

My herbalist friend Julie Rothman shares about her company, Flower Power. Julie has been making delicious and nourishing loose herbal tea blends for the last 30 years! Brew up a cuppa your favorite herbal tea blend, and join us for this interview about how Julie created Flower Power as the perfect creative fusion of her love of herbalism, gardening, and culinary arts.  

Tanya Stiller is an educator of and advocate for the seaweeds as part of a non-profit to support the oceans and particularly the intertidal zones of our Northern California coastline called “Healing Tide.” She shares about how we can sustainably support the oceans, harvest responsibly, and the amazing ways that seaweeds can be used as food and medicine.

For a new spin on Valentine's Day, I interviewed my best friend about our platonic love story! We created this episode to share about the sweetness of our friendship and also to offer insight into the wonders of being willing to have difficult conversations in a safe, secure connection. We’ve been kids together. We went to college together. We followed each other around the world. We have been rai...

In this episode with musical guest Alice DiMicele, we talk about her lifetime of letting song have its way with her. She shares about her singer-songwriter journey and the many albums she’s released along the way. With Nature as her muse, several of Alice’s original ecological songs are featured in this episode, including the title track of her newest album “Every Seed We Plant.” Alice has also gr...

I met with Lydia Neilsen and Anne Freiwald of Vital Cycles, in Anne’s garden, to discuss the power of teaching and training ourselves to the rhythms of the earth. Additionally, both Anne and Lydia share a deep love of song and are song carriers that help humans live our days in literal harmony. You can find several bits of song woven throughout the podcast as short and sweet interludes between eac...

I reached out to Esther Siegel recently about joining me on the podcast because she and her husband Spencer Brewer just released a book of Assemblage art, focusing on some of the phenomenal artists here in Northern California. Assemblage art is all about bringing together different parts to create a unified artistic whole. Imagine three dimensional collage or very adventurous mosaic making. And, i...

Joybi Joyner is an amazing man who has spent the vast majority of his adulthood living in the wilderness. We met last winter when I got to camp with him over the course of a couple weeks. We discussed the fascinating juxtaposition between the ancient ways humans have lived for thousands of years and the modern ways that things are changing so quickly. Joybi reflected on the balance of being out in...

This episode honors the North American beaver, in all its ecological keystone species glory. I chatted with Kate Lundquist, foremost beaver advocate in my neck woods (fed by the Russian River watershed), about how amazing beavers are, why we need them in our ecosystems, and the ways that new technology is helping create good relations between the humans and the beavers.

I'm excited to welcome Sarah Ryan and Sarah songbird, the two talented vocalists who make up The Real Sarahs duet, to "The Positive Fantastic" podcast. I became close friends with theses two at Herb School, just as they were forming their band. I have had the privilege of hearing them perform many times in formal and informal settings; they are a Mendo local band, but they've gone on tour internat...

Xicana Priestess Jamie Della shares about her life as an author. Her newest release “The Book of Spells” is now available. Listen as we explore what it means to live a magickal life.