The Wild Minds Podcast

As I record this onthe Summer Solstice - a moment when nature stands in its fullest expression, it feels like the perfect time to reflect on a season of conversations that, in different ways, have all pointed towards one essential human need: belonging. At the Summer Solstice, when the light reaches its fullest expression, we are invited to pause and ask what has ripened in us, what is ready to be...

In this conversation, GP Dr Tim Rigg explores how nature, community and healthcare might come together to create a more humane, preventative and scalable model of wellbeing. Tim speaks from his experience as a GP, bringing together clinical practice, social prescribing, nature connection and a wider understanding of what helps people become well He explains that around 90–95% of healthcare contact...

In this reflective solo episode, Marina explores how getting to know the plants around us can deepen our sense of connection, belonging and wonder. Drawing on a day spent teaching in the woods, she shares simple ways to slow down, engage the senses and discover the food, medicine, stories and lessons hidden within the plants we often overlook. Key Takeaways Why learning the names and qualities of...

In this episode, I’m speaking with Mo Wilde - forager, research herbalist, ethnobotanist, author of The Wilderness Cure , and founder of the Wild Biome Project. Mo has spent decades learning from plants, fungi, seaweeds, medicine, soil and the seasons. Her relationship with the wild began in childhood, and has grown into a life’s work exploring not only what plants can offer us, but what happens w...

In this week's episode I am discussing how climate anxiety is not the problem. I will explore how we educate, support and practice in a time of climate breakdown without overwhelming young people or asking them to numb themselves to reality. Topics include: Climate anxiety is not the problem; unsupported climate anxiety is. Climate education cannot just give young people facts - it has to help the...

Today I’m speaking with Jessica Newberry Le Vay, Senior Researcher in the Department of Psychiatry at the University of Oxford, and part of Climate Cares - a global initiative based at Oxford and Imperial College London, working to understand and respond to the links between climate change, mental health and wellbeing. Jessica leads the Compass Project, a research programme exploring how climate c...

This episode explores the tension between “just play” and the deeper understanding of what children truly need to develop and thrive. Topics Include: Play is not a break from learning but the primary way children engage with and make sense of the world physically, socially, and emotionally True play is child-led, intrinsically motivated, and process-driven, and when these qualities are removed it...

In this 1st episode of Season 12, Restoring the Occupation of Childhood, I’m joined by Angela Hanscom, a paediatric occupational therapist, Author of Balanced and Barefoot. She is also the founder of TimberNook that programmes designed to immerse children in sensory-rich, authentic play in nature and are found in over 51 locations in 4 countries! Angela’s work invites us to look again at the risin...

In this final episode of Season 11, Marina reflects on ceremony at a seasonal threshold, where science, spirituality and everyday life meet. As the light shifts toward spring in the North and autumn in the South, this episode explores what keeps us well - personally and collectively - and asks whether we are living as passengers or participants in our time. Topics include: Living at a threshold -...

Sitting by the fire with Annie Spencer, we explore ceremony as lived relationship - with spirit, story, blood, grief, and the long arc from initiation to eldership - and what it means to keep dreaming a life-affirming world in times that feel increasingly divided. Topics include: Sitting by the fire together becomes a doorway into relationship - gratitude not as a nicety, but as a way of rememberi...

In this episode, I step into what I’m calling the season of the amateur - asking big questions without claiming expertise. I explore how medicine is shaped by culture and worldview, what “evidence” really means, and how different systems - from biomedicine to Ayurveda - understand causation, illness and health. This isn’t a rejection of modern medicine - it’s an attempt to widen the lens. To ask w...

In this episode I’m joined by Dr Kanchan, an Ayurvedic doctor trained in India, to explore a radically different way of understanding health, not only as something we fix when it breaks, but as a lifelong relationship between body, mind, senses, environment, and meaning. This is a conversation about prevention rather than crisis, and about what becomes possible when health is understood as a livin...

In this episode, Marina explores why climate education is a health issue by looking at what actually keeps us well, and what happens when the systems we depend on begin to destabilise. This is a reflection on the living world, on physical reality, and on why informed climate education matters at a time of change. Key points: She begins in gratitude for the living world, and how amazing this biosph...

In this conversation, Professor Hugh Montgomery names climate change for what it is: A survival crisis driven by “radiation gain” and accelerating feedback loops. He cuts through denial, delay and mixed messaging with five simple moves anyone can make now - switch your power, move your money, change your food, shift your travel, and talk about it - then shows how asking seven others can cascade in...

Episode 82 invites listeners to arrive into 2026 with honesty, care and a sense of shared responsibility - not as individuals carrying the world alone, but as part of a wider web of life. Drawing on reflections from Jane Goodall’s work, seasonal change and lived experience, this episode explores how we stay present without panic. It asks what it really means to act with courage, dignity and relati...

Today, I’m joined by Rosemary Reed, trustee of the Jane Goodall Institute UK, and Jasmina Georgovska, Director of Outreach for Roots & Shoots UK — the global youth programme Jane founded to support young people to take action for people, animals, and the planet. In this episode, we talk about what it means to raise changemakers without breaking spirits. About listening, really listening, to ch...

As winter gathers and the days shorten, in this final episode of the season, Marina reflects on the Rowan tree, the act of wintering, and the hidden life beneath stillness.  Here are some of her reflections: The Rowan as a winter guardian, its bright berries offering sustenance and protection in the dark months. The solstice as a time of descent, when we enter the heart’s cave and tend the in...

Today I’m speaking with Nick Stoop , founder of Pangea Impact Investments - a company that’s trying to change something most of us rarely think about. Where our pensions are invested, and what that money is actually doing in the world. In this episode we get practical and brave about money — banks, pensions, and the difference between light green labels and deep green impact — so our savings can s...

In this solo episode, Marina explores what Linda Buzzell calls “level two ecotherapy” - a shift from using nature as a tool for human wellbeing to recognising our reciprocal relationship with the living world. Moving from “me” to “we,” she reflects on how our practices, systems, and mindsets can evolve toward a more ethical, embodied, and relational way of belonging. Key Ideas Explored The move fr...

This week, I am in conversation with Linda Buzzell who is a psychotherapist, ecotherapist, author, and pioneer in the field of ecopsychology, working at the intersection of psychology, ecology, and culture since the late 1990s. Linda co-edited 'Ecotherapy: Healing with Nature in Mind' with Craig Chalquist and has written widely on the ecological crisis as both a psychological and spiritual challen...

In this episode, Marina reflects on power, responsibility, and duty of care. As November marks a season of endings and beginnings, she looks beneath the surface of our systems — from education to environment, and asks what happens when we stop paying attention, and what it costs us when we do. This conversation traces the threads between integrity and innocence, corruption and accountability,...

In this episode, I’m speaking with Ash Smith, the founder of Windrush Against Sewage Pollution. A retired Detective Superintendent, former angler and scuba diver, Ash has spent the last eight years investigating the truth about what’s happening in our rivers. His love for the natural world, combined with a deep sense of justice, led him to gather a team of committed people from different disciplin...

In this reflective solo episode, Marina explores how the changing seasons, our ancestral roots, and the social history of education help us question what learning really means today. We journey from postwar Britain to the present classroom, asking how we can reimagine education as something alive, relational, and grounded in nature. Topics include: Gratitude for autumn, the changing light, and sma...

My guest today is Suzanne Welch, Education Partnership Manager at the RSPB, the UK’s largest nature conservation charity with over a million members, and in this episode she explores what it would mean to make nature a right in education and why it’s time to rethink the purpose. Suzanne has spent decades in outdoor learning - from taking inner-city children to the Thames foreshore, where subjects...

In this closing episode of Season 9, I’m exploring something that feels urgent in our times: the difference between education and learning. Education is often about systems, metrics, and tests — but learning is about life itself. It happens in forests, green spaces, kitchens, and communities. It’s experiential, embodied, relational, and remembered because we live it. With the rise of AI, increasin...