conscient podcast

a calm presence - 4%

28 Nov 2025

Contributed by Lukas

(note: to read the original Substack posting click here)It’s Thursday November 27th, 2025, at about 10pm. I’m sitting by a fireplace at our cotta...

e243 francisco rodriguez – amazon awareness

26 Nov 2025

Contributed by Lukas

Take care of the earth. We have grandsons and great-great-grandsons, and we have to, we, our generation, has to teach the young people what we lived, ...

e242 roundtable - dissolving boundaries

24 Nov 2025

Contributed by Lukas

In an era where pressures on climate and environments grow even stronger, we should not underestimate the transformative power of art. (Ambassador of ...

a calm presence - erasure

12 Nov 2025

Contributed by Lukas

erasureemulating sand mandalas(note: you can read the original posting here)It's November 1st, 2025 and as you can hear, I'm not at home. We've been t...

e241 roundtable – everyday habits for transforming systems

27 Jul 2025

Contributed by Lukas

The question the book asks is obviously transforming the system is not an individual task, it's a collective activity. But it still begs the question,...

e240 claudia salguero – community, beauty, nature

26 Jul 2025

Contributed by Lukas

To me, there's three key things and it's community, beauty and nature. I think if we connect with nature and if we produce beauty, that is something t...

e239 roundtable – imagining in public e2 - artist perspectives on social impact

26 Jul 2025

Contributed by Lukas

I love policy because it allows for surrealism, it allows for creativity, it allows for dancing, it allows for all the skills and disciplines and inte...

e238 roundtable – sonic research group - low tech

21 Jul 2025

Contributed by Lukas

This is a special edition of conscient roundtable featuring Aaron Lui-Rosenbaum, Barry Truax, Jacek Smolicki (for more on Jacek’s work also see co...

e237 helen yung – art as refuge

20 Jul 2025

Contributed by Lukas

Artistic practice, cultural traditions, cultural practice, folk traditions… These are all places where we have where wisdoms that might otherwise ha...

e236 keiko torigoe – the power of listening

19 Jul 2025

Contributed by Lukas

The environmental issues currently at hand, including global warming, are related, but I believe that at their root lies the decline of our listening ...

e235 lallan – art from the soil

11 Jul 2025

Contributed by Lukas

My advice to artists would be drop every garb that you have, drop every piece of knowledge that you think you have. Head to the jungles, head to the r...

e234 emily marie séguin – a sense of community

10 Jul 2025

Contributed by Lukas

Alongside the responsibility of holding people accountable and calling out what they see as unjust, I think that there's also an element of hope with ...

e233 andrew freiband – care as artistic practice

09 Jul 2025

Contributed by Lukas

If we start to pay attention to what we pay attention to then we start to naturally slow down. We disconnect from the urgency, the crisis, and we star...

e232 meghan moe beitiks - angles of consequence

08 Jul 2025

Contributed by Lukas

Even being confronted with something that is weird or uncomfortable: it’s character growth. You have to ask the question: why is this person doing t...

e231 kelly wilhelm – what can we contribute?

07 Jul 2025

Contributed by Lukas

Part of the answer to that question lies in the arts and culture understanding the role it can have in a time of collapse or crisis, and to understand...

e230 sarah peebles – how can we reciprocate?

07 Jul 2025

Contributed by Lukas

How can we reciprocate since the world keeps us alive on the one hand, and on the other hand, all these things, birds and you name it, right? Fish and...

e229 don hill – amplifying voices

06 Jul 2025

Contributed by Lukas

There are a lot of people that don't have the kind of talent that you do, Claude, or for that matter, I do and they have voices, but you can't hear th...

e228 rafael zen – artists as dreamers

05 Jul 2025

Contributed by Lukas

The role of artists is the role of dreaming. I've worked as a poet, as a multimedia artist, sound artist, storyteller. I think we hold the capacity to...

e227 judith marcuse – spiritual strengthening

04 Jul 2025

Contributed by Lukas

In a time when it's easy to become defeated, when one can succumb to despair and negativity, a question I use when I reflect on the state of the world...

e226 roundtable - listening in relation

03 Jul 2025

Contributed by Lukas

This is a special edition of conscient roundtable featuring Lara Felsing, Adrian Avendaño, Hildegard Westerkamp, Toni-Leah C. Yake as part of the ...

e225 hildegard westerkamp – when we were young

29 Jun 2025

Contributed by Lukas

The first thing that comes to mind is my young activist in me that says, of course, let's just fight. Let's just do what we can to speak out against, ...

e224 sarah heynen – food as a solution that invites people in

28 Jun 2025

Contributed by Lukas

The approach of the Canadian Centre for Food & Ecology (CCFE) is what has been so attractive to me. It's a conviction around joyful, immersive experi...

e223 anonymous - #downtowncritters

27 Jun 2025

Contributed by Lukas

I think there's a lot of roles for art generally, and one of my favorite ones is kind of imagining that art helps you imagine, even if it has nothing ...

e222 wendalyn bartley – restoring our connection with nature

26 Jun 2025

Contributed by Lukas

How do we restore our connection with nature? Because I think that part of the crisis that we're in, especially with the climate, stems from the fact ...

e221 annais linares and ben finley – arts-based kin making

25 Jun 2025

Contributed by Lukas

People maybe are used to being bombarded at this point with the news of what's happening. And that's the reality. And we need to face that. I think al...

e220 tina pearson – what is art anyway?

24 Jun 2025

Contributed by Lukas

What is art? What is art anyway? It's a new term, really. I think we need to go a little bit beyond that. I think of myself as a sound practitioner, s...

e219 adam kahane – radical engagement

18 May 2025

Contributed by Lukas

Radical engagement with the system doesn't mean participating in that system, distractedly resigned, knowing it all hierarchically at arm's length, wi...

e218 roundtable - surviving the future

04 May 2025

Contributed by Lukas

Hey there faithful, brave and patient conscient podcast listeners, Welcome to the 3rd conscient roundtable. Live radio style again. First take, only ...

e217 devora neumark - sitting with emotions

27 Apr 2025

Contributed by Lukas

What can I do to support the grieving? There's so much to grieve. Whether we think about the crisis of climate, whether we think about the political c...

e216 roundtable – in memoriam tracey friesen

18 Apr 2025

Contributed by Lukas

Hey there faithful and brave conscient listeners, Welcome to the second conscient roundtable conversation. This one was recorded on Sunday, March 16...

e215 chris creighton-kelly – optimism of the will

16 Apr 2025

Contributed by Lukas

I would say that while there's absolutely no question that we're in a crisis, there's no question about multi crisis. I'm not sure we're in the state ...

e214 roundtable – this moment in canadian culture

13 Apr 2025

Contributed by Lukas

I think, as has already been mentioned by a number of you, that we need to slow down, not speed up. This is a moment for really slow thinking and to b...

e213 stephen huddart – so much to do

13 Apr 2025

Contributed by Lukas

The arts have that capacity to be powerful broadcasters, conveyors of messages, invitations to celebration, reflection, storytelling, narrative buildi...

e212 max wyman – taking action

06 Apr 2025

Contributed by Lukas

There's been a real lack of positive action and response from the arts community to these existential questions that confront us. And I really wonder ...

e211 azul carolina duque - art as medicine

05 Apr 2025

Contributed by Lukas

I think there is a responsibility we have as artists to relate to our artistry responsibly. And that has to do with sensing into our artistic sensibil...

e210 roundtable – art and science

31 Mar 2025

Contributed by Lukas

Hey thereWelcome to the first conscient roundtable conversation recorded on Saturday March 1, 2025 in Tiohtià:ke (also known as Montreal). This ep...

e209 robert and peter janes – telling the truth through art

20 Mar 2025

Contributed by Lukas

I think that the first thing artists have to do is to start telling the truth. You know, just like climate change five or six years ago, you just didn...

ENCORE e01 terrified - climate denial bubble

09 Feb 2025

Contributed by Lukas

What triggered my climate denial bubble to burst? I feel compelled to share this personal experience, in the hope that it might help others who are a...

ENCORE e85 tracey friesen (in memoriam) - narratives of resilience

09 Jan 2025

Contributed by Lukas

What's starting to interest me is stories of resilience for a post-carbon world. What are we going to need for our emotional well-being? It's going to...

e208 clara schryer - science as story

23 Oct 2024

Contributed by Lukas

My interest in science is quite poetic. The things that I find the most interesting about science are when it can be woven into a story that makes sen...

e207 kenneth newby - living with grace

12 Oct 2024

Contributed by Lukas

The planet's not dying. Our place and our version of it may be dying. So how do we deal with that? How do we accept and live with the knowledge that o...

e206 arno kopecky - art as an inexhaustible resource

08 Oct 2024

Contributed by Lukas

​​I think if we can reimagine what matters to us and pursue that, then perhaps there's a chance that we can stop this truly self-destructive pursu...

e205 sheila james - create, heal, love

08 Oct 2024

Contributed by Lukas

In the face of destruction, we should create. In the face of hurt, we should heal. In the face of hate, we should love. That's my feeling and figuring...

e204 sophie weider - hearing young voices through art

02 Oct 2024

Contributed by Lukas

I'd like to use art more as a tool to get people thinking, get people involved, especially young people, and hopefully, help them process the emotions...

e203 leslie reid - climate as art

29 Sep 2024

Contributed by Lukas

All artists have to be aware of climate because otherwise it's not art (and that's going to piss some people off - Claude Schryer). I think it will. C...

e202 coman poon - what are you doing with your life ?

23 Sep 2024

Contributed by Lukas

We're going through a crash, the sixth extinction, climate collapse, geopolitical collapse, economic collapse, all types of overlapping, interlaced cy...

e201 robin sokoloski - why arts matter

16 Sep 2024

Contributed by Lukas

I believe that we are all connected by these invisible threads, the shared sinew amongst all living things, that includes humans, plants, animals, wha...

e200 maggie chang - the power of art

14 Sep 2024

Contributed by Lukas

I really think art is one of the most important things to help tackle issues and create social change. There's that quote from Maya Angelou that goes ...

e199 judi pearl - an ineffable shift

09 Sep 2024

Contributed by Lukas

The role of the artist in the climate crisis is not simply to communicate scientific information in a sort of dressed up kind of way, but really to en...

e198 tim brodhead - later is too late

07 Sep 2024

Contributed by Lukas

If we're going to see change happen, it's going to be because people change and that doesn't occur when you preach to them or you evangelize or anythi...

e197 zan chandler - other ways of responding to the world

06 Sep 2024

Contributed by Lukas

That's the thing about the future's work and foresight work is you need a very broad range of thinkers. You need people from different perspectives wh...

e196 alice irene whittaker (part 2) - homing, a book review

03 Sep 2024

Contributed by Lukas

I think a lot of people right now are feeling terror or feeling deep grief - worry about climate - and might mention it in a joking way over dinner, l...

e195 emma bugg - art, scholarship and environment

02 Sep 2024

Contributed by Lukas

It’s really important to have some sort of horizon to grasp onto and work towards and for me that is thinking about what possible worlds might exist...

e194 owais lightwala and sgs - manifesting for now

01 Sep 2024

Contributed by Lukas

The majority of individuals who work in this sector are deeply concerned about climate change and deeply motivated and often doing a lot about it in t...

e193 yin paradies - interweaving everything with everything else

17 Aug 2024

Contributed by Lukas

In primal cultures, there's a tendency to interweave everything with everything else, including art. People are very creative and expressive in everyd...

e192 julia matamoros - cultural transformation & art

15 Aug 2024

Contributed by Lukas

Definitely we need a cultural transformation, and no one’s better positioned to contribute to that than the arts and culture. I think part of the ta...

e191 luc lalande - community arts during times of crisis

13 Aug 2024

Contributed by Lukas

We have folks who would never define themselves as artists, but are nonetheless creative and have ideas and are imaginative. How can we get them to fe...

e190 kim fry - appealing to hearts and souls

07 Aug 2024

Contributed by Lukas

In Canada and many other parts of the world, we've relied on policymakers and scientists to be the ones communicating around climate, and they failed ...

e189 tanya kalmanovitch - mobilizing the power of the arts

01 Aug 2024

Contributed by Lukas

What happens is that you have arts and environment initiatives popping up all over the place, but everyone's pitted against one another in competing f...

e188 dawit seto - talking about climate through art

30 Jul 2024

Contributed by Lukas

Having a conversation about the artworks and important issues such as climate change is everywhere in the globe. It's important for us also in the Hor...

e187 alice irene whittaker - caring for the planet I love

29 Jul 2024

Contributed by Lukas

About collapse acceptance : I've been in that space and it is really liberating. How I frame it for myself is : I don't know how it all turns out and ...

e186 yahya aka semzyiri - collective liberation as planetary right

27 Jul 2024

Contributed by Lukas

We have become a bit disconnected after COVID but at the same time we are emerging more consciously while we were more complacent before. I hold hope ...

e185 sandra laronde - home never leaves you

22 Jul 2024

Contributed by Lukas

I really believe that we carry the spirit of the land wherever we go. In the Western canon, they say that once you leave home, you can never return, b...

e184 cpamo ai panel - from precarity to stability

19 Jul 2024

Contributed by Lukas

My dream with AI started with curiosity about how technology can extend to the boundaries of artistic expression. I was fascinated by the possibility ...

world listening day 2024 - listening to the weave of time

18 Jul 2024

Contributed by Lukas

World Listening Day takes place every year on July 18, which is also Canadian composer R. Murray Schafer’s birthday. The day is organized  by the W...

e183 imagining in public - cultural leadership in a changing world

09 Jul 2024

Contributed by Lukas

I've been thinking a lot about the importance of connecting the value of the arts to everyday citizens and their own connection to creativity, whateve...

e182 ian garrett - modelling what we want on the other side

08 Jul 2024

Contributed by Lukas

Whether or not we get to a complete and total collapse or we're looking at collapses of very specific systems for it…  Right now I'm concerned with...

e181 dawn dale - reconnecting with nature through art

06 Jul 2024

Contributed by Lukas

To go to a farm and take a carrot out that’s covered in dirt and wipe it off on your pants and eat it on the spot. It's something that most people d...

e180 mary edwards - capturing the beauty and terror of reality

05 Jul 2024

Contributed by Lukas

We're all going to be affected by the same outcome. When I went up to Svalbard (Norway), I went with the intention of also capturing the beauty and th...

e179 katrine claassens and sébastian méric de bellefon - art, science and climate leadership

02 Jul 2024

Contributed by Lukas

I luckily managed to move from a space of ‘I have to save the planet or else’ (and we talk about that word ‘save’) to ‘I choose to commit my...

e178 podium 2024 - what more can we sing and do?

26 Jun 2024

Contributed by Lukas

It is taking far too long for us to acknowledge the damage we have done to the world's water and to indigenous people and to take action : truth, reco...

e177 asma khan - unknownness as a playground for artists

20 Jun 2024

Contributed by Lukas

We essentially know two percent of all different disciplines and that kind of unknownness creates a very free playground for an artist to dance in or ...

e176 annette hegel - art is a tactic

14 Jun 2024

Contributed by Lukas

We need culture to shift behaviour, because everything is culture but the mentality is that art is an adornment and not actually a tactic. I think art...

e175 sabine breitsameter - an aesthetic of care

13 Jun 2024

Contributed by Lukas

Listening can teach us to appreciate our environment in a critical sense, but also in a kind of admiration for it. If we admire something because we t...

e174 julie andreyev - more-than-human creativity

05 Jun 2024

Contributed by Lukas

As an artist and educator, I see that this moment calls for a way of working through decolonization and forging a path of care. I like to think of thi...

e173 kelly mcinnes - late stage remedy

02 Jun 2024

Contributed by Lukas

I think there's a lot of focus on systems change and we need all of that, but what we really need is to change ourselves so that we can actually embod...

e172 beth carruthers - a living sentient place

30 May 2024

Contributed by Lukas

What would change things is love. … We ask people to act, to change, to make sacrifices, or what may be perceived as sacrifices, which in the end ca...

e171 kimberly skye richards - dept of utopian arts & letters

24 May 2024

Contributed by Lukas

One of the roles that artists play within the poly crisis is supporting us through processes of unnumbing. Sometimes we might describe it like a re-tu...

e170 sonic research group (part 2)

22 May 2024

Contributed by Lukas

(Note: some quotes below have been edited for concision)Soundwalking is always like magic. It is a magical experience. It is so simple, Hildi, as you ...

e169 louise adongo - we’re all artists

15 May 2024

Contributed by Lukas

How can we remind ourselves that we're all creative and we're all artists? I think that we need all parts of ourselves to be able to navigate this tra...

e168 felicia young - together through art

12 May 2024

Contributed by Lukas

Community arts became my initial quest in the 1980’s as a reaction against the commercial art world. How can art participate in a functional way to ...

e167 barbara cuerden - tending the garden of art

06 May 2024

Contributed by Lukas

The garden doesn't have to be something that's instrumental. It can be just a place where you sit, where you're thinking of growing something, you kno...

e166 david maggs - the art of being

04 May 2024

Contributed by Lukas

What you do as an artist is crucial. Do not abandon that for a desire to serve a kind of utilitarian purpose of ‘I'm gonna make sure people know mor...

e165 bill crandall - art can change us

29 Apr 2024

Contributed by Lukas

Being an artist, or making art, in the context of climate is more about being a kind of light in the darkness, making us believe in ourselves and beli...

e164 jimmy ung - proximity proportionate responsibility

23 Apr 2024

Contributed by Lukas

Proximity proportionate responsibility: if we were to do an inventory of where all the things we own were made, that would give us a very interesting ...

e163 transition innovation group - art and defeatism

17 Apr 2024

Contributed by Lukas

I’m wanting something from art, which I think is much deeper, is a re-imagination of what it means to be human. I feel like we've instrumentalized a...

e162 terri hron - an ecological lens

13 Apr 2024

Contributed by Lukas

I think as musicians we have particular concerns that perhaps looking at those through an ecological lens can be helpful. One of them is to think abou...

bonus episode - solar eclipse 2024

12 Apr 2024

Contributed by Lukas

This is a special bilingual episode of the conscient podcast recorded on April 8, 2024 during the solar eclipse in Ottawa. The same  recording can be...

e161 alchemize circle - a conversation with kamea chayne

08 Apr 2024

Contributed by Lukas

'It's kind of like sacred medicine or sacred plant medicine in a way where it meets you where you are, based on your intentions, on your setting, your...

e160 shannon litzenberger - a culture of collective thriving

01 Apr 2024

Contributed by Lukas

We are in a very unstable environment right now. We don't have to be change makers. Change is happening. It is happening quickly and the pace of chang...

e159 jane marsland - it’s all about balance

25 Mar 2024

Contributed by Lukas

It's all about balance and moving away from perpetual growth mode. It's about understanding that if you're a tightrope walker, you can't stand still, ...

e158 bob sirman - engaging with the artistic experience

22 Mar 2024

Contributed by Lukas

We're not just talking about saving the environment. What we're first and foremost trying to get people to do is care for the environment and you can'...

e157 sonic research group (part 1)

10 Mar 2024

Contributed by Lukas

The most interesting part to me is to discover what we're not listening to and why we are not doing that. I think it's wonderful that I've had the cha...

e156 siobhan angus - camera geologica

07 Mar 2024

Contributed by Lukas

I think that's what the arts contribute to these discussions. There's the possibility of that kind of emotional or embodied connection to things that,...

e155 sanita fejzic - peasant futurisms

03 Mar 2024

Contributed by Lukas

I think artists can challenge us by showing our blind spots, in a way, educating us, but also inspiring us about what's possible, right? I think in SC...

e154 riel schryer - the art of history and gaming

21 Feb 2024

Contributed by Lukas

There's a sort of pulling back and forth between these two ideas. Out of the idea of fundamental inferiority comes slavery. And out of the idea of cul...

e153 full circle - how can we support those who are frightened by the ecological crisis and in need of a calm presence?

31 Dec 2023

Contributed by Lukas

The final episode of season 4 and my conclusion from my sounding modernity learning and unlearning journey featuring an exchange with Catherine Ingram...

e152 questions - what do you question?

24 Dec 2023

Contributed by Lukas

a selection of questions and observations from the end of episodes this seasonMy gesture of reciprocity for this episode is to the Resilience.   *EN...

e151 rain - can you hear the sound of catastrophe in the rain and thunder?

17 Dec 2023

Contributed by Lukas

i was listening to the sound of rain falling in a small cabin by a stream with distant thunder in the background…  TRANSCRIPTION OF EPISODE(bell a...

e150 compactor - are there strange sounds on your street?

10 Dec 2023

Contributed by Lukas

i heard a strange tapping sound from my window one morning and had a chat when the workers repairing the street  TRANSCRIPTION OF EPISODE (Bell and...