Emergence Magazine Podcast

Finding Joy in the Unknown – A Conversation with Dara McAnulty

27 Feb 2024

Contributed by Lukas

Envisioning a future colored by a worsening ecological crisis makes for a despairing picture, but how can we find ways to keep our hearts open amid de...

Deep Time Diligence – A Conversation with Tyson Yunkaporta

20 Feb 2024

Contributed by Lukas

What would it mean to operate from a place of deep time diligence? In this conversation, Tyson Yunkaporta, an Aboriginal scholar and author who belong...

Mycelial Landscapes – A Conversation with Merlin Sheldrake and Barney Steel

13 Feb 2024

Contributed by Lukas

Recorded live at our Shifting Landscapes exhibition in London last December, this conversation between Emergence Magazine executive editor Emmanuel Va...

Glacial Longings – Elizabeth Rush

06 Feb 2024

Contributed by Lukas

Taking us to the collapsing face of Thwaites Glacier in Antarctica, author Elizabeth Rush works to free the ice’s agency from both historical tropes...

Seeds of Reciprocity – A Panel Discussion with Kalyanee Mam, Joycelyn Longdon, and Sam Lee, moderated by Emmanuel Vaughan-Lee

30 Jan 2024

Contributed by Lukas

Held at our Shifting Landscapes exhibition in December last year, this panel discussion, moderated by Emmanuel Vaughan-Lee, brought together environme...

Widening Circles – a conversation with Joanna Macy

23 Jan 2024

Contributed by Lukas

From her first experiences of heart connection with the living world on her grandfather’s farm in upstate New York to her antinuclear activism in th...

An Offering of Remembrance – a talk by Emmanuel Vaughan-Lee

16 Jan 2024

Contributed by Lukas

We have forgotten the covenant of primordial love and reciprocal care with the Earth that existed from the beginning in favor of a story that casts hu...

A Path Older Than Memory – A Conversation with Paul Salopek

09 Jan 2024

Contributed by Lukas

In this conversation, Emmanuel Vaughan-Lee speaks with Pulitzer Prize–winning journalist Paul Salopek, who is a decade into a remarkable journey ret...

Valemon The Bear: Myth in the Age of the Anthropocene – featuring Martin Shaw

02 Jan 2024

Contributed by Lukas

In an audio adaptation of our multimedia experience “Valemon the Bear: Myth in the Age of the Anthropocene,” mythologist Martin Shaw takes us on a...

Be Earth Now – Rainer Maria Rilke recited by Joanna Macy and Anita Barrows

19 Dec 2023

Contributed by Lukas

In our final podcast of the year, a special selection of Rainer Maria Rilke’s poetry offers nourishment for heart and spirit. Twenty-five years ago,...

Sanctuary – Camille T. Dungy

12 Dec 2023

Contributed by Lukas

Witnessing the cry of the Earth, in its myriad permutations, can evoke real responses of grief and deep love for the planet. As we begin to acknowledg...

And Peace Shall Return — Ben Okri

05 Dec 2023

Contributed by Lukas

In this short story, Booker Prize–winning Nigerian author and poet Ben Okri envisions the tragedy and peace of a post-human world. Twenty thousand y...

An Ecological Technology – A Conversation with James Bridle

28 Nov 2023

Contributed by Lukas

Interrogating where AI models originate from and who they serve, writer, artist, and technologist James Bridle questions our fundamental assumptions a...

Corn Tastes Better on the Honor System – Robin Wall Kimmerer

21 Nov 2023

Contributed by Lukas

In one of our favorite stories, “Corn Tastes Better on the Honor System,” Potawatomi mother, scientist, and professor Robin Wall Kimmerer takes us...

When You Could Hear the Trees – Kerri ní Dochartaigh

14 Nov 2023

Contributed by Lukas

In this narrated essay, Kerri ní Dochartaigh’s experiences of pregnancy and motherhood bring her into an emerging realization of her own mammalhood...

The Stories I Haven’t Been Told – Jamie Figueroa

07 Nov 2023

Contributed by Lukas

How do our inheritances shape our lives? In this week’s narrated essay, Afro-Taína author Jamie Figueroa brings her pen to the erased and fragmente...

Be Dammed – Laia Jufresa

31 Oct 2023

Contributed by Lukas

This week, we share a short story by Mexican author Laia Jufresa, translated by Sophie Hughes, that imagines the chaos of a world ravaged and divided ...

Portholes – Anna Badkhen

24 Oct 2023

Contributed by Lukas

What can we learn from imprints in the earth about the ancient presences that left them behind? Acclaimed author Anna Badkhen traces markers left in t...

They Carry Us With Them: The Great Tree Migration – Chelsea Steinauer-Scudder

17 Oct 2023

Contributed by Lukas

This week, we’ve adapted the interactive multimedia feature “They Carry Us With Them: The Great Tree Migration” for our podcast. Written by Chel...

Ravens and Doves – Jeffrey Jerome Cohen and Julian Yates

10 Oct 2023

Contributed by Lukas

In light of the intensifying climate crises we face today, Jeffrey Jerome Cohen and Julian Yates examine the opposing narratives of survival embodied ...

The Place by the Sea – Masatsugu Ono

03 Oct 2023

Contributed by Lukas

In this short story by Japanese author Masatsugu Ono, translated and narrated by Sam Malissa, a woman and her young son move to an abandoned seaside v...

Look Closely, or You’ll Miss It – Natalie Rose Richardson

26 Sep 2023

Contributed by Lukas

In this week’s essay, Natalie Rose Richardson begins to experience a quality of attention that birdwatching can cultivate. Learning from Chicago his...

Antarctica the Woman – Stephanie Krzywonos

19 Sep 2023

Contributed by Lukas

Visiting the Ross Ice Shelf across several seasons, Stephanie Kryzwonos interrogates the heroic narratives of male exploration and conquest—written ...

A Whale in the Desert: Tracing Paths of Migration in Turkana – Tristan McConnell

12 Sep 2023

Contributed by Lukas

 In a world rapidly spiraling into climate turmoil, will we reorient to welcome migration not only as a right, but a necessary human adaptation? In t...

Stepping into the Liminal – A Talk by Emmanuel Vaughan-Lee

05 Sep 2023

Contributed by Lukas

When we are both left with the fragments of a dying world and given glimpses of an emerging one; when there is so much beauty and destruction to be wi...

Speaking Wind-Words – Chelsea Steinauer-Scudder

29 Aug 2023

Contributed by Lukas

How do words shape our world? In this week’s narrated essay, writer Chelsea Steinauer-Scudder visits the wind-sculpted dunes of Nebraska’s Sandhil...

Animals in the Room: Why We Can and Should Listen to Other Species – Melanie Challenger

22 Aug 2023

Contributed by Lukas

How might our human systems work differently if they were adapted to receive input from the nonhuman creatures they involve and impact? In this week’...

Ancestral Structures on the Trailing Edge – Lauret E. Savoy

15 Aug 2023

Contributed by Lukas

Histories are enduring presences. No matter how deeply they are buried, they remain. In this week’s narrated essay, author Lauret E. Savoy meditates...

Thylacine – Lydia Millet

08 Aug 2023

Contributed by Lukas

As rapid warming, pollution, habitat destruction, and insidious violence against other species speeds up the rate of extinction and edges ecosystems e...

When the Earth Started to Sing – David G. Haskell

01 Aug 2023

Contributed by Lukas

In this audio experience by biologist and acclaimed author David George Haskell, we are invited to be attentive to the songs and stories that thrum in...

The Butchering – Jake Skeets

27 Jun 2023

Contributed by Lukas

In this story, Diné poet and author Jake Skeets honors the food traditions that have sustained his people since time immemorial. As he prepares to bu...

Joy Is the Justice We Give Ourselves – J. Drew Lanham

20 Jun 2023

Contributed by Lukas

“Joy is our lives mattering, / Blackness respected.” Juneteenth is a day to celebrate and defend freedom, equity, and belonging for Black American...

Creaturely Migrations on a Breathing Planet – David Abram

13 Jun 2023

Contributed by Lukas

In this week’s narrated essay, cultural ecologist and geophilosopher David Abram conjures the impossible movements of Alaskan salmon, sandhill crane...

Hidden Bayou – Nathaniel Rich.

06 Jun 2023

Contributed by Lukas

“Did Nieux Swamp resemble the original deltaic marsh, before it had been ruined by sea level rise, shipping canals, and pipelines? Or had the Founda...

Becoming Water: Black Memory in Slavery’s Afterlives – Makshya Tolbert

30 May 2023

Contributed by Lukas

As our physical and cultural landscapes transform around us, what memories remain held by water? What histories of pain and destruction, what hallowed...

Saguaro, Free of the Earth – Boyce Upholt

23 May 2023

Contributed by Lukas

Imagine a world where the mountains and glaciers, trees and waterways and animals—everything comprising our living, breathing planet—had as much a...

In the Shifting Embrace of the Ganga – Arati Kumar-Rao

16 May 2023

Contributed by Lukas

Visiting West Bengal during monsoon season, writer and photographer Arati Kumar-Rao bears witness to all that is formed and all that is destroyed in t...

Dwelling on Earth – Jay Griffiths

09 May 2023

Contributed by Lukas

Soil has been described as the skin of the living world—vital, reactive, fragile and thin. Like our own skin, soil contains and protects a living, i...

The Inward Migration in Apocalyptic Times – Alexis Wright

02 May 2023

Contributed by Lukas

With native ecosystems and Indigenous lifeways perpetually under threat, acclaimed Australian Aboriginal author Alexis Wright considers how her enduri...

Another Kind of Time – a conversation with Jenny Odell

25 Apr 2023

Contributed by Lukas

How we experience time is, ultimately, how we experience our lives. In this conversation with Jenny Odell, artist and author of Saving Time: Discoveri...

The Nightingale's Song – a conversation with Sam Lee

18 Apr 2023

Contributed by Lukas

To mark the beginning of England’s nightingale season, we revisit our conversation with acclaimed folk singer, conservationist, and song collector S...

A Woman Meets an Owl, a Rattlesnake, and a Hummingbird – Greg Sarris

11 Apr 2023

Contributed by Lukas

In this week’s podcast, Tribal Chairman and award-winning author Greg Sarris introduces us to the Crow Sisters, who tell of a young woman drawn on a...

Reindeer at the End of the World – Bathsheba Demuth

04 Apr 2023

Contributed by Lukas

In this narrated essay from our archive, ecological historian Bathsheba Demuth explores the allure of the apocalyptic arc—the ending of an “old”...

Monuments Upon the Tumultuous Earth – Boyce Upholt

28 Mar 2023

Contributed by Lukas

For thousands of years, the southern Mississippi River has been shaping the land it traverses—and the structures humans have built along it. Over va...

Valemon The Bear: Myth in the Age of the Anthropocene – featuring Martin Shaw

21 Mar 2023

Contributed by Lukas

This week’s episode is an audio adaptation of our multimedia experience “Valemon the Bear: Myth in the Age of the Anthropocene,” featuring mytho...

What Survives – Lacy M. Johnson

14 Mar 2023

Contributed by Lukas

In this narrated essay, author Lacy M. Johnson reflects on what can be rebuilt and what must be mourned as our environments shift, fracture, and somet...

When You Meet the Monster, Anoint Its Feet – Bayo Akomolafe

07 Mar 2023

Contributed by Lukas

In this narrated essay from our archive, Nigerian writer Bayo Akomolafe deconstructs old stories of colorism and puts forward “monstrosity”—that...

The Fallout: Voices from Ukraine – Anna Badkhen et al.

28 Feb 2023

Contributed by Lukas

One year has passed since Russia launched a full-scale invasion of Ukraine. The conflict has unleashed unspeakable violence, killing hundreds of thous...

Creatures That Don’t Conform – Lucy Jones

21 Feb 2023

Contributed by Lukas

In this essay, author Lucy Jones brims with awe upon discovering slime molds in the woods near her home. As she is increasingly drawn down to the fore...

Sanctuaries of Silence – A Listening Journey

14 Feb 2023

Contributed by Lukas

In this immersive listening journey from our archive, acoustic ecologist Gordon Hempton guides us into the Hoh Rain Forest—one of the quietest place...

An Ethics of Wild Mind – a conversation with David Hinton

07 Feb 2023

Contributed by Lukas

David Hinton is a poet, translator, and author whose works are informed by ancient Chinese philosophy and deep ecological thought. In this interview, ...

Kinship, Community, and Consciousness – a conversation with Richard Powers

31 Jan 2023

Contributed by Lukas

This week we revisit our conversation with Richard Powers, author of the Pulitzer Prize–winning novel The Overstory, a story that reweaves the fabri...

Finding Joy in the Unknown – a conversation with Dara McAnulty

24 Jan 2023

Contributed by Lukas

This week we’re re-sharing our interview with Irish teenage author, naturalist, and conservationist Dara McAnulty. His debut book, Diary of a Young ...

Prophecies of Possibility: A Ripening of the Next World – Jamie Figueroa

17 Jan 2023

Contributed by Lukas

Jamie Figueroa is Boricua (Afro-Taíno) by way of Ohio and a long-time resident of northern New Mexico. She is the author of the novel Brother, Sister...

Ten Love Letters to the Earth – Thich Nhat Hanh read by Emmanuel Vaughan-Lee

10 Jan 2023

Contributed by Lukas

The Vietnamese Buddhist monk and Zen master Thich Nhat Hanh died nearly one year ago, on January 22, 2022. To honor his passing, we are re-sharing his...

A Primordial Covenant of Relationship – An Evening in London with Emmanuel Vaughan-Lee

20 Dec 2022

Contributed by Lukas

In this talk given at St. Ethelburga's Centre for Reconciliation and Peace in London, Sufi teacher and Emergence Executive Editor Emmanuel Vaughan-Lee...

After the End – Ben Okri read by Colin Salmon

13 Dec 2022

Contributed by Lukas

As we come to the end of Living with the Unknown, we begin again at the beginning. For the final story of our third volume, we journey into the fictio...

An Ecological Technology – A Conversation with James Bridle

06 Dec 2022

Contributed by Lukas

In this expansive interview, writer, artist, and technologist James Bridle seeks to widen our thinking beyond humancentric ways of knowing. In questio...

The Inward Migration in Apocalyptic Times – Alexis Wright

29 Nov 2022

Contributed by Lukas

Alexis Wright is an Australian Aboriginal author and member of the Waanji people from the southern Gulf of Carpentaria. As the world falters, threaten...

The Serviceberry: An Economy of Abundance – Robin Wall Kimmerer

22 Nov 2022

Contributed by Lukas

As we look to an uncertain future, what systems of exchange might we embrace that support and deepen our interdependence? In this essay, Potawatomi sc...

Coming into Being: Reflections on Mothering in the Apocalypse – Chelsea Steinauer-Scudder

15 Nov 2022

Contributed by Lukas

In this meditative exploration, Chelsea Steinauer-Scudder witnesses her daughter learning to speak and wonders how to listen for a language of motheri...

Finding the Mother Tree – A Conversation with Suzanne Simard

08 Nov 2022

Contributed by Lukas

Suzanne Simard is known for her groundbreaking research on the belowground fungal networks that connect trees and facilitate inter-tree communication ...

The Spirit of the Wetlands – Julian Hoffman

01 Nov 2022

Contributed by Lukas

Julian Hoffman lives in a mountain village beside the Prespa lakes in northwestern Greece. He is the author of The Small Heart of Things and Irreplace...

Joy Is the Justice We Give Ourselves – J. Drew Lanham

25 Oct 2022

Contributed by Lukas

We close our exploration of the theme of Roots by taking a step into joy. This week, we bring you another piece by birder and writer J. Drew Lanham. I...

Coming Home to the Cove: A Story of Family, Memory, and Stolen Land – Episode 3

18 Oct 2022

Contributed by Lukas

This three-part series is the multigenerational story of a Coast Miwok family’s eviction from their home and one woman’s determination to bring th...

Coming Home to the Cove: A Story of Family, Memory, and Stolen Land – Episode 2

11 Oct 2022

Contributed by Lukas

This three-part series is the multigenerational story of a Coast Miwok family's eviction from their ancestral home—on a cove in Tomales Bay in North...

Coming Home to the Cove: A Story of Family, Memory, and Stolen Land – Episode 1

04 Oct 2022

Contributed by Lukas

Across the United States, Indigenous communities are calling for sweeping revisions to stories commonly told as “history”—stories that, even tod...

Beings Seen and Unseen – A Conversation with Amitav Ghosh

27 Sep 2022

Contributed by Lukas

How can stories return us to what is essential as we navigate an uncertain future? In this conversation with Amitav Ghosh, author of The Nutmeg’s Cu...

My Wild-Like Refuge – J. Drew Lanham

20 Sep 2022

Contributed by Lukas

How do we root ourselves in times of isolation and disorientation? As birder and writer J. Drew Lanham encounters his backyard during the pandemic loc...

My Name Is Beauty – Jake Skeets

13 Sep 2022

Contributed by Lukas

We begin Chapter Three with a story that explores language as a technology capable of transforming our lived realities. As a Native scholar and poet, ...

When the Earth Started to Sing – David G. Haskell

06 Sep 2022

Contributed by Lukas

This sonic journey written and narrated by David G. Haskell brings us to the beginning of sound and song on planet Earth. The experience is made entir...

Of Wandering Angels and Lost Landmarks – Daegan Miller

30 Aug 2022

Contributed by Lukas

Daegan Miller is the author of This Radical Land: A Natural History of American Dissent. In this essay, Daegan visits the tree that marks the thousand...

They Carry Us With Them: The Great Tree Migration – Chelsea Steinauer-Scudder

23 Aug 2022

Contributed by Lukas

Around the world, trees are on the move. Last year we published a special multimedia story, told from the perspectives of four native tree species, th...

Giantstone – Andri Snær Magnason

16 Aug 2022

Contributed by Lukas

In our final installment on the theme of Ashes from Chapter Two of Living with the Unknown, we enter a fictional world dominated by the monotony and t...

Sanctuary – Camille T. Dungy

09 Aug 2022

Contributed by Lukas

Acclaimed poet Camille T. Dungy bears witness to an encounter between a man and an elephant. In an effort to make sense of a world in which so much ha...

War on the Air: Ecologies of Disaster – Daisy Hildyard

02 Aug 2022

Contributed by Lukas

In this narrated essay, Daisy Hildyard, a scholar of the history of science, examines three stories of atrocity and considers how whiteness has inscri...

To See Beyond: A Hoping in Three Pictures – Anna Badkhen

26 Jul 2022

Contributed by Lukas

In this narrated essay, writer and journalist Anna Badkhen brings us into histories of imperial collapse. As we continue our exploration of the theme ...

Noiseless Messengers – Rebecca Giggs

12 Jul 2022

Contributed by Lukas

This month we move from Initiation into Ashes with five stories from Chapter Two. When so much has been stripped away, how do we bear witness to ruin?...

The Vagrants: Butterfly Land Grabs and Other Climate Migrations – Cal Flyn

05 Jul 2022

Contributed by Lukas

In this narrated essay, Cal Flyn observes new species of butterflies arriving in Scotland's Orkney Islands. As plants and animals migrate northwards o...

Living with the Unknown Soundtrack – Volker Bertelmann

28 Jun 2022

Contributed by Lukas

We invited Oscar-nominated composer Volker Bertelmann, also known as Hauschka, to create a unique companion to the stories in our third volume, Living...

Chasing Cicadas – Anisa George

21 Jun 2022

Contributed by Lukas

Amid the cacophony of a cicada emergence, our final narrated essay on the theme of Initiation follows a movement into new rhythms and patterns of beco...

Where the Horses Sing – Llewellyn Vaughan-Lee

14 Jun 2022

Contributed by Lukas

This week, as our journey into Initiation continues, Sufi teacher and author Llewellyn Vaughan-Lee invites us to cross a threshold. Witnessing how hum...

Widening Circles – a conversation with Joanna Macy

07 Jun 2022

Contributed by Lukas

In this interview from our archive, Buddhist eco-philosopher and author Joanna Macy discusses her life and work. From her anti-nuclear activism in the...

The Creatures of the World Have Not Been Chastened – Lia Purpura

31 May 2022

Contributed by Lukas

In this narrated essay from our archive, poet and essayist Lia Purpura considers the processes which transform bodies from one state to another and th...

Navigating the Mysteries – Martin Shaw

24 May 2022

Contributed by Lukas

Initiation, chapter one of Living with the Unknown, begins where all inquiries into the unknown begin: with myth. In this narrated essay, Martin Shaw ...

The Nightingale's Song – a conversation with Sam Lee

03 May 2022

Contributed by Lukas

Sam Lee is a Mercury Prize–nominated folk singer, a song collector, and the author of The Nightingale: Notes on a Songbird. We spoke with Sam last y...

Ancient Green: Moss, Climate, and Deep Time – Robin Wall Kimmerer

26 Apr 2022

Contributed by Lukas

Long, long ago—before there were trees, before there were flowers, before life existed outside of the churning oceans—mosses bravely ventured onto...

Finding the Mother Tree – a conversation with Suzanne Simard

19 Apr 2022

Contributed by Lukas

In honor of Earth Week we’re revisiting our conversation from last year with Dr. Suzanne Simard, the renowned scientist whose groundbreaking researc...

Watering the Dead and the Unseen – Sumana Roy

12 Apr 2022

Contributed by Lukas

At her home in Siliguri, India, writer and poet Sumana Roy collects the trunks, roots, and branches of fallen trees and affectionately places them in ...

Saguaro, Free of the Earth – Boyce Upholt

05 Apr 2022

Contributed by Lukas

In this narrated essay, Boyce Upholt travels to the US-Mexico border, where the O’odham peoples have long revered the saguaro cactus as a being with...

The Eternal Tree – Jori Lewis

29 Mar 2022

Contributed by Lukas

In this narrated essay, Jori ventures out from her home in Dakar, Senegal, drawn to the wisdom and resiliency of Africa’s baobab trees: ancient arks...

False Passives – Anna Badkhen

22 Mar 2022

Contributed by Lukas

In this narrated essay for our ongoing series on migration, Anna Badkhen asks: When does a journey begin? As she encounters people traveling north of ...

On Death and Love – Melanie Challenger

15 Mar 2022

Contributed by Lukas

In this narrated essay, environmental philosopher Melanie Challenger examines the belief in human exceptionalism that has devastated life on this plan...

Birder to Birder – J. Drew Lanham

08 Mar 2022

Contributed by Lukas

In this narration of his essay, birder and naturalist J. Drew Lanham imagines an exchange of letters between Henry David Thoreau and John James Audubo...

When the Earth Started to Sing – David G. Haskell

01 Mar 2022

Contributed by Lukas

This sonic journey written and narrated by David G. Haskell brings us to the beginning of sound and song on planet Earth. The experience is made entir...

Becoming Water: Black Memory in Slavery’s Afterlives – Makshya Tolbert

22 Feb 2022

Contributed by Lukas

In this narration of her essay, writer and poet Makshya Tolbert wades into the liminal, haunted space that exists between water and Black memory. As s...

Ten Love Letters to the Earth – Thich Nhat Hanh read by Emmanuel Vaughan-Lee

15 Feb 2022

Contributed by Lukas

In honor of the passing of Buddhist monk and Zen Master Thich Nhat Hanh, we republished his Ten Love Letters to the Earth, a series of meditations tha...

Coming Home to the Cove: A Story of Family, Memory, and Stolen Land – Episode 3

08 Feb 2022

Contributed by Lukas

Spanish missions, boarding schools, and ranching empires in California drove many Coast Miwok people from their ancestral land, targeting the erasure ...

Coming Home to the Cove: A Story of Family, Memory, and Stolen Land – Episode 2

01 Feb 2022

Contributed by Lukas

This three-part series is the multigenerational story of a Coast Miwok family's eviction from their ancestral home—on a cove in Tomales Bay in North...

Coming Home to the Cove: A Story of Family, Memory, and Stolen Land – Episode 1

25 Jan 2022

Contributed by Lukas

Across the United States, Indigenous communities are calling for sweeping revisions to stories commonly told as “history”—stories that, even to...