Emergence Magazine Podcast
Episodes
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...
From Dirt – Camille T. Dungy
18 Jan 2022
Contributed by Lukas
In this essay Camille reflects on the journey of seeds, how much of what we plant in our gardens was brought to our soils during the slave trade, and ...
The Ecology of Perception – a conversation with David Abram
11 Jan 2022
Contributed by Lukas
This week we are revisiting our interview with cultural ecologist and philosopher David Abram where he discusses the animism, power, and potency of th...
An Unbroken Grace – Fred Bahnson
21 Dec 2021
Contributed by Lukas
In this essay, Fred Bahnson, author of Soil and Sacrament: A Spiritual Memoir of Food and Faith, offers a tribute to the preeminent nature writer Barr...
A Whale in the Desert: Tracing Paths of Migration in Turkana – Tristan McConnell
14 Dec 2021
Contributed by Lukas
Tristan McConnell is a writer who spent years working as a foreign correspondent in Nairobi. In this essay, Tristan ventures across the rugged landsca...
Be Earth Now – Rainer Maria Rilke recited by Joanna Macy and Anita Barrows
07 Dec 2021
Contributed by Lukas
As we approach the longest night of the year, we invite you to find a few moments of quiet to tune in to this re-broadcast of recitations from Rainer ...
Beings Seen and Unseen – a conversation with Amitav Ghosh
30 Nov 2021
Contributed by Lukas
Amitav Ghosh is an Indian-born scholar, novelist, and nonfiction writer. His many books include The Great Derangement: Climate Change and the Unthinka...
Reseeding the Food System – a conversation with Rowen White
23 Nov 2021
Contributed by Lukas
In this in-depth interview, Rowen White shares what seeds—her greatest teachers—have shown her: that resilience is rooted in diversity, and that a...
They Carry Us With Them – Pt. 2: Sugar Maple, Paper Birch, and Red Spruce
16 Nov 2021
Contributed by Lukas
This month we released a special multimedia feature exploring the migration of trees and what is at stake for both ecological and human communities as...
They Carry Us With Them – Pt. 1: Introduction and Black Ash
09 Nov 2021
Contributed by Lukas
This month we released a special multimedia feature exploring the migration of trees and what is at stake for both ecological and human communities as...
Making Relatives – Diane Wilson
02 Nov 2021
Contributed by Lukas
As part of a new Emergence series, we’re publishing a selection of essays from Kinship: Belonging in a World of Relations—a five-volume collection...
Finding Joy in the Unknown – a conversation with Dara McAnulty
26 Oct 2021
Contributed by Lukas
Dara McAnulty is a teenage autistic author, naturalist, and conservationist from Northern Ireland. After several years of writing his blog, Naturalist...
A Little More Than Kin – Richard Powers
19 Oct 2021
Contributed by Lukas
As part of a new Emergence series, we’re publishing a selection of essays from Kinship: Belonging in a World of Relations—a five-volume collection...
Invasives: Unknitting Despair in a Tangled Landscape – Catherine Bush
12 Oct 2021
Contributed by Lukas
Catherine Bush is the author of five novels, including Blaze Island, Accusation, and Claire’s Head. She is an Associate Professor and Coordinator of...
Language Keepers, Episode 4: Wukchumni
05 Oct 2021
Contributed by Lukas
We’re featuring this episode from our Language Keepers podcast series in honor of Marie Wilcox, the last fluent speaker of the Wukchumni language an...
Atascosa Borderlands – Jack Dash and Luke Swenson
28 Sep 2021
Contributed by Lukas
Jack Dash and Luke Swenson are the creators of Atascosa Borderlands, a visual storytelling project combining botanical survey, oral history, and docum...