Future Ecologies

We're featuring another guest episode. This time, from Canada's National Observer: a new podcast called Race Against Climate Change Episode 1 – How We Eat SUMMARY: Everybody’s gotta eat, but who’s feeding us, and what else are we eating up along the way? In this episode we chew on the ways our food affects our climate, and what can be done about it. Professor and author Lenore Newman discusses food security and this summer’s heat dome with National Observer founder Linda Solomon Wood. Plus,...

We're featuring another podcast we think should be in your feed (if it isn't already): MEDIA INDIGENA. This episode, originally released on May 27 2021, features a conversation with Dr. Max Liboiron – Director of the Civic Laboratory for Environmental Action Research, and author of the new book Pollution is Colonialism. Don't miss Part Two of this important discussion. Find episode 259 of MEDIA INDIGENA wherever you listen to podcasts, or visit...

We’ve got an amazing 4th Season headed your way! While we’ve got our heads down for the rest of the year, we’re going to feature some episodes from other podcasts we think you’ll love. First up is an episode from the kind folks at https://how2saveaplanet.show (How to Save a Planet). Dedicated Future Ecologies listeners might notice that this episode connects nicely with some of the work we covered in our first season, specifically episodes six and nine. There’s fire, there’s dam removal,...

A few quick announcements! Get in touch with us: https://www.futureecologies.net/#contact-section (https://www.futureecologies.net/#contact-section) Meet the musicians we've featured: https://www.futureecologies.net/music (https://www.futureecologies.net/music) Download the Official Soundtrack of Season 3: https://www.futureecologies.net/season-3-ost (https://www.futureecologies.net/season-3-ost) 💖Support the show and join our Patreon community: https://www.patreon.com/futureecologies...

What is a border? Is it simply an edge: a sharp transition between one state and another? Or does it stretch beyond a single dimension, warping land and people through a self-perpetuating 'otherness'? In this final chapter of Goatwalker, we uncover the ties that bind ecosystems, identities, and communities of all sorts – migrant or otherwise. We'll walk a path to restorative justice: a way to foster new livelihoods through conservation programs and the many uses of an oft-overlooked keystone...

Having finished his work in the Sanctuary Movement, Jim Corbett allowed his focus to broaden, bringing his system of ethics to the land itself. Jim had gathered many people around him throughout the Sanctuary days: a group that shared a deep, abiding love for the more-than-human world. Together they would establish a herding community – a herd in which they would all be members – grounded in a practice of ‘pastoral symbiotics’, and guided by a prescient ecological covenant: a bill of rights...

In the early 1980s, the outbreak of civil war across Central America forced unprecedented numbers of refugees to seek asylum in the United States, putting the recently passed 'Refugee Act' of 1980 to the test. There was just one catch: the Reagan Administration was providing funding to right-wing governments that most of these refugees were fleeing. As a result, Central American refugees making the dangerous journey to the U.S.-Mexico borderlands were being intercepted, denied asylum, and...

Jim Corbett was not your typical rancher. Over the course of decades roaming the borderlands of the desert southwest, he developed a practice that he referred to as 'goatwalking' - a form of prophetic wandering and desert survival based on goat-human symbiosis. For Jim, 'goatwalking' provided both physical and spiritual sustenance, and allowed him to become at home, for a time, in wildlands. To many, this modern-day Don Quixote would seem an unlikely figure to have sparked one of the most...

Mushrooms that smell? Fungi can be pungent, provocative, and at times irresistible. While we might not always recognize it, we're in constant chemical communication with the world around us through olfaction. For those with the senses to discern them, aromas, perfumes, stinks, and stenches can all convey useful information. Some scents are warnings, and others are deterrents, but the most alluring are expert portraits of our animal fascinations, honed through evolution to attract, captivate,...

In collaboration with the Serpentine Galleries, Future Ecologies presents a choral, poetic collage featuring the voices of The Understory of the Understory: a virtual symposium bringing together practitioners from many disciplines to consider the ground beneath our feet across ecologies, politics and spiritualities. With vignettes ranging from co-evolution to condensation, from medicine to mycomorphism, and from death to dust and back again, and all generally rooted in a question of earth,...

Guest producers Sadie Couture and Russell Gendron explore the concept of invasive species through a look at a small island community, a species doing some serious damage to the ecosystem, and the complex issues at play when a plant or animal moves into a new territory. Sadie and Russell talk to current and former residents of Mayne Island, Indigenous elders, and conservation professionals to think through what it means to call something an “invasive species,” how to manage our ever-changing...

Sometimes it feels like we're all living in a garbageosphere – an ecosystem of trash and detritus. But despite the extent of anthropogenic impacts, life is resilient and infinitely creative. Hyper-ecologies, novel ecosystems, freakosystems – different names for the same thing: never-before-seen assemblies of lifeforms, born of human disturbance. These profoundly weird ecologies are persistent, and (through a certain lens) often functional. In this final chapter of "Nature, by Design?", we...

Tomorrow (Saturday Dec 5) is World Soil Day, and there are many exciting things underfoot! The Shape of a Circle in the Mind of A Fish: The Understory of the UnderstoryThe 4th annual festival from the Serpentine Galleries Live streaming Saturday and Sunday (12pm - 5:45pm GMT) Register and attend for free: https://themind.fish (themind.fish) Festival trailer: https://youtu.be/6_vz_avr8Js (https://youtu.be/6_vz_avr8Js) Life in the soilA new podcast collaboration by Anja Krieger and the Plant,...

This episode is the second in a 3-part series. Before listening to this one, you may want to catch up with https://www.futureecologies.net/listen/fe-3-1-nature-by-design-pt1 (FE3.1 - Nature, by Design? Part 1: Taking the Neo-Eoscenic Route) As we continue to discuss the practice of ecological restoration, an important question emerges: is wilderness itself an illusion? We all have a picture of wilderness in our minds, but how did that image come to be? Join us for a tale of two simulacra....

For a new season of bonus Patreon mini-episodes, we’re going beyond kelp worlds to meet the rest of our seaweed sojourners. Today, we’re stepping into a world of colour – of light, and shadow. Our first algal introduction is a stunning seaweed, known to some as rainbow leaf (or Mazzaella). We're unlocking this first episode of of our Patreon-exclusive series: “Seaweed Sojourning”, as we explore https://www.josieiselin.com/the-curious-world-of-seaweed (The Curious World of Seaweed) with Josie...

Is “Nature” a real thing, or is it just an idea? When we talk about restoring ecosystems, what are we restoring them to? Or more precisely, when? This episode is the first part of a conversation between Mendel, Adam, and two of Adam’s mentors, wherein we explore what it means to practice ecological restoration as a form of art. http://www.oliverk.org/art-projects/land-art/healing-the-cut-bridging-the-gap (Click here) for photos and details of Oliver’s artwork / restoration project in the...

What is queer ecology? How do queer theory and artistic practice inform environmental activism and climate justice? How can we think decolonisation and queerness together? Victoria Sin welcomes guest host Serpentine Assistant Curator, Kostas Stasinopoulos to dive into transformation, queerness, the natural and unnatural, wild, decolonial and submerged perspectives. Together with guests Ama Josephine Budge, Macarena Gómez-Barris and Jack Halberstam they ask: “where does wildness live?” and...

While we work on Season 3, we're featuring an episode from one of our favourite podcasts: http://plastisphere.earth/ (Plastisphere) ––– We want to know what you want to listen to! Take our https://forms.gle/y9KwU9H24ufU79MH9 (2020 Listener Survey) and help shape the sound of Future Ecologies Season 3. ––– Finally, we're releasing 2 albums: the official soundtracks of Season 2 and our Scales of Change series, featuring the instrumental compositions of Sunfish Moon Light (a.k.a. Adam Huggins),...

This is our final chapter, and our last genus of Dragon: Immobilis – the dragons of Limited Behaviour. This genus contains only two species: Immobilis signum, or the Dragon of Tokenism, and Immobilis jevonsii, or the Rebound Effect. They are among the most pernicious dragons, especially for people who already care deeply about the climate. As we unpack this small but important genus, we discover how they are tied to the global movement to divest from fossil fuels. Once again we find...

In our sixth genus, we dive deep into the Dragons of Sunk Cost – the investments that work against our climate interests. Some of these may simply be financial, but they may also be emotional: our goals and aspirations, our patterns of behaviour, and our attachments to the places around us. In this episode, we focus our attention on Place Attachment, as we tag along with the https://www.sgicommunityresources.ca/climate-action-project/ (ṮEṮÁĆES Climate Action Project): a W̱SÁNEĆ-led...