If you can only plant one tree, make that tree an Oak. Doug Tallamy, national advocate for restoring the LIFE in our places with the power of Native Plants, celebrates the mighty Quercus family of trees with this latest book, his third as definitive matchmakers for humans and plants. The Nature of Oaks: the Rich Ecology of our Most Essential Native Trees (Timber Press, 2021) is Tallamy's personal story, scientific observation chronicle and love song to the oak trees around his home. He connects ...
Jan 12, 2025•35 min
Renewable energy Return On Investment is booming , across the U.S. and worldwide. With uber-real concerns about this trajectory on environmental minds, Earthworms reviews how a powerful coalition of advocates - in a timely turn of events - moved Illinois state lawmakers to achieve results for people, planet and economics. Consider what we can learn and apply from this story, as the Fossil forces go for every last greenhouse gasp. Andy Heaslet, Earthworms' esteemed audio engineer, dug into the de...
Nov 27, 2024•48 min
"What's going on in that bucket," wrote the great enviro-spiritual guy Wendell Berry in The Work of Local Culture , "is the most momentous thing I know, the greatest miracle that I have ever heard of: it is making earth.” Here in St. Louis, New Earth Farm brings that moment right to you - as an affordable, convenient, sustainability service. John and Stacey Cline are growing New Earth Farm as a neighborhood-based enterprise serving the greater STL area. If you can't compost in your yard, your su...
Nov 11, 2024•44 min
Sustainable farming is both lifestyle and full-time job for Holly Evans, Randy Buck and their three children. Holly and Earthworms host Jean Ponzi "tour" this young family's 15+ acre Rosy Buck Farm on a hillside property in Leasburg, MO, where Randy digs circular vegetable beds! Third in Earthworms' series featuring local farmers certified by Known & Grown STL , our regional sustainable food brand, this conversation explores Rosy Buck's search for land, learning process, and joyful commitmen...
Sep 11, 2024•30 min
Earthworms' late, dear, zany friend Jay Schober was one hemisphere - with he dearest friend Jim Findlay - of the St. Louis Brain Sandwich, in the early glory DAZE of KDHX. Honoring Jay, we serve up again this interview, recorded in January 2021, promoting Jay and Jim's memoir, We Never Got To Be Zombies (yet) - 55 Years of Friendship and Fiddling with Fate. Jay was a kind, gentle, big-hearted bear-hug BIG guy. Missed and beloved by many who knew him, and MANY more who heard him and Jim carry on,...
Aug 14, 2024•44 min
Would you like to learn to: Sew from a pattern? Customize a thrift-store find? Replace a busted zipper? You can do all this and more in a lively, well-stocked compound on St. Louis' near-south side. Welcome to City Sewing Room! Creative Director Rita Hunt shares the what-why-how of this non-profit community sewing center, where adults and kids can take classes and create in professional-grade studios, and you can score great deals on fabric, notions and sewing machines donated to their Makers' M...
Jul 09, 2024•30 min
ALAN - Artificial Light At Night - is surging. Light pollution disrupts health for humans and wildlife, wastes energy and money, and blocks out awe-some Universe views. How to flip the switch on this issue? Dark knights arose in 1988 to challenge and turn this offense to Quality of Earth Life. Today the International Dark Sky Association mobilizes over 193,000 members and supporters through 70+ chapters in 24 countries, who educate and advocate for protecting and restoring nighttime darkness. Da...
Jun 11, 2024•41 min
To champion grassland soil health in Missouri, where conventional grazing practice is practically enshrined in state law, Amy Hamilton's family enterprise has dug in as deep as roots of the native plant species whose seeds they sell. Hamilton Native Outpost has been led since 1981 by Amy and her husband Rex. They are passionate, expert advocates for the Diverse Native Grassland species and practices that sustained human to microbial communities across the vast mid-continent region for centuries....
May 08, 2024•31 min
If you have a library card or not, St. Louis County Library welcomes you into their multi-verse of learning. Earthworms' Jean Ponzi has been hosted as a speaker many times by SLCL's Sarah Kunz Jones, Adult Programs Coordinator. This conversation returns the favor, spotlighting myriad SLCL offerings to all ages, from webinars to community garden beds, from author events to loans from SLCL's Library of Things, from free lunches for children to computer access for anyone - and much more from a publ...
Apr 30, 2024•39 min
Hungry for new dining thrills? Need a place to meet and eat in an area of STL you don't know well? Align your fork, dollars and values by heading to a restaurant certified by the Green Dining Alliance , a program of our town's EarthDay-365. As program manager, Ben Daugherty whisks his love of restaurant energy and culture into GDA audits that have helped over 80 restaurants, catering enterprises and food trucks earn 2-5 Star ratings for Green practices in seven categories of food service operati...
Feb 16, 2024•35 min
In a south St. Louis city park created in Victorian times, Indigenous culture, native plant ecology and 21st century engineering are newly united in a southwesterly flow. Tara Morton, Community Engagement Manager for this project's urban someplace, Tower Grove Park, shares the story of Nee Kee Nee, a riverine revival. Named Nee Kee Nee, or “revived water” in the language of the Osage People who once inhabited the land, the East Stream captures stormwater from 43 Park acres and provides a natural...
Feb 16, 2024•33 min
Traditional Ecological Knowledge (TEK) offers indigenous wisdom to "conventional" society, where responses to issues like climate change and biodiversity loss need all hands to work together. Cathy “Cat” Techtmann serves as a University of Wisconsin-Extension Environmental Outreach State Specialist. She weaves together indigenous science, place-based knowledge, and academic science to “decolonize” climate education. Cat coordinates the UW- Extension Climate Leadership Team and is a member of the...
Jan 05, 2024•41 min
From his personal relationships with the organizations we know as Forests (where C ollaboration AND Competition thrive), Jo Pang helps good health flourish in human orgs, specifically those focused on "social good." The work of Culture Wise, Jo's enterprise, supports organizations who envision a more compassionate and just world, to develop capacity for leadership in ways that can turn around society's dominant and colonizing modes. This work can take groups out of doors in activity at once supe...
Dec 01, 2023•42 min
Related Earthworms Conversations: Forest Bathing, Richard Louv
Nov 01, 2023•46 min
St. Louis journalist Don Corrigan storms the American Popular Culture Association with his books exploring way more than journalistic topics - like ROAD KILL. Corrigan's book American Roadkill: Animal Victims of our Busy Highways is in the great animal rights tradition of Joseph Grinnell of the 1920s, who was alarmed at the animal carnage on America's new highways. Corrigan tells the squashed sad tales, and shares some positives: • The Saint Louis Zoo enlisting “citizen scientists” to identify h...
Oct 12, 2023•38 min
This idea seeks not to uproot every shred of living carpet - "just" the (humongous, sterile, resource-intensive) areas we don't use. Owen Wormser is an ecological landscape designer who sees restorative potential in our acres of compulsive turf. His Nautilus Award-winning book's practical and visionary approach to ecological restoration can bring your place to life! Converting areas of lawn to meadows gives us back precious time and money while super-charging food webs and vital pollinator suppo...
Aug 23, 2023•36 min
The wild world of Milkweed plants is populated by aphids who suck the plant's life, beetles who suck the aphids dry, ant lion babies who will eat each other - and sometimes the Monarch butterflies whose caterpillars gotta eat Milkweed or starve. APHIDS! Native gardening specialist Besa Schweitzer guides this conversational tour through the realm of Milkweeds - and the bugs to bug them! Her Wildflower Garden Planner is a book everyone can use to welcome Nature's Wild Child plants into your place....
Aug 09, 2023•25 min
St. Louis is the first U.S. city using the app Mosquito Alert, developed in Barcelona, Spain, and in use across Europe. This Citizen Science project combines support for our Public Health pros with rich opportunities for eco-logical messaging: We CAN Control the Pests AND Protect our Pollinators! The Mosquito Alert STL project team is promoting use of this smartphone app around our community - and taking the work an important academic step further: researching the power of Citizen Science to boo...
Jul 17, 2023•38 min
"Aside from all that, Mrs. Lincoln, how was the Play?" In his new book I Want a Better Catastrophe, lifelong activist Andrew Boyd navigates the Climate Crisis with grief, hope and gallows humor. Earthworms host Jean Ponzi chimes in (leaving Boyd the best lines, as a gracious host would do). Boyd's leadership of the global CLIMATE CLOCK campaign blended art, science and grassroots organizing. His writings ask eight diverse climate thinkers "Is it really the end of the world? If so, now what?" Fro...
Jun 21, 2023•34 min
Creating from The Center in midtown St. Louis, youth artist Story Stitchers collect stories, reframe and retell them through art, writing and performance to promote understanding, civic pride, intergenerational relationships and literacy. Story Stitchers Branden Lewis and Chris BlueBeatz Pendleton are both artists and staff. Their collaborative crew mainly targets ending gun violence as content focus, not surprising for urban youth in the U.S. today. Time experiencing Prairie environments surpri...
May 31, 2023•49 min
As flowers bloom, bees rev up their pollinating rounds, and a host of Community Scientists are helping local pros explore key bee-health questions: what promotes bee diversity and bee-plant interactions in residential and community gardens? This is Shutterbee! Backyard bee photography to improve conservation practices. Nina Fogel, Ph.D. co-leads this multi-year project from the Billiken Bee Lab at Saint Louis University with founder and Webster U professor Dr. Nicole Miller-Struttmann, and a tea...
May 17, 2023•43 min
Missouri Green Schools enriches learning and lives! Work through three pillars of a Green School - Environmental Impact, Health and Wellness and Sustainability Education - is drawing on the strengths of two terrific partners and their organizations: Hope Gribble, Green Schools Manager for Missouri Gateway Green Building Council; and Lesli Moylan, Executive Director of Missouri Environmental Education Association. These two leaders and friends have grown a statewide program from St. Louis roots i...
Apr 21, 2023•40 min
Woody Tasch thinks like a root vegetable grows: slow, sure, mostly underground, deeply nourishing. From this perspective, in collaboration with a rainbow circle of fellow evolutionists, comes the investment structure Tasch and friends call Beetcoin: small local donations generating Zero interest, locally-made loans supporting local sustainable food systems and the community economics they feed to flourish - aiming to work on a global scale. A mission-focused investment strategist since the 1990s...
Mar 01, 2023•38 min
In Illinois communities along the mighty Mississippi, Sierra Club members are advancing enviro-policy and awareness. The club's Piasa Palisades Group, named for a fierce bird in lore of the Illiniwek people and the stone bluffs towering over river and towns,is active locally and in their state. Chris Krusa, the group's Program Chair, and Outings Chair Craig Heaton share purpose, projects and some big river paddling upcoming program highlights. Check out this south-central Illinois group of fierc...
Jan 25, 2023•27 min
Charmin Dahl, conservation educator and nature-loving mom, shares her experience and perspective relating to Nature with her digital native kin. Explore with her - and head on out-of-doors, with your young friends. More from Dahl in The Healthy Planet Magazine and in her blog for Villa Montessori School. Find nature connection resources from MEEA , the Missouri Environmental Education Association. Related Earthworms Conversations: Forest Bathing with Andrea Sarubbi Fareshteh (January 2019) The B...
Jan 10, 2023•32 min
Thrift stores, tag sales, rummage piles. They may be everywhere, but some rise above the jumbled fray with grace, circulating our castoff human-made stuff as beacons of beneficial reuse. One of these is Experienced Goods , supporting free Community Hospice care in Brattleboro, Vermont. Gemma Champoli is a force at the heart of this experience - and lifetime kindred spirit with Earthworms host Jean Ponzi. Jean and Gemma share deep Love of Stuff, and talking about it. As resale geared for profit p...
Nov 23, 2022•34 min
Great Rivers Environmental Law Center defends and protects Nature: places, creatures, plants and US. Celebrating two decades of this worthy work, GREC President Bruce Morrison recalls triumphs, challenges and how collaboration with community is changing they way his team practices enviro law. Preview: the recent WIN for children's health thanks to Madeline Semanisin's work to secure passage of Get Lead Out of Drinking Water Act, through the MO Legislature, on July 1, 2022. October 23, 2022 - joi...
Sep 28, 2022•39 min
Elizabeth Fournier always wanted to work in funeral service. She was drawn to the service in this profession, and fascinated by its technical skills. Today she works "for a better living" - with Nature's tech - and she's proudly known far and wide as The Green Reaper. Fournier is a national advocate for Green Burial, practices that are changing her profession's enviro impacts, and helping her fellow humans better connect Life to our Earthly nature, at Life's end. She compares the importance of e...
Sep 13, 2022•39 min
It's a sister-rooted family scene at Fair Shares. The resourceful twist of this CCSA - Combined Community Supported Agriculture - nourishes St. Louis with produce and value-added products, a plateful of action for over 15 years. As founding sister Sara Choler Hale prepares to set sail (literally) on her next life adventure, she and sibling Jamie Choler share the main course and many sides of their story with Earthworms host Jean Ponzi, with relish. From dedicated subscribing to local CSA (Commun...
Jul 15, 2022•42 min
What does a Mom and environmental lawyer do after leading a statewide enviro-coalition into its second half-century and serving as a City of St. Louis Alderperson? This one, Heather Navarro, takes on directing climate action for the Midwest U.S. The Midwest Climate Collaborative , based at Washington University in St. Louis, envisions a carbon neutral, climate resilient, interconnected Midwest Region. This is seeing big: if the Midwest US (a dozen states) were a country, we'd be the sixth larges...
May 19, 2022•35 min
