Sharing a depth of attention for what stands to be lost in our relationship with the seasons, Volume 6 contributors Terry Tempest Williams and Susan Murphy Roshi come together to explore the theme of requiem in this first conversation of a companion series to Seasons. Drawing on their respective essays, “A Hollow Bone ” and “ Alive In the Skin of a River’s Flow ,” Terry and Susan contemplate what becomes present amid absence, a love for the burning world, and ways we can move with flock consciou...
Jan 20, 2026•1 hr 2 min
How might our understanding of plants transform if it embraced the voices of plants themselves? In this conversation, research scientist Monica Gagliano speaks about her groundbreaking research on plant communication and cognition, informed by knowledge imparted by plants through visions, dreams, and sensations. Sharing stories of how her remarkable experiments have evolved alongside a relationship of reciprocity and trust with the plants she studies, Monica offers a model for how we can radical...
Jan 13, 2026•1 hr 5 min
Journalist Ben Goldfarb follows the winding course of the Klamath River, from Oregon’s high desert plateaus to the Pacific Ocean in Northern California, as its four most obstructive dams are dismantled under a restoration plan reopening hundreds of miles of salmon spawning habitat. Ben chronicles how the prolonged absence of salmon has reshaped this waterway, its surrounding redwood forests and canyons, and the Yurok, Karuk, Hoopa, and Shasta tribes for whom this creature is not only sustenance,...
Jan 06, 2026•40 min
Earlier this year, the remarkable eco-philosopher Joanna Macy passed away at age ninety-six. Among her many gifts, she was a seminal translator of the great twentieth-century poet Rainer Maria Rilke. In our final episode of the year, we return to a selection of translations of Rilke from The Book of Hours: Love Poems to God , by Joanna and award-winning poet Anita Barrows, that speak to the beauty and mystery present in worlds both seen and unseen, the unknowability of the Divine, and the union ...
Dec 16, 2025•22 min
In this week’s story, Australian writer and Zen roshi Susan Murphy explores how haiku’s reflections of the seasons are being disrupted by the climate crisis. How will this poetic form bear witness to the ferocity of change reshaping the seasons? Woven with verses from Bashō, Buson, Issa, and fellow Volume 6 contributor Ron C. Moss , this story contemplates whether haiku may, in fact, be a vessel for holding the paradox of the seasons in this moment: allowing us to both mourn and love a rapidly e...
Dec 09, 2025•31 min
Fungi are veteran survivors of ecological disruption, and they demonstrate a radically different approach to crisis and decision-making than we do. While we tend to work with binaries and control when navigating uncertainty, mycelium works from a place of relationality. In this conversation, acclaimed mycologist and author Merlin Sheldrake explores what we can learn from mycelial networks about building flexible ecological, social, or structural systems that are rooted in mutuality and exchange....
Dec 02, 2025•47 min
This Thanksgiving holiday, we return to a conversation with Potawatomi botanist Robin Wall Kimmerer, where she talks about her new book The Serviceberry , which emerged from an essay she wrote for us about the potential of a gift economy to recognize the sacred nature of the Earth. Robin introduces a set of ethical and pragmatic principles, known as “the Honorable Harvest,” that orients us to take only what we need, share abundance, and offer gratitude for what is selflessly given to us; and lea...
Nov 25, 2025•1 hr
In November, we celebrated the launch of our latest print edition, Seasons , at the Tate Modern in London. Recorded live at the event, this conversation featuring four Volume 6 contributors, delves into each of their stories and the themes of requiem, invitation, and celebration at the heart of their seasonal experiences. From honoring the fragility of spring birdsong, to finding an expanded sense of self through seasonal “noticelings,” this wide-ranging and lively exchange explores the myriad w...
Nov 18, 2025•1 hr 16 min
In this conversation from our archive, Australian writer and Zen roshi Susan Murphy immerses us in the ancient tradition of koan and the power of the “not-knowing mind” to open a treasury of resources for meeting the climate crisis. Sharing several koans from Zen masters that push at the boundaries of our consciousness, she speaks to the way they can draw us deeper into kinship and reminds us that the Earth Herself is a koan waiting to be known. Read the transcript. Photo by Warren Summers. Lear...
Nov 11, 2025•1 hr 6 min
We return to one of our most in-depth interviews this week: a conversation with poet Jane Hirshfield, who has contributed a new poem to our latest print edition, Volume 6: Seasons . Reciting several poems from her prolific body of work, including Time Thinks of Time , she speaks about how her Zen practice has led her to embrace the largeness of time’s mystery. She shares how this inner “spaciousness,” present in many of her poems, can uncover intimacy with both the ordinary and the divine. Read ...
Nov 04, 2025•1 hr 42 min
Probing the flatness of his Midwestern landscape, Roy Scranton challenges us to peer beyond what meets the eye to engage more thoughtfully with a place’s ecological, geological, and cosmological dimensions. What first appears to him as farmland, highways, and worn industrial sprawl in his new home of South Bend, Indiana, begins under sustained attention to disclose rich layers of physical and temporal meaning. Roy invites us to practice this same attentiveness, allowing ourselves to be changed b...
Oct 28, 2025•48 min
In this final talk of a three-part series, Emergence executive editor and Sufi teacher Emmanuel Vaughan-Lee speaks about two essential elements needed if we are to tend to a relationship of reverence with the Earth: humility and offering. To ground ourselves in respect for the power of the Earth, and respond to Her unconditional generosity, we can begin by remembering to de-center our needs, and instead ask ourselves: What attitude towards the seasons can help me develop a relationship to place?...
Oct 21, 2025•43 min
We are in need of stories that can help us navigate the complexity of our moment: both the unfolding ecological catastrophe and the love we feel for our burning world. This second talk in a series given by Emergence executive editor and Sufi teacher Emmanuel Vaughan-Lee at our Song of the Seasons retreat on Whidbey Island explores how the story of birth, growth, decay, and death told by the seasons, regardless of where one is in the world, invites us into a space of reverence that offers a conta...
Oct 14, 2025•43 min
As an introduction to the themes within our latest print volume, Seasons , we’re sharing a series of talks over the next few weeks given by Emergence executive editor and Sufi teacher Emmanuel Vaughan-Lee at our Song of the Seasons retreat on Whidbey Island. This first talk explores the cyclical nature of the seasons, and how when we devote our attention to these cycles over time, their continuous variation reveals itself, unfurling like a spiral that draws us deeper into kinship with the Earth....
Oct 07, 2025•47 min
After the destructive fires of 2020, writer and facilitator Maya Pace awakens to how California’s essential dry, scorched nature has been repressed to realize a vision of economic and social prosperity across the state. Searching for what it means to love a place that is harsh, uncomfortable, or increasingly unfamiliar, she connects with communities living in landscapes removed from our ideals of paradise. What does it mean to live fully in the reality of a place, rather than how we wish it to b...
Sep 30, 2025•32 min
A companion to our Breathing with the Forest feature, this conversation from our 2023 Shifting Landscapes exhibition with Marshmallow Laser Feast director Ersin Han Ersin explores the importance of imagination in making visible the often invisible threads that bind us together with the living world. He talks about the collective’s work creating spaces where people can step into deliberate acts of connection with the more-than-human, and how art can allow us to embody the experiences of other bei...
Sep 23, 2025•1 hr
Nonfiction writer Stephanie Krzywonos opens a door into the histories of our most iconic and desired pigments, from ochre to bone black, lapis lazuli to mummy brown. In our earliest attempts to recreate the magnificent colors of Earth for our art, garments, make-up, and more, we mixed and alchemized matter drawn from the flesh of the Earth Herself. Stephanie follows a spectrum of colors from these origins, through the entangled webs of colonialism, capitalism, and the more-than-human world, to t...
Sep 16, 2025•47 min
What if we had only decades left before the final harvest capable of feeding the world? Accustomed to Earth’s abundance year after year, can we imagine an end to something so eternal? In thirty short passages, from pruning dandelions with her four-year-old to grappling with the mathematical theory of infinity, art historian and writer Annabel Howard moves through a mind-warping process of fathoming a world where the cycles that have sustained us since the beginning of time cease. Following her f...
Sep 09, 2025•14 min
In honor of the recent passing of the eco-philosopher, Buddhist scholar, and dear friend Joanna Macy, we return to our interview with her from 2018. In this conversation, she traces the ways a life-long heart connection with the living world cultivated a resounding ecological awareness within her work and spirituality; and explores how we might return to an “ecological self” as a way to be of service amid the climate catastrophe. Joanna was also a seminal translator of Rainer Maria Rilke’s poetr...
Sep 02, 2025•36 min
We’re living in a world that is perpetually bathed in artificial light. We repel the dark. Yet, we live in the midst of what is often referred to as “dark times.” How can gazing upon the night sky connect us to a greater sense of space, beauty, and possibility? Are we able to come into a relationship with something infinitely bigger than ourselves? How can we be present and engaged amid the realities of environmental crisis, inequality, and shifting political tides? Whether you live in the city ...
Aug 26, 2025•15 min
What does it mean to listen without judgement, allowing your ears to be present, open, and curious? Inspired by our virtual reality film Sanctuaries of Silence , which follows acoustic ecologist Gordon Hempton as he documents the sounds of the Hoh Rain Forest in western Washington State, this practice invites you to discover how a new experience of sound and silence can profoundly impact your relationship to place. By taking in sounds with equal value and becoming aware of the presence and absen...
Aug 19, 2025•15 min
Biologist David G. Haskell calls the practice of listening to other species the original “augmented reality.” In opening our minds to the language of the species around us, we can experience connection and meaning that far transcends anything offered by an electronic substitute. This week, we’re sharing the next instalment in our Summer of Practice podcast series with a practice David wrote for us that invites you to attune to the birdcall near your home; become aware of the ecological rhythms a...
Aug 12, 2025•15 min
We continue our summer of practice with a second series of audio practices throughout August. In this episode, you are encouraged to respond to the ways trees invite you—through bloom, shade, wonder, breath—into closer relationship. From the old-growth forests whose presence precedes our lifetimes to the rooted sentinels of our own backyards, trees are humans’ oldest and most constant companions. This practice calls you to bring a renewed quality of attention to the threads that bind you and tre...
Aug 05, 2025•15 min
In this episode, we bring you the final Time audio practice—the fourth in a series exploring how we can come to dwell within a kind of time that is in relationship with the Earth, rather than the clock. This invitation draws your attention to the Earth’s immense capacity for recording the passage of time. Imagine your way backwards through millennia and then forward into the far future, as your journey through your homeplace, attentive to the histories held within its topography, ecosystems, and...
Jul 29, 2025•16 min
In Ancient Greek mythology, the old and powerful god Chronos oversaw the linear progression of time. Kairos, the youthful, wing-footed god of opportunity, expressed the possibility within a given moment . This practice—the third in our summer audio series—orients you towards “kairos time”: openings in time in the wake of change; timing that moment itself dictates. Explore how your sense of time determines how you participate in the world, and how you might balance a reliance on structured time w...
Jul 22, 2025•16 min
This summer, we’re sharing a series of audio practices—each inviting you into an experience of Earth time. This episode orients you towards one of the simplest practices you can do to shift your sense of time: walking. Follow the metronomic rhythm of your feet—down a bustling street or through a secluded woodland—and learn how moving at your most natural pace allows you to form relationships with what surrounds you. Receptive to the present moment, open to a simultaneous experience of deep inwar...
Jul 15, 2025•16 min
What happens when we’re able to inhabit time—even if momentarily—in an entirely new way? And how could this shift the way we relate and engage with each other, with the presence of mystery, and of course, with the Earth? Over the summer we're featuring a special series of audio practices exploring Time. This first episode invites you to attune to how your body and those of nearby more-than-human beings are in conversation with your ecosystem via internal clocks. Creating time together with the E...
Jul 08, 2025•15 min
Potawatomi botanist and author Robin Wall Kimmerer visits the Andrews Experimental Forest in Oregon, where over the course of two centuries scientists will study how old-growth trees and their decomposition contribute to the biogeochemical cycles of the Earth. For the forest’s cedar trees, Robin says, death is merely a transition—a rearrangement of elements from one species to the next. What might this teach us about the nature of our own “afterlife?” Can this cyclical ecology be an experimental...
Jul 01, 2025•30 min
In this third story we’re sharing in partnership with the Center for Humans and Nature, ecosystem ecologist Liam Heneghan turns to a council of philosophers and physicists to help reconcile the human experience of growth with the reality of decay as he keeps vigil by his father’s bedside. He contemplates how closely life sits at the margins of death—one bleeding into the other—and wonders what can be learned from the everyday breakdown of leaves, milk, friendships, solar systems that might orien...
Jun 24, 2025•26 min
The second in a series of stories we’re sharing in partnership with the Center for Humans and Nature, this narrated essay by Aboriginal scholar Tyson Yunkaporta explores the ways we’ve long mistaken cerebral thinking for knowing, and in doing so, dulled a more vital intelligence. He argues that we are “overthinking and underfeeling” our existence, and reminds us that we have a second brain: the gut, which “governs terrestrial relations and is in constant communication with land and all our human...
Jun 17, 2025•31 min
