In this narrated essay, CMarie Fuhrman encounters a coyote whose leg is caught in a trap in the southern Montana prairie. As she decides what to do, she navigates the two legacies of her identity—Native and white. In doing so, she considers what it means to be trapped and what it means to be free. CMarie is the author of “Camped Beneath the Dam: Poems” and co-editor of “Native Voices: Indigenous Poetry, Conversation, and Craft.” Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices...
Nov 17, 2020•23 min
In this narrated essay, ecological historian Bathsheba Demuth travels across the easternmost edge of northern Russia—home to the Native Chukchi people and their herds of reindeer. As she uncovers the history of this landscape, she encounters the allure of the apocalyptic arc—the promise of a new world—and the rise and ruin of the Soviet ideology that sought to impose its utopian vision on the Chukchi, their reindeer, and the natural cycles of the Russian tundra. Through the Soviet project’s ambi...
Nov 10, 2020•30 min
In this interview, Sandor Katz discusses his new book, Fermentation as Metaphor . A world-renowned expert in fermented foods, Sandor considers the liberating experience offered through engagement with microbial communities. He shares that the simple act of fermentation can give rise to deeply intimate moments of connection through the magic of invisible forces that transform our foods and our lives, generation by generation. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices...
Nov 03, 2020•46 min
From the Yangtze Valley, to Neolithic Mesopotamia, to the orchards of Oxford, Roger Deakin sought to understand the origins of the domesticated apple. His essay East of Eden— an excerpted chapter from his book Wildwood: A Journey Through Trees —recounts his journey into the wild fruit forests that grow on the mountainsides of Kazakhstan. After Roger’s death in 2006, Robert MacFarlane planted a sapling grown from an apple seed that Roger carried home. As ‘Roger’s tree’ now fruits in his yard, Rob...
Oct 27, 2020•58 min
Gathering wild foods was once a practice of deep observation, carried out by women who knew the ways of wild medicine. In this narrated essay, Gina Rae La Cerva considers the widespread loss of this traditional knowledge and the generations of women in her family who have intimately known the land. How, she asks, can the ancient feminine understanding of wildness and foraging serve a fragmented world? Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices...
Oct 20, 2020•15 min
The coronavirus has shrunk the scale of our individual worlds, setting us on an uncertain and increasingly narrow path. While in lockdown, David Farrier finds inspiration in the meandering imprints left by the tracks of animals. He begins to seek out desire paths: ways of walking and paying attention that mimic the way an animal pads a path across the land. Walking through his neighborhood, he locates new ways of moving which offer new opportunities for noticing both where we are and where we wi...
Oct 13, 2020•19 min
To conclude our six-part “Language Keepers” podcast series, we explore the rapid rate of language loss occurring around the world and hear from speakers of endangered languages who are increasingly resisting predictions of extinction. We revisit the keepers of the Tolowa Dee-ni’, Karuk, Wukchumni, and Kawaiisu languages, who offer their thoughts, prayers, and hopes for the future of their languages and for the generations that will come after them. Adapted from our award-winning multimedia story...
Oct 06, 2020•35 min•Season 9Ep. 6
For many Indigenous communities, the effort to document and learn from as many last speakers as possible is a race against time. In Episode Five of our “Language Keepers” podcast series we meet Julie Girado Turner, who, for nearly two decades, has been documenting and recording her father and aunt, the last remaining fluent speakers of the Kawaiisu language. Adapted from our award-winning multimedia story, “Language Keepers,” this six-part podcast series explores the struggle for Indigenous lang...
Sep 29, 2020•29 min•Season 9Ep. 5
Episode Four of our “Language Keepers” podcast series brings us to the home of Marie Wilcox—the last fluent speaker of the Wukchumni language and the creator of the only Wukchumni dictionary. Younger generations of language learners often rely on both fluent elders and physical resources: Marie and the dictionary she created have been an inspiration to four generations of her family and to Indigenous communities around the world. Adapted from our award-winning multimedia story, “Language Keepers...
Sep 22, 2020•27 min•Season 9Ep. 4
Episode Three of our “Language Keepers” podcast series explores efforts to revitalize the Karuk language, which is deeply tied to the Klamath River in Northern California. Just as a river is dependent on an unobstructed flow to remain healthy, a language depends on healthy connections and transmissions between generations of speakers. Karuk language keepers Maymi Preston-Donahue, Phil Albers, and Julian Lang are working to fill generational gaps in the transmission of Karuk. Adapted from our awa...
Sep 15, 2020•33 min•Season 9Ep. 3
Episode Two of our “Language Keepers” podcast series brings you to the redwood forests of Northern California, home to Loren Bommelyn, the sole remaining fluent speaker of the Tolowa Dee-ni’ language. Tolowa, like other Indigenous languages, is interwoven with the ecosystem where it came into being and thus holds the traditional ecological knowledge of the Tolowa people. Along with many Native communities, the Bommelyn family is grappling with what is at stake—for their children, for their cultu...
Sep 08, 2020•57 min•Season 9Ep. 2
Adapted from our award-winning multimedia story, “Language Keepers,” this six-part podcast series explores the struggle for Indigenous language survival in California. Two centuries ago, as many as ninety languages and three hundred dialects were spoken in California; today, only half of these languages remain. In this series, we delve into the current state of four Indigenous languages which are among the most vulnerable in the world: Tolowa Dee-ni’, Karuk, Wukchumni, and Kawaiisu. Along this j...
Sep 01, 2020•1 hr•Season 9Ep. 1
Lia Purpura is the author of nine collections of essays, poems, and translations, including It Shouldn’t Have Been Beautiful and All the Fierce Tethers . In this narrated essay, Lia bears witness to the decomposing body of a deer and considers stories of “rightness”: the processes which transform bodies from one state to another and the beginnings that emerge from endings. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices...
Aug 25, 2020•17 min
Daisy Hildyard examines how the COVID-19 pandemic has drawn our attention toward the space between things. She notes that these “negative spaces” reveal relationships that normally lie beyond our perception. The intertwinement of our lives—human, plant, animal—has become more apparent: our lives trace through other beings, and their lives trace through our own. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices
Aug 18, 2020•31 min
We commissioned four authors to approach the theme of apocalypse through fiction, from the perspectives of past, present, and future. Our fourth and final installment is a short story by Ben Okri, entitled And Peace Shall Return . Ben is a Nigerian poet, novelist, and playwright whose many books and poetry collections include Prayer for the Living , Rise Like Lions: Poetry for the Many , and The Famished Road . Narrated by the British actor Colin Salmon, And Peace Shall Return is set twenty thou...
Aug 11, 2020•58 min
We commissioned four authors to approach the theme of apocalypse through fiction, from the perspectives of past, present, and future. Our third installment, The Basilisk , is from Paul Kingsnorth, a writer and poet living in rural Ireland. Paul is the author of the novels The Wake and Beast , the essay collection Confessions of a Recovering Environmentalist , and his latest book of nonfiction, Savage Gods . Narrated by Paul, The Basilisk is an exchange of letters between an uncle and a niece. In...
Aug 04, 2020•43 min
In this interview, cultural ecologist and philosopher David Abram discusses the animism, power, and potency of the living world. In our current moment of ecological and societal instability—rich with possibility and fraught with potential danger—he calls on us to remember the animacy of our own bodily senses and our inherent participation in the collective, embodied flesh of the Earth. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices...
Jul 28, 2020•49 min
We commissioned four authors to approach the theme of apocalypse through fiction, from the perspectives of past, present, and future. Our second installment, Ink , is a story by Sjón, an Icelandic poet and writer. He is the author of The Blue Fox , From The Mouth Of The Whale , and Moonstone—The Boy Who Never Was . In this short story—narrated by Sjón—we are introduced to Valur Sveinsson, a Chargé d’Affaires in London. Born with the gift of second sight, Valur encounters supernatural beings call...
Jul 21, 2020•39 min
As part of our planned Apocalypse issue, we had commissioned four authors to approach this theme through fiction from the perspectives of past, present and future. Our first installment in our fiction series, entitled Thylacine , is from the American novelist Lydia Millet, author of numerous books including A Children’s Bible ; Love in Infant Monkeys , a finalist for the 2010 Pulitzer Prize; and My Happy Life, winner of the 2003 PEN Center USA Award for Fiction. This short story, narrated by Lyd...
Jul 14, 2020•24 min
As the existence of the famed ivory-billed woodpecker is increasingly left to the realm of myth, Chelsea Steinauer-Scudder explores the widespread disappearance of birds in the narratives of apocalyptic prophecy that run through our collective consciousness. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices
Jul 07, 2020•1 hr 3 min
Crystal Wilkinson is the author of The Birds of Opulence; Water Street; and Blackberries, Blackberries , and an Associate Professor of English in the Creative Writing MFA Program at the University of Kentucky. At a time that is punctuated by the loss of breath—when we are increasingly gripped by the profound understanding that the right to breathe is the right to life—this essay from Crystal contemplates the intimacy of breathing as she considers how we live, die, and love. Learn more about your...
Jun 30, 2020•25 min
As part of our recent series of online conversations with our contributors, mythologist and storyteller Dr. Martin Shaw joined us to read from his new book, Courting the Wild Twin and talk about his recent op-eds for the magazine on the mythical response to the pandemic. In the moderated discussion that followed with Emergence executive editor Emmanuel Vaughan-Lee, Martin answered questions from the audience and shared his thoughts on initiation, agency, and the move into the mythical. Our task ...
Jun 26, 2020•56 min
In this narrated essay, poet Jake Skeets explores apocalypse, time, and futurity from a Diné perspective. While colonial frames foretell a final apocalypse that will arrive in linear time, Indigenous people have experienced many beginnings and many endings. As he observes the grief that has arisen in his community during the coronavirus pandemic, he considers how hope might be reimagined. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices...
Jun 23, 2020•27 min
In this narrated essay, Roy Scranton asks what we mean when we say “the world is ending.” Examining the nature of the narratives we tell ourselves about the future, he explores what revelation may be before us. Roy Scranton is the author of I Heart Oklahoma!; Total Mobilization: World War II and American Literature; We’re Doomed. Now What?; War Porn ; and Learning to Die in the Anthropocene: Reflections on the End of a Civilization. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices...
Jun 16, 2020•44 min
Amaud Jamaul Johnson is the author of Darktown Follies , Red Summer , and Imperial Liquor . In this essay, Amaud explores the loneliness and fear that arise in the wake of inexplicable tragedy where personal losses highlight histories of suffering and the deep uncertainties of our time. This fact has always been true, but feels more so in the midst of a pandemic, massive job losses, food insecurity, climate chaos, and the national uprisings provoked by ongoing racial injustice and police brutali...
Jun 09, 2020•26 min
During the Khmer Rouge regime in Cambodia, Kalyanee Mam’s mother nourished and sustained her family with umami soups, chicken rice, and fried noodles. Years later, as Kalyanee cooks for her husband and mother-in-law who have fallen ill during the pandemic, she reflects on food as a conduit for healing and love. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices
Jun 02, 2020•30 min
As sirens fill the streets of London, George Prochnik recalls a revolutionary poet’s account of the 1832 cholera pandemic that unfolded in Paris. While watching history repeat itself in devastating refrain, George wonders: What is hysteria? What is necessary passion and courage? How can we respond both lucidly and compassionately as this disaster progresses? Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices
May 26, 2020•56 min
Since lockdowns began, there has been an unprecedented reduction in human-created noise. Our movements have lessened, the circle of our existence is closer, we are more still. As the din of human activity has quieted down, the sounds of the living world have come to the forefront. Around the world people have reported hearing an increase in the songs of birds, the chirping of insects, and the myriad sounds of non-human life. A newfound silence is pervading many of our environments as cars, plane...
May 19, 2020•15 min
As part of our recent series of online offerings, the Emergence Magazine Book Club spent the month of April reading Robin Wall Kimmerer’s celebrated, best-selling book Braiding Sweetgrass: Indigenous Wisdom, Scientific Knowledge, and the Teachings of Plants. For the Book Club’s last meeting, Robin joined us in a vibrant live video zoom conversation, hosted by acclaimed writer Robert Macfarlane. Responding to questions asked by readers from around the globe, Robin discussed dandelions as global c...
May 12, 2020•1 hr 3 min
Self-quarantined and isolated in her apartment in Brooklyn, Hala Alyan is more aware than ever of humanity’s interdependence—suddenly exposed as a raw, pulsing nerve. With all of us inescapably together as we move through this pandemic, how, she asks, can we make room for grief, empathy, and hope? Hala is an award-winning Palestinian American poet, novelist, and clinical psychologist whose work has appeared in numerous journals. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices...
May 05, 2020•20 min
