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 Irreplaceable: The Fight to Save Our Wild Places . In this piece, Julian witnesses the drastic decline of Dalmatian pelicans nesting on the Prespa lakes as they succumb to the recent outbreak of avian influenza. As the wetlands fall strangely quiet, he senses the porous boundaries between our health and that of the ecologies we inhabit. Learn more about you...
Nov 01, 2022•52 min
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. In this powerfully recited poem, Drew celebrates the radical act of joy through lifting up liberation, reparations, justice, and deep connection to ancestors and the living world. Emergence Magazine, Vol 3: Living with the Unknown explores what living in an apocalyptic reality looks like through four themes: Initiation, Ashes, Roots, and Futures. Ev...
Oct 25, 2022•13 min
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 the living history of her family back to the land. This final episode traces the Spanish missions, boarding schools, and ranching empires that drove many Coast Miwok people from their ancestral land in Northern California and shares Theresa Harlan’s continuing grassroots efforts to protect the last standing structures on Tomales Bay built by Coast Miwoks...
Oct 18, 2022•1 hr 4 min
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 Northern California—and one woman's effort to bring the living history of her family back to the land. In Episode Two we learn that the Coast Miwok culture predates the geological formation of the San Francisco Bay. In tracing thousands of years of Indigenous presence and history, all the way through the oppressive colonial systems that have become today'...
Oct 11, 2022•1 hr 4 min
Across the United States, Indigenous communities are calling for sweeping revisions to stories commonly told as “history”—stories that, even today, neglect and erase Indigenous peoples and serve as justification for continued ownership of stolen Indigenous lands. This three-part series is the multigenerational story of a Coast Miwok family’s eviction from their ancestral home in Northern California and one woman’s mission to bring the living history of her family back to the land. Throughout thi...
Oct 04, 2022•48 min
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 Curse: Parables for a Planet in Crisis , he calls on storytellers to lead us in the necessary work of collective reimagining—decentering human narratives and re-centering stories of the land. Emergence Magazine, Vol 3: Living with the Unknown explores what living in an apocalyptic reality looks like through four themes: Initiation, Ashes, Roots, and Fu...
Sep 27, 2022•42 min
How do we root ourselves in times of isolation and disorientation? As birder and writer J. Drew Lanham encounters his backyard during the pandemic lockdown, he designates it as a newly sanctioned “wild-like refuge”—a place that is brimming with life as he notices the wildlife that inhabits the nearby faraway. Emergence Magazine, Vol 3: Living with the Unknown explores what living in an apocalyptic reality looks like through four themes: Initiation, Ashes, Roots, and Futures. Every two months we’...
Sep 20, 2022•20 min
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, Jake Skeets considers the necessary interrogation of colonial naming and narratives, and how the Indigenous application of writing as a technology can reshape our world as we move into an unknown future. Emergence Magazine, Vol 3: Living with the Unknown explores what living in an apocalyptic reality looks like through four themes: Initiation, Ashe...
Sep 13, 2022•33 min
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 entirely of tiny trembling waves in air, the fugitive, ephemeral energy that we call sound. Spoken words combined with terrestrial sounds invite our senses and imaginations to go outward into an experience of the living Earth and its history. How did the vast and varied chorus of modern sounds—from forest to oceans to human music—emerge from life’s comm...
Sep 06, 2022•41 min
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 thousandth westward mile of the Transcontinental Railroad and considers how our historical landmarks have shifted in meaning, leaving us adrift and disoriented in the Anthropocene. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices
Aug 30, 2022•35 min
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, that explores what is at stake for both ecological and human communities as forests migrate. In this re-release of “They Carry Us With Them,” Chelsea Steinauer-Scudder narrates the feature story, chronicling the possible disappearance of the black ash tree from the state of Maine. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices...
Aug 23, 2022•1 hr
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 tireless momentum of greed. In this short story from Icelandic author Andri Snær Magnason, time expands and collapses as an architect in Reykjavíik struggles against the soulless design of urban landscapes in the Anthropocene. Emergence Magazine, Vol 3: Living with the Unknown explores what living in an apocalyptic reality looks like through four t...
Aug 16, 2022•50 min
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 has been lost, this poem offers us the opportunity to step into a moment where past harm gives way to an expansive recognition of love. Emergence Magazine, Vol 3: Living with the Unknown explores what living in an apocalyptic reality looks like through four themes: Initiation, Ashes, Roots, and Futures. Every two months we’ll release a new chapter on...
Aug 09, 2022•4 min
In this narrated essay, Daisy Hildyard, a scholar of the history of science, examines three stories of atrocity and considers how whiteness has inscribed itself onto the land through violence. In what ways, she asks, does human history blur into the nonhuman world and into the present moment? Emergence Magazine, Vol 3: Living with the Unknown explores what living in an apocalyptic reality looks like through four themes: Initiation, Ashes, Roots, and Futures. Every two months we’ll release a new ...
Aug 02, 2022•50 min
In this narrated essay, writer and journalist Anna Badkhen brings us into histories of imperial collapse. As we continue our exploration of the theme of Ashes and what it means to live in a moment of unraveling, she asks: How do we come to terms with the world we have made? How do we make space for hope and sanctuary? Emergence Magazine, Vol 3: Living with the Unknown explores what living in an apocalyptic reality looks like through four themes: Initiation, Ashes, Roots, and Futures. Every two m...
Jul 26, 2022•22 min
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? How do we continue to be present with that which remains? We begin with the sudden disappearance of the bogong moth in alpine Australia. As writer Rebecca Giggs traces the moths journey from superabundance to apocalypse, she considers how very small beings are often responsible for vast surges of life. Emergence Magazine, Vol 3: Living with the Un...
Jul 12, 2022•1 hr 1 min
In this narrated essay, Cal Flyn observes new species of butterflies arriving in Scotland's Orkney Islands. As plants and animals migrate northwards on an unprecedented scale, she faces the haunting knowledge that some voices are rising as others fade away. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices
Jul 05, 2022•25 min
We invited Oscar-nominated composer Volker Bertelmann, also known as Hauschka, to create a unique companion to the stories in our third volume, Living with the Unknown . The resulting four-part score is a cinematic and introspective experience, and a compelling counterpart for the journey into the unknown. When we first spoke to Volker about the issue’s themes—Initiation, Ashes, Roots, and Futures—he said he felt like they were describing a life circle and the course of creativity. Deep crises a...
Jun 28, 2022•25 min
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 becoming. While immersed in a unified chorus of insect voices, playwright and director Anisa George reflects on her departure from the Bahá’í faith and its promise of a new civilization, choosing instead to embark on her own path. Sounds provided by David Rothenberg. Emergence Magazine , Vol 3: Living with the Unknown explores what living in an apocaly...
Jun 21, 2022•36 min
This week, as our journey into Initiation continues, Sufi teacher and author Llewellyn Vaughan-Lee invites us to cross a threshold. Witnessing how humanity is tearing apart the web of life, he calls us to return our awareness to a fully animate world and to the deep ecology of consciousness we once held. Emergence Magazine, Vol 3: Living with the Unknown explores what living in an apocalyptic reality looks like through four themes: Initiation, Ashes, Roots, and Futures. Every two months we’ll re...
Jun 14, 2022•20 min
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 late 1960s to her work with deep ecology, Joanna expresses the need to live within an ethic of care for the earth. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices
Jun 07, 2022•34 min
In this narrated essay from our archive, poet and essayist Lia Purpura considers the processes which transform bodies from one state to another and the beginnings that emerge from endings. When she encounters the decomposing body of a deer, she witnesses the forces of restoration at play and wonders what constitutes stories of “rightness.” Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices
May 31, 2022•17 min
Initiation, chapter one of Living with the Unknown , begins where all inquiries into the unknown begin: with myth. In this narrated essay, Martin Shaw provides a mythological framework for forging new paths, calling upon different intelligences, and committing acts of sacred transgression as we walk our questions into a troubled future. Over the coming months, we’ll continue to release narrated stories from Emergence , Volume 3 , as we ask: What does living in an unfolding apocalyptic reality lo...
May 24, 2022•29 min
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 year in the midst of England’s nightingale season about the transformative experience of creating songs in collaboration with a songbird. As part of a new documentary series that will be released next year, we're heading to the UK to experience Sam singing with the nightingales firsthand. In the meantime, we are revisiting this special conversation: ...
May 03, 2022•52 min
Long, long ago—before there were trees, before there were flowers, before life existed outside of the churning oceans—mosses bravely ventured onto dry land. In this special Earth Week episode Robin Wall Kimmerer, author of Braiding Sweetgrass , takes a long view of life on Earth, exploring how mosses—ancient beings who transformed the world—can teach us strategies for persisting amid a changing climate. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices...
Apr 26, 2022•36 min
In honor of Earth Week we’re revisiting our conversation from last year with Dr. Suzanne Simard, the renowned scientist whose groundbreaking research, widely known as “the wood-wide web,” demonstrated how trees communicate and exchange resources through networks of mycorrhizal fungi within the soil. In this interview, Suzanne speaks about the urgent implications of our evolving understanding of the interdependent nature of forests for healing the rift between ourselves and the living world. Lear...
Apr 19, 2022•1 hr 5 min
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 the rooms of her house—admiring their life even in death. In this narrated essay, Sumana and her nephew debate whether the dead trunks can be revived by the element of water and reflect on the continuance of all that has vanished from our sight. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices...
Apr 12, 2022•30 min
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 personhood—a belief that is congruous with the recent rights-of-nature movement. As legal protections for the cactus come up against the push to build a wall through Organ Pipe Cactus National Park, Boyce meets with elders from the Tohono O’odham Nation who are acting on behalf of the rooted beings of the desert. Learn more about your ad choices. Vi...
Apr 05, 2022•39 min
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 of biodiversity that have migrated across the landscape, enduring for millennia. As many of the oldest trees have died and younger ones struggle to survive, Jori bears witness to these elders in a rapidly changing world. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices
Mar 29, 2022•39 min
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 the Ethiopian capital who are looking for a means of escape, she considers failed migrations when the forces of climate catastrophe and colonial greed combine to trap the world’s most vulnerable populations. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices
Mar 22, 2022•30 min
