Spring is here, and (not to brag, but) around these parts, the smell of flowers is in the air, and everything seems to be buzzing with life. Times like these, it’s hard not to have plants on the brain, and we fully endorse you getting out to meet your green neighbours. While you do that, we thought you’d like to hear from two of our favourite plant enthusiasts: Chelsey Armstrong and Leigh Joseph . You might remember Chelsey from our season 4 classic: FOREST / GARDEN , where we explored the roots...
Apr 28, 2026•50 min
So you want to put good fire on the ground, but how?? We're taking you to Yurok territory (at the mouth of the Klamath River) to join the Cultural Fire Management Council for 3 days of burning — not just for fuel management, but for all sorts of cultural and ecological values: food, wildlife, materials, and more. We're finally moving from theory to practice, as we learn what it really means to be on the fire line. This is our 6th return to the subject of fire. Call us obsessed, but we can't thin...
Mar 11, 2026•56 min•Season 6Ep. 9
Eric Higgs (of FE3.1 , FE3.2 , FE3.3 , and FE4.9 ) sits down with Laura Govers , who has been working on bringing eel grass back to the Netherlands' Wadden Sea — on an island that moves , no less! This conversation covers the low-tech solutions that they concocted to plant hectares of eel grass, the social invisibility of the marine domain, and the semantics of "restoration" in a rapidly changing world. Catch some videos of Laura's team over at the Zeegrasherstel NL YouTube channel . And don’t m...
Jan 15, 2026•52 min
Bogs are our absolute favourite places to be. They’re not only tremendously important ecosystems, rich in exquisite biodiversity and massive stores of carbon, they’re also uniquely beautiful. These serene, colourful spaces jumble land and water into something at once both alien and familiar. In this episode, we explore the wonders and the mysteries of peatlands, through the story of one very special (and threatened) bog just outside of the city of Vancouver. We meet the scientists who fought for...
Dec 16, 2025•1 hr 2 min•Season 6Ep. 8
Mendel has another show to share with you: Waterbodies It's a video podcast dedicated to a particular body of water we have here in Vancouver, called False Creek, but more generally it’s about how we can transform our urban spaces into thriving, biodiverse, celebrations of living nature — for everyone’s benefit. If you live in a city on a coast, and you dream of swimming in clean waters, tidepooling along the shore, and seeing all kinds of sea life, right next to downtown, this show is for you. ...
Dec 08, 2025•5 min
We had the opportunity to hang out with two of our favourite podcasters: Amy Martin of Threshold , and Amy Westervelt of Drilled . We've previously featured both of their work on the Future Ecologies feed, and we couldn't pass up the chance to talk shop about the latest (fantastic) seasons of their respective shows, and get to know more about their personal journey. That's this episode: Part 1 In the supporter-exclusive Part 2, we get into more of a roundtable on the practice of environmental jo...
Nov 28, 2025•44 min
What do you call it when a population of podcasts mysteriously drop episodes on the same topic at the same time? It's Critical Mast! We're so proud to present this nutty experiment in community podcasting, with its roots going back to the very beginning of our show (and the beginning of our dedication to silly puns). Thanks to help from our pals at Jumpstart Nature , Golden State Naturalist , Learning from Nature: The Biomimicry Podcast , Nature’s Archive , and Outside/In , it's time for a bumpe...
Oct 24, 2025•44 min•Season 6Ep. 7
We've got another edition of our intermittent interview show for you, this one featuring Sadie Couture in conversation with Hannah Tollefson . You'll remember Sadie as co-producer and reporter of FE3.4 — Dama Drama . Since then, she’s become a PhD student in Communication Studies at McGill University pursuing research at the intersection of media history, sound studies, and feminist science and technology studies. Hannah's work is situated at the intersection of environmental, media, and infrast...
Oct 22, 2025•1 hr 8 min
We’ve got a great guest episode for you today, coming courtesy of our friends over at the podcast Cited . They’ve got a new series out called “Green Dreams” — covering stories of radical environmentalist thought leaders, and the ripples they’ve left on the present day. We wanted to share with you the very first episode from this series, called “The Green Cosmos”, covering Gerard O’Neil’s 1970s vision for humanity’s passage to the stars. Find the rest of Green Dreams and much more from Cited wher...
Oct 07, 2025•1 hr 24 min
We’ve got something a little different for you: something a little less in the sciences, and a little more in the humanities — in the realm of language and human experience. Today, through a series of conversations, we’re exploring the notion of what it means to have a relationship to land, to be or not be of a place (in other words, to belong or not) and how the intrinsic tensions in all that may be metabolized through the practice of art, and more importantly, that of life. Our co-producer and...
Sep 23, 2025•1 hr•Season 6Ep. 6
It's a double feature! With help from recordist/anthropologist/podcaster Louise Romain and musician/conservationist Javan Hunt , we're visiting the Caribbean. First, off the coast of Colombia, on the islands of San Andrés, Providencia and Santa Catalina, and next a musical excursion to Grand Bahama. — — — From Reef to Ridge is an audio documentary love story with the Ocean, the reef, and its guardians; an invitation to travel to Caribbean shores to immerse yourself in the lived experiences of co...
Aug 29, 2025•1 hr 2 min
Hello! As you know well, we're not the news. The news is generally bad, and we prefer to not be bad news. So, it's a funny thing for us to release an episode about politics. In this edition of Hyphaedelity, our interlocutor Adam Davis ( EIP , FE5.6 ) and his guest Tim Male ( EPIC ) discuss going from working at an environmental NGO to within the White House, the role of executive orders, the state of environmental regulation, effecting change, the voting age, and much more (from a vantage point ...
Jul 21, 2025•57 min
The Miyawaki Method of micro-forestry is a viral sensation: sprouting tiny, dense, native tree cover in neighbourhoods all around the world. With the promise of afforestation at a revolutionary speed, this planting technique has become the darling of green-space enthusiasts, industry, and governments alike — yet few professional or academic ecologists have commented on its efficacy, or even seem to have heard of it! In this episode, we debate the legacy of Dr. Akira Miyawaki: the man, the myth, ...
Jun 30, 2025•1 hr 4 min•Season 6Ep. 5
Mendel here with an exciting announcement: I'm producing a new video podcast for a local environmental advocacy organization: the False Creek Friends Society . False Creek, as the name suggests, is not a creek. It’s a tidal slough, and it’s one of the most visible waterways here in Vancouver, where I live. It’s right next to downtown, and it’s always bustling with life. It also has a reputation for being highly polluted, thanks to bygone industry and present day civic infrastructure. Despite tha...
Jun 16, 2025•4 min
We're excited to introduce our brand new spin-off format: Hyphaedelity (which will ironically be somewhat lower-fi than our usual output). Here’s the deal: Hyphaedelity is our experiment in chatcasting, but with a twist. On each episode, we’re inviting a past guest from Future Ecologies to conduct their own interview, and bring us all along to sit in on their conversation. We wanted to see what would happen if we chased some of threads outwards from the dense tangle of ideas usually on display i...
May 29, 2025•1 hr
When is it ethical to kill one thing to save another? Lethal intervention is a common practice in the field of wildlife management, especially when the survival of a species hangs in the balance For as long as we’ve existed, human beings have employed killing as one of our primary responses to adversity. We seem to believe at some deep level that if we have a problem, killing the manifestation of that problem might just make it go away. This is the logic of political assassinations, revenge plot...
May 12, 2025•1 hr 3 min•Season 6Ep. 4
Today, it's our pleasure to bring you an episode from our friends at Bioneers, who have just released a 6-part series called Nature's Genius. Follow Bioneers wherever you get podcasts, or listen to the rest of the series at bioneers.org/natures-genius/ This is episode 1 — The Universe Beneath Our Feet: Mapping the Mycelial Web of Life Imagine an underground web of mind-boggling complexity, a bustling cosmopolis beneath your feet. Quadrillions of miles of tiny threads in the soil pulsate with rea...
Mar 18, 2025•33 min
In this very special donkumentary, we’re headed to the Mojave Desert — to Death Valley, in particular — where we find one animal at the centre of a heated debate in land management: the hardy wild burro (AKA donkey, ass, or Equus asinus). These feral burros, beloved by some and reviled by others, are an introduced species in the desert southwest, but are uniquely entangled in its human history. Since before the establishment of Death Valley as a national monument, they have been widely regarded ...
Feb 10, 2025•1 hr•Season 6Ep. 3
We’re unlocking one of the conversations from our bonus feed. In this interview, building on episode FE6.2 , Mendel speaks with Skye Augustine, a leading voice uplifting the science, history, and culture of Sea Gardens. In a time where so much of the future feels uncertain, the resiliency of Sea Gardens over millennia is (at least to us) a source of deep comfort and inspiration. What’s more, if you’re as inspired as we are, and you want to learn how your community could build a clam garden, we’v...
Feb 04, 2025•47 min
We're borrowing an episode from one of our all-time favourite shows: Threshold , a Peabody Award-winning documentary podcast about our place in the natural world. Now in their 5th Season, "Hark", Threshold producer Amy Martin is exploring sound itself: investigating what it means to listen to the nonhuman voices on our planet — and the cost if we don’t. With mounting social and ecological crises, what happens when we tune into the life all around us? Other episodes from Hark cover the sounds of ...
Jan 08, 2025•36 min
Food security, climate adaptation, and vibrant biodiversity all in one place — welcome to the ancient and diverse technologies of Sea Gardening. These widespread (but often overlooked) monumental rock features are proof positive of thriving Indigenous maricultural systems all around the Pacific Rim, since time immemorial. These spaces are not only simply stunningly beautiful spots to hang out, they're also a powerful symbol of ecocultural restoration; of Indigenous sovereignty, self-determinatio...
Dec 10, 2024•1 hr 2 min•Season 6Ep. 2
Season 6 kicks off in the deep dark woods: the simplified, post-industrial forests of the world — the only forests that many of us have ever known. Join us as we meet foresters in British Columbia, Vermont, and Scotland, all working to embrace the messy art of ecological forestry. Because if we want our forests to be old growth-ier, we might not be able to just wait and leave them alone. It might mean challenging some assumptions and getting out of our comfort zone, but that's what it'll take to...
Oct 30, 2024•1 hr 2 min•Season 6Ep. 1
As is tradition, we're releasing all the original music we composed for the latest season of Future Ecologies as a set of soundtracks. For the first time ever, they are also available on all major music streaming services. Enjoy! Auditory Compost by Sunfish Moon Light Bandcamp , Spotify , Apple Music Convergence by Thumbug Bandcamp , Spotify ( Side A | Side B ), Apple Music ( Side A | Side B ) – – – Find all of our seasonal soundtracks at futureecologies.net/albums And get free download codes on...
Aug 23, 2024•2 min
We're excited to share another beautiful guest episode with you today. In this piece, originally broadcast in 2 parts on The Wind (one of our favourite podcasts), producer Eleanor Qull is taking us on a pilgrimage in honour of, and in tribute to that most collective monarch — the monarch butterfly. Through those lepidopteran migrants, it’s a story of scale, agency, and spiritual offering in a changing world. Eleanor cooked up a special ~1 hour version just for us. It's spacious, equal parts sill...
Aug 19, 2024•1 hr 8 min
Future Ecologies presents "The Right to Feel," a two episode mini-series on the emotional realities of the climate crisis. The second and final episode, “ Eulogies ,” is based on fictional writing from the class. Students imagine and eulogize something that could be harmed by the climate emergency, and then imagine a speculative future in which action was taken to mitigate that harm. Over a two-year period, associate professor of climate justice and co-director of the UBC Centre for Climate Just...
Jul 17, 2024•55 min
Future Ecologies presents "The Right to Feel," a two episode mini-series on the emotional realities of the climate crisis. This first episode, “ Climate Feelings ,” is a collection of students’ non-fiction essays and reflections on their personal realities of living with and researching the climate crisis. The first episode opens with an introductory conversation between Naomi Klein and series producer Judee Burr that contextualizes how this class was structured and the writings it evoked. Over ...
Jul 17, 2024•58 min
Vision without eyes? Intelligence without a brain? Are plants more akin to us than we have been prepared to acknowledge? Or are they different in ways we will forever strain to imagine? One way or another, a vine with some unusual abilities is shaking the field of botany to its foundations. On this episode: Zoë Schlanger (author of the newly-released, New York Times bestselling book The Light Eaters: How the Unseen World of Plant Intelligence Offers a New Understanding of Life on Earth ) takes u...
Jun 06, 2024•47 min•Season 5Ep. 10
In this conclusion to our trilogy, we're looking at a proposal to move beyond the concept of "rangelands" through the rewilding of the American west — meaning, the return of forgotten landscapes, species, and ecologies not commonly seen in generations (not to mention improved water and carbon storage). But at least one thing isn't compatible with this vision: grazing cattle on public lands. Catch up with Part 1 and Part 2 And find citations, a transcript, and credits on our website — — — This ad...
Apr 29, 2024•1 hr 6 min•Season 5Ep. 9
Our series on cows and rangelands continues in the weeds and in the thorns, looking at a specific piece of public land where livestock are being employed to give some endangered species a new lease on life. In this 3-part series, we're hearing from impassioned scientists and land managers with diametrically opposed opinions on the concept of "rangelands" — by some estimates, accounting for 50-70% of the earth's surface. Missed Part 1? Catch up here — — — Find credits, citations, a transcript and...
Mar 18, 2024•1 hr 4 min•Season 5Ep. 8
The introduction of cattle to western North America has undeniably contributed to massive ecosystem change. But could cows be as much a part of the solutions as they are the problem? In this 3-part series, we're hearing from all sides of this issue: impassioned scientists and land managers with diametrically opposed opinions on the concept of "rangelands" — by some estimates, accounting for 50-70% of the earth's surface. Part 1 kicks things off with a look at the special case of California, and ...
Feb 09, 2024•53 min•Season 5Ep. 7
