Spoken Earth

David Abram is an American cultural ecologist, a philosopher and an activist. He is author of Becoming Animal: An Earthly Cosmology (2010) and The Spell of the Sensuous: Perception and Language in a More-than-Human World (1996). Grounding his work within the philosophical tradition of phenomenology, he seeks to reanimate our senses, teaching us how we have been shaped in tandem with the more-than-human world, and how by forgetting it we create a profound loss both for ourselves and for the world in which we live. Having taught and lectured all over the world, he is currently Senior Visiting Scholar in Ecology and Natural Philosophy at the Center for the Study of World Religions at Harvard University. Podcast by Lacuna Magazine Interviewer: Adam Weymouth Producer and musician: Ulli Mattsson Further Reading: Alliance for Wild Ethics On Being Human in a More-Than-Human World

Max Ajl is an agrarian sociologist. He is an associated researcher with the Tunisian Observatory for Food Sovereignty and the Environment, where he currently lives, and a postdoctoral fellow with the Rural Sociology Group at Wageningen University. As well as a frequent contributor to journals, he is author of the 2021 book A People's Green New Deal. In it, he explores the wave of Green New Deals that are currently sweeping politics, and he looks at how far those deals fall from a true eco-socialism. Only eco-socialism, Ajl argues, can provide the sort of justice and equality that is needed to ensure a healthy future for the planet and all of its people. Podcast by Lacuna Magazine www.lacuna.org.uk Interviewer: Adam Weymouth www.adamweymouth.com Producer and musician: Ulli Mattsson www.ullimattsson.com Further reading: http://www.politicaleconomyproject.org/max-ajl.html http://www.plutobooks.com/author/max-ajl/

In this episode of Spoken Earth, Adam Weymouth discusses overpopulation with Betsy Hartmann, who argues that blaming the planet's problems on overpopulation is not only a fallacy, but a racist one that plays into the hands of the far right. Betsy Hartmann is professor emerita of development studies at Hampshire College in the US. She is the author of The America Syndrome: Apocalypse, War and Our Call to Greatness and the feminist classic Reproductive Rights and Wrongs: The Global Politics of Population Control, as well as two political thrillers about the far right. She has long worked at the intersections of population, migration, environment, and security, and has spent much of her career attempting to debunk arguments that use overpopulation to explain climate change, poverty, the loss of biodiversity, and much else besides. In this wide ranging conversation we explore reproductive rights, migration, racism, and America's vision of the coming Apocalypse. Find the full story here: Podcast by Lacuna Magazine www.lacuna.org.uk Interviewer: Adam Weymouth www.adamweymouth.com Producer and musician: Ulli Mattsson www.ullimattsson.com Further reading: http://betsyhartmann.com/ https://sites.hampshire.edu/popdev/ Reproductive Rights & Wrongs https://betsyhartmann.com/reproductive-rights-and-wrongs/ Population Control: Birth of an ideology https://www.jstor.org/stable/45130847 Threats and burdens: Challenging scarcity-driven narratives of “overpopulation” https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/abs/pii/S0016718518302458

In this episode of Spoken Earth, Adam Weymouth discusses the work of forest ecologist Suzanne Simard, who has spent a lifetime uncovering the hidden networks that bind the forest together. Suzanne Simard is a professor in the Department of Forest and Conservation Sciences at the University of British Columbia. After battling for years to have her science recognised, it has begun gathering wide attention, not just in the scientific community, but featuring in Richard Powers' Pulitzer prize-winning The Overstory and James Cameron's 2009 blockbuster Avatar. She has recently published her own book, Finding the Mother Tree, both a biography and a scientific journey of discovery. It unearths a story of community within our forests, and of how ecosystems do not only compete, but also yearn to cooperate. Find the full story here: Podcast by Lacuna Magazine www.lacuna.org.uk Interviewer: Adam Weymouth www.adamweymouth.com Producer and musician: Ulli Mattsson www.ullimattsson.com Further reading: Suzanne Simard https://suzannesimard.com/ The Mother Tree Project https://mothertreeproject.org/ TED talk: https://www.ted.com/talks/suzanne_simard_how_trees_talk_to_each_other?language=en The Department of Forest and Conservation Sciences https://fcs.forestry.ubc.ca/ TerreWEB (Terrestrial Research on Ecosystem and Worldwide Education and Broadcast) https://soilweb.ca/terreweb/ Richard Powers' The Overstory https://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/2018/06/richard-powers-the-overstory/559106/ Avatar and the Real Life Wood Wide Web https://fantasticfungi.com/the-mush-room/avatar-and-the-real-life-wood-wide-web/ [Image of Suzanne Simard by Diana Markosian]

In this new episode of Spoken Earth, Adam Weymouth speaks with Professor Peter Staudenmaier, about the historical overlap between environmentalism and far right thought, and the growing trends of ecofascism today. Staudenmaier is a professor of modern German history at Marquette University in Milwaukee, Wisconsin, and his work focuses on Nazism and Fascism, the history of racial thought, and the political history of environmentalism. Staudenmaier has been an active participant in the anarchist movement, the green movement, and the cooperative movement in the United States and Germany for over two decades. In 1995, he co-authored the book Ecofascism: Lessons from the German Experience, a work that grew out of what he saw as a lack of awareness of the history of environmentalism amongst his fellow activists. In it, he documented how Nazism frequently intersected with ecological thought in everything from organic farming through to the mantra of ‘Blood and Soil.’ But far from being confined to history, the resurgent far right is again adopting its own creed of environmentalism, and some of it is bleeding over into more mainstream views. We discuss the history, and these new worrying trends.

In this episode of Spoken Earth, Adam Weymouth discusses climate and environmental justice with academic and activist Dr Beverly Wright. Wright is an environmental justice scholar, advocate, author, activist, civic leader and professor of Sociology. For decades she has led the battle for environmental justice in the United States, and in 1992 she founded the Deep South Centre for Environmental Justice in Louisiana, the first environmental justice centre in the United States. We discuss her long battle to expose the racism inherent in the destruction of the environment, and how that battle remains as critical as ever in the face of the pandemic and the recent exposure of police brutality in the US. Find the full story here: https://lacuna.org.uk/environment/environmental-justice-is-racial-justice-the-whitewashing-of-the-environmental-movement/ Podcast by Lacuna Magazine www.lacuna.org.uk Interviewer: Adam Weymouth www.adamweymouth.com Producer and musician: Ulli Mattsson www.ullimattsson.com Further reading: Deep South Centre for Environmental Justice https://www.dscej.org/ EPA 20th Anniversary Environmental Justice video series https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9hE3SyXr9bw The website of Dr Robert Bullard, who as co-authored several books with Beverly Wright https://drrobertbullard.com/ Environmental Justice Foundation https://ejfoundation.org/

In the latest episode of Spoken Earth, Adam Weymouth speaks with Jojo Mehta about Stop Ecocide's campaign to have ecocide recognised as a crime at the International Criminal Court. Mehta co-founded Stop Ecocide in 2017, along with the barrister Polly Higgins. Higgins had dedicated her life to criminalising ecocide since 2005 when, in a moment that she describes as having changed her life, she realised that “the earth was in need of a good lawyer.” Since then her life's work became geared towards establishing ecocide at the International Criminal Court, as the fifth of the crimes of gravest concern to humanity, alongside war crimes, genocide, crimes against humanity and crimes of aggression. Mehta and Higgins co-founded Stop Ecocide to campaign towards that end. What once seemed a radical, impossible dream is now edging closer to reality. Find the full story here. Podcast by Lacuna Magazine www.lacuna.org.uk Interviewer: Adam Weymouth www.adamweymouth.com Producer and musician: Ulli Mattsson www.ullimattsson.com Further reading: Stop Ecocide https://www.stopecocide.earth/ Polly Higgins' TED talk https://www.tedxexeter.com/speakers/polly-higgins/ In 2011, a Mock Ecocide Trial was held in the Supreme Court of England and Wales https://ecocidelaw.com/the-law/mock-trial/ Cradle to Cradle, by William McDonough and Michael Braungart https://www.cradletocradle.com/ Doughnut Economics, by Kate Raworth https://www.kateraworth.com/doughnut/ Ecocide Law: https://ecocidelaw.com/ Polly Higgins obituary by Jojo Mehta: https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2019/apr/25/polly-higgins-obituary

In the third episode of Spoken Earth, Adam Weymouth speaks with the Scottish writer, academic and activist Alastair McIntosh. McIntosh is a Scottish writer, academic and activist. He is the author of several books, including Poacher's Pilgrimage and Hell and High Water, and most famously, Soil and Soul: People Versus Corporate Power. McIntosh works in the discipline of human ecology, which explores the tangled web of connections between “the natural environment and the social environment,” bringing politics, economics, sociology and more within the realm of a more traditional ecology. In particular, McIntosh, who is a practising Quaker, is interested in extending the discipline to encompass both psychology and spirituality. All of his work, whether through his activism, his teaching, his speaking or his writing, is focused on opening us up to that multidisciplinary approach. He pays particular attention to the restoration and rekindling of community, and says that more than anything, what the world needs today is a deepening of spiritual vision. Podcast by Lacuna Magazine www.lacuna.org.uk Interviewer: Adam Weymouth www.adamweymouth.com Producer and musician: Ulli Mattsson www.ullimattsson.com Further reading: Alastair's website: http://www.alastairmcintosh.com/ Alastair's books: http://www.alastairmcintosh.com/books.htm Centre for Human Ecology: http://www.che.ac.uk/ The Four Quartets: http://www.davidgorman.com/4Quartets/ Hamish Henderson: https://www.scottishpoetrylibrary.org.uk/poet/hamish-henderson/ Kenneth White: http://www.geopoetics.org.uk/what-is-geopoetics/kenneth-white-biography/ Paolo Freire: https://www.freire.org/paulo-freire/ Joseph Campbell: https://www.jcf.org/ Mircea Eliade: https://www.britannica.com/biography/Mircea-Eliade Isle of Eigg: http://isleofeigg.org/ Who Own's Scotland: http://www.whoownsscotland.org.uk/ Ram Dass: https://www.ramdass.org/

In the second episode of Spoken Earth, Adam Weymouth speaks with Professor Anna Lowenhaupt Tsing about her book The Mushroom at the End of the World, and how the matsutake mushroom can help us to see ourselves in another light. A professor of Anthropology at the University of California, Santa Cruz, Tsing's latest book takes the matsutake mushroom as its subject, a luxury product traded for vast sums in Japan, but one that refuses to be cultivated. It thrives best where old growth forest has been logged, and Tsing explores these landscapes, in particular in the Pacific Northwest. Here, she discovers various migrants and others characters making a living from the crop in these ruined landscapes, and the sprawling networks of global supply chains that refuse to be standardised. By examining the webs that hold all these different elements in place, she suggests a new way to conceive of nature. Not as something external, on a one way trajectory towards decay, but as a messy network of both ruin and flourishing, with people very much entangled within it. Podcast by Lacuna Magazine www.lacuna.org.uk Interviewer: Adam Weymouth www.adamweymouth.com Producer and musician: Ulli Mattsson www.ullimattsson.com Further reading: Prof Anna Tsing https://anthro.ucsc.edu/faculty/academic-personnel/index.php The Mushroom at the end of the World https://press.princeton.edu/books/paperback/9780691178325/the-mushroom-at-the-end-of-the-world The New Wild, an essay by Anna Tsing https://www.littletoller.co.uk/the-clearing/the-new-wild-by-anna-tsing/ Feral atlas http://anthropocene.au.dk/feral-atlas/ Satoyama https://ourworld.unu.edu/en/greetings-from-satoyama John the Poacher https://www.esquire.com/uk/food-drink/a15768/john-the-poacher-east-london-foraging/

In the first episode of Lacuna Magazine's new environmental podcast, Spoken Earth, award-winning author Adam Weymouth speaks with British anthropologist Hugh Brody, discussing land rights, his time in the Arctic, and the hunter-gatherer view of the world. Brody demonstrates how what we believe to be universal truths in fact pertain only to the farmers’ way of conceiving of the world. The indigenous viewpoint is radically different, and one which could teach us much about our own. Yet these ways of life are being eradicated at an ever increasing rate, and now cling on at only the most inhospitable corners of our planet. Brody has made much of his life in these places, and the insights that he has brought back from them are essential. Podcast by Lacuna Magazine https://lacuna.org.uk/ Interviewer: Adam Weymouth http://www.adamweymouth.com/ Producer and musician: Ulli Mattsson http://www.ullimattsson.com/ Further reading: Hugh Brody on Faber https://www.faber.co.uk/author/hugh-brody/ Hugh Brody on IMDP https://www.imdb.com/name/nm0111035/