Susan Poizner is an award-winning author, journalist, urban orchardist, and fruit tree care educator based in Toronto, Canada. She trains arborists, master gardeners, and community and home orchardists in fruit tree maintenance. In this episode of Nature Revisited, Susan delves into the value of fruit trees in city landscapes, highlighting the aesthetic and health benefits that urban orchards contribute to city living, and how urban orchards provide direct access to fresh produce while bolstering environmental consciousness.
Episode 110: Wallace J. Nichols - Blue Mind
Dr. Wallace J. Nichols is a scientist, activist, community organizer, and author helping people re-establish healthier, more creative and regenerative relationships with themselves, each other and their environment through water, wonder, wellness and wildlife. His work has been broadcast on NPR, BBC, PBS, National Geographic and Animal Planet, as well as numerous popular periodicals. His most recent work is Blue Mind: The Surprising Science That Shows How Being Near, In, On, or Under Water Can Make You Happier, Healthier, More Connected, and Better at What You Do. In this episode of Nature Revisited, Wallace delves into his lifelong relationship with water and how it has shaped his career and personal philosophy. Drawing inspiration from Melville's Moby Dick, the esteemed neurologist Dr. Oliver Sacks, and much more, Nichols articulates the concept of “Blue Mind”—a state of being that celebrates the serene connection and health benefits that water provides, echoing a sentiment revered across various cultures and spiritual traditions.
Episode 109: Linda Hogan - Voice Of The Spirit
Linda Hogan is an American poet, writer, academic, environmentalist and member of the Chickasaw Nation. Intimately connected to her political and spiritual concerns, Hogan’s poetry deals with issues such as the environment and eco-feminism, the relocation of Native Americans, and historical narratives, including oral histories. In this episode of Nature Revisited, Linda recites some of her poems and talks about being raised as part of the Chickasaw community, her discovery and pursuit of contemporary poetry, and how the power of words can express and reconnect us with the wonders of nature.
Episode 108: Colton Carlson - Nature's Embrace
Colton Carlson is a retired US Marine who lost his legs from injuries sustained during a tour of duty in Afghanistan. Originally from Colorado, home of The Rocky Mountains, Colton joins us from his home in Vermont, where he and his family settled after Colton earned a degree in Mathematics from Dartmouth. In this episode of Nature Revisited, Colton talks about his life before and after his assignment, his life-changing incident on duty, and how his love of nature helped him overcome immense challenges to reclaim his health, independence, and pursuit of outdoor activities and sports including his passion: mountain climbing.
Episode 107: Rue Mapp - Outdoor Afro
Rue Mapp is the Founder and CEO of Outdoor Afro, a national not-for-profit organization that has become the nation's leading, cutting-edge network in celebrating and inspiring Black connections and leadership in nature. She is also the author of Nature Swagger, a book showcasing Black joy and strength in spaces from which they have either historically been excluded, or less represented, and makes for an inventive and uplifting celebration of Black joy in nature. In this episode of Nature Revisited, Rue recounts the formative experiences growing up in Oakland, CA - as well as the greater Bay Area - that instilled in her a love of nature and a strong desire to help make empowering experiences in nature available to the Black community.
Episode 106: James Canton - Sacred Grounds
James Canton is an author and lecturer whose writing is mainly concerned with the ties between nature, literature and the environment. Often involving exploring the distant past, his books include Ancient Wondering, From Cairo to Baghdad, and The Oak Papers. His most recent book Grounded takes him on a journey through England, considering the private markers in the landscape which are sacred to individuals and which connect us to the people from our past. In this episode of Nature Revisited, James reveals how our ancient ancestors were not as primitive as we might imagine, as well as what we can learn from - and how we're connected to - the sacred sites and grounds of our landscapes.
The Lion Man
Episode 105: J. Drew Lanham - The Home Place
Joseph Drew Lanham is an ornithologist, naturalist, writer, and poet combining conservation science with personal, historical, and cultural narratives of nature. Lanham's research and teaching focuses on the impacts of forest management on birds and other wildlife. He brings this ecological knowledge as well as his perspective as a Black man living in the South to bear on his work as a storyteller, poet, and passionate advocate for bird-watching, outdoor recreation, and environmental conservation and stewardship. In this episode of Nature Revisited, Drew discusses the inspirations for his award-winning book The Home Place - Memoirs of a Colored Man's Love Affair With Nature. With meditations on nature and belonging, he explores the contradictions of Black identity and how he finds joy and freedom in the same land his ancestors were bound to.
Episode 104: Scott Chaskey - Soil and Spirit
Scott Chaskey is a farmer, poet, and pioneer of the international Community Supported Agriculture (CSA) movement. Weaving together his passion for farming and prose, Scott has penned multiple books on the community farming movement, creating a road-map for Americans who want to live off the land as a community. In this episode of Nature Revisited, Scott recounts the formative events of his life which led him to his love of gardening, farming, and the land - experiences recounted in his collection of essays Soil and Spirit. From Maine to Cornwall, England, planning rotations of fields and tending to crops and their ecosystems, Chaskey cultivated a longstanding commitment to food sovereignty and organic farming with a belief that humble attention to microbial life and diversity of species provides invaluable lessons for building healthy human communities.
Episode 103: Sara Gagne - Nature At Your Door
Sara Gagné is an author and associate professor of landscape ecology in the Department of Geography and Earth Sciences at the University of North Carolina. Her research, teaching, and writing is dedicated to understanding and communicating how people and nature interact in cities. In this episode of Nature Revisited, Stefan and Sara discuss her book Nature at Your Door: Connecting with the Wild, which explores how what we do in our yards matters just as much as the way our local parks and nature preserves are managed. Beginning with a perspective of the yard, moving onto streets, parks, neighborhoods and cities, Sara illustrates how people and nature are vitally connected in the urban and suburban landscape.
Episode 102: Tony Hiss - Rescuing The Planet
Tony Hiss is the author of fifteen books, including the award-winning The Experience of Place. He was a staff writer at The New Yorker for more than thirty years, was a visiting scholar at New York University for twenty-five years, and has lectured around the world. In this episode of Nature Revisited, Tony discusses his latest work Rescuing The Planet - Protecting Half The Land To Heal The Earth. Covering topics including the vast Boreal Forest, global animal tracking, the origin of the Appalachian Trail, and various conservation initiatives and the people behind them, Tony offers a broad perspective of the Earth's biosphere: its land, its elements, its plants and animals, its greatest threats--and what we can do to keep it, and ourselves, alive.
Episode 101: Christopher Preston - Tenacious Beasts
Christopher J. Preston is a writer, public speaker, and environmental philosopher based in Missoula, Montana. His new book Tenacious Beasts takes an inspiring look at wildlife species that are defying the odds and teaching important lessons about how to share a planet. In this episode of Nature Revisited, Christopher talks about an optimistic future with wildlife, envisioning a fresh way to live alongside the natural world in the Anthropocene age. Touching on different facets of ecological restoration from Indigenous knowledge to rewilding practices, Christopher describes, with a measure of hope, a future in which humans and animals can once again coexist.
Episode 100: Steven Hawley - Cracked
Steven Hawley is an environmental journalist who writes about rivers, dams, and the ecological impacts they have on salmonids in the American West. He is the author of Cracked: The Future of Dams in a Hot, Chaotic World (2023), Recovering a Lost River (2011), and the writer and co-producer of an award-winning documentary, Dammed to Extinction (2019). In this 100th episode of Nature Revisited, Steven walks us through the history of extensive, misguided dam building in the United States and the resulting environmental, economic, and human repercussions. Citing startling examples, he explains how the costs of maintaining a sprawling water storage system in an increasingly arid world under the ravages of climate chaos is well beyond the benefits furnished.
Episode 99: Charlie Bluett - The Abstract in Nature
Sea Glass Beach
Charlie Bluett is an abstract and expressionist artist whose works are driven by his overriding passion for nature and the natural world. His contemporary abstract colorfield paintings focus on the natural scenes & objects we are exposed to within the Earth's vast and varied outdoor environments. In this episode of Nature Revisited, Charlie walks us through his early life in England and eventual discovery of New England in the US - Vermont in particular - which he chose as his home and an essential source of inspiration for his art. Charlie expounds upon the meaning of the abstract, the line between art and artist, and describes his artistic process as an effort to translate the light, colors and textures, ebb and flow, and ephemeral beauty of nature through his works.
Dune
Sea Shimmer
The Winter Walk
Episode 98: The Wildlands Conservancy - Behold The Beauty
Founded in 1995, The Wildlands Conservancy is dedicated to preserving the beauty and biodiversity of the earth and providing programs so that children may know the wonder and joy of nature. TWC has established the largest nonprofit nature preserve system on the US West Coast, open to the public, and encompassing nearly 200,000 acres of diverse landscapes. In this episode of Nature Revisited we meet Executive Director Frazier Haney who explains the founding and mission of TWC, as well as its core approach to preservation and education. Additional topics include fostering a positive impact on conservation through land ownership, building relationships with local indigenous communities, the challenges of climate disruption and wildfires, TWC's plans for the future, and the Behold The Beauty association which helps foster the appreciation of Natural Beauty in people’s daily lives.
Episode 97: John Perlin - A Forest Journey
John Perlin is a lecturer, consultant, and the author of several scientific/historical books including A Forest Journey: Wood and Civilization, published by Harvard University press as one of its "One-Hundred Great Books" and a "Classic in Science and World History." In this episode of Nature Revisited, John takes us back in time to discover how wood was the foundation upon which most societies were built. With wood serving as the basis of metallurgy, ceramics, architecture, the construction of ships and more, civilizations rose and fell because each began with a plentiful forest resource, used it up, and was extinguished – to be succeeded by a newer center, closer to a new rich swathe of forest. By viewing human history in the context of wood as humanity's most essential material, we see that humanity's future relies on renewing our symbiotic relationship with the trees that have sustained us.
