Episode 173: Megan Eaves-Egenes - Nightfaring

Megan Eaves-Egenes is a Lowell Thomas Award-winning travel writer whose work explores the intersections of landscape, culture, and the natural world. A passionate advocate for dark skies, she is the editor of DarkSky International's Nightscape magazine and founded Dark Sky London, a community group focused on light pollution awareness.

In this episode of Nature Revisited, Megan alerts us to our ever-brightening world. The proliferation of artificial lighting around the world has created so much light pollution that many of us can no longer see the Milky Way or experience the restful embrace of a natural night. As the dark becomes ever more elusive, it is a critical moment to stop, look up, and consider what we lose with the disappearing stars.

Episode 172: Gabrielle Cerberville - Gathered

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Gabrielle Cerberville aka the Chaotic Forager is a foraging educator, community mycologist, and climate advocate. Known for her informative, funny, high-energy social media content, Gabrielle has given keynotes, classes, and forays around the country. She researches the intersection between art, science, and our responsibility to understand, protect, and communicate with the natural world.

On this episode of Nature Revisited, Gabrielle invites us to move beyond our comfort zones, open our eyes, and dig into the earth. She argues that foraging is the past, present, and future of food, and the key to unlocking a reciprocal relationship with the land that feeds us. Through learning to engage with the world of wild food, we can also build a kinder, more respectful relationship with ourselves and our communities.

Episode 171: Beronda L. Montgomery - When Trees Testify

Beronda L. Montgomery is a writer, researcher, science communicator, and professor at Michigan State University and Grinnell College. With a PhD in Plant Biology, her research has centered on how photosynthetic organisms adapt to changes in their environment.

On this episode of Nature Revisited, Montgomery explores the intersection of trees in America and Black History & Culture. Pecan trees were domesticated by an enslaved African; sycamore trees were both havens and signposts for people trying to escape enslavement; poplar trees are historically associated with lynching. Montgomery explains how knowledge surrounding these trees has shaped America since the very beginning and are material witnesses to the lives of enslaved Africans and their descendants.

Episode 170: Alexandra Mitjans - Ashoka and Changemakers

Alexandra Mitjans is a Co-Director of Ashoka, working to promote a global movement of change agents through the identification and support of social entrepreneurs and individuals with innovative solutions to society’s most pressing social, cultural, and environmental challenges.

On this episode of Nature Revisited, Alexandra recounts how she was drawn to the calling of social and environmental action, her personal mission, and her various roles at Ashoka. We also hear from a selection of Changemakers – Joaquín Leguía (ANIA), Hanli Prinsloo (I AM WATER Ocean Conservation) and Wietse van der Werf (Sea Ranger Service) – about their own missions and entrepreneurial projects.

Episode 169: Terry Tempest Williams - The Glorians

Terry Tempest Williams is an American writer, educator, conservationist, and activist. Writing in the genre of creative nonfiction and lyrical essay, her work focuses on social and environmental justice ranging from issues of ecology and the protection of public lands and wildness, to women's health, to exploring humanity's relationship to culture and nature.

On this episode of Nature Revisited, Williams discusses her latest work The Glorians and the formative experiences in her life that led to its writing. A Glorian is the name Williams has given ordinary, often overlooked presences—animal, plant, memory, moment—that reveal our shared vulnerability and interconnectedness with the natural world. Recognizing the Glorians within our own lives can be a testament to the power of witness, a field guide to finding grace in the unexpected, and a moving invitation to engage with one another and our surroundings with renewed intention.

Episode 168: Mark Granlund - Art For Nature

Cove Edge (oil on cavas)

Mark Granlund is an artist, writer, and public art administrator who explores the personal experience of natural landscapes, human activity and contemporary culture. His work utilizes traditional genres of landscape and still life. In his landscapes, Granlund shares the rhythms, layers and patterns that he senses particular to the site, capturing the bodily experience of place.

On this episode of Nature Revisited, Mark recounts his formative experiences as a developing artist which led him to develop the particular approach, style and themes present in his works. He describes how his artistic process, materials, and motivations fit into a greater nature-conscious sensibility and how that extends into his writing and his work in public art administration.

[Mark’s Substack]

Glade (oil on canvas)

Water’s Edge (oil on canvas)

Cloud Over Lake Como (oil on canvas)

Episode 167: Eyal Frank - Environmental Economist

Eyal Frank is an Assistant Professor at the University of Chicago Harris School of Public Policy. Working at the intersection of ecology and economics, his research addresses three broad questions – how animals contribute to specific production functions, how market dynamics reduce natural habitats and biodiversity, and what the indirect costs of conservation policies are.

On this episode of Nature Revisited, Frank explains how these areas of research present causal inference challenges, as manipulating ecosystems and species at large scales is often infeasible. Citing real world examples such as the collapse of vulture populations in India due to a livestock medication, or the imbalance in insect populations due to declining bat colonies caused by white-nose syndrome, Frank describes how unintended side effects from disrupting the delicate balance of animal behaviors can lead to catastrophic economic results. By drawing natural experiments from ecology and policy, it is possible to employ econometric techniques to estimate different pieces of the puzzle regarding the social cost of biodiversity losses.

Episode 166: Stephanie McDonough - Farm To Table Kids

Stephanie McDonough is the founder of Farm To Table Kids, an educational movement that helps children connect with nature through regenerative gardening, farm to table cooking, and nature crafting.

On this episode of Nature Revisited, Stephanie aka 'Farmer Steph' recounts how her backyard project of introducing local kids to gardening transformed over time into a nationwide movement. With her partnership program sharing the Farm To Table Kids teaching model with schools, farms, and organizations, children are learning to nurture a lifelong appreciation for local agriculture and being empowered to see themselves as farmers, chefs, and helpful members of their communities.

Episode 165: Priyanka Kumar - The Light Between The Apple Trees

Priyanka Kumar is a prolific and widely published writer who has authored over a hundred essays and reviews on subjects including the high desert and bird migration. Her latest book The Light Between The Apple Trees brilliantly weaves together science and childhood memories with the apple’s storied history.

On this episode of Nature Revisited, Kumar invites us on a transformative journey to rediscover apples. Today we rarely encounter more than a handful of varieties, yet sixteen thousand apple varieties were once celebrated in America, their mature and wild orchards acting as havens for creatures from hummingbirds to bears and a living connection to generations past. Join us as Kumar unearths a rich and complex history of apples while illuminating how we can reimagine our relationship with nature.

Episode 164: Marcia Bjornerud - Turning To Stone

Marcia Bjornerud is an American structural geologist and writer. She is the Walter Schober Professor of Environmental Studies and Professor of Geosciences at Lawrence University. She is also the author of Timefulness, Reading The Rocks, and Turning To Stone: Discovering the Subtle Wisdom of Rocks.

On this episode of Nature Revisited, Bjornerud helps us interpret the language of the rocks that surround us, and reveals how our lives can be enriched by understanding our heritage on this old and creative planet. Earth has been reinventing itself for more than four billion years and rocks are the hidden infrastructure that keep the planet functioning, from sandstone aquifers purifying the water we drink to basalt formations slowly regulating global climate.

Episode 163: Amorina Kingdon - Sing Like Fish

Amorina Kingdon is a science journalist and fiction writer living in Victoria, British Columbia. While working as a staff writer and researcher for Hakai Magazine covering ocean and coastal science around the world, she became fascinated by underwater sound. The result is her recent book Sing Like Fish - How Sound Rules Life Under Water.

On this episode of Nature Revisited, Kingdon introduces us to the emerging science of just how many animals under water, from larvae to lobsters to sea lions, rely on—and are impacted by—sound. Sound travels four times faster under water than in air and conveys a wealth of information about food, threats, and the surrounding environment. Even animals that don’t speak or have 'ears' still find ways to listen. This is why the widespread din of ships, pile drivers, motorboats, sonar, air guns, and other human-made noise is so concerning.

Episode 162: Kelsey Timmerman - Regenerating Earth

Kelsey Timmerman is a journalist, speaker, and the New York Times bestselling author of Regenerating Earth, Where Am I Wearing?, Where Am I Eating?, and Where Am I Giving?. His immersive storytelling takes readers, audiences, and listeners to the people and places behind the products they consume, exploring global issues through deeply human experiences.

On this episode of Nature Revisited, Timmerman invites us to rethink the status quo of industrialized agriculture, recalling his global explorations of alternative farming methods. From the Amazon to Hawaii, Kenya to George, he describes farmers, activists and indigenous leaders who work with nature rather than against it. Their regenerative practices build soil, strengthen communities, and even help fight climate change. Timmerman reveals how the choices we make about how we grow our food can reconnect us to land, life, and one another —and offer purpose in a time of ecological crisis.

The Arhuaco people of Colombia's Sierra Nevada de Santa Marta

Episode 161: Elspeth Hay - Feed Us With Trees

Elspeth Hay is a writer, public radio host and a proponent of place-based living. Her recent book Feed Us With Trees reveals how nut trees can transform our diets, landscapes, and future.

On this episode of Nature Revisited, Hay explains why we don't need to choose between feeding ourselves and sustaining the planet. With agriculture being a significant driver of climate change and biodiversity loss, restoring perennial food systems centered on nut trees can help build a future that is abundant, equitable, and resilient.

Episode 160: Lance Richardson - True Nature: The Lives of Peter Matthiessen

Lance Richardson is an award-winning journalist, essayist, educator, and the author of House of Nutter (2018) and recently, True Nature: the Pilgrimage of Peter Matthiessen (2025).

On this episode of Nature Revisited, contributing interviewer Scott Chaskey sits down with Lance to discuss his 8-year process and deep research involved in writing the first biography of Peter Matthiessen, the novelist, naturalist, and Zen roshi, whose trailblazing work championed Native American rights and helped usher in the modern environmental movement. Drawing upon a multitude of sources, interviews, and even re-enacting Matthiessen's 250-mile trek across the Himalayas, Richardson describes the multi-faceted writer's uncanny ability to sense connections between ecological decline, racism, and labor exploitation—to express, eloquently and presciently, that “in a damaged human habitat, all problems merge.”​

Episode 159: Amanda Leland - Sea Change

Amanda Leland is the Executive Director of the Environmental Defense Fund, bringing unlikely allies together to find the ways that work to support healthy communities and economies while reducing climate impacts. She previously led EDF’s Oceans program, a global team in 14 countries focused on reversing overfishing while supporting thriving fishing communities, triggering the dramatic economic and ecological recovery of U.S. fisheries and beyond.

On this episode of Nature Revisited, Leland discusses the surprising partnerships and solutions that are quietly revolutionizing the fishing industry. Fishermen who once followed established policies and practices to no avail are now working alongside scientists, government agencies, and environmental groups to lead real change that is preventing overfishing and securing resource longevity.