Heat! Camera! Action!

It’s early morning in late summer, and I’m with turtle dove expert Mark Nowers of the RSPB. We’re sitting in a wild field margin at Braxted Hall estate, location for wilding and nature recovery through Biodiversity Net Gain (BNG), and site for the rare turtle dove. In the UK, there were 135,000 pairs in the 1960s, today just 2000. Just recently, he watched a pair on the hill behind us, purring at four in the morning. “We come offering solutions,” says Mark. They stitch the nature jigsaw together across multiple farms. His role: “Visit a landowner, listen to their story...

In the walled garden at Braxted Hall Estate, Duncan Clark talks about 30 years of rewilding of the family farm, and how it is beginning to connect up with other efforts across the landscapes of Essex. He describes developing multiple strands of business, including as a wedding venue. Farming has benefitted hugely from public support for the transition to sustainability and nature restoration. Now the new mechanism of Biodiversity Net Gain (BNG) is bringing money from developers to the land: developers must offset nature losses by creating more, either nearby or further away on farms. Braxted Hall is being transformed...

We’re sitting on the banks of the River Stour in “Constable Country.” It’s the home territory of the painter 250 years after his birth. Susan Owens is acclaimed author, art historian and curator: her most recent book is “Constable’s Year.” She was curator of paintings at the V&A Museum, and told on arrival she’d have to take on John Constable. What she found was a painter brave enough to invent a new attentiveness to the patterns of both nature and the working environments of the countryside: in fields, on the river, by the mills. He broke rules, est...

So – this is that sort of trailer that comes in part after the vehicle. Looking back as well as forward.

Series 1: 40 shows to Dec 23rd this year. In all 20 women guests, 20 men

Series 2 will begin around the end of March 2027. About the time that my new book, Bamboo and Butterfly is published.

It’s wonderful, isn’t it! Walking in the woods and wilds created by each guest. Transformational. Creating a huge and happy web. Some of the stories will become myth. Myth is relational isn’t it; it creates the web.

Big th...

We’re at the home of Rob Hopkins close to Totnes in south Devon, and we’re talking time travel. Rob is the co-founder of the Transition Movement, and we chat about the revelatory moment when he saw a T-shirt saying, “I’ve been to the future. We won.” He says of the climate movement, “We are losing this at the moment really badly.” He observes there sometimes comes a moment in life that just wants to change you: “And you just have to do this thing.” He bought a hazmat suit, an astronaut’s bulb helmet, and built a time machine. To a...

I’m chatting with historian, translator and author Moudhy al-Rashid in Wolfson College in Oxford, overlooking the gardens and pond. Moudhy works with the extraordinary record of cuneiform languages written on clay tablets with reed styluses. These open and period of deep history of some 3500 years between the two rivers of the Tigris and Euphrates. Most of the tablets records of daily life; some are great hymns and stories. We talk of The Epic of Gilgamesh, the oldest surviving written story, and of the Hymns of Enheduana, the priestess and first named author in human history. We also talk of...

I’m chatting with Jenny Tolhurst in her Danbury garden. She is the first female Lord Lieutenant of Essex, and has been in post for nine years. It is a multi-dimensional role across counties of the UK, representing and serving the monarch of the day. The man duties including organising royal visits, giving out King’s Awards for Volunteers and for Enterprise, and celebrating local action. She commends the rich voluntary work in the county on the environment and support for farmers. We talk about the day in 2002 when the seawalls were deliberately breached to create new marshland and redu...

In the churchyard of Great Henny church, I’m chatting in the breezy sunshine with Roger Morris, the Bishop of Colchester. He’s brought his purple hard hat. We’re at St Mary the Virgin church, one of six churches in the diocese of Chelmsford that has had to be closed because of the effects of climate change. Soils and ground experiencing severe wetting and then summer drying are moving, and 1000-year-old churches without foundations are moving too. At Great Henny both the east and west ends are cracking and sliding away. Two of the five marks of mission, he say...

In his home in Stroud, oral storyteller and author Anthony Nanson chats about story and the current polycrises. We hear about the three essential ingredients for narrative story: progression of events in time, characters embodied, the imagery of place. Anthony talks of the vulnerability of storytelling, and yet its limitless possibility too. He talks of the Bath Storytelling Circle and storytelling workshops for midwifes under pressure in the NHS. Through enchantment, story creates intent and imagination that counter the problems of deterministic thinking. He says, “Kindness towards other people will be essential to address the crises.”

Anthony’s book...

We’re in a flower-rich meadow in Warwickshire to hear from award-winning playwright Sarah Woods. Sarah works on story across a range of media. She says, story is a way of being. It’s always co-created, including in our minds as we read or listen, changing the “dappled light of the now.” She has written 30+ plays and dramatisations, and an original opera. Her dramatisations for BBC radio, such as on Das Kapital and Darwin’s On the Origin of Species, bring to life ideas and works that are rarely read in the original. These move from explanation to drama. Sarah is w...

We’re on location in Yadvinder Malhi’s office in Oxford, professor and director of the Leverhulme Centre for Nature Recovery. Yadvinder’s work-origin story begins when he first climbs sampling towers in the Amazon to look out on 1000 miles of rainforest in every direction. “I was absolutely bewitched. I felt it viscerally.” We talk about culture and nature, the wild force of nature, and the sense of living in a belly of something huge. He recalls being sent back to India aged six to reconnect, and see the value of the huge family network as another support system. “Vibrancy is...

In Mann Woods in central Essex, therapist and outdoor leader Jo Roberts chats about the work of the Wilderness Foundation and the transformative power of being in nature. We sit around the fire as winter sun falls. She talks about the value of learning small competencies for young people, and how nature interferes to remind us of something greater. Just look up, count the stars. There’s a surprising finding about young people and social media too. She also talks about how discomfort takes us into deep places. Jo says, “the tears fall quickly when you’re in the wilder...

I’m chatting with author, academic and former double UN Special Rapporteur Olivier De Schutter at a street table in the heat of an Oxford summer. Olivier is professor at the University of Louvain in Belgium, and says, “We have not made the economy inclusive by design; we have allowed it to operate in another way." The new Roadmap for Eradicating of Poverty Beyond Growth goes beyond 20 new metrics recently proposed as alternatives to GDP, and this Roadmap now contains 80 options for governments, businesses and civil society to take ever-lengthening steps towards a new inclusive and sustainable society.

Gr...

I’m talking online with Charlotte Hollins who with brother Ben are the farmers and business leaders of the Fordhall Community Land Initiative in Shropshire. Their father Arthur was an early adopter of organic methods in the 1940s, also of inviting the community in. over the years, natural and social assets accumulated. But their landlord sought to evict them after he died. They were in a deep hole. For a change, the small people win, and Charlotte and Ben come up with a model to sell non-profit shares in the farm: 8000 people invest in the idea. They can see th...

In his farmhouse kitchen in central Essex, Simon Lyster chats about local nature recovery. He is Chair of the Essex Local Nature Partnership that comprises 40 organisations. Like all counties there is now an obligation to produce a statutory Local Nature Recovery Strategy (LNRS). This is a spatial map of the whole county, where the aim is to protect and conserve 30% of the land and sea are by 2030 (30 by 30). It’s about making nature “bigger, better, and more connected.”

Over several decades, we have lost bio-abundance. We can recall the moth snowstorms driving at night. Now they are gone...

I’m sitting with Hattie Phillips in the OWLS community garden in Maldon during one of the summer heatwaves. She was one of the first WWF Youth Ambassadors, and is currently studying at Black Mountains College in Wales. She is a very fine communicator, and already has great experience of speaking in public, performing in theatre, engaging with community action and national climate events. She says, “We can’t solve the climate crisis without nature,” and notes that “Everyone can make a difference, but not everyone has a voice.” She also says, engagement with activism was so exciting: “I went from bein...

In this online chat, award winning actress, director, producer and writer Aria Mckenna talks from her north Florida home on building bridges between climate scientists, policy makers and the media. She talks of efforts to get positive climate and nature narratives inside TV and films, and how to go beyond the tendency to think drama can only be created around apocalypses. “Climate disinformation,” she says, “is so successful, we’re at a breaking point.” The annual Climate Summit in Hollywood brings together a wide variety of writers, actors, producers, all personally concerned about the climate crisis. This is already moving the...

In his wildlife-friendly garden in East Sussex, I’m chatting with author and scientist Dave Goulson about insects, and especially bees. “They’re clinging on in little fragments of habitat.” Across the world, there are one million species of insect, and perhaps another 4 million awaiting identification. But they’re in severe decline. The land has become hostile to insects, particularly from the use of insecticides and herbicides by farmers, gardeners and urban authorities. “It mystifies me,” he says, “why we allow the sale of poisons for our gardens.” We talk of the dreaded neonics – and how the poison spreads from fields into wil...

I’m sitting with the award-winning oral storyteller and author, Danyah Miller, in her West Sussex garden to hear about “swimming in the sea of story.” Danyah tells of vision and method – how story works best and what we might do to create story. She’s the first person to sing on the podcast, showing how young children can come to see how beautiful is the world. “Sharing stories in the seasons opens up a connection with the natural environment.” Personification is key too: speak of Mother Earth, Grandmother Moon, Brother Wind, Friend Robin, the Standing People. Story works slantwise to c...

In his Field at Maplestead in north Essex, author and nature restorer James Canton chats about the transformation by renaturing of small spaces in the landscape. “I evolved,” he says, “the field evolved.” From barren land to cricket pitch to abundant patch of wildflower meadow, scrub, trees and pond. We talk about how life recognises life, and how when you create the conditions, nature comes fast. He describes digging out of the pond, and how quickly insects arrived, followed by fish (eggs from the feet of ducks, maybe), and great crested newts (walking great journeys across the land from other wa...

In our online chat in her Southampton studio, we hear from activist, author and creator Denise Baden about the power of positive story. She is Professor of Sustainable Business, and came to realise that teaching business ethics does not make students more ethical. She switched to good role models in story, finding these created a different kind of motivation. “We remember stuff embedded in story,” she says. Also, “It’s more fun!”

She tells of her A Jigsaw to Save the World project, to paint a picture of the good stuff happening. And how it felt to have her w...

We’re talking online about rewilding, Ben Goldsmith at his London home. Ben is activist, rewilding advocate, financier, farm owner and host of the podcast Rewilding the World. Ben talks about rewilding cities, and the work for the Mayor of London’s taskforce, and how access to open spaces brought him close to nature as a child. Less tidiness is needed, he says. He describes the rewilding of his Somerset farm, and how the tragic and traumatic loss of his daughter Iris led to a whole new approach. He and other farmers/landowners have hopes for a rewilded corridor from...

We’re sitting at the edge of land and sea on Mersea Island, the tide is out. There are terns and gulls, bees flying, a perfect place to hear from Leanne Hepburn, director of the Ocean Literacy Project. All is dependent on a healthy ocean. It absorbs heat, pollution, plastic; it influences us in return. Leanne talks of her step away from academic security, the sense of freedom and scary vulnerability. Science is vital, yet it is only part of the story of how we change how people care, how they feel. She was the first person in her fa...

In her Somerset home in Wiveliscombe, Nicky Saunter chats about her life as author, poet, mask maker and activist. On the table is a large mask of Frog, and in the kitchen are masks of Octopus, Beaver and Ant. She says, “You wear a mask at an outdoor event, and it frees you up. You become a more extreme version of yourself.” People also instantly smile, put on a mask, become a frog. Everyone’s immediately laughing. 

What can go wrong? Nothing. They’re bomb proof. 

Such street art closes gaps between humans and animals. Masks and...

In this online conversation, I’m chatting with an old friend and radical agricultural and development educator, Richard Bawden. He’s on the Sunshine Coast in Queensland, I’m in Suffolk. This is a longer pod than usual. Richard is dying from cancer (he’s not living with it). It’s metastasised, it’s now untreatable. The phases are coming fast.

And yet. We laugh, tell stories, wander over a life of 87 years. In lieu of something written, it’s a conventional autobiography, squeezed into just over an hour. Before the end of the recording, I say, using clunky l...

In this online chat, author, poet and community activist Mandy Haggith talks from her Assynt croft in the north-west of Scotland. She is using poetry to create a sense of agency when so much seems bleak. We hear of community development in Scotland, how policy has enabled local people to but estates, islands and urban plots. It’s hard, though, to create the income streams for local people. Mandy talks of the use of poetry in local projects on nature recovery and reducing fossil fuel dependence. She says, “At least, verse can’t make it worse.”

She says, “L...

At Abbotts Hall by the Blackwater Estuary, chief executive of Essex Wildlife Trust, Rich Yates, chats about the 67 years of county wildlife action. We sit in sunshine by a pond, and hear about the Trus’s many reserves and visitor centres. And how the focus on nature has shifted from protecting and conserving to improving. This puts people at the heart of it all. The Trust relies on a dense network of 2000 volunteers to manage their 100 reserves and engage with the public. 

We talk of the timescales of conservation and nature recovery: 60+ years (so far) for Fingringhoe Wic...

In her home in central Suffolk, First Light Festival director Genevieve Christie chats about the reinvention of Lowestoft around the free festival held at the summer solstice. Once famed fishing town, then seaside resort, like many coastal places Lowestoft had struggled to invent a third way for contemporary times. It is the place in the UK where first light appears, and the idea of first light led to the establishment of the summer-solstice free festival on the South Beach and promenade. First Light works on the idea of place as an asset, on creating pride, on bringing all people...

In our online discussion, Jacquie McGlade chats about her unique perspective on environmental harms and solutions. She’s Professor at UCL in London and Strathmore in Kenya, is former Director of the European Environment Agency, Chief Scientist at UNEP (the UN Environment Programme), and is a resident of Kenya. 

She talks of hope in the Global South, and how the young of Africa will be future world leaders to get us out of modern polycrises. The North is brittle and fearful, where hope seems so easily dashed. In the South, “Hope always springs eternal.” She talks of nationa...

In the garden at Bottengoms, on an early spring morning, biographer and art curator Ian Collins chats about the 100-year-life of Ronnie Blythe. 

We talk about how Ronnie was hyper-local to the landscapes of south Suffolk and north Essex, yet wrote in a way that told of the whole world. His life was hard. He lived in the shadow of the workhouse, and yet he found great contentment. Visitors were always charmed by the magic of his home and garden. Ronnie published most of his book aged over 60, some of the best at over 80. His was a f...

In his garden in the Norfolk Broads, philosopher, author and climate activist Rupert Read talks to me about climate movements and action. 

We hear of the formation of Extinction Rebellion, thrutopian ideas and transformative adaptation. And how too the declaration of climate emergencies moved thinking and local policies. We hear about the need to focus on a climate majority: the middle 60-70% of the population who know something bad is going on, but don’t know quite what to do. Thrutopia implies going through, a leaning in, the taking of good from bad. 

Rupert’s heroin...

I’m chatting online with prize-winning global change scientist and film-maker Phoebe Barnard in her borrowed home in Ireland, as the sun breaks through on her and her happy dog. 

We talk about Phoebe’s life as a climate scientist, about international negotiations and processes that bring countries together, about film making for positive stories. She describes having to leave beautiful Washington State in the US. “We work on change, after all," she says.” We talk about the need for new thinking, a new story. “We can choose” she says of taking agency and ownership. 

“Feminism is a pu...

In his brim-full office at the British Antarctic Survey in Cambridge, I chat with Lloyd Peck just after his return from a spell at Rothera Research Station. We talk about how fast things are changing. He’s a veteran of some 800 cold water dives, often under the ice. The Antarctic is the site of enormous aquatic biodiversity, much completely unique. We talk of great sea spiders and fish with no haemoglobin; of low temperature enzymes that will help in organ donor transport. But he’s seen glaciers and ice sheets retreat two miles; he’s seen rain fall instead of sno...

In a borrowed room at local Tone Dale House, author and activist Anita Roy chats to me about personal and community transformation. We are in Wellington in Somerset, winner of the national prize for best transition town, and we hear how the people did it. They created a new commons, a 65-acre woodland-orchard that all are free to use. Anita talks about the up-down down-up arc of writing and how it mirrors our own lives. She says, “I wonder what this is going to be like in 20 years; everything’s getting worse, except when I think of Fox’s Field...

A 5 minute trailer for Heat! Camera! Action!

Heat – too much in the air and oceans

Camera – for focus and attention

Action – what we need

We’re in a hole. The planet’s losing. This is how we get out.

Story with a swerve, slantwise.

More hope, more agency.

In the pod, we hear from culture leaders and wanderers, the crossers of boundaries, the story-tellers. 

Good story is not just a hiding place. It’s a finding place.

My guests ar...