A small hummingbird flew over 1,900 kilometres, and ended up in a Saskatchewan backyard before a cold winter. The hummingbird – later called Yosemite Sam in national news stories – had performed something called reverse migration, a phenomenon where a bird migrates in the wrong direction. Sam ended up in the care of today’s guest, who protected the Californian bird through a Canadian winter, while she puzzled over how to rehabilitate the bird to the wild. Jan Shadick is a wildlife rehabi...
Each of us is deeply connected to soil, whether we see or feel soil directly. It is the source of our food, medicine, and clothing, and is critical to the liveability of our ecosystems and to our lives. Healthy soil can also help us rise to meet biodiversity loss and climate change. We can grow soil, and sequester carbon, feed ourselves, and strengthen local communities and economies in the process. Guest Antonious Petro is the Executive Director of Régénération Canada and a Masters Cand...
We are midwives of a transformation, in a time of crises and grief. Now is a moment to find our most expansive definitions of motherhood, nature, and ancestry in order to equip us for this moment. This episode of Reseed explores mothering in these times of ours, writing through emergency, a ceasefire in Palestine, and the power of togetherness. Kerri ní Dochartaigh is an Irish mother, writer, and grower. Her work explores ideas of emergency, interconnectedness and ecologies of car...
We all have times of silence — when momentum slows down, we turn inwards, or we cannot rush and produce. These wintering times, as Katherine May calls them, can allow us to rest and heal, but they can also lead to big changes. Taking times of silence can be one essential tool for restoring our energy and then changing how we are directing that energy: to confront a machine of oppression and extraction; nurture our communities and projects; or rebuild how we want to live. Guest Steven Lov...
In the darkness of solstice season, a slim and nourishing light begins to return, imperceptibly, like the small and steady reconnections we are making to the earth and each other. This conversation explores how we can reconnect with land and improve our relationship with the environment through natural dye and slow fashion. These practices allow us to express creativity and connect with our specific homes on a miraculous and hurting planet. We discuss how no one can shoulder the we...
A journey to track giants - the biggest old growth trees in British Columbia - teaches us about the relationships we have with forests, and the threats our trees face, from runaway wildfire to old growth logging to climate change. This journey also sheds light on the harms of a checklist approach to life where we search for the biggest and best acquisitions at a recklessly fast pace. Guest Amanda Lewis is a big-tree tracker and an award-winning book editor. Born in Ireland, she now lives...
Collective action can lead to real, tangible victories, like halting an offshore oil project proposed by Big Oil, reminding us that collectives of people have the power to challenge destructive and powerful forces. Instead of the individualistic, lonely, consumerism-heavy environmentalism that claimed centre stage in the past - telling us we are guilty for the worsening climate impact and we need to solve it all alone - the collective climate justice movement encourages us to turn towards eac...
Our lives interconnect closely with the lives of animals. From the raven to the honey badger to the snake to the fox, we live in relationship with the animals, our neighbours and creaturely kin. When the convenience of our modern life causes animals great violence and harm, many of us are deeply affected, even heartbroken, and many of us privately seek ways to grapple with and grieve the cycle of life and death in a society that largely disregards animal life. Guest D...
Imagine creating a food future where all people have access to nourishing affordable food, growing practices are regenerative, and our food systems transition from being global and fragile to regional and resilient.This conversation looks at our isolation from the Earth and food that nourishes us, and wonders about repairing our relationship with land and agriculture. We discuss the extractive systems on which we are dependent, and what happens when our systems are disrupted by climate change...
Communicating the Anthropocene is an art and a science. Multiple messages, tactics, messengers, and channels can be harnessed to convey climate change problems and solutions to citizens. Environmental communications are one of the most underutilized solutions we have for rising to meet environmental crises. Every movement, every momentous and terrible human collective shift starts not with weapons or protests - they start with words.Anthropocene problems are spiritual and cultural. Our greate...
Looking at species in a landscape, we can see the stories of each creature and what role it plays in that ecosystem. So, what is our role in our landscapes? Are we an invasive species? Too often we hear that we are doomed to be takers, who damage the planet with our very presence. However, it is possible to see ourselves as creative stewards of the Earth while meeting our own needs. Most of us have not seen a reciprocal reality brought to life, but this Reseed conversation about permaculture,...
The ocean - which has always held mystery for us human beings - also holds powerful solutions to climate change and biodiversity loss. By rewilding our oceans and protecting the forests of the sea, we can bring back essential biodiversity, reduce the worst of climate change, and provide a sustainable source of food for humans and many ocean species. In a world of discouraging environmental news, stories of the proven successes and future potential of rewilding the ocean are a beacon of hope.&...
Food justice is interwoven with conversations about our women ancestors and motherhood in this episode of Reseed. Food is interconnected with human health, planetary health, water, soil, animals, culture, and care. At its worst, the production of food is one of the most damaging sources of climate change and biodiversity loss, and it can be cruel to animals and exploitative to people. At its best, growing food roots us into this beautiful Earth, creating a reciprocal relationship with the lan...
Fossil fuel narratives seep into our culture, media, politics, and minds like pesticides through soil, water, and food. It can be hard to know where these pervasive and damaging narratives started, or how to extricate them from our lives. Fortunately, we can create our own hopeful narratives of possible climate futures that run like fast-moving rivers from person to person. Guest Grace Nosek is a climate justice scholar, community organizer, and storyteller. Grace has spent years studyin...
Oceans, cities, farming, media, storytelling, seeds, soil, and activism are being reimagined and revolutionized by the captivating guests who join season 2 of Reseed. Host Alice Irene Whittaker delves into thought-provoking, in-depth conversations with people who are repairing our relationships with nature. Seeds of change are being planted by these guests - and also by millions of us. Individually, these seeds seem small, but together, they transform our ecology and our selves.We ...
We protect our gentle hearts and our fearful brains by saying things cannot change, telling ourselves it isn’t as bad as it is, or just ignoring environmental and social breakdown all together. Our disillusionment can be a slow erosion of imagination and hope, day by weary day, with global tragedies playing out behind our personal triumphs and pains. As an antidote to disconnection and despair, artists have a powerful role to play: making space to feel grief, sparking imagination, knitting pe...
From the wonder of watching tiny, wild critters to the grand, complex world of international environmental research, this conversation spans worlds. It navigates the often-separate disciplines of science and stories, threading them together. Guest Kai Chan and host Alice Irene Whittaker discuss our responsibilities on Earth, heroic action, the value of nature, the connection between culture and conservation, what it is really like to work on those massive international climate reports, and re...
How do we balance joy with sorrow in the midst of ongoing crises? Seeking freedom is not frivolous but rather essential, so that we are able to care for ourselves as we protect wild places, and so we can be resilient in the face of environmental and social breakdown. This conversation explores the importance of strengthening our relationships to our ancestors, protecting the places where we live, and reconnecting with our own inner child in this search for joy.Guest Danielle Daniel is an awar...
We live as part of a wondrous planet, an intricate web of interconnections and relationships. We have been taught, though, to think not in wholes and connections, but rather to break everything into simple, easy-to-digest pieces. What is often lost is our knowledge that we are whole, and that we belong here. Fortunately, systems thinking helps us to see interconnections and complexities, and learn from whole systems, like a body, ecosystem, economy, community, or planet. Drawing on this...
There is a strange and haunting beauty to the discarded massive objects like ships, planes, cars, and phone booths that sit in waste graveyards around the planet. These relics of the past and symbols of our disposable culture are spotlighted in Scrap, a new documentary by filmmaker Stacey Tenenbaum, who tells the stories of the human beings who live with and have relationships with these objects at the end of their useful life. Scrap draws on poetic, cinematic storytelling to allow us to witn...