Episodes

I'm deeply happy to share this episode, a few years in the dreaming and making: an excerpt from the audiobook of Widening Circles, the memoir of Joanna Macy. In this chapter about her year in Sri Lanka, you'll hear from Joanna at 50 years old, in 1979, when she was participating in and studying the Sarvodaya Shramadana Sangamaya movement. Her memoir reads like a novel, and this chapter has so much of what I love about it: her adventurousness, her passion, the breadth and depth of her thinki...

I'll be honest with you: the "great unraveling" is as real as the "great turning." They're happening at the same time, and have been for decades. The unraveling was already accelerating, and now (late 2024) to see a democratic election process choose a path of more, worse, faster harm to our planet and our fellow human and more-than-human beings? It's been... deeply discouraging. For many I know, it's been devastating. And at the same time - always at the same time - I feel so blessed to have h...

A conversation between Leilani and Erin Geesaman Rabke about sustaining our tender hearts and our dedication to showing up for the web of life on Earth, through all the heartbreak, overwhelm, and discouragement that can happen when we care deeply about our world. We talk about taking beauty as ballast, turning to our grief as a guide, and attending to our bodies as sacred landscapes. We share the "five vows of the great turning," or the "five commitments of active hope," and how they help us o...

"How is it that those individuals who are in the front line, in the first response, can bring that awareness, that connection to their own selves through their own nervous system, owning again a quality of spaciousness in their body?" My wonderful guest for this episode, Paula Ramírez, supports mental health in contexts of war and displacement. In this work, she has learned a lot about that process of reconnection and nervous system regulation, and about the spaciousness that can become accessi...

My guest Ingrid Edstrom founded the "Accounting Alchemy Network," and in this episode, we talk accounting, and we talk alchemy. "Alchemy" as in transformation. Practical transformation, which of course is necessary in this great turning toward a life-sustaining society, along with transformation in the ways we think, and the ways we ask questions. These are necessary too. Listen in to hear us talk about how the accounting profession can change the world, Ingrid's journey with giving "rights ...

What a joy to introduce you to We Are the Great Turning, a new podcast series featuring kitchen-table conversations between Joanna Macy, in her 95th year of life, and her friend and student, activist Jess Serrante. Click Play to hear a brief visit between me and Jess about what's on her mind now that this extraordinary project has come out into the world, and then you'll hear the beautiful first episode of We Are the Great Turning, called Love and Loss. About We Are the Great Turning: We welc...

How to become an Earth Caretaker? If you can, "get off your butt and get out in the woods," as Tim Corcoran has been known to say, and his young students love to quote. Hear about many other good starting places and ways to walk the path in this conversation. It's a fun and rich one, including Tim's own fascinating life story of connecting with nature and with Earth Caretaking people, closeness with animals, and 30 years of running Headwaters Outdoor School, where Tim teaches nature connection,...

"I bow to Osprey in deepest respect and gratitude for her years of inspired activism and this brilliant book." - Joanna Macy Once again, I agree wholeheartedly with Joanna Macy, this time about Osprey Orielle Lake and her new book, The Story is in Our Bones: How Worldviews and Climate Justice Can Remake a World in Crisis. The book is packed with so much to learn from - stories, insights, strategies - and so is the conversation Osprey and I had. Click Play to hear us dive into: Osprey's experi...

Alpha Lo caught my attention when I heard him say, "All we have to do is…" and then lay out a sweeping plan for how California can effectively restore rain, prevent both wildfires and floods, and regenerate the water cycle. He explained how we could reverse the negative effects on the water cycle caused by how we've built our cities, treated our forests, and run our agriculture. This plan clearly would take many years, and plenty of political will and resources, but he said, "All we have to do…...

Our bodies are just like the rest of the living world: coursing with healing, life-affirming intelligence and capacity; and suffering the effects of being out of balance. The body is one setting for what Joanna Macy called "the three stories of our time": Business as Usual, the Great Unraveling, and the Great Turning. We've explored these stories many times on this podcast. In this episode, I talk with Lydia Violet Harutoonian about how I see all three stories playing out in the landscape of the...

Ready for a dose of Active Hope? Listen to Gloire Mudekuza, a young refugee, a social entrepreneur, a climate activist and a mentor in Uganda, making an impact in the refugee community. He is passionate about regenerative agriculture, climate action, and entrepreneurship. He is the founder and director of Plethora Social Initiative, a refugee-led organization that works to develop the inner potential and capacities of refugees in Nakivale Refugee settlement and their host community, developing a...

In this planet-wide, diverse movement we can call The Great Turning, one of the threads I'm personally following is medicine. I'm all in for the shift to a life-honoring, life-sustaining approach to understanding illness, treating disease, and promoting health and healing. Ruby Daniels is part of this shift, too, growing medicinal herbs and making botanical medicines at her home in West Virginia. I connected with Ruby because she's on the board of United Plant Savers. I heard her talking about...

How about these goals: Avoid human extinction Cultivate healthy economies of living systems at local landscape, continental and planetary scales Emerge into these systems on the other side of whatever crises and collapse(s) are ahead What would that take? Joe Brewer has dedicated his life to this question, and to a "living laboratory" of bioregional regeneration and community collaboration. He is the founder of Earth Regenerators and co-founder of the newly established Design School for Reg...

"Somehow, we were only touching the symptoms, whether it's poaching, whether it's the destruction of forests, or unsustainable development." So said Radhika Bhagat about her 12+ years of conservation work with leading organizations in India, as she explained to me why she founded the Sacred Earth Trust. Radhika now focuses on reviving spiritual connection to the Earth, as well as scientific research and education, in her work to protect India's thousands of Sacred Groves. This conversation was ...

This Full Moon, a new deep conversation with someone rising to her own unique role in The Great Turning - the role only she can play, coming about through what she loves, what breaks her heart, her gifts, her circumstances, her stories. Today, meet Fernanda Lenz, an educator, facilitator, and visual documentarian in São Paolo, Brazil. Listen in to see what resonates with you about how she's relating to this time of ecological and humanitarian crises, influenced by her longtime immersion in Tibe...

News roundup of evidence of The Great Turning, for this month's New Moon: The Mother Tree project in British Columbia Tribes and Natures Defenders in the Philippines and Indigenous leadership on climate change in the Arctic (Native Movement, Indigenous Climate Action, Native Conservancy, as shared recently by Bioneers) Turning Season Podcast is your regular dose of active hope, here with news and deep conversations with people following the thread of their own storyline in this adventure we'...

I guess I was believing some "bright green fairytales" myself - because the truths in Bright Green Lies burst a few bubbles in my mind. In a tiny nutshell: Solar, wind, hydro, and recycling do worse than not solve our problems. They continue the harms of industrial society, and divert the attention of people who want to address our ecological crisis away from what matters most. This book intensified some of my biggest personal questions, especially about relinquishment, and my ongoing participa...

Here at the new beginning marked by the Lunar New Year, come back with me to the beginning of Turning Season Podcast, for what is still one of my favorite conversations yet, with dreamworker, beekeeper, and new mother, Ariella Daly. A warm hello to all of you who've started listening since this show was born. I know not everyone has gone back to Episode 1 - so please join me in enjoying this rich conversation. If you've heard it before, listen again and let me know what strikes you this time! ...

Which is easier to feel in your own mind and body: The sense of living in The Great Turning (aka, our transition toward a life-sustaining way of being human on earth), or the feeling of "Business as Usual," a way of being human that values being productive, consuming, succeeding, and never feeling like you've done enough or have enough? My guest in today's Full Moon episode, Nisha Mody, explores with me how these different stories live in our bodies and minds, and play out in our lives. She br...

Click Play for 13 minutes of Active Hope to hearten you today, in the latest news episode of Turning Season Podcast. Hear about: the work of a young refugee in Uganda named Irenge Mudekuza Gloire, founder of Plethora Social Initiative, teaching permaculture and regenerative agriculture to fellow refugees and host communities Fossil Free Research campaigns to get universities to break ties with oil and gas companies - and never let them fund research on climate, energy, or environmental studies...

It can be hard enough to find your "purpose" in the best of times - and it's a whole other level of challenging when you're reckoning with the prospect of ecological and societal breakdown. My interviewee for this Full Moon episode, Gwyneth Jones, describes herself as a "Deep Adaptation Coach," serving as a life coach for people who are aware of our collective predicament. She's rising to her role in the Great Turning also as a writer, a gardener, a teacher of her native language, Welsh, and a ...

Listen in for today's dose of Active Hope, in the latest news episode of Turning Season Podcast, covering: words from one of the courageous Iranian women protesting in Iran, about seeing The Great Turning in process, and how the type of practices we do in the Work that Reconnects have impacted her indigenous fire stewardship returning to forests in Minnesota in a collaboration between the Fond du Lac Band (a Chippewa / Anishinaabe band) and the Cloquet Forestry Center and Robin Wall Kimmerer ...

When I heard from Bioneers about a new children's book about the story of Thanksgiving, written by Native authors, complete with curricula for elementary school students – I signed up for their presentation right away. Last week, I had the opportunity to speak with two of the authors, Alexis Bunten and Anthony Perry. If you too have wanted to share a more accurate, more complete story of Thanksgiving with children - appropriate for their ages - you're going to love Keepunumuk: Weeâchumun's Than...

Listen in for your dose of Active Hope in today's news episode of Turning Season Podcast, here to bring you news and deep conversations about our adventure toward a life-honoring, life-sustaining way of being human on Earth. This show is for every one of you who's awake to our multiple crises, feels your love for life on Earth, and chooses to participate in cultivating ways of life we can believe in, making a life-honoring present even in the face of an uncertain future. In today's quick episod...