Episodes

  • Practical Reverence – A Conversation with Robin Wall Kimmerer

    Practical Reverence – A Conversation with Robin Wall Kimmerer
    Nov 25 2025
    This Thanksgiving holiday, we return to a conversation with Potawatomi botanist Robin Wall Kimmerer, where she talks about her new book The Serviceberry, which emerged from an essay she wrote for us about the potential of a gift economy to recognize the sacred nature of the Earth. Robin introduces a set of ethical and pragmatic principles, known as “the Honorable Harvest,” that orients us to take only what we need, share abundance, and offer gratitude for what is selflessly given to us; and leads us towards embodying a simple “practical reverence” for the Earth. Read the transcript. Discover our latest print edition, Volume 6: Seasons. Photo courtesy of MacArthur Foundation. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices
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    1 hr
  • Seasons: A Conversation at the Tate Modern – with Melanie Challenger, Sam Lee, Dara McAnulty, Kerri ní Dochartaigh and Emmanuel Vaughan-Lee

    Seasons: A Conversation at the Tate Modern – with Melanie Challenger, Sam Lee, Dara McAnulty, Kerri ní Dochartaigh and Emmanuel Vaughan-Lee
    Nov 18 2025
    In November, we celebrated the launch of our latest print edition, Seasons, at the Tate Modern in London. Recorded live at the event, this conversation featuring four Volume 6 contributors, delves into each of their stories and the themes of requiem, invitation, and celebration at the heart of their seasonal experiences. From honoring the fragility of spring birdsong, to finding an expanded sense of self through seasonal “noticelings,” this wide-ranging and lively exchange explores the myriad ways of remembering our relationship with the seasons. Read the transcript. Discover our latest print edition, Volume 6: Seasons. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices
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    1 hr and 16 mins
  • Earth as Koan, Earth as Self – A Conversation with Susan Murphy Roshi

    Earth as Koan, Earth as Self – A Conversation with Susan Murphy Roshi
    Nov 11 2025
    In this conversation from our archive, Australian writer and Zen roshi Susan Murphy immerses us in the ancient tradition of koan and the power of the “not-knowing mind” to open a treasury of resources for meeting the climate crisis. Sharing several koans from Zen masters that push at the boundaries of our consciousness, she speaks to the way they can draw us deeper into kinship and reminds us that the Earth Herself is a koan waiting to be known. Read the transcript. Photo by Warren Summers. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices
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    1 hr and 6 mins
  • On Time, Mystery, and Kinship – A Conversation with Jane Hirshfield

    On Time, Mystery, and Kinship – A Conversation with Jane Hirshfield
    Nov 4 2025
    We return to one of our most in-depth interviews this week: a conversation with poet Jane Hirshfield, who has contributed a new poem to our latest print edition, Volume 6: Seasons. Reciting several poems from her prolific body of work, including Time Thinks of Time, she speaks about how her Zen practice has led her to embrace the largeness of time’s mystery. She shares how this inner “spaciousness,” present in many of her poems, can uncover intimacy with both the ordinary and the divine. Read the transcript. Read Jane’s poem “Time Thinks of Time.” Photo by Curt Richter. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices
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    1 hr and 42 mins
  • Strange New World - Roy Scranton

    Strange New World - Roy Scranton
    Oct 28 2025
    Probing the flatness of his Midwestern landscape, Roy Scranton challenges us to peer beyond what meets the eye to engage more thoughtfully with a place’s ecological, geological, and cosmological dimensions. What first appears to him as farmland, highways, and worn industrial sprawl in his new home of South Bend, Indiana, begins under sustained attention to disclose rich layers of physical and temporal meaning. Roy invites us to practice this same attentiveness, allowing ourselves to be changed by the stories that make a place new and strange, and the mundane alive with resonance. Read the transcript. Artwork by Nico Krijno. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices
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    48 mins
  • Offering Our Attention with Humility – A Talk by Emmanuel Vaughan-Lee

    Offering Our Attention with Humility – A Talk by Emmanuel Vaughan-Lee
    Oct 21 2025
    In this final talk of a three-part series, Emergence executive editor and Sufi teacher Emmanuel Vaughan-Lee speaks about two essential elements needed if we are to tend to a relationship of reverence with the Earth: humility and offering. To ground ourselves in respect for the power of the Earth, and respond to Her unconditional generosity, we can begin by remembering to de-center our needs, and instead ask ourselves: What attitude towards the seasons can help me develop a relationship to place? How can I respond with love not only to the wonder, but to the pain of the Earth? When we are rooted in this space of humility and offering, we can remain open and present with Her beauty and loss. Read the transcript. Discover our latest print edition, Volume 6: Seasons. Artwork by Thoth Adan Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices
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    43 mins
  • A Story of Requiem, Invitation, and Celebration – A Talk by Emmanuel Vaughan-Lee

    A Story of Requiem, Invitation, and Celebration – A Talk by Emmanuel Vaughan-Lee
    Oct 14 2025
    We are in need of stories that can help us navigate the complexity of our moment: both the unfolding ecological catastrophe and the love we feel for our burning world. This second talk in a series given by Emergence executive editor and Sufi teacher Emmanuel Vaughan-Lee at our Song of the Seasons retreat on Whidbey Island explores how the story of birth, growth, decay, and death told by the seasons, regardless of where one is in the world, invites us into a space of reverence that offers a container for holding love and loss amid the vast ecological changes reshaping our Earth. Read the transcript. Discover our latest print edition, Volume 6: Seasons. Artwork by Thoth Adan. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices
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    43 mins
  • Unfurling the Spiral – A Talk by Emmanuel Vaughan-Lee

    Unfurling the Spiral – A Talk by Emmanuel Vaughan-Lee
    Oct 7 2025
    As an introduction to the themes within our latest print volume, Seasons, we’re sharing a series of talks over the next few weeks given by Emergence executive editor and Sufi teacher Emmanuel Vaughan-Lee at our Song of the Seasons retreat on Whidbey Island. This first talk explores the cyclical nature of the seasons, and how when we devote our attention to these cycles over time, their continuous variation reveals itself, unfurling like a spiral that draws us deeper into kinship with the Earth. If we find the courage to remember ourselves not as impervious to the rhythms of the seasons, but as profoundly connected to them, we can begin to open to their sacred invitation. Read the transcript. Discover our latest print edition, Volume 6: Seasons. Artwork by Thoth Adan. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices
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    47 mins