Emergence Magazine Podcast

Sharing a depth of attention for what stands to be lost in our relationship with the seasons, Volume 6 contributors Terry Tempest Williams and Susan Murphy Roshi come together to explore the theme of requiem in this first conversation of a companion series to Seasons. Drawing on their respective essays, “A Hollow Bone” and “Alive In the Skin of a River’s Flow,” Terry and Susan contemplate what becomes present amid absence, a love for the burning world, and ways we can move with flock consciousness through this time of ecological uncertainty.

Read the transcript. 

Discover our latest print edition, Volume 6: Seasons.
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How might our understanding of plants transform if it embraced the voices of plants themselves? In this conversation, research scientist Monica Gagliano speaks about her groundbreaking research on plant communication and cognition, informed by knowledge imparted by plants through visions, dreams, and sensations. Sharing stories of how her remarkable experiments have evolved alongside a relationship of reciprocity and trust with the plants she studies, Monica offers a model for how we can radically bridge the rigor of Western scientific methodology with the deeply human and spiritual act of listening to plants. 

Read the transcript.

Photo by Andrea Pellerani.
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Journalist Ben Goldfarb follows the winding course of the Klamath River, from Oregon’s high desert plateaus to the Pacific Ocean in Northern California, as its four most obstructive dams are dismantled under a restoration plan reopening hundreds of miles of salmon spawning habitat. Ben chronicles how the prolonged absence of salmon has reshaped this waterway, its surrounding redwood forests and canyons, and the Yurok, Karuk, Hoopa, and Shasta tribes for whom this creature is not only sustenance, but sacred kin. Tracing the monumental effort to restore the vital presence of salmon, Ben witnesses how the restitching of relationships between land, fish, and humans is nourishing this ecosystem anew. 

Read the essay, featuring a postscript from Ben as he returns to the Klamath

Discover our latest print edition, Volume 6: Seasons.

Photo by Kiliii Yüyan.
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Earlier this year, the remarkable eco-philosopher Joanna Macy passed away at age ninety-six. Among her many gifts, she was a seminal translator of the great twentieth-century poet Rainer Maria Rilke. In our final episode of the year, we return to a selection of translations of Rilke from The Book of Hours: Love Poems to God, by Joanna and award-winning poet Anita Barrows, that speak to the beauty and mystery present in worlds both seen and unseen, the unknowability of the Divine, and the union of nature and the transcendent. We share them this holiday period in the hope they nourish heart and spirit, inviting reflection on all that is given and all that fades away.

Cover artwork by Claire Collette.
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In this week’s story, Australian writer and Zen roshi Susan Murphy explores how haiku’s reflections of the seasons are being disrupted by the climate crisis. How will this poetic form bear witness to the ferocity of change reshaping the seasons? Woven with verses from Bashō, Buson, Issa, and fellow Volume 6 contributor Ron C. Moss, this story contemplates whether haiku may, in fact, be a vessel for holding the paradox of the seasons in this moment: allowing us to both mourn and love a rapidly evolving Earth. 

Read the essay. 

Discover our latest print edition, Volume 6: Seasons.

Image: Asako Narahashi, Kawaguchiko #5, 2003

© Asako Narahashi / Courtesy of Ibasho
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