Emergence Magazine Podcast

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. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

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. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

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. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

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 Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Fungi are veteran survivors of ecological disruption, and they demonstrate a radically different approach to crisis and decision-making than we do. While we tend to work with binaries and control when navigating uncertainty, mycelium works from a place of relationality. In this conversation, acclaimed mycologist and author Merlin Sheldrake explores what we can learn from mycelial networks about building flexible ecological, social, or structural systems that are rooted in mutuality and exchange. Tracing the ways we can embrace a mycelial way of thinking, he invites us to dwell within the “substrate of mystery” embodied by fungi: a liminal space where new ways of being can emerge. Read the transcript. Photo by Tomas Munita. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices