In the churchyard of Great Henny church, I’m chatting in the breezy sunshine with Roger Morris, the Bishop of Colchester. He’s brought his purple hard hat. We’re at St Mary the Virgin church, one of six churches in the diocese of Chelmsford that has had to be closed because of the effects of climate change. Soils and ground experiencing severe wetting and then summer drying are moving, and 1000-year-old churches without foundations are moving too. At Great Henny both the east and west ends are cracking and sliding away. Two of the five marks of mission, he says, are foundational: challenging unjust structures, and addressing sustainability and the climate crisis. Other closed churches are at Twinstead and Little Wigborough. These profound threats have occurred only in the past five years or so.

The task is so huge, he says, yet Mother Theresa said of actions of individuals: “It might feel like a drop in the ocean, but the ocean is made of drops.”

Roger mentions the unseen heroines and heroes already taking action on climate and sustainability.

Roger recommends reading the new theology statement on sustainability due from The Synod in July 2026. He also says, change your energy provider to renewables, and don’t fly. The Church of England has committed to net zero in all its buildings by 2030. Even if they miss the target, it has helped galvanise action.

My new book will be supporting this podcast, and will be published in March 2027 by Unbreaking/5m. It’s called "Bamboo and Butterfly: Transformation and Story for Climate and Nature Recovery."

In his home in Stroud, oral storyteller and author Anthony Nanson chats about story and the current polycrises. We hear about the three essential ingredients for narrative story: progression of events in time, characters embodied, the imagery of place. Anthony talks of the vulnerability of storytelling, and yet its limitless possibility too. He talks of the Bath Storytelling Circle and storytelling workshops for midwifes under pressure in the NHS. Through enchantment, story creates intent and imagination that counter the problems of deterministic thinking. He says, “Kindness towards other people will be essential to address the crises.”

Anthony’s books include Storytelling and Ecology, and his novel Deep Time.

He recommends Lindsey Clarke’s Green Man Dreaming, and Kim Stanley Robinson’s Ministry of the Future. His hero is Edward Garnett, publisher’s reader in the early 1900s. His action: try meditation.

Anthony’s website: http://www.anthonynanson.co.uk/

His publishing house, Awen: https://www.awenpublications.co.uk/

See also Fire Springs Storytellers at: http://www.firesprings.org.uk/index.html

My new book will be supporting this podcast, and will be published in March 2027 by Unbreaking/5m. It’s called "Bamboo and Butterfly: Transformation and Story for Climate and Nature Recovery."

We’re in a flower-rich meadow in Warwickshire to hear from award-winning playwright Sarah Woods. Sarah works on story across a range of media. She says, story is a way of being. It’s always co-created, including in our minds as we read or listen, changing the “dappled light of the now.” She has written 30+ plays and dramatisations, and an original opera. Her dramatisations for BBC radio, such as on Das Kapital and Darwin’s On the Origin of Species, bring to life ideas and works that are rarely read in the original. These move from explanation to drama. Sarah is working on a project in Iceland that focuses on the lives of women in the famed family sagas from 1000 years ago, and works with women’s groups, particularly recent migrants, to turn story into action.

Story, says Sarah, “is always relational.” We should always ask. “Does this story make friends.”

Sarah’s object is a jar of honeycomb.

Her heroine is Jane Goodall, who noticed things.

Her book recommendation is Fritjof Capra’s “The Systems View of Life: A unifying Vision.”

“Origin” is her dramatization of Darwin’s On The Origin of Species, and is available to listen to here: https://www.bbc.co.uk/sounds/play/m002htxs

Her article in Resurgence/Ecologist, “Changing the Story” is available at: https://www.resurgence.org/magazine/current.html

My new book will be supporting this podcast, and will be published in March 2027 by Unbreaking/5m. It’s called "Bamboo and Butterfly: Transformation and Story for Climate and Nature Recovery."

We’re on location in Yadvinder Malhi’s office in Oxford, professor and director of the Leverhulme Centre for Nature Recovery. Yadvinder’s work-origin story begins when he first climbs sampling towers in the Amazon to look out on 1000 miles of rainforest in every direction. “I was absolutely bewitched. I felt it viscerally.” We talk about culture and nature, the wild force of nature, and the sense of living in a belly of something huge. He recalls being sent back to India aged six to reconnect, and see the value of the huge family network as another support system. “Vibrancy is more than abundance,” says Yadvinder. It is energy to be shared. Vibrancy is about connections and story.

We talk of ecological civilisation in China, and nature recovery in the UK. He says, “We need to be thinking about radical transformations of landscapes,” not just the utilitarian values of nature.

He also says, “Ecology and ecosystems are the constant negotiation of relationships.”

Yadvinder’s new book will be called “Vibrant Earth.”

His heroes and heroines are the small organisation and local people making positive change: the social underbelly beneath nations and governments.

His book recommendation: David Abram’s Spell of the Sensuous.

His key action: don’t stop at connections to nature: turn to action.

Website: https://www.yadvindermalhi.org/

Leverhulme Centre for Nature Recovery: https://naturerecovery.ox.ac.uk/

Oxford Nature Network: https://www.youtube.com/@oxfordnaturenetwork

My new book will be supporting this podcast, and will be published in March 2027 by Unbreaking/5m. It’s called "Bamboo and Butterfly: Transformation and Story for Climate and Nature Recovery."

In Mann Woods in central Essex, therapist and outdoor leader Jo Roberts chats about the work of the Wilderness Foundation and the transformative power of being in nature. We sit around the fire as winter sun falls. She talks about the value of learning small competencies for young people, and how nature interferes to remind us of something greater. Just look up, count the stars. There’s a surprising finding about young people and social media too. She also talks about how discomfort takes us into deep places. Jo says, “the tears fall quickly when you’re in the wilderness.” But that, too, faces will be softer by morning.

Jo’s heroine: Wangari Maathai, founder of the Green Belt Movement in Kenya.

Her recommended books: Peter Wohlleben’s “The Hidden Life of Trees”; and Victor Frankl’s “Man’s Search for Meaning.”

Jo recommended action: Be attentive, take time – see the world in a grain of sand.

The Wilderness Foundation: https://wildernessfoundation.org.uk/

My new book will be supporting this podcast, and will be published in March 2027 by Unbreaking/5m. It’s called "Bamboo and Butterfly: Transformation and Story for Climate and Nature Recovery."

I’m chatting with author, academic and former double UN Special Rapporteur Olivier De Schutter at a street table in the heat of an Oxford summer. Olivier is professor at the University of Louvain in Belgium, and says, “We have not made the economy inclusive by design; we have allowed it to operate in another way." The new Roadmap for Eradicating of Poverty Beyond Growth goes beyond 20 new metrics recently proposed as alternatives to GDP, and this Roadmap now contains 80 options for governments, businesses and civil society to take ever-lengthening steps towards a new inclusive and sustainable society.

Growth is still an orthodoxy that leads to extraordinary accumulation of wealth by the few, the growing fear of scarcity, and persistence of poverty and the breaching of planetary boundaries. Olivier calls this “the counter-productivity of growth.”

The Roadmap, he says, will help “broaden the imagination.” Combined with the declaration of an Inequality Emergency, and the launch of the International Panel on Inequality (IPI), he says, “We are at a turning point.”

Olivier’s heroes and heroines are the many low-income and neglected people: “if we listened to them, if we valued their knowing more, we’d make fewer mistakes.”

Olivier’s most recent book is called “Poverty Beyond Growth.”

He recommends Kate Pickett’s new book, “The Good Society”, and says read Hartmut Rosa too, especially his “Resonance.”

Olivier recommends, look people in their eyes, create special relationships, and learn from each other.

Website: https://www.srpoverty.org/

Roadmap: https://www.ohchr.org/en/special-procedures/sr-poverty/roadmap-eradicating-poverty-beyond-growth

My new book will be supporting this podcast, and will be published in March 2027 by Unbreaking/5m. It’s called "Bamboo and Butterfly: Transformation and Story for Climate and Nature Recovery."

I’m talking online with Charlotte Hollins who with brother Ben are the farmers and business leaders of the Fordhall Community Land Initiative in Shropshire. Their father Arthur was an early adopter of organic methods in the 1940s, also of inviting the community in. over the years, natural and social assets accumulated. But their landlord sought to evict them after he died. They were in a deep hole. For a change, the small people win, and Charlotte and Ben come up with a model to sell non-profit shares in the farm: 8000 people invest in the idea. They can see that something magic lies ahead. Twenty years on, and the 130 acre (50 hectare) farm and businesses employ over 150 local people in summer. There’s the livestock and crops, also farm shop, glamping yurts, café onsite, social prescribing, care farm, residential groups, alternative education projects, mobile catering – and abundant nature.

Charlotte says, “It’s a happy farm, full of energy, with so many people involved.” There are 1000 worms per square metres, otters in the river.

“We’ve been very good at linking to people,” she says. It’s made them all more creative.

Charlotte adds, “We’re still here, Fordhall’s thriving.”

Charlotte’s heroes and heroines: her father, and all their shareholders, who took a punt on them, a risk.

Charlotte recommends we make small sifts in what we do and say, especially the everyday stuff, and talk to people. Start a social movement.

She also says: buy a share in Fordhall, for in 2026 they’re going to ask the community again.

Fordhall Farm: https://www.fordhallfarm.com/

My new book will be supporting this podcast, and will be published in March 2027 by Unbreaking/5m. It’s called "Bamboo and Butterfly: Transformation and Story for Climate and Nature Recovery."

In his farmhouse kitchen in central Essex, Simon Lyster chats about local nature recovery. He is Chair of the Essex Local Nature Partnership that comprises 40 organisations. Like all counties there is now an obligation to produce a statutory Local Nature Recovery Strategy (LNRS). This is a spatial map of the whole county, where the aim is to protect and conserve 30% of the land and sea are by 2030 (30 by 30). It’s about making nature “bigger, better, and more connected.”

Over several decades, we have lost bio-abundance. We can recall the moth snowstorms driving at night. Now they are gone. Simon tells of personal stories of being in a hole, and getting out.

Simon recommends The Moth Snowstorm by Mike McCarthy.

He says on action: “Bring joy. We need to talk more of joy.”

“If you’ve got a bit of garden, let it go wild. Make a little pond. If you don’t, then plant a window box for insects.”

Local Nature Recovery Strategy: https://www.essex.gov.uk/about-council/plans-and-strategies/environment-and-planning/local-nature-recovery-strategy

https://essexnaturepartnership.com/lnrs/

My new book will be supporting this podcast, and will be published in March 2027 by Unbreaking/5m. It’s called "Bamboo and Butterfly: Transformation and Story for Climate and Nature Recovery."