I’m sitting with the award-winning oral storyteller and author, Danyah Miller, in her West Sussex garden to hear about “swimming in the sea of story.” Danyah tells of vision and method – how story works best and what we might do to create story. She’s the first person to sing on the podcast, showing how young children can come to see how beautiful is the world. “Sharing stories in the seasons opens up a connection with the natural environment.” Personification is key too: speak of Mother Earth, Grandmother Moon, Brother Wind, Friend Robin, the Standing People. Story works slantwise to create inner courage and new paths. Danyah says, “I have no idea where each seed of story will go.”

Danyah also says, “I go to a place when time stops, when I’m telling a story.”

Danyah recent book is “Seven Secrets of Spontaneous Storytelling” (Hawthorn Press).

Her hero is local suffragette Madge (Ethel Margartet) Turner: “I can’t get her out of my mind.”

She recommends the book, “The Secret Garden” by Frances Hodgson Burnett (1911): “a challenging book, yet it’s also how nature can inspire us.”

Her action: share a story with children. Then repeat. “You can’t water the rose only once.”

Danyah’s YouTube channel is at https://www.youtube.com/@danyahmillerthestoryteller.

Danya’s website is at: https://danyahmillerstoryteller.co.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."

In his Field at Maplestead in north Essex, author and nature restorer James Canton chats about the transformation by renaturing of small spaces in the landscape. “I evolved,” he says, “the field evolved.” From barren land to cricket pitch to abundant patch of wildflower meadow, scrub, trees and pond. We talk about how life recognises life, and how when you create the conditions, nature comes fast. He describes digging out of the pond, and how quickly insects arrived, followed by fish (eggs from the feet of ducks, maybe), and great crested newts (walking great journeys across the land from other water). Also: think of the digger churning up the land as a herd of aurochs. James is Director of Wild Writing at the University of Essex, and also talks about how students of all ages have been creating story to talk about transformations. He says, “renaturing is open to everyone.”

James’ heroines and heroes are the unsung: Chris Gibson (“mothman”), Steve Carver of the University of Leeds, and local activist Lucy Manthorpe of Kiln Farm near Long Melford.

James recommends “Lie of the Land” by Guy Shrubsole and “Ice Age Art” by Gill Cook. Also watch the online film on rewilding ideas in Siberia called “Pleistocene Park.”

James’s recent books are “Renaturing” and “The Oak Papers.”

He recommends, renature wherever you are. Even a window box. All through our talk, the rooks nearby are calling.

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 our online chat in her Southampton studio, we hear from activist, author and creator Denise Baden about the power of positive story. She is Professor of Sustainable Business, and came to realise that teaching business ethics does not make students more ethical. She switched to good role models in story, finding these created a different kind of motivation. “We remember stuff embedded in story,” she says. Also, “It’s more fun!”

She tells of her A Jigsaw to Save the World project, to paint a picture of the good stuff happening. And how it felt to have her writing turned into a play. Do you interfere, or just watch?

Her heroes are Caroline Lucas and Rob Hopkins. Her most recent books are “The Philosopher and the Assassin”, and “Habitat Man.”

She recommends Rob Hopkins’ book, “How to Fall in Love with the Future.”

Her top action: turn to face the sun. Go solar.

For Denise’s books, see Habitat Press: https://habitatpress.com/

See also https://www.dabaden.com/

https://www.southampton.ac.uk/people/5wzjrb/professor-denise-baden and linkedin.com/in/denise-baden-3742793

A Jigsaw to Save the World: https://www.linkedin.com/newsletters/creative-climate-communication-7300475505529540608

https://www.greenstories.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."

We’re sitting at the edge of land and sea on Mersea Island, the tide is out. There are terns and gulls, bees flying, a perfect place to hear from Leanne Hepburn, director of the Ocean Literacy Project. All is dependent on a healthy ocean. It absorbs heat, pollution, plastic; it influences us in return. Leanne talks of her step away from academic security, the sense of freedom and scary vulnerability. Science is vital, yet it is only part of the story of how we change how people care, how they feel. She was the first person in her family to go to university, and has felt the value of education. Now she is creating new language to lead to collective action. it’s also, she says, ok to be changed by the natural world.

Leanne reads a poem by Emelina Corrales Cordero called “Grandmother Ocean Speaks.”

“I am the Grandmother. We are one, one planet, one ocean.”

“I am the one to remind you.”

Her hero: Satish Kumar, the Peace Pilgrim.

Her top recommended actions: check where your money or pension is being invested. And find a way to reconnect with the natural world. Just notice things, pay attention.

Leanne’s website: https://www.oceanliteracyproject.com/

A link to Emelina’s poem and book: https://www.grandmotheroceanspeaks.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."

We’re talking online about rewilding, Ben Goldsmith at his London home. Ben is activist, rewilding advocate, financier, farm owner and host of the podcast Rewilding the World. Ben talks about rewilding cities, and the work for the Mayor of London’s taskforce, and how access to open spaces brought him close to nature as a child. Less tidiness is needed, he says. He describes the rewilding of his Somerset farm, and how the tragic and traumatic loss of his daughter Iris led to a whole new approach. He and other farmers/landowners have hopes for a rewilded corridor from Stonehenge to Avalon. He most magical moment, a July night two years ago, walking on a path by beaver ponds at the bottom of the farm, and seeing glow worms for the first time. I expect there to be lynx in the UK soon, he says. Maybe wolves too.

Ben recommends “Feral” by George Monbiot, and Jonathan Thomson’s rewilding handbook called “How to Rewild Manual.” He also recommends reading any of the works of Richard Jeffries from the late 1800s to understand what nature abundance used to look like.

Ben’s book is called “God is an Octopus: Loss, Love and a Calling to Nature” (2023).

His top recommended action: spend time in nature, and appreciate it. From there, all else flows. Also, apply pressure on your political candidates: make sure they care.

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 her Somerset home in Wiveliscombe, Nicky Saunter chats about her life as author, poet, mask maker and activist. On the table is a large mask of Frog, and in the kitchen are masks of Octopus, Beaver and Ant. She says, “You wear a mask at an outdoor event, and it frees you up. You become a more extreme version of yourself.” People also instantly smile, put on a mask, become a frog. Everyone’s immediately laughing.

What can go wrong? Nothing. They’re bomb proof.

Such street art closes gaps between humans and animals. Masks and tricksters are closely related. They cause agency. She tells of filming new river rituals with masks, becoming animals, and changing the world. “After all, transgressions are now needed.”

Nicky talks of beavers, having helped form the Beaver Trust: “People love beavers.”

Here hero is Wangari Maathai, the Kenyan pioneer of tree planting. And Peter Gabriel, for championing world music through WOMAD.

She recommends any book by Margaret Attwood.

And says, “Become a magpie. Choose things that are already working, and copy them.”

Especially, go for the joy!

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 this online conversation, I’m chatting with an old friend and radical agricultural and development educator, Richard Bawden. He’s on the Sunshine Coast in Queensland, I’m in Suffolk. This is a longer pod than usual. Richard is dying from cancer (he’s not living with it). It’s metastasised, it’s now untreatable. The phases are coming fast.

And yet. We laugh, tell stories, wander over a life of 87 years. In lieu of something written, it’s a conventional autobiography, squeezed into just over an hour. Before the end of the recording, I say, using clunky language, “Let’s not take up too much of your time.” Richard says, “Why not! I’m enjoying this.”

We’ve bumped this episode up the schedule. If you have any comments on the chat, I’ll make sure they get to Richard.

Richard grew up on a mixed farm in Cornwall. At Wye College, the principal, Dunstan Skilbeck calls out one day, as he walked across the square, “Where are you going? Where are you going with your life?” Now, that’s a good question from a mentor. “You like sheep, don’t you?”

Richard ends studying sheep parasitology in Australia. He goes on to head Hawkesbury Agricultural College, installing a new curriculum in 1981 focused on agroecology and experiential learning, with students learning to be the people in the systems they are studying. This experiential learning becomes truly radical, and links with educational and development groups all over the world.

Then the empire strikes back. The wardens of the old system come out with big sticks, and beat the novel system of learning and being into darkness.

We talk of the emergence of regenerative systems, ask what does good looks like. We also talk of the central importance of worldviews (weltanschauung in German). It’s all about worldviews – these shape what we think is important. They change through experience, through being, in the world.

Richard recommends Lester Milbrath’s 1985 book “Envisioning a Sustainable Society: Learning Our Way Out.” This is how we get out of the climate hole. We learn our way out.

He recommends, first by thyself. Be existential. Figure out why you hold the beliefs you have, and whey are different to others.

I finish by reading an excerpt from Mary Oliver’s wondrous poem, Last Night the Rain Spoke to Me.

“The tree was a tree, with happy leaves…

Imagine, imagine,

The long and wondrous journeys, still to be ours.”

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 this online chat, author, poet and community activist Mandy Haggith talks from her Assynt croft in the north-west of Scotland. She is using poetry to create a sense of agency when so much seems bleak. We hear of community development in Scotland, how policy has enabled local people to but estates, islands and urban plots. It’s hard, though, to create the income streams for local people. Mandy talks of the use of poetry in local projects on nature recovery and reducing fossil fuel dependence. She says, “At least, verse can’t make it worse.”

She says, “Little changes can snowball into vast change. We don’t all need to be heroes.”

Mandy’s books include The Lost Elms, five collections of poetry, and five novels, including The Last Bear; Bear Witness, The Walrus Mutterer. See her website: https://www.mandyhaggith.net/

Mandy recommends Hermann Hesse’s Siddhartha and Barbara Kingsolver’s Prodigal Summer.

Her action: go and plant a tree (if you have the resource). Do imaginative time travel: go into the past, find things that are wonderful, beautiful, uplifting. However far you went back, now go forward the same amount of time into the future, and take that good thing with you. Imagine how that feels.

People feel better. It seems to generate hope about the future.

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."