Heat! Camera! Action!
The planet’s losing.
We’re in a hole. Climate, nature and social inequality crises. Story with a swerve gets us out. It’s the shape of all our lives. Up-down, down-up. And this shape of slantwise story, it creates hope and agency.
In this podcast, we hear from culture leaders and wanderers, the crossers of boundaries, the story-tellers. They share their ideas on how we get out of holes. Good story is not just a hiding place. It’s a finding place.
The podcast vibe is the warm-dark daguerreotype photograph, invented at the start of the industrialised era, before human-induced carbon pollution of the atmosphere.
My guests are writers and poets, artists and scientists, environmental and business leaders, farmers and landowners, local and national activists, festival directors, therapists, religious leaders. All are storytellers too.
The music clips at the start and end of episodes were recorded at public dances in Punakha and Thimphu (Bhutan).
My new book will be supporting this podcast, and will be published in March 2027. It is called "Bamboo and Butterfly: Transformative Stories for Climate and Nature Recovery."
Heat! Camera! Action!
Latest Episodes
22 Olivier De Schutter on the poverty of GDP-Growth, the Inequality Emergency, and the new UN Roadmap for Eradicating Poverty
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 econ...
21 Charlotte Hollins on community-owned Fordhall Farm: being courageous with 8000 member-landlords
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 invit...
20 Simon Lyster on the Local Nature Recovery Strategy and bringing joy to conservation
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 Lo...
19 Hattie Phillips on being a young activist and the power of arts and community
I’m sitting with Hattie Phillips in the OWLS community garden in Maldon during one of the summer heatwaves. She was one of the first WWF Youth Ambassadors, and is currently studying at Black Mountains College in Wales. She is a very fine commun...
18 Aria Mckenna on the greening of Hollywood and building bridges with story
In this online chat, award winning actress, director, producer and writer Aria Mckenna talks from her north Florida home on building bridges between climate scientists, policy makers and the media. She talks of efforts to get positive climate a...
