Episode 41 - Reconnecting with Soil
Each of us is deeply connected to soil, whether we see or feel soil directly. It is the source of our food, medicine, and clothing, and is critical to the liveability of our ecosystems and to our lives. We can grow soil, and sequester carbon, feed ourselves, and strengthen local communities and economies in the process.
Guest Antonious Petro is the Executive Director of Régéneration Canada, a national organization promoting soil regeneration in order to mitigate climate change, restore biodiversity, improve water cycles, and support a healthy food system.
In this episode, we get into the principles of regenerative agriculture, barriers that farmers face, and the importance of soil. We look at the hopeful ways in which we can help nature and soil heal themselves. We explore how we need to make sure environmental, economic, and social well-being work together, if we are to have any hope.
Episode 37 - The Pursuit of Old Growth Giants
A journey to track giants - the biggest trees in British Columbia - teaches us about the relationships we have with forests, and the threats our trees face, from runaway wildfire to old growth logging to climate change. This journey also sheds light on the harms of a checklist approach to life where we search for the biggest and best acquisitions at a recklessly fast pace.
Guest Amanda Lewis is a big-tree tracker and an award-winning book editor. Born in Ireland, she now lives in a log house on a small island in the Pacific Northwest of Canada. Amanda’s first book Tracking Giants: Big Trees, Tiny Triumphs, and Misadventures in the Forest became an instant bestseller, telling the story of being an overachieving, burned-out book editor who decides to visit all of the champion trees in British Columbia.
In a conversation ranging from old growth trees to small gardens, from perfectionism and burnout to self-discovery, and from the West Coast of Canada to Ireland, we explore learning how to let go of the checklist, in favour of life.
Episode 36 - Turn Towards Each Other: A Collective Climate Justice Movement
Collective action can lead to real, tangible victories, like halting an offshore oil project proposed by Big Oil, reminding us that collectives of people have the power to challenge destructive and powerful forces. Instead of individualistic, lonely, consumerism-heavy environmentalism of the past, the collective climate justice movement encourages us to turn towards each other.
Guest Tori Tsui is a Bristol-based climate justice activist, organiser, writer and speaker from Hong Kong. You might have seen her on the cover of Vogue, on international panels, or in Instagram posts with inspiring activist friends like Mya-Rose Craig, Greta Thunberg, Daphne Frias, and Dominique Palmer. Tori’s recent debut book, It’s Not Just You, explores climate change and mental health from a climate justice perspective.
This conversation provides wise reflections on successful movement building and sustaining, and shows how recent wins have been accomplished by collective-minded organizing that is required for these dark times.
Episode 32 - Local Food Reinvented with Tech
How do we feed everyone, how do we feed cities? How do we tackle food deserts and food injustice? And what if there is not one answer to these questions - but many?
This experiment of how humanity tackles environmental breakdown requires all of us. People will find their niches. For Eddy Badrina, that niche is the intersection of economics, technology - and lettuce.
Eddy Badrina is the Chief Executive Officer of Eden Green, a part vertical farm, part technology company that produces year-round harvests of locally grown leafy greens.
This conversation explores vertical hydroponic farming, reducing water and energy, and how to feed cities with locally-grown food. We explore how, when facing environmental breakdown - that most complex of problems - technology and innovation can be a part of a complex mix of solutions.
Episode 31 - Reawakening into Something Better
In these dark winter days at the beginning of a new unknown year, this reflective episode invites us to be quietly awake: to our true selves, our relationships, our responsibilities. How can we be awake to beauty as well as the darkness of the world? How can we be awake to the brokenhearted but resilient and courageous millions who refuse to abandon a planet that needs our care?
Guest Larissa Crawford is an acclaimed published Indigenous, anti-racism, and climate justice researcher, policy advisor and speaker. Larissa Crawford proudly passes on Métis and Jamaican ancestry to her daughter, Zyra. Larissa is the Founder of Future Ancestors Services, a youth-led professional services social enterprise that operates at the intersection of climate and racial justice.
Climate justice, reconciliation, motherhood, and a groundswell of activism are explored in this conversation. We discuss the direct connection between anger and joy - and how that anger can fuel meaningful environmental action that is rooted in justice.
Episode 30 - Relocalizing Our Food Future
Imagine creating a food future where all people have access to nourishing affordable food, growing practices are regenerative, and our food systems transition from being global and fragile to regional and resilient.
An expert in reimagining resilient local food systems, Barbara Swartzentruber is currently Executive Director of the Smart Cities Office at the City of Guelph, where the City and County of Wellington are collaborating with public and private sector partners to build a circular, regenerative regional food system.
Facing international problems of daunting proportions, we interrogate: what are the roles of individuals, communities, and cities? Can we stomach the current economic model, and what are the alternatives? How can food connect and strengthen community?
Episode 27 - Rewilding the Ocean
The ocean - which has always held mystery for us human beings - also holds powerful solutions to climate change and biodiversity loss.
Charles Clover is the Executive Director of the Blue Marine Foundation, and author of Rewilding the Sea: How to Save our Oceans. Charles made his name as an author and environmental journalist and editor, and has dedicated decades to conserving land and ocean.
Delve into this conversation about the mysteries of the ocean and how the sea connects to us all, no matter what ecology we call home.
Episode 26 - Reclaiming Food Sovereignty, Remembering Women Farmers
Food justice is interwoven with conversations about our women ancestors and motherhood in this episode of Reseed.
Guest Leticia Ama Deawuo has been a leading activist for food sovereignty and food justice for the past 15 years. She is the Executive Director of SeedChange, as well as a filmmaker, currently working on a film on Women Indigenous Farmers in Africa.
Ama sheds light on food sovereignty, a grassroots worldwide movement to reclaim food systems, with a particular focus on farmers’ rights. Could anything be more prescient to our precarious moment when workers are rising up and the Earth cries for our radical care?
Episode 25 - Rejecting Fossil Fuel Narratives, Rewriting Climate Futures
Fossil fuel narratives seep into our culture, media, politics, and minds, and it can be hard to extricate them from our lives. Fortunately, we can create our own hopeful narratives of possible climate futures that run like fast-moving rivers from person to person.
Grace Nosek is a climate justice scholar, community organizer, and storyteller. Grace has spent years studying and deconstructing the narratives and tactics of the fossil fuel industry - as well as creating her own hopeful climate narratives.
We can find the veins and rivulets of care that already exist in the growing climate movement, and together rewrite the future.
Episode 22 - Rewriting Joy Amidst Crisis
How do we balance joy with sorrow in the midst of ongoing crises? This conversation with Danielle Daniel, bestselling author of Forever Birchwood and Daughters of the Deer, explores the importance of strengthening our relationships to our ancestors, protecting the places where we live, and reconnecting with our own inner child in this search for joy.
Episode 21 - A Web of Relationships
We live as part of a wondrous planet, an intricate web of interconnections and relationships. Systems thinking helps us to see interconnections and complexities, and learn from systems like a body, ecosystem, or planet. Multisolving helps us solve complex problems by taking actions that result in many interconnected benefits. This conversation looks at both systems thinking and multisolving - starting with a decades-long experience of cultivating an intentional community. Guest Dr. Elizabeth Sawin brings decades of experience as a systems thinker who leans into complexity to help small seeds grow into big changes.
Episode 9 - Reclaiming Culture, Decolonizing Fashion
Aditi Mayer joins Reseed to help reimagine the fashion system to be rooted in justice and environmental care, while advocating for the reclamation of culture.
Episode 7 - Reclaiming Land Back
Originator of Land Back and Labrador Land Protector Bryanna Brown joins Reseed to explore reinforcing Indigenous leadership in the climate movement. This conversation also looks at reclaiming our own voices while amplifying the voices of others.
Episode 2 - Remaking Fashion: Fossil-Free and Feminist
How do we remake fashion so that it is regenerative, fossil-free, inclusive, and equitable?
Sophia Yang, Founder and Executive Director of Threading Change, joins Reseed for a conversation about fashion, justice, gender, circular economy, and climate - and how they all weave together.
Episode 1 - Redefining Environmentalism
How do we redefine environmentalism so that it includes everyone? Chúk Odenigbo, a Founding Director of Future Ancestors, and Reseed host Alice Irene Whittaker discuss how to use our power and influence to dismantle oppressive systems, while planting seeds that grow a vibrant, fair way of life.