Muse Ecology

Bugs are foundational to life on Earth, and their numbers are plummeting due to human activity.  In this conversation with Vicki Hird, author of Rebugging the Planet, we explore the wonders of bugs and how we can restore our relationship with them. You can find more information about rebugging, and purchase the book, at . Here's the two papers referenced in Vicki's book that came up in our discussion, on the potential effects of new higher frequency radiation on invertebrates: Arno Thielens et al., Exposure of Insects to Radio-Frequency Electromagnetic Fields from 2 to 120 GHz, Science Reports 8, no. 3924 (2018), Arno Thielens et al., Radio-Frequency Electromagnetic Field Exposure of Western Honey Bees, Science Reports 10, no. 461 (2020), Many thanks to for welcoming the use of her song The Old Ways Restored in the intro. The banjo bird jam in the outro was recorded in the woods by the talented nature artist Michael DiGiorgio.  If you'd like to order a CD of this album he says to email him at the contact o

"Water begets water, soil is the womb, and vegetation is the midwife." -Prof. Millan M. Millan This last episode, for now, in the Water, Life, Climate, and Civilization series, was a great panel conversation with 6 people from 3 different organizations, each working from distinct approaches  to restore weather and climate through restoring natural processes.  It was a lovely example of the diversity of backgrounds that are beginning to come together around this idea. Juliette Kool and Ties van der Hoeven, Maya Dutta and Jim Laurie, Marcel de Berg and Pieter-Paul de Kluvier, Here is the Here is the And here again is the link to . And as always, many thanks to for the use of her song The Old Ways Restored in the introduction.        

The understanding that we can restore weather and climate systems by protecting and restoring the living surface of the Earth is an idea whose time has come.  In these final two episodes in this Water, Life, Climate, and Civilization series, we'll hear discussions of how this understanding is beginning to guide our response to climate change, from grassroots to international levels. In this first of the two panels, I met with three  friends from previous episodes who have had a big influence on how I think about our relation to water, life, and climate:  , mesometeorologist Li An Phoa, founder of , filmmaker and ecologist Here are the linked references for the three of Millan's papers that I said in the discussion I'd include here in the show notes.  

This episode is a diverse panel discussion on the implications of renewable energy supply chains on life, water, and local communities, and how we might address them. Saad Youssefi has a background in finance and economics and works in the renewable energy sector, consulting governments and international corporations on energy production projects.  He's also coauthored . Mary Gibson is Western Shoshone, and has experienced devastation of life, land, and culture by the mining industry and the colonizing process in general.  She is on the board of . Derrick Jensen is a long time activist and advocate for the living Earth, and has written dozens of books on the subject.  Most recently he coauthored a book called , about the negative effects of the renewables industry on the biosphere. Thanks again to for the use of her song The Old Ways Restored in the introduction to each episode. You can support the Muse Ecology Podcast at with a much appreciated donation .  Thanks for listening. Here's a link to the .  

In this episode in the Water, Life, Climate, and Civilization series, we hear diverse voices from the resistance to the proposed lithium mine at Thacker Pass in northern Nevada, on Paiute and Shoshone ancestral lands. To learn more about and support the blockade camp at Thacker Pass, you can go to . To follow the legal process, you can visit the Great Basin Resource Watch's website at . In our next episode, we'll continue exploring the complexities involved in the renewables industry with a civil panel discussion including expert perspectives from both the renewable energy industry and it's opposition.

In this conversation with author Judith Schwartz and scientist Walter Jehne, we discuss the importance of the shift from seeing the Earth as a resource base to seeing ourselves as enmeshed in a web of life that both manages and depends on natural processes.  In particular, we focus on how this perspective shift affects how we understand and are empowered to address anthropogenic climate change. Judy:   Walter:   The banjo bird jam in the intro and outro was recorded in the woods by nature artist Michael DiGiorgio.  If you'd like to order a CD of this album he says to email him at the contact on his website,  , where you can also find his exquisite nature art.

In this conversation with Paul Cereghino, we discuss some of the challenges of collaborating in groups and groups of groups to protect and restore the Earth, including such topics as the role of online interactions, the importance of place-based reality, benefits and pitfalls of systems like sociocracy, Covid complications, and much more. You can check out the to read more about Paul and friends' biocultural restoration experiment in the Puget Sound of Washington State .  And here's a link to the Paul and others are creating to share ecological restoration knowledge of their bioregion. And thanks to for allowing the use of her song The Old Ways Restored in the intro.

In this episode in the Water, Life, Climate, and Civilization series, we explore one of the great challenges on our way back to harmony:  humans.  Through the lens of his Ecosystem Guild and Restoration Camping project in western Washington State, Paul Cereghino and I discuss some of the interhuman and intergroup complexities of grassroots ecological restoration efforts. And as always, many thanks to for giving the use of her song The Old Ways Restored in the intro to each episode.

In this episode we continue the Water, Life, Climate, and Civilization series with Alfredo Quarto, co-founder and international program director of the Mangrove Action Project.  In our conversation with Alfredo, we discuss the importance of mangrove ecologies, their devastation by the shrimp farming industry, and how the mangrove action project uses an approach called Community Based Ecological Mangrove Restoration to facilitate their natural regeneration. Mangrove Action Project website contains further information about mangrove ecology and their important restoration work. You can support their work by purchasing a beautiful 2021 calendar feature mangrove-inspired art from children around the world. And as always, thank you to for donating the use of her song The Old Ways Restored for the podcast intro. Financial support of the Muse Ecology Podcast is much appreciate.  You can find links to the Patreon page and the Paypal donate button at  

In this episode, we continue the Water, Life, Climate, and Civilization series with Neal Spackman, ecological restoration designer, regenerative entrepreneur, and bold visionary. In previous episodes in this series, we’ve heard how agriculture and development having long been destroying ecology and hydrology, directly causing desertification and disruptions of weather and climate systems, and leading to the fall of empires. As cofounder and former director of the Al Baydha project in Saudi Arabia and as Founder and CEO of Regenerative Resources Corporation, Neal Spackman is working to change that ancient dynamic. His projects restore ecological function to desertified and degraded landscapes in a way that also integrates the restoration of the area’s economy, hydrology, and atmospheric interactions. The scholar that Neal refers to who came up with the term "precipitationshed" is Patrick W. Keys, and here are some of his papers on the topic:   Here is an inspiring video that Neal made about the amazing s

Since millennia before the early states of Mesopotamia, farming has been a complexity-destroying process.  In this episode, we'll hear from Felipe Pasini about an agricultural approach called Syntropic Farming that reverses this process, facilitating greater ecological complexity while providing for human needs. Here is a lovely video called Life In Syntropy that Felipe co-created several years ago to introduce the concept. You can learn more about Syntropic Farming at You can learn more about Katharina Serafimova's work at And again, many thanks to Peia for the use of her inspiring song The Old Ways Restored in the podcast introduction.  You can find her beautiful music at

In this second episode in the Water, Life, Climate, and Civilization Series, I'm grateful to be able to share this inspiring conversation with Li An Phoa, creator of the Drinkable Rivers movement.  Li An is a scientist, activist, and river walker, working to mobilize watersheds to engage in citizen science and work together towards the return of drinkability to their river.  Li An explains that such properties of a river can emerge when all the relationships along it's banks and in the watershed that feeds it are healthy.  She also reminds us of the important role our own singing hearts play in the web of relationships, connecting us to each other and the living world around us. You can connect with Li An Phoa and the Drinkable Rivers project at . And as always, thank you to the amazing singer and musician Peia, for allowing me to use her song The Old Ways Restored in the introduction to each podcast.  You can find her music at

"Water begets water, soil is the womb, and vegetation is the midwife." -Professor Millan Millan In this episode we learn about what Professor Millan Millan calls "the second leg of human-induced climate change":  how our land use changes lead to major disruptions of weather and climate patterns, independently of changes due to warming from carbon emissions.  As Millan shares, the international scientific community has known for fifty years that anthropogenic climate change has two legs:  greenhouse gases and surface property changes due to land use change.  While business and politics have assimilated the greenhouse gas narrative, addressing the climate effects of our land use will require far more fundamental changes. In these conversations with Professor Millan, we'll hear about the processes involved in the land use leg of climate change, and how we can act to address it. As I mention in the introduction, this episode is a bit long, around two and a half hours, since I wanted to include as much as possible

In this prelude to the upcoming series dealing with the interrelated processes of Water, Life, Climate, and Civilization, we take a look at the historical and mythological roots of civilization's discord, and set the tone for the series with a new song and some poignant clips from the next three episodes that remind us of the dynamic complexity we are interconnected with. From renowned meteorologist, Professor Millan Millan, we'll learn how our land use has been disrupting weather and climate since long before it was accelerated by the industrial revolution, and how land use change can bring about meteorological healing. From scientist and inspiring activist Li An Phoa we'll hear about her Drinkable Rivers project, and her mission to awaken folks to the awareness that Drinkable Rivers are a result of all the relationships and processes in a watershed being intact and healthy, including our own singing hearts. Finally, we'll hear from farmer and journalist Felipe Pasini about an agricultural approach called Sy

In this episode, we visit Quail Springs in the Cuyama Valley of Southern California, a place and community dear to my heart. We'll hear useful knowledge about building with natural materials, and learn of exciting recent developments in the international legalization of cob construction. This episode also contains alot of folk music, including quite a few songs from the soulful Cuyama Mama Jan Smith. There was even a surprise acoustic performance by the talented bluegrass band, Hot Buttered Rum (HBR). Feel free to have hoe-down dance party, and if you'd like to hear even more, Nat from HBR welcomed me to share the whole recording of their set with you. . They are currently doing an indigogo campaign for a musical project they just recorded in Rwanda and Zambia.  You can support . And here's a few more of Jan's songs that were in the episode: , , You can support the important ongoing cob testing work at Quail Springs . You can find out more about the Cob Research Institute and their work getting cob into buil

In this episode, we hear the voice of Grandmother Agnes Baker Pilgrim. She passed on, but her light lives on in so many of us water babies. These recordings of Grandma Aggie are from this past year: a panel at the Global Earth Repair Conference in Washington state, a prescribed fire training exchange in Ashland, Oregon, and finally at her 95th birthday gathering. I hope these words bless you like they've blessed me, and help remind us to be a voice for the voiceless. If you can support her family financially, it would be much appreciated, especially for her daughter Nadine, a great grandmother herself, who has taken care of Grandma Aggie for years.  You can donate directly to help Nadine at the following paypal link: If you would like to make a tax deductable donation, you can do it through the Grandmother's Empowerment Project paypal link below, and specify "Support for Nadine" in the comment: And again, thank you to Peia for allowing me to use her song The Old Ways Restored for the introduction, and for h

In spring 2018 I visited the headquarters of the Dr. Bronner's Magic Soap Company in Vista, California, where the Bronner family carries on the legacy of 5 generations of traditional soapmaking and the quirky and passionate All-One vision of Emmanuel Bronner (Dr. Bronner).  You are probably familiar with their colorful liquid soap bottles covered with words exuberantly enumerating what Dr. Bronner called the Moral ABC's. The Bronner Family still uses their castillian soap product as a platform for world healing.  I met with David Bronner, Emmanuel's grandson, intending to discuss the new Regenerative Organic Certification that they are championing along with Patagonia, The Rodale Institute, and quite a few other companies who are seeking to help create a more harmonious agricultural system.  David also invited Mickey Norris and Chris Conrad to join our factory tour and conversation. David described Chris and Mickey as "the godfather and godmother of cannabis" because of their 30 plus years of pioneering advoc

While later this year there will be an in depth Muse Ecology series on the beaver, in this episode we hear one one the more inspiring beaver stories I've come across: the tale of the Martinez Beaver.  When the beaver moved in to downtown Martinez, CA, the city originally intended to exterminate them, but thanks to community involvement, the Martinez Beaver became protected and celebrated as a cultural icon.  In this episode, we hear this story from beaver advocate and founder and president of Worth a Dam, Heidi Perryman. Important Announcement:  If you are anywhere near Martinez tomorrow (Saturday, June 29th), it's the 12th annual Martinez Beaver Festival!  Warning: beaver enthusiasm is highly contagious! You can find more information on the beaver and Worth A Dam at The feautured image for this episode, of a beaver mother and her kit, was taken by Cheryl Reynolds in Martinez, CA. The Ballad of the Martinez Beaver in this episode was written by Mark Comstock. The theme song in the Muse Ecology introduction i

In this inspiring episode of Muse Ecology, we hear songs and conversation from my visit early spring of this year with musical artist Peia.  While many restoration ecologists and regenerative agriculturalists are working to restore harmony at the ecosystem level, Peia is one of the bards doing important work at the level of human emotion and narrative; inspiring open, courageous hearts and reminding us of what is sacred. Starting with this episode, Peia's song The Old Ways Restored will now be the theme music for the Muse Ecology introduction, setting a magical and adventurous tone for each episode before we hear some of the voices and grooves of people and place as we make our way back to harmony. You can find out more of Peia's work, and see a schedule of her upcoming shows and workshops at  

In this fifth and final episode in this series on the bison in the Great Plains, we visit the Savory Institute Headquarters in Colorado and speak with Daniela Howell, Director of the Savory Institute, and Allan Savory, inventor of the Holistic Management framework. We also hear some collaborative discussion about how regenerative cattle ranchers might support efforts to facilitate the return of large roaming herds of wildlife to the prairie. You can find the Muse Ecology Webinar Wild Bison and Holistic Management, A Collaborative Conversation at  You can find out more about The Savory Institute at Here's links for each of the organizations in this bison series , , , ,  DiGiorgio.  . You can find his amazing nature art at . Michael says that if you'd like to buy the album of his nature-banjo jams, you can find his email on his website and he can mail you a CD.  Many thanks to Michael for letting me use it for this first year of episodes.  This will be the last episode with this introduction music, as next ep