Tag Archives: biodiversity

Podcast

Women Who Changed Journalism + Nature’s Hidden Relationships

Writer’s Voice: compelling conversations with authors who challenge, inspire, and inform.

This week’s Writer’s Voice features two new books that take us into very different realms of hidden history.

First, Julia Cooke joins Francesca to talk about Starry and Restless, her vivid group portrait of Rebecca West, Martha Gellhorn, and Emily Hahn, three adventurous women writers who expanded what journalism could be, often while battling the constraints placed on women in their time.

“Women were central to voice-driven narrative journalism for at least the last century and a half.”

Then, we move from literary history to natural history, as nature journalist Sophie Pavelle takes us into a very different realm with her book To Have or To Hold. It’s a fascinating exploration of symbiosis, parasitism, and the intricate relationships that sustain the living world.

“The natural world is structured and founded upon these really intricate, complicated, ancient relationships.”

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Tags: Julia Cooke, Starry and Restless, Rebecca West, Martha Gellhorn, Emily Hahn, women journalists, Sophie Pavelle, To Have or To Hold, symbiosis, ecology, biodiversity, Writer’s Voice podcast,

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You Might Also Like: Ethel Payne, First Lady Of The Black Press, Slippery Beast: Ellen Ruppel Shell on Eels, Ecology, and the Global Wildlife Trade

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Podcast

Entwined Lives: Bridget Lyons on the Intersection of Species, with Carl Safina on Alfie and Me

Writer’s Voice: compelling conversations with authors who challenge, inspire, and inform.

Today we explore what it really means to share the planet with other forms of life. We’ll talk with writer Bridget Lyons about her acclaimed book, Entwined: Dispatches from the Intersection of Species, a collection of essays that invites us to see animals, plants, and even ourselves in a radically more connected way.

Part of the reason I wrote this book was to encourage people, inspire people to just go outside and look around and see who else is living around you.” — Bridget Lyons

And then we’ll hear an excerpt from our conversation with ecologist and author Carl Safina about his book Alfie and Me, the extraordinary story of a baby owl that helped him rethink what animals know — and what humans believe. 

People have often said humans are the only logical animals, but I think that’s almost completely backward. We’re really the only illogical animals.” — Carl Safina

Follow us on Bluesky @writersvoice.bsky.social and subscribe to our Substack. Or find us on Instagram @WritersVoicePodcast.

Key Words: Bridget Lyons, Entwined, Carl Safina, Alfie and Me, Writers Voice podcast, animal intelligence, anthropomorphism, biodiversity, environmental ethics, sea stars, interspecies relationships

You Might Also Like: Adam Nicholson on BIRD SCHOOL, Richard Louv, OUR WILD CALLING & Carl Safina, BEYOND WORDS

Read the Transcript on Substack

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Podcast

What’s Happening To Our Microbiome: THE INVISIBLE EXTINCTION with Sarah Schenck and Steven Lawrence

Our Miraculous Microbiome Is Under Threat

Our microbiome, the collection of microbes that live in and on our bodies, is under threat. Antibiotics, processed foods, and even stress can disrupt the delicate balance of our gut bacteria, leading to a range of health problems. Problems with our gut microbiome could be factors in the rise of diabetes, obesity, food allergies and even developmental disorders like autism.

We talk with  filmmakers Sarah Schenck and Steven Lawrence about their film The Invisible Extinction. It’s about the threats to our life-supporting microbiome and the scientists racing to save our vanishing microbes before it’s too late.

Writers Voice— in depth conversation with writers of all genres, on the air since 2004.

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Key words: microbiome, biodiversity, documentary, Sarah Schenck, Steven Lawrence, film, podcast, diabetes, obesity, health, autism

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Web Extras

Vandana Shiva, CREATIVE CIVIL DISOBEDIENCE

Vandana Shiva is a force of nature — and a force for nature. Winner of the alternative Nobel Prize, the Right Livelihood Award, Shiva has been at the forefront of the food sovereignty movement; Her greatest fights have been against GMOs and the patenting of seeds that have bankrupted small farmers throughout the world. As Vandana Shiva says, “Life is not an invention.” Continue reading