Future Ecologies

Latest Episodes:

FE6.10 - Mussel Memory Jun 25, 2026

Show notes

On the emerald isle of Ireland, an easily-overlooked creature holds the history of a nation within its shell. From the rise and collapse of heavy industry, to a bloody civil war, the riverbeds of Ireland have been witness — and they tell a story of change and possibility stretching far beyond any human lifetime.

With the help of guest producer Caitlin Kennedy, we're tracing the modern arc of Northern Ireland through the story of the freshwater pearl mussel.

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🦪 Find photos, citations, and a transcript of this episode at futureecologies.net

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Featuring the voices of Frank Mitchell, Mary Catherine Gallagher, Stiofán Cullen, and Sebastian Graham.

Music by Olly Keen, Thumbug, Martin Austwick, Sorcha Kennedy, plus our theme by Sunfish Moon Light

From Caitlin:

As well as the episode’s incredible contributors & musicians, a huge thank you to everyone at the Ballinderry Rivers Trust, especially Mark Horton for introducing me to freshwater pearl mussels in the first place. Thank you to Dr Evelyn Moorkens and Dr Ian Killeen for 30 years of tireless research: without them, Irish pearl mussels would be in much worse shape. I'm incredibly grateful to Wetland Surveys Ireland, Dennis Funk, Sarah Jones & John D’Arcy for helping bring this project to life and to Carrie, Sorcha & Garfield for lending an ear with endless enthusiasm & wise words of feedback. Liz and Frank Jones - your generosity in home, sustenance and support knows no bounds. Finally, thank you Karina for the hydrophones & shared sonic explorations. To all who have nerded out about mollusks with me, you’re great and hopefully we'll come back as one in the next life.

PS. Please do not go stomping around in sensitive Northern Irish river habitat looking for mussels without a survey license!

Future Ecologies presents Ideas: What the River Wants to Be (Part 1) May 26, 2026

Show notes

We have a soft spot for food systems that challenge the modern convention: food systems like forest gardens or sea gardens that don’t at all look like vast rows of monocultures, but instead blend into the landscape — to the point of being invisible — at least until you’ve learned how to see them.

It just so happens that, not far from us (in the Cowichan Estuary), there’s another kind of ancient food system being revived, and we were looking forward to visiting it as part of our upcoming season 7. But when one of the all-time greatest shows on Canadian radio beat us to the scoop, we thought we may as well save ourselves the effort and bring you the story that much sooner.

From CBC Ideas and producer Pauline Holdsworth, this is “What the River Wants to Be”

This is just Part 1 of a 2-part series. Listen to Part 2 here (or find CBC Ideas wherever you get podcasts)

[HYPHAEDELITY] Chelsey Armstrong x Leigh Joseph — The State of Ethnobotany Apr 28, 2026

Show notes

Spring is here, and (not to brag, but) around these parts, the smell of flowers is in the air, and everything seems to be buzzing with life. Times like these, it’s hard not to have plants on the brain, and we fully endorse you getting out to meet your green neighbours. While you do that, we thought you’d like to hear from two of our favourite plant enthusiasts: Chelsey Armstrong and Leigh Joseph.

You might remember Chelsey from our season 4 classic: FOREST / GARDEN, where we explored the roots of permaculture through the lens of Indigenous food systems which have been overlooked all too often. Today, Chelsey is sitting down with Leigh Joseph: Skwxwú7mesh ethnobotanist, author, and botanical entrepreneur.

Both Leigh and Chelsey do incredible work, in academia and in community. Their conversation today will take us into some of the thornier parts of the field (and deliver us to fruitful gifts).

Enjoy!

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FE6.9 - On Fire: Out of the Green, Into the Black Mar 11, 2026

Show notes

So you want to put good fire on the ground, but how?? We're taking you to Yurok territory (at the mouth of the Klamath River) to join the Cultural Fire Management Council for 3 days of burning — not just for fuel management, but for all sorts of cultural and ecological values: food, wildlife, materials, and more. We're finally moving from theory to practice, as we learn what it really means to be on the fire line.

This is our 6th return to the subject of fire. Call us obsessed, but we can't think of a better symbol for what this podcast is all about: demonstrating how people can (and need to) be active stewards of their ecologies, rather than passive victims of collapse. In fire-evolved ecosystems all over the world, prescribed fire has been an ecological management tool since time immemorial.

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🔥 Learn more about the CFMC at culturalfire.org

📸 Find photos, citations, and a transcript of this episode at futureecologies.net

🌱 Support this indie podcast, made with love for the world. Join our community on Patreon for as little as $1 each month to get

Exclusive early access to new episodes
Access to our discord (and bookclub)
A back catalogue of bonus content
Stickers, patches, hats (and a 50% discount on all merch at any membership level), and
Your name listed at futureecologies.net/join — forever

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This episode features the voices of (just some of) the CFMC crew. In order of appearance: Elizabeth Azzuz, Dylan Stevens, Rick O’Rourke, Margo Robbins, Robert McConnell, Annelia Norris, Isabel Guerra, Amanaka Yancey, Jordan Spannaus, Claire Brown, Max Brotman, and Will Bruce.

Plus music by C. Diab, Thumbug, Adrian Avandaño, G̱a̱mksimoon, and Sunfish Moon Light

With special thanks to the Confluence Lab's inaugural Artists-in-Fire Residency (Sasha White especially). Thanks as well to Fern Purdy, and Anita & Micah Williams. If you're interested in another version of this story, Adam wrote a blog post for the Confluence Lab about his experiences at the CFMC.

Cover art by Ale Silva

Catch up on all our other episodes On Fire:

Plus three related episodes:

[HYPHAEDELITY] Eric Higgs x Laura Govers — Seagrass Restoration on a Moving Island Jan 15, 2026

Show notes

Eric Higgs (of FE3.1, FE3.2, FE3.3, and FE4.9) sits down with Laura Govers, who has been working on bringing eel grass back to the Netherlands' Wadden Sea — on an island that moves, no less!

This conversation covers the low-tech solutions that they concocted to plant hectares of eel grass, the social invisibility of the marine domain, and the semantics of "restoration" in a rapidly changing world.

Catch some videos of Laura's team over at the Zeegrasherstel NL YouTube channel. And don’t miss our own visit to Oostvaardersplassen, in FE4.3 “A Tiny Wilderness”

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FE6.8 - For Peat's Sake Dec 16, 2025

Show notes

Bogs are our absolute favourite places to be. They’re not only tremendously important ecosystems, rich in exquisite biodiversity and massive stores of carbon, they’re also uniquely beautiful. These serene, colourful spaces jumble land and water into something at once both alien and familiar.

In this episode, we explore the wonders and the mysteries of peatlands, through the story of one very special (and threatened) bog just outside of the city of Vancouver. We meet the scientists who fought for its protection, and some of the folks who are studying it and working on restoring it to this day.

Plus, we answer a tricky question: should we still be extracting peat to help grow plants?

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Visit futureecologies.net/listen/fe-6-8-for-peats-sake for photos from some of our boggy adventures, full credits, citations, and a transcript of this episode

🪼💖 This episode is sponsored by our amazing community of supporting listeners. If you appreciate it, you can become one yourself! Get the scoop at futureecologies.net/support

A podcast for False Creek Dec 08, 2025

Show notes

Mendel has another show to share with you: Waterbodies

It's a video podcast dedicated to a particular body of water we have here in Vancouver, called False Creek, but more generally it’s about how we can transform our urban spaces into thriving, biodiverse, celebrations of living nature — for everyone’s benefit.

If you live in a city on a coast, and you dream of swimming in clean waters, tidepooling along the shore, and seeing all kinds of sea life, right next to downtown, this show is for you.

So far on Waterbodies, we’ve discussed the interplay of environmental and human health, frameworks for Indigenous protected and conserved areas, environmental rights and personhood, marine biodiversity and citizen science, and urban planning in the face of rising sea levels, and there’s lots more to come.

Find Waterbodies on the False Creek Friends YouTube channel and wherever you get podcasts

PS. This is more than a podcast. It's a project in civic reimagination. If you'd like to get involved with grassroots environmental democracy, and take part in shaping the future of Vancouver, we'd love to have your help. Visit falsecreekfriends.org to learn more and get involved.

In conversation with Threshold and Drilled Nov 28, 2025

Show notes

We had the opportunity to hang out with two of our favourite podcasters: Amy Martin of Threshold, and Amy Westervelt of Drilled.

We've previously featured both of their work on the Future Ecologies feed, and we couldn't pass up the chance to talk shop about the latest (fantastic) seasons of their respective shows, and get to know more about their personal journey. That's this episode: Part 1

In the supporter-exclusive Part 2, we get into more of a roundtable on the practice of environmental journalism and podcasting in these especially scary and chaotic times. For the two of us, unschooled and unqualified in anything resembling journalism, it was a blast to have the privilege of what ended up being a private consulting session with two of our heroes. Interested? You can find it on our Patreon

FE6.7 - Critical Mast Oct 24, 2025

Show notes

What do you call it when a population of podcasts mysteriously drop episodes on the same topic at the same time? It's Critical Mast!

We're so proud to present this nutty experiment in community podcasting, with its roots going back to the very beginning of our show (and the beginning of our dedication to silly puns).

Thanks to help from our pals at Jumpstart Nature, Golden State Naturalist, Learning from Nature: The Biomimicry Podcast, Nature’s Archive, and Outside/In, it's time for a bumper crop of podcasts about (or inspired by) the perplexing phenomenon known as masting: where plants somehow synchronize their seed production across staggering distances.

Give all these pods all a follow, & check out this Spotify playlist (to which episodes will be added as they drop).

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Join our community for as little as $1/month for access to early episode releases, a bonus podcast feed, merch, our discord server, book club, and more!

[HYPHAEDELITY] Sadie Couture x Hannah Tollefson — Tidewater and the Nature of Logistics Oct 22, 2025

Show notes

We've got another edition of our intermittent interview show for you, this one featuring Sadie Couture in conversation with Hannah Tollefson.

You'll remember Sadie as co-producer and reporter of FE3.4 — Dama Drama. Since then, she’s become a PhD student in Communication Studies at McGill University pursuing research at the intersection of media history, sound studies, and feminist science and technology studies.

Hannah's work is situated at the intersection of environmental, media, and infrastructure studies. She researches the role of socio-technical systems in land, water, and labour struggles, infrastructures of energy transition, and the politics of green capitalism.

This episode focusses on Hannah’s writing on the Port of Vancouver, the concept of "tidewater", the nature of logistics, and the supply chain in which we’re all entangled. Don't miss it.

(Hannah's dissertation, the main subject of this discussion, is under University embargo until Dec 14, 2025. Check back here after then for a link. Until then, one chapter is available below).

Hannah kindly compiled the following citations:

References

KD Derickson, The Annihilation of Time by Space: https://www.researchgate.net/publication/335733261_The_annihilation_of_time_by_space
Deborah Cowen, The Deadly Life of Logistics: https://www.upress.umn.edu/9780816680887/the-deadly-life-of-logistics/
Reconstructing Pre-contact Shoreline (UBC article): https://open.library.ubc.ca/soa/cIRcle/collections/facultyresearchandpublications/52383/items/1.0407075
Hannah Tollefson, on the ECHO program in The Journal of Environmental Media https://www.researchgate.net/publication/383972463_On_synchronicity_Green_shipping's_logistical_and_real-time_media

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