In this online conversation, I’m chatting with an old friend and radical agricultural and development educator, Richard Bawden. He’s on the Sunshine Coast in Queensland, I’m in Suffolk. This is a longer pod than usual. Richard is dying from cancer (he’s not living with it). It’s metastasised, it’s now untreatable. The phases are coming fast.

And yet. We laugh, tell stories, wander over a life of 87 years. In lieu of something written, it’s a conventional autobiography, squeezed into just over an hour. Before the end of the recording, I say, using clunky language, “Let’s not take up too much of your time.” Richard says, “Why not! I’m enjoying this.”

We’ve bumped this episode up the schedule. If you have any comments on the chat, I’ll make sure they get to Richard.

Richard grew up on a mixed farm in Cornwall. At Wye College, the principal, Dunstan Skilbeck calls out one day, as he walked across the square, “Where are you going? Where are you going with your life?” Now, that’s a good question from a mentor. “You like sheep, don’t you?”

Richard ends studying sheep parasitology in Australia. He goes on to head Hawkesbury Agricultural College, installing a new curriculum in 1981 focused on agroecology and experiential learning, with students learning to be the people in the systems they are studying. This experiential learning becomes truly radical, and links with educational and development groups all over the world.

Then the empire strikes back. The wardens of the old system come out with big sticks, and beat the novel system of learning and being into darkness.

We talk of the emergence of regenerative systems, ask what does good looks like. We also talk of the central importance of worldviews (weltanschauung in German). It’s all about worldviews – these shape what we think is important. They change through experience, through being, in the world.

Richard recommends Lester Milbrath’s 1985 book “Envisioning a Sustainable Society: Learning Our Way Out.” This is how we get out of the climate hole. We learn our way out.

He recommends, first by thyself. Be existential. Figure out why you hold the beliefs you have, and whey are different to others.

I finish by reading an excerpt from Mary Oliver’s wondrous poem, Last Night the Rain Spoke to Me.

“The tree was a tree, with happy leaves…

Imagine, imagine,

The long and wondrous journeys, still to be ours.”

My new book will be supporting this podcast, and will be published in March 2027 by Unbreaking/5m. It’s called "Bamboo and Butterfly: Transformative Stories for Climate and Nature Recovery."

In this online chat, author, poet and community activist Mandy Haggith talks from her Assynt croft in the north-west of Scotland. She is using poetry to create a sense of agency when so much seems bleak. We hear of community development in Scotland, how policy has enabled local people to but estates, islands and urban plots. It’s hard, though, to create the income streams for local people. Mandy talks of the use of poetry in local projects on nature recovery and reducing fossil fuel dependence. She says, “At least, verse can’t make it worse.”

She says, “Little changes can snowball into vast change. We don’t all need to be heroes.”

Mandy’s books include The Lost Elms, five collections of poetry, and five novels, including The Last Bear; Bear Witness, The Walrus Mutterer. See her website: https://www.mandyhaggith.net/

Mandy recommends Hermann Hesse’s Siddhartha and Barbara Kingsolver’s Prodigal Summer.

Her action: go and plant a tree (if you have the resource). Do imaginative time travel: go into the past, find things that are wonderful, beautiful, uplifting. However far you went back, now go forward the same amount of time into the future, and take that good thing with you. Imagine how that feels.

People feel better. It seems to generate hope about the future.

My new book will be supporting this podcast, and will be published in March 2027 by Unbreaking/5m. It’s called "Bamboo and Butterfly: Transformative Stories for Climate and Nature Recovery."

At Abbotts Hall by the Blackwater Estuary, chief executive of Essex Wildlife Trust, Rich Yates, chats about the 67 years of county wildlife action. We sit in sunshine by a pond, and hear about the Trus’s many reserves and visitor centres. And how the focus on nature has shifted from protecting and conserving to improving. This puts people at the heart of it all. The Trust relies on a dense network of 2000 volunteers to manage their 100 reserves and engage with the public.

We talk of the timescales of conservation and nature recovery: 60+ years (so far) for Fingringhoe Wick, 24 years for saltings after coastal realignment, 15 years for Mucking waste tip to reserve, and 1-2 years for the ghost ponds of Essex to come back.

Rich says, “The story of conservation is the story of people.”

Rich recommends Kate Raworth’s Doughnut Economics.

Rich’s object is a guitar plectrum.

His heroes are local education leader Gary Horne and EA Festival organiser Joanne Ooi.

His recommended action: go on, join a Wildlife Trust local to you.

Website: https://www.essexwt.org.uk/

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."

In her home in central Suffolk, First Light Festival director Genevieve Christie chats about the reinvention of Lowestoft around the free festival held at the summer solstice. Once famed fishing town, then seaside resort, like many coastal places Lowestoft had struggled to invent a third way for contemporary times. It is the place in the UK where first light appears, and the idea of first light led to the establishment of the summer-solstice free festival on the South Beach and promenade. First Light works on the idea of place as an asset, on creating pride, on bringing all people together. Says Genevieve, “It has to be free.” Regeneration is a story with “a long arc.”

Genevieve recommends Gardens of the British Working Class by Margeret Willes.

And A Tonic to the Nation by Hugh Casson, Director of the 1951 Festival of Britain. Casson says, “The real achievement? It made people want things to be better, and no was taught to hate.”

Genevieve’s recommended action: “Be interested in things be curious. Look and listen.”

First Light Festival (20-21 June, 2026): https://firstlightlowestoft.com/

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."

In our online discussion, Jacquie McGlade chats about her unique perspective on environmental harms and solutions. She’s Professor at UCL in London and Strathmore in Kenya, is former Director of the European Environment Agency, Chief Scientist at UNEP (the UN Environment Programme), and is a resident of Kenya.

She talks of hope in the Global South, and how the young of Africa will be future world leaders to get us out of modern polycrises. The North is brittle and fearful, where hope seems so easily dashed. In the South, “Hope always springs eternal.” She talks of national addictions to fossil fuels, and how with intent countries are changing fast. Jacquie was lead negotiator at the EEA and UNEP in international negotiations for COPs. Fundamental to all agreements and progress, she says, is talk. Talk is good. COPs are like large plays, three Acts, drama, ups and downs.

She says, “Living in a mud hut makes you endlessly happy.”

Her hero is Sir Crispin Tickell, climate negotiator and diplomat.

Her recommended book is Song of the Reed Warbler by Charles Massy.

Her top action: “Take one step, it’s how all journeys begin.” And then go outside, and “take a handful of soil, and smell it.”

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."

In the garden at Bottengoms, on an early spring morning, biographer and art curator Ian Collins chats about the 100-year-life of Ronnie Blythe.

We talk about how Ronnie was hyper-local to the landscapes of south Suffolk and north Essex, yet wrote in a way that told of the whole world. His life was hard. He lived in the shadow of the workhouse, and yet he found great contentment. Visitors were always charmed by the magic of his home and garden. Ronnie published most of his book aged over 60, some of the best at over 80. His was a fine life of example. Like most, though, he needed support, and this came from Christine Nash. Says Ian, “She was the sort of person who pushed you off.”

Ian recommends Ronnie’s final book, Next To Nature; and talks of his biography of Ronnie called Blythe Spirit, winner of the New Angle Prize in 2025.

His recommended action: try not to feel overwhelmed; savour the moment; bring joy.

For a film short of Ian Collins talking to me at Bottengoms, see https://youtu.be/TYErZWYaCd8.

For more on the Essex Wildlife Trust and Bottengoms, see https://www.essexwt.org.uk/bottengoms

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."

In his garden in the Norfolk Broads, philosopher, author and climate activist Rupert Read talks to me about climate movements and action.

We hear of the formation of Extinction Rebellion, thrutopian ideas and transformative adaptation. And how too the declaration of climate emergencies moved thinking and local policies. We hear about the need to focus on a climate majority: the middle 60-70% of the population who know something bad is going on, but don’t know quite what to do. Thrutopia implies going through, a leaning in, the taking of good from bad.

Rupert’s heroines are Joanna Macy and Greta Thunberg (“small people can change the whole world”, he says).

His books include “This Civilisation is Finished”; Why Climate Breakdown Matters; The Climate Majority Project”; “Transformative Adaptation”.

Rupert recommended action: believe this: most of us are capable of far more than we dare to imagine.

See Rupert’s website: https://rupertread.net/

Climate Majority Project: https://www.climatemajorityproject.com/

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."

I’m chatting online with prize-winning global change scientist and film-maker Phoebe Barnard in her borrowed home in Ireland, as the sun breaks through on her and her happy dog.

We talk about Phoebe’s life as a climate scientist, about international negotiations and processes that bring countries together, about film making for positive stories. She describes having to leave beautiful Washington State in the US. “We work on change, after all," she says.” We talk about the need for new thinking, a new story. “We can choose” she says of taking agency and ownership.

“Feminism is a public good mindset,” she also says. “We need to move towards more feminism and a world of greater ancient-culture influence.”

Phoebe’s book recommendation is Robin Wall Kimmerer’s Braiding Sweetgrass.

Her heroine and mentee: Abidemi Raji, Nigerian researcher at Cornell University.

Her recommended action: recognise you are not alone. Join something with others, like a climate repair café and the climate majority project.

The Climate Restorers films: https://www.theclimaterestorers.com/

The Climate Repair Café films: https://www.climaterepaircafe.com/

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."