Around the world there are over 100 human names that mean ‘The Sun’; perhaps the clearest evidence of us humans being inspired by, and acknowledging the significance of, a 4.5 billion-year-old yellow dwarf star, a nearly perfect ball of hot plasma, heated to incandescence by nuclear fusion reactions in its core.

Its benevolence and its destructive capacity affect all aspects of our being, our cultures, our artworks, and take The Sun away and Polar Night makes us sad, detached, without energy, struggling to concentrate, struggling to stay awake. Give us too much of it and we cannot survive its power.

With music from Colin Williams

Some of the ideas and references we make in this podcast can be found here:

Equinox

Rush

2001 A Space Odyssey

Richard Strauss ‘Sunrise’

Sun Studio

RKO Pictures

Isla Santa Catalina

Helios

U2

Kiribati

Hopi

New Mexico

Mexico FIFA 1986

Serotonin

The Road - Cormac McCarthy

Carrington Event

Svalbard

Carl Nielson

A high tide coming

Will eat the land

A tide no breakwaters can withstand.

Act 1 Scene 1 Peter Grimes, Op. 33 Benjamin Britten, libretto Montagu Slater

On a cold winter's day, we go down to a river that becomes the sea and, in an exploration of the complex human relations with the tide, we go with the ‘ebb and flow’, feel the currents, watch the high water mark and study what gets cast up. We are waiting to see what the tide brings and what it takes away; especially at this time in human history.

With music from Colin Williams.

‘JUST AS THE TIDE WAS FLOWING’ BY JON BODEN. ALL RIGHTS RESERVED. USED BY KIND PERMISSION OF THE ARTIST https://www.jonboden.com

Some of the ideas and references we make in this podcast can be found here:

River Alde

Benjamin Britten

Corhampton

Svalbard

Moby Duck

Wild Man of Orford

Wadden Sea

Just as the Tide was Flowing

Isle of Iona

Dunwich

Woodhenge

Doggerland

Cockles

Julius Caesar; William Shakespeare

We live in the age of the 6th Mass Extinction; one that is human caused. Yet, amidst all this loss, we are still finding so called ‘Lazarus’ species; creatures that we believe we had extirpated but have been re-found. And some that have not been proven, but many fervently believe are still alive, clinging on to existence away from human gaze and knowledge; ready for a second coming.

Why are we so reluctant to let go of that which has demonstrably gone? Why do we hold a desperate desire that some creatures are still there, but we didn’t care enough at the time to stop their eradication? In this episode we explore stories of the Tasmanian Tiger, the Ivory-billed Woodpecker and others, and wonder why do so many of us ache for natural loss not to be final.

With music from Colin Williams

Some of the ideas and references we make in this podcast can be found here:

Ivory-billed Woodpecker

Thylacine

Arthur Conan Doyle

Cottingley Faeries

Sixth Mass Extinction

Yangtze River Dolphin

Passenger Pigeon

Honshu Wolf

Mexican Grizzly Bear

Tasmanian Emu

Tasman Starling

Coelacanth

New Zealand Storm Petrel

Mahogany Glider

Mountain Pygmy Possum

Adelaide Pygmy Blue-tongued Skink

Bridled Nail-tailed Wallaby

Night Parrot

Aldo Leopold’s ‘Sand County Almanac’

Darren Rees

Ghosts of Gone Birds

BirdLife International

Carolina Parakeet

John James Audubon

Galapagos

Lonesome George

Natural History Museum, Tring

Sam Keen

Of all the ways we relate to the natural world it could be said that the human sense of smell is by turns our most powerful sense and yet also our weakest link with the rest of Nature. Scents can transport us, can help us form enduring memories, proves the link between our olfactory system and our limbic system.

The human nose and brain can detect 1 trillion different odours yet we have inadequate language to describe them, often amalgamate them into collective smells (“it smells like a forest”) and struggle to quieten our mind in Nature and become one with the odours. With contributions from Ella Roberts, Sam Lee, Devi Singh and Gina Gow, we attempt to make sense of scents.

Music from Colin Williams

Some of the ideas and references we make in this podcast can be found here:

Jasmine Tom Robbins Sam Lee Nature Moroccan souk Herb Robert Peak District Patrick Süskind Freshwater Mint Meadowsweet Adam Thorpe Wiltshire Downs Hiraeth Cistus Wild Thyme Cairngorms Cuban cigar Fern Schumer Chapman Balsam Poplar Tamarack Song Aldo Leopold Red Fox Henry Beston Sagebrush Yellowstone Western Meadowlark White Sage Bay of Fundy Bougainvillaea Fungi Amanita Neroli Rosemary

Is song connected to even deeper roots than time and place? Can music and song can bring us closer to the non-human world? Does musical meaning arise from the experience of inhabiting the world and is it shared freely between humans and birds and trees and ‘all our relations’?

We explore all this and much more with the wonderful Sam Lee. A highly inventive and original singer, folk song interpreter, passionate conservationist, song collector and successful creator of live events. Alongside his organisation, The Nest Collective, Sam has shaken up the music scene breaking boundaries between folk and contemporary music and the assumed places and ways folksong is appreciated.

And he is the author of the acclaimed ‘The Nightingale’, a book about a bird whose presence and reassurance of nature represents an English totemism, a symbol of a visceral relationship with the natural world, myth and identity. Mixing grief, hope and vision for the future, we explore how Nature projects on to us, not us on to Nature.

Sam Lee website

The Nightingale book

Old Wow album

Some of the ideas and references we make in this podcast can be found here:

Jeannie Robertson - MacCrimmons Lament Nusrat Fateh Ali Khan Bernard Butler Buzzard Totem Anthropomorphism Heron Kestrel Ornithology Totem Pole Ray Mears Shamanism Music Declares Emergency Wembley Stadium Hans Christian Andersen J M W Turner Hawthorn Supermoon Ecology Solastalgia Caroline Lucas MP Benedict MacDonald - Rebirding Monsanto Siren Calling Fridays for Future

An archetype, a creature that we impose human ideas, ideals, values and characteristics upon? A real, spectral being, visiting us from the demonic world? Or simply our domestic companion for thousands of years that we have venerated, commemorated and depicted in myriad ways? Hounds have been - and continue to be - all of these for us humans.

As a denizen of the wild around them, humans have encountered wolves, jackals and dogs dependent upon geography, and those cultures have found ways to bring those relationships into myth, legend, worship, movies and more. In this episode we ponder Anubis in Egypt and the Beast of Bray Road, Robert Johnson’s ‘Hellhound on My Trail’ and the legend of East Anglia’s ‘Black Shuck’.

THEME MUSIC BY COLIN WILLIAMS

Some of the ideas and references we make in this podcast can be found here:

Holy Trinity Church, Blythburgh Black Shuck East Anglia The Hound of the Baskervilles Harry Potter and the Prisoner of Azkaban Flag Fen Caldicot Shamanism Saint Christopher New Testament Bog bodies River Styx Spanish Water Dog Anubis Sirius Tutankhamun Werewolf Dogman Encounters Radio Beast of Bray Road Jung Archetypes Jackal Osiris Sumarian Goddess Bau The Omen Lycanthrope Beowulf Grendel Scucca Hellhound on My Trail Robert Johnson Delta Blues Gospel music Caerwent Staines Leiston Abbey Felixstowe Gorleston Long Island Ipswich

“There are many songs in the landscape”, says Ed O’Brien, guitarist and member of Radiohead, “it roots you in what it means to be a human being; what are we doing walking on this planet”. In this podcast it’s our delight to have time with Ed as he describes the making of his solo album ‘Earth’ in retreat in mid-Wales, amidst a timeless, rich vein of Celtic tradition, and in Brazil amidst the polyrhythms of insects that are at the heart of samba.

Landscape, belief, aliveness, quantum physics, spirituality, and reading poetry aloud in the mountains, the interview dances through concepts, connections and contrasts, from a man who continues to be creating contemporary music that is a record of time, place, resonance and emotions. “Nature and landscape are not always easy places to be but you couldn’t feel more alive”.

Ed O’Brien and ‘Earth’ https://www.eobmusic.com

INTRODUCTORY AND INCIDENTAL MUSIC: Colin Williams

Some of the ideas and references we make in this podcast can be found here:

Led Zeppelin Bon Iver Jack Kerouac Snowdonia Radiohead Brazil Oxfordshire Vale of the White Horse Mid-Wales Cambrian Mountains Jay Griffiths - Wild Rhayader River Wye Walt Whitman - Leaves of Grass William Blake Dylan Thomas Celtic Nations The Shard Plynlimon Rebecca Solnit - Wanderlust Barry Lopez Aberystwyth Ezra Pound Dead Poets Society Atheism Agnosticism Buddhism Aldous Huxley - The Perennial Philosophy Sufism Kabbalah Hinduism Samba Laura Marling Nick Drake New Mexico Arizona Dehli Rajasthan Bhutan Sámi Aretha Franklin Quantum physics Paul McCartney