Future Ecologies – Details, episodes & analysis

As is tradition, we're releasing all the original music we composed for the latest season of Future Ecologies as a set of soundtracks. For the first time ever, they are also available on all major music streaming services. Enjoy!

Auditory Compost by Sunfish Moon Light

Bandcamp, Spotify, Apple Music

Convergence by Thumbug

Bandcamp, Spotify (Side A | Side B), Apple Music (Side A | Side B)

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Find all of our seasonal soundtracks at futureecologies.net/albums

And get free download codes on our Patreon ✨

We're excited to share another beautiful guest episode with you today.

In this piece, originally broadcast in 2 parts on The Wind (one of our favourite podcasts), producer Eleanor Qull is taking us on a pilgrimage in honour of, and in tribute to that most collective monarch — the monarch butterfly. Through those lepidopteran migrants, it’s a story of scale, agency, and spiritual offering in a changing world.

Eleanor cooked up a special ~1 hour version just for us. It's spacious, equal parts silly and deadpan, with a big scoop of mono no aware.

If you’d like to see pictures of the pilgrimage offerings from each stop, you can find them at thewind.org/episodes/the-merry-monarchs, along with complete list of citations, plus the original unabridged 2-part version — where the tour makes an additional stop (in space).

How do we account for nature? We can build on it and we can take from it, but what is its intrinsic value — in and of itself?

On this episode: Adam Davis (of Ecosystem Investment Partners), and a cultural transformation happening right now — reshaping the intersection of environmentalism and capitalism. Welcome to the restoration economy.

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Music: Thumbug, Local Artist, Yu Su, SFML

Cover art: Alé Silva

Thanks: Ian Wyatt, Ava Stanley, Aila Takenaka, Alex Janz

Transcript, Citations, etc: https://www.futureecologies.net/listen/fe-5-6-making-a-living

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Help us keep making this show for as little as $1 each month.

Our supporters get access to early episode releases, a community discord server, discounted merch, and exclusive bonus content: for example, a follow-up Q&A conversation with Adam Davis.

Meet the Fire Watchers of Skeetchestn: the people keeping their community safe during nearby wildfires, and working to bring good fire back to the land. Join us for this conclusion to our visit to Secwépemc territories as we discuss a way to bring different knowledge systems together: a synthesis of western science and Indigenous understanding.

This is the 5th instalment in our series of indeterminate length, "On Fire". While you don't need to listen to them in order, you may want to at least catch up Part 4 (Under Water) before diving into this one.

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Links, citations, photos, episode transcript and more

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🌱 Future Ecologies is supported by our community of listeners like you.

Join for as little as $1/month to access early episode releases, bonus and behind the scenes content, our discord server, and more at futureecologies.net/join

What happens after the smoke clears? What does recovery look like when the disasters never end?

In this episode, we're visiting the sites of some of BC's biggest burns of 2017 and 2021 – making the link between the mega-fires and the floods and landslides that followed. We'll hear about how the land is (and isn't) recovering, and the factors that spell the difference.

This is the 4th instalment in our series of indeterminate length, "On Fire", but don't feel obliged to listen to parts 1-3 beforehand.

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Links, citations, photos, episode transcript and more

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🌱 Future Ecologies is supported by our community of listeners like you.

Join us for as little as $1/month to access early episode releases, bonus and behind the scenes content, our discord server, and more at futureecologies.net/join

Inherited is a climate storytelling podcast by, for, and about young people. We're bringing you Season 3, Episode 1: "Mama's House", a personal story of family loss, structural resilience, and survival in an era of climate change.

Find all of Season 3, including behind-the-scenes interviews with each of the 8 storytellers, wherever you get your podcasts, or at yr.media/inherited/

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September 15-17 will hold climate marches and demonstrations around the world (many starting RIGHT NOW). Join the fight to end fossil fuels, and find the action near you: fossilfueltreaty.good.do/global-march/map/

In this bonus conversation, Adam catches up with Fern Yip (guest producer on FE2.3) about her recent close call with wildfire, with lots of practical advice for those living on forested lands.

For photos and a transcript of this conversation, see futureecologies.net/listen/earthkins-trial-by-fire

Learn more about Fern at earthkin.ca

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Find Earthkin's September workshops in Vancouver: earthkin.ca/rewilddays

and a 10-weekend course September 2023 through June 2024 at Anderson Lake: earthkin.ca/waysofthewild

See also: BC's Emergency evacuee guidance for the public

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VANCOUVER: Spiders Song will return to Lobe Studio on Thursday, September 14th!

Join us for this exploration of the music of evolution, presented in 4DSOUND spatial audio.

2 showtimes: 6:30pm and 8:30pm, both including a Q&A with Mendel.

Tickets available on a sliding scale: eventbrite.ca/e/lobe-artist-residency-series-spiders-song-by-future-ecologies-tickets-695016291437

Get yours soon! Capacity is limited and both of the last shows sold out.

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🌱 Ongoing support for this podcast comes from listeners just like you. To keep this show going, join our community at patreon.com/futureecologies 💖

How do our dreams shape our reality? Tonight, with the help of scientists, artists, philosophers, and historians, we're sprinkling a little stardust on our understanding of the more-than-human — from fish, to demons and gods.

This episode features the words and voices of Lucia Pietroiusti, Filipa Ramos, Alex Jordan, Sophie Lunn-Rockliffe, Rain Wu, Nahum Mantra, Onome Ekeh, Federico Campagna, Yussef Agbo-Ola, and Hatis Noit, recorded at The Shape of a Circle in the Dream of a Fish — a recurrent festival exploring ideas of consciousness, language and the mind across non-human species and beings, initiated in 2018 by the Serpentine Galleries and held in 2022 in partnership with the Galeria Municipal do Porto.

With music by Yussef Agbo-Ola, Hatis Noit, Thumbug, and Any-Angled Light.

Big thanks to Adam's Electric Sheep Radio co-hosts, Ryder Thomas White & Samantha Ruth, to Kostas Stasinopoulos, and to Arda Studios.

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Love and strength to everyone affected by wildfires, floods, hurricanes, or other disasters right now. We're feeling... not great about planetary stability, and we'd bet you're in the same boat.

This episode doesn't directly address the climate breakdown, but we hope it can at least be a reprieve — or even offer some ways to reframe a shared nightmare.

Our next episode (on fire) is in the works. For now, we're wishing you safety, preparedness, and many moments of joy in all the life around you. Get to know your neighbours, and take care of each other. Maybe have a chat about holding climate criminals accountable.

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Our supporters on Patreon get early episode releases, a lovely discord server, and other bonus content, including some of the unabridged presentations that went into this episode.

Join our community at https://www.patreon.com/futureecologies

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VANCOUVER: Spiders Song will return to Lobe Studio on Thursday, September 14th!

Join us for this exploration of the music of evolution, presented in 4DSOUND spatial audio.

2 showtimes: 6:30pm and 8:30pm, both including a Q&A with Mendel.

Tickets available on a sliding scale:

Get to know our friends and collaborators, Miriam Quick and Duncan Geere — the hosts of Loud Numbers, a data sonification podcast.

How do data visualization and sonification differ? What are the possibilities and pitfalls? And how can you incorporate the practice into your life?

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Hear the entire conversation wherever you get podcasts — join our community at patreon.com/futureecologies

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Haven't heard our own data sonification yet? That's in Spiders Song (Part 2)

Spiders Song is a story about a quest to hear the greatest symphony on Earth: the music of evolution. Along the way, we get to know some of nature’s most surprising musicians — the paradise jumping spiders.

Part 1 is the Spiders

Part 2 is the Song

Headphones advised.

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For credits and much more, visit futureecologies.net/listen/fe-5-1-spiders-song

Missed Part 1? You can find it wherever you get your podcasts, or at futureecologies.net

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But there's more to this story than just a couple podcast episodes!

We're also releasing an open-source system which may be used to hear evolutionary patterns as music.

As you'll hear in Part 2, data sonification, the sonic equivalent of data visualization, has found applications in many scientific fields, but never before in phylogenetics: the study of evolutionary relationships.

This sonification system is intended as an experimental platform for evolutionary biologists to explore and communicate their data through sound, and for musicians to take inspiration from biodiversity. It is built in Max/MSP, and released under a GNU-GPLv3 license for customization and further development. 

Find a lovingly illustrated explanation of our sonification at futureecologies.net/listen/fe-5-1-spiders-song#explanation

• Listen to / download the full length sonification on its own
• Get the source code and a detailed technical explanation, and
• Watch a video of the patch in action

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Funding for this series was provided by the Canada Council for the Arts.

But ongoing support for this podcast comes from listeners just like you. To keep this show going and growing, join our community at patreon.com/futureecologies

Our patrons get early episode releases, exclusive bonus audio content, access to a fantastic discord server, 50% discounts on all merch, and more (eg. a livestream tour of the sonification system that we built).