What if wild, not domesticated, should be our normal instead of factory-farmed lives?
What if you could cultivate fulfilling lives and contribute to a healthy natural world?
The Wild Minds podcast is brought to you by me, Marina Robb, an author, entrepreneur, Forest School and Nature-based Trainer and Consultant, and pioneer in developing Green programmes for the Mental Health service in the UK. I am the founder of https://www.circleofliferediscovery.com (Circle of Life Rediscovery CIC) and https://www.theoutdoorteacher.com (The Outdoor Teacher) and creator of practical online Forest School and nature-based training for people working in mental health, education and business.
Tune in for interviews, insights, cutting-edge and actionable approaches to help you to improve your relationship with yourself, others, and the natural world.
https://www.geoffrobb.com (Music by Geoff Robb)
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Reimagining Inclusion - Forest School, Autism & the Power of Relationship
Season 13 · Episode 100
Monday, September 28, 2026 • Duration 01:20:43
In this 100th episode of The Wild Minds Podcast, I'm in discussion with Michael James and Stefania Donzelli. We explore what Forest School and autism can teach us about difference, belonging, relationship and the ways we create environments where people can genuinely be themselves.
We discuss:
Why autism is far more than a diagnostic category, and what changes when we listen to autistic people’s own experiences and perspectives.
Moving beyond the deficit model and questioning the assumptions of neuro-normativity.
Forest School as a micro-community where relationships, trust, autonomy and belonging can create different possibilities.
The triangle of trust between practitioner, participant and environment and why all three matter.
The social model of disability and how barriers can sometimes sit in our environments, communication and expectations rather than in the individual.
Sensory differences and the outdoor environment, including why nature itself may need to be adapted rather than treated as something fixed and untouchable.
The importance of flexibility, communication and listening - recognising that the participant may be the greatest expert in their own experience.
Power and authority in Forest School, and what happens when we create spaces where people can question, negotiate and do things differently.
Intersectionality and Universal Design for Learning, and the value of anticipating different ways of participating, communicating and expressing ourselves.
Nature as an active participant, including a beautiful story about a non-speaking child, a wisteria and the possibility of seeing behaviour differently.
The importance of place, repeated encounters and embodied experience, and what the woods can offer beyond a prescribed programme of activities.
Curiosity, disagreement and connection in a polarised world, and why sometimes the answer might be to go to the woods, light a fire, have a cuppa and talk.
In this episode, I’m joined by Dr Ralph Mortimer-Roome, a GP based in Brighton and Chair of the Kent, Surrey and Sussex regional group of Greener Practice.
We discuss what changes when we stop seeing health as something that sits only inside the individual body, and begin to include climate, community, relationship and the living world in how we understand healing.
In this episode, we explore:
Why the climate crisis is also a health crisis — and why solutions for planetary health can also support human health.
What older medical traditions can teach us about health as balance, rather than simply the absence of disease.
The idea that illness has not only biological causes, but also social, political and environmental dimensions.
The tension between the transactional and relational sides of medicine — treating illness while also helping people feel heard and understood.
David Abram’s influence on Ralph’s thinking, particularly the idea of the healer as an intermediary between the human and more-than-human world.
Why mental distress can be understood through multiple lenses — biomedical, psychological, social, trauma-informed and spiritual.
How loneliness and social isolation can contribute to ill health, and whether nature disconnection may operate in a similar way.
Why doctors may need to recognise their own relationship with nature before they can notice nature disconnection in others.
What a green prescription can actually look like — from signposting and access to green spaces, to walking groups and supported outdoor care.
Why simply moving healthcare outdoors is not enough — and the difference between being outside and developing a relationship with nature.
What a more embedded nature-based care pathway in Sussex could look like, including outdoor consultations, local sites, social prescribing and primary care.
Ralph’s closing idea of nature as a gift rather than something to consume — rooted in reciprocity, care and the possibility of healing.
For this episode, I’m joined by my husband Geoff Robb - musician, composer and co-director of The Outdoor Teacher, to explore his lifelong relationship with music and nature, and the story behind The Music of Trees.
We discuss....
Geoff’s journey from classical guitar and years of busking to becoming a professional musician, composer and creator of The Music of Trees.
How his early experiences with Reiki and healing opened questions about music, creativity and where inspiration might come from.
Geoff’s lifelong relationship with the outdoors, from Forest School Camps as a teenager to the deeper nature-connection practices we later explored together.
What it means to listen to nature, ask permission and build a relationship with individual trees - without needing to claim certainty about what is happening.
How the willow became a turning point in Geoff’s composing, and how music sometimes seems to arrive unexpectedly rather than being consciously created.
The story behind The Music of Trees - combining original guitar music with folklore, ecology, storytelling and the remarkable lives of trees.
Ancient yews, tree protectors, Julia Butterfly Hill and the people who have stood up for trees when trees cannot speak for themselves.
How COVID brought Geoff’s work as a musician almost to a standstill, but also gave him time in the woods to write more music than he had written in the previous several years - much of which became Music of Trees.
How that period also brought Geoff into The Outdoor Teacher, combining his technical and business experience with our shared commitment to helping more people access nature.
The changing reality of being a musician in the age of Spotify, streaming and AI and why supporting live music and independent artists matters more than ever.
As I record this onthe Summer Solstice - a moment when nature stands in its fullest expression, it feels like the perfect time to reflect on a season of conversations that, in different ways, have all pointed towards one essential human need: belonging.
At the Summer Solstice, when the light reaches its fullest expression, we are invited to pause and ask what has ripened in us, what is ready to bear fruit, and what kind of power we wish to carry into the darker half of the year.
The shift from Oak King to Holly King reminds us that true strength is not domination but stewardship - how can the warrior within us create the conditions for feeling, tenderness and relationship?
Belonging begins with safety. Before we can feel deeply, we need to feel held. Yet the natural world offers a remarkable invitation: trees, rivers, birds and plants ask nothing of us before we speak.
Angela Hanscom reminded us that children belong through their bodies first. Movement, risk, balance, play and sensory experience are not extras; they are part of how we come to know ourselves and our place in the world.
Children often meet the world as a community of living subjects rather than objects. Perhaps part of adulthood is remembering that capacity for relationship with the more-than-human world.
Jessica Newberry Le Vay challenged the idea that climate anxiety is something to be fixed. Grief, worry, anger and sadness may be healthy responses to a world under pressure - evidence not of pathology, but of care.
Emotional resilience does not come from avoiding difficult feelings but from learning how to hold them together, in community, with purpose and agency.
Mo Wilde brought us back to ancient relationships between people, plants, food and seasons, reminding us that health has always been rooted in reciprocity with the living world.
Many people arrive at the GP with symptoms that cannot be neatly explained or measured. Sometimes what hurts is not simply the body, but loneliness, grief, burnout, disconnection or the absence of belonging.
Health may not exist solely within the individual. It may also live in relationships, communities, purpose, access to nature, and our connection to something larger than ourselves.
Outdoor consultations, walking groups, community gardens, shared fires and time in nature are not soft alternatives to healthcare. They may be part of the medicine itself - helping people regulate, connect and remember they are not alone.
What If Your GP Could Prescribe Nature?
Season 12 · Episode 95
Monday, June 22, 2026 • Duration 01:04:32
In this conversation, GP Dr Tim Rigg explores how nature, community and healthcare might come together to create a more humane, preventative and scalable model of wellbeing.
Tim speaks from his experience as a GP, bringing together clinical practice, social prescribing, nature connection and a wider understanding of what helps people become well
He explains that around 90–95% of healthcare contact happens in primary care, showing just how important GPs are in shaping the first conversation about health, care and prevention
He suggests that a very large proportion of people coming to GPs are living with chronic disease, stress, anxiety, depression, isolation or other conditions shaped by the environments and systems they live within
The conversation explores the strengths of Western medicine, especially in acute illness, trauma and emergency care, while also asking whether it is less equipped to address root causes, prevention and the conditions of a healthy life
Tim shares how the pioneering social prescribing work in Frome helped reveal the importance of community, belonging and purpose in supporting people’s health
One striking statistic from Frome was a reported 40% relative reduction in hospital admissions compared with a neighbouring area, suggesting that community-based approaches may have a significant role to play in reducing pressure on the system
The episode looks at green prescribing not as simply telling people to “go for a walk”, but as a structured, supported and clinically credible pathway from the GP consultation room into nature-based wellbeing programmes
A key part of the emerging model is making it easy and safe for GPs to signpost patients, while trained nature-based practitioners manage screening, safeguarding, delivery and ongoing support
The conversation explores why nature-based work may help through regulation of the nervous system, sensory connection, beauty, awe, movement, stillness, meaning, community and relationship with the more-than-human world
Tim’s work is also about collaboration, bringing together GPs, Primary Care Networks, nature-based practitioners, social prescribing link workers, universities, funders and local green providers
At the heart of the episode is a hopeful question about scale - how do we move from inspiring local projects to a joined-up, evidence-informed, nationally accessible pathway that supports people, practitioners, communities and the NHS?
Getting to Know the Plants
Season 12 · Episode 94
Monday, June 15, 2026 • Duration 24:40
In this reflective solo episode, Marina explores how getting to know the plants around us can deepen our sense of connection, belonging and wonder. Drawing on a day spent teaching in the woods, she shares simple ways to slow down, engage the senses and discover the food, medicine, stories and lessons hidden within the plants we often overlook.
Key Takeaways
Why learning the names and qualities of individual plants changes how we relate to the natural world.
How simple sensory activities can help us slow down and pay closer attention.
The powerful "Meet a Tree" exercise and what it reveals about uniqueness and connection.
Marina's woodland day of foraging, fire-lighting, whittling and plant-based practices.
The medicinal and nutritional benefits of pine needles, including vitamin C and antioxidants.
How to make an infused pine and elderflower tea and immunity-supporting syrup.
The importance of safe foraging, correct identification and awareness of lookalike species.
Ethical harvesting practices that ensure enough is left for wildlife and future growth.
Insights from Mo Wilde's foraging work and the impact of wild foods on gut health and the microbiome.
The remarkable benefits of common plants such as nettles, often dismissed as weeds.
Creative ways to use plant study across science, geography, history, literacy and art.
An invitation to choose just one local plant, observe it through the seasons, and discover the richness of relationship it can offer.
The Wilderness Cure: What Happens When We Eat the Wild with Mo Wilde
Season 12 · Episode 93
Monday, June 8, 2026 • Duration 59:12
In this episode, I’m speaking with Mo Wilde - forager, research herbalist, ethnobotanist, author of The Wilderness Cure, and founder of the Wild Biome Project.
Mo has spent decades learning from plants, fungi, seaweeds, medicine, soil and the seasons. Her relationship with the wild began in childhood, and has grown into a life’s work exploring not only what plants can offer us, but what happens when we remember ourselves as part of the living world.
In 2020, Mo began an extraordinary experiment: for a whole year, she ate only wild food. No supermarket food, no farmed food, no quick stops for coffee and cake — just what could be foraged, gathered, hunted, exchanged, preserved, fermented or found within the landscape around her.
But this conversation is not really about survivalism. It is not about going “backwards” or romanticising the past. It is about relationship.
What happens when we begin to notice the green world in detail again? What happens when the body is nourished by wild plants, fungi and microbes? What happens to our gut, our sense of belonging, our imagination, our resilience — when food stops being just a product and becomes a relationship with place?
Together, Mo and I explore foraging, wild food, food security, children’s ecological literacy, the intelligence of plants, the Wildbiome Project, and the deep shift from scarcity into abundance.
This is a conversation about the wilderness cure — and the question at the heart of it is: what happens when we eat the wild?
In this conversation with Mo Wilde, we explore wild food not simply as foraging, but as a way of remembering our place inside the living world.
Mo begins with gratitude for plants, reminding us that through photosynthesis they transform sunlight into the energy that makes all life on Earth possible.
She describes a wild plant as one that is not directly tended or controlled by humans, inviting us to think about wildness as relationship rather than separation.
During her year of eating only wild food, Mo found far more abundance than she expected, with most of her food coming from within 15 miles of her home.
Climate Anxiety Is Not the Problem
Season 12 · Episode 92
Monday, June 1, 2026 • Duration 55:06
In this week's episode I am discussing how climate anxiety is not the problem. I will explore how we educate, support and practice in a time of climate breakdown without overwhelming young people or asking them to numb themselves to reality.
Topics include:
Climate anxiety is not the problem; unsupported climate anxiety is.
Climate education cannot just give young people facts - it has to help them emotionally metabolise what they know.
Emotional literacy needs to include the body, not just naming feelings.
Adults and teachers need to do their own emotional work, otherwise they may shut down young people’s grief, anger or fear.
Climate anxiety can be a sign of care, intelligence and relationship with the world, not pathology.
The “Goldilocks zone” is really useful: enough feeling to care and act, not so much that people collapse.
A climate breakdown risk-benefit assessment feels like one of your most original contributions.
The neutrality/politics section is one of the most interesting: teachers do not need to be party-political, but silence and false balance are not neutral.
Resilience should be framed as community, belonging and collective capacity, not individual toughness.
Nature connection is not just a well-being add-on; it is part of repairing the relationship that created the crisis.
The ending around possible futures, imagination and agency is important because it offers hope without false reassurance.
Can We Teach Climate Change Without Overwhelming Young People?
Season 12 · Episode 91
Monday, May 25, 2026 • Duration 53:35
Today I’m speaking with Jessica Newberry Le Vay, Senior Researcher in the Department of Psychiatry at the University of Oxford, and part of Climate Cares - a global initiative based at Oxford and Imperial College London, working to understand and respond to the links between climate change, mental health and wellbeing.
Jessica leads the Compass Project, a research programme exploring how climate change education can be integrated with mental health and wellbeing, so that young people are better supported to live, work and thrive in a changing climate. Before joining Oxford, Jessica worked at Imperial College London as a Climate Change and Health Policy Fellow with Climate Cares, and previously led Cancer Research UK’s policy research programme on cancer prevention.
In this episode:
Jessica describes climate change and mental health as two deeply connected crises, because how we feel shapes how we respond.
The conversation centres on the Compass Project, which looks at how students and educators experience climate education and climate emotions.
Jessica shares that many young people feel anxiety, fear, anger, grief, hopelessness or betrayal in response to climate breakdown.
She highlights research showing that 59% of young people surveyed globally were very or extremely worried about climate change.
More than 45% of those young people said their climate feelings were affecting daily life, including sleep, eating, school and relationships.
Jessica explains that climate anxiety is often a rational, healthy and caring response, rather than something to simply remove or fix.
Marina and Jessica explore how unspoken emotions can affect mental health, especially when young people do not feel able to share what they are carrying.
Teachers are also experiencing climate worry, while often feeling under-resourced, under-trained and unsure how to hold these conversations.
The episode explores the need to help young people hold fear and hope together, rather than avoiding difficult truths.
Jessica discusses how misinformation, social media and stigma can make it harder for young people to talk openly about climate change and action.
The conversation questions whether climate education can ever be politically neutral, especially when climate impacts are shaped by injustice, power and systems.
This really helps me to spread the word to more people like you, and to empower more people to take their practice outdoors!
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This really helps me to spread the word to more people like you, and to empower more people to take their practice outdoors!
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Mentioned in this episode:
30% Off All Courses until 5th October
Go to: https://theoutdoorteacher.com/courses/
This season has returned again and again to one simple truth: health is more than the absence of illness. It is connection. It is movement. It is meaning. It is relationship. It is belonging.
This really helps me to spread the word to more people like you, and to empower more people to take their practice outdoors!
Click here, scroll to the bottom, tap to rate with five stars, and select “Write a Review.” Then let me know what you loved most about the episode!
Also, if you haven’t done so already, "follow" the podcast, as if you’re not following, there’s a good chance you’ll miss out.
Mentioned in this episode:
30% Off All Courses until 5th October
Go to: https://theoutdoorteacher.com/courses/
Her wild diet included hundreds of plant species, seaweed, mushrooms, shellfish, game, and even wasp larvae, revealing the astonishing range of foods still present in the landscape.
The experiment was not about survivalism or proving toughness, but about asking whether the land around her could truly feed her.
Mo speaks beautifully about the practical intelligence of preservation, celebrating the jam jar as one of humanity’s great inventions for fermenting, storing, and carrying abundance forward.
She challenges the idea that foraging requires some rare talent, suggesting that humans already can notice detail - we have simply trained that attention on brands, logos, and consumer culture instead of plants.
The conversation touches on how children can naturally learn plants when they are shown them, and how much ecological literacy could return if this knowledge was woven through childhood.
Mo reflects on food insecurity, Brexit, Covid, and her own teenage experience of feeding younger siblings in Malawi, all of which shaped her interest in resilience and local food.
What begins as a question about food becomes something deeper: Mo describes moving from a mindset of scarcity to an experience of abundance, gratitude, fragility, and being held by the living world.
As a herbalist, she reminds us that healing is not only something we seek when we are ill, but something that happens daily through nourishment, relationship, and the complex intelligence of plants.
Through the Wild Biome Project, Mo is exploring how eating wild food changes the gut microbiome, opening up questions about whether health can be understood not by isolating one molecule, but by seeing the larger patterns between bodies, bacteria, plants, soil, and place.
