Future Ecologies

How did nuclear testing accidentally reshape our understanding of food webs and marine ecology? Why did sea otters bounce back from near-extinction on some parts of the Pacific coast, but are still a…

A more efficient world is simply cleaner, greener, and more sustainable. Or is it? This month, we’re exploring some of the ways we can reset our long-standing paradigms of labour, productivity, and e…

This is an excerpt from episode 5 of our Patreon-exclusive series: “Meet Your Fungal Associates”

Pay what you can – as little as a $1 per month – to unlock this entire episode, and our whole back cat…

The world is full of sound. With the help of Hildegard Westerkamp, Bernie Krause, and Nick Friedman, we untangle some of the amazing ways that we can learn about our planet by listening to it. Join u…

No matter where we call home, the land beneath us has been in a long and constant relationship with people. Some of these people may be our ancestors, some may not. This episode is about how we move …

Today is the 10th anniversary of the rediscovery of the Franciscan manzanita! To celebrate, we're re-releasing this episode from Season 1.

What do you do when you find the last individual of a species…

Who, or what, is a Naturalist? With the help of author Briony Penn, we trace the intertwined stories of two pivotal characters in the modern environmental movement: Cecil Paul (Wa'xaid) & the late Ia…

Another year, another fire season. We’ve already had a lot to say about wildfire, forest science, traditional ecological knowledge, and prescribed burning, but we’re not done yet! In this episode, we…

Lichens: ecosystems unto themselves. They’re diverse, apparently ubiquitous, and foundational to life on terrestrial earth. But this episode isn’t really about lichen. It’s about an endangered specie…

We've unlocked our 11-episode Patreon series – Dr. Lisa-ann Gershwin, and occasionally the two of us, dive deep into jellyfish species and phyla. Find stories and science on:

- Aurelia labiata (the mo…

We’ve dropped an album. Those in the know might recognize the prolific Sunfish Moon Light as the musical alter-ego of Future Ecologies co-host, Adam Huggins.

Now you can listen to the original, full-l…

Forever is a really long time. This episode is about death, and its transformative power on the landscape. It’s also the last episode of Season 1.

It may be trivial to remind you that death is an unav…

In this conclusion to our series on dam removal, we travel from the Klamath up to the Olympic Peninsula, and the site of the former Elwha and Glines Canyon dams. What did it actually take to bring th…

Dams remain one of the ultimate demonstrations of human power over nature. Wild rivers can be tamed to deliver energy for industry, lakes for recreation, and water for agriculture. But severing the l…

How are human activities changing our oceans, and why do these changes all seem to support a new age of jellyfish? What are these ancient, diverse beings: harbingers of doom, or simply the most well-…

In the fall of 2017, a series of devastating earthquakes rocked southern Mexico. But what if it’s not the earthquakes themselves that pose the greatest threat to these communities? The conflict betwe…

In this second part of our two-episode series, On Fire, we look at ways to move our civilization forward – without continuing to deny the role of fire in our landscapes. We discuss how prescribed bur…

The past two years have been the worst fire years on record across the west coast of North America, with whole communities being engulfed in flames and smoke enveloping major cities for weeks. But as…

During the devastating September 9, 2017 earthquake off the coast of southern Mexico, residents of Mexico City and Quetzaltenango, Guatemala witnessed mysterious bursts of light in the sky. These lig…

What do you do when you find the last individual of a species previously thought to be extinct? The two rarest plants on earth both live in the Presidio of San Francisco, they’re both in the same gen…