Field Notes
Field Notes explores the themes of conservation and hope through a wide lens. Our guests include a moth-er, a wine theologian, Hebrew scholar, an environmental historian and a linguistic philosopher among others. Soundtrack – Jill Phillips & Andy Gullahorn: ‘Only Say the Word’ (instrumental track) from the album ‘The Good Things.’ Used with kind permission. www.andygullahorn.com – www.jillphillips.com
Episodes
47 episodes
Ep 45: Cyrie Sendashonga – The politics of protecting nature
To halt and reverse the terrible trends in nature loss and climate change requires collaboration at international levels. With every country coming to the table with its own interests and agenda, it is no small task to agree joint commitments t...
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Season 1
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Episode 45
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34:01
Ep 44: Dorothea Seeger – Marine biology & motherhood
The choice to start a family is always a great act of faith, hope and courage. In these unprecedented days of biodiversity collapse, climate change and societal upheaval, all the more so. Doro is a marine biologist from Germany, whose love of t...
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Season 1
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Episode 44
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26:10
Ep 43: Caroline Pomeroy – Stewarding the climate in turbulent times
Is carbon offsetting just something to make us feel a bit better about our climate-harming behaviours? How does it actually work and is there good science behind the numbers? Caroline leads Climate Stewards, one of the organizations in the A Ro...
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Season 1
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Episode 43
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35:52
Ep 42: Cristina Jakob – When loving nature becomes a life
Raised in Southern Chile in a family of farmers, teachers and pastors, Cristina never realized how all those areas could be linked with God's purposes to bring redemption to all his creatures. For most of her life, she worked as a staff member ...
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Season 1
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Episode 42
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32:31
Ep 41: Abby Simonin & Carly Richardson – the fellowship of farm & food
Most of us live largely disconnected from the production of our food, but whether or not we give it much thought, each mealtime puts us in relationship with our fellow creatures, the soil, the air and the water. Abby and Carly are farmers at A ...
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Season 1
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Episode 41
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34:44
Ep 40: Rui Lino-Ramalho – Why conservation is best (and most joyfully) done in community
In 2023, Rui, his wife Debora, and their two young children moved their life from a campervan to Cruzinha, A Rocha Portugal’s field study centre in the Algarve. It is hard to imagine a more radical change but it is one their family has embraced...
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Season 1
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Episode 40
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31:26
Ep 39: Kuki Rokhum – An inconvenient challenge to the Church
More and more Christians acknowledge God’s call to care for his creation, and yet resist taking action. Kuki has preached, taught and written on creation care to audiences around the world for decades, and believes the main barrier is our love ...
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Season 1
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Episode 39
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32:53
Ep 38: Federica Marsi – a cynical journalist finds redemption at the Kenyan coast
Federica Marsi is a multi-lingual freelance journalist who has filed dozens of hard-hitting reports from everywhere from Tunisia to Lebanon, Jordan to the Occupied Palestinian Territories. Federica’s life and career were going well and then loc...
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Season 1
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Episode 38
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36:58
Ep 37: Sara Kaweesa – a heart for creation care in a context of suffering
Uganda is known for the beauty and diversity of its landscape, encompassing as it does the enormous Lake Victoria and the snowy peaks of the Rwenzori Mountains. It is a land of contrast, with lush gardens full of tropical fruit and vegetables f...
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Season 1
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Episode 37
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31:50
Ep 36: Leah Kostamo – How nature both hurts and heals poor mental health
Nature is under enormous stress. It is almost impossible to turn a blind eye to the impact of our over consuming, polluting, degrading way of living on this planet. Fewer birds sing in sadder looking trees, under skies either delivering a month...
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Season 1
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Episode 36
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38:42
Ep 35: Ed Walker – Meet A Rocha's new Executive Director
As the first day of 2023 dawned, Ed could not have known that by September he’d accept God’s calling to ‘sing a new song’ and be leading a global conservation organization he had barely heard of. With a history of walking towards crises, whethe...
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Season 1
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Episode 35
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43:27
Ep 34: Peter Harris – Milestones, miracles and migration
A Rocha's cofounders Peter and Miranda Harris were in their early thirties when they identified the collapse of the biosphere as the issue of our times and decided to give their lives to that cause. With a big vision, next to no resources, and ...
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Season 1
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Episode 34
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42:39
Ep 33: Godwin Evenyo Dzekoto – collaborative conservation and why humans can be both the problem & the solution
It is the poorest of this world who suffer the worst impacts of biodiversity loss and climate change. But we'd be wrong to think the vulnerable are passive in suffering and without agency or hope. This is a conversation that will leave you in a...
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Season 1
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Episode 33
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45:53
Ep 32: Prarthini Selveindran - Reading the world with wonder
Do you ever find you have walked for several minutes without any awareness of your surroundings? Particularly in cities, where our senses can be overloaded, we can block out much of what is going on around us. Prarthi has always lived in urban ...
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Season 1
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Episode 32
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42:53
Ep 31: Gustavo H. R. Santos – Redefining success and introducing the A Rocha Conservation Certificate
Originally from Brazil, Gustavo draws on his previous experience coming from the business sector to the nonprofit world and challenges us to rethink how we measure success. Rather than continuous growth as the usual marker for achievement, Gust...
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Season 1
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Episode 31
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45:35
Ep 30: Avinash Krishnan – Deep roots, long trunks: a lifelong commitment to making peace with Indian elephants
India has 1.4 billion people and 29 thousand elephants living in a multiple use landscape. Avinash Krishnan has dedicated over half of his life to making peace between these two populations. Now its National Director, Avinash was first a volunt...
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Season 1
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Episode 30
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50:18
Ep 29: Dave Bookless – Conviction, courage, and the changing church
Many of us have felt our consciences pricked in the midst of doing something we know is harming the natural world. But few have thrown their lives into upheaval in the way Dave Bookless did having chucked a few bags of rubbish off a cliff at th...
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Season 1
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Episode 29
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47:06
Ep 28: Judith Ochieng – How digitising data about nature can change the world
If you have never heard of GBIF (the Global Biodiversity Information Facility) you are not the only one, but after this conversation you will be glad to have discovered it. Funded by the world's governments and free to access, this global netwo...
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Season 1
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Episode 28
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48:16
Ep 27: Guillaume de Vaulx & Nabil Shehadi – Prophetic acts of hope on Lebanese soil
Hope is sometimes understood as a feeling of optimism, but as we all know, feelings are transitory and not a rock on which to build a life. What if we instead understood hope as a practice, an active way of living? Lebanon has a turbulent histo...
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Season 1
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Episode 27
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46:34
Ep 26: Christine Warner – Learning from the snail: joyful living within painful limitations
Beauty and suffering coexist in this world. There are breath-taking mountains and devastating volcanoes; healthy children and children born with acute medical challenges; birds that sing in war torn countries. How do we endure suffering and ret...
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Season 1
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Episode 26
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1:04:41
Ep 25: Jo Swinney – Finding A Place at the Table and a heart for hospitality
At a time when social distancing and virtual working have become the norm, a new book invites us to rethink our connections to each other, the earth, God, and community. Co-written from A Rocha co-founder Miranda Harris and her daughter, Jo Swi...
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Season 1
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Episode 25
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30:24
Ep 24: Soohwan Park – Sustainable activism and the prayer-driven life
How do we sustain our physical, mental and spiritual health when we are expending ourselves for justice? How can we face the reality of the world's problems and not be crushed? Soohwan has spent much of her working life up close and...
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Season 1
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Episode 24
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50:15
Ep 23: Stephen Ruttle – The art of difficult conversations – making peace with God, nature, each other and ourselves
Is peace just the absence of conflict, or is it something more?In this episode, Stephen Ruttle QC talks to Peter and guest host Rachel about peace making and the art of having difficult conversations. As a professional mediator, Stephen...
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Season 1
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Episode 23
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41:03
Ep 22: Embert Messelink – Engaging head, hands and heart in the conservation effort
Do you ever wonder if you have anything to bring to the effort to protect and restore the planet? Perhaps you feel small and insignificant considering the scale of the problems. Or you think the task requires specialist skills and experience th...
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Season 1
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Episode 22
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37:13
Ep 21: Ken Yeong – Being an environmentally friendly consumer in a complex world
Should we really be eating Nutella? Or buying products that contain palm oil? How can - and should - consumers make environmentally-friendly choices when supply chains are so complex?Ken speaks with Bryony and Peter about moving from the...
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Season 1
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Episode 21
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44:21